you are the big rocket launcher

ABNEG
25150453
EAMES
DC
PRES
RAF22-14

Eames receives both of his guns at the same time: a Sig Sauer .40 calibre P228 (with a .357 barrel extra) and a Heckler & Koch HK417 rifle. They are plain and ugly weapons, designed specifically for their purpose, and the first time Eames disassembles them, he lets the metal warm in his hand as he cleans them, and when he puts them back together, they are alive. Eames is loyal to his guns, and they in return are loyal to him.

He scores in the 99th percentile for all target based tests, and in the 98th percentile on all written examinations. He is only twenty-one.

Flight Sergeant Keats tells him, "Be careful, Eames, or you'll get more attention than you might want."

"Yes sir."

+++

For Eames, there is no beginning. His first memory is of him surrounded by too many goats at a petting zoo, and crying for his mother. If he remembers earlier than that, he doesn't know.

+++

Eames hikes up the rifle to a rest position on his shoulder and grabs his crotch as his regiment hassle the new American Marines. Afghanistan is a shit hole, and apparently the American base had been flooded by a busted sewage pipe, making it become more of a literal shit hole. The Lieutenant-Colonel had told the SAS to "not be bloody gits", but there were so many ways to take that.

"This is my rifle, this is my gun," Eames and his regiment chant as they thrust their hips forward. "This is for fighting, this is for fun!" A few of the Marines echo their gestures, one of them stepping forward to turn around and moon Eames's regiment.

"Hey oh, soldier! Didn't think poufs were allowed on your side!"

"Unlike y'all," one of the Americans call out. "Need some dick to get the job done?"

"Don't you talk to your superiors that way!" Eames calls, pulling rank, because pulling rank on American gits seems appropriate.

"Yeah, what kind of rank you got?" says a man labelled Browning, who Eames notices carries the silver bar of First Lieutenant. He doesn't know who Browning is at the time, though he would regret knowing him later.

He steps forward. "Squadron Leader Eames," he replies, raising his eyebrow at Browning. "Stand down, Looey, take your boys outta here before we can't help our British pricks."

Browning flicks him off, and gestures to his group. "Decamp, soldiers, to the bunks. And don't forget to show your appreciation for our hosts later. Just don't drop the soap."

+++

The sand is everywhere, in everything. They brush their teeth with sandy toothbrushes, they eat their Wayfarer chicken curry pouches with sandy utensils. Eames enjoys trading his pouches with the Americans; they get his curry, he gets their beef ravioli. It all tastes like sand anyway. But everyone fights over the powdered chocolate pudding. It makes the coffee taste better.

Eames brushes sand out of his hair and checks his Sig, clicking out the .40 calibre barrel and sliding in the .357 before replacing the magazine, scratching his cheek.

There's a scuffle on the American side of the camp, and Eames ambles over to watch.

"What's the scuffle?"

"Don't worry about it. None of your concern."

"Well, then, you can stop kicking all the bloody sand about, can't you?"

The two men stare at him for a long moment before Eames turns on his heel and walks away.

+++

It isn't that Eames is necessarily…obsessed with weapons. In dreams, he can handle anything, knows how this obscure Russian anti-tank gun works, or that World War Two gunner plane. In the real world, it actually takes some time and motivation to learn weaponry.

So he starts, obviously, with Bond.

He chooses a Walther PPK as his personal weapon, runs through hoops to become a Registered Firearms Dealer. The only time Eames regrets not living in America was the moment he started collecting his Bond guns.

It is even more difficult to get a permit to carry his Walther concealed. "Being in a war zone has affected your mentality," the Home Office says.

"Of course it hasn't," Eames says. It's easier to lie than to say I sleep in my bathtub, my finger waiting on the ready.

A fortnight later, he receives special permission. As a member of SRR Company 14, it is realised that it may be necessary for Captain Daniel Charles Eames to carry a Walther PPK, Issue Number 35671 in a concealed fashion. Find attached a permit and rules regarding carrying requirements.

When Eames straps the shoulder holster on, standing in front of the mirror, he most assuredly does not say, "My name is Bond. James Bond," and he most certainly does not give the mirror his most devastatingly charming smile.

He would deny it to the end of his days.

