the_story_teller | For Jim Moriarty

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For Jim Moriarty

Richard's found himself in the bar again, which is something he seems to be doing more and more these days. It throws him off his guard a bit less each time it happens, and takes him less time to adjust to suddenly not being where he's meant to be.

And at least this time, he's himself, so the risk of getting sucker-punched and getting a second black eye to match the first is, in theory, smaller.

Today, he was on his way home from a rehearsal for a small show he's in when the bar found him. Once over the initial brief shock at walking into his flat and finding not his flat, Richard makes his way up to the Bar and orders a coffee before settling down to read one of the books he'd recently picked up. He's already finished the first one and is about halfway through the second, determined to find the story where his name comes up.

He's starting to think it's going to prove Mr Moriarty right and never come up at all.

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Richard shrugs. "I've not met Dr Watson. I don't know anything about him."

Clearly, it's all being set up to make Sherlock even more amazing than he thinks he is.

"You might try looking him up," Jim suggests. "He's not really going to be in a sharing kind of mood when you do meet him."

"You could save me some time and just tell me," Richard tries.

He's not too hopeful. Jim will almost certainly make him do his own homework, but it never hurts to try.

"Former army doctor, adrenaline junkie, drunken lesbian sister, blah blah blah. One of the ones here has a decent right hook on him, you might want to mind that."

In case he can manage to actually duck or block in time.

"Self-defense lessons. Take some. I didn't always have Seb to watch my back." He could have defended himself quite handily against that particular John Watson, if he'd bothered. And hadn't been mildly hypothermic at the time.

Great. That's just great. And does beg a certain question.

"Is there anyone here who isn't going to try to knock my teeth out?"

Jim looks mildly offended.

"Most of them haven't, have they?"

"Haven't tried, you mean," says Richard. "There's that woman who spent a good ten minutes shrieking at me. Then this kid kept trying to, I don't know. Kept wanting to see my ID for whatever reason."

It's an odd feeling to know that one of the nicest people he's met around here is supposedly also one of the most dangerous.

"I'm not very good at making friends."

Though he can be the master of understatement when he wants to be.

"I've noticed."

He gives Jim a thoughtful look before digging about in his knapsack for his small notebook, in which he scribbles out several long paragraphs to himself.

"What about Moran?" he asks. "Obviously he's important, or you wouldn't have him in the first place. Minor characters always are, because they exist for their own very specific purposes."

He's applying fiction-logic to this whole charade, because he has no other idea how to really handle it.

Jim's universe is cobbled together from the writings of several different storytellers. He takes no offense.

"The bare bones of Doyle's backstory are there," he says. "Seb was an army sniper, discharged for enjoying his job a little too much, wallowed in boredom and despair until I turned up and gave him a reason to live again. He's very grateful. The Morans are a fanatically loyal family. It's bred into them. Give them a reason to apply that loyalty to you and they're yours for life."

"He's your John Watson."

It's not a question. It doesn't have to be.

"John is Sherlock's Sebastian Moran," Jim corrects, placidly enough. "I had mine first."

He makes another note to himself; one more reminder of Jim's unabashed cockiness. He actually thinks it may wind up being the bit he'll ultimately have the biggest problem with when improvising. Affectations and mannerisms are easy to remember, but the state of mind can be tricky.

"How long?"

It's not being cocky when he's right.

. . . okay, fine, maybe it is, but he's still right.

"Seven years."

"Really?" He seems surprised. "What's the story there?"

He's trying to gauge whether Jim's likely to start getting annoyed with all the questions, but he wasn't lying when he said that he wanted to get this character right. Especially after having actually been inside the man's head, the last thing he wants to do is insult and disappoint Jim.

Jim shrugs.

"Not much of a story. He's the best there is at what he does and he'd do anything for me. Why wouldn't I keep him around?"

(It might sound like an indifferent dismissal of everything Seb has done for him, but if he were here, he'd recognize the truth behind the words, and if that's good enough for Jim then it should be good enough for Rich too.)

Richard knows there must be more to it, but he can also tell when he's not going to get any more information out of someone.

"There's one more," he says, again sounding like he knows this is the sing worst idea he's ever had. And this time, he's pretty sure it is. "What, exactly, do you do? I sort of get the whole consulting criminal thing, I think, but I guess I'm not really sure how it works?"

Definitely going to get his throat torn out for this one.

Jim eyes him.

"Behaving like prey, my dear, just makes the predator want to pounce even more."

Rich had been doing so well with that in these past few minutes, too.

"People ask me to do crimes for them. If they're not boring crimes, I do them. If they're exciting, I don't even charge. It's a hobby, not a living."

"Sorry," he says, though he only seems to tense up even more.

"So then what do you do for a living?"

Jim gives him a long, long look.

"I did mention the massive international criminal network, didn't I? Or did I hallucinate that part of the conversation?"

"Well, you said..."

Jim isn't exactly playing fair here, but Richard doesn't know how to call him out on it.

"I'm not going out of my way to annoy you. I'm just trying to understand."

"I assumed you'd understand that I make a substantial profit from it."

He does frequently misjudge what should be obvious to even the thickest of ordinary people, but honestly.

"It's what I do so I can afford the interesting things. It's my job."

"Yeah, but..." He's trying. He really is. It's just not the sort of thing he understands quite so automatically as other things.

"OK, so you charge for the boring ones, then? And the ones that are interesting enough to be reward enough on their own, you just do because they're fun?"

Edited 2012-02-12 20:28 (UTC)

"The boring ones I ignore," he corrects. "It's a luxury I don't have with my little empire, so I exercise it as much as I like with my hobby. Do you need that again in smaller words?"

Something's not adding up. Something obvious.

"No. No," he says. "Let me make a complete hash of this on my own so you don't even have to bother insulting me.

"What are you doing when you're not engaged in your hobby? I guess that's what I'm trying to ask."

Christ, even he doesn't even know anymore.

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