RPF Fic: the restless few
the restless few
rpf ; daniel craig/eva green ; pg ; 2,410 words
it's complicated ; unfortunately, it's also about survival.
notes: OKAY. I had a really long-winded explanation for this. But then I thought, "if they don't know you by now, C ..." So simply put. This is for oxymoronassoc, who puts up with my long, winding, and epic ramblings trying to express things about rpf and James Bond alike and does crazy projects with me. And pretty much the coolest person around. Seriously.
-
They are friends last. It is ultimately the strangest way of looking at the two of them, should you have the chance - she is only a private person to most, unconventionally shy to those who actually know her, and necessarily unattainable to the rest of the world, all for a category. Daniel does not pretend to understand her.
This is why she likes him.
He is late to tea. He calls her, mid-apology, just as she settles in again at their table. Her legs cross at the ankle and she sighs, “you’re going to make me drink coffee at this point,” and when she pauses, her fingers still over her cup, “you should have just said a later time.”
“You’re impossible, Green.”
She snorts. It hides a smile. “And hopelessly early.”
Eva has picked the table the furthest away from the windows. She half-listens to whatever he is teasing her about; he has been in Toronto for months and she has just come back from Moscow, trying relentlessly to remember the last time she’s really seen him.
“Ah,” he says then. “There you are.”
She looks up and Daniel is cutting across the restaurant, closing his phone. The dial tone sits at her ear. When he reaches the table he moves to her first, plucking the phone from her hand and leaning in, his mouth presses against her jaw.
“We could turn this into a dinner,” he says. She raises an eyebrow and he sits. He turns off her phone and slides it back over the table. It rests against her cup of tea. “If you prefer,” he drawls. “Since you are hopelessly early and have missed me entirely too much.”
Her lips curl. “Ass.”
He looks good, she thinks. He shrugs out of his jacket, twisting to let it drape over the back of his chair. He raises a hand to signal the waitress. But they will not talk about the breakup.
She listens absently to his order - he asks for coffee for her. He makes an odd joke about the small restaurant and she watches as the girl blushes. She shakes her head.
“How’s the dog?” Daniel asks.
“How’s the new girlfriend?” she counters. His nose wrinkles and she shrugs. “It’s all I hear about,” she says.
“From who?”
The corners of her mouth turn. “We’re having dinner,” she says dryly.
It’s easy to wonder, the way that some things are spread against magazines, cover to cover in papers, on the internet with the occasional awkward photo. She doesn’t know how to be jealous when it comes to him; she might get sad, she will get possessive, and somehow, she manages to strike a balance when it comes to being in Daniel’s life.
“It isn’t true,” he murmurs.
“No?” she feigns boredom when the waitress comes back. The girl puts a piece of cake between the two of them, handing Daniel the forks. “You said the same thing about -” she pauses, and then gently says, “your engagement months ago.”
“That was different, Green.”
“And inevitably the same, non?”
She rests her chin against her hand. Her hair brushes over her eyes. He catches her gaze, swallowing. His jaw locks and she straightens in her chair. The collar of her blouse catches her throat and she runs her fingers over the fabric, spreading them over her skin to press back the irritation. For a moment, he watches her, ignoring the question - or even the answer, she thinks - and seems to be trying to catch her off-guard.
Eva reaches for her fork. She pulls it out of his hand and then cuts it into the slice of cake. The off-colored filling, blueberry, maybe even blackberry, slivers into her fork.
“You are angry.” She says it quietly, and slips the fork into her mouth. Daniel looks at her and then looks away. “I’m sorry,” she offers.
He scoffs, amused. “You’re not.”
She takes the small bite off of her fork. She’s isn’t.
They never sat for interviews back with Bond. Satsuki asked them both, once; there was something about publicity and odd chemistry until Eva made the odd, awkward joke about tension that Daniel only laughed at.
He comes back from the bathroom. His hands are shoved into his pockets and he sits back down at the table, frowning. He shakes his head before she opens her mouth.