+++

On the back of Eames's helmet--where other soldiers write the names of loved ones, or the popular US Marine saying Death Before Dishonour,a Bible verse or some patriotic mess—he writes:

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

+++

The wild berries are out, and the air is fragrant and heavy with the scent of them. I'll pick some later to fold into some yoghurt, a light lunch with tea I'll be sure to brew after this difficult chore.

I have been here twice already, after a quick pilgrimage to Nice, France. I collect a seashell there, clean it and go back to a church that blesses it. The priest has seen me twice before, and sometimes he invites me in for coffee and, if I'm late, a supper of daube and red wine. I stay for a few days with friends and leave for England, arriving in Heathrow and hiring a car for Yorkshire, and Settle.

Settle is a beautiful name for a beautiful place. I have been here many times, but now when I climb the hill to the house I can no longer truly call my own, the steps are hard.

I am greeted by two Great Danes, who forget they're not lap dogs and bowl me over with their enthusiasm. I say hello to the housekeepers and make my way into my bedroom, unpacking the few bits of luggage I have. I sit on the bed with the seashell in my hand, turning it over and over and over.

It's his birthday. Another birthday I shan't have with him. Another birthday where I go to the graves of his family and clean them all before I get to his. I will glue the shell to his tombstone, a third one, for the three birthdays we have missed together. I will clean his grave, clearing away debris and dead leaves. The grounds-keeper, Matthew, saves this job for me, and I am forever thankful that he does.

The dogs will be out, running around, ignoring this chore of mine. The cemetery is surrounded by trees, centuries old. They'll hold their secrets, as well as mine, as I sit and tell him what he's missed. I tell him about my life, what I do, and where I've been. I tell him I've spoken to his mother, and how she implored me to come back to Settle, to settle. It's a long old joke.

When there is nothing left to say I will get up and collect the berries and go inside. The house will be quiet, and I will listen to the silence. If I listen closely, I can hear our vows spoken on the sands of Nice those three years ago.

But perhaps it's just the wind. The tea is warm, and the berries are delicious.

I am tired of listlessness. Every time I sit down to tell this journal something important, my brain can't think beyond watching the numbers count down until someone, somewhere, tells me that I'm over my character limit. Thinking in 140 characters is bothersome and worrisome; I prefer ink on paper but sometimes the pen skips.

All I can think of, beyond this moment and that moment, is how we are beyond compatible. The last time we talked at any length your words were like a balm on my soul and I felt each breath like a thousand beautiful kisses. We sat and I watched you de(con)struct and now building you back together is hard because my fingers keep slipping over your skin.

I need your fingers in my hair and I need your heartbeat under my lips and I need your hips against mine. I want to be your factory girl, but somehow my heart's being broken before I can even find the last piece.

This is us: in the back-seat, thighs barely touching; in my bedroom, watching each other (or the television); on the beach, watching the last gasp of sunset. What are we hearing? I can't share my headphones, but I promise it's good.

With the windows down, it smells like dawn. Between my sheets, it smells like your (un)clean skin. If only we had known...maybe we could have tried this once before, when we were young and my wrists were still bruised.

I still talk about Singapore like it meant something, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Maybe it was Osaka, when I was early and scared, and you called to ask where I was. I remember your voice better than I remember the lyrics to the last song I heard. Your voice has become my last great lullaby, and I haven't heard it long enough to go to sleep.

Sometimes I wish I could curse you and your insistence on having my heart. It isn't mine to give.

I'm telling you this in the distinct hope that you'll wake up tomorrow, next to her, and see me.

I have this bitter-sweet notion of what "home" is. I've lived in this country for eight years, but I've always felt like a mismatched puzzle piece. I'm feeling nostalgic for something I've never really known.

When I was sixteen, I was a sophomore in high school and still the 'new kid' (in fact I was always the new kid, as nobody new came to my high school after me). My English still wasn't very good, and while I wasn't shy, I didn't have many friends (one or two). I was still riding the bus when everyone in my class was starting to get cars.

The music of my sophomore year is what stands out to me: I was listening to The Strokes and the White Stripes, and it's really the first time I started shaping my "musical tastes", away from all the pop music I had been feeding my musical diet with. Everybody remembers where they were when they heard that sick bass and drum line from Seven Nation Army or how familiar 12.51 from the Strokes sounded -- familiar like a favourite t-shirt or the smell of your mother's perfume.

