Archive of Our Own ^beta

2010

Virginia, USA

Two ex-spies – a Brit and an American – walked into a bar. It was a dark, hole-in-the-wall kind of place, perfect for clandestine meetings.

Taking in the other patrons of the dingy bar without even seeming to be looking while they got their drinks, they quickly pinpointed their target and headed toward her. 

“Boys.”

“Ms. Bouvier,” Ivar Bryce drawled, “You’re lookin’ swell.”

Pam Bouvier let her old friend kiss her cheek. At fifty years old, her short hair had some gray in it, but she was attractive in a perpetually athletic and tomboyish way. “Flattery will get you everywhere, cowboy. Hey, Damien.” 

“Pam,” Damien Drake said with a slow smile. “How are you? I hope they’re not working you too hard?”

The current director of the CIA shook her head and snorted. “My job would be a helluva lot easier if agents did as they were told,” she said with a pointed look at each of her friends. 

Ivar Bryce (ex-CIA and ex-DEA) and Damien Drake (ex-MI6) grinned unrepentantly. 

“If you want agents who’ll follow orders to the letter, you oughta get your tech division to make you a fleet of robots,” Ivar said, sitting back and getting comfortable. This was an ancient argument that never got old. 

“Speaking of,” Pam said, “I heard Six’s got a new assistant quartermaster.”

“Is that so? They don’t keep me apprised of new hires anymore. I’m retired.” Damien’s expression of innocence fooled absolutely no one. 

“Uh huh. So it’s not your kid who got a big promotion?”

Damien was the father of a twenty-year-old technological genius who had wanted to be the quartermaster of MI6 since he’d been a toddler, likely due to his godfather’s influence. Old Major Boothroyd had been the Q before the current one.

“Now why would you think that?” Damien’s facade didn’t waver for a moment. 

Pam rolled her eyes. “I heard he’s young, scary smart, extremely efficient, and has an attitude on him that’ll get him punched by someone one of these days. Heard he also keeps tabs on all the equipment that goes out, down to each bullet and gets real upset if things don’t come back. Sounds a lot like Junior to me.” She downed her glass and looked at him with a challenge in her eyes. ‘Let’s see you try to deny it now,’ her expression said.

Ivar snorted, enjoying her very accurate description of Danny Drake, who had indeed been newly designated R. “She’s not wrong, Damien.”

“Well,” Damien shrugged and gave in easily, “I did try to drill into him the importance of not losing track of explosives, especially when one has pets who like to steal and hide things for unsuspecting fathers to find.”

“Unsuspecting my ass.”

“You’re absolutely right; I should have expected the modified grenade hidden amongst my potatoes that I found only when I dug them up for Sunday dinner.”

Pam’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me.”

“He shits you not. That darn dog of Danny’s loved to dig in Damien’s garden and hide all sorts of junk. Drove him insane. I miss that little mutt. He was a good dog.” 

Ivar’s sigh had a tinge of sadness in it and he raised his glass in tribute to the late Puck, who’d died in his sleep of old age, lying under an old blanket that smelled like Danny and drooling happily into Damien’s slipper.

Damien sniffed. “I certainly don’t miss having my garden rearranged and my newspaper chewed to bits every morning.”

“Shut up. You miss that son of a bitch more than Danny does.”

“I most certainly do not.”

“Liar.”

Pam interrupted what was well on its way to turning into the usual friendly bickering their rare get-togethers tended to descend into. “You know what you need? Another dog.”

Damien fixed her with an incredulous look. “And why would I need another dog when I finally got rid of the other one?” As though he’d ‘gotten rid’ of the last dog the way one ‘got rid’ of someone in his old job.

Ivar shook his head. “Because Danny’s worried about you rattling around in that house all by yourself.”

“Actually, I’m relieved that I’ve got an empty house now and I’m not likely to step on a half-finished land mine.”

“Bored. You’re bored. He’s afraid you’ll implode from boredom one of these days, and it’ll be a big, old-fashioned mess.”

The ex-007 had been just as destructive in his prime as his predecessors and successors. 

“I’m not bored. I’ve got plenty of things to do.”

“Like what?” Ivar snorted. “Knitting?”

Damien glared at his friend defensively. “At least I haven’t started writing shit bodice-rippers like some people I could name.”

Pam looked between the two men, slightly aghast. “Jesus H. Christ. Seriously? Knitting and romance novels? Is that what the two of you have come to?”

Damien was decidedly amused. His green eyes danced at the humor in his situation. “Sad, isn’t it?”

Ivar harrumphed. “You get to our stage of life and see if you judge us then for doing whatever it takes to stay sane. We’ll see who’s laughing then.”

“I’ll have you know,” Damien said leaning forward with an overly-earnest look that was too serious to be real, “needlepoint is extremely therapeutic. Remember Manny Hernandez?”

Pam wracked her memory. “Wanna-be dictator of Nicaragua? Liked to kill people by sticking fireworks up their assholes? You eliminated him, right?”

