fic: agatha christie, in the parlor, with the wrench (rpf)
agatha christie, in the parlor, with the wrench
rpf. it is a question of categories, of placing each thing in its rightful slot; the two of them belong somewhere (it just probably isn't here). keira knightley/james mcavoy. 1982 words. pg-13
i'm so sorry but the motorcade will have to go around me this time.
(all the wine; the national)
“You know better than this. Right, mate?”
It is his own face staring back at him and, surprise of all surprises, it doesn’t answer. He straightens the collar of his shirt, pulls his jacket on - the kind of sports coat his mum would have bought him at some point, that uniform navy blue, a fancy label on the inside - and runs a hand through his mess of hair. He clears his throat once.
“’Course you do. Of course.”
The interview starts taping in five.
They have been working on honesty here, at least between the two of them. There are enough lies and half truths piled up in other realms of their respective lives, between the wife, the boyfriend, the peeping tabloids and the constant circuit of talk-show hosts.
First though, she is slouching again.
Her feet have slid out against the carpet, far away from the chair, limbs sprawled inelegantly, and her neck hurts. A lot. She raises a hand to cup the back of her head, damning the seventeenth century, the eighteenth, the nineteenth, just for good measure, and their penchant for elaborate and quite literal pain in the neck hair adornments.
Her face is pulled in a grimace when James walks in, his own face splitting in a grin, reflecting the polar opposite of hers.
“What the hell happened to you?”
She drops her hand into her lap near instantly. She imagines she could tell him, tell him about the ridiculously tall wigs and the even more ridiculous amount of hair and ribbons and feathers, the way it makes her shoulders stoop, back curve, neck ache. But she doesn’t. The words stay tight behind her teeth, bared as it were, as though ready to unleash this laundry list of woes. It doesn’t feel right though, telling him. It would be like showing weakness to an enemy, and the thought alone makes her pause. She doesn’t know when it is that the two of them became framed like this, the context of enemies and opposing sides, weakness and the possibility of them being taken advantage of. Even the admittance that she is tired as a deferral to his question seems too much. And worst of all, his curiosity is growing by the passing second, made a little too evident by the growing smirk on his face.
“Nothing,” she finally says, a small shrug and a half-smile.
He isn’t buying it, she’s sure of it. “Yeah?” he says, that tilt of his head, raise of the eyebrows. He pauses for a moment, en route to the armchair across from her, caught in the middle. His fingers flex and stray, to the side, reaching, it would seem, for her. She watches his right hand, the bend of the wrist, the way the fingers fan, and as her pulse raises (slightly, mind you) she wants to offer whatever kind of words of encouragement would bring him closer, bring him in, to her. His breathing is kind of short, his eyes are watching her knocked knees.
Neither of them speaks and the moment passes. He collapses into that chair across from her without a single ounce of grace.
He watches her prepare for these interviews. Keira takes to rote memorization, the same line of dialogue spit out while seated before Ellen, Oprah, Regis and Kelly, God help them. “It’s what happens when the line between fact and fiction gets blurred,” she’ll say, on repeat. Her teeth catch on the twin t’s in fact and fiction, and hell, if anyone is to know of this, it would be her. It would be him.
Robbie and Cecilia can carry. A love like that, a love portrayed - at times it becomes difficult to separate. It is a theory, of course; this is how he rationalizes. It’s not like he confuses the two. That would just be fucking ridiculous on his part.
In the hot-seat, he relies on charm, a dash of wit, but mainly charm. Most times, it makes her sneer, arms crossed and no words necessary. It makes him coat it on in thick, smarmy layers all the more.
“You’re on in three,” and Keira sinks kind of funny in her seat and neither of them recognize this particular interviewer.
He offers them both an awkward hello and handshake.
There are these points where collision is nothing save for inevitable. It is in the tight circles the two of them draw around each other, concentric, like little nesting dolls, coming closer and closer to that middle ground where rather than peace or some kind of understanding will be found, it is disaster waiting for them.
Tense bodies will hit, jar against the impact. The signs will become far too telling: the clench of her jaw, the way her smile pulls at awkward angles; he will fidget more than necessary, his body language lolling past the point of flirtatious and into territory unnamed and all the more dangerous for it.
The moments are stacking high between them.
It was summer once, July hot and sweaty in a more uncomfortable as opposed to sultry way. When his phone rang, he had answered it, her name flashing on the caller ID, a different kind of mystery there with the lazy “hello?” he had offered.
There was that white noise only a crowded street can bring in the background. Her greeting in return was nearly swallowed whole by it, but he caught it, the blare of a horn catching on the, “It’s me, it’s Keira.”
