Work Text:
There was a rather crude saying in another language that described someone who was so unfortunate that they were both fucked and had their money stolen and Q felt without a doubt that this applied to him perfectly. Of course, since he the world of the spies had adopted him a mere 7 years ago in lieu of sending him to jail for being much too curious for his own good, Q had grown to expect that, but he could have at least been literally fucked because he was dropped in the middle of a shit storm that might cost him his position in MI6.
“Technically, you did share a bed with the reason why you’re in trouble two months ago and since the hearing is not for another two weeks, you still have all your money,” Moneypenny intervened and although Q loved the woman like she was his big sister and the fact that he knew that she was just trying to cheer him up, her words made him want to drink some more.
“I say, waiter! Five more of these, is you please!” He drunkenly called out, quickly grabbing the edge of the bar so he wouldn’t fall down. “Why the bloody hell do they make high chairs so high? Do they want their clientele to break their necks?”
“So their patrons would know when they had enough,” Moneypenny breathed out, sending the waiter a death glare before placing her soft, warm hand on top of his rough and clammy one. “You can sleep on my sofa tonight and if push comes to shove, you and your darling cats can move in my apartment—”
“That’s not what we were talking about, Miss Moneypenny” Q interrupted her, scrunching up his face while he struggled for a moment to remember the actual topic. “Ah, yes… To be fair, I’ve had that bloody pest for half a night and it was more him having me but only because he needed access to one of my prototypes. He dumped me for Mexico the second I started to snore and once he got there, he blew up half a street, tore down two old buildings that were part of Mexico’s national heritage or whatever, and endangered the life of many civilians while doing physics defying stunts above them in a helicopter.” His voice tone grew louder and louder as he said that, ignoring Moneypenny’s desperate attempts to shush him, and culminated in him hitting the table with his fist. “Waiter! Where are my bloody drinks? My thoughts still make sense and my memory isn’t leaving me.”
A tall glass appeared before him a second later and Moneypenny slowly shook her head as Q wondered why vodka suddenly started to taste so watery and bland. “Darling, I’ve warned you about him way back when you were a minion yourself and seconds before you disappeared into the night with him after that party,” she muttered, signing something to the waiter who, now that Q squinted at him, kind of looked like one of the agents that worked for MI5.
“Well, he’s a good agent and I thought he was treating me differently because I meant something for him, not because I was useful,” Q admitted with no little amount of shame and then promptly hit his head against the table.
Moneypenny let him do that before she cupped his head in her hands and stopped him. “Q, he does care for you in his own James Bond way. You yourself just said that he’s a good agent and he’s kind of horrible at being a normal human being, so he might have accidentally mixed the field with his personal life.”
Hearing the good agent part again suddenly made him laugh. “I retract my earlier statement,” and drown the glass before him after he was done because if he could say that without stuttering, he still isn’t drunk enough. “I mean, who steals a spy car without checking to see if the extra options are fully functioning before going on an unauthorized mission that could cost them their lives and the world it’s already reduced freedom?”
The corner of Moneypenny’s lips quivered a little as she struggled to keep on a straight face. “Bond would, Q. And you pretty much invited him to steal that bloody car after rubbing his face in the fact that he couldn’t have it anymore.”
Q scoffed, shaking the woman’s hands off of his face before resting his head on the table and poking the glass of water. “I gave him that watch out of my own free will, you know,” he grumbled, although he couldn’t quite remember why he had done that since Bond was a supreme bastard that didn’t even deserve someone taking time out of their lives to tell him what time it was. “Still, if he were a sensible man or at least a decent agent, he would have stolen a car that actually blended in with the city that he was in.”
Now that seemed to be too much for Moneypenny and she barked a laugh. “Please tell me when James ‘I do what I want and especially if you tell me now just because I can’ Bond acted like a sensible man?”
