#ofc: vivian liu

[tessa-quayle]

007fest 2019: OC day

In which I shamelessly promote Dr Vivian Liu, friend to Q and Moneypenny and Bond (Craig), and lover to M.

Headcanon for Dr Liu: American surgeon turned political operative/MI-6 consultant.  Helping to rebuild the US and UK and world post their 21st century wave of fascism.  She has no more fucks to give.  Except a few for M.  ;) 

Headcanon for Gareth Mallory/M in relation to her: he is a older than she is, but not obscenely so (by several years).  he is drawn by her smarts, humor, and passion.  he fancies himself a forward thinking man, but learns new things (about himself and the world and women) daily when confronted with her feminism and painfully checks his implicit biases.  they enjoy a long-term commitment and share a love of travel and snark (especially snark on Bond).  they never marry, but this is not a bad thing.

Created by the talented @jomiddlemarch

read 16 stories by her here on AO3

read 8 stories by yours truly here on AO3

THANKS 007FEST FOR BEING SO INCLUSIVE!  xo 

[jomiddlemarch]

Gang aft agley

“What is this?” Vivian said, working very hard not to spit out the mouthful she’d taken without paying it much attention. She’d trusted Gareth and while generally that was entirely reasonable, the exception, as people ungrammatically said, proved the rule. Or she was already in the throes of being poisoned and she wasn’t responsible for the vagaries of her internal monologue.

“You don’t care for it?” Gareth said. He sounded his version of crestfallen, which had a very narrow range, like a lithium index, and ordinarily, she would have teased or consoled based on her mood. She had run out of options with her first bite.

“What is it supposed to be?” she managed to say. She’d choked it down and hoped there was an antidote, that Q could arrange a dialysis unit in her flat if she needed it, one that would also allow her to play Candy Crush.

“You can’t tell? Bloody hell, the recipe said it was fool-proof,” Gareth replied.

“It may be. I’m not saying you made it wrong. Maybe it was meant to turn out like this,” Vivian said, poking at the contents of the bowl with her fork tentatively, as if she might suddenly reawaken a beast. Kraken in crockery, that’s how they could market it. If someone was going to actually try and sell it.

“Here. I don’t see how I can have ruined this,” Gareth offered her a glass of wine.

“Perhaps later. Ingesting anything right now seems…unwise,” Vivian said, guiding his hand away with her own, still able to appreciate the loveliness of his wrist though somewhat distantly.

“I should have listened to you and gotten that takeaway you like. What a waste,” Gareth sighed. “I went to three markets to get the ingredients. Moneypenny said it was a fool’s errand and she was right.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Vivian said. It was all that could be said to count in this case, but she didn’t feel the need to add that. And however revolting the ill-prepared amuse-bouche was, she couldn’t help being pleased by his effort and its failure; it was good to know he was human, with flaws and frailties. It satisfied something in her that he couldn’t be stopped by international terrorists or gunshot, but Pinterest was his Achilles heel.

“Platitudes? From you? It’s must have been even worse that I thought,” Gareth said. He was as close to pouting as she’d ever seen him. But unlike James, he was not looking to see if she liked it, if he’d found another way to seduce her so unlike Q, she needn’t call it out directly.

“It was,” Vivian said, smiling. “But there are other appetites we might try to satisfy with a greater assurance of success. And afterward,” she drew the word out gently, libidinously, “you can order that takeaway. With extra poppadoms.”

For @tessa-quayle

[mi6-cafe]

It’s Supportive Sunday!

Supportive Sunday is a day when we encourage you to support someone in the fandom!

There are lots of ways to do that:

Kudos something that you like 

A short comment (”Loved this!” or “Extra kudos!”)

A more detailed comment (”X made me laugh out loud!”)

Make a rec post

Send a creator a short anon ask about their work! (”What inspired X?”)

Send a reader who’s commented a short anon ask showing your appreciation! (”Your comments make my day!”)

As part of Supportive Sundays, we’re also highlighting three randomly chosen fics and a piece of art on AO3 that don’t have any comments:

00Q: Adjust as Needed, by viklikesfic (v_angelique). Summary: This was part of a pile of 00Q disability-and-kink fics I just found randomly sitting in my Google Drive. Enjoy a Q that is both badass and realistic about his energy needs.CW: Brief unsolicited groping by an intoxicated stranger. (Dom/sub, multiple sclerosis, BAMF Q, finger sucking.) 

Rare pair: Omne Trium Perfectum, by middlemarch. Summary: One, two, three.  (Romance, established relationship. Gareth Mallory/Dr. Vivian Liu (an OFC.)) 

Gen: Enough, by TheGoodDoctor. Summary: Caretaking is fun. Maths is weird. (An AU where James, Eve, Q, and Bill are little kids, and Gareth is their beleaguered babysitter.)  

Art: When We Met, by Dassandre. Summary: This photo collage is inspired by the series Fool Me Once by Boffin 1710 and AsheTarasovich. 

[tessa-quayle]

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign

happy thanksgiving!  

below is a gift fic for the awesome @merger-she-wrote - grateful for her friendship and for encouraging me to get on this site - ha!

also thankful for @jomiddlemarch who made this drabble readable and whose own writing is unparalleled

the title is from the poem “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander (read at Barack Obama’s 2009 Presidential inauguration)

other notes and the same drabble can be read on AO3

_____

Julia pulled the knit hat over her ears, pearly pink with cold and matching the worn wool.  Leaning against the marble column, she blew into each icy fist and watched her breath waft in the cold November air before gripping her camera to twist off the 35mm lens.  As she reached into her square leather bag to exchange the lens, fingering the chrome of the 50mm, she felt a heavy warmth against her leg.  

