#when i shut the book the pages should compress my depression

[patrick3ds]

tumblr blog will never replace my discourse diary

[thesleepy1]

You C-Could’ve Just Told Me Y-You Didn’t Want Me

A/N: I stumbled upon the MorMor fandom again and thought, “What the hell, why not? Most of this is either depressing, sad or kinky. Right up my ally.” Unbeta’d as always. 

 Pairings: Jim x Sebastian 

 Summary: Moriarty really did it. He killed himself and Holmes. But did the great consulting criminal think of the outcome? Did he think of what would become of his tiger?  

 Word count: 2,591

 Warnings: Please do not read this if any of the warnings trigger you, I’m touching on many heavy subjects and there will be a sad ending. Please be aware of what you can handle. There is no shame in reading the same coffee shop AU over and over again. Please proceed with caution. Major character death, death, suicidal thoughts, suicde, attempted suicde, violence, language, depressing thoughts, mourning, grief, poor coping mechanisms, blood, alcohol consummation, 

 Moriarty really did it. Jim’s really gone. No warning. No notice. No caution. No nothing. Just a single message plastered on the building in front of his window.   

 “Behave tiger.” 

 Sebastian learned on the news that night after not having heard from his boss, the man he thought of as a friend and more. The newscaster focused on Holmes’ leap from the building, but all Sebastian cared about was the body being dragged off the scene. That same empty gaze he had grown to adore, the same slicked back hair he wanted to run his fingers through, the same sickly pale face he wanted to feel under his fingertips. 

 Gone.

 Just like that. 

 He had never told Jim about the beating in his chest, the butterflies in his stomach, the constant searching for him in a crowd. But the man must have known. He read Sebastian like a favorite book. Had memorized every line, every page, every chapter, everything. Jim had known and yet he was still gone. 

 The arguably new fridge in his kitchen had not seen the sight of alcohol since it was installed. Sebastian had swore off of the thing since his parent’s passing. He had seen what it did to people. But tonight was an expectation. And so was the next day. And the next week. And the week after that. And the months that followed. 

 The only reason he left his small flat was to get more. Nothing else mattered anymore. Time passed as it always did when someone died. Sebastian had no right to be mad at the human concept of time, but he had to have someone to blame. Something that made sense. Because if time was allowed to move on as if nothing happened then time was a bastard.

 Jim wasn’t just some concept a man with too much time on his hands created. Jim was more then every human life was worth and more. Jim was also a Westwood wearing bitch. 

 The man just won’t let Sebastian die. Appearing in front of him at his worst moments.

 One morning or afternoon, he wasn’t sure, he was awoken by the sound of polished shoes on his tiled kitchen. His first thought was Jim, just like every other thought he’s had for the past year. Time wasn’t even really a thing. But alas, when he opened his exhausted eyes, because his bed was just a place marker, he was greeted by the sight of an old woman in a suit. 

 “Good day,” she spoke in an central London accent, too polite for a shirtless man in his pants. 

 “The prostitute lives a floor down.” 

 She seemed to be taken aback by his comment, visibly flinching. Her lips pressed together a moment before she spoke, “I’m here for you on behalf of Mr. Myrcroft Holmes.”

 “Tell him to go fuck himself.” 

 “That can be arranged, but for the time being he wants you to meet him at his estate. He sent me here to make sure you were alive,” the woman said sternly, regaining her composure. Jim wouldn’t have even faltered at his comments.

 “Tell him I’m dead.” Or will be if he could find the tenner he kept hidden in his couch cushions. He was due for another bottle. “I’ll even give you a blood sample. Just give me a knife.” 

 The woman seemed unimpressed, taking in the state of the flat. Things were askew, he knew. That was the point of grieving wasn’t it? Being self destructive to the point of insanity? Give him time, grieving takes time, everyone suffers differently. He could no longer count how many times he’s been to Bart’s, just sitting on the ledge. The fact that jumping, falling, seemed like a simple matter to see Jim again should frighten him but...it doesn’t. He’s just biding his time until he’s had enough. Unsure what’s holding him back, waiting. 

