Gravitational Two-Body Problems
As usual, starting with ridiculous AU fics. ~3150 words, R, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Moriarty/Moran daemonverse. It's this prompt's fault. Warnings for fucked-up relationships, elements of D/s and bloodplay.
(none of us are going back.)
It’s not that Sebastian Moran is an intimidating man, much, though there is something to the way he stands, so carefully still, that sends warning messages to that obscure, primitive part of the brain that still remembers predators. It’s not the way he handles a gun, a rifle-though it helps-because those are predictable, understandable things-or at least so they think.
No, it’s nothing like that.
The thing people remember about him, when they notice him at all, isn’t what he is, isn’t what’s there-but rather what isn’t.
Moran, he’s got a gun in his hand but no soul at his side. He smiles when someone’s brave enough to ask, and so far no one’s stayed long enough to get an answer.
“Bast,” James says, and his daemon lifts his head from across the table, looks at him with eyes of cold copper. He clicks his tongue, says “Do make an effort to keep up” and moves his knight, black on white, a tiny click of a sound that resonates.
A sigh.
Over the decimated chessboard Bast reaches a heavy paw to tilt over his king, says “Checkmate” and sounds terribly bored, like he’s the one who won, which-well, isn’t so far from the truth, because he’s yet to settle but he knows this, already, knows James beats him always, and knowing is, as ever, already half a victory.
Sebastian doesn’t bleed, at first.
They’re thirteen, he could settle anytime, and so James makes it a habit to curl his fingers around his daemon’s throat, to pin him down while he scores neat lines over his chest, his shoulders, teeth gritted through the pain that resonates through the bond. No, he says, dispassionate, when a faint spark of gold shimmers up from the cuts then disappears, and Sebastian bares his throat, swallows, says Again. It doesn’t matter that this is impossible, that no one’s ever done this before. There’s no such things as small mistakes, James once says. If you’re going to look human, you’ll need to hurt just like one, and Sebastian voices no objection.
It’s seven weeks before he learns to hold the light in, almost a year before red dribbles out, sluggish and too bright a shade, a bit off in texture-but close enough, for now.
“You’ve been practicing,” James says, trailing cold fingers against the wound, and watches Sebastian like he’s some falling star. “Like you didn’t know,” says Sebastian, knife still in hand, and his grin’s a challenge and an acknowledgment both, because James seldom looks outside his equations these days, only finds elegance in orbital movements and impact trajectories but still shudders from across a room, a building, because there’s nothing Sebastian can hide, never for long, and why would he want to, anyway?
“Think I can bruise?” he asks, standing very still while James smears red over his ribs, and James looks at his hand, considers testing the taste, shelves the thought for another time; smiles instead, slowly, says “We won’t know until we try.”
“So what is she?” Holmes asks, irreverent, and while he turns his back to Moriarty with insolent carelessness his daemon flutters its wings, eyes on him. “Scorpion? Beetle? Mantis? No, you strike me more as the spider type.” He talks as though to make a mask out of his words, filling space and buying time, thinks himself so clever and he is, though he is quite unimaginative right now.
“I do hope you’re not always this boring,” Moriarty says, conversationally, and signs his name inside the book, doesn’t reach for the little metal box that lies always nestled in his front pocket. “You first mistake would be in assuming it is a she.”
“And the second?”
“I am no equation for you to solve, Holmes.” He smiles. “But if you really must-try, rather, an inequality.”
He doesn’t have to look up to see the interested hitch in Holmes’ daemon’s flight, the slight shift in his shoulders as he tries to adjust his theories. Let the man have his consolation prize, his useless analysis of handwriting that doesn’t show anything he didn’t already know. Let Holmes think he can look into him. Half of war is waged through knowing your enemy, the other half through making him believe he knows you-and this isn’t war yet but oh, it will be.