She looked down and spotted Silver - the First Cat - her deep purr reverberating through her dense body and into Julia’s jeans.  Silver’s stubby white paws peeked out from the lush coat of grey fur, her lifted tail a plume.  Before Julia could put away her gear to scoop up the cat, a baritone voice boomed from a distance.

“Poehler!”  She saw a figure in a reflective running vest, long tights, shorts, and a tattered t-shirt waving happily at her.  From a distance, two large men trailed behind in black tracksuits like shadows.  He slowed to a jog as he neared, winced presumably at his left knee, its orthopedic deficits minutely chronicled in the Post, even meriting occasional mentions in the Grey Lady.

He regarded her inquisitively, panting: “What’re you doing here?”  

Silver sauntered over to him, stretching herself against the taut curve of his muscled calf.   He swiftly crouched down to hug the cat, his long fingers stroking her downy chest and she licked the base of his thumb.  Julia instinctively raised the camera to her face, clicking at the image of the president kneeling by his cuddly pet, his tousled salt and pepper hair, the ends darkened wet with sweat, filling the frame, a perfect shot.

“I just wanted to check out the lighting before the ceremony,” Julia replied casually, tucking her camera into the bag.  The pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey was scheduled later that day.   A plump turkey would be trotted out, its rainbow-painted snood drooping and darting beady eyes oblivious to its fate and circumstance.

“The kids are excited about this event,” he stood up, hands on his waist, and flashed her a wide grin that made him impossibly young to be the leader of the free world.  “I hope you’re coming to dinner tonight.”

“Yes,” afraid of sounding a bit too eager, she quickly added: “Official duty and all.”

“Aw come on, it’s not just official business.  It’s Thanksgiving!” he insisted. “You gotta stay for dessert.  I convinced the kitchen staff to let me make my famous pecan bourbon pie.  With pecans from El Paso.”

“You had me at bourbon,” Julia smiled, warmed by the prospect of the rich dessert, bourbon a dark gold in a heavy tumbler, the light in the President’s dark eyes.

***

Vivian watched Gareth bring her coffee and a thick, mysterious-looking rectangular packet.  He had gotten up early that morning to check the downstairs mailbox she neglected and was already half dressed for work, a buttoned white collared shirt neatly tucked into dark navy trousers, his jacket and tie in the bedroom still hanging from her mirror.  “DO NOT BEND” in block print was red-stamped on the manila and black wavy stripes filled the upper corner.  She slowly sliced the side of the envelope with a brass letter opener, fashioned like a fang, and peeled away the bubble wrap, popping as it revealed a card and framed photograph.

Vivian chuckled softly at the curlicue scrawl inked on the card.  

“Vivi -

When we set out to fuck the patriarchy, we didn’t mean for you to take it literally.  

You are sorely missed.  When are you coming home?  Will we ever meet Old British Dude?

Enclosed is a picture from inauguration.  It needs to occupy a spot on your piano.  

Happy Thanksgiving (and yes, the WH turkey lived to gobble another day),

Jules”

She failed to suppress a giggle as Gareth leaned over to study the picture more closely: Vivian in a sparkling royal blue gown with a plunging neckline and a tall, boyishly handsome man in a smart tux in black tie. His arm was draped around her, his large hand grasping the side of her bare shoulder, matching incandescent smiles beaming into the camera.  

He cocked his head to the side and muttered, “That’s quite a dress.  I didn’t realize you were such close friends with the President.”

“I’m not - Julia is. She’s the lead White House photographer and took this at one of the inaugural balls.”

Gareth countered: “So he just seeks out pretty voters on the day he’s sworn in? What does his wife have to say about that?”  

“Oh stop,” she bristled, carefully expanding the velvety easel behind the photograph, letting it stand on the table top.  “He’s just generous with his time. Though I did work my ass off for his campaign.  And a few good friends are now in the administration.   Marisa heads the Department of Justice.  And Amy - another Amy - she’s the first psychiatrist to be Surgeon General.”

“Is his cabinet all women?”

“Mostly,” she replied, folding her arms, slightly irritated at his tone.  “No one says anything when cabinets are majority men.”  

“You’re blushing,” Gareth said, smiling at her.

“What?”  Vivian feigned surprise and felt the heat rise in her cheeks.

“You adore him.”

“I adore his policies,” she huffed. “You don’t get it.  You can’t imagine how … appealing it is when someone champions your right to control your own body.  And when someone stands up for the voiceless and most marginalized in our society.”

“You Americans always want to fall in love with your politicians.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone who probably fantasized about Thatcher.”

“That’s brutal, even for you,” Gareth shot back.

“Brutal?  Or politically incorrect?”  Vivian winked, finally taking the cup of coffee meant for her from his hands, and enjoying a long sip.

[tessa-quayle]

Whirling in the dark universe

many thanks to @jomiddlemarch for the combined prompts and the edits.  notes (and the same drabble) can be found on AO3.

