Chapter Text
In the world they walk through, there is one currency that has value above the almighty dollar, and that is information, and its denominations of gossip, whispers and innuendo. After a certain point, the dollar holds little appeal for people. Eventually, there is little that an extra dollar can buy, but every whisper has the potential to be a great addition to the discerning portfolio.
Economists have whole books about marginal return on investment, of abstract concepts of goods made real; made flesh. He can relate.
All that to say that of course 47’s heard whispers in the past about Diana. He’s heard the whole gamut of salacious nonsense over the years, from outright lies from other ICA handlers looking to poach the golden boy from her stable, to the poison that is spat at the moment of terrified no return by their few mutual enemies. None of it has ever mattered to him; Diana has her own life, same as him, and like him, she can take care of herself. He knows that she had a doctor friend for a while, but that it ended amicably, and he knows this because she mentioned it once, on a stormy night, waiting for an exfil gondolier who had got lost in the labyrinthine waterways of Venice, and though he remembers the setting of this particular pearl, he cannot remember the context. It is nice that she felt comfortable enough to share it with him, all their years working together notwithstanding. That kind of information is the kind of thing the ICA considers more dangerous than writing your password on a post it note, and then getting that note stapled to your forehead. All he remembers was that she said that the doctor never knew, and was comfortable not knowing, only wanted to enjoy his retirement in peace, and they both respected each other’s secrecy. 47 left that conversation with two pieces of information, first, that Diana likes older men (or at the very least, one older man), and second, that she values people who don’t ask too many questions about her life.
Much like his own dollar holdings, 47 has never been particularly bothered with the accumulation of information. He collects secrets the way he collects money; reluctantly, and often by accident, with a knowledge that it gives him freedom to do what he wants, but with little real connection to its value.
There was a time, maybe eighteen months ago, just when this whole shadow client chapter was starting to become more complex, that someone in a dark room in a Hong Kong casino put a photo down of Diana that perhaps would have meant something, had he been the kind of man who cared about gossip. He made it a point of pride that he didn't even look at it. He wouldn't be good at this job if he was, and as he's the best, it can't tempt him.
Now though, with the ICA gone, and Diana running the most dangerous operation ever to get to Edwards, he wished he had taken a moment to give it a glance. It seems like he could do with a little more intel these days.
There’s a finality to this job in Mendoza. Maybe it's seeing Diana out in the field, out of her element. Maybe it's just seeing her at all, still an unfamiliar pleasure. He has to push down the impulse to knock out one of the bodyguards and take what he feels like is his rightful place, standing on her right hand side with a hand on his trusty silverballer, waiting for her word.
He doesn’t drink on the job, as a rule, apart from when he needs to, to avoid suspicion. Still, there’s something about being on a vineyard, and seeing Diana knocking back glass after glass as he lingers, waiting for the optimal moment to take the place of a waiter and slide a vial of poison into just the right glass at just the right moment. He feels like he’s had a few glasses, that the world is a bit slower. He’s felt like this since she touched him. Perhaps it is the syrupy light, or the clear air, or the feeling of being in the lion’s den, or maybe just the influence of the tango music floating down from above them, all the more hypnotic and mysterious as it is muffled by the conversation of those around him.
There are a group of Providence Heralds standing nearby, and their tone of voice is just piercing enough to ruin the rest of the delightful party atmosphere that must have cost Yates’ party planner a near aneurysm to get just so. Their babble cuts through the background, each clipped consonant and languid vowel blessed by good wine and the eternal indiscretion of middle management. They’ve positioned themselves in a way that hides him from the bodyguards who glower at anyone who keeps line of sight with Diana or Tamara for more than a split second, and just like most of the people at this party, their conversation is hyper-focused on the guest of honour.
“So, why do you think Edwards is so keen on her?”, a handsome dark haired man brays. “She's beautiful, sure, if you're into milfs, but maybe I’m a bit disappointed that Edwards would be that obvious.”
“Surely to be a milf you've got to be a mother,” the older woman who 47 has mentally named the Duchess, based on the quality of her jewellery, scoffed. “Diana Burnwood definitely is the type to eat her young. No, look at her, she's got money for a Pilates instructor and thinks she's on the side of the angels. There's nothing more preserving than righteousness.”
