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Pierre is going to be the death of Charles. He just knows it.
It’s the way that he drops the equipment on Charles' desk right before a mission, reminding him of how every single function as if Charles hasn’t been through weeks of preparation before this. It’s the way that he silently hands Charles a jacket when he’s shivering in the briefing room, as if a 00 agent who has literally been to Antarctica like Charles can’t handle a 24 degree temperature air conditioner.
It’s the way that he treats Charles with kindness more than anything else.
Kindness. Charles tastes the word on his tongue. The same tongue that has told lies like they were nothing, spinning conceivable stories out of silk from thin air.
Does Pierre know that Charles has the death of more than a hundred on his conscience?
Probably. He’s clever like that.
Still, it doesn’t stop him from bringing a blueberry yogurt to him every morning when Charles is caught up in yet another weapons testing session that requires him to stay overnight.
Kindness. The insurmountable force that is going to bring Pierre and Charles down one day.
-
MI6 is positively buzzing when Charles first steps into the office.
(Of course it's buzzing, Charles you idiot. It’s MI6.)
In literally every office, there was some political scandal unfolding while MI6 did damage control. Every second of every day, field agents sent out to risk their lives. God save the Queen, all that jazz.
Charles would know. He’s been through that.
People always do a double take when they find out that Pierre and Charles are childhood friends, all the way up until now. Friendships don’t last long when they’re in this line of business. Rumours of best friends trashing each other’s projects at the Academy to get into the coveted spot at the Weapons operation were rife. Not to mention, the list of pending 00 agents apparently filled an entire database by itself. What was kicking off one more competitor, even if it was your best friend?
The thought never occurred to Charles to do that to Pierre. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he could never fathom the thought of not having Pierre by his side. Pierre, the man who Q went straight to in the event of a potential hack. Pierre, the weapons and coding genius of MI6 but too kind to ever turn down a drink with Charles.
Sentimentality was a weakness for any 00 agent. You were supposed to be a chameleon, an entity of ever changing personas and personalities. One day you’re David, the receptionist at the Ritz. The next day, you’re Alexander, a bartender at the bar known for attracting Russian mobsters. In fact, Charles had once been a stripper (Pierre had given him hell for that one) and a therapist on the same day.
Emotional connection to anyone made them a target, your weak link.
The Swiss agents were particularly good at weeding out those links.
Charles digresses. He is in MI6 on a mission.
Or specifically, he is about to be briefed on one.
-
“It’s simple. Get in, get the drive, get out.” M states, his palms folded across his lap calmly. Under his steely brown gaze, Charles can’t help but adjust his position to look a little taller and bigger, which he hopes translates to looking more intimidating.
He heard it works for snakes. Or was it bears?
Charles can speak 6 languages fluently, but can’t seem to remember a defense mechanism of an animal.
Lewis’s gaze could cut marble, but there is a certain kindness to it.
Kindness, the constant that seems to be present even in an organisation like MI6, willing to sacrifice a bus of agents to save the greater good of England.
He doesn’t let the facade of kindness get to him though. Between Charles, Lewis, and his assistant Valterri, they’ve probably brought down more men than any other agent in MI6.
(Charles once heard that just to infiltrate a contact in the Mafia within Ferrari, Lewis got himself a Mercedes drive, learnt how to work the F1 car in a matter of weeks, and won the first race he participated in while taking down the contact in the same afternoon. Lord knows how he did it, but he supposes to be M requires some level of god-like talent.)
Again, Charles realises he’s dissociated from the meeting for a little too long. M is looking at him in practiced amusement, while Valterri just sighs.
“I think it’s a little more complicated than just getting in and out, sir.”
M studies him, eyes raking him up and down. For the second time this meeting, Charles squirms.
“You’re right, 007. That’s why we need you and Pierre down there. There is a bomb that needs to be diffused in the empty train carriage, below Westminster Abbey. Below the bomb, there should be a memory stick.”
Charles winced internally. Out of all his training, bomb diffusion was the one he hated the most. He might be able to take out 10 people with nothing but a ukulele at a Hawaiian bar, but he drew the absolute line at cutting coloured wires. One wrong move, and you wouldn’t even have time for your life to flash by your eyes.
Did M say Pierre was coming?
“Pierre is coming?”
Charles didn’t miss the way Valterri muttered something under his breath in Finnish.
Idiootti.
