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“Well, here’s a sight I never expected to see.”
Q jumped as he heard James’s voice coming from immediately behind him, and he would have probably dropped his sandwich if he wasn’t so used to jumping with tea in his hand instead. He swung the chair around with his legs, glaring up at the intrusion to his lunch break.
“I think I’m missing something, because nothing looks out of the ordinary right now,” he retorted. “Apart from you maybe showing up to drop your equipment off in time, that is.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually eat before,” James said, studying him closely. “This certainly puts a new twist on things.”
“A new twist on—” Q repeated, spluttering over the words. “A new twist on what, Bond?”
“Oh, nothing.” James waved a hand. “Just a few conspiracy theories going around, that’s all. A lot of us think you’re actually some kind of advanced AI. You know, no one’s ever seen you eating, or sleeping, and many of us are under the impression that you don’t actually leave the building. But apparently there’s now new information to consider.”
Q glared, taking an angered bite of his sandwich both out of spite and because he was incredibly hungry, and no amount of annoyance was going to cut too far into his lunch break. His lunch breaks were rushed as it was, and often interrupted – Q would be damned if he was going to sacrifice a part of it to James bloody Bond.
“Well, now you know,” Q told him, once the look of exaggerated amazement on James’s face had become too annoying to bear. “Now piss off and leave me be. I don’t often get any peace and quiet around here and I do actually quite enjoy it, believe it or not.”
“You’re full of surprises, Q,” James said. For a wonderful moment it looked as though he was actually going to leave, and then he paused, glanced back at Q’s food. “Where did you get that from, anyway? I’m being serious. It smells great.”
“I’m not telling you,” Q said, and James raised an eyebrow. “I’m not. It’s my secret. Maybe I’ll tell you one day if you behave enough. But for now, skedaddle.”
*
Perhaps it was childish, keeping such pointless information to himself, and Q knew with hindsight that it was that simple and stubborn decision to not tell James where he had got the bloody sandwich from that had started this whole mess. He should have known better, but he had been hungry and not exactly working to his full cognitive abilities, and at the time he would have probably said damn near anything to get rid of James long enough to enjoy what little lunch break he could salvage. But there was at least a reason to his madness.
The thing was, Q would never admit to anyone that actually, he made those sandwiches himself. It would open up far too many questions, seems several people were now convinced that Q had found some rustic artisan sandwich place that he wasn’t telling anyone else about, and if they discovered that all of them were Q’s own invention he knew he would have to fess up about the rest of it, too – the rest of it being that since a very young age, Q had been a natural in the kitchen, and still found nothing more relaxing than making meals up from scratch, and inventing his own recipes, and bringing all this knowledge together in everything he could get away with. The coffees he brought in in his reusable travel mug – all his, created in the morning with his own array of beans and syrups. The strange smelling tea blends everyone was always asking about – also his. Eventually it got to the point where Q had to admit that he didn’t have the time to escape the building for an hour to find lunch at work, and so it would make much more sense for him to bring his own food in. He tried to keep it simple, but apparently he had very different ideas of “simple”.
So far, most people had left him alone. At the very least, they had accepted his half-excuses that he didn’t remember where. But Q knew that all of that was going to come to an end now he had made the mistake of refusing to tell James Bond something, and once the food had settled and his brain had started working normally again, Q could have kicked himself.
*
“It’s none of the coffee shops,” James said, dropping a folder down onto Q’s desk. Q registered some brief surprise that James had done the paperwork within the time frame he had asked, but quickly realised that it was probably all a ploy to come and bother him again. At least he had waited until after lunch this time.
“What isn’t?” he asked, just to play dumb.
“Your sandwich,” James said, and Q groaned.
“Really?” he asked, pulling the folder towards him and flipping through the loose pages. Impressive – it was all actually done, and not just the top two sheets. Maybe James had noticed that Q checked before he left the department now. “Haven’t you bloody spies got anything better to do?”
“Oh, the others do. I’m just in a bit of a bind at the moment. M’s going over my latest expense report and isn’t entirely alright with letting me loose again until it’s all been sorted out.”
“A wise choice,” Q said grimly. “So you’ve come down here to harass me instead, then? Over sandwiches, no doubt.”
“Well,” James said, and to Q’s horror he made himself comfortable in one of the chairs opposite Q. “I figured that if you’re not going to tell anyone where you’re getting them, there must be a reason for that. Either it’s a major issue of national security, or it’s just a really good place and you’re trying to keep it all to yourself.”
Q put the folder down.
“An issue of national security,” he deadpanned. “What, do you think I’m sending out messages to enemy operative through my sandwich fillings?”