“Except Botox,” sniped her friend, a statuesque woman with a huge pink diamond heart necklace hanging gaudily between her impressive cleavage, taking a very large slurp of her wine as punctuation.
“Well, yes, of course” the Duchess says archly, “excepting Botox and the subtle nips and tucks one is bound to have after the age of 40, but, Darling, it's the roaring twenties, that goes without saying. Diana Burnwood isn’t just a normal rich-bitch of the establishment. She’s come from the shadows, Nowhereistan-on-Thames to be the next constant. I think that there’s something there other than her batting up the order appearance-wise.”
The men wandered off in search of something other than wine, and looking around, one of the other women at the table, the one 47 had assumed was one of the assistants, leaned in and whispered as loud as she could, "well...there is one thing...I know about Diana Burnwood" as she flushed a deep scarlet red down into the plunging neckline of her gown.
The rest of the women at the table close ranks, and 47 has to strain to hear the next part.
“It's not exactly kosher to tell,” she says, and then empties the rest of the bottle into her glass until it nearly brims over. “Oh, fuck it, this is very good wine, isn't it, and she’ll probably be dead by tonight if Yates has anything to say about it, so who does it hurt? Diana Burnwood is very well known at a certain club on Dean Street. You know the one.”
The duchess gasps, and the tendons on her neck, already prominent from her recent facelift, seem to nearly jump out of her skin. “No!”
“Yes!”
The Duchess mock-fans herself. “Oh my. Well that is gossip. They say she's a dark horse, but wow. The respect has gone up! Perhaps I’ll vote for her after all.”
“They say that's why Edwards simps so hard for her. You know that's his type.”
“Oh really? Well that does explain the twins.”
The duchess’ new friend laughs bitterly. “Quite!”
“Sorry,” Pink-Diamond says, impatiently. “I have no idea what you're talking about. There are at least a dozen clubs on that street. I'm in a club on that street.”
“We're not talking Soho House, darling” the Duchess’ new friend laughs. “It's a club for...discerning women, and the men who like to serve them. The kind of place where you need a personal invitation?” She winks ostentatiously, and then sputters at her friends’ still gormless face. “Oh for fucks sake, Lydia, stop gaping like a fish, it's a sex club. Diana Burnwood goes to a sex club that caters to women who like to dominate men.”
“Really? Like, whips and chains, 50 shades?” she cranes around her friend to take a look at Diana, who is pointedly looking in the opposite direction to 47 and all this scurrilous speculation, though 47 would not put it past her having heard every word, somehow.
“I hear her one is more the hareem-of-hunks type, get on your knees for the chairwoman of the board, the kind that caters to those men who never really got over Thatcher, you know.”
“How do you know anyway? Do you want another bottle darling, I feel you’ve deserved it.”
“Go on then, and yeah well, you know Chingis Kazenov? He's around here somewhere, Works for president...yeah, him, well, he's been going for years, loves it, I mean, you do you, yucky yummy all that bullshit,” she mocks gags herself before downing the dregs of her wine, before Lydia-with-the-Pink-Diamond refills her glass for her. “Ugh, I’d give anything to never have to feign interest in the small talk of kinky men, but anyway, he's seen her loads of times, never thought twice about her really, thought she was MI6 or an MP or something until suddenly she turns up here, and while he's never personally serviced her, it's not for lack of trying. He says you’d be mad not to put your hat in the ring considering the stories, and he's heard all the stories. The men who do get between her pilates-honed thighs to do ‘whatever’ with her, oh my god they love her, they worship her, she’s like some kind of urban legend of sex to them.”
Suddenly, 47 realises the waiter he had picked out as being the broadest of chest and most unobtrusive of manner, the one who would make the perfect mark to allow for the easiest of mimicry, had walked straight past him and he had completely missed it, so engrossed in salacious gossip. He turns on his heel and catches the storeroom door before it clicks-shut, and chastises himself for almost compromising the mission through the kind of idle gossip he would normally not give any quarter. He resolves to himself, as the waiter cools in the locker, to repress this, just like old times, and never think about what he’s heard ever again, and forcibly puts the mental images out of his mind and allows his hands to take over.