“It’s nothing,” he says. They could’ve easily had the time at her flat, she thinks. But the invitation, suddenly remembered, is because she spent a few extra hours at the museum, wandering. Daniel reaches forward, sliding his fingers against her mouth. “Cake,” he says, shrugging.
“I thought it was nothing.”
He shrugs again.
“I told you that Marton sends his regards, right?”
Eva tenses. She looks away. Her gaze settles on the window and the outside traffic, the cars stumbling into the center of the city. There are bits of snow or rain - she has to squint to really tell if anything is happening. Marton, she remembers, Marton never liked London.
“Several times,” she murmurs.
“He told me -” Eva holds up her hand. “It was friendly,” he finishes, ignoring her. “That the two of you are -”
“You’re being patronizing.”
“Sympathetic,” he says dryly, and she could hit him, she thinks. She could hit him and leave and not look back. The anger is sudden, and it stings, crawling up and out of her because she hasn’t seen him in months and she never understands why it’s just this easy to pick up with him again and again. There is nothing to like.
She reaches for her fork. “I know the two of you got on well.”
“For you,” he mutters, but she pretends not to hear it.
They both reach for the last piece of the cake. Her fork pushes his away and he laughs, low and thick as the waitress passes them by. Eva shares a curious look with the girl and ends up splitting the small bite in half, taking the part with more filling.
“I wanted that piece.”
Her eyes roll. “You’re too slow. And you’re avoiding the conversation - as well-placed as your strange sense of loyalty is, you’re allowed to be friends with him, Daniel.”
“And again,” he says, ignoring her. He laughs too. When he leans over the table, he seems to stretch, invading her space; his fingers grasp her chin, his thumb brushing against her lip as he seems to fall into his own smile. Her mouth dries and she licks her lips, she can’t help it, catching his thumb with dark eyes and a terrible sigh. He doesn’t seem to notice. “I worry about you Green,” he tells her. It sounds so simple. His voice is soft. “I worry about you and all your stupid secrets.”
Her eyes narrow. She tries to draw back. She cannot bring herself to move. His hand drops and he looks down at their empty plate.
“This isn’t dinner,” she murmurs.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s cake.”
She laughs and draws back, glad for the distraction, glad that she suddenly cannot bring Rachel up without being completely and utterly vague. She brushes her hair out of her eyes and then lets her hand shrink into her jacket. She pulls her cigarettes out.
“It is time to go,” she tells him.
“Is that an invitation?”
“Of course. As you remind me from time to time, you are my only close friend. That I am not sleeping with. Or on the arm of. Or inherently drawn to because of your charm and good looks.”
He chuckles. “You care,” he drawls.
“Apparently.”
She forces herself to stand too. Her hands drop to the back of her chair, over her coat, and curl into the collar. She’s hesitant, reminding herself: there is New York on Thursday, engagements and smaller moments, having to back home see her mother for a few days. She could tell him. She might really tell him. But certain things are harder to admit to than others.
Instead, she quietly gathers her coat. Her cigarettes are still in her hand and she steps back, shaking her head. His gaze is steady.
“Well,” she says. “Are you coming?”
Primrose Hill was an accident, a strange sort of accident. The flat, her flat is far too quiet to really be hers - but it’s home, she reasons, and she likes have her own space. It’s different when it’s hers and maybe this is why she lets him come here.
Griffin rushes Daniel in the kitchen, the small dog jumping, scattering and nipping at his legs. She watches them both in amusement, catching Daniel as he leans quickly to rub the dog’s belly.
“So.” She slides herself onto the counter. “Are you going to talk to me about the news? It isn’t like you,” she murmurs, “not talking to me about what - well, everything.”
He shrugs. “You got angry at me the last time.”
It’s true, too true; it was another one of those nights, one of those long nights where he brought the whiskey and she drank half, he smoked some of her cigarettes while she listened to him go on and on and on about how he needed his life to be his. She has heard the song and dance before and it has hurt, really hurt, but there are just things that she can’t tell him.