Q frowned and fell silent for a few minutes, enjoying the burning sensation that was spreading in him and how everything was slowly becoming jungled up. The world was spinning out of focus, the colours were blending into each other, and everybody seemed to be talking louder. His thoughts were also erratic, ending before they really started, his interest in them changing randomly and then he saw a mouse scurrying on the floor and he could focus once again.
“World’s greatest spy and he needed a bloody mouse and expensive old wine to find a hidden room that was crappily hidden in the first place.” Nine eyes, although not officially active at that moment in time, still caught about 75% percent of what Bond did via hidden cameras and since L’American had been nothing more than bait, Q had seen everything that had happened in it.
Moneypenny too, which is why she found a way to defend him. “He was sloshed, although not as much as you are right now.”
“I’m clearly not sloshed enough if I can still remember that,” he grumbled again, almost jumping on his feet when he thought of the perfect comeback. “But before he got wasted, he supposedly searched every corner of that room, so don’t defend his sloppy work, Moneypenny.”
She gently patted his back and visibly bit her tongue to stop herself from speaking. Not that Q didn’t know what she wanted to say, defending the man’s inappropriate behaviour while out on the field by implying that he had gotten drunk because he couldn’t find a proper thread to lead him to the true game master as well as because this mission’s bird refused to fall for his charms the second he laid them on her.
“Imagine that… devoting time, effort, and actual feelings in a relationship with someone who isn’t interested in a one-night stand before getting them to sleep with you,” Q whispered to himself, a painful shiver traveling though his body.
Although, seeing that he had done just that with Bond – admittedly, in his own shy and subtle way that could easily be missed since he always went the extra mile for his agents – and ended up being as pathetic as this, maybe the bloody bastard had a good plan: blind whoever you’re interested in with a smile, flex your muscles, have them, and then see if you still feel like having a pseudo relationship with them until another pretty bird catches your eyes.
But just the thought of starting to act like that made him sick to his stomach and thankfully, Moneypenny appeared to be strong enough to easily pick him up from the chair and carry him to the bathroom. Only, after he was done revisiting in one of the most painful ways what he had for lunch, he realized that the hand that was gently rubbing his back was too big and too heavy to belong to the woman.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to act stupid,” the reason why he was trying to get so drunk that people would have a hard time finding blood in his veins whispered, wiping his mouth with a wet napkin and then using another one to clean the rest of his face. “I guess I need to explain myself?”
Q wished he could start vomiting again so he’d ruin the bastard’s shoes but sadly, his stomach was empty after 10 minutes of nonstop vomiting and even his queasiness had went away by that time. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t breathe out every word and attack the man with his stinky breath. “You’ve been gone for three days, Bond; you can’t tell me that you’ve already managed to destroy the car over which I sweated on my own free time despite you no longer being on a mission.” Although Mexico had suffered despite Bond being in his downtime, so Q really wouldn’t be that surprised.
“The car is parked without a scratch in the front of the bar,” Bond promised as he led him to the sink, pulling out a new toothbrush and a small toothpaste from somewhere inside his pristine and expensive suit. “Tanner finally took pity on me and told me where you went after your meeting, so it was only logical for me to bring these with me.”
“What do you want?” Q demanded, pleased that he managed to get a speck of toothpaste on the man’s silk shirt. “I’m not exactly in a position to help you with anything and you can’t let me trick myself into thinking things now that you’ve drove off into the sunset with the lovely Miss Swann.” He had wanted to call her a few choice words, but he considered himself much too much of a gentleman to allow such vulgarities pass his lips when it wasn’t warranted even if he had lowered himself to the ‘sobbing mess because he left me’ cliché.
Bond lowered his head and raised his hands in a defensive way, frowning when he caught sight of his shirt. “Miss Moneypenny made it clear that I currently don’t even deserve your time, but if you’d lend me your ear—”
“I’ve lent you my trust, my blood, my sweat, career—” he started strongly but then stopped himself because he ended up shouting again, taking a deep breath. “You have until I no longer taste bile on my tongue,” he hissed and then shoved the toothbrush in his mouth just to make sure he wouldn’t interrupt Bond again.