In the end it is Yates who kills Vidal, rendering 47’s staking out of the bar and careful procurement of a bottle of Pinot Noir ultimately worthless. Her body hits the floor and the collected Heralds flinch away from it, as if her insubordination could become airborne and poison them by mere proximity. Yates sneers and insults her body with the lewd raking of his eyes over her sprawled corpse, the skirt of her stylish blue dress flipped up as she sprawled in death like a puppet with the strings cut, and then insults her further by turning his back on her, and instructs his goon to knock Diana down instead. To both of their training and credit, neither 47 nor Diana flinched, Diana holding her face and keeping stock still, even though the sound, the sick crack of a handful of metal was enough to warrant medical intervention alone. The goon, unaware he is about to meet a violent, justified end, drags Diana away, his meat hands white against Diana’s skin with how hard he is holding her, and 47 backtracks immediately from the tableau of future corpses, heads back down the stairs as if he was the shocked sommelier, pausing only to purloin a suit from an unwilling volunteer.
His heart is pounding, his mind racing trying to predict where they’d take her next, his ears craning for noise, for any small-coin information that could direct his feet back to her side.
He takes the stairs three at a time, bolting past Yates’ guards, running through the house, gun gripped in his hand, ready to forcibly extract revenge from anyone who stands in his way. When he finds her in the bedroom, it takes him no time at all to murder every single one of the wastes of skin who think they can hold her, giving into his training and a lifetime of careful optimisation to block out the memory of Diana being knocked to the floor, being dragged away, knowing he was the only thing standing between the kind of simple shot to the head that took out Vidal so anticlimactically.
Diana has it all in hand, of course she does, and they kill Yates together. It's glorious, the thing of legends that should be picked out in lights. Diana stabs Yates in the gut, a nasty way to go, and 47 knocks out the guards with a falling chandelier, and then shoots Yates in the head as he starts to plead for his life. The blood sprays across the plastic, and no further; it really is a perfectly set up kill room.
Diana nudges Yates’ body with her foot. “They did a good job. I would get the clean up crew’s number, but there’s no point now.” She sighs, but it doesn’t stop there, and her next breath is ragged, painful, panicked. He sees her try to pull herself together, one shuddering breath at a time.
“Random. Disordered.” Diana says, unable to look straight at him. Her breath is still laboured, and her fringe has flopped somewhat from the effort of committing murder, but even the gravity of the situation can’t disrespect Diana Burnwood for long. There’s a wildness in her eyes he’s never seen before, and there’s blood on her hands, her manicure now two-toned red.
“That’s what you said, when we first met, when I asked you what killing felt like. I know what you meant, now. It was always academic, before.”
He can’t tear his eyes away from her, and he feels his mouth start to open, but he has no idea what he will say. The moment stretches into awkwardness, opportunities passing that he can sense. She takes pity on him, eventually, breaks the gaze, turns away. “Meet me on the dance floor, 47,” she says, “and...wear something appropriate?”
He spies the suit sitting there, as if it was put there for him. Perhaps it was; Providence has done stranger things. Eyeballing it, it seems like it’ll fit, and the red tie is that perfect scarlet slash that he always finds so pleasing. When he takes it off the hanger, he turns, expecting for her to have already gone in a swirl of black satin and three inch heels, but instead she’s leaning against the wardrobe, watching him with naked desire on her face, a stolen moment, her eyes ravenous and unguarded for just a moment too long. Yates’ body cools inside, and her hands are shaking, and opportunity creeps back into the room.
Outside the window there’s the twitter of birds and the crunch of gravel underfoot as a patrol walks past.
He doesn’t pause this time. He strips the cheap polyester guard suit from his body, stands there in the late afternoon sunlight in his boxers and his skin, and dresses himself in Yates’ beautiful bespoke suit, warm in the spotlight of her gaze.
