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The knock on the door came relatively late, but Q thought it was still in the time period where there was no need to worry. After eleven was worrying time, but now – around nine – probably meant some last minute emergency had arisen that was ultimately manageable. If it had been something at work, they would have called him, which meant only one logical thing – family.
Q moved through to the hallway, shooing the cats back into the living room and pulling the door closed to stop them from escaping out into the hallway. As always, he pressed his eye to the spy-hole in the door, and immediately had to re-evaluate his earlier conclusions. Standing on the doorstep was a person who appeared to be one of his colleagues, and if it wasn’t him, he bore an uncanny resemblance to him. Even more confusing was the fact that someone else had now come into view, this time bearing an uncanny resemblance to Q himself. Q frowned and leaned back again, unlocking the several locks and bolts on the door and then disabling the security system. Didn’t they say it wasn’t uncommon for twins to date other twins? If that was the case, this would be the coincidence of the century.
He didn’t miss the briefest flicker of surprise on his colleague’s face when he opened the door, but they were both professionals, and neither responded in any obvious way. Q gave him a polite but uncomprehending smile, and turned his attention back to his brother.
“It’s about time you showed your face,” he said. “Though nine in the evening on a Monday night is an odd time to do it.”
“Sorry,” Danny said, sheepish. “I only just remembered I have a job interview tomorrow and I have nothing nice to wear. I was hoping to borrow something from you, maybe?”
“That’s cheeky, considering all the merciless teasing you do of my clothing,” Q replied, and Danny rolled his eyes.
“Come on. Some of those suits you have aren’t bad. Just like, not any of the patterned ones.”
Q gave him an exaggerated glare for a moment, to drive the point home, and then sighed. “I suppose you’d better come in, then. Both of you, though apologies – I don’t believe we’ve met?”
“Alex,” the other man said, confirming that it was him after all. Not so much the name, Q thought as they shook hands, because Q knew him as Alistair, but there was no denying that the speech was the same. Alistair – or Alex, as Q remembered he would have to get used to saying, at least for tonight – had a very unique way of speaking, so much so that even the slightest yes or no answer was in an obviously unusual cadence. The strangeness of the situation was only growing all the more evident.
“So you must be who Danny’s been talking about so much lately,” Q said, as he closed the door before everyone. He felt Alex’s eyes on his hands as he put the many bolts and locks back into place and reset the security system. “I did wonder, actually. Usually Danny’s a devil for the details but he was rather coy this time.”
Alex glanced at Danny, who blushed.
“I didn’t want to jinx it,” he said, and Q smiled.
“I’m hoping it worked?”
“Well,” Danny said, giving Alex a shy grin. “I think so. I mean, you haven’t run away yet, have you?”
“Not yet,” Alex said, and while his voice didn’t lose its normal flatness, Q thought the man might be joking. If that was true, it was a first.
A sudden outbreak of meowing and scratching came from behind the living room door, and Danny’s face lit up as he went to open it, unleashing the two excitable furballs behind it. They made straight for him as he crouched down, petting them both at once and making silly cooing noises at them. Q didn’t even have the heart to tease him for it, knowing that if it wasn’t for the lack of glasses, he would essentially be looking at an image of himself.
“I hope you like cats,” Q said to Alex, who was watching them warily.
“I can’t say I’ve ever had any.”
“Well, if you value your furniture and your clothing and pretty much everything you’ve ever loved, you’ll keep it that way. Byron, out of the way. Roll around away from the living room door, thank you.”
He tickled the black cat’s belly with his socked foot and the cat looked at it thoughtfully for a moment before latching on, teeth nibbling and back legs kicking. Hopping awkwardly, Q managed to make it into the living room. Danny, managing to untangle himself from Shelley, the grey and white cat, followed him, with Alex bringing up the rear, giving Byron a wary glance as the cat focused his attention on Alex’s shoes instead.
“Byron,” Q said warningly, and the cat immediately began to groom itself, as though such crimes would have never crossed his mind.
“They’ve got so big!” Danny said, sitting cross-legged on the floor and calling to Shelley, who trotted over for some more attention. “I still remember when I could fit one each in the palm of my hand.”
“Twice the size and ten times the trouble,” Q said, collapsing down onto the sofa. “Make yourself at home, Alex. You might want to grab a seat before the cats take them all.”
Q had forgotten how out of place Alex always seemed to be – even at work it was obvious, but here, sitting in a strange house and clearly still trying to come to terms with the recent revelations, he looked every bit like a fish out of water. Q could at least understand why Danny found it so endearing. He had always thought his brother was the type – for all the looking after he admittedly needed, he loved to return the favour by adopting every stray he could find.
“What’s the job for?” he asked, as Danny dangled his fraying shoelace for Shelley to attack.
“It’s nothing special,” Danny shrugged. “Just there’s a job going at one of the bars in town. I go to it quite often and there’s a good chance I’ll get the job because I know so many people there, but I was told to apply properly and all that. I hope I get it. I’d rather hang out there at a time where I’m actually going to be awake than carry on with this factory warehouse crap. The manager is a psychopath, I’m pretty sure of it. You know he was trying to make the new guy work a morning shift after a late one? Only eight hours between shifts. That’s illegal, that is, and I told him as such.”
