Fic: I Started a Joke
Title: I Started a Joke
Author:jim_in_westwood
Pairing: Jim/ Sebastian
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3500
Spoilers: The Reichenbach Fall
Warnings: Bad language, blood, ill treatment of expensive clothes, slash
Summary: Well...Jim things that whole ending was disappointing and funny. Sebastian disagrees. Vehemently.
So, I sit up.
It’s an odd way to start a narrative, but really we’re starting in media res, which is a fancy way to say you missed the first half of the movie and you’re going to spend the rest of it annoying the fuck out of the guy sitting next to you asking, “Why is he doing that?” At some point, if he’s worth his six figure salary, he’s going to pull a darling wee gun out from under his coat and shoot you. It’s that type of theatre, and he’s probably my boyfriend.
My name is Jim Moriarty, and I’ve been dead for approximately five minutes when I get an email notification. Sherlock Holmes is pretending to be dead too, but he’s doing it under more scrutiny, so I sit up and dig the phone out of the coat pocket. The blackcurrant juice mixed with a thickening agent that has apparently done a disappointingly good job fooling Know-It-All Cheekbones has started running down the back of my neck, into my shirt collar and down my back. Disgusting. That’s why dead bodies don’t sit up. If you’re pretending to be a dead man, always have a towel for the unveiling moment of life. Free tip.
The email is only of moderate interest and importance. Smuggling is one of those things I organize mostly to pass the time. Only one job out of twenty has any real interest in it for me, and this isn’t one of them. I scroll through a few texts and also check out a few blogs I follow in my downtime. I haven’t had a lot of that recently, so there’s an embarrassing amount of content I’m just mad behind on.
Leaving Sebastian’s borrowed gun on the ground, I get up and edge around the faux gore to make my way to one of the chimneys. I sit down, leaning against it comfortably while I scroll. Moran is due to meet me in a few minutes, especially since Buttboy Watson’s safety is, for the moment, secured. (Oh, excuse me, Confirmed Bachelor John Watson. LOL.)
Sherlock Holmes is an idiot, everyone. Did he think I didn’t know he was going to fake his own death? That I couldn’t tell the roof setup as soon as I got the text? Why a roof? It goes against the common sense of anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie. What does the idiot girl in the nightie do when pursued by the killer with a hook? Oh, yes, she runs upstairs, rather than out into the bustling neighborhood full of police and kindly passersby. And in this noble tradition, Sherlock Holmes invited me up to the roof for our tete-a-tete. Um. Okay. So, I shot myself. Blank in the mouth, which hurts like a bitch, and a good packet of fake blood at the back of my collar. Burst on impact, which was unpleasant, but not insurmountable. And the best thing is that this is university level acting and special effects. I wanted to see if he was paying attention. Was he? Oh, no; he was already flailing with panic. Perhaps he’d never seen a suicide up close? In any event, I wanted him to go through with it, his silly act. Because even though I knew it wasn’t really going to be his death, he would lose everything. With Jim Moriarty dead, he has no alibi, no dignity, no career, no trust. With Sherlock Holmes “dead,” he has no home, no family, no friends. I’ve won. I don’t really need to worry about him anymore. I’ve won as completely as if he’d really died.
Anyway, so I’m leaning against the chimney and I hear the footsteps behind me. Sebastian, I know immediately; he has a very measured, military gait and his boots (I call them his killing boots because he always wears them when he has a job) on the ground are a very familiar sound to me. I’m right in the middle of reading, so I don’t turn around right away. And he makes a sound that I imagine resembles the sound a baby seal makes at the moment it realizes its about to be clubbed so someone can wear infant on a coat. It’s not a sound Sebastian is particularly good at making, and that’s probably because he gets so little practice. Most snipers tend not to whimper. In general. God, my ears are ringing. Blanks in your mouth can give you a serious headache. Also, fruity colour but no fruity flavour. Even when you have them specially made as an entrée option; I thought I may have to play this card, but even a normal blank into the soft palate will kill you. Knowing all the lads who make the fake bullets not kill you and the real guns kill you better can be a useful thing. I turn my head, raising the phone in a lazy sort of wave. His dyed black hair is hard to get used to. It makes me stare and I’m pleased he’ll be done with this disguise today so he can wash it out.
