Chapter Text
Q had decided that he hated doors. If James truly was eavesdropping on even a fraction of Q’s thoughts, he’d probably be laughing himself silly at the new vendetta the boffin had acquired, after finding all the ways in which little kitten paws did not work well with doorknobs – especially when one of those paws was damaged and only bore his weight if he gritted his teeth and stepped on it funny. Door-handles that required only downward pressure did eventually concede to Q’s determined efforts, but any rounded knob that required dexterous turning was out of the question. That limited Q’s course severely, but he managed to find stairs to take him up. Hopping from step to step, most of his weight on three feet and the tape tugging irksomely at his fur with every abrupt movement of his body, Q reached the top floor and resisted the urge to growl at the door that blocked his way. It was only a horizontal bar, and he knew that he was heavy enough to depress it and open the door if he hung off it, but that meant more jumping, and he honestly had had his fill of that. His hindlegs ached.
“Maybe a bit of exercise should figure into your future, Q,” James’s voice crackled unexpected out of the earpiece, cheerful and so startling that Q flailed and managed to trip – on nothing, and while standing stationary. Righting himself before he actually ended up sprawled on the dusty floor, Q twisted his head back to glare in alarm at the earpiece, as if James could see him as well as hear him.
‘James, what the hell are you-?’ he started to mentally berate.
The older boy answered before the rant could really get going, “Don’t worry, Q, there’s no one listening in – for the moment, at least. Being hypersensitive to sound means being vulnerable to auditory overload, did you know that?” James sounded so innocent, it was insane. “Anyway, we’ve got a small window while her ears are still ringing. You’re on the top floor, yes?”
Resigning himself to Bond’s antics and pushing down his nagging worry at being caught thanks to the earpiece, Q formed the thought, ‘Yes,’ even as he crouched low to the floor and shifted his weight until he thought he was ready for a jump. He absolutely refused to admit that his fluffy little behind was swaying back and forth like any other common house-cat preparing to pounce. Back legs releasing like springs, he once again was airborne, landing on the horizontal bar and struggling not to slide right off it as his weight depressed it and released the catch. The timing was a nightmare, but then Q managed to drop – baring his teeth as his paw sent a lance of pain up to his shoulder – and skitter through the open gap before the door swung shut again with a blessedly quiet click. ‘And now I’m trying to figure out which way is east,’ he thought next.
“I can help you with that. I’m towards the east now, and I think I’ll be able to tell when you get closer to me,” James said with a reasonably sure tone. “Pick a direction and walk. I’ll tell you if you’re getting warmer. And Q – are you okay?”
Q had been starting to walk down the hallway to the left, limping and keeping at least ninety-percent of his weight off his right forepaw, but now he froze and looked down at said paw. He knew what James was talking about, but apparently James didn’t. Carefully choosing what words went from amorphous mental ramblings to crisp, mental texts, Q replied after beat, ‘Just scratched myself. It stings a little, but it’s nothing to worry about.’
An unconvinced noise filtered down through the earpiece, but James didn’t push the matter, instead murmuring, “You’re getting further away from me – if you switch directions, you should be headed towards your target. I’ll stay on the line.”
Obediently doing an about-face, Q did as he was told without further mental conversation, although his mind was bubbling with worries that he didn’t know whether James could decipher and hear or not. It was comforting to know that Bond’s telepathy had grown to the point where he could dependably keep track of one cat-shaped boffin, and with that in mind, Q picked up his pace as much as he could. His paw hurt, and he really just wanted to sit down and whine about it, but that was a luxury that he’d have to save for later. He’d just reached a door flanked by windows – a conference room that showed more shuttered windows beyond – and was preparing to tell James that he saw a bright green flag hanging on a coat-rack when suddenly James was snarling through the earpiece, “Dammit. The other two trainees split up. The girl’s getting close to me, and she must have her hearing back because she’s doing a bloody good job of it.”
‘Well, then for heaven’s sake, stop talking!’ Q slammed the thought back at him as hard as he could. He inspected the door: thankfully, not a turn-knob, but instead a lever that he knew he could turn if he jumped up and hung off it like a black-and-white Christmas ornament.