___________________________________

Gareth spent minutes staring at the ceiling before realizing it wasn’t his bedroom. In the kitchen, a coffee grinder buzzed and a metal filter tapped against the sink.  An automatic pour-over whirred.  A few gurgles were followed by a long hiss.  Two slate Heath mugs lined the counter, ready to be filled.  

    As he reached for the nightstand in search of his watch, he found his tie wrapped around his wrist in a loosened knot, a distant cousin to the double Englishman’s.  He smiled recalling the night before.  She had left him at the curb.  Hours later, he showed up at her door.  She tied him to her kitchen chair: one hand twisting the silk around his wrists and the other unzipping his pants.  He wanted to ask where the fuck did you learn how to do this, but remembered she’d spent years one-handedly stitching up ragged flesh with catgut and nylon.  He twisted in surrender, and struggled to sit still as she knelt before him.

  You don’t have to, it’s okay

I want to, if you want it

I do, but -

Then shhhhh (shhh, baby)

Vivian, in black rimmed glasses and a faded Yale t-shirt barely covering the top of her thighs, walked to the edge of the bed and handed him his cup of coffee.

“Thank you.”

She studied him as he sipped.  “I think my grandmother would’ve liked you.”

“What do you mean?”

She smiled conspiratorially. “She called 1997 ‘the Handover.’”

***

She recalled her grandmother sniping in Cantonese at the aunts and uncles.  Is it a reunification or a handover?  We move from one oppressor to another.  Vivian’s childhood summers were spent roaming the malls and parks in Burnaby and West Van with her cousins.  Each year, her grandmother teased her about her accented Mandarin.  Before every road trip back on I-5 near the border, they’d have dim sum in a strip mall where cars in the lot packed like mahjong tiles across felt.  They had to shout over the table of billowed pork buns, spiraled-top soup dumplings, sheets of white rice noodles stuffed with pink-orange shrimp; no one thought anything of the noise.  Carts carrying stacked bamboo steamers crowded the aisles, every waiter’s black trousers shiny with wear.  Vivian liked best the first pour of the fragrant jasmine tea and was careful not to swallow the verdigris specks at the bottom of the amber water.  Once, the wait staff had forgotten to refill the pot; oversteeped, the tea turned brown and bitter.  She learned to love chrysanthemum tea her grandmother preferred - bright yellow white petals that blossomed under hot water and resembled miniature sunflowers, the sap only turning cold with time.  

***

He groaned and rolled his eyes: “I’m not like that.”

“I know you don’t mean to be,” she leaned down and kissed his forehead.  

***

(the night before)

This is bullshit, Vivian sputtered to herself.  Standing beneath the red awning, she had just walked out of Rules.  Lanzhou was city blocks away and suddenly she craved hand-shaven noodles.   She debated whether to march the quarter mile in her spiked stilettos; on a better night, she’d have packed flats into a tote snagged at that last medical conference in Brussels.

The door swung open and Gareth stepped beside her, his fingers grazing her elbow: “Vivian, why’re you leaving so soon?”  

“We had a really long day with Q,” she replied, picking an easy excuse, “I’m exhausted, I need to go to bed.”

“It’s 8:30.”

“I’m an old lady.”

Gareth, slightly annoyed, demanded: “What happened in there?  Why won’t you tell me the truth?”

***

Moneypenny looked on sympathetically as Vivian neared a confrontation with a dense MI6 agent.  

So where are you from?  

The States.  

Oh yes yes, but you know, where are you really from?  

California.  

What I mean is -

She interrupted him and enunciated evenly: Palo Alto, Ca-li-for-ni-a.  He blinked, barely able to recognize the sarcasm in her voice.   She glared into the old-fashioned before throwing the rest of it back, the ice cold against her lip. It stung. She slammed down the glass and tossed an oversized tip onto the bar.   Gareth huddled at a table with Q and she felt relieved he’d been spared being a witness to her rage.  As she stomped toward the exit on the gold-swirled patterned carpet, she heard a faint ni hao from a corner.  She felt the urge to maim someone.  She darkly imagined herself with a scalpel, the power gathering in the center of her palm, where Gareth thought it was romantic to press a kiss.

***

She couldn’t help but fume: “Because you’ll never get it.  You all had an entire Empire built on the backs of others and still can’t expand your definition of what a fucking Westerner looks like.”

Shaking with anger, she turned to the street and raised a hand in the air, the satin clutch gripped in the other fist, the Burberry Gibbsmoore coat draped heavy over her forearm.  Cabs snaked through the narrow road, none of them for hire.  

He looked at her, bewildered: “Won’t you at least tell me what happened?  I don’t understand.”

She shook her head, “I’m sorry.  Not now, maybe later.”

Defeated, Gareth offered: “Fine, well, at least - at least let me get you a car.  Let me take you home.”

[jomiddlemarch]

Tender only to one

��Q needs to stop making cow eyes at James. That’s not going to happen,” Vivian said quietly. No one else would have heard her, she’d made sure of that, but she hadn’t whispered. She hadn’t spoken in a way to try and turn him on, so he couldn’t blame her for it.

 “Cow eyes?” Gareth repeated.

 “Don’t you know that expression? Moony? Is that better?” she said, then took a sip from her mug. Her throat was long and lovely when she swallowed, whether it was a crockery mug or a champagne flute she drank from. Whether she held a piece of painted china in her hand or his cock, her dark eyes always just as beautiful.