 That was a lie and a half. He had jumped, twice. First time a moving truck broke his fall. The movers had called an ambulance and he was rushed to the hospital. That was eight days after Jim shot himself through the skull.

 The second was last night, morning? Some twenty hours ago that was foiled by a short woman who wore her hair in a low ponytail. She had given him some sort of speech but he just tuned out her voice and threw away the slip of paper with her number on it. He didn’t need pity. 

 “That won’t be necessary. I can inform my employer of your beating heart and he will arrive here himself,” she turned on her heel and headed for the door, her hand lingering on the handle before turning back to him. “What made him worth suffering for?” 

 The door clinked shut. 

 More than the bastard realized.

 “Calling me a bastard and a bitch? On the same day? I’m honored, Sebby,” came Moriarty’s voice from the arm of the couch. “Really, just wonderful what you’ve done to the place.” 

 “What are you doing here?” Sebastian groaned to the figment of his imagination which was also a shit eating bitch. 

 “Picking flowers, what do you think I’m doing?” 

 Sebastian couldn’t help but grin at the comment. He knew Jim wasn’t actually here but if he could fool himself for an hour or so. The calmest hours he granted himself once a week.

 “C-could you hold my hand?” Sebastian begged in a whisper, not looking up at the gaze of his one sided lover. 

 “This again?” He could hear Moriarty rolling his eyes. “I guess, but only for a moment.” The ghost held out his hand, far enough to make Sebastian work for it. He always did, forcing himself to move, to crawl, fight tooth and nail with his useless body to get up and hold Moriarty’s non-existent hand. 

 Moriarty’s hand was cold. That was how he imagined it if he had ever gotten the chance to hold it. Moriarty’s hand was soft because he never had to do any dirty work. Nails filed down and clean, pristine. The real Jim would never, but Sebastian let himself have this. 

 “You’re crying again. I thought this was supposed to be my moment.” Moriarty lifted his face to meet his, wiping the tears with an invisible force. “Can you not make this about yourself for one moment? It's starting to get on my nerves and Daddy wants the spotlight so SUCK IT UP.” 

 Sebastian clenched Moriarty’s hand, nodding and willing himself not to cry. It never worked. “Why did you have to leave?” it came out as an uncontrollable sob.

 “Things were too boring. I needed a change of pace. What’s better than being a ghost?” Moriarty licked his tears clean but more poured down.

 “I-I could h-have-”

 “You could have done NOTHING to change my mind. Even your subconsciousness knows that, Sebby.”

 Seconds, minutes, hours, days, who knows passed as Sebastian cried into the arms of a dead man. He curled into Moriarty’s side, a trembling ball of compressed pain. The alcohol was wearing off at this point and he longed for another hit. Something stronger perhaps. 

 Just anything to make him forget for a while, because while he permitted himself to cry with Moriarty, feeling nothing at all felt better. Just empty, mindlessness. Unconsciousness. Anything but this. 

 “Why...why won’t you-you let me die?”

 “Because you know I would be furious if you died. Rage wouldn’t even cut it if you met me in hell.” Moriarty brushed back his overgrown hair, messing with his beard just because he could. 

 “I want your rage instead of this. Please,” he begged, rubbing his head against Moriarty’s chest. “I-I had a gun stashed here. I knew exactly where it was and how many bullets were in it. Jim...he...the real Jim took the bullets out.” He picked at the loose strings on the couch, unable to face his mind. “He-” he croaked, “He took them and put them in his own gun. I-I checked and everything….” Pressing the heel of his palms to his hand Sebasatian continued in between gasps. “I want them back. I want my bullets back. I want him back. I want him. I want him alive and here. I want to hold him and let him hold me. I want him. I want Jim. I don’t care if-if he never wanted me. If he-” It pained him to keep talking, to admit this in his worst moment. “If he did this just to get away from me...I just want him back.” 

 “You’re being awfully selfish today. What if I really did this to get away from you? And now you want me to come back? Sebby, please. Be realistic. If all of this is because you’re useless, and it can very well be, then I don’t want you.”