James shrugged. “I mean, your words, not mine.”
“It’s a sandwich, Bond.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“And I told you I might tell you, if you behaved. This doesn’t look much like behaving to me.”
“I prefer the thrill of the chase,” James said with a grin, and Q fought the urge to throw something at him.
*
Of all the secrets Q had to keep, he never thought this would be one of them. At first he had hoped, naively, that James might get bored, but he quickly realised that there was no one quite as stubborn or as ridiculous as a bored double-0. Q first spotted him on Wednesday morning of the following week, and immediately he knew that this wouldn’t have been the first time that James had tailed him on his way to work. The fact that Q spotted him was pure chance, and anyone else would have been fooled by the way that James immediately made a beeline for him rather than trying to hide.
“Fancy seeing you here!” he said, as Q slammed his Oyster card down against the card reader and ducked through the barrier.
“Oh, yes,” he called back over his shoulder. “What a coincidence!”
James caught up with him again back on ground level, falling into step beside him, which was something Q could at least appreciate in the crowds as people seemed to just instinctively get out of James’s way, making Q’s life much easier.
“Forgive me,” James said, “but I think I may have detected a note of sarcasm in your voice there.”
“I think you may be correct.”
“Any why might that be?”
“Well,” Q said, pausing as though he had to really think about it. “You see, I’m currently under this utterly paranoid delusion that you might be following me.”
“I would have to agree with your assessment there.”
“That you’re following me?”
“No, that it’s paranoid and delusional.”
Q shot him a sideways glance and saw exactly what he expected – James looked thoroughly amused. Not for the first time, Q wondered why he was keeping the sandwich situation a secret in the first place, because surely this was far too much trouble for something that didn’t really matter in the long run. He couldn’t even tell himself why he didn’t want people to know about it; perhaps it was because he was just a private person by nature, or maybe this was another case of him being incapable of knowing where exactly the line between personal and professional was. He knew it was always a good idea to keep such things separate, and that much was easy when it came to his name and where he lived and what his family was like. But then the lines blurred, and he wondered if he could tell anyone anything at all. Could he tell his colleagues that he had cats? Could he tell them about the TV shows he liked? Could he tell them that he loved to cook?
Perhaps, he thought, if he was on their level. But now that things were different, he wasn’t so sure. He could count on one hand the things that he knew about M, for example. Perhaps that was just how things went once one reached a certain level. How many things did he knew about James, after all? The thoughts were sobering and Q felt suddenly very lonely, as ridiculous as the whole thing seemed.
“Piss off, Bond,” Q muttered, and James made a show of looking taken aback.
“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’m just curious.”
“So you are following me, then.”
“Of course not. I just thought, while I’m here, I could ask again. On the off chance.”
“Suck my dick.”
James snorted, but Q ducked out between two taxis and crossed the road before he could hear whatever lewd comment James might make to that. When the traffic cleared again, he had already vanished – something that, privately, James found rather impressive.
*
It was stupid, Q thought, the next morning when he was pottering about the kitchen trying to make everything he had left to do stretch until he could leave for work. He was showered and dressed, the cats were fed, his lunch was made and safely hidden away from curious pets, and now there was nothing left to do but rinse the breakfast dishes and wait until he could take a slow walk to the Tube station.
He was angry with himself. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he was being utterly ridiculous. Telling someone that he liked to make sandwiches and just happened to be very good at it was not exactly a huge secret, and it didn’t say much about him aside from the fact that he maybe watched too many episodes of MasterChef (which he did). Q was not the kind of person who was oblivious to the goings-on in his own head, and he knew that this whole thing was just a symptom of something else, but as for what that was he didn’t like to think about it. It was unbelievable, that he could have worked himself up into such a state yesterday, and all over a bloody sandwich.
But it wasn’t just about that, was it? It was about everything else that nobody knew about him, and how after all the time they’d known one another, the only personal question James had ever asked him was where he purchased his bloody sandwiches.
Now there was something that Q didn’t understand. Why did that bother him so much?
*
“It’s none of the sandwich places at the train station, and it’s not from any of the places in Vauxhall as far as I can see,” James said, this time dropping a small signal blocker that doubled as a rather fashionable lighter onto Q’s workstation. Q considered setting it off, just so the chaos would excuse him from another interrogation about his lunch. “It’s definitely not from anywhere like Upper Crust, unless there’s a secret menu that I don’t know about, which there isn’t, because I’ve asked.”
“You interrogated the Upper Crust cashier over a secret menu just to try and catch me out?” Q asked. “That doesn’t sound like behaving, Bond.”
