Work Text:
September 29th is not an un-average day in London, by any means. It’s rainy… rather gloomy, and it’s rather gray out. Most young children do not rise out of their beds at seven fifteen on a saturday to greet a rainy day with vigor.
The two stars of our story are not most young children.
One awakes with a plan…a plot…a scheme…while the other awakes with something more akin to an aspiration. The first child to awake, scrawny and pale with dark, inky black hair, rises from his bed and gathers his tools that will be necessary for the coming day.
A syringe.
A vial of poison.
Rubber gloves.
A lock pick kit.
The other, a built more sturdy and tanned from head to toe from constant swimming practice, wakes and greets his loving family. His brothers, or perhaps his sisters. The family dog or cat runs around his ankles as he eats his breakfast, his parents pep-talking him for the day ahead.
He’s still stuffing his lucky swim trunks in a bag by the time the scrawny boy has left the house.
The dark haired boy slips into the local swimming pool, unnoticed. No one asks him questions, no one notices his presence. He’s like a ghost, slipping through the main area and into the locker rooms, finding the section designated for renters. There’s a locker with gold ribbon taped to it, as well as silver wrapping paper and little post-it notes… ‘Go get ‘em Carl!’ and ‘Swimming champion!’
Jim resists the urge to rip the paper off. Leave everything untouched.3 He nearly murmurs his thoughts aloud. Jim slips on the rubber gloves and begins picking the lock, popping the locker open. It creaks, but no one is around to hear it. No one, besides the little boy, so ignored by everyone he might as well not exist.
He rummages as little as possible, pulling out the tube of medication from the locker and the syringe (already filled with a clear liquid) from his bag. He preforms the operation with steady hands, taking a deep breath once its done. The hole the needle left is unnoticeable, his presence here untraceable. He dribbles a bit of the poison on the boys trainers as well, just for good measure, and then he packs up, closes the locker, and leaves. Not a trace is left behind him as he calls for his ride, not saying a single word in greeting to the man behind the wheel. He’s silent the whole way back to his flat where he burns the glove, disposes of the syringe, and the rest of the poison.
It’s hours later before he returns to the pool, hiding in the supply closet under the bleachers, hardly used. He waits, two hours before the meet starts, sitting curled in the corner with his ipod, The Thieving Magpie lulling him into a relaxed consciousness watching the spectators fill in one by one. Finally, finally he hears the starting gun and he watches, and waits.
The moment is a long time coming (years, months, days, weeks, minutes, seconds) but its so very worth it. Worth everything Jim has ever endured, to hear a garbled, watery scream…and then chaos. He can only see limbs splashing and struggling, but it’s enough. The bleachers above him thud as Carls family is up and running to him (‘Get him out of the water! Get him out of the water!’) But it’s too late, and Jim smiles as he lowers the volume of The Thieving Magpie, listening to the chaos and murmurs from above.
He listens and waits, and he’s not entirely sure how many hours of friends sobbing, parents pleading, annoying house wives gossiping and paramedics speculating he’s sat through before it all empties out. He slinks out of his hiding place in the dead of night and stands before the pool. He leans down past the caution tape and dips his hand in, chills going up and down his spine.
He stays there for a few moments before standing, but as he goes to leave he’s struck with an idea.
Carls shoes.
Those stupid, bloody expensive trainers he loved so goddamn much.
Jim wants them.
Something inside tells him no, he’ll be caught, he should just go, but something else, something darker and filled with desire and lust for a trophy of his kill tells him yes. Take the trainers, the ones he never got dirty, treasured and kept close to his smug, disgusting wormy heart.
He slinks into the locker room without another thought and finds the locker untouched. Police won’t investigate till morning, if they investigate at all. So Jim breaks in (without the lock pick, a bit more difficult, but not impossible.) and takes the shoes. He dumps them in a bag he had stuffed in his pants pocket and leaves the building.
He doesnt smile that night.
Or the next night.
Or the next.
No one asks, of course, no one cares enough.
But a full week later, a full week free of bullying and taunting and teasing (Carl’s minions will be back in full force eventually, but for now, they’re mourning their sweet, innocent, ‘died too soon’ friend…) he smiles.
It is done.
It is over.
He did it.
James Moriarty has won.