Father takes them shooting one summer when they’re eleven, a misguided attempt at bonding. The shotgun’s heavy and awkward in James’ hand, and Bast wears a sighthound’s shape, too lean and tongue lolling out as he trots as his side. He doesn’t want to be here, not when he’s got new proofs to work out. He supposes he could continue testing the maximum distance Bast and he can stretch their bond before it hurts too much, but that makes people start asking questions and he doesn’t need that-but it’s tempting, especially when they find themselves alone, father gone after an errant dog.
Bast looks at him, like he knows-and there’s a sound in the undergrowth, something moving, and the gun sits uneasy in his hands, it’s not fear, just a certain distaste (he knows better ways to kill small things), and Bast, never afraid and never planning, never hesitant, shifts: loses the muzzle and the tail, keeps the eyes, the leanness; looks at James all careless despite the impossibility of him, reaches a hand for the shotgun, says Let me.
He’s back to four feet, fur, stripes this time, when they’re making their way home a few dead birds and a couple hours later, father none the wiser, but at night when they’re alone in their room James sets his books aside, says “Bast, do it again.”
There’s a boy in front of him, looks a bit younger and like he’s not quite used to this particular set of limbs yet, but it’s the same eyes, the same curve to the smile. For the first time in years he looks right, the way not even he did when he tried being a cobra or a raven, and that’s enough to quell the murmur of wrongwrongwrong running through his mind.
“Better get used to it,” his daemon says, leaning back against the side of the bed, and James asks “Are you quite sure?” because it is one thing for Bast to always trail in his shadow, another entirely to stand apart and that’s what this means, doesn’t it?-and Bast nods, pulls his knees up to his chest and raises his chin, a challenge to his tone at odds with his body language, says “What’re you waiting for?” and then remains beautifully, painfully still while James runs his hand through his messy hair and traces the line of his throat.
The thing with stars, you see, is they’re history: old and burning and shifting, writ large and small across the sky.
Does it come as such a surprise, that he would trace their revolution? Nothing new under the sun, and indeed there isn’t; the world is spinning and time, time burns out stars while man propels himself towards yet another uprising, yet another war, and while a distant part of him walks through desert sands and jungles he condenses trajectories into formulae, theorems, theories.
You could be great, his professors tell him, but there’s a shudder through the hackles of their fat cat daemons when he picks apart everything they throw at him, goes further, and he doesn’t say I already am because he’s got better things to do than stating what is simply, purely, fact.
There’s a number of things the army can do with a daemonless man, and that outweighs the mistrust, at least at first, silences the questions. In the desert there are places where the Dust has never fallen, where daemons can’t follow, but Moran’s been on his own for years now, the bond gone so quiet sometimes he thinks it’s snapped while he wasn’t paying attention, and he may not be exactly human, whatever that means when daemons can be anything, isn’t he proof, but he’s bloody well close enough. He makes his way up the mountain passes, his rifle strapped to his back, only gives in to the nausea twice before he learns to filter off the constant dull pain. He spends two days picking off scouts and it’s like sport, because no one expects any danger to come from the badlands, but there’s no mistaking the thrill in him, the hunger, and when the main of the troops find their way around the mountains he considers just staying where he is, watching them fight for a country he’s never been attached for and that most of them haven’t ever even set foot in.
He comes down, in the end, but he takes his time. There’s gunpowder residue on his hands and he remembers to bleed when a stray bullet grazes him, and everyone looks at him warily, and his shadow stretches out on the sand, stark, unapologetic, alone.
It’s two more years of this war, chafing under the uniform and orders that he doesn’t agree with and don’t come in the right voice, before he turns the muzzle of his rifle on an officer, one of his own, sees the daemon disappear in a cloud of dust and the man fall from a distance. No one can prove it’s him, it’s so hard to keep track of who’s where when under enemy fire, but they’ve got their suspicions. He’s polite, calm and doesn’t make a whit of effort to hide how very bored he is of them all when they call him to the Court Martial.