“Well, I’ve been behaving in all other respects for the last month, and so far you haven’t given me so much as a hint,” James said, folding his arms. “Look, everything’s in one piece. What more do you want?”
“Actually, the lighter is rattling rather ominously, so I’ll have to take a look at it before I get back to you on that.”
“Alright, well, it’s in mostly one piece, then,” James said, waving a hand before patting it against his elbow, seemingly in thought. “This leaves me with two options.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Either it’s something on the way from your place to the Tube station, or it’s homemade, either by your or someone else. Lord, you don’t have a wife, do you?”
“As if,” Q snorted.
“A husband?”
“No?” Q asked. “Bond –”
“Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Flatmate concerned at how skinny you are?”
“I don’t have anyone,” Q suddenly snapped. Immediately he regretted it. He had meant to simply shut James up; he hadn’t meant for it to sound so… hurt. He cleared his throat, trying to pull the situation back, but he could tell from the way James was looking at him that he wasn’t convinced. “I mean I don’t live with anyone. No one is making me a packed lunch. There, you have your clue for the day. Can I get back to work now?”
Q didn’t miss the brief look James gave him over his shoulder on his way out, either. He wanted to sink into his seat and disappear.
*
The last place that Q expected to find James at 9pm on a Friday night was in the bread aisle of his local Tesco – and by “his” Q meant his own local, rather than James’s, wherever “local” was for James. It seemed to be another thing the agent had found out about him, somehow, and Q could barely believe his own eyes when he turned the corner and saw James standing there among the whole-wheat loaves, looking as though he had been expecting him the entire time.
“I’m thinking about formally complaining,” Q said drily, leaning past him in order the grab a loaf of thick white – the best option for toasted sandwiches when he was in a rush, he’d found. “I think this has definitely reached the levels required to classify as stalking, and as far as I know you’re fully back at work now and have been for a while. What’s your excuse?”
“Oh, I was just in the area and wanted to see if I could persuade you to give me any more clues,” James said pleasantly. Q didn’t miss the way his eyes roamed over the contents of his shopping trolley.
“What brings you all the way out here?” Q asked. “I wasn’t aware you knew anyone out here.”
“I know you, don’t I?”
“You do,” Q said, folding his arms. “But I have never told you where I live, so I’m inclined to believe you must have followed me here at some point.”
“Well, maybe I did,” James said, and Q at least got a flicker of satisfaction from the fact that he had finally got James to admit to it. “But who can blame me? You know I love a good mystery.”
“Is this really about the bloody sandwiches?” Q found himself suddenly exasperated. He grabbed the trolley again and pushed it forward, narrowly avoiding James’s toes. “Because if it is I have to say it’s reached utterly ridiculous levels now. Why do you care?”
“Maybe I want to try one myself?” James asked, following, much to Q’s annoyance. “They look really good, Q. Apparently a lot of people at work think so, too, though none of your colleagues know where you’re getting them from, either.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Q muttered. “Have you been asking them, as well?”
“I might have put the feelers out,” James shrugged. “Had a bit of a chat with some of them. Admittedly, most of them don’t care quite as much as I do.”
“Because you’re an obsessive, invasive pig,” Q told him bluntly. “And if I was a woman I could probably call the police on you at this point, so you should thank your lucky stars that I’m not.”
“There’s nothing stopping you,” James said, smiling. “Aside from you know, how silly it would sound.”
“You don’t have to tell me how silly this sounds.”
“Is that halloumi? You have that in your sandwiches pretty often, don’t you?”
“Bond.”
“Think I recognise chutney ingredients, too.”
“I’m going to strangle you,” Q said brightly, grabbing a bottle of milk. “I’m going to strangle you, and they’re never going to find your body.”
“Good luck,” James said. “I’d really love to see you try.”
“You would deserve it.”
“You can end this if you just tell me where you get them from.”
“Do you really want to know?” Q asked, turning around to face him with enough suddenness that James had to stop in his tracks. This close, their height difference was more than noticeable, and Q admitted even if only privately that his threats to strangle the man were probably a little ambitious.
“Why else would I be going to so much effort?” James asked innocently, and despite the fact that Q knew he should really be taking a step back, looking at this rationally and absolutely not getting so worked up over an issue only he really understood or even knew was an issue to begin with, he couldn’t help but give in to the surge of annoyance that flooded through him.
“Why a sandwich?” he demanded. “Why, out of all the time we’ve known one another, are you suddenly so obsessive over where I buy my sodding sandwiches? What are you going to do when you find out? Just go back to how things were before with the smug knowledge that you have one – one! – tiny bit of knowledge about me? It all seems like a pointless waste of time. Of everything you could be curious about, it’s something as stupid as this.”
