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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: James/Alec (twentysomething).
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, whatever.
Notes: Poem found at here.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Blame Fleming and his posse.
Summary: Yet another step toward the final road.
***
I dream of someone else entirely
And he, for this subversion,
Hurts me, he
With his armor of fakery,
--From "The Jailer," Sylvia Plath
***
"We're in, you realize." James grinned again and thrust his glass high in the air. Pale yellow champagne slopped over its edges, sprinkling pearls all over the two of them. He set down the glass and rolled over to face Alec. "We're in."
"Yes. Merry Olde England's decided we're good enough for her elite." Alec sounded bitter, even through his mouthful of effervescence. He swallowed the prickles down and ignored the sharp bursts against his soft palate. There was another letter in his pocket. At the very bottom, the starkly plain script of "Major Ourumov" carved deep grooves into the paper.
He hadn't wasted his time on those piecework testing missions. Wrapped everything up and built a network of operatives on the side. He'd told himself it was so he could be certain on whom he could rely, in the future when he was sent back to Russia. Rus'. As beautiful and hard and fatal as the fragments of his childhood had told him. He'd found where they had shot his parents, and then where they had slaughtered the rest of his people. A bit of soil from both places now reposed in his bedroom drawer, right next to the bottle cork from his and James' celebration of first getting into MI6.
"Alec?" James had sobered, and was now staring curiously at him. Gaze unconsciously frosting with distance, but that was how they had been taught, after all. Objective examination of the situation.
Alec had a good berth here. All the creature comforts-but none of the spiritual ones. He couldn't shake the blood from his veins, or reverse the Bible and change it to pure, harmless water. He couldn't shake the knowledge that if the British government was willing to lie to him about his past, then they would be more than happy to lie about his future.
And he'd been made to survive. "James. Don't you worry at all about what they don't tell us?"
"We're on a 'need-to-know' basis." Shrug that bumped Alec's glass aside as the other man crawled closer and pushed his face into Alec's neck. Lips nipped teasingly at his ear and throat. "It makes perfect sense to me."
Alec closed his eyes and watched the breaking reel of memory flicker indelible images over the insides of his eyelids. "Do it for England, then."
Smile, careless and blind, pressed into his skin. Its heat scorched him, but not nearly deep enough. "Exactly. For England, 006."
***