“47,” she chokes out, and it's enough, so he goes to her, steps into her personal space and she wraps her arms around him, burrowing into his chest for a much yearned for moment that drags into a long, impossible minute. Its safety really, comfort, and he wants nothing more than to give that to her, to soothe the adrenaline from her blood and say things he can barely conceive of the words to represent. That yes, killing is random and disordered, but she always made it make sense, separated the signal from the noise, made what they did beautiful in the midst of chaos.
She pushes back, twitches a slight, perfunctory smile at him that she obviously meant to mean an apology for her indulgence. Her eyes are very slightly wet.
“We should go”, she says, quietly. “We shouldn’t be caught here.”
He thinks about telling her about the dead men that lie through the secret passage, that no one will come up here until the boss leaves, that even so, he cannot bear to step away, that she is safe with him, always has been, always will be.
He falls to his knees instead.
Even if she rejected him here and now, the look on her face would be enough reward. The naked want, that flitted momentarily into embarrassment, just for a second, and then just as quickly into something else, shock, perhaps, or surprise, he’s never been good with faces, either way it’s not embarrassment for long, and then there it was, pleasure. A Russian novel of emotion in the space of a few seconds, all for him.
“Oh, 47…” she said, unable to drag her eyes away from him.
“I heard,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I heard that this is what you like.”
She tilts her head to the side, and appraises him, before looking up for a brief moment at the ceiling.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Diana asks in a soft, low voice, so unlike the flustered tone she had had a few moments ago.
“No.” he says. “Yes. I overheard someone at the party earlier saying that this is...I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t want to stop thinking about it.”
She takes a deep breath in, and then exhales all at once. He sees the moment this sinks in, and sees Diana shift. She stands taller. She regains her control. She steps back into her skin from the strange place she had gone to when the random disorder threatened to overwhelm her.
“If we do this, 47”, she says, cool and clear, “It will change things. Forever. We won’t be able to go back.”
He tenses his core, holding himself perfectly still, hands locked firmly in the curve of his spine. “The ICA is over. Grey is dead. I won’t involve Olivia any more. There is nothing to go back to.”
“Very well, 47”, she says. “Do you know what is expected of you? Do you know what is expected? I have high standards and I expect you to surpass them.”
“The clitoris”, he says thickly, then swallows. “Is a delicate organ, the only part of the human body designed purely for pleasure. It spreads through the whole vulval vestibule. The nub is...a good place to start.”
“Yes, good.” She says, rubbing her gloved hand over his pate. “You have been studying. Looking to take my job?”
“You always leave me to prepare”, he says. “I prepared.”
“Have at it, 47” she says, and he does.
He doesn’t dive straight in. He takes his time, dedicates a long while to kissing his way up her thighs, scraping his teeth over the sensitive skin, using all his instincts to make up for his lack of experience. He knows her well, so he relies on that, like he’s read the manual on how to please Diana Burnwood cover to cover. He keeps his hands behind his back, but spends long moments sucking bruises into the tops of her thighs, taking his time to ease his head into the tight space of her skirt by sheer determination. Eventually, he gets his mouth on her, and groans at the taste, unplaceable and yet so yearned for, now he’s tasted her, he will never be able to get enough. He huffs a burst of air as the last piece of tease before he gets to work, pleased that she is wearing nothing beneath her dress and there are no further obstacles between him tasting her, between him demonstrating his knowledge of the clitoral arts.
She’s joked before that his hands should be registered as deadly weapons, but without them he needs to use the rest of his arsenal to get the job done. He keeps his tongue thick and soft, keeps his movements slow and lush and applies pressure and suction in between long, luscious licks, and when he worms that tongue inside her, presses the angles of his face full against her, she nearly falls over, has to put her hands on his head again in silent communication, and he hopes he gets the message right.
He pulls back slightly, eases off, takes a shuddering, overwhelmed breath, breaths hotly against her whole sex because he can’t help but drag this out. Neither of them want this to be over. This is the last mission, the final farewell, the eulogy given at the graveside to their old lives. They’ve blown this up now, neither of them can go back to being voices on the phone, to having polite conversations about ammunition and the weather and the best place to slip out unheard.
