Title: "Easy"
Author: Hecate
Fandom: James Bond - Goldeneye
Rating: PG 13
Pairing, Character: Alec/James
Summary: In the beginning it was easy: Alec loved James, and James didn't love Alec.
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made.
Note: Thanks to autiotalo for the beta. Written for vongroovy in the Yuletide 2004 challenge

In the beginning it was easy: Alec loved James, and James didn't love Alec.

He fought with Alec on his side and he fucked Alec, but he didn't love him. James never loved what he could get, what he could control. And he could control Alec easily. In every moment and in every sense.

On their missions he was the leader, even though most of the time it was Alec who led them into the mission, who found the secret door, who killed the first man, who cheated his way into the trust of those they hunted. It was James who controlled their banter, who started it and who ended it. James was the dominant one when they left clothes and weapons behind: the one who touched first, who only allowed touches and never allowed kisses. It was James who only came after Alec did, and he came with the smallest sound, a sound Alec never heard and James never wanted him to hear. Alec was an agent, a killer, but he wasn't all that then. But James...James always was.

The only difference between Alec and all the others was that Alec didn't bore him despite the fact that he could control him. And then somehow Alec became his friend instead of leaving him behind in anger, or being left behind because James wanted to play with something new.

James thought he knew Alec because he controlled him, and he thought that things would always be like that. But then this mission happened and suddenly Alec didn't answer anymore. Their banter ended before it should, habits and control systems messed up in a second and then...then there was a shot, and Alec was dead.

In the middle it was easy: Alec was gone and James wanted revenge.

He dreamt of Alec's last words at night. Every agent has a ghost and Alec was his: his lazy smile, his movements and the sounds he had made when James pushed into him. But his ghost was just a phantom compared to what the other agents carried around: their burden was made of blood, bullets and ashes, and it seemed that they were ready to break under so much weight at any moment. But James controlled even his ghost: the sharp taste of martini and the soft feeling of skin gave him the ropes and the power to do so.

His ghost. The one people didn't talk about because they were afraid that one day James would lose it - because, really, no agent could be so cold forever; no human being could just go on and on, and if it wasn't another one of his suicide missions that would break him then one day surely it would be Alec's death. Because Alec was dead and it might have been his fault; and one day James would finally see this.

James smiled about these whispered fears and rumours because he was a secret agent and not a character in an American action movie. There wouldn't be a dramatic breakdown with tears and violins in the background. There would be his job until he died on a mission or until he was too old - and the latter was something James never really thought about, because alcohol and skin kept this away as well.

But then his ghost became solid and wasn't his ghost after all, and that changed some things and other things stayed the same. It - he - was something new, something that James had never considered before.

In the end it was easy: Alec was gone, replaced by Janus; and James knew he had to kill him, and he felt like he wanted to kill him.

Janus, who spoke like Alec and looked like Alec, who knew their banter and who knew James, but who wasn't Alec, who couldn't be Alec. Because Janus was...different. Hard, like Alec and James, but his bitterness was on the surface. It wasn't hidden by a quick smile, a quick drink or a quick night with a random woman. Or a random man, for that matter.

Janus attacked James with words, something that Alec had never done and James never thought that he could do. He attacked him with punches and kicks, but that reminded James of Alec again: it reminded him of their training, the way Alec moved back then, the way he fought so much like James himself.

James could calculate Janus but he couldn't control him, couldn't steer him in the direction he chose. He knew what his enemy would do, but he couldn't make him do otherwise. He could only react, only counteract; until they fought for the last time and Janus fell and James reached out because, for a second, he looked like Alec.

But then he didn't anymore: and Janus spoke with Alec's voice again and he just couldn't take it because he wanted Alec back, he wanted it to be the way it used to be.

And so he let go, because the only way to retrieve the past was to get rid of the present.

And so Janus died.

But Alec...Alec was in the rest of this disaster, too, and James couldn't forget Janus without forgetting Alec; and he didn't want to forget Alec: his voice, his smile, the edges curved into his face by their work and by his past. In his head, Alec was no longer the man he once knew, but he wasn't Janus, either. He was more and he was less; he was new shades of grey, shades that James had never seen before in a person. He had never wanted to see these shades before, could never allow himself to see them; because then he feared that his work and his missions would turn into the living nightmares suffered by so many others.

The Alec he lived with now, the ghost that travelled within him, changed and rearranged things. It was beyond James' grasp and control. It chased Natalya away and it invaded James' dreams, a space that had been empty before. But now he dreamt of Alec at night and he woke with a scream, covered with heat and wetness on both his face and belly. That was when James Bond lost control.

In the end it was easy. Alec was dead and James loved Alec