He was sure this was the point where vague pleasantries are usually exchanged and a breeze tried for the open kitchen window, sweat collected, and he hadn’t the slightest as to when whatever tentative relationship - friendship, let's be clear - he established with her disintegrated into this. Just as he had tried for a stilted, “How are you?” she neatly interrupted him.
“Have you read the Sunday Mail?” she had asked, and he? He had lurched forward in his chair, a scrape against the floor. The conversation had taken a turn for the unexpected, and he cleared his throat.
“The Sunday Mail? No, no, I haven’t read it yet. Why? Anything worth a peak?” There was something a bit more natural here, he thought, their old rapport struggling to be restored.
“Oh. Well. It’s just. There was a piece, in there. About me, and about…Rupert. And, um, as it were, about you.”
Whatever attempt at their status of the past was knocked clear off course. He had stilled, his shirtsleeves rolled, a cuckoo clock mounted on the wall counted to ten, and there was a peculiar tightness to his chest.
“Beg pardon?” he finally said, his voice a bit choked; it was embarrassing, really.
“It’s really rather silly, actually. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered you about it,” and she had paused, her breathing heavier than normal; he assumed she was walking, down a street, London maybe, he was guessing there, and he had wondered if the heat was creeping down her spine just as insistently as his. For whatever reason, he hoped so. “It just says that, um, that Rupert was horribly jealous of, well, of you and me.” The last part of the sentence was rushed, as though there was some kind of veiled confession there, and for the life of him, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Let me get this straight: There is a piece in a Scottish paper about your boyfriend going all jealous fucking Othello because of you and me?” There was a small “mm-hmm,” of assent on her end and his hand felt damp against the phone. “But. There is no you and me.”
“I’m aware of it,” her answer came, sharp and fast.
He was quiet for a moment, uncharacteristic of him, really, and condensation rolled down the glass set out on the placemat there.
“Is the story true?”
She sighed.
“In its own way.”
“That a yes or a no?”
“What the bloody hell do you think?”
When he hung up the day was still unmercifully hot; his pulse had jumped, his hands stuck to the table, palms flat.
“And in five, four, three, two…”
The lights are shining; the studio audience cheers once the number one has passed.
He really is a fantastic kisser. She was not just being polite or sneaky, evasive, in this answer.
Despite her admission of this particular fact, the questions won’t stop coming concerning him, her, his lips, hers, and the dark corner of a library.
She finds it strange to talk about. Maybe it is the bright lights, the sea of strangers, the personality across from her and their strangely rapt interest in the men she has made out with in the past, where Mr. James McAvoy ranks among them. But really, there are very few things more personal than kissing. Okay, let’s be honest, there’s sex, there are the various indiscretions inherent in the act of sex and every sort of foreplay leading up to said sex. That lot is definitely more personal in nature to discuss, especially on live, daytime television.
But the kissing - of course to a degree it is choreographed, carefully thought out, like a dance of sorts. The cameras loom too close, like an extra lover or something, and there is the director and every other assistant out there, watching too. A kiss is still a kiss, you know. And with James, it was the hand along the jaw, the way it would wind deep into her hair, would hold the back of her head. It was the slip of his lips against hers, the softness, wet tongue, his eyelashes light against her cheek. She isn’t entirely sure how you explain all of this in a fifteen-second sound-bite, how one could even try.
Romance can be difficult to speak of as well, she imagines.
No, she is sure.
It makes her squirm a little.
They somehow waited until New York.
There was a hotel room, those dizzying circles they move in, and finally, it was a kind of snap. It wasn’t even because of something particularly dramatic or interesting.
He had wanted to double-check their call times for the next morning, The Today Show on the docket for one but not the other and he had just wanted to be sure, see, and it was Keira, the flash of her eyes and a “does it look like I fucking know?” she didn’t really mean and his hot glare, and just like that, they both stumbled.
Kissing off camera is different. It doesn’t matter how high she tilts her chin, it doesn’t matter if her hand cradling his head leads to her arm obscuring his face from view. She can gasp just as she pleases, even if it makes her face pull in unflattering angles. Her eyes can slant shut, remain lidded and half-opened. She can curl her fingers along the collar of his shirt, she can tug if she wants to.
She can call him James.
And she did.
His hands had found her breasts bare beneath her shirt and she thinks it was him that had shuddered first, his mouth open against her neck, and with the heavy flick of his thumb against her she was trembling just as hard.
The phone had rang - comically, they jumped apart.
The memory alone makes her throat constrict.
This man, this curious man, the interviewer gazes expectantly at her.
James raises a fist to his mouth to hide the laughter there.
“I’m sorry,” she blushes, “what was the question?”
