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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Jim looks up with a sharp smile.

"I don't do anything anyone says 'no' to."

Whether or not a 'yes' carries any true meaning is another matter entirely.

"Coming?"

Never get into cars with strangers. It's one of the first things children learn.

But Jim's not really a stranger, is he? He doesn't seem to hide much of himself at all (at least, not that Richard's noticed; what he's seen from Jim more or less matches up with what he's seen on the BBC DVDs, at least). But he is something else entirely.

"Er. OK," he says, getting up slowly and slinging his knapsack over one shoulder. "Where are we going?"

All the same, he starts following before Jim even answers.

"Room one-eleven," he says. "Sounds like one of the generic-use rooms. I expect we'll find suitable equipment in there."

Milliways is feeling cooperative today; the room in question is right near the first flight of stairs where it ought to be.

This place doesn't make any sort of sense to Richard. Not that he's done too much exploring yet, but he knows that room 111 probably shouldn't be right there.

His nervousness only increases as he watches Jim unlock the door.

"You'd let me know if I pissed you off, right?" he asks. "You're not gonna, like..."

Well, he doesn't even want to think about the end to that sentence.

"Stash your body for the cleaning staff to find?" Jim finishes for him, looking up as the door swings open.

"There was a murder here once," he says. "Once. It may not seem like it, but I do know my limits, and I am not as good as Milliways."

He pauses, then, as an afterthought,

"I've got no reason to kill you, anyway, why would I?"

"I have seen the DVDs," Richard points out. "You did put a little kid in a bomb, which is pretty fucked up."

Congratulations, Jim. You got Richard to swear.

He peers into the room, hesitant to cross the threshold.

"I'd blown up a blind old woman," he points out, unconcerned. "I had to raise the stakes somehow. Everyone clutches their pearls when a child is at risk."

The room has a decidedly scifi air, full of sleek technology that makes Jim brighten with interest as he talks.

That seems to spark some sort of memory in Richard.

"How did you know, anyway?" he asks. "The other day when we were rehearsing. That I'd worked with her before?"

Jim couldn't have researched him. Could he?

Having the distraction does seem to put him a bit more at ease; enough that he finally walks into the room and even examines some of the items on a nearby counter. He's not sure if any of them are dangerous, though, so he doesn't dare touch. He's seen enough episodes of Star Journeys to know that anything completely benign and harmless looking will kill you dead in ten minutes.

At least he's not wearing a red shirt today.

Either Jim has not watched enough episodes of - anything, ever, or he doesn't care. He's already picked up the closest item to examine it.

"Have you?" he says distractedly. "Multiversal resonance, probably. I just thought it would be funny."

"Yeah," Richard says. "I even went to school with the woman who's playing Irene. I mean, we're not super close, but I guess the pool of desperate actors is pretty small."

He looks over to see what Jim's holding in his hands, and more importantly, what he's planning on doing with it.

"Has Sherlock mentioned your relationship with Irene at all?" he asks, all idle curiosity.

There is slightly more of his attention on Rich than there was a few seconds ago, though the item he is valiantly resisting taking apart still has most of it.

"Not yet," Richard says. "I haven't even got to meet Dr Watson yet. But he — Mr Holmes — did give me a big book full of notes, and I read through it."

It occurs to him, a bit belatedly, that Jim is expecting to hear just what the relationship is meant to be.

"We're supposed to know one another a bit more closely than I — you; whatever — am with other clients. Close enough that we share gossip and messes with my phone."

He doesn't really understand the significance of the phone-messing, but the exact joke wasn't spelt out in any precise sort of way.

"Clients," he mutters sardonically. "Darling, the day Irene needed to hire me would be the day I'd put a bullet in her head for her own good."

And she'd thank him for it.

- all of which reminds him of why they're here. He can play with the shiny toys later. Reluctantly, he puts his current one down.

"Oh." And he's right back to nervous again. "Sorry, is that not the right word?"

He wants to make sure he gets everything right. Even the smallest details matter. Like the one he's just noticed in Jim, as he was playing with his little toy.

"I'm right-handed," he says with an appalling lack of eloquence. Oh well. Jim probably gets what he means.

"Not quite right, no," he says, very dry. "Irene is a dear friend, though I'm not surprised Sherlock chose to leave out that little detail. Doesn't really give the right impression of evil, does it, Irene and me giggling over cosmos at three in the morning. Wouldn't want to give Johnny the idea we've got layers."

