Confidential Information

1. Villiers has been M’s aide for five years, and in that time, he has become very good at his job, which isn’t very prestigious, but is difficult nonetheless. He’s responsible for informing M on what M needs to know and taking care of everything M doesn’t. Learning the difference is all about experience and intelligence. But mostly experience.

2. He’s known Bond for about as long as he’s known M, and Villiers hates his recklessness, because it makes his job that much more difficult, needing to keep extra close tabs on him for M’s benefit. At first, when Bond came by, he liked to flirt with Villiers, in much of the same way Bond flirts with most secretaries, and the first few times, it flustered him, but afterwards, it was just irritating. Eventually, Bond picked up on it and decided to treat him like a living telephone switch, and he actually likes that a lot better.

3. He has a nice little flat with big windows and a girlfriend he’s fairly serious about even though they aren’t living together. She doesn’t know what he does, and it’s safer that way, even though she does know that he works for the government. She thinks he’s the assistant to some high up Treasury official, and he’s let her think that for a long time. One day, he may ask her to marry him, but it’s not set in stone, and sometimes, he gets really sick of always having to plan ahead.

4. He doesn’t let anyone from work call him by his first name. This way, he can separate who he knows at work from the people he knows in real life.

5. He can’t stomach anything more gruesome than the sight of blood, and even that depends on how much there is.

6. Once, M went on a ten minute rant about the some stupidity 005 got himself into, and Villiers can still recite the entire speech by heart if necessary. It pays to remember what M has and has not said.

7. There has been exactly one attempt to seduce him in order to gain information. When he was at a night club with some of his old mates from the Uni, showing them the London nightlife, a man came up to him and offered to buy him a drink. He’d been gorgeous in an exotic sort of way, and Villiers had been just tipsy enough not to think better of taking him home with him. He awoke in the middle of the night to find the bloke bent over his laptop, trying to crack the passwords. Villiers managed to get MI-6 security to pick him up before he noticed Villiers was awake, and as he was taken away, Villiers didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was trying to hack the wrong computer. (The real one was in a locked case, hidden inside one of the cabinets. He only takes it out when there’s something urgent.)

8. When he was thirteen, Villiers wanted to be a lawyer. His mother always did say that he was good with details. But in the end, he decided he didn’t want to do a job that involved wearing wigs. He told M that once, when she was interviewing him for the position, and she’d smirked at that, with an edge that could cut.

9. There are times when he forgets that every choice he makes, every call, every report, everything he sends straight to M or keeps from her, can mean the difference between life and death, a win or a lose for Her Majesty’s Service. Those times are when he does his job the best.

10. He’s a little addicted to Chinese takeaway, from too many nights of information gathering, not enough time to get anything decent or to go home to get something from there, and his body has become accustomed to the greasy, salty taste of it. He learned how to use chopsticks during his years studying Internal Relations, and it’s come in handy a few times while accompanying M when she travels the world. But even when they visit Beijing to tie up some business involving 003, he finds himself wanting the takeaway, which is even better than the real thing.

11. He’ll never be a field agent, and he isn’t resentful about that at all, because he likes being at a desk with a computer in front of him; the nervous system, not the muscle.

12. When he’s in a room, people usually don’t look at him, because he’s usually standing next to M, and even though he’s got quite a few inches on her, he knows that all the eyes are on her. He likes it there, one step back and to the side. Letting her be front and center while he watches things from the edges.

13. One of the things that’s not in his official job description (but he’s expected to do nonetheless) is to keep track of the MI-6 rumor mill, because M doesn’t really have the time to wade through all the shit herself, and besides, no one would tell her anything anyway. He knows who knows people, that Anderson has the best drug connections, that Bayes, not Natarajan, is the best source on Indian politics and Bollywood (Natarajan is a their best doctor on call, though, lightening quick an accurate), that there’s a death pool on the double-O agents that M really doesn’t need to know about. Villiers does have a few bets placed in it, but none on Bond, he knows the man well enough to know better than to do anything that stupid.

14. When he’s not too busy, he goes to the firing range in order to relieve the stress. Basic weapons training isn’t required, but it’s “strongly suggested”, and Villiers has never been averse to learning new ways to protect himself. His aim is good but not great, but he still likes the absolute focus you need when staring down at a target, the way everything else fades from your mind.

15. He has never had a heart-to-heart with M about anything. He knows he never will. That’s part of what he likes about her.