 “So that’s it? You won’t even let me off myself?” Sebastian mumbled into his sleeve, his eyes stung from crying and he was too dehydrated to continue.

 “Behave tiger.”

 He didn’t clean himself off or made himself look presentable like he did with Jim. He just smoked as he tried to find himself a cab to the other Holmes’ estate. Apparently that wasn’t needed due to the fact a black car pulled right up next to him, the front window lowering to reveal a driver that motioned for him to get in. 

 Sebastian did so, flicking off the cigarette before entering. The driver didn’t speak, not that he would reply, but the man looked like he wanted to. A new guy who was still learning the ropes. 

 “D-” 

 “Talking out of turn will get you fired, or killed,” Sebastian repeated the phrase Jim had told him the first day he worked for the man. Back then he didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he wanted a quick, high paying job. 

 “Rude,” the driver murmured before pulling into a driveway. He stopped the vehicle and gestured for Sebastian to exit with a roll of his eyes. Sebastian wondered then what the other Holmes would do if he blooded up the driver. Getting himself killed had crossed his mind numerous times, bar fights and ally robberies, but he was too skilled to allow himself to be disarmed. But the Holmes were of a different story altogether. They could have him killed in an instant if they felt like.

 “Well are you going to leave or what?” 

 Holmes would probably do nothing, not for a driver this chatty. He left the vehicle with Moriarty on his tail, “You’re useless, you know that? I tell you to do one thing and you do another. Well you come to hell, don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me.” 

 Sebastian resisted crying in the home of Jim’s worst enemy’s brother. It wasn’t worth it, he told himself. Whether he believed himself? He didn’t feel the tell tale wetness on his cheeks so that was something. 

 “Good day,” the elder brother greeted him, not a hair out of place despite the fact that his brother was dead. 

 “What do you want.” 

 “Getting straight to business I see. Very well then,” Mycroft thumped his cane on his hardwood floors of his parlor. “I have an assignment for you, think of it as a favor if you will.”

 “Fuck off,” he turned on his heel to leave only to freeze in place. Sherlock Holmes stood in the doorway, as alive as the day he was born. Not a wound or sign or anything that said he was dead or had been. Just standing there.

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is dead.

 It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. 

 “Sebastian Moran, Jim Moriarty’s right hand man and one sided lover from the state of your appearance. How is crying over a man who will never love you going?”

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is dead.

 The other Holmes rolled his eyes, “I’m trying to get him to work with us Sherlock, not plan our murders.” 

 “I can’t say the same for him though,” Sherlock smirked, like he was getting a rise out of seeing Sebastian like this. A caged, striving tiger pacing.  

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is dead.

 “Sherlock.”

 “Mycroft.”

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is dead.

 “If you want to kill me just do it. I won’t fight back,” Sebastian stated, meaning every word. He just wanted the release of death. If anything his dying might please Jim Moriarty. Having someone watch the life or what was left of it, drain from his eyes. He could only hope. “Just kill me.” 

 “On the contrary. We want you alive.” 

 “I’m useless alive or dead,” he repeated what his mind told him.

 “I can assure you, you’re m-” 

 The gunshots shattered the parlor windows. Glass burst from their constricting frames, a shower of shards raining down. More gunshots followed, a dozen barrels at the least. Sherlock and Mycroft ducked for cover because they wanted to live. Sebastian stayed where he was because he would rather not. 

 A shot pierced his side immediately, then another and another. His legs could no longer support him so he fell forward, the side of his face pressed up against the rough carpet. He was staining it red, a stark color against the shades of brown and white. 

 Rope ladders dropped the sky, bodies lowering from out of view helicopters. They entered in pairs, shooting up the parlor room and everything in it. Over the sound of gunshots nothing could be heard then it stopped like a conductor silencing an orchestra with practice.

 A suited man entered the ruined parlor, his arms spread wide in dramatic flare. “Daddy’s back, Sherlock!” 

 “Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock exclaimed, smiling from his cover behind a bookshelf. “Glad you could make it.” 

 “I missed you, Sherly.”

 Sebastian could only smile from the floor. 