“I’ll listen,” she murmurs. It sounds awkward.
He chuckles.
“You - you just dropped it on me,” she adds, thinking back to Satsuki. She shakes her head. “I can’t -” she laughs dryly. “You really don’t know, do you? At all?”
It is not the first time she says something like this. He blinks. She winces, and it almost seems to casual Daniel moves to the counter, reaching for her jacket. She’s draped it off the edge and when he pulls out her cigarettes, he tosses them to her. She catches them, barely. The box dangles off her fingers.
“I don’t want to make you angry,” he says.
“So you give me cigarettes?”
He smirks.
“You’re an ass,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“No,” he tells her. “I just know you.”
She used to resent that, or maybe she still does, the way he just says I just know you. But she manages to feign some kind of nonchalance, pulling a cigarette into her mouth. Daniel moves to stand in front of her, sort of fixed between her legs.
He watches her with some amusement - there’s something else too, there’s always something else. She’s long-since learned. But Griffin has decided to disappear, and there’s no way of offering him a distraction because she just doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.
When she looks down, Daniel drops his hands on either side of her. He doesn’t touch her. They rest close, maybe too close to her legs. She is not uncomfortable, not yet, and cannot help herself, brushing her fingers against his jacket. She pickets at the collar and flashes a lazy smile. She hasn’t lit her cigarette just yet.
“There you go,” he murmurs. She meets his gaze. The corners of his mouth turn. “There you go hiding yourself again, Green. It’s the little things, love. You’ve never been too brilliant of a liar.”
“I haven’t lied.”
He chuckles. “Not yet,” he says.
She swallows.
He reaches for her hand. His fingers press against the back, pressing her fingers into his coat; he slides his thumb over her knuckles. She stares at him, waiting, uncomfortable and confused.
“I am an ass,” he says quietly, and she makes a sound, causing him to chuckle. He shakes his head, moving closer. His hand comes up to rest against her leg and then suddenly that’s it, there’s no sense of space. They have never been good at boundaries, on and off cue, further away from the reality of him being completely unaware. She does not know what he wants and for the first time, in very long time, it’s starting to worry her.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Something, nothing, the obvious, I suppose -”
She frowns.
“It was only a few times,” he finishes awkwardly.
Eva doesn’t say anything. He’s watching her, waiting for some kind of reaction, any reaction, still too close for comfort. She pushes him gently, nudging him back so that she can slide off the counter. When her feet hit the floor, Griffin comes rushing into the kitchen.
She manages to grab the whiskey, tucking it under her arm. There are matches on the counter. They were pushed behind her. Her coat is on the floor and as she lights her cigarette, she watches her dog begin to roll around over it. Daniel lets out a short laugh.
“Come on,” she says, and touches his arm. He looks at her, surprised. She motions for him to follow her. She likes the sitting room for this, she thinks. It’s going to be another one of those nights.
She turns, and he stops her again, merely to pull the whiskey bottle out from under her arm. He offers her a smile.
“You’re mad again,” he says.
Eva doesn’t answer. Her hand closes over the neck of the whiskey bottle and she pulls. She just wanted to see him; it’s ironic, really, how suddenly she’s walked back into this, listening to this. His mouth opens and closes. She just shakes her head.
He lets her take the bottle again.
They talk all night of course; he drinks the rest of her whiskey, finishing stories of Marton and Toronto, Rachel - although he never really says her name - as she listens quietly. She wants to be angry at him and for once, then, she thinks it’s the only thing he really understands.
In the morning, she wakes up, sprawled against his side as the two of them seem to turn into each other inside of fighting for the couch. Her blouse is twisted and she knocked her heels off, somewhere earlier the night before. She can feel his hand in her hair and her fingers are twisted into his shirt; the only thing she can think is: how can you not know.
But his eyes are closed and he makes a low sound, his mouth turn to press against her forehead. She lets out a sigh.
“A few more minutes,” he mumbles sleepily.
