a spell on you (because you're mine),a series of Hour drabbles. set during season two, but before 2.06. previously posted on Tumblr.
i'm still a victim of your love
keane, your love
It takes three days for her to crack, two of which she spends home after calling in "sick". In fact she does feel sick, just not in the way that counts. Sick as in mad with sorrow. Sick like a man on death row. Sick with an unyielding fever, a copy-cat restlessness. This is not her. This is her breaking point and she can't keep dodging the bullet: it's time to face the firing squad, to spin on her heels at the last minute and look at the executioner right in the eye. To take the shot standing upright and challenging, as he would. As he would!, for fuck's sake. Her mind can't even face analogies.
He finds her by the stairs and follows as she storms off without a word. Step after step gets them to the ground floor. The strike of a match, the spiral of smoke. If only she could vanish as easily. Silence begins to stretch, and she stands there and every fiber of her being hates him – with his new-found confidence and his sharp brilliant mind and his new suits and his secret existential readings and his bloody French wife. Then again, she also aches for him. She turns and startles when he's not at her side and catches herself expecting to find him there like a soldier would expect a missing limb to reappear.
"Something's off", he says. "You're not looking people in the eye today-"
"Nothing's off-"
"Something is off", he repeats. "You're not smiling enough, Moneypenny."
She rolls her eyes. "Not much to smile about."
"What about having me back? That's reason enough to forget the world's still going to hell." There's his old self again, that spark of cheeky sarcasm, and she would like so much to just give in because she's never missed anyone this much. Then she remembers his Big Betrayal and how this sweet humble powerless man has unknowingly shattered her. This is not my best friend, she thinks, and turns her face away. Not the boy she treated to oysters. Not the boy who promised her they'd save the world together. Not the boy she believed in. There's only ever been you suddenly comes back to her like the cruelest joke in the world, and she almost says: Liar.
Instead, she leaves him staring at her clicking heels. "Shut up, Freddie".
i think i should have loved you presently
edna st. vincent millay, sonnet ix
She knows she should know better than crying over this. She waits and drinks and smokes the night away as if dawn could bring her a time-machine to go back and do instead of doubt. She makes no claim. She is, however, the only person in the world to have ever heard him sing. (It was an old love tune he'd picked up from his dad, a song of war-torn lovers. He sang as if his life depended on it, without taking his eyes off hers. Then he said: "I meant every word". It was the first time he ever left her speechless.)
She sees the day when they first met as if it hadn't been years since. The quiet certainty of things falling into place. This boy, this man, this wonder of stubborn restlessness and ideals and Big Words and manifestos-in-the-making, standing across the room. Talking, talking, talking, moving his hands about and smoking like a chimney. How their eyes met and the world stopped turning, the bebop turned jazz, the crowd disappeared and he was absolutely speechless for the first time in his life. Feeling vaguely proud then, thinking: I did that.
He left his friends behind, made his way to her. "The name's Lyon", he said like a schoolboy facing the prettiest girl in the ball. "Frederick Lyon."
"As in Bond, James Bond?", she teased, rather amused.
"Of course", he said with faux nonchalance. "And you're beautiful enough to be Miss Moneypenny." He took her outstretched hand in his, kissed the top and bowed ridiculously before flopping down on the seat beside her. Blushing and laughing, she let him order a second round of whiskey for them.
"I'm Bel", she said then. "Don't call me Moneypenny again".
"Why ever not, Moneypenny?", he said cheekily. "I'm quite fond of Fleming's novels. It's not that I'm implying you're incapable of relevant professional posts-"
She glared at him, half-amazed, half-endeared. "You're impossible".
He's supposed to be ruthless now. He's supposed to have moved on. Besides, honesty's his thing, isn't it? He goes ahead and says,"And what would you have done?" as if he didn't know it'll crush her to pieces. Then he stares, testing himself. She cracks. He turns away because it's terrifying - the power he has now to make this perfect image of Litchtenstein beauty look so lost and surrounded.
She watches him do that thing where he can't keep his hands off people, and feels enraged.
It used to be her.
