(no subject)
Title: for all that i've done or drunk
Author:andthen_shesaid
Characters/Pairing: Moran/Moriarty
Rating/Warning: T, hints of spoilers, but nothing solid.
Summary: A week in the life, Seb Moran and Jim Moriarty and the other side of London.
Sunday and Jim goes to church.
He invites Seb along, buttoning up the silk shirt, smoking his first cigarette of the day and blowing the smoke in Seb’s face, dragging kisses down his neck, “it’ll be fun, you know.”
Seb doubts it. His mother used to drag him to church, roughly wiping the dirt off his face and yelling at his father through the wall. She wore a cross around her neck, the silver tinted green; probably bought at a second-hand shop.
He shakes his head at Jim.
“It’s Saint Mary’s. They have lovely stained glass windows.”
Seb rolls his eyes, leaves out the back door, knocking aside the stray cats that fucking congregate there, goes to the shooting range and doesn’t come back until the sun is starting to set. He thinks about going somewhere else, somewhere other than the posh apartment with blackout curtains and color-coordinated furniture, but he’s not sure he has anywhere else to go. His apartment burned to ashes long ago - ruled an accident, something wrong with the oven or the gas line or he forgot to put out a cigarette; he gets a check and his landlord had shaken his head, like oh well, like he’s sad to see him go, even if it was only because Seb had used a muffler when he shot birds out of his window and always paid his rent on time - because Jim didn’t like the neighborhood.
Jim is there when he gets back, still dressed in his three-piece suit, black dust under his nails and the collar smudged with something dark and rusty.
Seb decides to help him out of it.
/
Monday and the blonde on the news is saying things like “explosion at local catholic church” and “unknown causes” and “six dead, one wounded.”
He looks toward Jim, back from the shops, in another suit, his eyes dark and dangerous in his pale face. He’s got about six plastic grocery bags and that’s just shit, because he always whines at Seb about them ruining the environment, like the little fucker he is, apparently trying to destroy the world one choked dolphin at a time or whatever.
Seb is drinking black coffee, fucking with Jim’s phone, wondering who the hell Asymmetric Haircut/IT Help and Tramp Stamp/Boyfriend are.
(He calls Tramp Stamp/Boyfriend, just to make sure his own phone doesn’t buzz - but a woman with a throaty voice picks up; Seb is under SM and the ringtone is some show tune from the 90’s. He doesn’t know the lyrics, but they get stuck in his head anyway.)
“Jimmy,” he whines, because he loves the annoyance that crosses Jim’s face, “why didn’t you tell me it was going to be fun?”
“Fuck off, Sebby-darling. I did invite you.” Jim sing-songs, not looking at him, still unpacking the groceries. “And don’t whine. It’s unbecoming.”
Sebastian rolls his eyes, touches the gun in his pocket, just to make sure it’s still there, some kind of reassurance. He changes the channel, switching from the news to some Doctor Who rerun, the one with the ginger in the wedding dress. “Shut up.”
Jim makes a humming noise and takes out fourteen jars of jam and ten of milk and from the plastic grocery bags.
“For target practice,” He says, smirking, catching Seb’s raised eyebrow.
/
Tuesday and Jim wakes him up at 5:22 AM with first class tickets to Athens; he had a job last night, he’s tired, the bed is warm and Jim wasn’t stealing the covers, but he gets up. Doesn’t shave, though, because beard-burn pisses Jim off.
“I’m bored.” Jim says, sitting next to each other on the plane, Seb’s hand gripping his knee, because he’s always hated flying. Seb feels a short flash of worry, of annoyance.
“That’s why we’re going to Greece, darling,” Seb says, spitting out the last word in some kind of pale mockery, because they’re taking off now, and he only has one gun on his person and he’s categorizing the rest of the items on the plane, what he could use to kill the businessman in the seat behind them if he doesn’t turn off his phone - the tray table, definitely; Jim’s laptop, though he’d get gutted for it, slowly; the duct tape sticking out that American girl’s bag.
They land in Athens International, end up at some drug dealer’s shack, Jim laughing at some man’s tattoos and Seb at the building next door, gun pointed at the man’s forehead, right in the center of the ink.
Jim dances away, still laughing, when the man moves to wring his neck. He should learn to shut up, Seb thinks, but he won’t tell him until later.
Seb shoots; the man falls.
They go home.
/
Wednesday and it’s not a good day, because everything in London is muggy and shot a tourist - maybe an accident, maybe because he was screaming on his cell phone and tourists are shit, anyway.