Months later he’s got four exquisite lines of pain scored down his chest and a wounded tiger roaring in his face, blood everywhere and he smiles because this is better, this is power, this is what life’s supposed to be like-“Was a tiger myself once, mate, you’ll have to try harder to scare me” he tells the cat as it moves to tear his head off-and then there’s the snap of recoil, the sharp tang of gunpowder, to mingle with the dirt and the blood.
“Nice try, but looks like I win this one,” he tells the dead tiger, but when the time comes to clean up he looks at the old, faint lines of scars crisscrossing under the new wounds, thinks If he can still feel anything then he must have felt that, knows it the way he knows this-bodies and lead and the taste of copper-is the only victory he can get, which is enough, which has to be.
It sinks inside of him, that knowledge, makes itself known, heavy in the pit of his stomach, and he knows, then, that it’s time to come home.
James moves on to crime when he grows tired of waiting for his peers to catch up-the numbers are still there with him, always, but he tired of playing games against himself years ago. Now his pawns breathe and move on their own, so very predictable and willing to fall into place, one after the other, and that’s-better, but not quite what he wants yet.
By the time he’s thirty he’s got the foundations to an empire and no one knows, and this too might grow stale were it not for how much there is to control, how the smallest thing cascades and needs to be watched carefully. Those times, also, when he catches a whiff of gunpowder, the smell of it sharp and familiar-were he a more sentimental man he’d say it was painful, but James Moriarty is not one for sentiment. He acknowledges the empty space at his side, rather, and then moves on, lets gravity do its work, waits because nothing lasts, not even distance and not even stars.
“You're here early, Colonel” he says the day someone steps inside that space, a straight back and a precise gait and a crooked smile. “Got tired of tigers,” comes the answer, in a voice grown a bit rougher through the years but then they’ve both changed, haven’t they? the way they intended.
“Here to stay?” he asks, even though he knows, and Moran tips his head, says “If you’ll have me, sir”-drags the last word out, presents it the way he would the hilt of a sword, the butt of a gun. Moriarty only has to reach for it, and he does, fists his hand in Sebastian’s collar and pushes him against the nearest surface, they’re alone but even if they weren’t it wouldn’t matter. It’s been a long time and he’s stronger than he used to be, but this man-his daemon-could still reverse their position, easily, but he doesn’t, just leans into the touch, his hands relaxed at his sides, and oh he’ll have him alright-and Moriarty sets his fingers on the back of Sebastian’s neck, possessive, pulls him down into a kiss which should feel sacrilegious but only feels good, which amounts to the same as right, smiles when Sebastian returns it, with teeth, and there’s blood, all of it his, if he wants to be pedantic about it.
“Sure you don’t want him dead?” Moran asks, tilts his head towards the paper, Sherlock Holmes aides police. Moriarty doesn’t look up from the essay he’s correcting, says “I like a problem, Sebastian, you know this.”
“Problems don’t get you arrested,” says Moran, and Moriarty smiles, says “Precisely.”
It’s not-easy, exactly, to fall back into their dynamic after ten-odd years. Theirs was never exactly normal, but even those few records of survivors of long-distance human-daemon separation never were over such great spans of time, and there was never a continent and a half’s worth of distance, never people to kill and persuade and have hurt in between.
“You’ll run yourself into the ground,” Moran says, cleaning his sidearm while Moriarty tries to get used to having someone with him always and not snap, doesn’t answer. “Stop,” Sebastian growls after three days as the professor throws out yet another report, another page of sprawling numbers and variables ending in nothing, hands restless over his desk. “I won’t break, you know.” The look he gets is murderous, under the mild professorial façade. “You won’t fight back, either.”
“Would defeat the point, no?”
There’s a scraping sound as Moriarty rises from his chair. He makes his way across the room to stand before Moran, takes him in-the Indian tan lingering on his skin, the scar barely visible under the open collar of his shirt, his hair slicked back, so absurdly human. “On your knees, Colonel,” and Sebastian barely lifts a brow, “Is this how you do it now?”, folds with animal grace.
