skyfall fic: for a while i thought i was the princess
for a while i thought i was the princess. skyfall. eve moneypenny/james bond. pg13. "I was in love once," Bond never tells her.
“I was in love once,” Bond never tells her.
“I love you,” he never says either, but Eve never expected that.
You wouldn’t believe her, but she’s never wanted it either.
M’s funeral is horribly formal. Eve knows she would’ve hated it. But she is there nonetheless, a black veil pinned to her hair and a respectable dress cut at the knee. She sits in an empty pew in the middle of the church.
Bond’s suit is charcoal gray and he puts a hand on her knee nonchalantly.
He looks drunk. This is nothing new. She is surprised he came at all.
“Did you look this nice at my funeral?” he asks, the edges of the words slurred. There are rows of solemn people ahead of them and behind them but James’ hand slips to her inner thigh and creeps up.
She crinkles her nose and picks his hand up carefully, placing it back down on the dark hard wood of the pew.
“Have you no sense of decency, Bond?”
Her whisper is hoarse but it’s not from crying. There are still people filing in. The church is a grandiose thing, white marble gargoyles carved into the tops of pillars, stained glass windows of saints and the Virgin.
“I’ll take that as a no then,” he murmurs to himself and stares up at the statues.
Mallory sits far ahead of them with his wife. She’s blonde and thin, a waif of a woman. Eve was surprised by that but she’s not sure why. Her name is some sort of flower, Rose or Lily maybe.
Bond stares at the grotesque statues and points.
“Those are some pretty ugly angels, aren’t they? Hardly comforting.”
Eve clears her throat and tries to ignore the obvious metaphor.
She takes his hand in hers and says, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
James’ mouth doesn’t move but his face slides into something devastating, something very private. Eve almost has to look away. She doesn’t.
She also says, his hand still in hers, “I’m sorry for shooting you too.”
A corner of his mouth twitches up. He leaves before the service starts.
“Orphans make the best recruits,” M told James, before she died. Skyfall was their war zone and James had designed the attack with a morbid sort of satisfaction, watched the whole thing go up in flames and he didn’t need to look back.
The morning is grey and the sun is starting to rise. Eve’s hair is braided tight to her skull, wrapping around to the nape of her neck in a neat rope. James snores in his sleep. She is always halfway out of bed when he wakes up in the mornings.
He says, “You could do better than MI6, you know.”
He says, “Surely your mum worries.”
That was his idea of joking, she thinks. She doesn’t know him very well, after all. It’s a relief to the both of them. James is not meant to be known, not anymore. He is a wonder, a myth, a legend, and Eve no longer has nightmares about shooting him.
Eve has lived many lives before she knew Bond and she has no intention of telling him that. There are constants among all of them and this, her hand pressing his chest down into the bed, the silent shiver when she comes, is two of them.
The sun rises and she steals one of his shirts while he’s in the bathroom, slipping out the door the way that spies are trained to. Eve is only doing deskwork because she wants to, after all.
Remember: orphans make the best recruits.
There was a girl once, for Bond.
It says Vesper Lynd in his files, printed in bold black. There’s a stamp next to the name, deceased in old red ink, fading at the edges. The documents are years old.
Eve rubs at the word, her finger curving around the d while M is on a conference call. Her desk is kept neat, always, and the page sits perfectly in the middle of it. She catches herself humming some horrid pop song and sighs.
The file is pages thick but she doesn’t bother reading the rest of it.
Bond is in Africa. He is too old for Africa, too old for all of it really. Too old for her, even, in some circles.
Bond is in Ethiopia so Eve calls someone else that night to keep her company, a young violent thing with a swoop of black hair and green eyes. His name is unimportant.
Bond gets back two days later with a smattering of new scars spread across his back, so fresh he hisses when she traces the lines of them with her tongue.
What’s pleasure without pain James? she purrs against his skin and he grunts in return, his jaw clenched tight while he digs his fingers into the soft curve of her hip, his nails bruising purple and dark blue.
There was a boy for Eve once, too.
Eve’s dress is high-necked and backless.
James is in his tux.
This is not an assignment. They are both good at socializing with the right sorts of people when necessary.
“Fancy seeing you here, Moneypenny.”
Eve’s fingers wrap around her champagne flute. There’s a slit in her dress and when she turns to him, he catches a glance at the skin of her inner thigh. His martini is half-empty and there is no girl for him here. It’s a favor, really, his presence.
Her lips are painted red to match her dress and they curl up, slowly, her eyes rimmed in black kohl. She calls his conquests Bond girls in a fond sort of tone when they are in private. He thinks she rather looks the part tonight, though he has never thought of her as a conquest.
“Take a picture, James,” she tutts, draining the rest of her glass. He picks them up a second immediately. She orders a scotch from the bar instead.
“You look lovely.”
Eve looks at him in a way that suggests she’s aware of that.
“Thank you.”
There is a moment of silence between them. He raises an eyebrow. She rolls her eyes.