Idiot, in Finnish.
“Pierre will be coming, yes.”
Charles has to take a deep breath before being led out of the office by Valterri.
-
“You have everything you need, Pierre?” Charles watches as Pierre shoves the last of the bomb defusal equipment into his satchel, making sure to have his fake ID packed. Charles doesn’t miss the way that Pierre’s hands shake slightly as he zips his bag, but chooses not to say a word. Charles has a knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but Pierre’s nerves are already shot and Charles makes a conscious decision to not make a comment about it.
It’s Pierre’s first day in the field. In all their years at the agency, Pierre has been strongest behind a desk, armed with nothing but a bench of tools, a couple of test tubes, and the occasional computer and headset. He’s been Charles eyes back at HQ, never putting a foot wrong and always making sure Charles came home.
Being in the field itself was a completely different ball game.
In the field, Charles rids himself of all sentimentality. Off the job, he can afford a touch that lingers too long across Pierre’s shoulder. He can afford the luxury of looking into Pierre’s eyes as he tells another story of his incompetent colleague in the intelligence committee. But during a job? Charles is too busy trying to make sure he doesn’t get killed, all while making sure the 10 bullets in his gun somehow lasts long enough to finish off the 15 guerilla fighters coming towards him.
Pierre should have been seen as a distraction. But Charles feels none of that.
Just like how he cannot fathom a life without Pierre.
He tries to put himself in Pierre’s shoes now. On his way to diffuse a bomb, something he’s only ever done over the comms at HQ. Burdened with a task that literally carries the weight of England.
Charles has done so many jobs like this he forgets what it’s like to not have the responsibility of England breathing down his neck.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Pierre. You know that.” The promise spills out of nowhere over his tongue, but Charles knows that he’s never meant anything more.
Pierre looks at him. Charles notices his hands stop trembling once his gaze meets Charles, his face equally set in determination.
“I know.”
Charles is going to die in the hands of his best friend. If nothing, from the kindness that Pierre has shown him. Always.
-
It takes a while to find the train carriage. The abandoned Underground network of London is complex, but thanks to Pierre’s new navigation system they reach it 20 minutes before the bomb is set to blow.
“Do you always cut it this close?” Pierre pants beside him, ducking under Charles’s arm as he pulls the train carriage door open.
“Today is actually a good day.”
Pierre snorts, swinging his satchel on the floor, rolling his shoulders a little to relieve the ache that they have after walking for close to an hour. Beside him, Charles combs his way through the carriage, searching for any signs of a bomb.
He can’t find any. No tell-tale ticking of a timer, no live wires, nothing.
A sinking feeling sets in his stomach.
Have they found the wrong compartment?
He looks over at Pierre, who is looking at him expectantly.
Charles makes the split second decision in his head. This station splits into two other routes, there could easily be 2 more train carriages there with the bomb planted, waiting to blow up the entirety of Westminster Abbey and with it, 1000 years of British society and politics.
If they move now, they could make it with 7 minutes to spare.
He looks over at Pierre.
No.
He trusts Pierre.
He trusts Pierre, just as Pierre has trusted and shown him kindness all these years.
This is the right carriage. Charles just has to keep looking.
MI6 instincts kick in.
-
Over the course of the next 3 minutes, Charles has patted down every wall and panel in the carriage. He’s looked under every seat for a mysterious package, just as the standard protocol dictated. The virtual clock ticks in his head, the countdown almost visible in his head.
17 minutes left. Sweat has begun to gather at his forehead, trickling uncomfortably down the fitted suit MI6 has all their agents wear for the sake of tradition.
He can do this. He needs to do this.
Forget England. Forget MI6.
He promised he wouldn’t let anything happen to Pierre.
Charles deftly moves his hand across the seats, feeling the roughness of the fabric under his fingertips. The London Underground has never been known for its high quality of seating fabric per se, but-
Even there wouldn’t be a bulging bump on the seat closest to the window.
Charles rips the seat cover. Then the one next to it. Then, the one next to it.
Charles lets out a strangled gasp, but the exclamation catches in his throat, snagged like a fish bone.
“Charles? What’s wrong?” Pierre’s concern knocks him out of the temporary reverie that he’s set himself in.
“The bomb-” Charles struggles to deliver the words he so desperately needs to deliver. The thoughts
“Come on Charles, talk to me. You have to talk to me. What’s going on?” Pierre’s urgency shines through the cracks of Charles' anxiety.