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 And all it took was for him to be bleeding out on the floor from gun wounds. Dying. Unable to feel his arms or legs. That was all it took for Jim Moriarty to come back.

 His grin pained his face from disuse, but he couldn’t stop it. Joy didn’t cover what he was feeling. The love of his life, forever one sided; the man he yearned to stay by, to hold, to drink and live alongside was fucking alive.

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 “Y-you’re alive,” he gasped from the floor, his blood cooling but his smirk never faltering. He wanted so badly to drag himself to Jim Moriarty but he couldn’t feel the warmth in his limbs. The man was right there, breathing, standing tall, and looking so jubilant. Sebastian really was useless. 

 “Tiger?” Jim Moriarty’s act flickered when he heard the sound of Sebastian. He turned to face the fallen sniper and every set of eyes in the room followed. 

 “Y-you’re here,” Sebastian choked on a laugh, his eyelids heavy. “You c-could’ve just told me y-you didn’t want me.”  

 “SEBASTIAN?!” 

 His eyelids closed shut. What remained of the feelings in his limbs dispersed. His labored breaths evening out until he disappeared altogether. His hearing was the last to go but even that shut down. He was dead. That was all it took. 

 Sherlock Holmes is alive.

 Jim Moriarty is alive.

 Sebastian Moran is dead.

[hereisplendorr]

Here's something I wrote over 8 years ago. I was reminded of it today. I don't like the vestiges of racist, drug war language it contains; I was on the way out of having been raised very conservatively, and this piece is part of the questioning I did as I worked out how wrongly I'd been informed about so many things. There are also stylistic things I regret, but here it is anyway.

Hornets' Nest

This hornets’ nest. Family vacationing near the top of a mountain, a stilt-mounted house surveying a dirt road and a small creek, billed as “overlooking a waterfall” which is, as usual, generous. Here’s my dad, not long out of bed, pajama pants that might be comical if I’d looked more closely; next time I will look, and tell you. Dad is peering out of the window above the sink, where the eaves of the screened-in porch are mere feet away, it’s a corner, you could reach out and grab the little hornet-spit-formed baseball nest. Is that right? About the hornets using their saliva to glop together paper or wood fibers or whatever? Do hornets have saliva? We’ll have to wiki what’s sticky later.

There is a small hole pointed almost directly at our window, at my dad, and hornets are moving rapidly in and out, but it’s so dark inside, so abruptly interior and secretive that, on the cusp, only half of a hornet can be seen at a time. Unknown amounts of stinger made more obvious because there is shadow where there should be visible threat.

Actually: that’s always true.

I join my dad, and he’s sipping coffee. Contemplating the eradication of a species while he waits for the early-morning mindfog to clear. I’m holding a book that I’m rereading after four years, after that first time when it mangled my view of freedom and tried to unleash me before my socially-appointed time. I also have a pen, which I have used to make just a few marks to the sides of important lines, only remembering that marking is okay when I’m two-thirds of the way through.

Yesterday I decided I wouldn’t drink any more coffee. I usually only drink coffee when I’m with my family or with friends - I am a social coffee drinker. It is one of the few things I do only when in the company of others. However: in a few hours I will fill my new mug with coffee, conflicted and exuberant because, what does it matter? This is vacation and I have finished this book and gotten into the shower because I thought I would start crying and all emotions must be optimized, maximized, extrapolated to their fullest potential. If I’m grinning, why not throw my arms out to my sides, mimicking the spread shape everywhere? If my face is going to have this thin trickle of water, why not the entire body, enveloped and steaming, endangered and streaming? If struck with despondency, if depressed, why not also be compressed, squished down to the lowest point, waving paper-thin as I pass a cockroach under a door-frame thoroughfare, watching its antennae drop astonished?

Bordering, I will not cry. So the shower will be repurposed, become a more obvious cleansing, rinsing some of that old detritus. Cinnamon soap will hang under the faucet. When I steal a small daub of my brother’s eucalyptus/mint shampoo, I will be two flavors of gum and thrilled.

