thewebspinner:

mistersmoran:

[Still, he waits. For hours. He’ll wait for days if he has to, in Jim’s living room, in the living room that’s theoretically been theirs for two days. Sebastian’s not about to consider it his though. He just happens to reside there, same as any hotel, until Jim decides otherwise.

Might be happening sooner rather than later, now. He does leave, just for a minute, to slide into the kitchen and come back with a pitcher of water, a glass, and all the dry, salty food he finds quickly. Because, knowing Jim, the man’s going to lie there until he’s too weak to move and Seb has to force-feed him.

But he’ll do it, if he has to.]

[Eventually, a good several hours after even that, Jim finally moves. The entire thing is oddly reminiscent of a robot shutting down to fix itself, and then resuming everything once it has rebuilt whatever errors had occurred. One moment, he’s barely conscious by the definition of the term, the next, he slowly moves into a sitting position, and then stands. He pads barefoot across the floor in near silence, disappearing into the bathroom. He might have gone days without food and water in the past, but he was still human and he did have some standards, ones that included actually being civilised enough to use the bathroom.

He stands at the sink for a while, looks into the mirror for a while longer, sees nothing but his own face staring back. Is it his face? Could any one of them claim that? Exactly the same. Same eyes, same nose, same dark hair, same lips, tongue, mouth, the same in every physical way. Jim imagines for a moment that if he could peel back his scalp and cut away the cradle of his skull, one might see great black spots over his brain, rotting, decaying, a mind diseased. He might be the only one. His hands shake with how hard his fingers clutch at the porcelain of the sink. The tremor runs into his shoulders and he lowers his head, teeth clenched.]

[When Jim leaves Sebastian’s posture sinks. He’s slouched in the chair now like a drunken alcoholic, his collar skewed and his clothes all shambles. He feels miserable. The silence is getting to him but not as much as the guilt, black, viscous and poisonous. It’s filling his lungs with more tar than every bloody cigarette he’s ever smoked and his stomach with enough oil to drown a school of fish.

Jim hasn’t really been steady since his meth fallout. He was- never really steady in the first place. They’ve never compared childhoods and he has a very good idea why. Sebastian knows he’s pretty twisted but Jim is a lot worse and absolutely smart enough to tear himself apart.

He sinks his head, leaning against his left hand. Waits some more.]