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Alec started smoking when he was nineteen, at Cambridge. When James found out he told Alec, rather pompously, "It's a filthy habit. Besides, good agents can't afford addictions."
Alec rolled his eyes and said,"You're still on about that spy business, are you?"
James caught him and pushed him up against a wall.
Alec yelped. "Jesus, James! What the bloody hell are you doing?"
"Checking you for cigarettes," James said, batting Alec's hands away as he efficiently searched him.
Too stunned to escape, Alec let him. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, staying annoyed when what he most wanted to do was lean into James's hands and tell him not to stop.
Years later, tired and angry, he had found James halfway through a bottle of vodka, so drunk he couldn't see straight, and he had snapped Besides, good agents can't afford addictions.
Bond had just looked at him wearily, barely seeing him, and said quietly, "Sometimes addiction is all that keeps them good."
Alec had lain awake that night, and other nights throughout his life, thinking. He never did find an adequate reply.
Shortly before finishing university, Alec received a quiet offer from MI-6, and accepted. It was, after all, what he had always dreamed off. Or what James had dreamed of, which amounted to the same thing, for hadn't James said once at the orphanage that they should always stick together? And hadn't he kept his promise? Hadn't they gone to Cambridge together? Yes. It was merely another inevitable step in James's plan. Everything always worked out the way James wanted.
That night James crept into his room and woke him. "Did you accept?" he whispered, flashing Alec a grin that nearly broke his heart. "I told them you'd be capital!"
Alec nodded, and wondered bitterly if they would have asked without James. Everything always came so easily to James, everything Alec had to work so hard for. Sometimes he thought he hated James as much as he loved him.
"Come on," James hissed, and caught at Alec's hand, dragging him up. "You weren't planning on just sleeping, were you?" He shot Alec a look of deep disbelief. "We've got to celebrate!"
"Right," Alec said flatly, pulling on his clothes again. "We do."
The light was on in the window of Alec's flat when he returned from MI-6 one evening on a cold January, and adrenalin instantly sang through his veins. He put his hand under his coat to his gun as he quietly unlocked the door and slipped inside, then whipped around with his gun pointed at the man sitting on his couch.
James had his gun out also, pointed at Alec. His hand trembled only infinitesimally, which was rather impressive given the bottle of vodka on the table next to him.
Alec clicked the safety on his gun and laid it on a side table. "Bloody hell, James," he said, his hands shaking as he removed his jacket and hung it on the coatrack. "What are you doing in my flat?"
James shrugged and made his gun disappear again. "Sorry," he said. "Have a drink?"
Alec dropped onto the other side on the couch and held out his hand. "Might as well. You'll drive me to alcoholism at this rate. Couldn't you have called?"
James shrugged again. "Didn't occur to me." Alec had years of practice understanding James when he was drunk, but even he had to work a bit. It was a surprise James was still awake, really.
"Thanks," Alec muttered, then downed his shot of vodka.
James was talking, half to himself, as he poured his next shot: "...some missions, you know, that kind. Didn't want to be alone tonight."
Alec's irritation vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. He knew that kind of mission, the kind where you didn't want to sleep alone but didn't have the energy to find a girl and probably wouldn't be much good to one anyway. He usually spent those nights sleepless on his couch with a bottle of alcohol; he wasn't sure what James did when he wasn't breaking into Alec's flat.
James was grabbing his arm hard enough to bruise, and his wides were wide and blue as he slurred, "Don't want to be alone tonight, Alec."
"Right," Alec said around the lump in his throat. He wanted desperately to put his arm around James's shoulder, wanted even more desperately for James to mean something just a bit different. Instead he reached up and patted James's hand awkwardly.
James smiled faintly, without humor. "Good," he said. Downed another shot. "Sleep now."
Alec brushed his teeth and stripped down to his undershirt and pants. When he returned to the bed room he found James curled tensely on one side of the bed, his eyes open.
He felt like a virgin on her wedding night, or at least how he imagined one would feel. Fucking ridiculous, really, especially since James probably wouldn't remember a thing in the morning (How to explain the bed he wakes in, then? a small voice in Alec's brain said. This was probably a very bad idea).
"I'm not some pansy, see?" James said quietly as Alec climbed into bed and pulled the covers up. "Don't worry. Just don't want to sleep alone tonight."
"Yeah," Alec said. No worries. Right.
Looking at James curled in on himself on the far side of the bed, he wanted very much to move over next to him and rub the tension from his back.
Instead he slowly drifted off to sleep.
Alec woke with James's hand resting lightly on his chest and James's head resting on his shoulder. Nothing new as far as fantasies went, but the reality was a bit different. He could smell the remnants of James's cologne, and the faint scent of cigarette smoke that always clung to him (because James was a fucking hypocrite, Alec thought, though the memory of James forcing him to stop smoking came without anger now, only the bittersweet question of what might have been), and the very faint acrid scent of sweat.
He wasn't sure he wanted to know what had upset James so much; usually James was nothing but cold and professional about his job.
He slipped away carefully, so as not to wake James, and out to the kitchen to make coffee. When he returned with coffee and aspirin, James was groaning under the pillows.
"Morning, James," Alec said, keeping his voice quiet.
James peered out from behind the pillow clutched in front of him. "Alec? 'Stoobright."
Alec glanced over at the drawn blinds. "Not much I can do about that, James." He handed James a glass of water and a few aspirin. "Here."
Later, Alec fixed himself breakfast as James huddled in a kitchen chair, silent and unmoving. Finally, when Alec sat down with his toast, James said simply,"There were children."
Alec bowed his head for a moment, understanding. It was the situation every agent dreaded. He hesitantly reached out and patted Bond's shoulder awkwardly, suddently hating himself for his thoughts the night before. Now was not the time.
It was never the time.
Alec was sorry that he could not see James's face when Ourumov 'shot' him, but Ourumov told him later that James's face was cold and empty. Nothing but the mission for James. Alec chose to believe him; it made his work easier.
When Alec said You were supposed to die for me, he meant I loved you, you bastard, and Why did you do it? He also meant I would have died for you.
James had never understood how a simple sentence could have half a dozen meanings.