That still underplays their friendship a little, but Jim doesn't need news of the depth of his connection to Irene travelling to the wrong ears.

"Oh. OK." It's still a lot more than was outlined in the notes (two and a half inches thick of them), and gives Richard some ideas of what he can build off of.

"You didn't bring me up here to talk about her though. Or about...any of this." he gestures vaguely at the thing that looks vaguely like a remote control that no doubt controls some sort of satellite around Mars.

The effort at hurrying things along gets an amused glance, but Jim allows it.

"They've got labels," he points out. "And you've got eyes."

Rich can help look, too!

(Jim already knows which one it probably is, but he's not the one who seems to be in a rush, is he?)

He's still rather nervous, and not entirely sure that he can trust Jim any farther than he can spit. As he said, he has seen the DVDs. Although, Bar refused to give him series two, which means he never did get to learn that Jim does indeed play by the rules and stand by his word, however twisted it may be.

So the twitchiness around the most dangerous man in the world is a bit justified.

He does look around, falling into the age old trap of seeing, but not observing. He just sees things he doesn't recognise with labels that are largely meaningless. But he does spend more than just a token few seconds to try to catch up to Jim — something he knows is ultimately pointless, but he is determined to at least try.

All it does is gives him a headache. "I don't get it," he admits finally. "Am I looking for something in particular?"

He's not even going to bother apologising. There'd be no point in it.

There's one display that's easy to overlook, quiet and understated amidst the gadgetry filling the room. It's a pair of thin bands, made out of a metal that almost looks like platinum and most certainly is not. They're just the right size to rest comfortably on the average adult human head.

Jim rolls his eyes and picks them up, holding one out to Rich.

"Er."

He takes the band and examines it as though it's a venomous snake that could wake from its slumber at any moment and bite him in the face. For all he knows, it is.

"We're both just gonna wind up annoyed if I try to work out what you want me to do with this," Richard says, tilting the band to study the inside curve of it, finding it in no noticeable way different from the outside.

"I'm not from the future. I've not been coming here long enough to know anyone from the future, I don't think. I don't know what you want me to do. Call me boring. I don't care. You're used to being ten steps ahead of everyone. I'm not. I don't think that's a gap we can bridge very easily."

Oh, the irony.

Jim listens, solemn-faced.

When Rich has finished, he leans down to tug at a section of the stand that reveals itself to be a little drawer, from which he draws a tablet about the thickness of of two sheets of paper.

"I was just going to read the instructions," he explains, without the slightest change in expression, as he straightens back up.

"Right."

Richard should probably be embarrassed right about now. If anything, he just sounds resigned.

He can't help but wondering what went differently — what went wrong — in his world that he could be the same as Jim in as many ways as he is completely different. What coin toss came up heads when it should have been tails? What idiot had forgot to look both ways before getting flattened by a lorry?

He doesn't do anything so obvious as slink off to a nearby chair to sulk. He stays right where he is, waiting patiently for Jim to explain what is going on.

Jim doesn't do anything so obvious as smirk - no, wait, yes he does.

But only a little. He's already more interested in reading the instructions closely. It doesn't pay to be careless with alien technology, not when it's his mind he might hurt if he misses something. An ordinary injury he could live with, and he wouldn't have to live with getting killed, but his mind is something he needs to protect.

(He's only up here at all because the key came from Bar. She wouldn't send any of her patrons to use something that would harm them.)

"It's an exchange," he says after a moment or two. "Each of us concentrates on what we want to share for long enough for the machine to get hold of it, and it does the rest."

He doesn't really want anything of Rich's in his head, but - fine. If he must.

Richard thinks about this, finding it a bit too far-fetched to be true. And then he remembers where he is and who he's with, and decides that this would be a whole lot easier if he took Jim's word for it.

"So...telepathy?" he asks. "But artificial."

He leans over to read the instructions, getting a vague feeling that whatever language it's actually written in, it's not English (despite its appearance). There is also a sentient bar downstairs with which people have conversations, so again, he just accepts this.

And this time, he does go for the obvious question. "Does it hurt?"

Jim hands off the tablet. He only needed to read it the once.

Luckily for Rich, the Milliways translator is in effect; he'll find it's in English.

"It doesn't say it does," he answers with a shrug.

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