It was hard to wipe the scoreboard clean though, I found myself distancing from him over the next few weeks. Our relationship became as cold as that between a debt payer and collector.
We didn't see much of each other, my specialist services weren't ones required on a regular basis. It therefore struck me as curious when I found a missed call from him on a Thursday afternoon. Despite myself I went immediately over to his flat.
He had moved again, this time to a one bedroom studio flat in North London. I'd been staying in one of his many other hideouts. He'd once joked about owning property on every street of the British edition Monopoly board. Trust him to turn even that into a game.
None of them he could call home, they are mostly safe houses, when you're head of a criminal empire nowhere is a home.
It wasn't just consumerist fuck though; it was the sense of ownership that he adored. And it didn't just extend to designer clothes and fancy apartments, to become a pawn in his game you had to sell your mind, your body and your soul.
Perhaps it was my soul fighting even now against the binds that were grabbing hold of me, as my conscience tried to convince me to turn around and not walk up the flight of stairs that led to his apartment. But I was kidding myself, from the night we first met the contract between us had been signed and my job description written. As he continued to build his empire, it was my job to go about sealing any cracks that appeared in this realm of crime.
It just happened that some of these cracks occurred inside Moriarty's own head. And I had to be there with him to fix those too.
A low whine met me as I walked in through the door. The front door was left unlocked, was he really that arrogant in thinking that no-one could ever get to him?
The sitting room was a mess, the kitchen left untouched as usual. Cautiously, I walked into the bedroom to find the curtains drawn and Moriarty lying under the covers in semi-darkness. A handgun lay on the mattress just out of his reach, and his phone beside it. I quickly snatched up the gun, putting it back in its case. This noise alerted him to my presence and he looked up at me. I expected the sort of petulance that usually accompanied his mood swings when they took a turn for the worst. Instead what I saw on his face was terror, as though the walls of his mind were caving in on him. He looked up at me, but then his eyes slid out of focus and were staring past me. He was lost in a nightmare of abstract thoughts, envisaging flames in the darkness.
"Jim," I said softly, hoping to break him from his reverie.
I reached my arm out towards him and he grabbed hold of it, squeezing my wrist tightly with his bony hand, nails digging into my skin as he gripped harder and harder. He was a blind man lost in his head and I was trying to guide him back to reality.
I climbed onto the bed; he didn't relinquish his grip from my arm and was still staring at the blank wall as though it was a hidden wilderness. With my free hand I turned his face towards mine, pressing our foreheads together, so close I could feel his sharp and shallow breath against my skin. We could hardly have been more intimate and yet he was a million light years away. I continued to talk to him softly, an endless stream of anecdotes and encouragements. I must have been talking to him for over an hour, my voice becoming dry and raspy, but eventually his eyes met mine fully: big blinking brown eyes.
It reminded me of my teenage years, talking round my older sister after her first bad trip on LSD. Talking her through the withdrawal she suffered when she first tried to cut her cocaine habit. It was a skill I'd well practiced by the time I'd joined the army, and have had to help a few people with post traumatic stress, alcohol dependency and the likes there too. Just talk them round, until they're ready to let go.
As far as I knew, Jim never touched drugs or alcohol. That was the tragedy. These wounds weren't self-inflicted; his mind wasn't addled from substance abuse and overdose. It was an illness. And there was little to be done about it. His mind was a superior one, yes; it was an advanced well-oiled machine… that just happened to burn itself out at times. Not that Jim would ever fully admit to it. After rejecting his own heart his mind is all he had left.
Just talk them round, until they're ready to let go.
If anything, Jim's grip on my arm tightened, as though I was the only thing anchoring him to reality.
"Sebastian," He murmured, reaching out his left hand to and placing it against my cheek. He stared at me as if mesmerized; tracing with a finger the creases of my eyelids, the dimples in my cheeks and the frown lines- accumulated evidence of my own thoughts over the years. The same finger brushed my lips, the delicacy of his touch contrasting with his vice-like grip on my arm.
It didn't require much movement for him to press his lips to mine. His whole body relaxed with the kiss, as though the moisture from our mouths was able to cool the fire in his mind. For me, however, it could only be fuel to the flames of confused emotion that were now roaring ferociously; the blaze I'd spent weeks trying to put out was reignited in seconds. I wanted to push back, I wanted to bite back. I wanted to cling to him as tightly as he held me and never let go.
But he still felt out of reach.