Not even a dent. God, how she loves this man who would clearly without the slightest hesitation jump in front of a bullet and a bunch of Italian gangsters for her. Like the word safe embodied, if only it wasn't ridiculous - tiny bony reckless man, couldn't hurt a fly and way too prone to getting her into trouble. Yet every time she falls (and every time she wakes, and every time she looks up to the heavens in despair) she feels his hands helping her up. She sees his eyes like blue impossible light in the darkness. She hears his voice, brimming with answers.
so thin with your poet hands and your eyes of flame
and i 'd like to kiss you -full on the mouth, i don't care if you tell
a fine frenzy, red ribbon foxes
The moment he says it, she knows, because this is the only thing that makes sense in a life of uncertainties and madness. She turns and breathes and waits for the right words to magically materialize. Nothing. What is she possibly expected to answer – I hope your wife's right? I know she is? Of course she's right. This man –her best friend in the whole wide world- is transparent. And finally, he's gone ahead and said it. The story and you. Which is like saying truth and love. Which is like saying: in case you forgot there's only ever been you. Which is like saying: we're still the same if we just start looking. And what will she say to that? Perhaps I've been waiting too? Or: I would very much like to kiss you, tonight and all of the nights? Much to her chagrin, he's the one that's good with words. (She's good with people. She's good with stories. She's good at putting the two together.) Before she can make up her mind, they're interrupted because after all, she's a news programme producer and there are more pressing matters at hand (such as the thin thread of a young girl's life dangling in front of her eyes somewhere close enough to taunt her, but too far for her to try and be a hero). But now she knows. It's the first night in nine months this mystery won't keep her up at night.
(When she was little she thought love was like magic, like pixie dust – one touch was surely enough to make life wonderful. She now knows love is a stubborn reckless best friend whose hunger for truth and justice makes everything worth it. )
It's Christmas. She catches herself wishing they were wonderfully alone dancing to Stormy Weather without saying a word. That would be enough.
The problem's that he wants everything, that stupid radical, that bloody absolutist of her heart. It's all or nothing with him – he sees in black and white, like film-noir characters - and she does not know how to choose. It's like she's constantly running after his always only to stomp on it and throw it back at his face.
(But what happens if one day he turns away, if she doesn't deserve forgiveness, if he starts saying never?)
i cannot be without you, matter of fact
i'm on your back.
foo fighters, walking after you
(It his own bloody fault if his life is a mess, if he still can't get what he wants. He disappoints everyone, including himself. He does not deserve – he has failed, only now he knows how to lie about it. And that lie alone –for someone who vowed to live in truth- is failure itself. )
He saves the sharpest thoughts for himself. He saves the sweetest for that woman he keeps walking after.
(What he really can't understand is why he keeps failing to capture her.)
it's all love my stupid love.
ingrid michaelson, all love
She does not know how to say yes completely. She does not know how to walk away, either. She does not know how to explain that when she says impossible through gritted teeth - when she wants to punch him, when he won't sit still, when he drives her mad - she always means love, or that fine line between desire and fury.
i like my body when it is with your body
-e. e. cummings
She dreams that they meet at her office, so late at night that even Lix has gone home already. He lets himself in without her permission, as usual. She yawns, takes off her glasses, stands. They move in sync, as if they've planned it. (They didn't need to plan it.) It takes exactly five seconds, no more, for their mouths to collide and it's spectacular and right and alive.
I am to you what Eve was to Adam and we don't need redemption.
He holds her like a selfish believer stealing an angel all for himself. She breathes into his ear –already her hands are anchored on his chest- that he really really had better take her home before they cause a scandal and become the story themselves. He laughs a wonderful low laugh that resonates under her fingertips and says he wouldn't mind in the slightest, but holds out his hands and leads her out.
The revelation, the resolution: this is forever, these are the colors London's missing, this is the end of fear. They never wanted sainthood anyway.
She kisses him again by the elevator with no concern for secrecy, because suddenly she needs to say yes a million times. Then the roles are reversed and he's the cautious one, tucking hair strands behind her ears like in the cheesy movie romances she detests, but he stares as if he wanted to memorize her and his eyes say I've waited my whole life for this, so she forgives him for taking his time.
"I thought you hated my getting involved with married men", she whispers mischievously.
He grabs a possessive hold of the low of her back and kisses his way down her neck. "I think I'll make an exception."
She smiles. That's more like him. The elevator doors close. She wakes up and of course, that is not him and there's no chance whatsoever of saying yes like that.