Infuriatingly, James didn’t so much as miss a beat.
“So what would you want me to be curious about?” he asked, and even more infuriating was the fact that Q didn’t have an answer.
*
James was shot the following month, chasing some deranged psycho across half the world’s continents. As far as incidents with James Bond went, it was fairly standard: he insisted he was fine, Q told him he was an idiot and sent extraction in, James gave them all the slip and finished the job before collapsing in the most dramatic fashion he could muster, and Q, cursing and angrily sipping his tea to try and distract himself from the fact that he was trembling like a leaf, found his location in the nick of time and finally sent people in to haul him home. No doubt in a week James would be swanning around Q-branch like he owned the place, most likely with some stupid new theory about where Q got his sandwiches.
Unfortunately the wound seemed to be more serious than first thought, and much to James’s annoyance he was laid up in medical for longer than anyone expected. Q, as usual, enjoyed the peace and quiet for the first week and then began to grow restless, the spare five minutes here and there suddenly no longer filled with his increasingly over the top efforts to escape James’s questioning. No one following him home on the Tube, and no one was spotted lurking around Tesco or the various eating establishments in Q’s neighbourhood. He didn’t spot anyone loitering around his flat, and the security protocols at home showed him no attempted breaches – and no evidence of any successful ones were found, either.
Sitting at home one night, staring blankly at his laptop screen, Q tried to work out what was more pathetic. Was it that he felt even lonelier now that James was laid up, or was it the fact that there was something to feel lonely about in the first place? After all, if his standard for human contact was the semi-regular interrogation about where he got his lunch, it was a pretty sad show.
You could put a stop to this, he thought to himself, seemingly out of nowhere. There’s only one person making this difficult, and it’s you.
Q wasn’t an idiot. He knew full well that it wasn’t about the sandwiches, and that it probably never had been. James was a spy – the best they had. If he wanted to work out who was making Q’s sandwiches he could have done it in an afternoon. In fact, Q was under the impression that James had worked it out weeks ago, and just wasn’t saying anything so he could prolong the whole thing. He wasn’t sure if he would call it flirting, because honestly, but he was sure that he would call it making an effort, and that was apparently something that James Bond didn’t do unless he was very serious about it.
And here Q was, rejecting him at every turn, and getting angry at him over the very thing he was trying to work on. Yes, he didn’t know much about Q, but no one did, and who was to blame for that? When was the last time Q had even tried to get to know anyone himself? And for all he was angry at James for not knowing anything about him, how many actual facts could he rattle off about James? Out of the two of them, James was the one putting in the effort here.
His alarm went off beside his bed, telling him that if he’d gone to bed when he said he would he would be waking up now. Q stood up and shut it off, quickly calculating how long he could get ready and how long it would actually take him if he didn’t drag his feet.
It was risky, but everything even remotely involving James was risky, so what was new? Besides, it was better than this. Ever since Q had acknowledged it, the heaviness in him had only grown worse. He wouldn’t feel right wallowing in his misery if he didn’t try and do something to stop it first, though god knows he had probably picked the worst person possible for the attempt.
*
Q was certain that James was pretending to sleep when he came in, and no doubt it was to avoid talking to the nurses, who usually did their interrogation rounds at this time of the morning. Perhaps it was also because of the fact that it was breakfast time, and James was well known for hating all the food at medical. Either way, he was most certainly faking, because there was no way on earth that Q could have got this close to him without waking him up otherwise.
“Rise and shine,” Q said, dropping the bag in his hand down onto James’s chest. James looked genuinely surprised to hear his voice, and his surprised doubled when he opened his eyes to see it wasn’t some kind of hallucination, and that Q was in fact right there.
“What’s all this?” James asked, sitting up slightly and looking from Q to the bag. “Please tell me this is a McMuffin and not whatever shit they’re going to try and pass off as food today.”
“Better,” Q said, slumping down into the seat beside him. James raised an eyebrow and reached for the bag, pulling out a neatly wrapped parcel.
“Is this what I think it is?” James gave him a knowing smirk, and Q rolled his eyes.
“It’s not an exploding pen, if that’s what you mean.”
“Shame.”
“It’s breakfast. The only thing I didn’t make myself was the cheese, but I assure you it’s sourced locally and very nice. The sausages are homemade, though, and so’s the tomato chutney. And I baked the bread. Do try and eat all of it. The doctors won’t let you out until you’re eating properly, and you know it.”
Much to Q’s amusement – and satisfaction, if he was honest – James already had a healthy mouthful of sandwich.
“Christ, Q,” he said, his mouth still full. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any better.”