But all of that is a few hours away. On this page, we’re still inspecting the hornets. My dad says, “You see that?”

“Ikes! Yellow jackets!” I say.

He pauses, doesn’t believe that his son doesn’t know the difference. “Actually, I think they’re hornets.”

“Yes. Right. Hornets. I thought--”

“They do look a little like yellow jackets.” Maybe he can be swayed. “But that’s what a hornets’ nest looks like.” He will not be swayed. I sway instead.

“Yeah, well; I wasn’t sure at first.” But to me, hornets are mythological - a hornet’s nest looks like my neighbor Brandon when I was seven, he and two other kids from our street jabbing a stick into a bush in front of Brandon’s house. A hornets’ nest looks like I’m standing at the edge of my yard, yelling that they probably shouldn’t do that, knowing what would happen because I’ve seen Winnie the Pooh and I understand the word “swarm” vaguely but viscerally. A nest looks like nothing until the stick hits the right angle, or the hornets finish counting to ten in warning, and then it’s like the cloud of hornets has always been there, maybe we just weren’t focusing our eyes -- there is no transition between no-cloud and cloud, between scold and swarm, between poke and panic and a Hornets’ Nest looks like I’m fleeing for my house, for the safe door, and I look over my shoulder and see this single hornet breaking from the pack, approaching me at unbelievable speed, flying straight into my lens like a television cartoon. I can see its wings right before I reflexively close my eyes and it stings me, just below the juicy marble of my left eye. The doctor tells me a centimeter higher and it might have stabbed my eye out.

I’ve never seen a hornets’ nest since then, as far as I know, though I am still equipped with both eyes. I have told the near-blindness story many times, never with any concept of what a hornets’ nest looks like… actually not even sure how to tell a hornet from a yellow jacket!

And then, here it is. This hornets’ nest. Until now I’ve always thought about it like “hornet’s nest,” as though the hornet were the entire colony, or maybe just that one hornet’s nest, the one that stung me. But we’re looking at these hornets flitting in and out, and I realize it’s got to be “hornets’ nest.” The plural is visible, shiver-shocking, and in transit. Industrious little things.

Why does their jerking, flickering movement speak of malevolence and hatred? When police say, “No sudden movements,” when they’re getting ready to pin the perp to the pavement, are they thinking about hornets and how you can’t trust them to be in the same place for any longer than a second? And: Are the police aware that they have become the swarm?

“How many do you think there are in there? Forty?” I guess high, to push the threat into absurdity, so that when my dad says, “No, not that many,” I can laugh and be relieved.

“Yeah, maybe,” he actually says. “That sounds about right.” I do not laugh, and I am not relieved. Now I know that he, too, is overestimating, maybe hoping for me to deny it, except he knows about hornets and I know nothing.

“Man. That’s a lot of hornets.”

“I wish I had some hornet spray,” my dad says. He gets wistful like this sometimes. “We’ve got ant and roach spray, but if I had hornet spray I could just open this window and shoot it straight into that hole and then shut the window really fast.”

“You wouldn’t have time,” I say. “You’d have to lean way out to get the spray to reach, and they’d be on you before you even pull the trigger.”

“No, hornet spray is a… it’s a stream, it shoots like twenty feet.”

“Oh, I was thinking of the other, you know, ant-type.” Of course! Of course, hornet spray has range! If I’d been in charge of inventing hornet spray, I would have botched the first batch by being too attached to the established method of bug murder. But then: why wasn’t spider death-spray also a long-range spray? Why this gentle mist? A weaponized stream would have come in handy when I was systematically eradicating the spiders outside my new house, having to jump to get the ones - again, under the eaves, like the hornets exploiting our shelter - that were too high up, almost always getting the cloud back on me, missing the spiders and becoming sticky with poison.

“No, it’s a stream. I wish we had some hornet spray.”

We watch the hornets moving in and out for a few more minutes.

“Was that a big one?” my dad asks, piqued.

“Where? No, I don’t know,” I say.

“You know there’s a big momma in there somewhere.”

A big momma hornet. Somewhere brooding.