They are friends last.
rpf ; daniel craig/eva green ; pg ; 2,410 words
it's complicated ; unfortunately, it's also about survival.
notes: OKAY. I had a really long-winded explanation for this. But then I thought, "if they don't know you by now, C ..." So simply put. This is for oxymoronassoc, who puts up with my long, winding, and epic ramblings trying to express things about rpf and James Bond alike and does crazy projects with me. And pretty much the coolest person around. Seriously.
-
They are friends last. It is ultimately the strangest way of looking at the two of them, should you have the chance - she is only a private person to most, unconventionally shy to those who actually know her, and necessarily unattainable to the rest of the world, all for a category. Daniel does not pretend to understand her.
This is why she likes him.
He is late to tea. He calls her, mid-apology, just as she settles in again at their table. Her legs cross at the ankle and she sighs, “you’re going to make me drink coffee at this point,” and when she pauses, her fingers still over her cup, “you should have just said a later time.”
“You’re impossible, Green.”
She snorts. It hides a smile. “And hopelessly early.”
Eva has picked the table the furthest away from the windows. She half-listens to whatever he is teasing her about; he has been in Toronto for months and she has just come back from Moscow, trying relentlessly to remember the last time she’s really seen him.
“Ah,” he says then. “There you are.”
She looks up and Daniel is cutting across the restaurant, closing his phone. The dial tone sits at her ear. When he reaches the table he moves to her first, plucking the phone from her hand and leaning in, his mouth presses against her jaw.
“We could turn this into a dinner,” he says. She raises an eyebrow and he sits. He turns off her phone and slides it back over the table. It rests against her cup of tea. “If you prefer,” he drawls. “Since you are hopelessly early and have missed me entirely too much.”
Her lips curl. “Ass.”
He looks good, she thinks. He shrugs out of his jacket, twisting to let it drape over the back of his chair. He raises a hand to signal the waitress. But they will not talk about the breakup.
She listens absently to his order - he asks for coffee for her. He makes an odd joke about the small restaurant and she watches as the girl blushes. She shakes her head.
“How’s the dog?” Daniel asks.
“How’s the new girlfriend?” she counters. His nose wrinkles and she shrugs. “It’s all I hear about,” she says.
“From who?”
The corners of her mouth turn. “We’re having dinner,” she says dryly.
It’s easy to wonder, the way that some things are spread against magazines, cover to cover in papers, on the internet with the occasional awkward photo. She doesn’t know how to be jealous when it comes to him; she might get sad, she will get possessive, and somehow, she manages to strike a balance when it comes to being in Daniel’s life.
“It isn’t true,” he murmurs.
“No?” she feigns boredom when the waitress comes back. The girl puts a piece of cake between the two of them, handing Daniel the forks. “You said the same thing about -” she pauses, and then gently says, “your engagement months ago.”
“That was different, Green.”
“And inevitably the same, non?”
She rests her chin against her hand. Her hair brushes over her eyes. He catches her gaze, swallowing. His jaw locks and she straightens in her chair. The collar of her blouse catches her throat and she runs her fingers over the fabric, spreading them over her skin to press back the irritation. For a moment, he watches her, ignoring the question - or even the answer, she thinks - and seems to be trying to catch her off-guard.
Eva reaches for her fork. She pulls it out of his hand and then cuts it into the slice of cake. The off-colored filling, blueberry, maybe even blackberry, slivers into her fork.
“You are angry.” She says it quietly, and slips the fork into her mouth. Daniel looks at her and then looks away. “I’m sorry,” she offers.
He scoffs, amused. “You’re not.”
She takes the small bite off of her fork. She’s isn’t.
They never sat for interviews back with Bond. Satsuki asked them both, once; there was something about publicity and odd chemistry until Eva made the odd, awkward joke about tension that Daniel only laughed at.
He comes back from the bathroom. His hands are shoved into his pockets and he sits back down at the table, frowning. He shakes his head before she opens her mouth.