“Moran,” I say, voice more gravelly than I was expecting it to be. “I thought you’d be up quicker.” His face is the delicate shade of cellar mushroom. “Sebastian? You ill? I told you that sushi looked suspicious.”
“The fuck…is on your head?” he demands, his mouth working after the question as though there’s a footnote but it’s not quite important enough to say at the moment. I raise my eyebrows, standing up and tucking my phone back into my pocket.
“Hair?”
“Fuck you,” he says gruffly. “The blood.”
“Brain, technically-“ He’s on me in an instant, grabbing me, running his hands all over me, invasively poking at my scalp. “Ow, ow, stop!”
“Boss, what happened? Did you fall? Where are you shot? You didn’t think he’d bring a gun!”
I pull back from him, smoothing down my coat. I stare at him. He’s no longer mushroom; now he’s the healthy colour of food-poisoned lichen.
“He didn’t. I did.” I gesture vaguely; he’ll find it, he has good eyes. He’s a sniper. “Your gun.” He doesn’t walk over to fetch it, doesn’t even turn towards my hand’s admittedly limp directional.
“Why did you bring my gun?” he asks in a numb voice. He’s still holding onto the back of my neck in a tightening grip that is slowly popping my head off like a damned dandelion.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly shoot myself with my mobile!” I scream at him suddenly then immediately regret it. Ow. Blank burn. His hand is shaking on the back of my neck.
“You would still be dead. That gun’s got enough of a-“
I cut him off. Boring!
“Yes, yes, it’s been a bit tampered with, I admit.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull away from him a bit as I reach for it. He’s cutting off the blood supply to my brain with his panic hand. “And don’t worry, it can be undone.”
There’s silence while I scroll through a rather lengthy pleading email. Ugh. The silence isn’t actually silence; my ears are still humming and after a moment I realize that Sebastian’s almost ragged breathing is filling what I had assumed was silence.
“You stupid selfish fuck,” he says with sudden growling intensity. “You put that goddamned gun into your goddamned mouth and pulled the trigger.” I look up, beaming.
“You should have seen the look on his face, Sebastian!” I almost squeal. “He must have pissed himself!”
“Shut up,” Moran says in that same deep, working-it-through voice. “I was watching Dr. Watson and you were over here, fucking killing yourself?”
I tuck the phone away and look at him.
“You’re getting redundant, Sebastian. Yes, yes, yes, and now I’m Zombie Jim! More Brains Moriarty! Come here and let me bite you, hot stuff.” I grin and grab him, but he holds me at arms’ length. There’s sticky drying fake blood on both his hands now. We’re like the cover of a queer industrial cd from Norway.
“Stop it.” He pulls off my coat, then his own jacket. He wraps his coat around my shoulders and bundles mine up under his arm. I start to complain, but really…that thing is never coming clean. Sigh. The fashion atrocities I’ve committed for Sherlock Holmes. “Stand there and shut up.” He walks over to retrieve his handgun, finally, and then takes my elbow, shifting his rifle case so it doesn’t get fresh and slap me in the arse every time I take a step. He marches me to the stairwell, practically drags me down the stairs, and every time I open my mouth, he growls, “Shut up, Jim. Shut up.” I’m manhandled into the car, and it’s like being kidnapped and taken to one’s one home. Bizarre.
Once we’re in the car, he stares straight ahead as he drives. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him this angry.
“When we get home, I want some food. I’m dying for something.”
“Shut up.”
“And I hope I can find my other slipper. I just want to lounge around the hotel room. I’m dead on my feet.”
“Shut up.”
“I also need something to drink. I’ve got the worst taste in my mouth. But, mm, that barrel. I can tell it’s your gun, because with girth like that in my mouth-“
“Shut up, Jim! For God’s sake, shut the fuck up! Don’t say another word until we are at the hotel!”
So I sit there playing Angry Birds on my phone and sending him text messages. Mostly just his name with eighteen ‘e’s in the middle. At one point I use some of the blood to draw a smiley face on the window, but he doesn’t even take his eyes off the road for a moment.
Once we’re at the hotel, I am again dragged bodily out of the car, into the elevator, up to the room, and to the shower.
“Can I talk now, Moran?” I ask wryly and he nods once. “Oh, good…I was worried that you were trying to avoid messages from beyond the grave.” He plucks the phone out of my hand.