“You look halfway decent yourself, James.”
He straightens his bowtie and smirks. There are other people in the room, milling about in their black tie. Eve’s gaze darts around the banquet hall. She takes a step closer to him and flashes that patch of skin again. He purposely looks down and licks his lips.
“I mean, really,” she scolds, the scotch warming her insides, half of it settled at the bottom of her empty stomach already, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“Well then it’s a good thing you didn’t bring me, love.”
“Ah”, she concedes, one eyebrow arched, “I stand corrected.”
At the end of the night she leaves with her date, and he leaves alone.
Eve reaches into her nightstand and pulls out a cigarette. It is a Wednesday, early morning, her sheets warm from sex and Bond stretches like a cat next to her.
Her lighter is a cheap, plastic thing, printed with the Union Jack. It takes three tries to light her cigarette. The sheet drops to her waist and Bond presses a kiss to the spot where her neck smoothes into her shoulder.
“I don’t normally do this sort of thing with colleagues,” she rasps, blowing smoke towards the cracked window. It’s winter, but she has always needed to sleep in cold. Her nipples harden when the breeze blows in but James palms her breasts in his large calloused hands.
“Really?” he muses, genuinely surprised. There’s a bottle of vodka on the floor, half-empty and warm. The taste of it still coats the inside of her mouth and she grimaces.
“It seems I’ve made a habit of it.”
“I think that would be an understatement, double-oh,” she teases. James leans in to kiss her but she leans away.
“Do you always need the last word or is that just with me?” he asks, trying for charming, she thinks. It comes off as rather superior.
There’s work to be done. Eve slips into one of her old t-shirts.
“Going for a run,” she says. James watches her dress with his hands behind his head, his scarred and battered body on display.
She says, “Not coming?” and can’t decide what she wants his answer to be.
“The old ways are usually the best,” she told him when he put his life in her hands.
He probably thought she was flirting. She was, of course, she always does with him, but she was speaking from experience, too.
There was a time when she wore her hair long and straight and she wasn’t so professional. He would never think to ask her about her past. He is too afraid of his own, too haunted by it. He wears his fear and tiredness on his face these days. Eve is too smart for that.
She thinks that is why she finds herself in his bed, night after night, his scarred flesh pressed against hers while she clutches at his sheets. There are other reasons, of course, but there are other men, too. Fidelity’s a dirty word for the both of them.
Her hair is short and curly now and James tells her he rather likes it like that. Eve smiles into his pillowcase as he thrusts into her.
Her name is not really Eve. He will never know that.
“I was in love once,” Bond never tells her.
“I love you,” he never says either, but Eve never expected that.
You wouldn’t believe her, but she’s never wanted it either.
M’s funeral is horribly formal. Eve knows she would’ve hated it. But she is there nonetheless, a black veil pinned to her hair and a respectable dress cut at the knee. She sits in an empty pew in the middle of the church.
Bond’s suit is charcoal gray and he puts a hand on her knee nonchalantly.
He looks drunk. This is nothing new. She is surprised he came at all.
“Did you look this nice at my funeral?” he asks, the edges of the words slurred. There are rows of solemn people ahead of them and behind them but James’ hand slips to her inner thigh and creeps up.
She crinkles her nose and picks his hand up carefully, placing it back down on the dark hard wood of the pew.
“Have you no sense of decency, Bond?”
Her whisper is hoarse but it’s not from crying. There are still people filing in. The church is a grandiose thing, white marble gargoyles carved into the tops of pillars, stained glass windows of saints and the Virgin.
“I’ll take that as a no then,” he murmurs to himself and stares up at the statues.
Mallory sits far ahead of them with his wife. She’s blonde and thin, a waif of a woman. Eve was surprised by that but she’s not sure why. Her name is some sort of flower, Rose or Lily maybe.
Bond stares at the grotesque statues and points.
“Those are some pretty ugly angels, aren’t they? Hardly comforting.”
Eve clears her throat and tries to ignore the obvious metaphor.
She takes his hand in hers and says, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
James’ mouth doesn’t move but his face slides into something devastating, something very private. Eve almost has to look away. She doesn’t.
She also says, his hand still in hers, “I’m sorry for shooting you too.”
A corner of his mouth twitches up. He leaves before the service starts.
“Orphans make the best recruits,” M told James, before she died. Skyfall was their war zone and James had designed the attack with a morbid sort of satisfaction, watched the whole thing go up in flames and he didn’t need to look back.
The morning is grey and the sun is starting to rise. Eve’s hair is braided tight to her skull, wrapping around to the nape of her neck in a neat rope. James snores in his sleep. She is always halfway out of bed when he wakes up in the mornings.
He says, “You could do better than MI6, you know.”
He says, “Surely your mum worries.”
That was his idea of joking, she thinks. She doesn’t know him very well, after all. It’s a relief to the both of them. James is not meant to be known, not anymore. He is a wonder, a myth, a legend, and Eve no longer has nightmares about shooting him.