“Not until I warn you that her partner is headed your way,” James cut back furiously, and Q felt his fur stand on end. “I already broke her partner’s mobile in a brief scuffle earlier-”
‘James, when you say scuffle, do you really mean just a scuffle…?’
The other young man went on as if he hadn’t heard, “-So regardless of what she overhears from me, she can’t pass on to her partner, but something must have tipped them off, or at least made them suspicious. Regardless – I’m going to handle the girl. You need to get out of there.”
‘I’ve almost got the flag.’
“Your safety comes first. We’re supposed to be playing with kid-gloves, but our kid-gloves can still leave bruises,” Bond warned with a quiet, dangerous sincerity in his voice that made a shiver run down Q’s delicate, arched spine. There was no room to doubt the blue-eyed youth’s words, not when they were spoken in that tone.
Tone be damned, Q had come this far already. He crouched down and shifted back and forth on his haunches once again, ears flattened and eyes determinedly focused on the door-handle. ‘I’m going to get it anyway,’ he thought back as incontrovertibly as he could, and then he jumped.
Q had already checked, and the door didn’t have anything besides simple hinges – there was nothing to cause the door to spring back shut after it opened – so Q made sure that his leap was at an angle, allowing not only his weight to twist the door-handle and throw the catch but his forward momentum to swing the door open a good ways. His breath caught and his back-paws flailed as he caught his forelegs on the handle, slipping and sliding and clawing at the door’s wood finish as he collided and his perch rotated alarmingly. The door did what he wanted, fortunately, swinging inwards even as Q clung with the single-mindedness of a baby bird jumping to its first branch and praying to every avian deity in existence not to make a swift acquaintance with the earth.
The floor wasn’t far enough away to hurt Q too badly, but it soon turned out that he had more problems: something snapped as the door opened, and Q didn’t have time to do anything but tense and look up before something was falling from where it had been poised above the door. Q cried out, a high-pitched, involuntary noise of surprise and then pain as something hit him on the way down, jostling but not quite dislodging him. His ears, so accustomed to the quiet of the empty building, where assaulted by the tumult of fabric moving and harder objects striking the floor, and there was a sharp, ripping pain across his left shoulder. After a few seconds, he belatedly lost his grip on the door handle and fell, but by then everything was quiet again, and Q landed with a pained squeak on what felt like a huge sheet.
He expected to hear James shouting at him through the earpiece, but instead there was only silence. Panting and shaking from shock and adrenalin, Q craned his head back, and realized with dismay that the earpiece had been ripped clean off him, tape and all. Looking beneath himself, Q saw a large tarp with random objects tied like weights to its corners – weights that had no doubt crushed the earpiece as well as knocking it loose. With a little shudder of horror, Q realized that any human walking through the door would have been rather effectively netted if not knocked unconscious, but his small size had allowed him to escape the worst of it. Standing, he stumbled, realizing that he was going to still have a lot of bruises from catching even the edges of the trap.
And he no longer had James in his ear to give him directions – or warnings about the trainee headed Q’s way.
‘Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit,’ Q ranted out the litany in his head, but quickly scrambled off the improvised net. His shoulder hurt, at first with a sort of surface-sting that he attributed to having a patch of fur pulled out, but then spread deeper in what had to be a bruise. Belatedly recalling that James could still hear Q even if the reverse was no longer true, the boffin tried to calm his thoughts. He focused on more positive things, like the fact that he had the flag in sight, and if he jumped up onto the conference table, he could even reach it. Hoping that James could hear Q’s thoughts of pending success louder than the undercurrent of fear and worry. Leaping lightly from chair to table, taking it easy on his bruised and tiring body, Q got up high enough that he was within a normal human’s arm-reach of the dangling flag. That meant… one more jump, in which Q would have to probably hook the flag and drag it all the way back with him to the floor.
Swearing again at the pure irksomeness of it all, Q nonetheless braced his paws, thought, ‘Once more unto the breach,’ and sent his lean frame into midair once more.
