Fic post: And Dip Into When We Need
Feb. 22nd, 2020 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enemyofperfectThis year's Chocolate Box assignment was very exciting for me, because the fandom I matched on was an adorable four minute long music video about a James Bond-like spy and his nemesis. And I'd never written for a canon so tiny before, or one without dialogue or even names for the main characters!
In some ways, it was very freeing, because the canon was incredibly easy to review as many times as I needed to (and somehow I never did get tired of it); in other ways, it was a fascinating challenge, because I needed to fill in whole areas of the story space that most other canons would have provided for me, making it almost like a midway point between the kind of fanfic I'm used to and original fiction. It was both nerve-wracking and incredibly fun to work on!
Plus, I had the supreme pleasure of joining the fandom trend of incorporating the song's lyrics into story titles, bit by bit.
Title: And Dip Into When We Need
Fandom: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (music video)
Pairing: Gold Nose Villain/Secret Agent
Rating: Teen
Contains: Action, combat, heists, sinister plots, accidental telepathy, angst, enemies to lovers, and a happy ending.
Word count: 2103
Summary: It was all in a day's work, really -- until it wasn't.
It was all in a day's work, really. The fight in the lobby, the sniper in the stairwell, the race to rewire the elevator followed immediately by assassins dropping in through the ceiling as it ascended to the roof. And through all of it the awareness of the ticking clock, the terrible new invention the villain of the hour planned to unleash on the sleeping city -- and surely would, if Jack could not get to him in time.
"Jack Fetter," sneered the last of the assassins, managing a show of defiance even while dangling from Jack's grip. "You might be a legend now, but soon Chrysos will outshine you, and your masters, and even your petty little country."
"Chrysos," Jack said thoughtfully. "Thank you -- I'd forgotten his name. Terribly ill-mannered of me." Then he neatly knocked the assassin out and straightened his cuffs in the moment it took the elevator to glide to a halt.
At the height of three hundred metres, the wind was quite appalling, even baffled by the hedges Jack knew to be planted around the edges of the roof. He couldn't see them, or anything else really -- just a little wash of brightness spilling out into the night from between the elevator doors as they opened.
Jack moved quickly to lose himself in the shadows -- and at once found himself grappling with a form he knew immediately to be that of his adversary, this Chrysos fellow who had burst so abruptly onto the scene.
He was shorter than Jack, but wiry and well-built, not one of those masterminds who spent all day in a lab and let everything atrophy but their minds. He had some truly filthy tricks, too, and for a moment Jack was pinned flat on his back between the other man's muscular thighs, before he managed a sharp jab to his face that threw him off again.
It left Jack's hand stinging terribly, too -- was that a helmet, a mask? He'd have to be more careful with his aim in the future.
But soon they were grappling again, rolling over and over through doubtless well-groomed beds of foliage that filled the air with a melange of floral scents. And then all at once they fetched up against something metallic and humming, a pedestal or platform of some kind. Jack's opponent tensed suddenly, all too aware of the significance of whatever they'd hit, and Jack felt his mouth stretch in a fierce grin -- whatever it was, Chrysos didn't want it hurt.
Seizing on the advantage, Jack surged to his feet and made to pin Chrysos to the thing. If he could just keep the man still for long enough to restrain him, he'd soon have the situation in hand--
But of course the machine's own creator knew it best, and in another instant, a wash of searing light forced Jack's eyes shut, even as he tried to maintain his grip on Chrysos. A blare of sound started up at the same time -- was that music? It was -- something lively and crooning. And when Jack forced his smeary eyes open, a fountain was sending up great streamers of foamy water -- the entire roof garden coming to life as if for a grand party. The control panel he'd been so pleased to use against Chrysos was for nothing more than the entertainments at the top of the tower.
Or rather -- it was for all of that, but was there also something more? A large unlabelled button covered by a clear shield, and the grasping hand of Jack's enemy scrabbling closer...
They kicked and thrashed with redoubled energy, but neither could gain advantage over the other, and if Jack could not wrestle Chrysos away from the control panel, then neither could Chrysos protect it. Battered and cracked, it began to emit a sharp electrical hiss, and for a single moment, the two men were united in their urgent desire to get as far away from it as possible.
Their eyes met in the moment before it exploded.