It was odd, to see the two of them together. Of course by now Alex had a fairly good idea what was going on, but for all their similarities there was some clear differences. Danny had told him he had a brother, but it had never come up that said brother was a twin, and an identical one at that. Danny and Q were the same height and build, with the same thick dark hair that grew in the same style, even though Danny’s was slightly shorter, and the cut to Q’s was more professional. Q wore glasses but behind them were Danny’s wide green eyes; they had the same red lips and strong jawline. Q looked younger, somehow, but Alex didn’t think that was surprising when he thought of the hell Danny had insisted on putting his body through for all those years.
Perhaps most shocking was the difference in their lifestyles. Danny was Danny, living from week to week, sharing a flat with two other people and with more horror stories about bills and debt and creeps than Alex thought one person could have. His twin brother was head of an entire department at MI6, a department Alex knew very well, and Alex knew for a fact that he had gone to either Oxford or Cambridge – he could pick out the slight plumminess of the Oxbridge accent in Q’s voice now it was compared to Danny’s, though the more he spoke to his brother the more it degraded slightly and his natural accent came out, harsher and more informal and strange to hear coming from the Quartermaster.
Danny eventually stood, brushing the cat hair off himself. “I suppose I should go do what I came here for,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the hall. “You might if I go have a look?”
“Go ahead, but no nosing, and no making fun of my cardigans,” Q warned him, and, grinning, Danny slipped out of the room. His footsteps vanished up the hall, and as soon as they heard Q’s bedroom door open, Q and Alex looked at one another rather like two children caught red-handed doing something they shouldn’t.
“Does he know what you do?” Alex asked, and Q shook his head.
“He thinks I’m in some relatively important system security job for a bank. You?”
“Bank as well. Investment.”
“Well, there’s our cover if we had made it known we knew one another, I suppose. Christ, I didn’t realise you were dating Danny.”
“I thought he looked a little like you. I thought it was a coincidence. You look younger, and you both dress differently and have different accents. This is all very unexpected.” Alex finally leaned back in his chair, relaxing his face for a brief second into a frown of confusion.
“So…” Q said, wondering where to go from here. The oddness of the situation was unavoidable, and there was no protocol for this. He wondered if they should just continue pretending they were strangers, or find some way to find out their respective cover jobs had colleagues in common, or if they should never speak of this again and pretend that they didn’t both have access to vital information about one another that they shouldn’t have.
“How are you brothers?” Alex suddenly said, shaking his head. “I cannot wrap my head around it.”
“Well, we share parents, you see,” Q said, giving a small smile, and some of the tension left Alex’s shoulders as he at least appreciated what a silly question it had been. “I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the rest, too. Christ, do you think we have to declare this?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I doubt they’ve written protocol for this.”
“You know my name, I assume,” Q said. He hated to do it, but he had to remember that he was after all at administrative level and therefore he was technically Alex’s superior, his twin brother’s boyfriend or not. “I trust I don’t need to tell you that it stays strictly confidential.”
“Of course.”
Q nodded, and there was another moment of reflective silence before the questions again became unbearable.
“How did you even meet Danny?” he asked. “I doubt the two of you are in any of the same circles.”
“We’re not. It was a coincidence. I was out running one morning, and Danny was on his way back from a club.”
“I should have known,” Q said, but Alex noted that he didn’t say it dismissively or judgementally. “Danny has a way of getting to know people. He knows everyone, I think.” He lowered his voice slightly. “I always said he would make a good spy if he was able to behave himself for five minutes, though I suppose looking at some of our colleagues that’s not always a prerequisite.”
“It’s certainly a talent of his,” Alex agreed. “Getting to know people, rather. Not misbehaving, though I suppose he’s rather good at that as well. You are the elder twin?”
“What gave it away?” Q asked, amused. “The fact I’m the responsible one?”
“Mostly. It’s very odd to think that the two of you had identical upbringings but such vastly different lives.”
“Our personalities are quite different,” Q said. “I suppose it’s a classic example of the nature versus nurture debate. I’m very good at keeping my head down and I’m quite academic. Danny was always rebellious and extroverted. We didn’t exactly have a good relationship with our parents, as I’m sure you’ve probably guessed, and we dealt with it in different ways. Danny got out as soon as he could, and I escaped through university.” Q gave a shrug, and another fond smile. “Danny is incredible. You would think that most siblings would envy the difference in our lives, but so long as Danny has enough money for rent and is surrounded by people he loves, he’s the happiest man in the world. He knows I would help him out with whatever he needs, but…” Q shrugged. “He’s just a people person. I worry about him a little less now that he’s older.”
“People have taken advantage of him,” Alex said, reading between the lines, and Q guessed that Alex had probably realised as much just from knowing his brother. “He trusts very easily, and he’s loyal. People have taken advantage of that.”
“Yes,” Q nodded. “It used to be worrying. I think he’s slowly realising now, though, as he get older. I have to admit that you’re the first person he’s ever dated that I actually have some high hopes for – no pressure, or anything.”
There was no denying there was a flicker of a smile on Alex’s face, which made it a pleasant moment for Danny to show up again, looking admittedly rather dapper in one of Q’s more tamely patterned suits.
“What do you think?” he asked, striking a ridiculous pose, which was made all the more ridiculous by a sudden ambush from Byron on his socks. “Ouch! Yes, thank you, Byron, your approval has been noted.”
“You look like a proper swot,” Q told him. “Which is exactly how I’ve managed a bunch of successful interviews, so you should be good.”
Danny grinned, and when he turned to Alex and saw what could only be described as a look of sheer wonder on his face, he positively beamed.