Redemption || MorMor

Drunk Thoughts

 Jim did start calling him Tiger and Seb slowly found that he didn't really mind. He got used to it. After a few weeks of, "make me a tea, would you, Tiger?" and, "hey, Tiger, what trouble should we cause today? Fancy a kidnapping?" the word just blended in with the rest of the sentence. The occasional, but not frequent, "dear" did catch Seb off-guard but he became less and less bothered by it, until, eventually, he got used to that too.

One thing he couldn't get used to, however, was Jim's mood swings and changeability. In the time it took Seb to make him a cup of tea, Jim would be the polar opposite mood to what he was a few minutes earlier, and didn't want a tea any more, he would want a coffee. It wasn't just the waste of perfectly good beverages that annoyed Sebastian, it was the fact that is constantly set him on edge, he wasn't sure how to deal with him.

A sight Seb hadn't seen before: Jim pointing his handgun at his own reflection in the mirror. The taller man held back a sigh, he'd been fine just a few moments ago. What could have possibly happened in the time it took him to make a coffee?

"Jim," he raised his eyebrows at him. The criminal looked at him via the mirror above the fireplace, but said nothing. "What are you doing?"

"Contemplating."

"Contemplating what, exactly?" He put his coffee down on a coaster, hand on hip.

"What I've always contemplated..." the dark-haired man sighed loudly, like a stropping teenager, and tossed his gun down onto the stone fireplace in front of him. He turned around to look at Seb, a look in his eye that the sniper hadn't seen before, "...death."

He frowned but then chuckled, "you really go for all the stereotypes, don't you?"

It was Jim's turn to frown, "how do you mean?"

"Well, you know, a well-off, crazy criminal who's never been interested in living. It's been done before, that's all I'm saying. You didn't happen to have had a crappy childhood, which led you to this way of life, did you?" He hoped he would distinguish the sarcasm in his voice. He was still a little, more than a little, scared of Jim and realised that saying this might be hitting too close to home. He prayed he wasn't.

Jim's face was angry. Then amused. Or at least Sebastian hoped it was amusement. He was never really entirely sure. But the laughter that followed confirmed his theory, "that's for me to know, and no-one else to find out."

He nodded, "ah, I see. Also secretive. Another cliché."

The dark-eyed man flopped himself down onto the sofa and flicked the TV on, not really watching it. Losing track of his thoughts and zoning out, Seb just watched him and wasn't even sure why. He narrowed his eyes, studying him. The way he sat, the way the TV light flickered in his pool eyes, the way his hair fell, the little bits of stubble he had coming through from a day or two of not shaving, the way his bottom lip stuck out slightly more than the top, the strange expression on his face...

And suddenly Jim was aware of him staring and was looking right at the ex-colonel, frowning only slightly, in a way that Seb only now noticed because he'd memorised every little detail about him in the few minutes he was looking at him for.

"What are you looking at? Do I have something on my face or what?" He frowned, touching each side of his face as if to wipe something off it that wasn't there in the first place.

Seb realised that he had patterns of frownlines on his forehead. He realised that they must have been from years of working hard to get where he was now.

"No-no. Sorry," he quickly picked up and drank his coffee, a welcome distraction from whatever had just happened. He finished it, put it back down, and excused himself. He went and sat on his bed, wondering what on earth he'd just done that for. More worrying again was the fact that he'd started to see things in Jim that he hadn't before. Small details, little things. But he couldn't get them out of his head. When he sat there on the edge of his bed, running his hands through his light hair, everytime he closed his eyes he saw Jim from that angle. He could remember precisely every detail. He always did have an excellent memory, but only for things he wanted or needed to remember. He certainly didn't need to remember how many frownlines Jim had. So did that mean that he wanted to? He didn't want to entertain the possibility. He didn't want to think that, within only a few short weeks, he'd started to develop feelings for that psychopath. Whatever those feelings might be. Friendship or... or whatever else it was. He didn't want to think about it too much. He glanced at the clock. 19:03. Damnit, he needed a drink.