“I came up with a plan that hinged on everyone seeing Madeleine and I as lovers,” Bond started and Q snorted, glaring at him through the mirror because he knew what that word meant when Bond used it. “I would never abandon you, not like that, and definitely not after what happened between us at that merging party right before I had to leave for Mexico.”
He dodged the water Q spit and it was more than the toothpaste that had the young Quartermaster foaming at the mouth. “Holding my own stupidity against me won’t change the fact that as three hours ago, I’ve been stripped of my Quartermaster title as well as locked out of my own domain pending an investigation as to how so many expensive prototypes disappeared from my branch.”
A wave of dizziness washed over him, but Bond wrapped his arm around his middle and kept him from falling, cleaning his mouth once again with yet another napkin. “M is doing that only to force you on a vacation, I am sure.” Even he didn’t believe his own words. “And in the off chance that you are under a real investigation, do you really think they’d do anything to the man who saved them?”
“Alan Turing also did the same thing and we all know what happened to him,” Q whispered, digging his nails in Bond’s arms when the world suddenly started to move past him despite him no longer feeling the ground under his feet.
“I’m doing the walking for the both of us,” Bond explained as they entered back in the main bar area. “I know how it looked when I left, but I was sure you’d drag yourself back home in the morning where I had planned on surprising you with my naked self in your bed and two train tickets to Skyfall.”
Q scoffed, resting his head against Bond’s shoulder and sending an amused Eve a glare as they walked by her. “And yet we meet two days later in a bar when I am not quite sure I haven’t passed out with my head in the toilet.” He knew that he had been shocked almost completely out of his drunkenness a long time ago and the cold air that washed over him continued to sober him up – although not enough for him to take full control over his feelings and act like a cold robot that – but he still couldn’t trust what he was seeing. “You’re a horrid old man that did something to Miss Swann to dump you and you came back to us with your tail tucked between your legs and you’re trying to get me to vouch for you so MI6’d take you back without going through the tests again.”
Lips brushed against cheek as Bond was done buckling him in, running his hand through his hair. “Miss Swann and I are nothing but friends, I don’t really worry about MI6 taking me back because of course they will, and M had Tanner keep me busy while your initial hearing took place for very obvious reasons.” He slid in the driver’s seat and patted Q’s leg before the car was brought to life and London started to whiz past them.
Attempts at small talk were made on Bond’s part, but Q pretended he didn’t hear them as he continued to sulk in… in what? Not misery because, despite his best attempts, he was really happy that Bond was back and his hope for keeping his job had actually been given back to him. You couldn’t sulk in embarrassment – although he was pretty sure he was going to die in it pretty soon – and one also couldn’t sulk in regret at showing emotion. Stubbornness was also out of the question, but he was too stubborn to admit that he was simply trying to hurt Bond with his silence, so he decided that he was sulking in silence.
Even so, he still ended up talking with Bond. “Have you been away for so long that you already forgotten where my apartment is?”
“No, but unless you want Tanner to waste your time by coaching you on a future hearing that you’ve already won, I thought my apartment was a better place to rest and then suffer through a hangover.” He opened the door for Q and helped him get out, knowing fully well that the younger man’s legs still couldn’t be trusted to let him get around on his own. “Plus, it’s only normal for you to see my apartment after I saw yours. Plus, it’s easier for me to do what you want me to do while I’m not attacked by your living weapons.”
“And what do you think I want you to do?”
“Grovel,” Bond said simply and, after closing the elevator doors right in a neighbour’s face, turned Q in his arms, their lips almost touching. “I admit to attempting to sleeping with her – which isn’t what bothers you in the first place – but I came back to you.”
Q thought really hard and did his best not to blink – or drown in those blue eyes that were filled with fake honesty – and then started to laugh. “You told Miss Swann something like that and she dumped you, didn’t she?” Definitive proof that the woman had more brain than he did because he liked the line and struggled not to shoot back one.