Eve has lived many lives before she knew Bond and she has no intention of telling him that. There are constants among all of them and this, her hand pressing his chest down into the bed, the silent shiver when she comes, is two of them.
The sun rises and she steals one of his shirts while he’s in the bathroom, slipping out the door the way that spies are trained to. Eve is only doing deskwork because she wants to, after all.
Remember: orphans make the best recruits.
There was a girl once, for Bond.
It says Vesper Lynd in his files, printed in bold black. There’s a stamp next to the name, deceased in old red ink, fading at the edges. The documents are years old.
Eve rubs at the word, her finger curving around the d while M is on a conference call. Her desk is kept neat, always, and the page sits perfectly in the middle of it. She catches herself humming some horrid pop song and sighs.
The file is pages thick but she doesn’t bother reading the rest of it.
Bond is in Africa. He is too old for Africa, too old for all of it really. Too old for her, even, in some circles.
Bond is in Ethiopia so Eve calls someone else that night to keep her company, a young violent thing with a swoop of black hair and green eyes. His name is unimportant.
Bond gets back two days later with a smattering of new scars spread across his back, so fresh he hisses when she traces the lines of them with her tongue.
What’s pleasure without pain James? she purrs against his skin and he grunts in return, his jaw clenched tight while he digs his fingers into the soft curve of her hip, his nails bruising purple and dark blue.
There was a boy for Eve once, too.
Eve’s dress is high-necked and backless.
James is in his tux.
This is not an assignment. They are both good at socializing with the right sorts of people when necessary.
“Fancy seeing you here, Moneypenny.”
Eve’s fingers wrap around her champagne flute. There’s a slit in her dress and when she turns to him, he catches a glance at the skin of her inner thigh. His martini is half-empty and there is no girl for him here. It’s a favor, really, his presence.
Her lips are painted red to match her dress and they curl up, slowly, her eyes rimmed in black kohl. She calls his conquests Bond girls in a fond sort of tone when they are in private. He thinks she rather looks the part tonight, though he has never thought of her as a conquest.
“Take a picture, James,” she tutts, draining the rest of her glass. He picks them up a second immediately. She orders a scotch from the bar instead.
“You look lovely.”
Eve looks at him in a way that suggests she’s aware of that.
“Thank you.”
There is a moment of silence between them. He raises an eyebrow. She rolls her eyes.
“You look halfway decent yourself, James.”
He straightens his bowtie and smirks. There are other people in the room, milling about in their black tie. Eve’s gaze darts around the banquet hall. She takes a step closer to him and flashes that patch of skin again. He purposely looks down and licks his lips.
“I mean, really,” she scolds, the scotch warming her insides, half of it settled at the bottom of her empty stomach already, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“Well then it’s a good thing you didn’t bring me, love.”
“Ah”, she concedes, one eyebrow arched, “I stand corrected.”
At the end of the night she leaves with her date, and he leaves alone.
Eve reaches into her nightstand and pulls out a cigarette. It is a Wednesday, early morning, her sheets warm from sex and Bond stretches like a cat next to her.
Her lighter is a cheap, plastic thing, printed with the Union Jack. It takes three tries to light her cigarette. The sheet drops to her waist and Bond presses a kiss to the spot where her neck smoothes into her shoulder.
“I don’t normally do this sort of thing with colleagues,” she rasps, blowing smoke towards the cracked window. It’s winter, but she has always needed to sleep in cold. Her nipples harden when the breeze blows in but James palms her breasts in his large calloused hands.
“Really?” he muses, genuinely surprised. There’s a bottle of vodka on the floor, half-empty and warm. The taste of it still coats the inside of her mouth and she grimaces.
“It seems I’ve made a habit of it.”
“I think that would be an understatement, double-oh,” she teases. James leans in to kiss her but she leans away.
“Do you always need the last word or is that just with me?” he asks, trying for charming, she thinks. It comes off as rather superior.
There’s work to be done. Eve slips into one of her old t-shirts.
“Going for a run,” she says. James watches her dress with his hands behind his head, his scarred and battered body on display.
She says, “Not coming?” and can’t decide what she wants his answer to be.
“The old ways are usually the best,” she told him when he put his life in her hands.
He probably thought she was flirting. She was, of course, she always does with him, but she was speaking from experience, too.
There was a time when she wore her hair long and straight and she wasn’t so professional. He would never think to ask her about her past. He is too afraid of his own, too haunted by it. He wears his fear and tiredness on his face these days. Eve is too smart for that.
She thinks that is why she finds herself in his bed, night after night, his scarred flesh pressed against hers while she clutches at his sheets. There are other reasons, of course, but there are other men, too. Fidelity’s a dirty word for the both of them.
Her hair is short and curly now and James tells her he rather likes it like that. Eve smiles into his pillowcase as he thrusts into her.
Her name is not really Eve. He will never know that.