You win, he seems to say with every methodical blow taken and calculated bruise left to spread under the skin, every minute he keeps his eyes fixed on his master’s, a link stronger than the bond they should have, that was left to waste and fade somewhere along the way.
“The way we are now-“ he wonders, Sebastian’s hair now wild and matted under his fingers, “-would you die, if I did?”
“Wouldn’t happen, James.” The name is strange, falling from his mouth, rusty from disuse
“It might.”
Sebastian shakes his head like a dog shaking off water, says “They’d have to get through me” like it’s self-evident, and when Moriarty’s mouth twists-“Not if I tell you to step aside”-he gives a bark of laughter. “Can a satellite stray from orbit?” he asks, then catches himself, “No, wrong question” when Moriarty’s about to answer, . “Why do I never miss?” which isn’t exactly the right question either because of course he misses, though only rarely, and less than anyone, but will serve, as he does.
Because you’re mine and I don’t do anything by half, Moriarty thinks, and Sebastian bares his teeth, smiles, the strangest of mirrors, and oh, of course-
You win, Sebastian means when he says I will not let you die, because that’s the way it always ends, because hunger unchecked folds unto itself, for the story cannot go otherwise, it is simply unthinkable-because they are and are not the same and some things run deep, both ways.
“How far?” Holmes says on that balcony, as the wheels of war slink on their way, and his daemon is as absent as the professor’s. It won’t save him. “We’ve yet to find a limit,” Moriarty says, and then wonders, falling, if this will be the one.
Moran, the professor says, and Moran hands him his coat, his pen, the little red book, falls into step. He’s impeccable, leather gloves and the starched white of his collar under the overcoat, the line of a gun under the cloth only visible to someone who knows it’s there, and he needs only the smallest of gestures to slide into action, a snap of the fingers, a tilt of the head enough to unclip the leash, set all that potential for violence loose, how he moves, smooth and a prelude to perpetual motion. And look, also, how efficient he is, with a knife or bullets or his hands, how he stills, mid-swing, at a word, Moran, folds back into humanity like he didn’t just lay his hands on someone else’s daemon, didn’t just play body and Dust like paired instruments, drawn acquiescence and information out of them, left no mark and no proof because daemons never bleed, never bruise.
Sebastian, Moriarty says, and it’s late, it’s just them. Sebastian pulls his gloves off with his teeth and his hands are clean, something they can both smile at, drops the gloves on the desk and then looks like he’s not sure what to do with his hands. He paces the room because he’s tasted blood tonight and it left him hungry for more, because he was once a hunter and that never leaves, because one of them is the calm, centred one and tonight it’s not him, because he can, and Moriarty watches him with hooded eyes, fingers tapping an absent-minded beat against the armrest, can time the fall of his steps to the very instant. He calls his name and sees his path shift, because the human goes and the daemon follows, isn’t that how it always goes? and his fingers curl over Sebastian’s scarred shoulder as he swings himself into the chair, knees coming to press against his hips, shoulders eclipsing the light. The chair’s not made for two and they’re not young anymore, and this would sit on the wrong side of comfort were it not for the faint crackle of the bond in his chest from the contact, like a solution slotting into place pages and pages after the start. Something the matter, sir? Sebastian says against his ear, a little bit mocking, calloused hands traveling down, and shifts, grinds down; grins, when on the exhale Moriarty says No, and then-pressure-oh, just so.
Bast, James doesn’t say later, hasn’t in years, doesn’t need to.
Would you leave a body if you died? Moriarty asked one day, and Moran’s didn't know the answer then, still doesn't, spends three years expecting every breath to turn to dust.