Jack returned to himself only gradually and by stages. The music was gone. Or was that just his hearing? The lights were knocked all askew, casting strange elongated shadows, but there, a stone's throw away, was the man he had been fighting -- Chrysos, the evil genius whose plan he had, he hoped, stopped.
It was strange to see him full-length, and not only in kaleidoscope flashes while they fought. There was a splash of gold at the centre of his face, as if King Midas, in some alchemical experiment, had received one painful taste of the gift he had sought and managed to halt it then and there. His eyes were as piercing as any ruler or general's, and Jack felt himself shiver beneath their gaze.
At the same time that Jack took his rival in, he experienced a strange double vision, an odd echo overlapping his own inner voice.
Such a striking figure, particularly with his clothes torn that way. The height -- the hair -- he must find seduction as easy as violence. No wonder he discovered my plan so soon. Next time I'll be prepared...
And then the similarly doubled sense of a realisation hitting with enormous force, like lighting striking twice in the same place.
Jack knew what Chrysos was thinking. And so he knew that Chrysos knew what he was thinking, too.
United for the second time by the strength of their dismay, the two men fled.
♥
"I'm compromised," Jack said into his phone.
Somewhere else, Chrysos fumbled at a number pad, tapping in a sequence without looking at what he was doing. Struggling to keep his secrets, even as Jack was struggling to keep his. The connection seemed somewhat limited to their immediate surroundings, their immediate thoughts, and even then they could dim it -- to an extent.
Less than an hour had passed, and already Jack felt he knew Chrysos better than he knew any other living person. His car -- a surprisingly sensible sedan with a booster seat in the back. His children -- a girl and a boy, the first faces his mind turned to in a moment of fear, and two lives he would give anything to protect. The exact taste fear took for him -- the scorched edges of it, the desperation burning down to sheer determination.
Jack had the terrible conviction that if anything threatened that little corner of peace that Chrysos had made for himself and his children, the world would burn.
"We'll pick you up at the designated location," Jack's handler was saying.
"No. No, I can't come in. I'm more of a risk to you there than I am out here." There was no protocol for this, no neatly codenamed eventuality. "I'm -- I'm transmitting, do you understand?"
There was a pause. Somewhere -- past a door whose security code Jack had never learnt, but could have tapped out from muscle memory -- Chrysos was pressing his hands so hard to his face that the prosthesis cut like a dull knife.
"We'll have a lead-lined room ready for you, then," Jack's handler said. "As well as Faraday cage, a private flight to the other end of the planet, and a healthy dose of sedatives to tide you over. Come in, Jack."
"I can't," Jack said, helpless. In a cold grey bunker half a city away, Chrysos was tense and waiting. Plotting, yes, because he wasn't a man who would give up simply because all his secrets were slipping through his fingers like so much sand. But also -- listening.
"And why can't you?" Jack's handler asked, her voice as calm as if they were troubleshooting another one of their clever little gadgets.
Because, Jack thought helplessly, you don't want to fix this, not until you've stopped him for good -- and I can't sit by and feel you do that.
At the heart of his hidden lair, Chrysos sat rigid as if he'd been electrified.
"I'll fix this," Jack said. "I'll find a way -- on my own -- to fix this. I'll talk to you when I have."
"Jack, wait--"
He crushed the phone beneath his heel before hearing any more. He had a mission to plan.
Just as soon as he figured out how to keep a certain villain out of his head.
♥
It was impossible.
They could, with effort and practice, conceal certain details of their plans from each other, but never the thrill of anticipation that went with a scheme nearing its fulfilment. Whether Jack meant to steal information from Chrysos or Chrysos to capture Jack, there was always that flicker of warning, just enough to shore up their defences or secure their escape. Stalemate.
They thought about forming a truce for long enough to work together to break whatever bond had formed between them. They might even have tried it, if they hadn't each thought of killing the other almost as often. The danger did lend a certain frisson of excitement to their game, but it didn't do much for trust.
In the end, what broke them apart was nothing more or less than time. Evidently, human physiology could only sustain a telepathic link for so long without reinforcement.
Regular physical contact might have done it, the scientists told Jack eventually, after he'd turned himself in and endured more tests and scans than bore thinking about. It was a lucky thing that he hadn't gotten himself captured, or his mind might never have been his own again.
"Jack," his handler said, "are you quite sure it isn't time to retire?"
He cleared every evaluation they put him through. He went back into the field.