 “I suppose. You think it’s unrequited?” Gareth asked, watching her squint, wishing to take the pins from her carefully arranged hair to see if all fall down, black against the white silk of her blouse. It wasn’t so dark in the bed they shared, in the candlelight or at dawn; then, he saw other colors, rich and warm, lively as flames.

 “I think James can’t allow it. That’s not quite the same,” she said.

 “Can’t—or won’t?” Gareth said.

 “Splitting hairs now, are we? You know him better than I do, after all,” Vivian said.

 “He loved Vesper very much. Losing her—it broke him,” Gareth said. He hadn’t even liked the man but he couldn’t help pitying him when he’d seen him afterwards. He’d never see a man with eyes so blue, so dead. With eyes that wished so much for death and a mouth that wouldn’t let him stop consuming whatever came his way. It was around then that Moneypenny had taken to single malt Scotch.

 “I think Q likes to fix broken things. And James knows it,” Vivian said. “What would it mean to be mended?”

 “Indeed,” Gareth said, musing. And thanking the Queen’s English he could say a word like Indeed and not end the conversation but make it clear she might.

 “How English you are! I forget sometimes,” she laughed. Not loud enough to attract the attention of either man across the room.

 “I’m meant to believe you forget anything? Ever?” Gareth said.

 “You’re meant to pretend. If I want you to,” she said, finally coquettish. It was rare for her to be so flirtatious. She was usually all subtlety, all shadow and delicious, intoxicating nuance. Until she decided to cut.

 “Your wish, madam, is my command,” he said.

 “Oh, if only that were true!” she sighed. It would take him all night to decide what she meant. What she wanted. At least, unlike Q, he had a chance to discover it. And he knew, already, she wanted him to.

For @tessa-quayle. 

[jomiddlemarch]

Many happy returns

Q had left a mug-full of dark chocolate covered espresso beans and Moneypenny had disclosed the esthetician she used. James had winked at her while eating a banana very slowly—the banana-consumption, not the winking, and Gareth had woken her with a kiss on the cheek, a tray of a pot of Lady Grey tea, scones, and an obscene amount of Devonshire cream and raspberry jam. All in all, Vivian had counted it a successful birthday, well before Gareth texted her.

Reservations at Cassowary 7pm under Liu

Vivian wasn’t sure why he’d texted her and not simply told her, but the man was a spy after all and he must be forgiven his default tendency towards subterfuge. It wouldn’t have been her choice, to take a black car to the restaurant by herself, presumably to meet him, but she had to accept the gift from the giver. The solo trip did allow her to touch up her face without him watching or interrupting and if she shucked off her heels within seconds of sitting down, there was no one to tell tales.

It became clear why he’d texted when she walked into the restaurant, whose use of feathers in the décor was just this side of exuberant.

“Amy! What? How—what are you doing here?” Vivian exclaimed. Amy, her best friend from college, was fully kitted out in the latest pieces from the latest Boden catalog plus a statement necklace that Vivian would probably tell her was too chunky after their second glass of wine.

“I’m your present. From Gareth, who by the way, yum if I’m allowed to say that,” Amy said after the brief, tight hug they exchanged but before they started in on the first glass of wine.

“You are, and yes. And what?”

“He tracked me down and arranged for me to come in for the weekend. As a surprise for your birthday,” Amy said.

“I can’t believe it,” Vivian said, though it did explain the time she’d caught him fumbling with her phone and some of the appraising glances he’d been shooting her way. She had chalked those up to lust or an assessment of how she’d hold up at The Hague, if they actually had to go. Amy’s arrival was an extremely pleasant alternative.

“Seeing is believing. I’m here for the weekend, put up at Claridge’s by your knight-errant, and there are a pair of tickets to Hamilton waiting for us at the box office tomorrow night,” Amy said.

“Holy shit,” Vivian blurted out. To say he’d gone all out was an understatement.

“Yeah, I thought so too,” Amy said, slugging back the last of her first glass as if it were cheap supermarket wine-in-a-box instead of a very fine 1971 Chateau Trotanoy. “Nice to know you haven’t gone full Brit. I was afraid you were going to say ‘bloody hell,’ just then.”

“No worries on that account,” Vivian laughed. “Gareth would be the first to tell you how American I am.”

“I don’t think he would. I don’t think he can find much of anything wrong with you, Vivi,” Amy said.

“Should he?”

“I’m just saying, however stiff that delicious upper lip is, the man’s bonkers for you. He’d probably say ‘besotted,’ especially if he’s fond of Peter Wimsey novels,” Amy said. Vivian smiled at what Amy said and how. She hadn’t known just how much she missed her friend, but Gareth had.

“Before I forget, he asked me to give you this. I’m going to the ladies’ room for a few minutes, so you can check it out in private, and then we can really catch up,” Amy said, handing Vivian a box wrapped in silver wrapping paper that resembled silk so closely, Vivian couldn’t help stroking a finger along the seams. The card was brief, in Gareth’s terrifyingly elegant copperplate hand.

Dearest Vivian,

Happy birthday. I felt certain you could find a use for these.

Gareth

She quickly unwrapped the box, lifted the lid and saw a half dozen utterly exquisite silk scarves from Hermès. The colors were rich, more Rubens than Vermeer. Each one would look beautiful with a suit or a well-cut wool sheath, but after touching the one that lay on top, she knew Gareth meant them for another purpose and she caught her breath at the image of each one carefully knotted at his bare wrists and ankles. Never a blindfold, not after Belfast, but as long as he could watch her…

“Do you need a moment alone?” Amy said, all the snarkiness undercut by the longest, warmest affection and the amusement of a woman married for over twelve years. Vivian huffed a little, like she was supposed to.