Bond, on the other hand, sighed and stepped away from Q, fishing out his phone out of his pocket. “I know it’s late, but I need a favour for you,” he said and then waited for whoever was shouting at him from the other side of the phone calm down before he continued. “I need you to talk with Q.” He held out the phone to him and Q glared at it for a bit, realizing that he was still slightly tipsy since he honestly thought that he could make the phone melt.
“I’m really not in a proper state to talk with anyone,” he tried to excuse himself, but James took his hand and kissed his wrist before giving him the phone. “Don’t think you’ve won,” he growled. “Hello? I must apologize for—”
“Only apology I’ll accept has to come from James and we both know that the devil will become an ice skating champion before that happens,” Miss Swann interrupted him and James wrapped his arm around his middle once again, as if hearing that woman would make him faint. “I told him his plan was a horrible one, but he was sure that his sudden return would make you forget his dramatics.”
Q snorted, rolling his eyes. “Well, thinking ahead is not his strong suit. Or, thinking in general, for that matter.”
“I’ve known him for a total of four days and I wholeheartedly agree with you, especially since this is beyond embarrassing for the both of us,” she said without missing a bit and the both of them shared a chuckle while James glared at nothing in particular as he badly pretended that he couldn’t hear their conversation. “Honestly, Q, James and I don’t click on any level, not even on a sexual one which is the most basic level you could think of.”
What Q got from that was definitive confirmation that he was the man’s safety net and while he normally had no problem with agents seeing him like that, this was different. “I’m sure that failure to perform after almost getting killed is normal, even in double oh agents who tend to thrive on that feeling, so I really think that you should give him another chance before walking out on him.”
“I’m not some dildo that you can just give away because you think it will better suit your friend,” James muttered against his ear, placing little kisses on his earlobe every other word because of course a top spy would remember how easily Q had melted the last time he did that.
“Look, I don’t know how his targets deal with this, but my sexual appetite completely disappears when my bed partner calls me another name,” she said in an almost sing-sang voice.
“Excuse me, what?” Q breathed out, easily pushing Bond’s face away from himself.
“I’m no prude by any means and I do like the occasional sex game as long as we discuss it beforehand.” She made no sense but then again, the elevator’s button currently won’t making any sense, so Q struggled to find logic in her words and even Bond was behaving – well, was drumming his fingers just above his hips and he was resting his chin against his shoulder, but it still counted as ‘behaving’ when it came to him. “However, the second I am called by the name of a person I’ve recently met, of someone who had looked at them with such care in their eyes—”
“I’m his Quartermaster and Bond was on an unauthorized mission while we – as an agency – were falling apart—”
The woman scoffed, probably rolling her eyes as she looked at the phone and shook her head in annoyance. “Fine, live in denial, but the fact of the matter remains that he still called me ‘Q’ in bed and there’s no coming back from that.”
Oh, he was definitely too drunk to understand anything that was being said or not to mishear things. “I’m going to lie down now; can you send me in a text what you told me so I can look at it tomorrow?”
“You’ll get a signed confession and a tape with a re-enactment if you want,” Bond muttered in his ear again while he took the phone away from his hand, the elevator finally reaching the top floor as Q leaned against Bond out of his own free will – not just out of need and because gravity was a thing – closing his eyes and sighing in content. “Thank you, Madeline.”
James struggled a little to open the door without disturbing the deeply thinking Q and he muttered an apology for his apartment looking unused and bereft of any personality. But even though he had most of his belongings in a box which seemed to suggest that he didn’t really trust Q to bring him back in one piece, the cleaning service MI6 had working for him did its job and he could use all the food he had in his fridge that he had cooked himself to get Q to stay here for a while longer in the morning when he’d probably want to die of embarrassment for the way he acted.
“See? It doesn’t look like a sex dungeon,” Bond tried to joke as he led Q to the bedroom, perfectly aware of the rumours that were going around at MI6.