Two weeks later, he walked straight to a door he'd never before seen, and entered old codes one after another until the guards came and brought him in.
♥
For their first mission together -- or their first heist, as Chrys kept insisting -- they had decided to steal back a painting a rival had stolen from Chrys during their honeymoon.
("From us," Chrys had said, furious. "It's the worst sort of disrespect to think you've made me soft -- you, who thwarted my plans a dozen times before I captured you at last!"
"No more than ten or eleven, surely," Jack had murmured in response, lifting Chrys's fist from where it had fallen heavily on the table and pressing a kiss to the pale knuckles, holding his eyes all the while. The question of who had captured whom was an old debate by then, hardly needing to be expressed in words. They had grown distracted shortly thereafter.)
But now they were at work, with Chrys practising his arts on the security system while Jack infiltrated the party that had transformed their target's home into a maze of gilded opulence and guests partaking of every sort of pleasure. It wasn't difficult to slip in on the tails of a large party -- not for someone who knew where the cameras and guards were placed, and Chrys had briefed Jack very thoroughly -- so Jack was soon in position, at a card table with a fairly good hand and a better martini, simply biding his time until he received the signal to precipitate a distraction and make his move.
As careful as he was to keep his demeanour languid, Jack could hardly wait. It would be the first time his triumph in the field belonged to Chrys as well, and he knew their shared celebration would be heady indeed.
"That song," said the woman in the exquisite headscarf who sat to his left, drawing his attention from his thoughts. "The sprightly thing you keep humming -- it's lovely. Won't you tell me what it's called?"
"I--" Haven't been humming anything, he would have said, but his fingers were curled mid-tap over his cards, and he realised abruptly that he had been. Jack summoned his most charmingly apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I couldn't tell you, ma'am. I must have picked it up somewhere."
Under cover of looking about for a waiter to refresh his drink, Jack reached out in that indefinable way to find Chrys deftly rerouting wires and, yes, singing softly under his breath.
Jack caught his attention with a warm brush of thought and offered the memory of the exchange he had just had. I won't blend in so well if you give me that earworm every time we're on a mission, you know.
On a heist, Chrys thought back instinctively, but Jack could feel the pleasure glowing behind the correction, just as he could feel the hot pride underlying Chrys's pretence of innocence when he added, Anyway, I don't see how you can blame me -- it's our song.
In some ways, it was very freeing, because the canon was incredibly easy to review as many times as I needed to (and somehow I never did get tired of it); in other ways, it was a fascinating challenge, because I needed to fill in whole areas of the story space that most other canons would have provided for me, making it almost like a midway point between the kind of fanfic I'm used to and original fiction. It was both nerve-wracking and incredibly fun to work on!
Plus, I had the supreme pleasure of joining the fandom trend of incorporating the song's lyrics into story titles, bit by bit.
Title: And Dip Into When We Need
Fandom: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (music video)
Pairing: Gold Nose Villain/Secret Agent
Rating: Teen
Contains: Action, combat, heists, sinister plots, accidental telepathy, angst, enemies to lovers, and a happy ending.
Word count: 2103
Summary: It was all in a day's work, really -- until it wasn't.
It was all in a day's work, really. The fight in the lobby, the sniper in the stairwell, the race to rewire the elevator followed immediately by assassins dropping in through the ceiling as it ascended to the roof. And through all of it the awareness of the ticking clock, the terrible new invention the villain of the hour planned to unleash on the sleeping city -- and surely would, if Jack could not get to him in time.
"Jack Fetter," sneered the last of the assassins, managing a show of defiance even while dangling from Jack's grip. "You might be a legend now, but soon Chrysos will outshine you, and your masters, and even your petty little country."
"Chrysos," Jack said thoughtfully. "Thank you -- I'd forgotten his name. Terribly ill-mannered of me." Then he neatly knocked the assassin out and straightened his cuffs in the moment it took the elevator to glide to a halt.
At the height of three hundred metres, the wind was quite appalling, even baffled by the hedges Jack knew to be planted around the edges of the roof. He couldn't see them, or anything else really -- just a little wash of brightness spilling out into the night from between the elevator doors as they opened.
Jack moved quickly to lose himself in the shadows -- and at once found himself grappling with a form he knew immediately to be that of his adversary, this Chrysos fellow who had burst so abruptly onto the scene.