“Good, because I’m hungry—for food. The rest of that, that’ll keep. Though I won’t be annoyed if you want to skip dessert tonight and hurry home,” Amy added.

“Oh, you,” Vivian said happily, glad she was just as old as she was, for the benefits were clearly significant, incomparable, and utterly delightful.

A birthday drabble for the incomparable @tessa-quayle. Apologies for punting on an appropriate accompanying gif of Gareth or Vivian. Or silk scarves...

[jomiddlemarch]

or the sound of water poured in a bowl

Gareth waited to say something. Truly, he had, but after watching Vivian fuss and fret for a solid hour, picking up this ornament and that as if she were dusting them, setting them down again just so and then moving each another centimeter to the right, furrowing her brow, and scowling in the direction of the stacks of documents on her desk as well as the orchids he’d brought, he gambled and spoke,

 “What’s got you so terribly bothered?”

 Vivian stared at him and daggers were not the weapon she evoked. Scimitars perhaps. Grenade launchers and the jacked-up laser pointers Q insisted on concealing in the brushes of a make-up kit he’d tucked in James’s sponge bag (as a joke or suggestion; a conjecture Gareth and Vivian had very much enjoyed exploring…). He’d gambled—and lost it seemed.

 “I’m fine,” she said. If she’d had an ivory slatted fan, she’d have slapped it on her crinolined thigh. If she’d had a knife, she’d have thrown it at the wall.

 “That’s patently untrue, love,” he said. “You’ve been sorting through your things like they’re going in an estate sale. And you haven’t touched your tea. It’s gone quite cold.”

 “I told you I didn’t want it and you poured a cup anyway,” Vivian said sulkily. Had he ever seen her pout like that before? He had the sudden urge to kiss her, very long and very soft, until she settled in his arms. A glance at her dark eyes told him he was wisest not to.

 “I thought it would help,” he said.

 “You’re so damn British! A cup of tea is not the solution to everything—and certainly won’t help do anything to deal with the fact that my parents are arriving in an hour—and staying for a week. Here. Not at Claridge’s or the Lanesborough and definitely not at Q’s Aunt Phyllida’s digs—here. And they’re going to drive me batshit crazy,” Vivian exclaimed.

 Gareth was wise enough not to remark that Vivian seemed to have already crossed the line into madness or to comment that he’d forgotten about her parents’ imminent visit.

 “I’d like to help,” he said, taking care not to make a suggestion, however reasonable it might seem. Or to utter some trite reassurance. She had a wicked throwing arm and she’d been known to bite. He hadn’t minded the biting before, not in the least, but he’d prefer it to remain erotic.

 “You can’t,” she replied, but the acid had left her voice.

 “Oh ye of little faith,” he teased gently, finally getting a smile out of her. “I’ve stocked your pantry with every tea in creation—and half a dozen kind of a biscuits. I can get lemon curd if you like.”

 “Gareth, you…” she trailed off. It was rare she was at a loss for words. He intended to make the most of it.

 “Prince among men? Delightful rogue? Casanova?” he offered, with each answer taking a step closer to her until he could brush back the strands of hair that had gotten loose from her chignon.

 “Were very kind. And thoughtful. And have now given me an unexpected insight into your fantasy life, so thank you. For all of it,” Vivian said, resting a hand on his chest.

 “How long have we got until they get here?” he said, letting his desire show in his direct gaze, breathing her in.

 “Long enough,” she said, laughing a little before she dropped her hand to his and led him towards her bedroom. If his tie was left behind there, it wouldn’t matter so much, at least, that’s what she said as she flung it across the room, to some distant corner. He made her a fresh cup of tea afterward, Darjeeling the pale green-gold of spring time, and she drank it, already most pleasantly soothed by his prior, dedicated ministrations. Her mother wouldn’t find the tie but she found the tea-cup and eyed approvingly the loose leaves in the base.

 “Keep this one,” she said and Vivian nodded.

For @tessa-quayle

[jomiddlemarch]

Shaken, stirred

“Will wonders never cease?” Vivian said, running her finger around the rim of her wine-glass. If she’d had twenty-odd more, filled with varying amounts of the extremely dry Viognier she ordered when there was any chance they’d be working, she could drive him mad with her glass armonica. She just had the one and that manicured finger gliding around—because she was bored? Because she wanted to entice him?

 “What’s that?” Gareth said, tossing back the rest of his Scotch. They didn’t have the 32 year old Oban he preferred, but the Glenfiddich would do. Vivian said she liked how it tasted when he kissed her.

 “Bond. Q,” she said, tilting her head subtly in the direction of the two men, standing across the room near a high-top. “I didn’t think it meant anything, just a flirtation on James’s side, but now…” she trailed off, shrugged. It was even more elegant and provocative than usual in her one-shouldered dress.

 “What’s changed your mind?” Gareth asked, resisting the urge to caress her bare arm, to draw his own finger along the line of her bare throat and down her toned forearm, letting it rest on the hammered gold bangles she wore at her wrist.

 “James just finished Q’s drink. All of it. And then he grinned,” Vivian explained. Gareth wondered if Bond had put his lips where Q had, a kiss in the cup as his Nan would have called it, a romantic gesture that would have been far more demonstrative than Bond usually was in mixed company.