Even in the most dire of situations, Charles can’t help but think of Pierre’s kindness when he says Charles can talk to him. With the way he’s getting distracted by the way Pierre’s sweaty hair falls over his forehead now, Charles might be the worst MI6 agent in history.
Still, if he doesn’t open his damn mouth they’re both going to die, so he does.
“The bomb is this entire carriage. It’s wired under each and every one of the seats.if we don’t diffuse this, the entire carriage will blow, creating a firestorm that goes through the tunnel and up into Westminster Abbey.”
Pierre swears something colourful in French. It’s the wrong time for Charles to be turned on, but he is. God help him.
There has to be a main wire, a box somewhere that contains the main switch. I just need to find it.” Pierre sets to work, his brows fixated and eyes glancing about wildly. He feels the panels just as Charles did, but his fingers flit over the edges of each like he’s looking for a kink in the panelling.
He does. It’s right below the display of stations. Deftly, he removes the panel to reveal a multitude of wires.
Pierre shoots Charles a look.
Charles lifts his hands up in apologies. Finding the bomb was supposed to be his job.
Then again, Pierre is clever like that.
6 minutes left on the clock. To diffuse a bomb, they need at least 10.
Pierre gets to work, his fingers tangling and untangling the wires, muttering something under his breath as he works.
Charles notices that his fingers do not tremble.
Pierre is kind. But more than he is kind, he is strong.
-
Every so often, Pierre gives an instruction.
“Clip this wire.”
“Hold the green wire down. Make sure it doesn’t touch the blue wire.”
4 minutes left on the clock. Charles, as reluctant as he is to give Pierre even more pressure, reminds him of that.
Pierre doesn’t respond. He just continues to work. Sweat has already formed and trickled down his brow, dripping in a small pool in front of him.
Charles resists the urge to wipe it away.
In the tension that fills the room, Charles can’t help but wonder.
When he signed up for the Academy alongside Pierre, he knew what he was getting himself into. He knew from the moment that he signed the contract that death on the job was a risk -- a way of life. Going in, with no guarantee of going out. They were the best of the best, but sometimes things went wrong. A rogue assassin launching an ambush (case in point: the Monaco coup). An undetected lethal injection dose of morphine into an agent’s body.
Just like that. Wiped off records, memories, pictures.
Charles wonders what it would be like if Pierre died. For Pierre to only live in the tendrils of his brain and the secret MI6 archives that only M had access to.
Charles cannot fathom a life without Pierre.
They were meant to be together. Charles and Pierre. Pierre and Charles.
Now was hardly the moment, but all Charles can do is imagine a life where they wake up next to each other in the morning, bodies sore but not from the nature of their job.
He should have known it from the moment Pierre took a hit for him at the Academy, when Charles the absolute dunce mocked the boy in their class who went to the gym 5 times a week to powerlift. The brute had raised his fist to swing, and Pierre had pushed him out of the way to take the hit himself.
Stupid, selfless, kind Pierre who was even more scrawny that Charles but had a heart bigger than life itself.
Charles and Pierre had sat under the willow tree outside the chemistry labs, Charles holding an ice pack to Pierre’s nose.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” Pierre’s voice is muffled under the cloth of the ice bag, but there’s a smile etched below it.
Charles could have kissed him there and then. Charles should have kissed him there and then.
Now, it was almost certain they would be blown to bits along with the rest of London.
2 minutes left. He reminds Pierre of this in a voice that he struggles to keep steady.
Forget England.
For Pierre, he will be strong.
Because, Charles loves Pierre.
-
The flashbacks don’t stop coming now that both of them are on the brink of death. His brain, it seems, has the most unfortunate timing.
Pierre and Charles singing at open bar karaoke to celebrate their acceptance into the Academy.
(Charles promised he would never be caught dead singing Dancing Queen again, and if they made it out he would hunt the footage down and delete every single copy of it before it hit the MI6 department email thread.)
Pierre and Charles playing volleyball on the beach, as the sun set in the background.
(As it turns out, Pierre has excellent hand-eye coordination. Charles lost the first set 12-0. And the set after that. And the set after that. By the end of it, Pierre’s hair is matted with sweat and in the orange hue of the sky Charles thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful.)
Charles accompanying Pierre on his first ever skydive.