“What’s the structure? Is it comb, or condos, or what?” I like imagining the hornets with time-share condos. Somehow it makes them even more desirable as targets for violence.

“No, they… there are compartments, for babies, and then they build more compartments onto the outside, for more babies.” My dad might know what he’s talking about. It sort of sounds like the time he told me about the poor black people in his town who became very wealthy when some drug came into vogue - maybe cocaine. They got the jump on the market. He said that, in order to store up the money, they rapidly and haphazardly expanded their tiny shacks, adding on a few rooms at a time, or a tennis court, or in one case building an entire mansion off of the back of a lean-to such that the front door was still through the old one-room shanty, but then you’d cross through the back door (how did my dad know this? probably he bought drugs from them but did he actually go to their homes or was he assuming based on the exterior?) and into opulence like none of us can possibly imagine.

Drug money mansions. Hornets’ nests.

Common threads:

Contained danger. Safe until prodded. Best if ignored.

Other commonalities:

Piecemeal; Pocketing; Pests; Persistence; Xenophobia.

“Huh,” I say. I lose interest in the in-and-out traffic jam, of thinking that everything lately has been turning up cyclical, pendulous, and that I embrace the notion as fervently as I am opposed to its purportedly universal nature. There is stability in it, an averaging out, which I need… but there is a resistance to progress that makes me want to spit, sometimes I do spit about it, because I think spitting goes so well with spiting and that I ought to, as I mentioned, outwardly manifest my emotions whenever possible. No more bottling, ever. Certainly not bottling of spit. Eugh.

Then I’m on the couch, reading a bit more, and my mom comes into the room. Dad lets her know that there are hornets, that we have no spray (except ant/roach), and that we also forgot to purchase Off! at the grocery store yesterday. She says we’ll get some, or something, and then Dad begins monologuing about his desire to destroy these hornets, his responsibility to his family and to the future. He doesn’t want us to get stung, nor does he want the next renters to be stung, either. And if they aren’t dealt with now, the nest will only get bigger, more virulent, more dangerous. He becomes discouraged, though, as he does so often recently, without cause, and begins saying, “Or, well, maybe we should just leave them alone. They probably won’t sting us, and then those next people can deal with it. Maybe they should deal with it. Why should we?”

I have to interrupt. “Nothing should be left for anyone else to do. Ever. We should always take action, always pre-empt. You want to destroy those hornets: we will destroy the hornets.”

My dad shrugs, makes a “you’re probably right” face. Mom is a little overwhelmed by the vehemence of the statement, as she tends to be. I speak clearly, decisively, sometimes dogmatically, and she is not the only one who is put off by this. It’s something I’ll spend the rest of my life wrestling with.

“We will kill these hornets because they may harm us, and then the people who stay here two months from now will not even know the hornets were there. They will not know us, nor will they know the favor we have done them. But when they are drifting off after an unmolested day outside, just before they lose consciousness, they will know our faces and they will know love.”

“Hey, I like it,” my dad says.

“And at that exact moment, we will remember the hornets, and hope that someone appreciates it, and we won’t know that it’s because they actually are appreciating it, but we will feel that love, also, and all of our lives will be better for it.”

There is a pause as we take this possibility in, and then I say, to diffuse, “And at the same moment, the relatives of those hornets will fill with rage at our scent, and the animosity between our species will grow.”

“And,” my dad laughs, “when the world-ending war between man and hornet comes to a head, we’ll know we were instrumental in bringing it about.”

“This is the impact of our lives!”

Laughing, my dad says, “Well, we took that about as far as it could go, I guess.”

**

Does the joke diminish fervent truth? Or is it just that degree of comfort needed to survive grave purpose?

**

Tomorrow, we will discover two other nests; it is an infestation. We will get the spray. Two cans. Dad will say he doesn’t delight in their sudden end. They will die as soon as the stream touches them. The range is impressive. The nests will sop up the chemical; they will darken and drip. The whole family will watch through the window. The lead-up will be like Christmas. An hour later, Dad will be wandering the house, saying he isn’t sure it was the right thing to do. We will comfort and reassure him, because we always have.