 “You think this is definitive?” Gareth challenged her.

 “Q was drinking a white Russian, Gareth,” she said, making a charming little moue of disgust. “It must be love—it couldn’t be anything else.”

[jomiddlemarch]

that all escape lies in the perfect contour

“What if you left him?” Vivian asked, watching Q’s eyes, dark but not as dark as her own. He was so young in so many ways and then he’d surprise her—not with his brilliance, she was familiar with genius, but with the soft, subtle wisdom that reminded her of sandstone and fossils, those white cliffs of Dover, the incomparable North Sea and the tired ghosts of Vikings.

 “I could never do that,” Q said. She wondered what name he’d been christened with. Benedict? Neville? John perhaps, called Jacky by a fond gran who’d made endless pots of tea and homemade bramble jam.

 “Why not?”

 “I wouldn’t—he couldn’t bear it, I would know, the whole time. He’d be…hurt,” Q explained with that crooked smile James must have fallen in love with before he realized it.

 “You worry about a double O getting hurt?” she said. She worried about Gareth, M they called him, but she was an American and a physician. She knew what could be healed and what could only be diagnosed and waited through.

 “I worry about James,” Q said. What a lovely voice he had. She would have fallen in love with it first, before she saw his slender hands and his shoulders, his eyes and the curve of his lips. His throat when he tossed back the last of the cooling tea in his mug.

 “Does he know?” She wasn’t even sure exactly what her question was, but she’d find out when he answered.

 “James knows everything he needs to,” Q said, running a hand through that terrible tumble of chestnut curls, that should seem feminine and never ever did. “And I know what I want.”

 Vivian laughed. He was a clever man, Q, a tinkerer. A dreamer when he chose and a realist the rest of the time.

 “You have such a nice laugh, Vivian. Even when you’re laughing at me, I like the sound of it,” Q remarked. She didn’t feel chastened, because she wasn’t supposed to, but she still wouldn’t tell Gareth this part. Or how she brushed a light kiss on Q’s cheek as she got up to leave and how Q touched his fingers to the spot, considering her.

 “That’s a relief,” she said, walking out. Her heels tapped out a toccatina as she went.

 “It was meant to be, L. I don’t say what I don’t mean.”

[jomiddlemarch]

The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight

“And then he started going on and on about some sort of rocket that could fire underwater but attain super-sonic speeds once it breached the ocean’s surface,” James explained, spooning up some more of the heirloom tomato gazpacho that Q had made after getting the tomatoes shipped in from Spain. The ruddy soup was drizzled with an olive oil almost the color of verdigris and a scattering of flash-fried basil leaves that Vivian had dutifully eaten. M had removed them all and tucked them in the shadow of the shallow soup bowl.

 “The whole place was an embarrassment, tawdry as a failed bordello. And all his equipment was out-of-date. You would have screamed to see the screens, Q. I pitied him, honestly,” James went on. He leaned back in his chair, the light from the pricked hanging lanterns playing very attractively on the planes of his face, his gasoline blue eyes, the hollow at the base of his throat. He wore an open-collared shirt and a pair of trousers so finely cut Vivian thought Versace might weep in his grave with frustrated desire. “He had an aquarium in the wall but it was filthy with algae. Even the crabs had given up on it. They just lay in a heap in the corner.”

 “So, it was a bust,” Vivian said, trying to move the story along. Gareth gave her a quick look, the proxy for a grin. “All that time you spent making up to Dolly Wantanabe at that mahjong tournament, where by the way, you lost an awful lot of Her Majesty’s assets, a total waste.” She’d seen the stills Q had, Dolly’s unnecessarily ill-contained and ample décolletage, James’s expression of total boredom whenever he thought he could get away with it. She could hear his introduction in her mind, “Bond, James Bond” and knew that neither he nor Dolly had had the slightest interest in going any further than his hand laid obviously on her knee, revealed by the slit in her heavy red silk gown.

 “Not entirely,” James said. From the pocket of his linen blacker, hanging on the back of his chair, he pulled out a device that was bulbous and retro. “I got this for Q, when Peshkaqen was waxing rhapsodic.”

 “Hang on,” Q interrupted, grabbing the tarnished item, weighing it in his hand. Gareth raised an eyebrow and she shook her head. No such presents for her, not even as a gag gift. “Now pay attention, 007, because this looks like it’s a feckless piece of shite, but it’s bloody dangerous if you handle it wrong.”

 “That could be said of so many things,” Gareth said and Vivian shivered. She knew what he wanted her to remember, her hands on him and his teeth, his voice in her ear, whispering the dirtiest Catullus he’d memorized in prep school and then making her catch her breath when he called her Domina.

 “Coffee?” Vivian said quickly.

 “It won’t keep you up all night?” James asked, guilelessly. As if a shark could ever be called that.

 “That’s not a problem for me,” Vivian said and Gareth laughed, a harsh sound, that she knew meant he was swallowing it back. She wouldn’t let him do that when they were alone.

 “Lucky you,” Q said, sly as James had not been. Vivian smiled widely. She had been right—a dinner party was an incomparable way to spend the night, both in the moment and in the anticipation of its delicious recollection.

