Tiago can't pinpoint when it starts, the unsettling normalcy they have now, but he knows it's after something has changed for the worse when he finds James rifling through his ice box late one evening.

"What kind of man doesn't keep any meat? My god,"

"I've been gone for a month."

"That is no damn excuse," James closes the door and spins on a heel to face him, eyes oddly bright around blown-wide pupils. "A man should at least have bacon stashed somewhere." He continues angrily, moving to the cupboard.

Ah, drugs then.

"A disgrace to double-O's everywhere, not having sodding breakfast meats - that's the cheapest thing you could possibly have in this flat, Tiago. All this alcohol and no food - what, does medical use your piss to sterilize the sutures?"

James picks up a decorative vase from the countertop and shakes it at 009 ruefully.

"What is this even? What god awful purpose does this serve in a kitchen?"

Good drugs at that. Potentially cocaine, but past indicators show Bond would not ingest the substance recreationally. Decent money says he was slipped something.

"Why?" James starts slowly before going back to the fridge. "Why don't you have anything to eat?"

Tiago pulls a chair away from the nook and sits, chin resting on his palms, just watching. If he waits long enough - and if his suspicions are correct - James will get maudlin and 009 might just learn something useful.

After a minute Bond slumps to the floor holding a cheap, heretofore forgotten bottle of scotch.

How the swill came to be in Tiago's flat again is immediately as much of a concern as how James managed to get in past the biometrics.

"I see you got my gift." James smile is cockeyed as he stares down the amber liquor. "Congratulations. You get to kill more bad people, protect the nation from threats foreign and domestic." James rips the cap off the scotch and takes a swig before spitting the contents all over Tiago's Brazilian Rosewood floor.

"Ugh." James relents, slamming the bottle down beside him. "That is terrible. At least I have some fucking taste."

"Perhaps. I have yet to see it in person." Tiago says lightly, not knowing if he should commit any further to the conversation. James looks confused for a moment, and his eyes truly are disgustingly bright.

"Why don't you treat me like the others?" James asks, and Tiago recognizes the wording is off. Grammar is not helping to articulate whatever James truly means; nonetheless, Tiago has an answer. He always has an answer.

He moves to speak but James shushes him abruptly.

"No. No. I know this one. It's because I'm different, I'm special. 'He's going to be a double-O,'" James mocks with high inflection. "'He's going to be a great agent.' They look at me like I'm a wild animal, something that has to be beaten into submission or put down entirely."

James takes another swig from the bottle, seemingly having forgotten the experience a moment ago, and cringes at the taste.

"You don't act like that." James says finally, meeting Tiago's steady gaze. "Like I need to be broken before I'm of any use."

Tiago hums in agreement, because the assessment is not wrong, but James is no longer looking at him, instead staring at the spilled scotch on the floor.

The stay like that for several minutes, James silent and pensive, Tiago silent and calculating.

"Is that why they do it? To break us so someone else can't?" James asks in a voice colored with exhaustion.

Tiago starts at the comment, but James doesn't notice.

The man's already unconscious.

Tiago stands over Bond for a full minute, trying to decide what to do with the body.

Then he remembers James isn't dead.

He doesn't have a guest room so the solution is achingly simple.

The next morning James wakes up with a splitting headache in bed beside Agent 009. He moves to get up, but relents and falls back into the sheets, pressing his face into Tiago's chest to block out the early morning light.

Tiago is already awake and trying to run numbers in his mind, but nothing comes. He can only focus on James' hot breath against his skin. He doesn't move, and in all honesty he doesn't really want to.

Crippling weakness must feel a lot like love.

They play this game whenever they find themselves together. Where James pretends to be comfortable in Tiago's presence and they act affectionate toward one another. It's oddly disarming, so Tiago doesn't put a stop to it.

The sex is more gentle. Insults far less stinging.

Neither verbalizes the word 'relationship', because that isn't what this is. But both still feel like any acknowledgement of what's between them will cause it to up and vanish.

"I think you're the only person that understands," James says in a bathroom in Marrakech, voice muffled by the belt Tiago had shoved between his teeth a moment earlier. "Because everyone else is dead."

Tiago doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead he says, "Bite down. This is going to hurt."

He spends the next hour digging hollow-point fragments out of James' back. Toward the end they're both seated on grimy tile, James unresponsive and Tiago exhausted. He slaps the junior agent's cheek lightly and relaxes when James' eyes slide open, clearly disoriented, but aware.

He wonders if James is comforted by the knowledge that his lover is the one holding the knife.

"Something to remember me by." He says, dropping the last small, jagged piece of metal into James' lax hand.

"Get up. Don't bleed out."

"Love you, too." James responds.

Tiago doesn't know what to do with that.

At some point, Tiago calls James 'Corazón'.

It sticks.

"Don't." James says softly, face half buried in his pillow, a sleepy hand reaching out across the sheets to a fully dressed Tiago.

"Not all of us can be junior agents, darling," Tiago tosses back, perched on the bed while he laces his boots. "The world waits for no double-O."

James looks thoroughly unimpressed, even half asleep and well-fucked.

"You can feel free to stop rubbing it in anytime now." Comes the dry reply, and James shoves his face full into the cushion with a groan. Tiago trails a hand lightly along James' exposed ribs, muscles beneath jumping at the too-soft touch.

"Your time will come, Corazón. With any luck I'll convince M to reassign you; Station H is so much more exotic than dreary old England."

James doesn't dwell on the comment. Instead he grunts a response and rolls over, exposing himself to his not uninterested lover.

"At least a quick romp before you leave."

"Naughty, James. Trying to distract me from Queen and Country." Tiago eyes him thoughtfully, but doesn't move to engage, instead drags his nails harshly across the pale skin, leaving raised red welts behind. James tries to roll away from the sensation but he's run out of bed.

"In the mean time you'll be here, escorting some bloated official to his scheduled prostitute." Tiego sighs mournfully, clicking his tongue as if chastising a child. "Where are your morals, Agent Bond?"

"Fuck off." James snaps finally, and Tiago laughs deeply as he rises from the bed, one hand reaching for his jacket, the other giving a firm swat to James' backside in lieu of a kiss.

"Until we meet again."

While James doesn't respond, Tiago looks to the mirror and can see the smile tugging at Bond's lips as he runs a hand over his backside, lingering where Tiago's hand had been not a moment earlier.

Pain always lingered longer than pleasure. It was their old standby. Bruises. Scratches. A firm hand to the arse. Something concrete when the reality around them shifted as readily as sand.

"Something to remember me by." Tiago thinks fondly, looking back at his disgruntled partner.

"Perhaps next time I see you you'll be a double-O, hmm?" Tiago calls playfully from the doorway and James chucks a whiskey tumbler at his head.

The death knell is Hong Kong. It's just that neither know it yet.