I was a tomboy, jock (sort of, because I went to a fine arts academy and we had no sports) and had a boyfriend, sort of. I had this weird, large, unwieldy life and this crushing loneliness and inexplicable sadness. I played the drums and I played the fiddle but I wasn't nearly as talented as anyone else at the school so my music was mediocre at best.

The summer before my sophomore year was the first year I ever went to California to visit my father -- my parents had divorced three years earlier, and my father wasn't even in Los Angeles for three days until he had to fly out to Washington DC. I was left to figure out the city on my own -- a black kid in Beverly Hills, who could afford a driver every day. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and it took me a while to fall in love with the city. I'm not cool or chill enough to be a SoCal girl, but I can fake it with a smile and I have a great tan all year.

I'm not lonely any more, but I'm still nostalgic. funnily enough, I'm leaving to make my own way back home.

Got stuck in Malibu at a house party watching a bunch of barbies and kens with names like Ashleigh and Ethan do lines on the kitchen counter like it was a buffet. Semi-okay music and a bunch of complete strangers except for the person that invited me. I wanted to do some lines but didn't, just watched and remembered the taste of dried blood later. I don't even think I had a drink, stayed sober to watch the stars and the water.

I don't know if it was cold but I stayed close to the fire-pit and drank my coconut juice (young, with pulp!) and listened vaguely to La Roux. It's strange to be known (not like haha can I get your autograph and a picture known) but people say hey, Sabrina and I'm looking at them like maybe they've been lurking on my Facebook, which is ridiculous because it's private. But seriously, who are you? And for that matter, who am I?

My friend vanished but people filtered out to the deck where I sat on a railing. I would have jumped if the sand didn't look so hard and uninviting. I gave J Alfred Prufrock a run for his money, the sky stretched out above us like a velvet Elvis painting and none of the girls talking about anything but cute shoes and who's a skank.

It's all about finding something in the back of your mother's closet, some relic from the sixties that might make you more relevant to that guy you wanna take home. I am guilty of wearing my mother's love beads doubled around my neck. She tells me how she spent hours stringing them herself, and I wonder why she did it. They work, but I'm no true hippie.

I am not the only girl with chipped red nail polish and tired eyes and a careful studied nonchalance but I am the only girl who has a chance.

I teach French and on the final day of classes before spring holidays, I showed my students a Belgian film called Ernest et Célestine, which in simple terms is about a bear (Ernest) and a mouse (Célestine) who become friends. It's a well-drawn animated film. My students had never heard of it but they mostly enjoyed it. Some of them had trouble suspending disbelief.

My favourite scene is when Célestine moves into Ernest's house. Ernest is none too pleased with the idea but Célestine has run out of options. She asks 'Well, how will you get rid of me? Can't kill me with a broom, I'm too fast. You could try with a regular old mouse trap, but that's difficult because it's been around for decades and we already know how to work around that..."

I like mice. I don't like killing them. I like mice winning against all odds. At my farm in England we had four mousing cats that would bring me mice every morning, and sometimes shrews. They were mostly disembowelled and unrecognisable.

And then I realised, that the best mouse trap, even after all these centuries...is a cat.

Sorry mice. Looks like you won't win all of them.

I have fallen in many dreams, but I've never caught myself going down. I was on the Great Wall of China with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (because, you know, that's what you do), and we were doing parkours and base-jumping, trying to get away from the Chinese police, and we pushed off from one of the guard towers and went soaring and ended up on top of the Onion Domes in Moscow, sliding down them. We grabbed the stems at the top and climbed back up, and we made out for some seconds before the Russian police were like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP THERE, GET OFF OUR NATIONAL TREASURE!!!"

So we looked at each other and pushed off and went flying, balancing on wires, and shot off to the Eiffel Tower, where we were clinging to the side, and people were stopping and staring, and clapping, and Joseph hands me something (a flat, cool bit of haematite) and then we push off and land on the London Eye. We run up to the top and we almost slip off the top carriage. Joseph says "Do you trust me?" and I reply "I don't know, should I?" We grab hands and push off the carriage and go flying and land on the Empire State Building.

Joseph vanishes, and I panic as I'm jumping and doing parkours on the edges of the Empire State Building, and suddenly a window opens and it's Joseph peeking his head out. He says, "I told you could trust me," and pulls me in. We kiss, and I wake up.

When I woke up it felt like I had gone running four miles. My legs throbbed, the pain of working out, and I could feel his stubble around my lips where we kissed.