"You're doing it again," James waves his hand in the direction he thinks Tiago might be. "That thing where you forget you're not speaking english."
"Gilipollas."
"I did understand that, though."
"Your flat is shit."
James looks up from the peeling linoleum on the kitchen floor and immediately feels like a fool.
"I'm aware of my living situation; I'm saving up for something decent."
"You know that double-0s live in MI6 furnished safe-houses?"
"Likely because the poor bastards don't live long enough to make any use of them. They have to be paid up front."
"It is why we get paid in beans, the budget is allocated to dead men. There is this one place, belongs to, ah, double-oh-two? It has this amazing view, you can see all of London. That's the one I want."
"Yeah, when you make double-0. Good luck with that. MI6's stables are full, so unless there's some horrible crisis, no one is going to get promoted anytime soon."
"Just wait. Someone will pop off soon enough."
"Christ, Tiago."
"Too crude?"
"A bit, yeah."
James doesn't know when things change. He can't pinpoint when he and Tiago fall into bed together, but he has a rough couple of months where everything is a bit fuzzy around the edges.
He drinks too much. He can't sleep. And Tiago is always just around.
"Are we together?" He asks one night, watching Tiago fuss with a take-away box.
"We certainly are not apart."
It's an acceptable enough answer.
Trevelyan dies a hero, then comes back from the dead and goes rogue and it's the worst kept secret in the Secret Intelligence Service.
He pulls an all-nighter to piecemeal together a report on 007's flawed assessment of the events that occurred at the Archangel Chemical Weapons Facility; and as darkness slips into unforgiving day he prays that no one important will be reading it.
He can barely keep his eyes open when he sees Tiago having a heated discussion with a small group of engineers from Q branch in the commissary and waves absently, mind occupied by nightmare scenarios where his report is not only shit, but misfiled as well.
If records fucks up again he's going to catch hell.
He comes back to himself when Tiago is suddenly in front of him, speaking hurriedly in his mother tongue and pulling James' coffee out of his hands.
"You want to speak english, maybe?"James snaps, reaching for the cup before the other agent dumps the entire contents out. "It's too early for me to translate your bloody nagging."
"You want to go fuck yourself?" Tiago bites, tone abnormally sharp, and pours fresh coffee into the cup and slapping James' hands away from the creamer.
"You have been standing here for three minutes, staring at the wall, filling your cup with non-dairy creamer," Tiago's lips twist into a sneer. "There was no coffee in your cup, James. None."
"What the hell is your problem?" James rips the cup away and hisses when the liquid sloshes over the side and burns his hand.
Of course. Of course this would be the start of his day.
"For the love of god, pull yourself together."
"Why?" He snaps, hand throbbing and mind foggy with exhaustion.
"How do you not know?"
"Know what?
"Trevelyan."
"Yes?"
"He's dead. The double-oh-six slot is open."
Tiago slaps James' cheek lightly and straightens the lapels of his jacket.
Realization hits hard.
"The announcement is today?"
"Yes, and a little bird told me you are on the short-list."
"You have more field experienced than I do, why would it be me?"
"You believe that they would make a foreign-born agent a double-0, now? After Alec?"
James feels his stomach drop at the barely disguised hurt on Tiago's face.
"There is no way it'll be me, you're the better agent. You've got seniority."
Tiago gives him a look and smooths non-existent wrinkles from his own jacket.
"What I have is an accent and certificate of live birth which declares me a foreign national. It's going to be someone, James," He says softly, low enough that their coworkers won't hear. "Why should it not be you?"
The moment passes and Tiago's face splits into a too-wide smile.
James doesn't know what just happened, but he feels like it was important.
He does get called in to HR, but there's no promotion. Instead he receives a fairly severe reprimand over the Archangel brief.
He is mildly disappointed, but grateful, if anything, that he doesn't walk into the the 006 slot.
This may be James' career, but it will always be Tiago's life.
"Do you have a family?"
"Como?"
"Family. Do you have any? Brothers and sisters?" James asks.
"Perhaps sons and daughters? Maybe I had children; a wife and a home." Tiago cards his fingers through James' non-regulation hair and passes him a cigarette. "If I did, I do not anymore. But what about you, ah? What secrets do you hide from the world?"
James takes a long drag from his cigarette. When he exhales the smoke is thick and cloying.
He's 27 and too young to feel this old.
He doesn't know what he was expecting.
"Nothing important, I think," He says breathlessly. "Just this."
"Ouch. So I am your greatest secret? Not a very good one, then, I should think."
They've been drinking steadily for hours, the only possible reason being to distract James from a fractured rib and the ache in his lungs, watching shit television and waiting for the sky to turn black.
"Do you hurt?"
He shakes his head no, but Tiago places a pill on his tongue anyway and hands him what's left of the vodka.
"Swallow. It will not kill you."