“And you’ve lost speaking privileges again, Boss. Take your clothes off; I’ll run the shower. Don’t argue with me. Don’t fucking even. I can’t look at you like that anymore. You’re fucking freaking me out. Naked. Now.”
Well, you’ll never hear me argue with a command like that! I tossed the phone on the counter and took off the suit. Ah, my beloved Westwood. Now you’ll really have to go. Because you have entered the realm of the Halloween costume and I can never take you seriously ever again. Alas, poor suit…You made me look so damned skinny. Sigh.
Sebastian is stripping down as though this was some sort of military exercise. I can almost hear the drill sergeant yelling at him. Makes it that much sexier. Gloriously nude, he grabs my arm and pulls me into the water. Sexy times! That’ll make you remember why you want to be alive!
Ah, no. Actually, he’s scrubbing me down as though he wants to take a good layer or two off. I realize after a moment that he’s looking me over, inch for inch, looking for…exit wounds? Skinned knees? Spider veins? His temporary hair colour is washing out in dark streaks that run down his body. It looks like he’s decided to be a crying teenaged girl’s eye for a party.
“Any marks on me are ones you put there, tiger,” I purr, wrinkling my nose at him. He doesn’t answer, just wraps his hand around the back of my neck and pushes my head under the running water. I’m staring down at my bare feet, the veins in them seeming very blue as the faux blood rushes around my toes, diffused, on its way to the drain. He’s scrubbing me within an inch of my life. I’m running out of inches!
“Easy, easy!” I protest, pushing my head out from under the water to draw a breath. “You could-“
“Just let me do this,” he interrupts flatly, though his grip does turn slightly more gentle.
After the shower, Moran still hasn’t said anything. He fetches me a set of pyjamas, very soft pyjamas. I’m not at all sure where they came from. As I dress I realize they’re not really a set of pyjamas. This is his faded, beat-to-hell “Go Green” T-shirt I got him as a joke one year for Christmas and a pair of Adidas training trousers he got me to encourage me to exercise. Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of those becoming pyjama bottoms? I put them on then wander out to see Moran making me a sandwich, of all things. His hair is properly blonde again, so that’s right with the world. He’s spreading butter on the bread, making sure not to miss the slightest bit. Crust to crust, the perfectionist in him has created an even, complete layer. It seems a shame to cover it with tomato.
I hold my hand out to him and he sets the finished sandwich into it.
“God, I’ve been dying for a bite to eat. If I’d had to wait a minute more, I’d be just as likely to eat lead as a sandwich!”
His jaw tightens as he opens a bottle of beer for himself. He drinks alcohol rarely. I watch him as I contemplatively eat said sandwich. The bread’s a bit stale and the tomato a bit too juicy.
“This is good, Sebastian. My last meal was a Crunchie bar. Men on their way to the grave usually get a better choice than that, yeah?”
Again, I am ignored. It’s getting annoying. I don’t like being ignored. When you don’t like something, it should really be worth it. Like the sort of loathing that inspires you to creatively end someone’s career, marriage, life, or turn at DDR. Free tip.
As I’m finishing the last bite, the over-eager tomato has a final orgiastic flourish right onto the front of my shirt. I groan as I chew then swallow, looking down to survey the damage.
“Ugh, seriously? That’s always the way, isn’t it? Fresh from the bath. It makes you a grime magnet, you know?” I shake my head and laugh, making my two first fingers into a gun. I stick them into my mouth then mime pulling the ‘trigger.’ In about point two five seconds (I’m just approximating here), Sebastian has set down the beer without spilling a drop, grabbed my shoulders, and slammed me into the wall. He does this with some serious vim and vigour; the picture above my head rattles against the wall.
“Stop it, Jim! Stop with the fucking death jokes!”
“Jesus, Sebastian! You scared me half to-“
He knocks me against the wall again, hard, and I laugh loudly. I can’t stop. I really can’t.
“It’s not funny!”
I look at him askance, raising my eyebrows. Then I laugh brightly at him.
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it isn’t. You could have blown off the back of your damn head with even a blank. You don’t know a fucking thing about guns.”
“Yes I do,” I say, reaching for the one that he has at his belt. “That part’s the grip, that’s the-“
He pulls away from me irritably then pulls out the gun and sets the safety as though it would really stop me. While I may not have his encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms, I know how to disengage the fucking safety. It’s easier than opening a child-safe bottle of Panadol.
