This is part 1 of Predator, where after the taster of the prologue things actually start to happen.
I've agonised over this so long I've basically lost sight of what's good or not, so I hope that some people can get the joy I've gotten from it minus all the anguish and writer-feels. My tumblr at .com contains the tumblr copies of this fic, and a whole bunch more compiled in a handy-dandy masterlist for any other enthusiasts.
Part I
"I hope you understand, Smith, that you are back here on a strict warning," Dr. Crabblesnitch lectured in a vain attempt to instil some kind of penance in Gary for the multitude of crimes that were being forgiven in this sitting.
"Oh, I understand," he answered drolly, trying to calculate what combination of words would get him out of here and into his new room. Crabblesnitch talked a hard game, but if dissolving the school like a body in acid hadn't got him kicked out, nothing short of sacrificial murder would do the job.
He took a moment to imagine ripping Jimmy's still-beating heart out over a sharp rock; satisfying, but murder was too crude, too inelegant. He'd find something better than that.
"Smith? Smith?" said Crabblesnitch tersely. "Are you even listening?"
"Of course," he answered, not really caring if he was believed. Crabblesnitch was only a small fry, the figurehead on top of a system that was ruled by cliques and now, potentially, Jimmy.
He was the real challenge, and Gary didn't know what he was going to do about it yet. He couldn't make plans until he'd worked out where the chinks in Jimmy's armour lay – but there was going to be an opening. There had to be.
"I can see I'm boring you," Crabblesnitch condescended, "but you're going to keep your head down this year, boy. Or someone is going to push it down for you."
"That won't be necessary," Gary assured the relic of an educational era long passed. "I have every intention of behaving, sir." He enjoyed lying. It felt like preserving the truth, keeping it personal and secret so that only he knew the real score.
"Well that's good to hear," Crabblesnitch answered, "because you can start with Hopkins."
"What?" He found himself forgetting to disguise his surprise. The council of doctors and administrators had arranged for him to move in before term started, getting 'settled in' as they claimed, which mainly consisted of making sure he had all the meds he needed. He didn't mind, he was just as eager to get away from home as his parents were to get rid of him. Out of sight was out of mind, and his being there only complicated the problems they had in abundance anyway. It just meant he hadn't been expecting Jimmy yet.
"He's been here over a week. Oh? Is that news to you?" remarked Crabblesnitch obnoxiously. "In fact, he's been around most of the summer." That made sense, if Hopkins' infamous mother didn't want her big mistake ruining the latest extortion racket.
"Wonderful," he answered through gritted teeth. "I can't wait to get started." He couldn't wait to get out of the office, in fact.
"The time for toadying is over," Crabblesnitch reprimanded. A roll of his eyes was what Gary had to settle for instead of ripping the silver tray out from underneath Crabblesnitch's tea and flinging it across the room. Just to remind him that he couldn't get away with being a patronising cunt all the time without someone blowing a fuse.
And he liked blowing a fuse, in a sickly satisfying way. Even when the repercussions were deep, he liked the exorcism of really losing his shit. That might have been why he let things go too far up on the roof; because he'd rather ride the runaway train all the way down than get off a stop early.
"Apologies, sir, would you rather I was ruder?" he offered, and Crabblesnitch looked like he was thinking about grabbing the tea-tray and hitting him with it for a moment.
"Cut the sass, Smith," he ordered distastefully, and Gary would've laughed at how ineffectual he sounded. "Anyway, I'm sure you're eager to get unpacking," he continued. "Dismissed."
At last, Gary thought, getting up and skulking out of the office. He headed for the boys' dorm, hoping not to see Jimmy on the way. He didn't care to deal with him just yet. Not until he was prepared.
One thing that his parents had managed to do was arrange a single room this year. They were quite good at getting him what he asked for, as if rewards would 'fix' him. It didn't, of course, but he couldn't let them know that.