His words are no reassurance and years of leadership training scream at him to abstain, but his judgement is shot and everything aches and he can't keep from trusting the man beside him.
"I hate you," he mutters, swallowing anyway.
The drugs only make his vision fuzzy and his mind soft, but it's enough. Cigarette smoke curls enticingly before his eyes, playing into gentle shapes that otherwise would hold no meaning.
"Maybe, when death comes, we are free to be the men we wish to be." James says, words thick on his tongue.
"I love the way you wax poetic when you are...ah...flying high. Your tolerance is," Tiago doesn't finish, just makes a popping sound with his mouth and puts his hand in front of James' face, pointer finger and thumb making a circle.
James presses his face to Tiago's chest and lets himself bask in the warmth of another human being.
"We're not going to die. I'm not going to die."
"You will one day, Corazón, and when that day comes you will not be alone."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to."
James contemplates Tiago's words for a moment before he realizes what he missed.
"Corazón?"
Tiago shrugs and James fights the urge to belittle the term of endearment, all too ready to defend his masculinity before he realizes that it really doesn't matter anymore.
"James?" Tiago asks him after scaring off a bottle-blonde co-ed in his third failed attempt of the night. "Do you think they have a fear of us? Of what we can do?"
"Well, you certainly startled her."
James may be more than a little intoxicated.
"I think they can sense it. That we're different. Dangerous."
"Obviously."
Tiago leans in across the table, a smirk on his lips and liquor on his breath.
"I could kill everyone in this bar."
But he's not that drunk. So James humors him and nods discreetly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Could you? There have to be fifty people here, I just don't think you can do it."
Tiago reaches across the short distance between them and cups James' cheek, far too gentle an action given their conversation topic and the man's already fickle desire to fuck someone who is decidedly not James Bond.
"Was that a dare, Agent Bond? And the number is actually fifty-three." Tiago corrects. "Fifty-three oblivious little vermin who have no concept of the danger that men like us keep from their doorstep."
The lights are a little too bright and his head is spinning.
"You're going to make a great villain one day," James says teasingly. "You should start writing your monologues now. Sweeping and epic. You'd be great at it, and you certainly have the right accent."
Tiago just laughs and pulls him into a rough kiss, the action unexpected enough that James spills what is left of his beer across the table.
"You know you've just shit all over your chances at taking someone home, right?" He mutters against Tiago's lips, but his companion just pulls away, tosses a few bills on the table and takes James' arm to maneuver them through the small crowd and out onto the street.
"Don't give yourself a large head, but I think you will be enough for tonight." Tiago tells him, huffing slightly at the October chill. James' foot catches on a crack in the sidewalk and he stumbles before he starts laughing for no reason at all.
"Tiago, never let anyone tell you you're not a romantic at heart."
The other man steadies James with a hand and whatever moment they were having is broken by a cheery whistle from behind.
"Oi! You forgot your wallet!"
James spins on his heel and his mind doesn't register any danger before pain explodes across his face.
Consciousness slips away quickly, but before he blacks out completely he thinks ruefully, I'm a bloody secret agent.
He comes to in the bathroom of his own flat, and he can feel the sticky crust of dried blood that must cover a good portion of his face, the skin tight and hot and throbbing.
He raises an unsteady hand to touch at what he hopes is not a noticeable wound and hisses when his fingers encounter raw flesh and unyielding thread.
"Tiago?" he calls out, mouth dry and voice raspy. "Are you dead?"
His head is pounding, and he cannot fathom what part of his brain decided it was a good idea to verbalize anything that would make sound.
Between the hangover and the stitches, one thing is abundantly clear.
He has to stop drinking so much.
The door creeks open and James sees Tiago, wearing a three-piece suit, holding a glass of water and an open pill bottle. He can see that the man's knuckles are bruised, the small cuts on his fingers no-doubt having scabbed overnight.
"I am alive. Can the same be said for you?"
"No. What happened? Did we get jumped?"
Tiago makes a face at the question and drops two large pills into James' hand before handing him the water.
"More or less. They caught you across the temple with a bottle."
"Are you - ?"
"Don't worry."
His head hurts too much to argue, but he knows what happened last night, even if Tiago won't voice it.
"It was the kiss." James mutters tiredly, knowing he can't blame the waver in his voice on the drugs or the head wound. Tiago just looks at him and pulls on a pair of gloves, the black leather sliding over swollen, discolored skin.
"I have to go in, but I managed three days medical leave for you. Can you handle yourself while I'm gone?"
"How did you swing that?" Before the question is even out of his mouth Tiago's fingers are dancing in midair over an invisible keypad.
"Right. I'll be fine. Just help me out of this damn tub before you dash off."
They don't talk about that night, or the implications of what occurred in regard to their social or personal lives.
Nonetheless, Tiago is shaken enough to alter his behavior. He won't drink in public anymore. James wishes on some level that he had taken the same lesson away from the experience.