Things went about as smoothly as Q expected, meaning he ended up knocking the entire coat-rack over (clearly it wasn’t very stable to begin with). He dearly hoped that Bond still had the undivided attention of the hyperauditory woman, because Q was now making quite a ruckus. However, by the time Q staggered to his feet and backed away from the wreckage – panting fast but not feeling much more bruised than before – he had a sheet of green cloth about the size of a file-folder clenched in his teeth. It tasted like dust and cheap soap, and Q couldn’t help the disgruntled little grumble that rolled up from his chest. Knowing that time was of the essence, however, he moved as quickly as he could on roughly three-and-a-half legs out the door and into the hall again. He’d almost made it to the stairwell door when he heard it opening, and skidded to a halt immediately. Tail pin-wheeling, Q spun around and slid into the nearest open room, squeezing himself under a raised set of shelves. The clearance between the lowest level and the floor was barely enough for Q to slip under, even with Q’s belly on the floor, but he made it and dragged the flag with him until there was no sign of his presence. Turning around while avoiding getting tangled in the flag, tail dragging the floor behind him like a trail of ink, Q eyed the strip of the room he could see from his hiding place.
His heart was doing its best impression of a jackhammer in his narrow chest, and his sides flared and narrowed with each panting breath, brushing faux-wood above him every other second. Now that he wasn’t dragging the flag but instead standing on it, Q could open his mouth to pant, hoping that he wasn’t a loud about it as he thought he was. Q was just in the process of trying to quiet his breathing when he heard footsteps and nearly stopped breathing altogether, head dropping onto his forepaws and licking involuntarily at his wounded paw for comfort.
Then something shocking happened.
He heard James’s voice.
The spark of elation Q felt was smothered instantly with a sick sort of horror as he heard what was being said – the words incongruous and wrong even if the voice was pitch-perfect. “Alec, are you still up here? Come on, mate, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
The word-choice was subtly off and the syncopation didn’t quite match – Q was instantly finding a million things wrong with what James was saying, even before he took into account that Bond was calling quietly for Alec and not Q. Bemused, Q tried to figure out if this was code or something even as the footsteps drew nearer. He most definitely did not give away his hiding position as James neared the doorway, although Q was still able to see James’s familiar blue eyes and handsome face peer into the room warily. If James were really looking for Q (or Alec, for that matter), he should have realized that this friend was capable of fitting into small places, but instead, the gap beneath the shelving was dismissed and the room apparently deemed empty, because James moved on.
It was then that everything clicked. The face looked like James’s, but as the young man walked past the open doorway, the rest of him looked wrong – he was subtly softer, rounder, and a shade shorter, too. Q felt like an idiot right then for forgetting that one of their opponent’s Gifts was the ability to change his looks from the neck up. Apparently that included vocal mimicry, too, because if the words hadn’t been wrong, Q would have come running as fast as his battered frame could carry him. Apparently the other team thought that Alec was miraculously still in the game, however, and that discrepancy had betrayed them. Q waited where he was until the other young man was far down the hall – headed towards the flag’s previous resting place – and then shot out from under the shelving so fast he felt like he scraped another strip of fur off his spine. Flag snatched up in his mouth again and fluttering over his back like an errant, square scarf, Q ran for the stairwell.
Even with a limp (which he was managing to ignore relatively well, thanks to adrenalin), Q was quick and quiet on his feet, and as his tail even decided to get with the program and help with turning. Entirely sure that he looked like a hot mess, Q nearly skidded right into the door, only to realize with a jolt that there was a problem with his plans: namely, the fact that he’d yet to learn how to pull a door open inwards.
Q actually hissed around the cloth in his mouth, furious with himself for not thinking of this and just plain furious with doors for existing. So frustrated at this development that he couldn’t think for a moment, Q didn’t do anything but silently turn his head when he heard another door open – this one further down the hallway, opposite of where the fake James had gone. Q felt frozen in place, unhidden and vulnerable in the middle of the hall with an impenetrable door in front of him, but thankfully, when the door swung slowly open, no one walked through it.
No human being, anyway. But there was a raven sitting on the door-handle.
