Gin and Bitterness

Fandom: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy / Smiley series
Rating: G
Characters: Ann Smiley, George Smiley
Primary Pairings: Ann Smiley/George Smiley
Word Count: 397 

General Summary: It is common knowledge that the Smileys are perpetually at war with one another.

It is not common knowledge, however, that this is patently untrue. 

Author’s Note: Another Ann and George prompt from February 2013.

Contrary to common gossip, the Smileys were not perpetually at war with one another, if at all. George Smiley knew this, as did Ann, although there were times in which even they were fooled by appearances. The truth, a George might have had it, was in the details.

It was in how, on an especially rainy day, Ann Smiley arrived home from her most recent escapade to find her husband sitting by the phonograph, his chin resting atop his hands as he stared intently into space whilst a symphony orchestra played Liszt. She had purchased the recording specifically for him despite his general disinterest in music because she had recognised the symphony’s name as being modelled after one of the lengthy German books that lined their shelves.

It was, too, in the way that George Smiley one day noticed in his wife’s eyes a keen understanding of at least a large portion of the words leaving his lips as he read aloud from a battered old copy of Goethe’s Faust.


Read the Rest Here...

Fandom: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy / Smiley Series
Rating: G
Characters: Ann Smiley, George Smiley
Primary Pairings: Ann Smiley/George Smiley
Word Count: 369

General Summary: The Smileys have never been congruous in their perceptions of the world. 

Author’s Note: A short piece about Ann and George. Written 25 October 2012.


The night is unseasonably warm, and to save money they don’t need, the bedroom window of the house at Bywater Street has been left open. The sun hasn’t quite finished going down, but the stars are already out and barely visible through the dark clouds over London, casting the entire sky a hazy mixture of greys and violets. Sitting beside the window, in a silk dressing gown and smoking a long-stemmed cigarette, her hair tied back from her face in a fashion that most would call “striking,” but that her husband quietly deemed “very like you,” the still - by most standards - newly married Ann Smiley languishes in a way that she didn’t know she was capable of.

Read the Rest Here...