OK. I literally wrote this on the train home today, so apologies if it's crap! Hope you like it!
Dedicated to everyone who took their GCSEs recently - I hope, and I'm sure, that everything went well for you!
DISCLAIMER: Oh, I wish...
Smithers grinned at the little boy, then looked up at John. "So you want to try the contact lenses out?" He asked, casually.
"They're for – Oktav." John said, firmly. "Will they work for him?"
Smithers squatted down in front of the boy, and turned his head from one side to the other, examining his eyes carefully. "We-ell…" he shrugged. "They might be a little uncomfortable – they're designed for adults, after all, old boy – but they'll definitely work. No damage cause at all."
John frowned at that, and said, rather worriedly. "Damage?"
"Soft lenses, old chap." Smithers stood and grinned at him. "Don't need to worry about that at all."
"You're sure?"
Smithers nodded, without losing his grin. "Of course I'm sure." He said, expansively, "But you'll need to put them in for him, I expect."
Alex tugged on John's trouser leg, and John sighed, already anticipating some awkward question from the boy. But when he spoke, Alex's voice was soft, and a little worried. "Dad…" he said, quietly, and John immediately forge him for the slip, as Alex sounded genuinely distressed. Alex was a highly intelligent kid, but he was no actor. "Is it going to hurt?"
John knelt in front of him, and said, gently, "No, Alex, it's not going to hurt. I promise, OK? It's going to be fine. I'm just going to put something in your eye, alright? It'll make it so – so no one can recognise you, alright?"
Alex swallowed, and watched with wide eyes as John took one of the plain contact lenses out of the solution they were kept in, and looked at Smithers. He had, on occasion, been required to use contact lenses to change the colour of his own eyes, but it was a whole different thin, to put them in his son's. There was the lingering fear that he might somehow hurt Alex – a few which he admitted had been there ever since Alex was born – which made him more than a little wary of trying this.
"Just go about it as you would for yourself, dear boy!" Smithers said, cheerfully. John grimaced a little – that was no help. "You'll be fine!" the younger man said, encouragingly.
John took a deep breath, placed the little plastic disk on his fingertip, and, pulling Alex's bottom eyelid down, he placed the thing on his son's eye.
Alex blinked.
When he looked at his father, his right eye was a slightly different shape to the left one. It was – not drastic, but noticeable, certainly.
"That's amazing." John said, rather awestruck. "How the hell did you do that?"
Smithers shrugged, looking rather pleased. "It adjusts the way the eyelid sits over the eye." He said, with the air of one who was dumbing something down quite drastically. John let it pass. "It's all to do with the type of plastic, and the shape of the lens… that's a basic change you've got there – the others could possibly damage a child's eye." He smiled widely down at Alex, again. "So, your daddy'll just pop the other one in for you, and then you can be on your way.
John had just fitted the other lens into Alex's left eye – and had admonished Alex several times for rubbing his eye – when his intra-departmental pager went off. Rather fatalistically, he read the message, already having an idea of what was going to happen now.
Grimly, slipping the pager back into his pocket, he turned back to Smithers. "Look, I'm really sorry to ask this of you, but – could you just watch him for a couple of minutes?" Smithers opened his mouth – presumably to protest – and John said, quickly, "I've got to go to the sit. room, OK? I have to hand in a report, and I really, seriously, can't take him with me." Smithers nodded, looking faintly impressed; after all, everyone knew that only the top agents were called to the situation room. "I'll be back in ten minutes, OK?" he gave Smithers a rather sharp look. "Don't give him anything, don't say anything to him, and don't give him any ideas. Please."
Smithers nodded, face a picture of innocence. "Of course, old boy, He's perfectly safe with me."
John nodded, rather doubtfully. But is the rest of MI6 safe from the pair of you? he wondered, rather worriedly.
On his way up to the Situation Room, he tried to reassure himself, by repeating, slowly and calmly, inside his head,
It's alright. It's Smithers, he seemed like a nice enough guy. I could have had to leave him with Yassen. I could have had to leave him with Yassen.
Yassen Gregorovich had joined MI6 after finding out that his mentor was an agent of theirs; the pair of them often worked together still. On a mission, John trusted the other man implicitly. With his son, he trusted him no further than he could throw him.
However, despite his attempt to reassure himself, he found that he'd been expecting the explosion of screams, which came fifteen minutes later.
Like the other men who were there, John ran out the room, but he headed down to the basement, bursting into Smithers' little back room, and saying, frantically,
"Where's Alex?"
Smithers looked up from what he was doing, with a grin. "I think you mean 'Oktav', don't you?"
For a couple of seconds, John just stared at him, a little perplexed – then he remembered, and nodded, rather wildly. "Yes, yes, Oktav, where is he?"
Smithers shrugged. "I had to deal with this," he held up a watch, "You know, get it all sorted and ready for someone to take it off on active service tomorrow." He grinned. "your partner – nice man, blond, good-looking – said he'd look after him."
"Yassen?" John groaned. "I just had to say it, didn't I?" he dragged a hand through his hair, then was off and running once more, ignoring Smithers' rather perplexed query,
"Say what?"
Up on Floor Eight, where the screaming had come from, John found his son with a grinning Yassen, playing a game of "I Spy".
Glaring down at his sometime-partner, he said, firmly, "Yassen. What did you do?"
The Russian stood, gracefully, still grinning. He revered John almost to the point of total embarrassment for the older man, but that didn't mean he was any less wicked around him. "Smithers' helped." He said, voice as quiet and unaccented as usual.
"Oh, I have no doubt of that." John nodded, grimly.
"I just watched him!" Yassen said, innocently, his grin widening. "You know, you've got a hell of a son, John."
John frowned at Alex, who did at least have the grace to brush. "Yes I have." He agreed, dryly.
"It was Mr. Gregorovich's idea!" Alex said, quickly, and John transferred his frown to his partner.
"Right."
Yassen shrugged. "Never waste opportunity, John. Did Scorpia teach you nothing?"
"Very little that I care to remember." John returned, with a raised eyebrow. "Now…" he looked around at the room. "What, exactly, did you do here?"
Yassen gave him a mischievous, slow-burn smile. "Well, it's a long story…"
There you go... like? loathe? say?
lol, ami xxx