‘Alec?!’ Q asked in his head, then remembered that without James, the two of them had no hope of communicating. At the same time, he heard a loud burst of swearing from the other direction as his thievery of the flag was noticed. Lacking options or time for contemplations, Q darted in Alec’s direction, even as the door started to slowly swing shut again. Q just barely made it in without getting his tail slammed in the door. Just as Q was spinning around to meow questioningly at Alec, the raven flapped wildly and… sort of fell off the doorknob.
‘He was drugged,’ Q’s brain caught up with things, even as he blinked stupidly at the sight of a physically incapacitated bird landing in a puffy file of beak and feathers. ‘Shit. James, if you’re listening, I want you to know that Alec decided not to stay wherever you left him.’ Q wasn’t about to complain, though – now he had a partner who could at least control his shape-shifting abilities, while Q was stuck until further notice without thumbs. Alec proved his usefulness a second later by changing back, sitting up, swearing fluently, and then locking the door. He swayed as if on a boat, but then turned to throw a crooked smile Q’s way.
“I couldn’t let you and Jamesy have all the glory now, could I?” he joked. His voice was awkward and thick, and Q was frankly surprised that Alec wasn’t slurring, but a second later he tried to stand up and only made it as far as his knees. “Fuuuuck. Back to a more manageable shape then,” the older boy muttered to himself, eyes squeezed shut and face pale like he was going to puke. Instead, he underwent another shape-shift, and instead of a tall human with a totally unsupportable center of gravity, he was a squat bird who could put his wings on the floor for balance if need be. At the moment he was sitting on his feathery arse with both wings and beak against the floor for balance, but he recovered a bit and tottered to his clawed feet. Marble-black eyes blinked slowly at Q, but then he clacked his beak once and began an awkward, corvine shuffle down the corridor he’d just let Q into. Hopping became gliding, and Q trotted along behind him. They’d made it past another door by the time they heard someone shouting and pounding on the one they’d locked behind them.
Between the two of them, doors were no problem, although human-Alec couldn’t stand and raven-Alec hit things when he flew. Q was pretty sure that no one was aware that the flag had been stolen by a cat and a raven, however, so with James still apparently keeping the auditorily Gifted girl busy and the face-changing young man listening for footsteps louder than the light clicking of bird claws and silent padding of feline feet, Alec and Q were outside and home-free in what felt like no time at all.
Still as awkward as all hell but actually getting a bit better, Alec used his beak to gently prod Q along. When the beleaguered pair reached the fence, Alec took the flag in his beak and, before Q could meow in protest, beat his wings in a flurry of black. By some miracle, he made it over the fence, although his landing included more skidding than usual. Q couldn’t see where he’d gotten through the chainlink fence last time, but without the earpiece, he merely picked a hole at random and wriggled his way through. For a panicked moment, he thought he’d gotten himself stuck midway, but then Alec – looking supremely helpful and as drunk as a bird could get – stumble-skipped forward and proffered the flag. Q made a disgruntled noise before giving in, hooking his claws into the flag, and holding on as Alec pulled as much as he could. Q popped free of the fence and Alec fell over. It would have been hilarious if Q didn’t ache everywhere and if they weren’t still in danger of getting caught. Q limped hurriedly to Alec’s side, nosing at the raven’s sleek feathers, until Alec gave himself a shake and splayed his feet beneath him again. In a reverse of their previous positions, Q came around to grab the other end of the flag, and tugged his groggy companion into motion, and kept hold of the flag just in case.
So it was that the two of them left the field of play, as pleasantly as tiny children holding hands through a park but as weary as battle-worn veterans and about as surefooted as drunks. They’d only just made it to the shadow of a nearby building, relying almost entirely on Q’s night-vision by this point, when suddenly that night-vision disappeared and Q found himself sitting – in human form – and spitting a corner of neon-green cloth out of his mouth. “Shit,” he grumbled, but scooted himself back into the shadowed lee of a doorway, reaching down to pick up Alec as he went. It felt so strange to be holding Alec instead of the other way around, but the raven went willingly (even gratefully) into the cradle of Q’s arms. The boffin winced as feathers slid like lace across his right palm, but it was too dark to tell how bad the cut was. It didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore, though, and Q could move his fingers perfectly well. Alec’s sleek head bobbed dazedly even once he was securely settled in the cradle of Q’s right arm, and even in the dark it was clear that his eyes were blinking torpidly. He kept the flag grasped tightly in his beak, however, and made a smug churring noise like he’d won already.