He shut the door and familiarised himself with the walls that would be his fortress for the next year. Nothing spacious, nothing special, but it was a space and it was his space. He lay back on his bed and rested an arm over his eyes, relaxing into his surroundings. There were matters to attend to.
"So?" he asked himself, imagining a shadow that stretched all the way across the room. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm still thinking," he answered silently. He animated the shadow, allowing it to get up and move as if it were its own creature. It perched on the corner of his desk, echoing a him that would be more proactive, more to grips with the situation.
"Are you?" the reflection asked scathingly. It was a habit he had to be careful with, interacting with these phantoms of himself. If he tried to explain it to people they were sure to take it the wrong way. He wasn't actually delusional, he didn't see or hear anything – just imagined that he did.
"If you've nothing useful to offer, don't say anything at all," he scolded himself.
"Well," the phantom responded, moving from the desk and pacing the room, walking straight through the bed and Gary's legs where they really lay. "You could start with Hopkins."
"No," he denied. Jimmy was too much to bite off at once. All good anglers knew you needed to catch bait before you went after the deep-sea swimmer. "Not Jimmy."
"Hmm, well then," his voice posed with a purr, minds still working as one. "Who's the wettest small fry at Bullworth?" A grin passed over his lips.
"Petey," he murmured satisfactorily. "Perfect." It would be simple, he'd go through Pete to get Jimmy. Pete who could be manipulated like day-old chewing gum; stiff at first, but a few chews and he'd go back to the way he was.
But Jimmy was here already and Pete wasn't, so it was a given that he had to navigate the thick-skulled cretin first. The school was a ghost town, and in a ghost town it wouldn't be long before he ran into a monster. Those nightmares were answered sooner than he expected. It hadn't been more than a few hours before his calm was disrupted.
"I don't believe it," a grating remark rang from Gary's bedroom door, which he certainly remembered being shut a few minutes ago.
"Oh please, do come in," he announced, failing to hide the sourness in his tone. "I always shut the door because I want irritating halfwits to come and bother me."
"Still your charming self, I see," Jimmy remarked, leaning against the doorframe like he had some business to be there.
"You mean, you can't tell the difference?" he asked, sitting up and looking Jimmy up and down. Nothing important had changed about him except that he'd grown – upwards but not out, like someone had put him on a rack and stretched him. "I'm a new man, Hopkins. Fresh out of the shop."
"The crazy farm was good to you, then?" Jimmy jeered, and Gary imagined standing up, crossing the room and then smashing Jimmy's face through the cheap wooden door.
"It was super, thanks," was all he said, much to the disappointment of his violent streak. He had to be careful around Jimmy, it was almost too easy to insult him. Words leapt onto his tongue without prompt or hesitation, and he could go too far in the blink of an eye. Like when he'd screamed the entirety of his wrongdoings at Jimmy, just to rub it in, and forgot who could overhear.
"According to Crabblesnitch, you're all fixed up and ready to make good," Jimmy declared. "I don't buy it for a second." Gary couldn't help a smile at the corner of his mouth. He'd done an exquisite job of betraying Jimmy's trust in the end.
"So you finally learned not to trust me," he remarked slyly. "Took you long enough."
"Whatever you've got planned, Gary, forget it," Jimmy ordered. "I'm gonna be watching you like a dog." And that was exactly how he felt: a bad dog that had bitten once before. So even though he wagged his tail and played fetch, everyone was just waiting for him to snap again.
The sad thing was that if he had been genuine, if for some reason he'd really wanted to put the past behind him, Jimmy had taken all of ten seconds before confirming he'd never let it happen.
"Takes one to know one," he said in a low voice that Jimmy wasn't necessarily meant to hear. He heard it anyway.
"Wanna say that to my face?" Jimmy snapped, bristling with the aggression that defined him so well.
