The morning after the first time (it was Seb's first time with a man) he woke up a little later than usual and wandered into the kitchen they shared. It had been ages since he'd been more than an hour or two at his own apartment, which now was in reality only his legal address. The Boss paid the rent, paid the utilities, but Seb was never there. It was easier for him to bunk over. Faster processing time for orders. That's how this whole sex thing had gotten started; Jim had seduced him.
As he rounded the corner into the kitchen, the back of the world's greatest criminal mastermind was to him, and how strange was that? He alone, of every person in the man's acquaintance, was trusted implicitly. Maybe that's what possessed him with such courage; at any rate, the first words out of his mouth that morning were, "James, what the hell?" He could have been asking What the hell did we just do? or possibly What the hell was this gash down my back from? or What the hell have I gotten myself into? or maybe What the hell do you see in me? What the hell do I have that a million others don't? What the hell are we doing here? What am I doing here? But he didn't add anything, just waited for an answer. He got one, though not the one he probably wanted: Jim turned, smiled a wicked, sexy smile, and walked away with his cup of coffee.
It was a variation on the same smile he'd get often, when Jim came back late or not at all, looking somehow disheveled and debauched but perfectly put together, and he'd just look at him and you could tell. He'd smile that smile, the one that said Yes I fucked someone last night, and it wasn't you, and you can't do a damned thing about it, which kills you because while you're exclusive to me, I'm not exclusive to you and I can do whatever and whoever I want. That smile that makes him call him something else, call him you bastard, and Jim still smiles that smile.And Seb, Sebastian Moran, the Colonel, one of the most deadly assassins in the world and certainly the best sniper, a man whose methods of torture were too inhumane for even the cruelest of warlords anywhere in Africa or Asia, would sit/stand/wait there and take it. Every. Damn. Time. He'd never hold it against him, not for long anyway, and he'd never refuse him anything. Not his gun, not his mind, not his body. It was Jim's, whatever he would do with it, and didn't Sebastian know it, and didn't it scare the hell out of him, but it was God's honest truth and there's no arguing with it. He didn't do it on purpose, never intended for a simple job to turn out this way, but it's the way of things all the same. If he's honest, which he always is, it's the best he's felt in a long time, and what the fuck does that say about him?
It took Sebastian a minute to notice the second cup, waiting patiently for him beside the coffee maker.