“You don’t know-“
“Sebastian, Sebastian, stop. Go get that beer and we’ll have a toast.” His intensity dims for a moment, and he actually meets my eyes. Grey eyes are odd things. They actually go stormy. Like with clouds and lightning sparks and everything. I smile up at him, and he slowly sets his pistol on the counter, as far away from me as possible. “A toast to Jim Moriarty. May you be in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re-“
“Shut up, Jim!” he roars, going white and then red again.
“Dead,” I finish determinedly. He’s breathing heavily; his eyes, it must be said, are bloodshot and watery. I think he may actually be considering finishing me off himself. As I look at it him, I get the distinct feeling that if I’d shot myself for real, he’d have been shortly after so I couldn’t have the last word for long. He hates when I have the last word. Which is why I make sure I have it so often.
And then somehow we’re on the sofa which hardly contains us. I blame it on the fact that he’s mostly long legs and I’m mostly unable to stay even remotely still. He’s hot and he’s almost impossibly heavy on me; I distantly understand his hurt and his anger and his relief and it’s sort of like being fucked by them. And that may be one of the creepiest sentences I’ve ever imagined. Not entirely a turn off, though. Creepy is the new sexy, darling. Actually, it’s not that new. Creepy has always been sexy. He breathes like he’s the one facing death, and I whine like a reluctant schoolboy or a coward facing a firing squad.
“Never again,” he gasps against my ear when he’s spent and limp against me, pressing me deep into the cushions. Bury me, buried in me. It’ll be a miracle, seriously, if I manage to get my fingers out of the gouges I’m pressing into his arms. I nod; I might as well. At this moment, I mean it. I couldn’t leave this.
Now it’s late and the bedroom we’ve retreated to is nearly pitch black. This hotel has won all manner of awards with me because I simply cannot sleep in a room with light sneaking around curtain edges. Sebastian is showered again. I am showered again. I was allowed to handle it on my own this time. Truffle is nestled in a little golden ball of warmth against stomach as I lie on my side. In turn, I am a ball of warmth against Sebastian’s taut bare stomach. He smells like clean and man. If they were to market that scent, they would be the richest men alive. When I say ‘they,’ I mean ‘it could be you.’ Free tip.
“I’m disappointed, Sebastian,” I say quietly. He grunts, eloquently asking me to go on. “He wouldn’t do it. He is just like me. He wouldn’t do it, for anyone. He didn’t figure anything out that I didn’t hand him. He couldn’t even fucking die right!”
“It doesn’t matter, Boss,” he murmurs behind my ear, breath warming my wet hair. “Let it go.”
“He’s somewhere, right now. I wonder if he’s actually realized that I’m not dead either.” I smile into the darkness, picturing Sherlock Holmes gnashing his teeth and fitfully rending that awful blue scarf. “Jim Moriarty, heaven doesn’t exist and hell doesn’t want you. I mean, Sebastian, there I was. Dead in Westwood. All dressed up and nowhere to go.”
“Stop,” he says mildly, warningly, fondly.
I turn in his arms, though it’s a comfort knowing that I can’t see his face and that he can’t see mine. He’s got a strong chin and it’s easy to tuck your head underneath it. I have done this on occasion.
“It’s funny. It really is. I half wanted it not to be a blank.” My voice is quiet but there’s no way for him not to hear. Behind me, Truffle stirs in annoyance before settling again. Pomeranians need every second of their beauty sleep, and they will destroy anyone who keep them from it. Free tip.
It’s silent and we’re both pretending to be asleep. Eventually, Sebastian believes he’s held out longer and the criminal lying so sweetly and limply in his arms must be out. He stretches out onto his back, gently extracting himself from me. He rolls onto his other side, and I can hear him pick up the handgun from the side table by the bed. In the dark, just by touch, he unloads it, dumping the bullets into the little drawer to sit by the pen, pad, and Bible. Then he sets the gun back in its wonted spot by the alarm clock before slipping his arms around me again. One hand goes for my wrist, as though he’ll remain comforted as long as he can reassure himself I’m still alive.
“I know, Boss,” he says quietly. “That’s what fucking scares me.”
Yeah, baby, that’s what fucking scares me too. Kiss kiss bang.