"Not really," he demurred. "The question is, what do you want? An apology? Or would you like me to tell you I'll do it again the moment your back is turned?" He kept his eyes working, examining Jimmy from head to toe, but still avoiding his face. He didn't think he could look Jimmy in the eye without wanting to put a black ring around it.
For a moment Jimmy didn't say anything, which was good because it meant he wasn't sure. Confusion was Gary's territory, how he functioned. Never being predictable was the way he stayed one step ahead. He savoured the silence on his tongue like a slow-melt pill, releasing a drug far better than anything he got from hospitals or doctors.
"Cat got your tongue?" he taunted when Jimmy did nothing but stand there looking fazed and stupid. He did it a lot, but this time Gary had been the one to put the vacant expression up there.
"Can it," Jimmy retorted, clearly running low on answers. "Just get used to seeing me when you turn around, Gary, because from now on that's how things are gonna be."
Gary had no intention of playing by Jimmy's rules. Actually, he'd rather take a mouthful of broken glass and swallow than accept anything Jimmy dealt out to him. So in his mind he got up and stood eye-to-eye with Jimmy, saying no right before he smashed his nose flat against his face. His hands twitched into fists as the fantasy played out, but moved no further.
"We'll see, Jimmy," he murmured wanly, his energy exhausted just containing the fury; the demons that wanted to tear open his chest and strip Jimmy down like vultures picking a corpse.
He could hold it in because he wasn't yet out of the shadow of his medicated summer. Mystery chemicals still crept around his system and suppressed the impulse to lash out. It grated on him. As if some great shred of metal was being dragged slowly over his back, wearing away more and more of what he was, until the only thing left was a pile of meaningless shavings.
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he suggested, this time imagining slamming the door on Jimmy's fingers until they bled. His mangled hand would be a reminder of what happened when you stuck your arm in the tiger's cage.
"Nope," Jimmy replied brattishly. It was like he was being deliberately difficult; as if to test how well Gary's control over himself was working.
"You know, as much as it'd be a delight to have you stand there all day watching me like an animal in a zoo, I have some privacy to be tending to," he excused dryly.
"Zoo, eh?" Jimmy picked at with a raffish grin. "If I throw food will you do a trick?"
"I said get out!" a scream tore from him with sudden, disorientating violence, and before he could suture the haemorrhage he was up on his feet, pacing towards Jimmy like he didn't know what he was going to do.
He stopped just out of arms' reach, and as the silence stretched like elastic, the only reason he did nothing was because so many thoughts bombarded him. Why Jimmy – why had Jimmy won, why had he failed? What had gone wrong, whose fault was it, and why did looking at him bring such loathing to the back of his throat, like bile before vomit? As a rule, Gary didn't like anyone, but Jimmy got under his skin like maggots and he wasn't entirely sure why.
Perhaps it was because Jimmy's very presence at Bullworth was proof of his failure. Or perhaps because he was the perfect example of a complete idiot, yet somehow he was a success. He defied everything Gary had learned about the world, and he hated it.
"Okay." Jimmy acceded condescendingly, stepping back from the doorway. "Don't blow a gasket."
"I'm fine," he hissed defensively, "just get out of my face." He slammed the door before any more could be said, Jimmy's hand regretfully nowhere near it. However, he felt a set of sceptical eyes hanging above him. Looking down with the aloof judgement that he usually reserved for everyone else.
"You lost it," the critical voice stated, riddling him with pique. It wasn't meant to go like that – their first meeting.
"I know," he answered under a breath. He was careful never to be loud if he answered himself in these conversations. Being overheard would just create problems, and the last thing he needed was any more interference in his life.
If he wanted to stop he could stop, but he didn't want to. Even if he only mocked himself – a self-depreciating cycle that would surely present a gold mine to any therapist – it still helped him confront things he didn't want to face.
"It's Jimmy's fault," he excused. He knew that Jimmy made his blood boil. With just one smug, arrogant look he could set everything aflame until he'd put him back in his place again.
