Title: Ode to the Vinyl Record. Part 1 of the Creaturely Imperfection series.
Author: kyrilu/Endless-chan
Rating: Mature. Choose not to warn policy for this one.
Fandom: Skyfall (2012).
Pairings/Characters: James Bond/M/Raoul Silva.
Summary: "It's always going to be the four of us," Silva announces, and he rolls the words off his tongue smoothly, almost gently, because this is his grand revelation. "You and me and her and England."
James Bond drives.
He speeds down the autobahn with the windows cracked down, wind rushing through, cold and sharp. The needle on the speedometer flickers, hesitant, and then it stays, unflinching. Constant. The car rumbles at his fingertips.
If he was wearing anything other than a suit, the wind would bite. But when does he ever not?
The car speeds on.
Fire is his balm.
When the explosion blossoms, a fire flower of red-orange-yellow-hot, he feels the familiar uptake of oxygen, ash on his lips and his tongue and his hair. He doesn't inhale; he cups his left hand over his face and runs, a streak of black.
He steadies his breath, and, as if he isn't light-headed or dazed or almost-burning at all, steadies his trigger finger.
The muzzle is pointed at a nameless man. The butt of his gun is a familiar weight against him.
"Now," M tells him, and he does.
The woman does not ask his name when he fucks her, and she, too, is nameless as well, a pretty face and a lip gloss smile and a waist that fits against his.
When she speaks, her accent is wholly German, low and husky when she tells him more.
He obliges.
He has his gun under the pillow, buried at the right angle where he can reach, if needed. Tucked in the perfect corner by the bed's mantle and the pillowcase - a sliver of black.
He doesn't know if he wants the world (a question that Silva dogs him with during every one of their little games) but the rush suits him fine. A headset looped around his ear, an unwavering voice directing where, when, how (yet never quite why).
James Bond knows that his eyes are blue, but no one has ever told him about the legends that people create around him.
MI6's secret weapon. A wolf, they say. The first thing you see is a flash of his very blue eyes, then a bullet.
When this rumour reaches M, she laughs.
The first person to tell James Bond about the apocryphal whispers is Raoul Silva, who croons praises into his ears. Not face to face, but as a hack; Silva's somehow managed to break into the communication line.
"Ignore him," Q says, and Bond can hear his fingers working furiously at the keys, trying to trace Silva's location and keep the comm system clear.
Bond listens: Silva's voice, a warm slick-as-honey pitch, deep, teasing.
Silva mimes the grr of a wolf, the click-clack of a beast's teeth, quite like sound of reloading a bullet. Bond scoffs and says, "You have quite the talent for onomatopoeia."
Judging by the pleased purr in Silva's voice, it's taken as a compliment.
Silva breaks the story off. "Catch me," he says simply. "M. 007. Catch me if you can," the last word dragged on, sing-song.
The connection breaks, the man's voice disappearing into a void, and Q curses underneath his breath. "Apologies, 007," the quartermaster says.
"Never mind that," M says, and Bond can hear the sharp frown edged into her words. "Keep on going, Bond. Reach the checkpoint and see if you can intercept Silva's contact."
"Yes, ma'am," he says, and for once, he's glad that Q hasn't installed cameras at the mission location.
(He doesn't want anyone to see him like this: eyes fluttered shut, breath held, drawn in like a moth to light.)
He misses Silva, this time, the checkpoint turning up empty. Of course, Bond thinks, scanning the deserted street corner. No cars pass here, and no people, either, and Bond stands in the alley shadows. He waits there for what might be hours, evening turning to dusk, and he eventually resolves to return to his hotel.
After a forethought, Bond reaches into his pocket and scribbles a note on the back of a receipt.
Mr. Silva, I believe that this is what they call being 'stood up'.
M orders him back to MI6, her lips pursed tightly; it is never a satisfying ending of the day when their prey is gone. Bond lingers at the headquarters, watching Q going over the mission, trying to see if they missed anything. CCTV shots of Germany, snipped recordings of Silva's hacking, note after note of places, times, and dates.
In the end, Bond turns in the mission file to M. MI6 is almost empty, agents filing out as it becomes later and later, and Q's already left.
He casts a distasteful glance at the Union-Jack coloured bull dog (as always), and M sweeps the mission file into a briefcase. Her cup of tea is cold before her, no steam arising from it, and Bond politely offers to refill it before he leaves.
She nods, pushing the tea out to his grasp.
Bond lets the teacup fall into the kitchenette sink, and it crashes, but doesn't shatter. He finds a thermos for her instead, fills that up with fresh tea, putting in two sugars and stirring. The tea cools, wisps of steam floating out before he twists a cap on it, and as if they have been doing this for years (they have - millimetre by millimetre), goes out to M's car.
She is sitting at her usual seat, and he presses the thermos into her hand and takes the driver's spot. M doesn't protest; in fact, she doesn't say a single word.
(He knows that Silva is slowly breaking her down, he knows. Bond knows this deterioration because it has been his own for so long. Now Silva is slipping in, whispering to him their sins.)
Through the rearview mirror, Bond sees M's hand on the tinted windows.
For the second time today, M doesn't touch her tea. For the first time today, Bond catches a strain of Ti-a-go, three lonely syllables released into the air.
It's not as if he has anywhere important to go. Bond sprawls on M's sofa, having snuck the mission file back from her briefcase, and he flips through it, his wrist flicking back and forth as he ruminates over the pages. From page one to page two to page three to page four-
M says, "He's changing the pace on things, isn't he?"