Ivar ran his finger around the rim of his glass thoughtfully. “Sadistic bastard had you for a coupla weeks before that, if I remember correctly.”

The Brit nodded. “I’ve got a shoulder that reminds me of him every time the wind blows southeast. I embroidered a cushion with his face on it.”

“Dare I ask why the hell you’d do that?”

“Do you realize how satisfying it is to stab someone in the face several thousand times?” Ah. There it was: the viscous smirk that was the last thing some people ever saw, though not recently. 

“Oh, brother,” Pam groaned, and finished her drink. “I’m gonna tell your kid to get you a damned dog. Better yet, a puppy. One that needs housetraining and watching twenty-four-seven.”

“What’d you do with the cushion?” Ivar furrowed his brows. “I don’t remember seeing any Central American dictators around your place last time I was around.”

Damien gave him a wolfish grin that made his green eyes gleam with a manic light. “Stuffed it full of fireworks and lit it up for Guy Fawkes Night.”

Ivar whistled through his teeth. “Alright. I bet that was damned satisfying.”

“I’ve made a whole series. I enjoy thinking up fitting ways to destroy them. Pavel Sobakov.”

Ivar cast his memory back. “The one with the man-eating dogs?”

“Gave that one to Puck to chew up. He listened to me for once. Even did his business on it when he was done.”

“See? I knew he was a good dog.”

“Maybe.”

“He was. And Pam’s right. You need another one.”

“No.”

“Get one yourself or I’ll tell Danny to bring you the first flea-ridden, mangy stray he sees. Better yet, I’ll tell him you’re starting a dog rescue for troubled pups.”

Damien’s death-glare was one that he had practiced and used for years to great effect. It, however, had very little effect on his old friend.

“What, are you going to make a voodoo cushion of my face now?”

Damien harrumphed. “What makes you think I haven’t already done so?”

“You like me too much.”

“Why would I like someone who consistently casts me as the skirt-chasing Lothario in practically every one of his romance novels?”

“What makes you think it’s all you? You’re not the only skirt-chasing Lothario I know.”

Pam grinned. She loved listening to the banter between the two men. “What name do you write under? I’ve got to see this for myself.”

Damien snorted. The glass he raised to his lips did nothing to hide his snickering. 

“Oh, don’t you start, granny.”

Damien coughed a name into his whiskey. 

“What was that?”

“Amanda Mount.” He said it slowly so that the pun was very clear.

“What?!”

“His heroines and plotlines are just as ridiculous. I have no idea why they keep getting published, but they do. Do you have something on the publishers? Is that why?”

“Maybe my readers want to read all about tall, dark, and pathologically unable to keep it in his pants.”

“So you admit that it is him!” Pam exclaimed, despite Damien’s grimace at her acknowledgement of the unflattering description of him.

“Maybe. Some of them. Some of them are definitely more me than him.”

Damien rolled his eyes. “I thought those were based more on Humphrey Bogart and Clint Eastwood, myself. The hardboiled detective, antihero cowboy type.”

“Have you read all of them?” Pam asked, wondering if she had time in her busy life to pick up a badly-written bodice-ripper or two. It would be a welcome change from badly-written reports. “How many are there, anyway?”

“He comes out with a new one every year or so and keeps sending them to me. What else am I to do with them?” As though Damien Drake could not think of half a dozen other things to do with something so simple, most of them involving destruction. 

Pam leaned closer to Ivar. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a closet fan, Bryce,” she whispered with a wink. 

Her phone chose that moment to buzz with a text message. She groaned. “Sorry to cut this short, but it looks like I gotta go, boys.”

Ivar raised his glass to her.  “Duty calls.”

She rolled her eyes as she gathered her things and left a couple of bills under her empty glass. “Just someone having trouble finding the giant stick up his ass, as usual.”

Damien, always the gentleman, stood and kissed her cheek. “It was good seeing you, Madam Director.”

Even though their visit hadn’t been particularly long, Pam felt like the heavy weight of responsibility had lightened just a bit, as it always seemed to do after talking to old friends. 

“And you, Damien. Don’t be a stranger.”

As she left, the two ex-spies bickered about who had the more ridiculous retirement hobby.

. . . . .

The following week, Danny showed up at his father’s house with a puppy. 

“No.” Damien didn’t quite close the door in his son’s face, but he was that close to doing it. 

“Ivar said you’re starting a dog rescue for troubled pups. This is Horatio.” Danny held the tiny golden retriever mix up for inspection. “Horry, this is your new dad!”

“No.”

Green eyes widened. “But you have to. The rest of his family died tragically, including everyone in his litter and his mother. Look at him. He needs you.”

The tiny puppy raised soulful brown eyes to meet his piteously. 

Defeated, Damien sighed. “Fine.”

He allowed the small wriggling bundle to be passed to his arms and accepted the tentative snuffling kisses the puppy gave his jaw. 

“Look, he likes you!”

He felt a warm wetness spread across the front of his shirt and closed his eyes with a groan. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! This is the last time I’m dealing with toilet-training! No more strays, Danny! No more!”

. . . . .