He's still waiting for it when watching John Watson's leopard daemon lifts her head and tastes the air.through his scope, when he doesn't take the shot. This game's not worth playing alone, and he just needs to keep waiting and bleeding until gravitation stops being a constant.
(none of us are going back.)
It’s not that Sebastian Moran is an intimidating man, much, though there is something to the way he stands, so carefully still, that sends warning messages to that obscure, primitive part of the brain that still remembers predators. It’s not the way he handles a gun, a rifle-though it helps-because those are predictable, understandable things-or at least so they think.
No, it’s nothing like that.
The thing people remember about him, when they notice him at all, isn’t what he is, isn’t what’s there-but rather what isn’t.
Moran, he’s got a gun in his hand but no soul at his side. He smiles when someone’s brave enough to ask, and so far no one’s stayed long enough to get an answer.
“Bast,” James says, and his daemon lifts his head from across the table, looks at him with eyes of cold copper. He clicks his tongue, says “Do make an effort to keep up” and moves his knight, black on white, a tiny click of a sound that resonates.
A sigh.
Over the decimated chessboard Bast reaches a heavy paw to tilt over his king, says “Checkmate” and sounds terribly bored, like he’s the one who won, which-well, isn’t so far from the truth, because he’s yet to settle but he knows this, already, knows James beats him always, and knowing is, as ever, already half a victory.
Sebastian doesn’t bleed, at first.
They’re thirteen, he could settle anytime, and so James makes it a habit to curl his fingers around his daemon’s throat, to pin him down while he scores neat lines over his chest, his shoulders, teeth gritted through the pain that resonates through the bond. No, he says, dispassionate, when a faint spark of gold shimmers up from the cuts then disappears, and Sebastian bares his throat, swallows, says Again. It doesn’t matter that this is impossible, that no one’s ever done this before. There’s no such things as small mistakes, James once says. If you’re going to look human, you’ll need to hurt just like one, and Sebastian voices no objection.
It’s seven weeks before he learns to hold the light in, almost a year before red dribbles out, sluggish and too bright a shade, a bit off in texture-but close enough, for now.
“You’ve been practicing,” James says, trailing cold fingers against the wound, and watches Sebastian like he’s some falling star. “Like you didn’t know,” says Sebastian, knife still in hand, and his grin’s a challenge and an acknowledgment both, because James seldom looks outside his equations these days, only finds elegance in orbital movements and impact trajectories but still shudders from across a room, a building, because there’s nothing Sebastian can hide, never for long, and why would he want to, anyway?
“Think I can bruise?” he asks, standing very still while James smears red over his ribs, and James looks at his hand, considers testing the taste, shelves the thought for another time; smiles instead, slowly, says “We won’t know until we try.”
“So what is she?” Holmes asks, irreverent, and while he turns his back to Moriarty with insolent carelessness his daemon flutters its wings, eyes on him. “Scorpion? Beetle? Mantis? No, you strike me more as the spider type.” He talks as though to make a mask out of his words, filling space and buying time, thinks himself so clever and he is, though he is quite unimaginative right now.
“I do hope you’re not always this boring,” Moriarty says, conversationally, and signs his name inside the book, doesn’t reach for the little metal box that lies always nestled in his front pocket. “You first mistake would be in assuming it is a she.”
“And the second?”
“I am no equation for you to solve, Holmes.” He smiles. “But if you really must-try, rather, an inequality.”
He doesn’t have to look up to see the interested hitch in Holmes’ daemon’s flight, the slight shift in his shoulders as he tries to adjust his theories. Let the man have his consolation prize, his useless analysis of handwriting that doesn’t show anything he didn’t already know. Let Holmes think he can look into him. Half of war is waged through knowing your enemy, the other half through making him believe he knows you-and this isn’t war yet but oh, it will be.
