[ She smiles plenty, always has, the arcadist formerly known as Miss Moneypenny (now Mrs. M of a different kind). The first time they'd ever met she'd been all smiles too — and girlish gaul and brutish bite, burnished with champagne and silver gold, wrapped up in studded leather and technicolor trappings. Since then her mouth has been a venus fly trap, it's been a wolf's smile full of wolf's teeth and a brawler's bloody maw, but with Iain there's something else — something fleeting but which always returns in the end. Not a softness but a quietness, a ruefulness dipped in sweetness, all that saccharine giving her a kitten's claws (still capable of prickling, of breaking the skin and drawing blood, but in way that says pet me, hold me, never leave me; keep me and I'll love you forever).
A moment passes, then two. Then the phone rings. ]
[ The first time they'd ever met, he'd been nothing at all. A thin line for a mouth, a dead sort of sharpness to his gaze, nothing but economical action and efficiency. Now there's a glow to the way he looks at her, and he goes above the minimum both in action and in speech for her sake. It's a curious thing, how they've managed to meet in the middle, but not something he'd change for the world. (There's nothing — nothing — that he wouldn't do for her.)
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A moment passes, then two. Then the phone rings. ]
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He picks up on the second ring. ]
Ta.