"And screaming at him makes you look super in-control," he baited back. He knew yelling wasn't the way to do it, but he was having issues controlling his furnace of a temper.
Gary glanced at his bedside table, where bottles of pills sat like tiny orderlies waiting to fiddle with the dials in his head. He hadn't taken anything since coming back to Bullworth. At home or hospital he was monitored, so he never had a chance to skip, or someone would push them down his throat.
He didn't want to be on medication and never had. But while he refused to be on it, everyone else refused to let him choose for himself. That meant he had to be smart this time. He couldn't do it foolishly, going cold-turkey and letting the change hit him like a truck on ice.
He took a bottle and turned it, to hear the little clicks of his medicine tumbling against the plastic casing. Beads of glass; swallow it piece by piece, until he had enough in him to make a mirror. So everyone could peer at him without fear, knowing they would only see themselves.
The meds were already wearing off, he could feel it, but he couldn't lose temperance so quickly. If he did it carefully, he might get away with it. Yet he felt a part of himself hanging across the room in contempt of him and all he was considering.
"Chicken," it prompted. He tried to ignore it. "Brack-brack-braah," it taunted again.
"I'm being careful," he told himself.
"You don't like losing your head." On medication it was easier to keep his cool. His fuse wasn't so short, temper less likely to shatter and turn to dust like dropped chalk.
"That's not the point," he insisted.
"You just like the taste, is that it?" It ripped into him without mercy, a tone full of sarcasm and condescension. "What are you afraid of? Hopkins? What's he going to do to you, beat you up until you're as ugly as he is?" It would be easy, in truth, to throw out all the meds and run off the rails, blow his top and try to take Jimmy with him.
"No," he said quietly. "It has to be this way."
"Why, because you're a coward?" it asked in disgust. Chemical crutches for a cripple, that's what they believed.
"Because I'll lose," he snapped. "Just like last time." There was no denying or avoiding it; he'd lost control and let Jimmy beat him. This time he had to win. Even if that meant taking the crutch – even if it burned to hold onto. "I have to win," he repeated, a mantra that gave him comfort as he clutched the bottle of meds in his hand like they could sink into his palm and reach his blood that way. "I have to."
And that was what he told himself in the morning, as he uncapped the lid and put powered conformity into his hand, slipped it onto his tongue and swallowed it dry. He wasn't giving up, he was just playing along.
But before long, he felt the change. The numbing, calming drone as the chemicals corrected his 'under-stimulated' mind. He'd told the doctors to take a spin in his brain and see how under-stimulated they felt afterwards, but it made no impact on them; they still gave him prescriptions. But the pills did make a difference. Soon enough he felt ready to venture outside of his room, raiding the vending machine for Buzz and taking a seat on the sofa. Classes weren't starting for two more days, so he had endless time to kill.
He dug the remote out from between cushions and the television growled into action. He flicked through channels idly, and as if drawn by the noises and pictures like an animal, Jimmy wandered in not long after. Gary was slumped longways across the sofa, so it was only the shifting channels that indicated he was there at all. He waited in expectation of Jimmy making the first move, but he didn't do anything, just stood there as the TV carried on springing through programs.
"The secretary of defence released a statement earlier today- zzzht - if you purchase this set of five ladders right now for 19.99 we'll give you another five ladders for free, yes, free! Zzzht - but these wounds indicate he was killed with a heavy object - zhhht - have you been injured in an accident that wasn't your fault?" Jimmy made a soft snorting noise and Gary pretended he wasn't there for as long as he possibly could.
"Is this all the crap there is?" he questioned crudely, and Gary blotted out the sound, as if no one had spoken. After a conspicuous pause, Jimmy tried again. "So this is your big plan, you're just gonna ignore me?"
"I don't have a plan, Hopkins," he answered calmly. "And not to make suggestions, but I think you sound a little paranoid."