Author:jim_in_westwood
Pairing: Jim/ Sebastian
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3500
Spoilers: The Reichenbach Fall
Warnings: Bad language, blood, ill treatment of expensive clothes, slash
Summary: Well...Jim things that whole ending was disappointing and funny. Sebastian disagrees. Vehemently.
So, I sit up.
It’s an odd way to start a narrative, but really we’re starting in media res, which is a fancy way to say you missed the first half of the movie and you’re going to spend the rest of it annoying the fuck out of the guy sitting next to you asking, “Why is he doing that?” At some point, if he’s worth his six figure salary, he’s going to pull a darling wee gun out from under his coat and shoot you. It’s that type of theatre, and he’s probably my boyfriend.
My name is Jim Moriarty, and I’ve been dead for approximately five minutes when I get an email notification. Sherlock Holmes is pretending to be dead too, but he’s doing it under more scrutiny, so I sit up and dig the phone out of the coat pocket. The blackcurrant juice mixed with a thickening agent that has apparently done a disappointingly good job fooling Know-It-All Cheekbones has started running down the back of my neck, into my shirt collar and down my back. Disgusting. That’s why dead bodies don’t sit up. If you’re pretending to be a dead man, always have a towel for the unveiling moment of life. Free tip.
The email is only of moderate interest and importance. Smuggling is one of those things I organize mostly to pass the time. Only one job out of twenty has any real interest in it for me, and this isn’t one of them. I scroll through a few texts and also check out a few blogs I follow in my downtime. I haven’t had a lot of that recently, so there’s an embarrassing amount of content I’m just mad behind on.
Leaving Sebastian’s borrowed gun on the ground, I get up and edge around the faux gore to make my way to one of the chimneys. I sit down, leaning against it comfortably while I scroll. Moran is due to meet me in a few minutes, especially since Buttboy Watson’s safety is, for the moment, secured. (Oh, excuse me, Confirmed Bachelor John Watson. LOL.)
Sherlock Holmes is an idiot, everyone. Did he think I didn’t know he was going to fake his own death? That I couldn’t tell the roof setup as soon as I got the text? Why a roof? It goes against the common sense of anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie. What does the idiot girl in the nightie do when pursued by the killer with a hook? Oh, yes, she runs upstairs, rather than out into the bustling neighborhood full of police and kindly passersby. And in this noble tradition, Sherlock Holmes invited me up to the roof for our tete-a-tete. Um. Okay. So, I shot myself. Blank in the mouth, which hurts like a bitch, and a good packet of fake blood at the back of my collar. Burst on impact, which was unpleasant, but not insurmountable. And the best thing is that this is university level acting and special effects. I wanted to see if he was paying attention. Was he? Oh, no; he was already flailing with panic. Perhaps he’d never seen a suicide up close? In any event, I wanted him to go through with it, his silly act. Because even though I knew it wasn’t really going to be his death, he would lose everything. With Jim Moriarty dead, he has no alibi, no dignity, no career, no trust. With Sherlock Holmes “dead,” he has no home, no family, no friends. I’ve won. I don’t really need to worry about him anymore. I’ve won as completely as if he’d really died.
Anyway, so I’m leaning against the chimney and I hear the footsteps behind me. Sebastian, I know immediately; he has a very measured, military gait and his boots (I call them his killing boots because he always wears them when he has a job) on the ground are a very familiar sound to me. I’m right in the middle of reading, so I don’t turn around right away. And he makes a sound that I imagine resembles the sound a baby seal makes at the moment it realizes its about to be clubbed so someone can wear infant on a coat. It’s not a sound Sebastian is particularly good at making, and that’s probably because he gets so little practice. Most snipers tend not to whimper. In general. God, my ears are ringing. Blanks in your mouth can give you a serious headache. Also, fruity colour but no fruity flavour. Even when you have them specially made as an entrée option; I thought I may have to play this card, but even a normal blank into the soft palate will kill you. Knowing all the lads who make the fake bullets not kill you and the real guns kill you better can be a useful thing. I turn my head, raising the phone in a lazy sort of wave. His dyed black hair is hard to get used to. It makes me stare and I’m pleased he’ll be done with this disguise today so he can wash it out.