Father takes them shooting one summer when they’re eleven, a misguided attempt at bonding. The shotgun’s heavy and awkward in James’ hand, and Bast wears a sighthound’s shape, too lean and tongue lolling out as he trots as his side. He doesn’t want to be here, not when he’s got new proofs to work out. He supposes he could continue testing the maximum distance Bast and he can stretch their bond before it hurts too much, but that makes people start asking questions and he doesn’t need that-but it’s tempting, especially when they find themselves alone, father gone after an errant dog.
Bast looks at him, like he knows-and there’s a sound in the undergrowth, something moving, and the gun sits uneasy in his hands, it’s not fear, just a certain distaste (he knows better ways to kill small things), and Bast, never afraid and never planning, never hesitant, shifts: loses the muzzle and the tail, keeps the eyes, the leanness; looks at James all careless despite the impossibility of him, reaches a hand for the shotgun, says Let me.
He’s back to four feet, fur, stripes this time, when they’re making their way home a few dead birds and a couple hours later, father none the wiser, but at night when they’re alone in their room James sets his books aside, says “Bast, do it again.”
There’s a boy in front of him, looks a bit younger and like he’s not quite used to this particular set of limbs yet, but it’s the same eyes, the same curve to the smile. For the first time in years he looks right, the way not even he did when he tried being a cobra or a raven, and that’s enough to quell the murmur of wrongwrongwrong running through his mind.
“Better get used to it,” his daemon says, leaning back against the side of the bed, and James asks “Are you quite sure?” because it is one thing for Bast to always trail in his shadow, another entirely to stand apart and that’s what this means, doesn’t it?-and Bast nods, pulls his knees up to his chest and raises his chin, a challenge to his tone at odds with his body language, says “What’re you waiting for?” and then remains beautifully, painfully still while James runs his hand through his messy hair and traces the line of his throat.
The thing with stars, you see, is they’re history: old and burning and shifting, writ large and small across the sky.
Does it come as such a surprise, that he would trace their revolution? Nothing new under the sun, and indeed there isn’t; the world is spinning and time, time burns out stars while man propels himself towards yet another uprising, yet another war, and while a distant part of him walks through desert sands and jungles he condenses trajectories into formulae, theorems, theories.
You could be great, his professors tell him, but there’s a shudder through the hackles of their fat cat daemons when he picks apart everything they throw at him, goes further, and he doesn’t say I already am because he’s got better things to do than stating what is simply, purely, fact.
There’s a number of things the army can do with a daemonless man, and that outweighs the mistrust, at least at first, silences the questions. In the desert there are places where the Dust has never fallen, where daemons can’t follow, but Moran’s been on his own for years now, the bond gone so quiet sometimes he thinks it’s snapped while he wasn’t paying attention, and he may not be exactly human, whatever that means when daemons can be anything, isn’t he proof, but he’s bloody well close enough. He makes his way up the mountain passes, his rifle strapped to his back, only gives in to the nausea twice before he learns to filter off the constant dull pain. He spends two days picking off scouts and it’s like sport, because no one expects any danger to come from the badlands, but there’s no mistaking the thrill in him, the hunger, and when the main of the troops find their way around the mountains he considers just staying where he is, watching them fight for a country he’s never been attached for and that most of them haven’t ever even set foot in.
He comes down, in the end, but he takes his time. There’s gunpowder residue on his hands and he remembers to bleed when a stray bullet grazes him, and everyone looks at him warily, and his shadow stretches out on the sand, stark, unapologetic, alone.
It’s two more years of this war, chafing under the uniform and orders that he doesn’t agree with and don’t come in the right voice, before he turns the muzzle of his rifle on an officer, one of his own, sees the daemon disappear in a cloud of dust and the man fall from a distance. No one can prove it’s him, it’s so hard to keep track of who’s where when under enemy fire, but they’ve got their suspicions. He’s polite, calm and doesn’t make a whit of effort to hide how very bored he is of them all when they call him to the Court Martial.