"You'd know all about that," Jimmy responded with a tone like a hacksaw blade. Metal teeth ripping into Gary's flesh, cutting for bone. He wouldn't give Jimmy the satisfaction of bleeding.
"Would I? I'm all cured now," he claimed uninterestedly, still jabbing the remote as if it could mute Jimmy instead.
"As if," he snorted. "You can't fool me."
"Of course I can," Gary hissed, loosing the words of a slightly less-controlled self. "Or did you forget what happened last year?"
"I remember beating you," Jimmy countered vindictively. Of course his memory was that short-term. Gary imagined being able to snap Jimmy's neck and let him drop to the floor like a bag of trash. Better yet, he could lobotomise him and give Jimmy a taste of what it felt like to have someone mess with your brain like a build-your-own radio set. Let him be the one who played the side-effect lottery and forgot how to eat or sleep properly.
"Face it, Gary, you've got nothing. You had nothing." He was being provocative with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, as per his usual fashion.
"What is it you're waiting for me to say?" Gary snapped, leaving the TV on a cycle of adverts and sitting up, looking in Jimmy's direction without looking at him.
"That I beat you," he declared, "and that you know I'm the King."
"King? King? You've got to be kidding," he scorned, letting a laugh slip from him like a pocket of hysteria left over in his brain. "No one here thinks you're their boss."
"Ask'em," Jimmy challenged. But Gary pulled his temper down until it was only a simmer, keeping his tongue because he couldn't retaliate just yet. Obedience tore something from his body. A protest so strong it couldn't bear to be inside his skin any more, crawling up the sofa to lunge for Jimmy with fingers of blades. That self which told Gary he couldn't do this, that he couldn't let Jimmy believe he was superior for even a second.
"What're you smiling about?" Jimmy queried suspiciously, as Gary visualised blood running from his mouth, spewing bubbles from his shredded throat as he tried to speak.
"Like I'd tell you," he scoffed.
"All right, fine," Jimmy snarled. "I'm bored of your pissy attitude anyway."
"You're bored?" he spat the words out like an infected tooth. "I'm none too surprised. I get bored of you after thirty seconds, Jimmy, I can't imagine what sixteen years of your own company must feel like."
"Do you really wanna make trouble with me?" he confronted, walking around the sofa to square off with him. "Because if you do, I'm right fucking here."
"I don't want any trouble," he answered patiently, pulling the choke-chain around his enraged self until he could drag it back into line. "I just want to be left alone. On which point, don't you have some masturbation to be getting on with?" Jimmy didn't like that.
"I could punch you right now and feel a whole lot better about myself," he told Gary with thick arms crossed over his chest. "Just think of that before you open your mouth again."
"Don't try to threaten me, Hopkins," he sneered. "All you do is wear your vocabulary out."
For a moment Jimmy looked like he was going to snap. Truth told, if he hadn't taken a dose that morning, Gary would've bounced off the couch and slammed the remote into Jimmy's face long ago. Instead he stayed where he was, motionless, locking eyes with his nemesis. The fury rose, but he kept the hound chained. He'd be a fool to try beat Jimmy physically. Fights weren't his style. It had been a mistake to ever meet Jimmy in open battle, he knew that now.
He could practically see the wheels turning in Jimmy's head; one rusty cog telling him he should punch Gary, and the others locking against it because he couldn't. A fight on the first day in would look bad for Jimmy, unless Gary threw the first punch, and he wasn't stupid or crazy enough for that any more.
"So why don't you go and be a cunt elsewhere, huh Jimmy?" he offered, and Jimmy's eyes narrowed into a glare. It was entertaining to watch the rage almost pop veins out of his forehead. He was easier to read than The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Jimmy turned and spat on the floor near Gary, as if to say what he thought of him.
"Fuck this," he growled, and stomped away to lick his wounds. Or to have some floozy do it for him.
"Byee," Gary cooed, twiddling his fingers in a mocking wave, a delighted grin on his face. Match two was his. He was back in the game.