[jomiddlemarch]

Moodboard, Vivian, contemplation

[tessa-quayle]

The Writing’s on the Wall

thank you to @jomiddlemarch for 1) the prompt, 2) the wonderful edits (that rescued this drabble) and insightful advice, and 3) creating such a fun OFC in Vivian.  :)  thanks for inspiring me to take a spin with these characters.

rated R.

__________________________________

She was tired.  It was midnight.  Out in the hallway, the custodian pushed along a wheeled bin, its muffled rumble providing equal parts comfort and discomfort: a reminder she was not alone and the uneasy idea of another human being tasked with taking out her trash. She finally heard his footsteps fade, and a door slammed shut. There was freedom in solitude.

Kicking off her heels, Vivian rolled off her stockings, balled them up, threw them into a corner.  The glow from her laptop screen dimly lit the tiny office.  She found an Alec Guinness reading of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, turned up the volume, and turned back to typing away furiously.  

The hard, fast tapping of the keyboard was interrupted by a loud chuckle.

“God, woman, how many words a minute can you type?”  Mallory stood at the door, his shoulder against the frame.

“Is someone in search of a secretary?”

He winked: “You filled that position last week, remember?”  He looked around and then at her expectantly: “May I come in?”

“Of course,” she replied, finding his formality curious.  And welcome.

“It’s spartan,” he said, surveying the books leaning like dominoes on the half empty shelf where a scented candle and a coffee mug collected dust.  No medical texts, just fiction.  

“Well, I was crossing an ocean, I had to pack light.”    

He leaned against her desk.  

“Careful,” she warned lightly.  “This isn’t as nice and sturdy as yours.  If you lean on it too hard, you could break it.”  

She held his glance steadily, sure of what she’d made him remember. During their first encounter, she’d tugged his tie toward her so that his head bowed and she tiptoed to meet his lips, kissing him hard until his mouth was swollen.  She let him bend her over the desk, putting her arms out along the cool, dark mahogany as he moved against her.  When he came, he reached for her hand curling her fingers under his.  She thought of his weight pressing her down, that sense of vital power, controlled, intoxicating, and she remembered wanting time to stand still.  

This was his first time in her office, her space.  Vivian watched as he fingered the spines of the novels, pulled them out and flipped them over to scan the back summaries.  Soft queries yielding simple answers.   This was not an interrogation; and yet, she felt unprepared by this rifling through thoughts.  An unannounced inspection – to what end exactly?  She was unnerved.  She felt more exposed now than in the moments he’d knelt before her, his hands circling her hips - he’d nipped her inner thigh, leaving a mark.  A shudder, a grip.  Looking up, he’d spied the rise of her chest.  He murmured a word she couldn’t understand, an answer she hadn’t thought of.

“Where is that?”  He pointed to a panoramic photo hanging on the wall behind her.  A wooden dock split a turquoise sea and stretched into the orange red horizon.  

“Tulum.”  She shrugged, rubbed her eyes.  “I know, it looks like a scene out of a motivational poster.  I borrowed a friend’s Leica and could only use it as a point and shoot.  Really - the picture takes itself with a fancy camera.”  

He grinned: “Maybe when this case is done, you can take me there.”

“I wish you wouldn’t…” muttered Vivian.  

She reddened and the room suddenly felt hot. She shifted in her chair, rolling it forward.  In the beginning, she had thought they’d be done when the case was done.  And now, she wished her feelings could be neatly compartmentalized, contained within borders squiggled on a map.  A foolish wish - hope was expectation was disappointment.  

Guinness’ baritone rang through the tinny computer speakers:

….human kind

Cannot bear very much reality

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present

Mallory gazed at her, confused, his eyes darkening.   “You wish I wouldn’t … what?”

“Never mind, sorry, it’s nothing.  I guess - I guess we’ll see.”  And offered a smile instead of an answer.

[jomiddlemarch]

What you see I see

“What’s he like? Bond, I mean,” Vivian asked. She looked just as enticing as she had hours earlier when she’d climbed atop him and pushed him back, her surgeon’s hands strong and confident on his shoulders, the look in her eyes brooking no argument. The linens were tousled around her like an odalisque might cunningly arrange, though he knew she’d done nothing of the sort; she was direct and uncomplicated except where she was incomprehensible, as she seemed to be now, with her question and the sleepy expression in her eyes.

 “This is your idea of pillow-talk?” he replied, unable to get the image of James’s blue eyes, unfairly like glacial ice, from within his own mind.

 “You prefer endearments and exaggerated congratulations on your prowess? I think not, Gareth. And I’m curious. He’s one of those men people talk a lot about—and I can’t help thinking it’s mostly horseshit,” she said smartly, not at all drowsy now. She’d propped herself up on one elbow and let her dark hair slip forward but she was still bare to the waist and the view was…exquisite. And almost mollifying.

 “That’s not the first word most people would choose for him,” he said. Bond, with his bespoke tuxedos and his weapons, his flashy car and his silver shaker, so invested in his own mythos and so oblivious, infuriating, attractive and repellent…

 “You’re not most people. We’ve established that. I thought we had. Does he read, d’you think? He doesn’t strike me as a reader,” she went on, shifting closer so her loose hair tickled him. He didn’t feel like laughing.

 “Nothing modern. Not his style, I shouldn’t think,” Gareth said. Kipling, if he had to guess, and Graves but not Wilfrid Owen, and if the man had ever read a novel after leaving school, he’d be shocked. He’d had the makings of the Senior Wrangler but he’d wasted that too.