Months later he’s got four exquisite lines of pain scored down his chest and a wounded tiger roaring in his face, blood everywhere and he smiles because this is better, this is power, this is what life’s supposed to be like-“Was a tiger myself once, mate, you’ll have to try harder to scare me” he tells the cat as it moves to tear his head off-and then there’s the snap of recoil, the sharp tang of gunpowder, to mingle with the dirt and the blood.
“Nice try, but looks like I win this one,” he tells the dead tiger, but when the time comes to clean up he looks at the old, faint lines of scars crisscrossing under the new wounds, thinks If he can still feel anything then he must have felt that, knows it the way he knows this-bodies and lead and the taste of copper-is the only victory he can get, which is enough, which has to be.
It sinks inside of him, that knowledge, makes itself known, heavy in the pit of his stomach, and he knows, then, that it’s time to come home.
James moves on to crime when he grows tired of waiting for his peers to catch up-the numbers are still there with him, always, but he tired of playing games against himself years ago. Now his pawns breathe and move on their own, so very predictable and willing to fall into place, one after the other, and that’s-better, but not quite what he wants yet.
By the time he’s thirty he’s got the foundations to an empire and no one knows, and this too might grow stale were it not for how much there is to control, how the smallest thing cascades and needs to be watched carefully. Those times, also, when he catches a whiff of gunpowder, the smell of it sharp and familiar-were he a more sentimental man he’d say it was painful, but James Moriarty is not one for sentiment. He acknowledges the empty space at his side, rather, and then moves on, lets gravity do its work, waits because nothing lasts, not even distance and not even stars.
“You're here early, Colonel” he says the day someone steps inside that space, a straight back and a precise gait and a crooked smile. “Got tired of tigers,” comes the answer, in a voice grown a bit rougher through the years but then they’ve both changed, haven’t they? the way they intended.
“Here to stay?” he asks, even though he knows, and Moran tips his head, says “If you’ll have me, sir”-drags the last word out, presents it the way he would the hilt of a sword, the butt of a gun. Moriarty only has to reach for it, and he does, fists his hand in Sebastian’s collar and pushes him against the nearest surface, they’re alone but even if they weren’t it wouldn’t matter. It’s been a long time and he’s stronger than he used to be, but this man-his daemon-could still reverse their position, easily, but he doesn’t, just leans into the touch, his hands relaxed at his sides, and oh he’ll have him alright-and Moriarty sets his fingers on the back of Sebastian’s neck, possessive, pulls him down into a kiss which should feel sacrilegious but only feels good, which amounts to the same as right, smiles when Sebastian returns it, with teeth, and there’s blood, all of it his, if he wants to be pedantic about it.
“Sure you don’t want him dead?” Moran asks, tilts his head towards the paper, Sherlock Holmes aides police. Moriarty doesn’t look up from the essay he’s correcting, says “I like a problem, Sebastian, you know this.”
“Problems don’t get you arrested,” says Moran, and Moriarty smiles, says “Precisely.”
It’s not-easy, exactly, to fall back into their dynamic after ten-odd years. Theirs was never exactly normal, but even those few records of survivors of long-distance human-daemon separation never were over such great spans of time, and there was never a continent and a half’s worth of distance, never people to kill and persuade and have hurt in between.
“You’ll run yourself into the ground,” Moran says, cleaning his sidearm while Moriarty tries to get used to having someone with him always and not snap, doesn’t answer. “Stop,” Sebastian growls after three days as the professor throws out yet another report, another page of sprawling numbers and variables ending in nothing, hands restless over his desk. “I won’t break, you know.” The look he gets is murderous, under the mild professorial façade. “You won’t fight back, either.”
“Would defeat the point, no?”
There’s a scraping sound as Moriarty rises from his chair. He makes his way across the room to stand before Moran, takes him in-the Indian tan lingering on his skin, the scar barely visible under the open collar of his shirt, his hair slicked back, so absurdly human. “On your knees, Colonel,” and Sebastian barely lifts a brow, “Is this how you do it now?”, folds with animal grace.