But Q just plopped on the bed without so much as sketching a smile or rolling his eyes like he usually did whenever Bond opened his mouth, kicked his shoes off, and pulled the covers over himself. “Nudge me when my cab gets here.”
“No cab was called, so I won’t nudge you except if you take up too much of the bed,” Bond made clear, pulling the covers back a bit so he could take the man’s glasses away before they broke and present him with a simple white t-shirt and a baggy pair of sweatpants. “You’ll sleep better in these.”
Q really didn’t feel like it and tried to burrow back under the covers, but Bond wouldn’t have it. He helped Q out of his wrinkled jacket, arching his eyebrow when the tie proved to be a clip-on – his father before him used one so he didn’t bother really bothered and he didn’t have time to learn how to do that because Bond always blew something up or stole something, so he really wasn’t allowed to judge his choice of clothes – and then started to unbutton his shirt, all the while trying to get Q to not kiss him.
“You’re still drunk and you’re supposed to hate me,” the – still – former agent said slowly, turning his head to the side as much as he could without breaking it while also holding Q’s shoulders so he could keep him in place and off of him.
“Hate sex is a thing,” chimed Q in, narrowing his eyes either because he was trying to give him his bedroom eyes or because his eyesight was a lot worse than he let people believe. “So come here and let me show you how much I hate you right now.”
Q puckered his lips and shoved his foot in his would-be partner’s stomach so he’d catch him by surprise, but Bond was sneaky and grabbed his foot, pulling him forward which forced Q to lie on his back. “How fast is the room spinning with you right now?”
“Too fast,” Q groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes.
“Now imagine going up and down—”
“I’ll ruin your bed if you don’t stop,” Q warned, his face changing colour. “Just give me the clothes and call me a cab. And if you actually call me a cab, I will hurl in your favourite car and then key the rest.”
Robbed of the painful pun, James undid Q’s belt and then leaned forward to plant a kiss on his forehead. “The door to your right leads to a bathroom which is where I’m going right now. If you get too sick and you won’t make it, I have another bedroom just down the hall, so don’t worry.”
“If I ruin that room as well, then will you call me a cab?” Q muttered, kicking his trousers off and curling in a foetal position, completely uncaring that he was only in his boxers – and, truth be told, the last time he and Bond shared a bed, he had been wearing nothing but his birthday suit, so what did he care that the man had a perfect view of his abs and Dalek-covered underwear?
Barely resisting the temptation to start kissing down Q’s spine, James tucked the half asleep genius in as best he could. “I don’t think you have anything left in you to do that and do you really want to get out of here?” Q frowned and pushed his head under one of the pillows, making James chuckle. “That’s what I thought. I’ll put water and aspirin by your bedside table and a basin next to the bed, although I’ll wake up the second you do.”
He waited for a moment to see if Q had anything to gripe about before going to the bathroom and returned to the man snoring and taking up about 90% of the bed and although he had promised to poke him if that were to happen, he didn’t have the heart to do that. Now the logical step would be for him to go sleep in either the second bedroom, or on the sofa, but knowing that Q – his friend, his Quartermaster, his digital protector, his reason for putting up with all the bullshit from both MI6 and MI5 that followed the death of the old war dog M – was defenceless woke the deadly and paranoid agent in him, so he found a way to balance himself on the side, back to Q, eyes fixed on the door, right hand resting on his favourite handgun under the pillow.
Then again, in this position, the window was an obvious blind spot and an apartment on the last floor never stopped him before. And what if his arm got numb and he couldn’t use the gun? It never happened before, but there was always a start for everything and—
His erratic train of thoughts were interrupted by Q wrapping his limbs around him, sighing in content and convincing him that it would be for the best if he simply enjoyed the moment and prayed for death when morning came and he’d have to go through everything all over again with a sober, sour, ‘hangover-ed’ man that had been wronged.