He was shorter than Jack, but wiry and well-built, not one of those masterminds who spent all day in a lab and let everything atrophy but their minds. He had some truly filthy tricks, too, and for a moment Jack was pinned flat on his back between the other man's muscular thighs, before he managed a sharp jab to his face that threw him off again.
It left Jack's hand stinging terribly, too -- was that a helmet, a mask? He'd have to be more careful with his aim in the future.
But soon they were grappling again, rolling over and over through doubtless well-groomed beds of foliage that filled the air with a melange of floral scents. And then all at once they fetched up against something metallic and humming, a pedestal or platform of some kind. Jack's opponent tensed suddenly, all too aware of the significance of whatever they'd hit, and Jack felt his mouth stretch in a fierce grin -- whatever it was, Chrysos didn't want it hurt.
Seizing on the advantage, Jack surged to his feet and made to pin Chrysos to the thing. If he could just keep the man still for long enough to restrain him, he'd soon have the situation in hand--
But of course the machine's own creator knew it best, and in another instant, a wash of searing light forced Jack's eyes shut, even as he tried to maintain his grip on Chrysos. A blare of sound started up at the same time -- was that music? It was -- something lively and crooning. And when Jack forced his smeary eyes open, a fountain was sending up great streamers of foamy water -- the entire roof garden coming to life as if for a grand party. The control panel he'd been so pleased to use against Chrysos was for nothing more than the entertainments at the top of the tower.
Or rather -- it was for all of that, but was there also something more? A large unlabelled button covered by a clear shield, and the grasping hand of Jack's enemy scrabbling closer...
They kicked and thrashed with redoubled energy, but neither could gain advantage over the other, and if Jack could not wrestle Chrysos away from the control panel, then neither could Chrysos protect it. Battered and cracked, it began to emit a sharp electrical hiss, and for a single moment, the two men were united in their urgent desire to get as far away from it as possible.
Their eyes met in the moment before it exploded.
Jack returned to himself only gradually and by stages. The music was gone. Or was that just his hearing? The lights were knocked all askew, casting strange elongated shadows, but there, a stone's throw away, was the man he had been fighting -- Chrysos, the evil genius whose plan he had, he hoped, stopped.
It was strange to see him full-length, and not only in kaleidoscope flashes while they fought. There was a splash of gold at the centre of his face, as if King Midas, in some alchemical experiment, had received one painful taste of the gift he had sought and managed to halt it then and there. His eyes were as piercing as any ruler or general's, and Jack felt himself shiver beneath their gaze.
At the same time that Jack took his rival in, he experienced a strange double vision, an odd echo overlapping his own inner voice.
Such a striking figure, particularly with his clothes torn that way. The height -- the hair -- he must find seduction as easy as violence. No wonder he discovered my plan so soon. Next time I'll be prepared...
And then the similarly doubled sense of a realisation hitting with enormous force, like lighting striking twice in the same place.
Jack knew what Chrysos was thinking. And so he knew that Chrysos knew what he was thinking, too.
United for the second time by the strength of their dismay, the two men fled.
"I'm compromised," Jack said into his phone.
Somewhere else, Chrysos fumbled at a number pad, tapping in a sequence without looking at what he was doing. Struggling to keep his secrets, even as Jack was struggling to keep his. The connection seemed somewhat limited to their immediate surroundings, their immediate thoughts, and even then they could dim it -- to an extent.
Less than an hour had passed, and already Jack felt he knew Chrysos better than he knew any other living person. His car -- a surprisingly sensible sedan with a booster seat in the back. His children -- a girl and a boy, the first faces his mind turned to in a moment of fear, and two lives he would give anything to protect. The exact taste fear took for him -- the scorched edges of it, the desperation burning down to sheer determination.
Jack had the terrible conviction that if anything threatened that little corner of peace that Chrysos had made for himself and his children, the world would burn.
"We'll pick you up at the designated location," Jack's handler was saying.
"No. No, I can't come in. I'm more of a risk to you there than I am out here." There was no protocol for this, no neatly codenamed eventuality. "I'm -- I'm transmitting, do you understand?"
There was a pause. Somewhere -- past a door whose security code Jack had never learnt, but could have tapped out from muscle memory -- Chrysos was pressing his hands so hard to his face that the prosthesis cut like a dull knife.