He nearly chokes.
fin.
rpf. it is a question of categories, of placing each thing in its rightful slot; the two of them belong somewhere (it just probably isn't here). keira knightley/james mcavoy. 1982 words. pg-13
i'm so sorry but the motorcade will have to go around me this time.
(all the wine; the national)
“You know better than this. Right, mate?”
It is his own face staring back at him and, surprise of all surprises, it doesn’t answer. He straightens the collar of his shirt, pulls his jacket on - the kind of sports coat his mum would have bought him at some point, that uniform navy blue, a fancy label on the inside - and runs a hand through his mess of hair. He clears his throat once.
“’Course you do. Of course.”
The interview starts taping in five.
They have been working on honesty here, at least between the two of them. There are enough lies and half truths piled up in other realms of their respective lives, between the wife, the boyfriend, the peeping tabloids and the constant circuit of talk-show hosts.
First though, she is slouching again.
Her feet have slid out against the carpet, far away from the chair, limbs sprawled inelegantly, and her neck hurts. A lot. She raises a hand to cup the back of her head, damning the seventeenth century, the eighteenth, the nineteenth, just for good measure, and their penchant for elaborate and quite literal pain in the neck hair adornments.
Her face is pulled in a grimace when James walks in, his own face splitting in a grin, reflecting the polar opposite of hers.
“What the hell happened to you?”
She drops her hand into her lap near instantly. She imagines she could tell him, tell him about the ridiculously tall wigs and the even more ridiculous amount of hair and ribbons and feathers, the way it makes her shoulders stoop, back curve, neck ache. But she doesn’t. The words stay tight behind her teeth, bared as it were, as though ready to unleash this laundry list of woes. It doesn’t feel right though, telling him. It would be like showing weakness to an enemy, and the thought alone makes her pause. She doesn’t know when it is that the two of them became framed like this, the context of enemies and opposing sides, weakness and the possibility of them being taken advantage of. Even the admittance that she is tired as a deferral to his question seems too much. And worst of all, his curiosity is growing by the passing second, made a little too evident by the growing smirk on his face.
“Nothing,” she finally says, a small shrug and a half-smile.
He isn’t buying it, she’s sure of it. “Yeah?” he says, that tilt of his head, raise of the eyebrows. He pauses for a moment, en route to the armchair across from her, caught in the middle. His fingers flex and stray, to the side, reaching, it would seem, for her. She watches his right hand, the bend of the wrist, the way the fingers fan, and as her pulse raises (slightly, mind you) she wants to offer whatever kind of words of encouragement would bring him closer, bring him in, to her. His breathing is kind of short, his eyes are watching her knocked knees.
Neither of them speaks and the moment passes. He collapses into that chair across from her without a single ounce of grace.
He watches her prepare for these interviews. Keira takes to rote memorization, the same line of dialogue spit out while seated before Ellen, Oprah, Regis and Kelly, God help them. “It’s what happens when the line between fact and fiction gets blurred,” she’ll say, on repeat. Her teeth catch on the twin t’s in fact and fiction, and hell, if anyone is to know of this, it would be her. It would be him.
Robbie and Cecilia can carry. A love like that, a love portrayed - at times it becomes difficult to separate. It is a theory, of course; this is how he rationalizes. It’s not like he confuses the two. That would just be fucking ridiculous on his part.
In the hot-seat, he relies on charm, a dash of wit, but mainly charm. Most times, it makes her sneer, arms crossed and no words necessary. It makes him coat it on in thick, smarmy layers all the more.
“You’re on in three,” and Keira sinks kind of funny in her seat and neither of them recognize this particular interviewer.
He offers them both an awkward hello and handshake.
There are these points where collision is nothing save for inevitable. It is in the tight circles the two of them draw around each other, concentric, like little nesting dolls, coming closer and closer to that middle ground where rather than peace or some kind of understanding will be found, it is disaster waiting for them.
Tense bodies will hit, jar against the impact. The signs will become far too telling: the clench of her jaw, the way her smile pulls at awkward angles; he will fidget more than necessary, his body language lolling past the point of flirtatious and into territory unnamed and all the more dangerous for it.
The moments are stacking high between them.
It was summer once, July hot and sweaty in a more uncomfortable as opposed to sultry way. When his phone rang, he had answered it, her name flashing on the caller ID, a different kind of mystery there with the lazy “hello?” he had offered.
There was that white noise only a crowded street can bring in the background. Her greeting in return was nearly swallowed whole by it, but he caught it, the blare of a horn catching on the, “It’s me, it’s Keira.”