“Moran,” I say, voice more gravelly than I was expecting it to be. “I thought you’d be up quicker.” His face is the delicate shade of cellar mushroom. “Sebastian? You ill? I told you that sushi looked suspicious.”
“The fuck…is on your head?” he demands, his mouth working after the question as though there’s a footnote but it’s not quite important enough to say at the moment. I raise my eyebrows, standing up and tucking my phone back into my pocket.
“Hair?”
“Fuck you,” he says gruffly. “The blood.”
“Brain, technically-“ He’s on me in an instant, grabbing me, running his hands all over me, invasively poking at my scalp. “Ow, ow, stop!”
“Boss, what happened? Did you fall? Where are you shot? You didn’t think he’d bring a gun!”
I pull back from him, smoothing down my coat. I stare at him. He’s no longer mushroom; now he’s the healthy colour of food-poisoned lichen.
“He didn’t. I did.” I gesture vaguely; he’ll find it, he has good eyes. He’s a sniper. “Your gun.” He doesn’t walk over to fetch it, doesn’t even turn towards my hand’s admittedly limp directional.
“Why did you bring my gun?” he asks in a numb voice. He’s still holding onto the back of my neck in a tightening grip that is slowly popping my head off like a damned dandelion.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly shoot myself with my mobile!” I scream at him suddenly then immediately regret it. Ow. Blank burn. His hand is shaking on the back of my neck.
“You would still be dead. That gun’s got enough of a-“
I cut him off. Boring!
“Yes, yes, it’s been a bit tampered with, I admit.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull away from him a bit as I reach for it. He’s cutting off the blood supply to my brain with his panic hand. “And don’t worry, it can be undone.”
There’s silence while I scroll through a rather lengthy pleading email. Ugh. The silence isn’t actually silence; my ears are still humming and after a moment I realize that Sebastian’s almost ragged breathing is filling what I had assumed was silence.
“You stupid selfish fuck,” he says with sudden growling intensity. “You put that goddamned gun into your goddamned mouth and pulled the trigger.” I look up, beaming.
“You should have seen the look on his face, Sebastian!” I almost squeal. “He must have pissed himself!”
“Shut up,” Moran says in that same deep, working-it-through voice. “I was watching Dr. Watson and you were over here, fucking killing yourself?”
I tuck the phone away and look at him.
“You’re getting redundant, Sebastian. Yes, yes, yes, and now I’m Zombie Jim! More Brains Moriarty! Come here and let me bite you, hot stuff.” I grin and grab him, but he holds me at arms’ length. There’s sticky drying fake blood on both his hands now. We’re like the cover of a queer industrial cd from Norway.
“Stop it.” He pulls off my coat, then his own jacket. He wraps his coat around my shoulders and bundles mine up under his arm. I start to complain, but really…that thing is never coming clean. Sigh. The fashion atrocities I’ve committed for Sherlock Holmes. “Stand there and shut up.” He walks over to retrieve his handgun, finally, and then takes my elbow, shifting his rifle case so it doesn’t get fresh and slap me in the arse every time I take a step. He marches me to the stairwell, practically drags me down the stairs, and every time I open my mouth, he growls, “Shut up, Jim. Shut up.” I’m manhandled into the car, and it’s like being kidnapped and taken to one’s one home. Bizarre.
Once we’re in the car, he stares straight ahead as he drives. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him this angry.
“When we get home, I want some food. I’m dying for something.”
“Shut up.”
“And I hope I can find my other slipper. I just want to lounge around the hotel room. I’m dead on my feet.”
“Shut up.”
“I also need something to drink. I’ve got the worst taste in my mouth. But, mm, that barrel. I can tell it’s your gun, because with girth like that in my mouth-“
“Shut up, Jim! For God’s sake, shut the fuck up! Don’t say another word until we are at the hotel!”
So I sit there playing Angry Birds on my phone and sending him text messages. Mostly just his name with eighteen ‘e’s in the middle. At one point I use some of the blood to draw a smiley face on the window, but he doesn’t even take his eyes off the road for a moment.
Once we’re at the hotel, I am again dragged bodily out of the car, into the elevator, up to the room, and to the shower.
“Can I talk now, Moran?” I ask wryly and he nods once. “Oh, good…I was worried that you were trying to avoid messages from beyond the grave.” He plucks the phone out of my hand.