“Consider it repayment for letting me continue to pretend you didn’t know,” Q said, delivering the words nonchalantly but feeling his stomach twist all the same. “It must have been infuriating for you to not reveal you’d found me out.”
“I’m quite good at keeping secrets, wouldn’t you believe?” James said. “Though, admittedly you’ve surprised me with the homemade bread. I didn’t realise you were going quite that far from scratch.”
“You’ll shit yourself when you try my homemade coffee, then,” Q said casually. “Maybe I’ll bring some in for you tomorrow, if you’re really good.”
“Oh, tomorrow? Are you making this a regular thing?”
“I thought it would be best for everyone if you were getting fed well. No doubt the nurses will thank me, and I need them on my side if the chaos in Q-branch at the moment is anything to go by.”
It wasn’t until James had finished the sandwich (in record time, Q noted) that the subject got around to what Q had half-heartedly been hoping to avoid for now. Of course James wouldn’t let it slip past; Q wondered how long he had been pondering the question for. Probably since he had found out.
“Why such a secret?” he asked, and Q felt himself sink a little further into his chair.
“I like some privacy,” he said lamely, and he knew it wouldn’t fly as an excuse at all.
“Were you worried everyone would want something?” James asked. “Or are you really just so private that you won’t tell anyone you cook?”
“It’s… complicated,” Q said, being deliberately vague, but James continued to stare at him and he knew that he expected more of an answer than that. Of course, there was nothing saying that Q had to give said answer to him, but that would defeat the entire purpose of this visit to begin with, so Q did what he did best, and told it straight.
“Well, first of all no one really asked at first, so I didn’t think it was overly important,” he said, shrugging. “And then once I ended up being promoted, I didn’t really know what was an appropriate amount of information to reveal about myself. I figured if people weren’t even allowed to know my name, I should probably take it easy on any and all identifiable information. By the time people started asking again, I suppose I was bitter.”
“Bitter?” James asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Yes, bitter. I didn’t see what was so important about it, and I didn’t know why everyone – specifically you – were so insistent about knowing. I suppose I was being spiteful, because I realised I had closed myself off from everyone and in some strange mental gymnastics I thought it was their fault, and I saw their efforts as condescending or selfish when in actual fact all of them – again, specifically you – were only trying to do exactly what I’d wanted for a while. I suppose everyone else noticed it before I did and tried to help, and I was only going to reject the efforts until I finally worked it out for myself.”
“And what is it that you worked out?”
“That I was very, very lonely,” Q said, giving a thin smile. “I have trouble getting the balance right sometimes, Bond. I’m very all or nothing. It’s something I’m working on.”
“And here you are,” James said, smiling.
“Here I am.”
“You worked all this out through some sandwiches?”
“Cooking is very relaxing for me. I get philosophical.”
“Well,” James said, laughing. “I’m glad.”
*
“You know,” James said, walking into Q-branch like he owned the place, exactly as he should have done a few weeks earlier, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place running so smoothly.”
“Apparently keeping everyone well fed and well caffeinated is key,” Q said, not looking up from his soldering. “Feel free to help yourself to some of the coffee. It’s an improved version of the one I let you sample in medical. Caramel blend, but still strong enough to knock your socks off.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
When James returned a couple of minutes later, he looked satisfactorily impressed.
“It’s not half bad,” he said, and Q snorted, finally looking up from him work.
“I’ll put that on the first batch if I ever sell it,” he said. “An astounding critical review. ‘Not half bad’.”
“Glad to hear it. So this is your secret, huh?”
“Apparently people really appreciate it when you stop keeping all your delicious recipes to yourself,” Q said, before smiling. “Who would have thought, huh?”
“I’m glad all that sandwich philosophising has served you well. What did everyone made of the fact their Quartermaster suddenly developed a personality overnight?”
“Well,” Q said, tapping his fingers on the metal of the desk. “Some people figured I’d finally got into my stride after the mess that was my first few months on the job. Several other people think I was just nervous. And at least a couple think I finally got laid. The rumour mill is working overtime.”
“Not the only thing that’s working overtime, apparently. I’ve never seen the place running so smoothly. Must mean you have some time for lunch breaks now, hmm?”
“I suppose it does.”
“And what about spare time? You have any of that lying around at the moment?”
Q squinted. “Depends on why you’re asking.”
“Well,” James said, with that look on his face that Q knew only too well. “I assume that your culinary talents don’t stop at sandwiches.”
“Of course not.”
“Then perhaps I could be so cheeky as to invite myself around with a few bottles of some nice wine and you could show me.”
Q looked at him for a long moment and then leaned back in his seat, returning the smile.
“Bring red. It’ll go with the food.”