“I think there might be snipers, 47”, Diana says, as he delicately sucks on her clit from his place on his knees, even though she knows that he took them out earlier, their bodies hidden in the lavender. “Keeping an eye on Yates, to keep him safe. He had enemies other than us, perhaps they watched us kill him and are now watching this, oh, what would all of them think? I suppose it would stop them gossiping that I’m Edwards’ whore,” she muses to herself, and 47 sucks harder to bring her back to him, to keep her mind from wandering off, “Mmm, yes, you have been studying, haven’t you?”
The fact she is talking is enough of a message that she is ready for more, but the mention of Edwards puts fire in his belly, reminding him of the gossip of the Heralds, of the knowledge that all these years she has gone elsewhere for this, never trusted him to do this, when he should be enough, he wants to be enough. He needs to prove it, make her never look at another man. He will stay on his knees forever if necessary, to prove it.
She’s loud now, her hands scrabbling against his head and holding him hard against her, so he holds his breath and keeps going until she’s moaning his name and so wet it feels like he’s going to drown in a flood of her, and he feels like he’s going to come just from the feeling of her coming against his face.
He’s so grateful for his lax trigger on the way here when she does come extravagantly, so beautiful and like a force of nature, she is deafening him, sucking in huge breaths and swearing like she’s running for her life, all the muscles in her thighs taut with effort at keeping herself up.
When she finally relaxes, it's like she’s a tower toppling after a single significant strut is removed. At first she wobbles on unsteady ankles, before her legs finally go weak and she collapses to her knees in front of him. She looks wrecked in the best possible way, her dress is askew, the neckline loose and pulled down from where she’s touched her own chest, the dress flopping off her shoulders now the skirt is pushed up. Her face is flushed and her eyes are huge and dark, and he did that to her. His face feels sticky and slick, but his hands are still clasped behind his back, his posture is still perfect, and she leans in, grabs his face with both her still-gloved hands, and kisses him hard, passionately, putting everything, a lifetime, into it.
“At ease, my love”, she says against his mouth, and he sits back on his heels so she can climb up his thighs and sit there, pressed against his dick, her breasts against his face. He leans forward slightly and takes the long pendant of her necklace between his teeth, holds it there on his tongue, the chain digging into the swollen, soft skin of his inner lip.
She pulls the jacket off his shoulders, and then rips the shirt from his body. The tiny buttons ping off the walls as she pushes it down his arms so it tangles just so, as if he needed to know that she wanted his arms to stay where they are, but now he feels tied up, restrained and fully at her mercy.
She undoes his belt, reaches her hand in and clucks her tongue in mock derision. “So hard, and from what? Just from getting your mouth on me? Have you dreamed about this, 47?”, she says fittingly dreamily, as she maneuvers his dick against the slick, hot, clutch of her sex, rubs the head against her clitoris deliberately, using him as an object of pleasure. “Was this what you dreamed of in those hovels we called safe-houses back at the start, or was this the kind of fantasy you saved for later, stuck in those lonely five star hotel rooms over the years? I was so good to you, always made sure you were in the lap of luxury” she says as she sinks down onto him, a soaking, boiling hot, clutch, better than a fist, better than anything, and then somehow she...sucks at him, somehow, pulls herself tighter around him to the point it hurts, she’s so tight and all-encompassing.
She pets his face, watches him intently, smiling indulgently, eyes wide in mock-surprise when he groans. “Oh, you can feel that? A little treat for my agent, I think. You have deserved it, after all, you are very good, my 47, I am honoured to be what a veritable urban legend dreams of in his most private moments.”
She leans in, breathes in his ear, and then bites the lobe, as she rises and sinks slowly on his dick. Whispers “I dreamed of this, in moments of weakness. Dreamed you’d be on your knees for me, that you’d do anything for me, never thought it would be real, never thought you’d be so big, splitting me open so well, staying still for me like a good, obedient, agent.”
He groans and comes, empties what feels like his entire soul, the whole of himself into the heart of her.
It takes a while for him to stop shaking.
When he comes back to himself, she is gone. He cleans up, digs another shirt out of the cupboard and dresses himself, and takes a moment at the window, watching her walk back down to the party, to where the couples circle in the eternal dance, and then follows her, unable to do anything else.