“It’s nothing,” he says. They could’ve easily had the time at her flat, she thinks. But the invitation, suddenly remembered, is because she spent a few extra hours at the museum, wandering. Daniel reaches forward, sliding his fingers against her mouth. “Cake,” he says, shrugging.
“I thought it was nothing.”
He shrugs again.
“I told you that Marton sends his regards, right?”
Eva tenses. She looks away. Her gaze settles on the window and the outside traffic, the cars stumbling into the center of the city. There are bits of snow or rain - she has to squint to really tell if anything is happening. Marton, she remembers, Marton never liked London.
“Several times,” she murmurs.
“He told me -” Eva holds up her hand. “It was friendly,” he finishes, ignoring her. “That the two of you are -”
“You’re being patronizing.”
“Sympathetic,” he says dryly, and she could hit him, she thinks. She could hit him and leave and not look back. The anger is sudden, and it stings, crawling up and out of her because she hasn’t seen him in months and she never understands why it’s just this easy to pick up with him again and again. There is nothing to like.
She reaches for her fork. “I know the two of you got on well.”
“For you,” he mutters, but she pretends not to hear it.
They both reach for the last piece of the cake. Her fork pushes his away and he laughs, low and thick as the waitress passes them by. Eva shares a curious look with the girl and ends up splitting the small bite in half, taking the part with more filling.
“I wanted that piece.”
Her eyes roll. “You’re too slow. And you’re avoiding the conversation - as well-placed as your strange sense of loyalty is, you’re allowed to be friends with him, Daniel.”
“And again,” he says, ignoring her. He laughs too. When he leans over the table, he seems to stretch, invading her space; his fingers grasp her chin, his thumb brushing against her lip as he seems to fall into his own smile. Her mouth dries and she licks her lips, she can’t help it, catching his thumb with dark eyes and a terrible sigh. He doesn’t seem to notice. “I worry about you Green,” he tells her. It sounds so simple. His voice is soft. “I worry about you and all your stupid secrets.”
Her eyes narrow. She tries to draw back. She cannot bring herself to move. His hand drops and he looks down at their empty plate.
“This isn’t dinner,” she murmurs.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s cake.”
She laughs and draws back, glad for the distraction, glad that she suddenly cannot bring Rachel up without being completely and utterly vague. She brushes her hair out of her eyes and then lets her hand shrink into her jacket. She pulls her cigarettes out.
“It is time to go,” she tells him.
“Is that an invitation?”
“Of course. As you remind me from time to time, you are my only close friend. That I am not sleeping with. Or on the arm of. Or inherently drawn to because of your charm and good looks.”
He chuckles. “You care,” he drawls.
“Apparently.”
She forces herself to stand too. Her hands drop to the back of her chair, over her coat, and curl into the collar. She’s hesitant, reminding herself: there is New York on Thursday, engagements and smaller moments, having to back home see her mother for a few days. She could tell him. She might really tell him. But certain things are harder to admit to than others.
Instead, she quietly gathers her coat. Her cigarettes are still in her hand and she steps back, shaking her head. His gaze is steady.
“Well,” she says. “Are you coming?”
Primrose Hill was an accident, a strange sort of accident. The flat, her flat is far too quiet to really be hers - but it’s home, she reasons, and she likes have her own space. It’s different when it’s hers and maybe this is why she lets him come here.
Griffin rushes Daniel in the kitchen, the small dog jumping, scattering and nipping at his legs. She watches them both in amusement, catching Daniel as he leans quickly to rub the dog’s belly.
“So.” She slides herself onto the counter. “Are you going to talk to me about the news? It isn’t like you,” she murmurs, “not talking to me about what - well, everything.”
He shrugs. “You got angry at me the last time.”
It’s true, too true; it was another one of those nights, one of those long nights where he brought the whiskey and she drank half, he smoked some of her cigarettes while she listened to him go on and on and on about how he needed his life to be his. She has heard the song and dance before and it has hurt, really hurt, but there are just things that she can’t tell him.
