100 days of enemy recs: 68. Bond/Trevelyan

[melannen]

So Bond fandom ought to be a good one for this, because Bond sleeps with the enemy literally every film. The thing is though, he's bad at it? Like I have seen, I think, 2 old Bond films and read one of the Fleming novels, and at no point in any of them could I suspend disbelief that the Bond girl would have willingly slept with him. Ever. Which is why I have not seen any of the other Bond films or read any of the other novels.

Luckily there are also male villains in Bond! And Bond is frequently slashy as hell with them! Not as much fic as you'd think. (The vast majority of Bond slash is Craig-era Bond/Q, which has its charms, but is not really enemyslash even at a stretch, except in the way that any tech support/end user relationship is enemyslash.)

The one that has an always small but very persistent fandom is Bond/Trevelyan. I am, as previously established, not super well-up on canon here, but I believe that in one of the Brosnan movies, one of the main bad guys was a former MI6 agent who had been left for dead while working with Bond on a mission. Bond is understandably dealing with grief over this, because they had been lovers as well as partners in the field. But! It turns out Trevelyan did not die, he defected! He almost asked Bond to defect with him! And now he is the bad guy that Bond must fight. At the end of the movie Trevelyan is falling off a high place and Bond catches him at the last minute and has to decide! whether to let go!

My knowledge of this movie is best expressed by the fact that until today I had no idea Trevelyan was Sean Bean. But the lovers-to-enemies(-to-lovers) is very good. I encountered it very early in my fandom journey, and while there was never a whole lot of fic and I never followed the fandom very closely, it made a big impression.

Unfortunately the fandom is scattered to darkness of night, old recs lists are full of broken links, one of the seminal longfics exists only as an extremely dubious GoogleDocs upload that probably should not be linked on Fanlore but is anyway, etc. etc. But here are a couple I dug up!

• Half Of Everything Is Luck (2073 words) by EllaStorm
  Fandom: James Bond (Movies), James Bond (Classic movies), GoldenEye (1995)
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: James Bond/Alec Trevelyan
  Additional Tags: POV Alec, Surviving Impossible Plunges, dumb luck, Post Goldeneye, Enemies to Lovers, First Time, Cemetery, Emotional Baggage
  Summary:

  Alec survives the end of his second life and goes on the hunt for Bond. Unfortunately, killing someone is always a little easier if you actually want them to die.




• Tarot
  Author: Guede Mazaka
  Rating: PG-13 to NC-17. Violence, rough sex and non-con issues.
  Pairing: Alec/James
  Feedback: Constructive crit. or whatever else you’d like to say.
  Disclaimer: Belongs to other people who aren’t even remotely related to me.
  Notes: References all of Brosnan’s Bond movies. AU from the end of ‘Goldeneye.’ Italics are flashbacks.
  Summary: James doesn't let go of Alec's foot. The result is possibly worse than dying.

Comments

[china_shop]

and at no point in any of them could I suspend disbelief that the Bond girl would have willingly slept with him. Ever.

Yeeeah, I had to keep repeating to myself, over and over, "he's supposed to have mind-blowing charisma, it all makes sense if he has mind-blowing charisma, we just can't see it." (I can't remember which Bond that was, but it was the film with Halle Berry.) ;-p

[melannen]

In the last one I watched, I think he had sex with her in, like, a hayloft? And I could maybe buy that he was reasonably attractive and she thought he might be less annoying afterward so why not, but then she immediately switched sides to help him out, having met him about two hours ago at least half of which was spend rolling in the hay. And there is no world in which his disco stick was good enough to explain that, despite what the movie seemed to think.

[ivyfic]

I mean, he has a whole song about how “Nobody does it better.”

[melannen]

Show don't tell. :P (Which reminds me, I meant to put some Bond themes on the playlist.)

I do like the Astolat fic where everything Bond learned about seduction he learned from a middle-aged Dame Judi Dench. Judi Dench I would believe could turn anybody with one roll in the hay.

[pengwern]

Thank you for the recs! I've seen this trawling through the back catalogs of authors.

I remember seeing some of the 00Silva from Skyfall, but yes, it lapsed into cozy fic very quickly even if [tech support/end user relationship is enemyslash] is so very true! :D

[marginaliana]

the way that any tech support/end user relationship is enemyslash - a deep, deep truth here.

[ivyfic]

That’s Goldeneye, which I just rewatched, as the Kill James Bond podcast just covered it. (Quoth my gf, who has not seen Bond before, that was one of the good ones? I’m done.) Had no idea it had a fandom.

(And the set up in the movie is that Bond thought he watched Trevelyan be executed, so shortened the timer on a bomb to aid his own escape. Except it was an elaborate defection plan and the shortened fuse nearly killed Trevelyan. But yeah, in the movie, Bond did not make any decision to leave a man behind, because he’d watched him be shot in the head. Also, Trevelyan has a line about how he and James shared everything—that he follows by assaulting the Bond girl. Woo Bond movies!)

[melannen]

Well, he did leave the body behind, and you'd think he'd know better! Although since it was Sean Bean it's probably reasonable to just assume he really was dead.

Also, "Trevelyan has a line about how he and James shared everything—that he follows by assaulting the Bond girl. " Wow. (did James assault the Bond girl first? I'd take about 50-50 odds on that.)

[ivyfic]

He forcibly kisses her, but she’s into it with him, you see.

I mean, rape fantasy/all women are actually into Bond even if they’re canonically lesbian is a major part of this franchise. (And to be fair, not just this franchise.)

My brother went through a major Bond phase, so I’ve seen all but two of the Bond films. And even though I remember some of them fondly…they should mostly not be revisited.