He was sure this was the point where vague pleasantries are usually exchanged and a breeze tried for the open kitchen window, sweat collected, and he hadn’t the slightest as to when whatever tentative relationship - friendship, let's be clear - he established with her disintegrated into this. Just as he had tried for a stilted, “How are you?” she neatly interrupted him.
“Have you read the Sunday Mail?” she had asked, and he? He had lurched forward in his chair, a scrape against the floor. The conversation had taken a turn for the unexpected, and he cleared his throat.
“The Sunday Mail? No, no, I haven’t read it yet. Why? Anything worth a peak?” There was something a bit more natural here, he thought, their old rapport struggling to be restored.
“Oh. Well. It’s just. There was a piece, in there. About me, and about…Rupert. And, um, as it were, about you.”
Whatever attempt at their status of the past was knocked clear off course. He had stilled, his shirtsleeves rolled, a cuckoo clock mounted on the wall counted to ten, and there was a peculiar tightness to his chest.
“Beg pardon?” he finally said, his voice a bit choked; it was embarrassing, really.
“It’s really rather silly, actually. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered you about it,” and she had paused, her breathing heavier than normal; he assumed she was walking, down a street, London maybe, he was guessing there, and he had wondered if the heat was creeping down her spine just as insistently as his. For whatever reason, he hoped so. “It just says that, um, that Rupert was horribly jealous of, well, of you and me.” The last part of the sentence was rushed, as though there was some kind of veiled confession there, and for the life of him, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Let me get this straight: There is a piece in a Scottish paper about your boyfriend going all jealous fucking Othello because of you and me?” There was a small “mm-hmm,” of assent on her end and his hand felt damp against the phone. “But. There is no you and me.”
“I’m aware of it,” her answer came, sharp and fast.
He was quiet for a moment, uncharacteristic of him, really, and condensation rolled down the glass set out on the placemat there.
“Is the story true?”
She sighed.
“In its own way.”
“That a yes or a no?”
“What the bloody hell do you think?”
When he hung up the day was still unmercifully hot; his pulse had jumped, his hands stuck to the table, palms flat.
“And in five, four, three, two…”
The lights are shining; the studio audience cheers once the number one has passed.
He really is a fantastic kisser. She was not just being polite or sneaky, evasive, in this answer.
Despite her admission of this particular fact, the questions won’t stop coming concerning him, her, his lips, hers, and the dark corner of a library.
She finds it strange to talk about. Maybe it is the bright lights, the sea of strangers, the personality across from her and their strangely rapt interest in the men she has made out with in the past, where Mr. James McAvoy ranks among them. But really, there are very few things more personal than kissing. Okay, let’s be honest, there’s sex, there are the various indiscretions inherent in the act of sex and every sort of foreplay leading up to said sex. That lot is definitely more personal in nature to discuss, especially on live, daytime television.
But the kissing - of course to a degree it is choreographed, carefully thought out, like a dance of sorts. The cameras loom too close, like an extra lover or something, and there is the director and every other assistant out there, watching too. A kiss is still a kiss, you know. And with James, it was the hand along the jaw, the way it would wind deep into her hair, would hold the back of her head. It was the slip of his lips against hers, the softness, wet tongue, his eyelashes light against her cheek. She isn’t entirely sure how you explain all of this in a fifteen-second sound-bite, how one could even try.
Romance can be difficult to speak of as well, she imagines.
No, she is sure.
It makes her squirm a little.
They somehow waited until New York.
There was a hotel room, those dizzying circles they move in, and finally, it was a kind of snap. It wasn’t even because of something particularly dramatic or interesting.
He had wanted to double-check their call times for the next morning, The Today Show on the docket for one but not the other and he had just wanted to be sure, see, and it was Keira, the flash of her eyes and a “does it look like I fucking know?” she didn’t really mean and his hot glare, and just like that, they both stumbled.
Kissing off camera is different. It doesn’t matter how high she tilts her chin, it doesn’t matter if her hand cradling his head leads to her arm obscuring his face from view. She can gasp just as she pleases, even if it makes her face pull in unflattering angles. Her eyes can slant shut, remain lidded and half-opened. She can curl her fingers along the collar of his shirt, she can tug if she wants to.
She can call him James.
And she did.
His hands had found her breasts bare beneath her shirt and she thinks it was him that had shuddered first, his mouth open against her neck, and with the heavy flick of his thumb against her she was trembling just as hard.
The phone had rang - comically, they jumped apart.
The memory alone makes her throat constrict.
This man, this curious man, the interviewer gazes expectantly at her.
James raises a fist to his mouth to hide the laughter there.
“I’m sorry,” she blushes, “what was the question?”
He nearly chokes.
fin.