“I’ll listen,” she murmurs. It sounds awkward.
He chuckles.
“You - you just dropped it on me,” she adds, thinking back to Satsuki. She shakes her head. “I can’t -” she laughs dryly. “You really don’t know, do you? At all?”
It is not the first time she says something like this. He blinks. She winces, and it almost seems to casual Daniel moves to the counter, reaching for her jacket. She’s draped it off the edge and when he pulls out her cigarettes, he tosses them to her. She catches them, barely. The box dangles off her fingers.
“I don’t want to make you angry,” he says.
“So you give me cigarettes?”
He smirks.
“You’re an ass,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“No,” he tells her. “I just know you.”
She used to resent that, or maybe she still does, the way he just says I just know you. But she manages to feign some kind of nonchalance, pulling a cigarette into her mouth. Daniel moves to stand in front of her, sort of fixed between her legs.
He watches her with some amusement - there’s something else too, there’s always something else. She’s long-since learned. But Griffin has decided to disappear, and there’s no way of offering him a distraction because she just doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.
When she looks down, Daniel drops his hands on either side of her. He doesn’t touch her. They rest close, maybe too close to her legs. She is not uncomfortable, not yet, and cannot help herself, brushing her fingers against his jacket. She pickets at the collar and flashes a lazy smile. She hasn’t lit her cigarette just yet.
“There you go,” he murmurs. She meets his gaze. The corners of his mouth turn. “There you go hiding yourself again, Green. It’s the little things, love. You’ve never been too brilliant of a liar.”
“I haven’t lied.”
He chuckles. “Not yet,” he says.
She swallows.
He reaches for her hand. His fingers press against the back, pressing her fingers into his coat; he slides his thumb over her knuckles. She stares at him, waiting, uncomfortable and confused.
“I am an ass,” he says quietly, and she makes a sound, causing him to chuckle. He shakes his head, moving closer. His hand comes up to rest against her leg and then suddenly that’s it, there’s no sense of space. They have never been good at boundaries, on and off cue, further away from the reality of him being completely unaware. She does not know what he wants and for the first time, in very long time, it’s starting to worry her.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Something, nothing, the obvious, I suppose -”
She frowns.
“It was only a few times,” he finishes awkwardly.
Eva doesn’t say anything. He’s watching her, waiting for some kind of reaction, any reaction, still too close for comfort. She pushes him gently, nudging him back so that she can slide off the counter. When her feet hit the floor, Griffin comes rushing into the kitchen.
She manages to grab the whiskey, tucking it under her arm. There are matches on the counter. They were pushed behind her. Her coat is on the floor and as she lights her cigarette, she watches her dog begin to roll around over it. Daniel lets out a short laugh.
“Come on,” she says, and touches his arm. He looks at her, surprised. She motions for him to follow her. She likes the sitting room for this, she thinks. It’s going to be another one of those nights.
She turns, and he stops her again, merely to pull the whiskey bottle out from under her arm. He offers her a smile.
“You’re mad again,” he says.
Eva doesn’t answer. Her hand closes over the neck of the whiskey bottle and she pulls. She just wanted to see him; it’s ironic, really, how suddenly she’s walked back into this, listening to this. His mouth opens and closes. She just shakes her head.
He lets her take the bottle again.
They talk all night of course; he drinks the rest of her whiskey, finishing stories of Marton and Toronto, Rachel - although he never really says her name - as she listens quietly. She wants to be angry at him and for once, then, she thinks it’s the only thing he really understands.
In the morning, she wakes up, sprawled against his side as the two of them seem to turn into each other inside of fighting for the couch. Her blouse is twisted and she knocked her heels off, somewhere earlier the night before. She can feel his hand in her hair and her fingers are twisted into his shirt; the only thing she can think is: how can you not know.
But his eyes are closed and he makes a low sound, his mouth turn to press against her forehead. She lets out a sigh.
“A few more minutes,” he mumbles sleepily.
They are friends last.