Work Text:
Day 8: Flynn/Moriarty "Late night/Can't Sleep"
Flynn knows he should be relieved to be back in his normal time, safe and sound after spending four hundred years kissing Eve. That was paradise, or it should have been paradise. Except Flynn can't get the image out of his head of James Moriarty reaching out to try to grasp his hand one last time before disappearing.
It all becomes even more bittersweet when the Library learns that the apartment where Prospero had housed Moriarty is still there and the landlord is about to foreclose due to a missing tenant. Of course the Library has to intervene. There may be artifacts that need to be collected in it and Flynn manages to convince them his reasons for wanting to box the apartment up alone, at night are a combination of academic reasons and his own just being quirky.
He even manages to keep Eve from helping, although he suspects her reasoning for refusing is more based in not wanting him to know that she misses Moriarty. Maybe he should let them hurt together, but he needs this for himself.
Flynn half expects the apartment to be a trap, but with this in mind he still decides to come armed only with his words.
Maybe Moriarty will have had a "factory reset" and he won't remember that he wanted to be good and Flynn will have to remind him. Or maybe he will remember, but will hate Flynn for how he treated him when he pretended not to love. Or maybe…the apartment will be silent because he isn't there.
Somehow, this act of opening the apartment door and finding it cold and empty is what breaks him although Flynn refuses to lose himself to despair quite yet. Although he does allow himself to softly say, "You're not here."
The apartment is sparsely decorated with almost no personal touches, but when Flynn turns the corner to the kitchen he does find that there are breakfast dishes sitting on the kitchen table, not even put in the sink, which is something that strikes him as odd. He would have assumed Moriarty was a neater person. Again, could it be a sign that he has been here recently. Hope.
That hope is quickly dashed though. The tea in the cup looks sludgy and the one half eaten slice of toast left on the plate is beyond moldy. There is also something that may have once been orange juice spilled on the table, almost ruining the notepad that Moriarty must have been writing on. However, there appears to be a page torn off the notepad and it seems to have been left discarded on the floor and Flynn bends down to pick it up.
Become a man she can love
Flynn is about to roll his eyes at the reminder that Moriarty had been intent on stealing his girlfriend, and maybe this should be a reason that he shouldn't be mourning him when he spots the second part of the note, written in seemingly more hesitant and nervous hand writing.
Flynn too???
"You just wanted to be with both of us, and I couldn't guarantee your safety. I didn't even want to admit that I loved you too. What kind of Librarian can't do that?" It is only when he stands up and realizes the mug has an inspirational quote with a picture of the sky at twilight, or probably more actually eve, that he feels a single tear roll down his cheek.
And then he starts to recognize the other signs of what had happened in this room the last time James Moriarty was here. Somebody had gotten angry and thrown things around, and he suddenly knows it was probably Prospero. Prospero had likely come into the apartment unannounced. Flynn assumes that Moriarty wouldn't have been so brazen to have a coffee cup with a picture of the evening sky if they'd lived together, but the wizard must have had a key. He must have recognized the signs of Moriarty pulling away from him and he'd become enraged.
A cabinet door is askew as well. Perhaps he'd used magic to slam Moriarty into it while verbally degrading him…and well, Flynn doesn't like to think of what happened next, but whatever it was, Moriarty hadn't even felt comfortable enough to clean up his mess before being forced to leave, and perhaps this had been the moment Prospero had tightened the lead further because he'd obviously never returned.
Either way, this is the first room that has to be cleaned. After throwing out old food and carefully packaging dishes and utensils, none of which are magic, Flynn decides he will keep two things from this room for himself. The note and the mug. The note will go somewhere private where Flynn hides other memories, and the mug is going to go openly on his desk. It's unlikely the LITs will question the relevance of it, and if at some point in the future he does see James Moriarty again, he can only hope its presence will be a sign that he cares.
The next room he moves to is the living room. There hadn't been a struggle there, so things are neater, almost tasteful. There is a shelf of books and Flynn is about to go over to see what Moriarty liked to read when he notices a thick stack of papers on the coffee table.
A closer observation reveals a name, his own name. Before his freedom had fully been taken away, Moriarty had been reading one of the many dissertations Flynn had done for a college class, and this one happens to be a rather mundane one that isn't connected to anything that could relate to the Library. The paper is worn and annotated in the same hand writing that had appeared on the note in the kitchen.
"Okay, this is how you can talk to me," Flynn states as he picks up the dissertation, mentally deciding to store it away in the same place he'll put the note.
A vision of Moriarty falling asleep on the couch while holding the dissertation suddenly flits across Flynn's mind so clearly that he almost believes he can touch the sleeping figure. Although he has no proof that this actually happened, the mental image actually makes him smile. Another vision enters his mind. This time it isn't a dissertation clutched in Moriarty's arms, but himself. Maybe at some future point, on a different couch, they can meet again and this vision can be real.
However, the sadness that follows is so much that Flynn is barely able to take note of the books on the shelf, other than that none of them present a danger to the Library.
Flynn doesn't even bother to check the clock, but after an indeterminate amount of time another room that James Moriarty had lived in is erased and only the position of the moon tells him he has been here for hours.
"Which room do you want me to do next, bedroom or bathroom?" Flynn picks up the dissertation from earlier again and flips to a random page. When he sees the word blanket he pretends it is Moriarty giving him an answer even though he knows it was from his own words and in the context of the dissertation he hadn't even been referring to bedcovers.
"Bedroom it is."
The room is tastefully decorated and neat, like he had expected Moriarty to keep his living space. The bed is already made. On that last morning he must have fixed the bed covers first thing when he woke up that morning. Or maybe fictionals don't sleep. Flynn realizes he doesn't actually know until he spies the edge of the pillow sticking out of the covers. On the pillow case is a single, short brown hair. Would it be strange to keep that, Flynn wonders before deciding this probably is a step too far.
Even so, he does flop down into the bed and lay his head on the pillow, just so he can be somewhere that Moriarty once was. For a moment he begins to doze off, and again he imagines what it might be like to wake up with him and Eve and Moriarty all tangled together fighting off sleep. "It would be nice," Flynn states, again to the empty apartment.
Then it is time to strip the blankets and yet another place that James Moriarty existed is destroyed and a lump forms in Flynn's throat. Clothes and shoes go into storage containers too, and Flynn can't bring himself to consider donating them to someone in need. They'll go into Library storage, because if Moriarty ever comes back he'll need something to wear. In this room, Flynn also notes that there are no magical artifacts in here.
The final room, the bathroom is somehow the one that truly breaks him. On that final morning before being attacked by Prospero in the kitchen, Moriarty had clearly taken a shower and tossed his clothing into the hamper.
Apparently, he'd had pajamas with Scooby-Doo on them and Flynn isn't sure if he'd actually known anything about the character or simply found the pattern charming. Either way, this one show of personality that Flynn would have never guessed is the thing that makes him actually openly break down in tears. It really does feel like cleaning out the apartment of someone who had died suddenly. There is absolutely no use saving the bottles of shampoo and body wash, or the things from the medicine cabinet, but Flynn does decide to keep the bottle of cologne because at least he will be able to remember what Moriarty smelled like.
Then, after he has dried his tears, this last room is cleaned, Flynn finds himself standing alone in an empty apartment just as the sun is coming up and it feels as if he is standing with a ghost.