"We'll have a lead-lined room ready for you, then," Jack's handler said. "As well as Faraday cage, a private flight to the other end of the planet, and a healthy dose of sedatives to tide you over. Come in, Jack."
"I can't," Jack said, helpless. In a cold grey bunker half a city away, Chrysos was tense and waiting. Plotting, yes, because he wasn't a man who would give up simply because all his secrets were slipping through his fingers like so much sand. But also -- listening.
"And why can't you?" Jack's handler asked, her voice as calm as if they were troubleshooting another one of their clever little gadgets.
Because, Jack thought helplessly, you don't want to fix this, not until you've stopped him for good -- and I can't sit by and feel you do that.
At the heart of his hidden lair, Chrysos sat rigid as if he'd been electrified.
"I'll fix this," Jack said. "I'll find a way -- on my own -- to fix this. I'll talk to you when I have."
"Jack, wait--"
He crushed the phone beneath his heel before hearing any more. He had a mission to plan.
Just as soon as he figured out how to keep a certain villain out of his head.
It was impossible.
They could, with effort and practice, conceal certain details of their plans from each other, but never the thrill of anticipation that went with a scheme nearing its fulfilment. Whether Jack meant to steal information from Chrysos or Chrysos to capture Jack, there was always that flicker of warning, just enough to shore up their defences or secure their escape. Stalemate.
They thought about forming a truce for long enough to work together to break whatever bond had formed between them. They might even have tried it, if they hadn't each thought of killing the other almost as often. The danger did lend a certain frisson of excitement to their game, but it didn't do much for trust.
In the end, what broke them apart was nothing more or less than time. Evidently, human physiology could only sustain a telepathic link for so long without reinforcement.
Regular physical contact might have done it, the scientists told Jack eventually, after he'd turned himself in and endured more tests and scans than bore thinking about. It was a lucky thing that he hadn't gotten himself captured, or his mind might never have been his own again.
"Jack," his handler said, "are you quite sure it isn't time to retire?"
He cleared every evaluation they put him through. He went back into the field.
Two weeks later, he walked straight to a door he'd never before seen, and entered old codes one after another until the guards came and brought him in.
For their first mission together -- or their first heist, as Chrys kept insisting -- they had decided to steal back a painting a rival had stolen from Chrys during their honeymoon.
("From us," Chrys had said, furious. "It's the worst sort of disrespect to think you've made me soft -- you, who thwarted my plans a dozen times before I captured you at last!"
"No more than ten or eleven, surely," Jack had murmured in response, lifting Chrys's fist from where it had fallen heavily on the table and pressing a kiss to the pale knuckles, holding his eyes all the while. The question of who had captured whom was an old debate by then, hardly needing to be expressed in words. They had grown distracted shortly thereafter.)
But now they were at work, with Chrys practising his arts on the security system while Jack infiltrated the party that had transformed their target's home into a maze of gilded opulence and guests partaking of every sort of pleasure. It wasn't difficult to slip in on the tails of a large party -- not for someone who knew where the cameras and guards were placed, and Chrys had briefed Jack very thoroughly -- so Jack was soon in position, at a card table with a fairly good hand and a better martini, simply biding his time until he received the signal to precipitate a distraction and make his move.
As careful as he was to keep his demeanour languid, Jack could hardly wait. It would be the first time his triumph in the field belonged to Chrys as well, and he knew their shared celebration would be heady indeed.
"That song," said the woman in the exquisite headscarf who sat to his left, drawing his attention from his thoughts. "The sprightly thing you keep humming -- it's lovely. Won't you tell me what it's called?"
"I--" Haven't been humming anything, he would have said, but his fingers were curled mid-tap over his cards, and he realised abruptly that he had been. Jack summoned his most charmingly apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I couldn't tell you, ma'am. I must have picked it up somewhere."
Under cover of looking about for a waiter to refresh his drink, Jack reached out in that indefinable way to find Chrys deftly rerouting wires and, yes, singing softly under his breath.
Jack caught his attention with a warm brush of thought and offered the memory of the exchange he had just had. I won't blend in so well if you give me that earworm every time we're on a mission, you know.
On a heist, Chrys thought back instinctively, but Jack could feel the pleasure glowing behind the correction, just as he could feel the hot pride underlying Chrys's pretence of innocence when he added, Anyway, I don't see how you can blame me -- it's our song.