 “What else?” she prodded, prodding him also with her other hand low on his belly, stroking upwards to where the hair grew more thickly, then back down, dipping to graze his hip bone. She was very gentle and intent and he didn’t think it was her surgical training. Just Vivian.

 “He’s old-fashioned but he’s not a dinosaur. He’s trapped…because he doesn’t want to look at himself and everyone else does. There was a woman he actually loved but she died,” he explained. It was strangely enjoyable to discuss James while Vivian was touching him, listening carefully to what he said and how.

 “How sad. And boring. I thought it would be boring,” Vivian said, surprising him now into laughter. He caught her hand and stopped her.

“Boring?” he repeated.

 “Jesus, yes. It’s like a bad movie, one that goes straight to video. Gorgeous, tormented, no insight, dull, dull dull-- Isn’t there anything interesting about him at all? Anything…unexpected?” she said. There was some sort of hunger in her voice, no, some appetite and he noted it but he couldn’t resist, rolled them over so he was looking down at her, felt her hook one leg behind his, that slick, silky thigh pressed against his.

 “He’s an exceptionally good bridge player, hates to lose a rubber,” he said. He leaned over to kiss her and felt her lips curve in a smile.

 “Is that even true or did you just want to say ‘rubber?’”

 He moved to kiss her throat, tasting her sweat, feeling her hips cant up against him.

 “Yes, love,” he said, drawing back a little, looking at her warm dark eyes, wondering at her. “Yes?” he asked, waiting to be invited further. For her to relegate James to somewhere far away or just far enough away to be out of their bed, those January eyes watching them both from the corner of the room, from shadows that they’d not plumb just yet.

 “Most emphatically yes,” she breathed out, a hand on the back on his neck. “I’m not bad at bridge either, I never miss a trick.”

[jomiddlemarch]

Omne trium perfectum

For @tessa-quayle

“Jesus fucking Christ damn it all to hell!” Vivian hissed, the profanity more obscene for the tone she used; she sounded like a fishwife, like he imagined a fishwife would sound, having had little to do with fishwives, fish-mongers and their ilk.

 “Dare I ask what’s wrong?”

 “I just spent an hour on this spreadsheet, it’s due tomorrow, and it’s gone. After I corrected it all, that admin screwed up half of it,” she said, calmer but still halfway to exhausted. They’d planned to break for dinner out. Now he thought better of it.

 “Let me make supper, then, love.”

 *

 “You’re late, Gareth. Extremely late,” Vivian said. Her arms were crossed in front of her and her pretty mouth was pinched. He wasn’t used anymore to the sensation that came with needing to brazen his way out of a scrape; he couldn’t say he’d missed it.

 “I could give you a thousand excuses, but none of them would make up for it,” he tried. He meant it, he was nearly two hours late and another woman would have left. He reached a hand out to push the loose hair from her cheek, then corrected, touching her hand only.

 “I’m sorry.”

*

 “Don’t bother me now,” Vivian muttered, stretching a hand out almost-blindly to bat him away. It was effective more in the gesture than execution, as he was standing behind her to drop a warm kiss on the nape of her neck.

 “Bother you?” he repeated, his tone low. Inviting.

 “Not now, Gareth, I’m in the middle of this. Just, I don’t know, amuse yourself for a while,” she said, not even glancing up at him. She was wearing glasses, which meant her eyes were too tired for contacts.

 He flicked on the TV, but he just watched her, amusing himself.

[jomiddlemarch]

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile

The cottage had stone walls and an Aga. It had a dresser with china and tea cups and a scrubbed table; the kettle was battered and the window cut above the kitchen sink looked out over a sere field. The sky felt low, filled with clouds, and there was a scent in the air, the sea and isolation, that Vivian felt Gareth inhaled like the finest perfume. She’d never seen this expression on his face before, pride and embarrassment; she thought he might duck his head like a school-boy in a cap except that it was only the lintel was not made for a man as tall as he was. His hand was at the small of her back, through the cashmere sweater that was too thin, so she walked in, wordless. Her luggage was non-descript but it seemed like it was from the distant future, that she should have had a carpet-bag and at least a cheap gold band on her finger. She wasn’t sure what he would do if she said it, if he would laugh or smile or nod. Or lean in to kiss her, as if there wasn’t anything worth saying, worth listening to.

 “Not what you expected?” he asked.

 “That presumes I had expectations,” she said, moving further into the room. Gareth put down the bags he carried and stepped behind her. She felt his hands stroke down her shoulders, rest on her waist.

 “You didn’t? I do find that hard to believe,” he said, his breath soft on her bare neck. She looked at the fireplace filled with split logs, a basket of twigs beside a possible ancient set of andirons and bellows. The rug was worn but there was a heavy throw on the sofa and some plump pillows…she found she knew how he would look gilded by firelight but not what he would call her here, when she gazed down at him. When she shivered and he groaned with her trembling.

 “I expect you know how to manage the Aga. I certainly don’t,” she replied. He laughed and she smiled, a smile he wouldn’t see.

 “I do. You needn’t lift a finger,” he said, tightening his grasp, brushing a kiss below her ear.

 “Perhaps I needn’t,” she murmured, shifting in his arms, drawing her thumb along his jaw, his lower lip. “I want to.”

 *

 Love was what he called her later. She didn’t ask what he meant.