You win, he seems to say with every methodical blow taken and calculated bruise left to spread under the skin, every minute he keeps his eyes fixed on his master’s, a link stronger than the bond they should have, that was left to waste and fade somewhere along the way.
“The way we are now-“ he wonders, Sebastian’s hair now wild and matted under his fingers, “-would you die, if I did?”
“Wouldn’t happen, James.” The name is strange, falling from his mouth, rusty from disuse
“It might.”
Sebastian shakes his head like a dog shaking off water, says “They’d have to get through me” like it’s self-evident, and when Moriarty’s mouth twists-“Not if I tell you to step aside”-he gives a bark of laughter. “Can a satellite stray from orbit?” he asks, then catches himself, “No, wrong question” when Moriarty’s about to answer, . “Why do I never miss?” which isn’t exactly the right question either because of course he misses, though only rarely, and less than anyone, but will serve, as he does.
Because you’re mine and I don’t do anything by half, Moriarty thinks, and Sebastian bares his teeth, smiles, the strangest of mirrors, and oh, of course-
You win, Sebastian means when he says I will not let you die, because that’s the way it always ends, because hunger unchecked folds unto itself, for the story cannot go otherwise, it is simply unthinkable-because they are and are not the same and some things run deep, both ways.
“How far?” Holmes says on that balcony, as the wheels of war slink on their way, and his daemon is as absent as the professor’s. It won’t save him. “We’ve yet to find a limit,” Moriarty says, and then wonders, falling, if this will be the one.
Moran, the professor says, and Moran hands him his coat, his pen, the little red book, falls into step. He’s impeccable, leather gloves and the starched white of his collar under the overcoat, the line of a gun under the cloth only visible to someone who knows it’s there, and he needs only the smallest of gestures to slide into action, a snap of the fingers, a tilt of the head enough to unclip the leash, set all that potential for violence loose, how he moves, smooth and a prelude to perpetual motion. And look, also, how efficient he is, with a knife or bullets or his hands, how he stills, mid-swing, at a word, Moran, folds back into humanity like he didn’t just lay his hands on someone else’s daemon, didn’t just play body and Dust like paired instruments, drawn acquiescence and information out of them, left no mark and no proof because daemons never bleed, never bruise.
Sebastian, Moriarty says, and it’s late, it’s just them. Sebastian pulls his gloves off with his teeth and his hands are clean, something they can both smile at, drops the gloves on the desk and then looks like he’s not sure what to do with his hands. He paces the room because he’s tasted blood tonight and it left him hungry for more, because he was once a hunter and that never leaves, because one of them is the calm, centred one and tonight it’s not him, because he can, and Moriarty watches him with hooded eyes, fingers tapping an absent-minded beat against the armrest, can time the fall of his steps to the very instant. He calls his name and sees his path shift, because the human goes and the daemon follows, isn’t that how it always goes? and his fingers curl over Sebastian’s scarred shoulder as he swings himself into the chair, knees coming to press against his hips, shoulders eclipsing the light. The chair’s not made for two and they’re not young anymore, and this would sit on the wrong side of comfort were it not for the faint crackle of the bond in his chest from the contact, like a solution slotting into place pages and pages after the start. Something the matter, sir? Sebastian says against his ear, a little bit mocking, calloused hands traveling down, and shifts, grinds down; grins, when on the exhale Moriarty says No, and then-pressure-oh, just so.
Bast, James doesn’t say later, hasn’t in years, doesn’t need to.
Would you leave a body if you died? Moriarty asked one day, and Moran’s didn't know the answer then, still doesn't, spends three years expecting every breath to turn to dust.
He's still waiting for it when watching John Watson's leopard daemon lifts her head and tastes the air.through his scope, when he doesn't take the shot. This game's not worth playing alone, and he just needs to keep waiting and bleeding until gravitation stops being a constant.