“And you’ve lost speaking privileges again, Boss. Take your clothes off; I’ll run the shower. Don’t argue with me. Don’t fucking even. I can’t look at you like that anymore. You’re fucking freaking me out. Naked. Now.”
Well, you’ll never hear me argue with a command like that! I tossed the phone on the counter and took off the suit. Ah, my beloved Westwood. Now you’ll really have to go. Because you have entered the realm of the Halloween costume and I can never take you seriously ever again. Alas, poor suit…You made me look so damned skinny. Sigh.
Sebastian is stripping down as though this was some sort of military exercise. I can almost hear the drill sergeant yelling at him. Makes it that much sexier. Gloriously nude, he grabs my arm and pulls me into the water. Sexy times! That’ll make you remember why you want to be alive!
Ah, no. Actually, he’s scrubbing me down as though he wants to take a good layer or two off. I realize after a moment that he’s looking me over, inch for inch, looking for…exit wounds? Skinned knees? Spider veins? His temporary hair colour is washing out in dark streaks that run down his body. It looks like he’s decided to be a crying teenaged girl’s eye for a party.
“Any marks on me are ones you put there, tiger,” I purr, wrinkling my nose at him. He doesn’t answer, just wraps his hand around the back of my neck and pushes my head under the running water. I’m staring down at my bare feet, the veins in them seeming very blue as the faux blood rushes around my toes, diffused, on its way to the drain. He’s scrubbing me within an inch of my life. I’m running out of inches!
“Easy, easy!” I protest, pushing my head out from under the water to draw a breath. “You could-“
“Just let me do this,” he interrupts flatly, though his grip does turn slightly more gentle.
After the shower, Moran still hasn’t said anything. He fetches me a set of pyjamas, very soft pyjamas. I’m not at all sure where they came from. As I dress I realize they’re not really a set of pyjamas. This is his faded, beat-to-hell “Go Green” T-shirt I got him as a joke one year for Christmas and a pair of Adidas training trousers he got me to encourage me to exercise. Am I the only one who appreciates the irony of those becoming pyjama bottoms? I put them on then wander out to see Moran making me a sandwich, of all things. His hair is properly blonde again, so that’s right with the world. He’s spreading butter on the bread, making sure not to miss the slightest bit. Crust to crust, the perfectionist in him has created an even, complete layer. It seems a shame to cover it with tomato.
I hold my hand out to him and he sets the finished sandwich into it.
“God, I’ve been dying for a bite to eat. If I’d had to wait a minute more, I’d be just as likely to eat lead as a sandwich!”
His jaw tightens as he opens a bottle of beer for himself. He drinks alcohol rarely. I watch him as I contemplatively eat said sandwich. The bread’s a bit stale and the tomato a bit too juicy.
“This is good, Sebastian. My last meal was a Crunchie bar. Men on their way to the grave usually get a better choice than that, yeah?”
Again, I am ignored. It’s getting annoying. I don’t like being ignored. When you don’t like something, it should really be worth it. Like the sort of loathing that inspires you to creatively end someone’s career, marriage, life, or turn at DDR. Free tip.
As I’m finishing the last bite, the over-eager tomato has a final orgiastic flourish right onto the front of my shirt. I groan as I chew then swallow, looking down to survey the damage.
“Ugh, seriously? That’s always the way, isn’t it? Fresh from the bath. It makes you a grime magnet, you know?” I shake my head and laugh, making my two first fingers into a gun. I stick them into my mouth then mime pulling the ‘trigger.’ In about point two five seconds (I’m just approximating here), Sebastian has set down the beer without spilling a drop, grabbed my shoulders, and slammed me into the wall. He does this with some serious vim and vigour; the picture above my head rattles against the wall.
“Stop it, Jim! Stop with the fucking death jokes!”
“Jesus, Sebastian! You scared me half to-“
He knocks me against the wall again, hard, and I laugh loudly. I can’t stop. I really can’t.
“It’s not funny!”
I look at him askance, raising my eyebrows. Then I laugh brightly at him.
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it isn’t. You could have blown off the back of your damn head with even a blank. You don’t know a fucking thing about guns.”
“Yes I do,” I say, reaching for the one that he has at his belt. “That part’s the grip, that’s the-“
He pulls away from me irritably then pulls out the gun and sets the safety as though it would really stop me. While I may not have his encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms, I know how to disengage the fucking safety. It’s easier than opening a child-safe bottle of Panadol.