Jim let himself get shot, for some inane reason, something to do with Mycroft and one of the princes and he’s just upset because blood stains silk. That one’s not an accident, that one’s planned - he’s had extra gauze in the cabinet and Seb knows how to deal with bullets and he comes home that day humming that insipid song on the radio, so.
Sherlock Holmes has a new case, dragging that assistant of his - who’s a crack shot, he supposes, but Seb’s still better - all across London, along with some ginger cop and his father.
“It’s all horribly boring,” Jim says, licking his way up Seb’s chest, using teeth on the scars and bruises, tugging at his hair, “I’ve figured it out already.”
“Mhmm.” Seb says - not listening, focusing on Jim’s mouth, not the words coming out of it, because he doesn’t really give a fuck about Holmes or a stupidly named league or anything other than Jim, right then.
He wonders if Jim should be doing this - arching his back and hissing at him, nails digging into his scalp, writhing, maybe, could be the right description - because he’s got bandages around his arm and asphalt scrapes on his face, but then, Seb doesn’t care, not really.
After, they lie together in bed, not touching, the covers on the floor. Jim is checking security feeds on his phone, laughing whenever Sherlock does anything in particular.
Seb could almost punch him, because that laughter is grating and he’s trying to sleep, but then he looks up at white gauze and can’t, which is really shit, because Jim wasn’t even hurt that badly and it probably means he’s getting soft.
Just for Jim though, so that’s alright.
/
Thursday and Seb spends the majority of the day cleaning his rifle and shooting jam jars on the window sill, because Jim’s stolen one of his shirts and left.
9:07 and his phone buzzes; he glances at the screen - meet met outside SH’s lab. And he leaves because he’s never been good at denying that fuck-up anything, leaving his guns scattered on the floor and the red-purple stains on the window.
Outside the lab, there’s a girl with a ponytail and smudged lipstick, smoking.
“’Lo,” he says. She takes another drag, blowing smoke into the dull-grey of the London sky; not responding, but giving him a curious look.
“Would you happen to know Sherlock Holmes, then?” He says, because he recognizes her now, the mousy lab assistant that Jim had been talking about.
She looks at him; the two-day old stubble and the gun in his jacket pocket, says “maybe,” her eyes flashing like angry steel, like Jim on a homicidal rage.
And fuck, he hated that bastard, sometimes. Times like this, maybe, when he’s standing outside in the cold with a sad girl and no cigarettes left.
She leaves after another ten minutes of silence, after her phone rings - she answers it in a trembling voice and stammering sentences, different from before.
Jim never shows; Seb comes home to find all his clothes replaced with suits.
/
Friday and Greg Lestrade bumps into him at the store. He’s carrying a basket, with teeth whitener and three different types of pasta and dark chocolate. There are dark circles under his eyes and imprints on his thumb from holding a gun.
Seb supposes that means his wife has left again, but he doesn’t care. He’s not Jim and other people are less experiments and more moving targets.
He buys cat food and goes home.
Later, he sees him again, walking with that stringy-haired lab guy and a ginger-haired officer, dressed in an ill-fitting suit.
“Lestrade’s wife is gone again,” Jim comments. Seb says nothing, trying to concentrate, cheek pressed to the rifle’s cold metal.
“We should get Chinese tonight.” And Jim is still talking, his hand tracing patterns on Seb’s thigh. Seb thinks about the rope burns on his wrists and Jim’s fingertips and twitches, not enough to fuck with his aim, just enough to make Jim’s lips curl up, a shadow of a smile.
Seb checks his scope again. Jim presses in closer, both of them stretched out on the hard concrete of some abandoned roof, and looking at him there’s a paroxysm of feeling going through him, because Jim’s probably ruining the knees of his suit - the fuck up won’t wear anything else, burning through the money Seb needs for noodles and bullets and cigarettes. “Shut up.”
“Go ahead and shoot, darling.”
He squeezes the trigger and the third man is gone, a bullet right through the head, red blood and red hair and a sloppy red tie.
“Chinese, then?”
/
Saturday and they stay in bed until 4 PM, the TV muted on the news, their legs tangled together. It’s cold outside, but Sherlock Holmes has gone to Brussels and John Watson is in Brighton with a skinny, green-eyed bank teller and Seb’s got bruises on his ribs and bite marks on his thighs and hickeys on his collarbone.
Jim smiles like a knife, tangles his fingers into Seb’s hair and pulls, brings him into a kiss that’s all teeth.