(Charles might be a 00 agent with nerves of absolute steel when it comes to pressing the trigger but he swears he’s never felt more nervous for Pierre. Is this how Pierre feels every time he watches Charles in the field? Dear god, his heart is stronger than Charles gives him credit for.)
Charles glances at Pierre, who has reached the last section of the bomb disassembling. He holds up the orange wire, prepared to cut it and diffuse the bomb once and for all.
Charles can’t believe it.
10 minutes for the top bob defusal team to defuse a bomb. Pierre has done it in 5.
Then again, Pierre is capable like that.
“Both of you, step away from the box or I’ll shoot your brains out.”
-
Charles wants to kick himself. No, scratch that. He wants to throw himself off a cliff.
He was supposed to watch the doors. He was supposed to be at the ready for any rogue assassins or interference.
Instead of doing the one job he had, he couldn’t stop thinking of the one person he was supposed to protect. Charles is more than aware of the irony in this situation. If there’s a trophy for the Worst Double 00 Agent in MI6 history, he’s pretty sure he has that in the bag. But first, the intruder.
Charles runs an estimate through his head. The man stands at 6’5 -- no, 6’3. His hand is steady, probably from the constant use of a weapon in his hand. His stance suggests he’s been in the military, but the awkward position of his foot implies he’s been discharged due to some kind of injury. Charles could shoot there and immobilise him for sure, but he isn’t sure if the man will react fast enough to shoot Pierre.
Pierre. Oh lord, Pierre.
Charles glances at Pierre beside him quick enough to register the look in his eyes.
Pierre is kind. He is strong. He is capable.
He understands what needs to be done.
Charles speaks first, addressing the man.
“Lower your weapon. Now. Or we all die.”
“You think I care about whether I die? I don’t give a shit about them, or you. I care about the meeting they’re having in Parliament right now. Those governors, those bastards. They killed my son. Sent him to Iraq. Justice, is what must be served.”
“You’re crazy.”
The man lets out a bark of laughter. “I am but a man.”
Charles steals another glance at Pierre. The last one he permits lest something goes horribly wrong.
Then, the shooting begins.
-
Charles remembers him and Pierre sitting in a meadow. There are daisies around him, but he never got their appeal. Small, white, frail flowers blowing against the wind. Surely, there are better uses of space.
Pierre is humming the tune of a familiar song and reading a book about coding. Charles is lying on his lap, aimlessly playing with the grass on the side of the mat.
All is right with the world.
-
When Charles next comes to, he is lying in Pierre’s lap. His vision feels hazy, and he recognises the vague feeling of pressure on his stomach.
He’s been shot, he's pretty sure. The feeling is surprisingly dull. But then again, he can feel himself fading in and out of consciousness so pain is relative.
“Come on, stay with me Charles. Don’t do this to me, come on Charles.” Pierre’s voice is cracking, and the pressure on his stomach increases. “Backup, I need backup! We have a man down.”
Charles registers the faint crackling of the reply over Pierre’s earpiece, but he wouldn’t know. Pierre feels far away. Charles feels tired, and can't help but wonder how easy it would be to close his eyes and take a quick nap, one he might never wake up from.
He’s going to die in his best friend’s arms. He plays along because he’s memorised this sequence of events long ago. It feels right, it feels fitting. To die in the arms of the only person who has ever made him feel more alive than life itself.
“You’re an idiot. You took that bullet for me, why?” Pierre’s voice is unmistakably cracking now, his tears falling hot and fast on Charles’s face that has been stained with blood. Whether it was his or the man’s, he wasn’t too sure.
Charles coughs up a little blood that's been gathering in his throat. it goes on Pierre's hand, and Charles want to wipe it away but can barely lift his arm.
He has a million things to say.
Because you are kind.
Because you are strong.
Because you are the most capable man I have ever met.
Because I cannot fathom a life without you.
Instead, he says what he means to say all along, all those years ago when Pierre took the hit for him.
“I love you, Pierre.”
The medics arrive after Charles has blacked out, his blood still warm in Pierre’s palms.
-
Pierre and Charles are sitting outside the MI6 HQ in London.
Well, Charles is sitting in a wheelchair. Pierre is seated on the bench beside him.
Pierre has his hand in Charles, never letting it leave even when he wants to turn the page, content to just watch the people go by instead. Charles has his hand in Pierre’s, never wanting to let it go anyway.
All is right with the world.