“You don’t know-“
“Sebastian, Sebastian, stop. Go get that beer and we’ll have a toast.” His intensity dims for a moment, and he actually meets my eyes. Grey eyes are odd things. They actually go stormy. Like with clouds and lightning sparks and everything. I smile up at him, and he slowly sets his pistol on the counter, as far away from me as possible. “A toast to Jim Moriarty. May you be in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re-“
“Shut up, Jim!” he roars, going white and then red again.
“Dead,” I finish determinedly. He’s breathing heavily; his eyes, it must be said, are bloodshot and watery. I think he may actually be considering finishing me off himself. As I look at it him, I get the distinct feeling that if I’d shot myself for real, he’d have been shortly after so I couldn’t have the last word for long. He hates when I have the last word. Which is why I make sure I have it so often.
And then somehow we’re on the sofa which hardly contains us. I blame it on the fact that he’s mostly long legs and I’m mostly unable to stay even remotely still. He’s hot and he’s almost impossibly heavy on me; I distantly understand his hurt and his anger and his relief and it’s sort of like being fucked by them. And that may be one of the creepiest sentences I’ve ever imagined. Not entirely a turn off, though. Creepy is the new sexy, darling. Actually, it’s not that new. Creepy has always been sexy. He breathes like he’s the one facing death, and I whine like a reluctant schoolboy or a coward facing a firing squad.
“Never again,” he gasps against my ear when he’s spent and limp against me, pressing me deep into the cushions. Bury me, buried in me. It’ll be a miracle, seriously, if I manage to get my fingers out of the gouges I’m pressing into his arms. I nod; I might as well. At this moment, I mean it. I couldn’t leave this.
Now it’s late and the bedroom we’ve retreated to is nearly pitch black. This hotel has won all manner of awards with me because I simply cannot sleep in a room with light sneaking around curtain edges. Sebastian is showered again. I am showered again. I was allowed to handle it on my own this time. Truffle is nestled in a little golden ball of warmth against stomach as I lie on my side. In turn, I am a ball of warmth against Sebastian’s taut bare stomach. He smells like clean and man. If they were to market that scent, they would be the richest men alive. When I say ‘they,’ I mean ‘it could be you.’ Free tip.
“I’m disappointed, Sebastian,” I say quietly. He grunts, eloquently asking me to go on. “He wouldn’t do it. He is just like me. He wouldn’t do it, for anyone. He didn’t figure anything out that I didn’t hand him. He couldn’t even fucking die right!”
“It doesn’t matter, Boss,” he murmurs behind my ear, breath warming my wet hair. “Let it go.”
“He’s somewhere, right now. I wonder if he’s actually realized that I’m not dead either.” I smile into the darkness, picturing Sherlock Holmes gnashing his teeth and fitfully rending that awful blue scarf. “Jim Moriarty, heaven doesn’t exist and hell doesn’t want you. I mean, Sebastian, there I was. Dead in Westwood. All dressed up and nowhere to go.”
“Stop,” he says mildly, warningly, fondly.
I turn in his arms, though it’s a comfort knowing that I can’t see his face and that he can’t see mine. He’s got a strong chin and it’s easy to tuck your head underneath it. I have done this on occasion.
“It’s funny. It really is. I half wanted it not to be a blank.” My voice is quiet but there’s no way for him not to hear. Behind me, Truffle stirs in annoyance before settling again. Pomeranians need every second of their beauty sleep, and they will destroy anyone who keep them from it. Free tip.
It’s silent and we’re both pretending to be asleep. Eventually, Sebastian believes he’s held out longer and the criminal lying so sweetly and limply in his arms must be out. He stretches out onto his back, gently extracting himself from me. He rolls onto his other side, and I can hear him pick up the handgun from the side table by the bed. In the dark, just by touch, he unloads it, dumping the bullets into the little drawer to sit by the pen, pad, and Bible. Then he sets the gun back in its wonted spot by the alarm clock before slipping his arms around me again. One hand goes for my wrist, as though he’ll remain comforted as long as he can reassure himself I’m still alive.
“I know, Boss,” he says quietly. “That’s what fucking scares me.”
Yeah, baby, that’s what fucking scares me too. Kiss kiss bang.