milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A young Jim Moriarty enters the bar looking thoughtful today. He's dressed like a student, carrying a bookbag and with (fake) glasses on his nose. He takes a coffee from Bar and goes to sit by the Observation Window, but he doesn't look out of it. He empties the bag of its contents, and sits there looking at that instead.

It's money. A thick stack of fifty pound notes, easily making the tens of thousands. Jim...doesn't look happy about it, or dismissive, or much of anything really. Faintly quizzical, perhaps. After a while he draws his knees up to his chest and puts his chin on them, still watching the pile like it might stand up and do something interesting.

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'There's a female Devil too? Interesting.'

Something he didn't know.

'Is she anything like the male one?'

"Dunno. Haven't had sex with the male one, that's more your department innit?"

Jim raises his eyebrows, deceptively mild.

'What're you saying?'

"That I don't know. Do you know how to spell triplets or not?"

'Of course I do.'

Is he going to tell him? Jury's out.

'Your assumption that I was talking about sex at all is annoying. I know you're impossibly stupid, but you could at least learn not to jump to conclusions.'

"Well I was talking about sex with the female devil, and you asked what she was like compared to the male one." Vyvyan says. "So I might be thick, but if you were as smart as you thought you were you'd know how to ask questions so a thick person could understand."

He gives up waiting and writes 'For kids' on the bag, before piling some more quarters out from his other pockets.

It's almost fascinating, watching this thought process unravel. Jim tilts his head and watches him, rather like someone might examine a brightly coloured bug on a nearby windowsill.

'I suppose I credited you with enough intelligence to realise you wouldn't know what sex was like with the male one, so I must have been asking in more general terms.'

Won't be making that mistake again.

'If you have nothing to do with the children, why are you buying them presents? And why are you paying in loose change?'

Stole it, begged for it, or pillaged it out of vending machines, or similar. Jim lodges a silent bet with himself on which it is.

"Well, I've never had a reasonable amount of money before, so I wanted to give them some." Vyvyan says.

"And it's from my job. I haven't got a bank account so I can't get it changed into notes."

'Why haven't you got a bank account?'

Jim draws a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and lights it. The movement may subtly direct the eyeline in the direction of the fifty thousand in notes sitting on his table.

'And what's your job?'

"Because I haven't got an address." Vyvyan says.

"Ice cream man. But it's winter so sometimes I sell other stuff."

Fascinating.

'Like what?'

"Coffee, balloons, rubber johnnies, socks, gloves and hats."

Vyvyan gets a packet of cigarettes from Bar and lights one, offering another to Jim.

"Soon as I can get a stove I'll start doing bacon butties."

He shakes his head at the cigarette - he's still smoking his own, and it's of immeasurably better quality than Vyvyan's.

'I should think parents don't like you much if you're selling rubbers to kids. And this is in America, is it?'

"I don't sell them to kids. Well, I would if they asked, but I don't advertise them on the kids' board."

He takes a drag of his cigarette. "I park outside drug dens and get them when they come out high."

Jim raises his eyebrows, faintly amused.

'I should think you'd want to be in the drug dens. That's more likely where they're going to fuck, depending on what they're taking.'

Once they leave, they'll either be out in the open, or most of the high will have worn off while they get home. Think it through, Vyvyan.

'Why don't you just sell drugs? You might make proper money that way.'

"Well yeah, they buy the condoms on the way in, the other stuff on the way out."

Vyvyan shrugs. "I don't need to sell drugs. I made a couple hundred dollars a day in summer."

A gentle snort.

'That's not real money.'

At all.

'And what are you doing in America?'

How did he even get there?

"I'm on the run." Vyvyan says. "Someone wants me dead. And it's real money to me. I've never had so much before."

'Someone wants you dead. I can't imagine why.'

You could sand wood on his dryness.

Vyvyan is quiet for a moment.

"Yeah, the people who made me like this." he gestures to the general state of himself.

Eyebrows again.

'Your parents?'

It's a bit much to blame them for that whole mess.

"No." Vyvyan says. "Though my mum pretty much sold me to them, so she's as much to blame. Don't know who my dad is."

He orders a pint. "Turns out I'm a failed experiment. I'm supposed to be watched at all times. I've managed to lose my minder. They probably won't let me do that twice."

He thinks about this for a second or two. Part of it makes sense, given his power and resets. Still;

'What were they trying to make? Given how you actually turned out.'

"A weapon." Vyvyan says.

"There were at least four of us. Neil's parents wanted him to be immortal so he could never hurt himself when he was depressed. Rick's parents wanted him to live forever. Mike signed up voluntarily. My mum just wanted the money they offered her. Don't ask me how they tried to do it, even if I did remember I wouldn't understand."

He stubs out his cigarette. "Long story short, Neil turned out to be a useless weapon because he's a pacifist hippy. Rick's a pathetic coward. I've got the most powers but I'm too stupid and volatile. Mike managed to keep his sanity so he got the job of minder, managed to persuade the researchers not to kill us on the grounds that he would make sure we were too dysfunctional to cause any real trouble, but mostly he followed me round because I was the most dangerous.

"I managed to work some of this out last year, then Mike shot me in the head. Should have done a better job though, because I remembered enough to confront him until he filled in the gaps."

Jim's seen the Young Ones. It's interesting to hear there's some kind of reasoning behind all the madness - far more interesting than it simply being present to try and make people laugh.

It doesn't, in his opinion, excuse Vyvyan for being stupid, or disgusting. At least he's showing some enterprise though.

'A weapon for what purpose?'