“This flag still has to get back to your home base, remember that,” Q warned, but couldn’t hide an almost giddy note from entering his own voice. It was starting to sink in what he’d just done – stealing something out from under the noses of two future spies.
Q and Alec were both torn from their respective thoughts of triumph by a sudden ruckus around the corner. It sounded like two dogs fighting, if dogs could curse and swear like a whole ship full of sailors. As crashing noises sounded and Q picked up the unsettling sound of punches falling, both the boffin and the raven in his arms cringed and held their collective breaths. Q could feel Alec’s heartbeat thumping hard against his injured palm where he clutched the other shape-shifter closer, and they both stared unblinkingly towards the source of the noises until there was a particularly harsh snap that sounded almost bone-on-bone, and then a form was falling into view to sprawl across the alleyway. It was a woman, dark-skinned and dressed in grey and black much like James had been, and after a small groan she went limp.
As alertly and swiftly as a hound on a scent, none other than James Bond followed, his panting breaths harsh in the quiet and blood dripping from his nose. This time it was definitely him, too, every detail about him familiar. He immediately went and rolled the girl into a recovery position, also checking her pulse at her throat before calling out, “Alec, Q, you two there? I was following you both, but she was following me.”
Relief flooded through Q and washed out seemingly all of the tension in his body. He only kept from turning into a puddle because he knew he’d drop Alec if his arms went limp. “We’re over here, James,” he replied gratefully, and was standing on shaky legs even as the Telepath straightened and strode their way.
Blue eyes went immediately to the bundle of black in the sling of Q’s arm, narrowing in a taut glower but looking very worried, too, if Q was not mistaken. “Alec, you bloody bastard, you were supposed to stay put. You’re higher than a kite.”
In answer, Alec’s throat merely puffed up to make a croaking noise, and he shook his head pointedly – thus shaking the flag.
“He did help me out,” Q defended helpfully, “I was in a bit of a bind and probably wouldn’t have gotten out so easily if he hadn’t turned up.”
Bond sighed, and stopped pretending to be mad. Instead, he reached out – hands hesitating for a moment – and rested one palm on the side of Q’s neck and the other on Alec’s feathery back. Q leaned unconsciously into the warmth and pressure of callused skin on his neck, a gleeful smirk unfurling across his face until his cheeks physically ached with how broad it was, pride blooming in full-force within his chest. James’s other hand caressed Alec’s jetty mantle with absentminded but sincere care, and the raven seemed to relax further into Q’s hold, almost dropping the flag as his head drooped.
Still pressing into Bond’s hand a bit, head even tilting of its own accord until Q could feel the edge of Bond’s thumb under the edge of his jaw, Q felt the need to point out, “Um… James, your nose…?”
The mood of silent celebration was broken. “Fuck,” James swore, dropping both hands and nearly crossing his eyes in an attempt to assess the damage. He brought one hand up gingerly, showing scraped knuckles before smearing them with more blood. Looking thoroughly disgruntled, James muttered, “I don’t think she broke it, but I’m definitely going to have to avoid well-lit places until this is over. Are you all right, Q?”
“Fine,” Q said. He chose not to mention his hand or the ache in his shoulder from losing the earpiece and falling; his small injuries felt insignificant compared to what he’d accomplished. Endorphins might have also played a large role in his answer, as they put a static charge in his blood and muffled aches and pains. “You might want to take the flag from Alec before he drops it, though.”
And so it was that the three of them got moving again. James lead the way, moving with an economy of motion as well as a leonine stride that Q hadn’t quite noticed before, but rather appreciated now, as he followed behind and watched. Alec fussed a little about being carried, but only until he was allowed to perch on Q’s shoulder. With Bond now carrying the flag stuffed deep into his coat-pocket, Alec was free to use his beak for grabbing things – namely, Q’s shirt, working together with his slim claws to keep him from falling off. Q wasn’t used to the weight of him, but with so many new and exciting things happening to tonight, he was pleased as punch to be Alec’s source of transportation.