Bond makes a sound of agreement. "Yes. I believe so." Then he says, "We're going to have to stop him soon."
And, as if he doesn't see her standing in the dimly lit hallway, he takes a book down from a shelf behind him, and reads:
"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands."
She looks at him with solemn old quiet eyes. She says, "You know I've never really liked that bloody poet."
His expression is knowing. "Which is why you still have these books on the shelf out here, of course."
They do this again the next time round.
"Make him talk," M says, and the bullet rips through the guard's arm.
He staggers, red pooling at the blue material through his arm, seeping in and appearing black.
Bond fires a bullet to the man's other arm. On the comm, there's a cool silence. Expectant. He keeps shooting, bullets catching at an elbow and a knee, shoulder and a forearm, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam.
The guard falls in a hail of bullets, coughing and gasping in pain. He doesn't let anything slip.
"Stop," Q says, poor delicate little lad, but Bond and M don't say anything at all.
Much later, when M and the clean up crew arrive to inspect the scene, she finds a teacup on the window sill. Two sugars.
"Careful, ma'am," one of the agents tells her, but she twists her fingers into the teacup handle and takes a sip, anyway.
Still warm.
M knows, after all, not to refuse any gifts.
Silva watches the footage of Bond shooting and shooting and not stopping. His hands are steeped in a pyramid. This is the fifth time he has watched the scene.
He can just hear the cold cadence of M's voice in Bond's ears, amplified into his own, and back into the past, when the kill shot order was given time after time. He can see Bond's easy compliance, finger to trigger. The easy grace of a killer (a loping wolf trying not to hobble) and a killer (her).
It is simple. Easy.
He mouths both of their names into the air.
When he confronts Bond - there are explosives planted on the spokes of the spinning London Eye - he holds his arms up out to the sky, to the wheel.
"It's always going to be the four of us," Silva announces, and he rolls the words off his tongue smoothly, almost gently, because this is his grand revelation. "You and me and her and England."
"And sometimes the world," Bond says, his eyebrow crooked, his hand on his earpiece.
When Silva presses the detonator, nothing fucking happens. He grits out a curse between his teeth. He turns tail, but throws back the word: "Sometimes," in agreement.
After the London Eye almost-disaster, everything seems to simmer down.
Bond doesn't drive M home, this time, but he sets her scarlet coat on her shoulder before she leaves, then puts on his own black coat.
"Night, 007," she tells him, and the look in her eyes promises him we'll have next time, we'll all have us again next mission.
"Good night," Bond says.
The door closes behind her.
He makes lists in his head. There are three ways he tries to justify the way Silva says his name James or brushes against his skin in between meetings - drink, nerves, age. There are zero ways he cannot find in that searing protectiveness of M, the way he wants to follow her shadow and stop the light from clearing it, the way he will bow his head when she chastises him, and-
He will let both of them take him apart.
It's almost funny that they think they're pulling him in opposite directions, a North and South pole tearing to and fro. But: it's the same thing.
"Don't even think about calling for help!" Silva shouts to M. He has a gun to Bond's head. Bond doesn't move; his hand is stealing into his pocket-
"Ah, ah, 007," Silva says, his voice dropping to a whisper, and he closes his hand over Bond's. "Naughty boy. What do you have hiding here, hmm?"
Bond attempts to sweep a kick under Silva's legs in a quick movement, but the man is fast. The gun is jammed hard against his temples, the scent of metal bright and bitter, and he stiffens, his mind mentally racing for solutions.
Silva's hand passes over Bond's trouser pocket. He shivers shudders shakes involuntarily, and Silva says, "Oh. My dear."
M is staring steadfast at Silva, and she looks unsurprised by Bond and Silva and the almost-touch. "Let him go, Tiago," she snaps. As if knowing his old name gives her any agency at all.
Tiago is the man who burned for her, inside out. This is Raoul Silva - remember.
Silva flicks a lazy smile. "Watch, M. Look at us. Watch." He cups Bond's chin, and Bond forces a razor grin. He takes the challenge, and presses.
A biting kiss, sharp and harsh.
The gun is still to his head.
"My dear," Silva says again, when they pull apart, a more predatory edge to the words. "Good boy."
And Bond's breath catches. Drink or nerves or age. Silva or Tiago or someone else entirely. "M," he says, looking at her, and holds her gaze.
"I want to go home," Bond says, and it's the truth; he is an orphaned boy begging Mummy Mummy Mummy that he's tired, he's had enough. There was a boy trained on the shooting range who said, I'm done once, but no one listened, even if his eyes were and are such a beautiful blue. His knees give way, but Silva grips him, stopping him from falling, and his hand is a soft caress when it moves down the length of Bond's thighs.
Silva says, "Not yet."
Bond shakes his head minutely, and looks again to M.
"James," M calls him.
So Bond says, "Please," and Silva tucks the gun into his coat, and Bond leans back into Silva when his trousers are undone and he is split apart, two pairs of eyes upon him, his own eyes closed.
When he comes, he gasps, "Tiago."
It's the strangest kind of narcissism. Tiago is from Santiago which is from James when you look at this on a nomenclature level, but in the end, the root and the source of this all is M, old cold hard fierce M.
He knows that they are leaving this world to him, because he is the one who destroys and trembles and fucks on command and habit and something that cannot be defined as love.
He kisses both their foreheads and promises to make England in their image.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
-The Eagle, Tennyson.