Jim Moriarty // "Sherlock" (BBC) // Bar

[mm_catslash]

Comments

[hlockhart_lapi]

"Is that Maine or... the other one?"

Harry's looking for Oregon. It might be a while before he finds it.

Jim Moriarty, meet Harry Lockhart, the world's worst private investigator.

[fixitforyou]

(Not to mention, Moriarty can see, a none-too-accomplished former thief. Desperately boring at home, but practically unique in Milliways.)

He looks blank for a second or two, then refocuses back on the paper.

"Oh, uh. Maine. I got family up there." His accent is thick, Boston through and through. (Exaggeratedly so, for his own personal amusement. He doubts his conversational companion will notice.) "My cousin got in the paper a few years ago and I never saw the article, so I figure, while I'm here, may as well look it up."

[hlockhart_lapi]

Luckily for Jim, Harry isn't properly from the East Coast, and was never much of a schemer, so he's no idea that he's being conned.

Which, to be fair, he's not the sort of person one would normally con. Because, really, where's the fun in fucking with someone whose primary skill set involves stupid sleight of hand and stealing X-boxes?

"You can do that? Here I mean," he asks. "Get old newspapers. Seems like the sort of thing you'd go to a library or something for, doesn't it?"

[fixitforyou]

(It's a lot more fun than bothering to have a real conversation with him, for starters.)

"Yeah," he says. "Just ask the Bar. You can get like anything there. Within reason, anyway."

[dangerousbotany]

This guy looks like a yuppie.

It's Ivy's personal conviction, though she has yet to put it into practice, that yuppies aren't good for much other than compost.

Still, know thy enemy. She saunters over.

"We don't bite, you know."

[fixitforyou]

He does look like a yuppie, doesn't he?

More specifically, he now looks like an embarrassed yuppie. (An embarrassed yuppie who thinks she's hot, because Jimmy O'Malley would.)

"Uh, sorry," he says with a heavy Bostonian accent. "I'm still kinda adjusting."

Take pity on a relatively new patron?

[dangerousbotany]

She smiles, slipping into a chair. Her dress moves with her as she goes; it's a short, recycled-polyester and organic cotton number, with enough weight to swing sleekly.

Expanded shopping options: just one of many reasons to pursue a life outside the system.

"You do kind of have 'newbie' written all over you."

[fixitforyou]

"Yeah, well. I never been a subtle kinda guy."

He closes up his paper and sets it aside.

"Whatcha see is whatcha get."

[gothamsheiress]

An equally uninteresting woman comes into the bar and settles into a table nearby.

Okay, the uninteresting part is something of a lie, given that she's wearing an expensive-looking set of pajamas and a monogrammed bathrobe. That, and the fading signs of burns on the lower half of her face, might count as interesting. But she's like you to believe she's uninteresting.

The uninteresting and uneasy man at the next table catches her eye; she gives him a faint, reassuring smile.

[fixitforyou]

(People who want you to think them uninteresting . . . usually are. But at least in Milliways, the odds are slightly better that he won't be bored within ninety seconds.)

He smiles back, a bit sheepish. Seeing a strange woman in public in her pajamas is weird, yes, but it's normal weird. It's a kind of weird he can get a handle on, which is calming. Has a steadying effect.

Plus, hey, if there has to be a woman wandering around in her PJs, she's a good choice for it. Easy on the eyes.

[gothamsheiress]

"Lost?" she asks, waving down a waitrat.

[fixitforyou]

"I still kinda feel like I might be," he admits. "Do you get used to finding a restaurant where the break room should be?"

His accent is Boston, his tone a trifle bewildered. Easily disoriented, is Jimmy O'Malley.