Alec was drugged, Q was a bit rough around the edges, and James looked like the winning team after a schoolyard brawl, but the three of them made it back to a more populated part of town. It appeared that the other team had finally admitted that they weren’t going to get the best of their opponents, because no one gave them any trouble along the way.
When they eventually reached streets where the night hadn’t snuffed out the pulse of the city, James took Alec from Q. He also hesitated again, shifted awkwardly, and then dragged the leggy boffin in for a quick hug. Alec squawked at being caught in the middle; Q was too surprised to do anything at all but stumble forward, thinking distractedly that he was going to end up bloodstained thanks to James’s nose if he wasn’t careful.
James was careful, however, and only moved in close for a moment – and only close enough to whisper, “Thanks, Q,” into the dark-haired man’s ear with sincerity an ocean deep. When he pulled back, Q stood stunned, and he had a feeling he’d never forget the crooked slant or gentle heat of James Bond’s smile. Or the infinite gentleness with which James tucked their corvine companion into his coat, proving that Q wasn’t the only one who could get zipped up in there for safe passage.
“Go home, Q,” James suggested more than demanded, “Alec and I can finish up here. Besides.” The rogue gave a wink. “We can’t have anyone realizing who our secret weapon is, can we?”
~^~
Q would hail himself a cab after that, aware that James and Alec were wasting precious minutes just to keep an eye on him – from the shadows, of course, because James’s nose would still be making an incarnadined mess of the lower half of his face. Jumped-up on adrenalin, Q would look back one last time at his friends, flash a smile as crazy as any of the ones James or Alec ever wore, and slip into his cab. He’d be smiling the whole way home, and only when he was back in his dorm-room with the first-aid kit would he realized the insanity he had just partaken in. Hand cleaned and bandaged with decent skill, Q would fall exhaustedly into bed – but not until first making sure that his phone was charged and nearby, in case he got another text.
He wouldn’t have the faintest idea that the following morning would include an unmarked car in front of his building and two men in suits awaiting to take him for a little, involuntary trip to MI6.
After making sure that Q was safely on his way home, James would pick up the pace, starting to tire but still possessing more than enough energy to weave his way from street to street. Alec would be almost asleep in his jacket, but would rouse enough a few minutes later to demand to be let out. After that, Alec would become James’s sentinel: perched on his shoulder as he’d been on Q’s, watching all of James’s blind-spots as well as he could in the dark. Even drugged, Alec would prove to be a valuable asset. Working together, James and Alec would make sure that their opponents never got anywhere near them.
At two in the morning, Alec and James would complete their mission, successful. At two-thirty in the morning, they’d check in with their handlers.
By three in the morning, they’d be detained at MI6. No one would explain why, but at three in the godforsaken morning, Alec and James would be too beat to argue or care. Holding cells weren’t that uncomfortable; MI6’s Medical made quick work checking both of them over and prescribing bed-rest as the only thing they needed. Too tired and rung out to think clearly, James would stretch out on the holding cell’s first bed and Alec would decide to share it with him – as a raven, tucked between Bond’s back and the wall, making him virtually invisible to both the security cameras and anyone looking in the door. At least one night-guard would panic before realizing that one of their charges was not missing, but a shape-shifter. At some point during the night, Alec would transform back to his human self. Usually Q was the one who transformed unconsciously, but this time, it’d be Trevelyan. The amusing part would be that neither would even wake up for the occasion, instead merely shifting in their sleep until the bed comfortably held them both, back to back like Gemini twins.
Silent and watchful, alert despite the fact that it would now be nearly six in the morning, a woman with hair silvered by age and eyes sharpened by experience would look into the holding cell of her two top trainees. She’d think, with certainty, that they held potential. Potential for what, she wouldn’t know.
Potential to be top spies? Sources of mayhem in her life? Prodigies in all the skills the world never needed to know about?
Or potential to be major leaks in top-secret information?
M would leave her two new boys to sleep just a bit longer, and head back to her office to prepare for what would be a very, very interesting – and apparently long-overdue – meeting.