Work Text:
[chaos is what happens when an angel falls in love with a demon.]
how quaint.
•••
Q notices almost immediately. He had read the file provided, stating he was to meet a special agent, recently returned, and outfit him with equipment for his mission. Apparently, said agent had come back miraculously from the dead.
Q has to stop short, and watch the man sitting down in front of one of Turner's masterpieces. He is ragged, and broken, and looks like he's death slightly warmed over, but Q recognises him for what he is instantly.
He almost pities Bond, but stops himself. He doesn't think it'd be welcomed, and that it's probably what he's gotten all day: the MI6 version of pity. Beside, England has no time for sympathy. They're here for her, for England.
But. But Q can't help but stop and stare. It's just so obvious, just like his demonic form is obvious if one would just stop and think about it. James Bond is strong, and broad, and stout, suited to carry a flaming sword and shield of gold and emerald. He is suited for battle and brutality and the type of love for their God that stems from complete adoration. He is scarred and bruised and yet rebuilt stronger every time. Really, it's the most obvious build an angel could have.
James Bond is an angel. Bond is the type of man that is inherently good, the type that is weighed down by the guilt of the mortal things he's had to do to achieve that goodness. The type that has had, for his entire life, to fight and fuck and murder and torture to stop the world from imploding on itself. He is the type of inherent good that takes the weight of the world on his shoulders like a damned martyred Atlas and breaks under the strain, the immorality of his actions, until he rebuilds.
Q has always had to work on his initial need for fire and brimstone. He chooses to be good, and that weighs a little less heavily in his heart than immorality does in Bond's, but it's a struggle he overcomes daily. A challenge. Q is a walking target practice mimicry of a demon, cast aside by both spheres of divinity, and Bond is such a pure thing cracking under strain.
Q thinks, looking at him, that he's the type of good that despises evil, probably. The type that would look at Q's wings, black and slightly smaller, but otherwise no different, and sneer or recoil. And Q can't afford that, not with England relying on them to do their jobs right.
So it is with an excusable amount of nerves that Q walks stiffly to the bench and sits down. But he is not afraid of the angel, no. Q is too self-assured for that. They are still brothers, after all, united under the same God. But if James Bond is unwilling to work with Q because of his demonic traits; if he resents and pushes Q away because of Q's assumed loyalty, then that couldn't bode well.
And Bond is just that: uncomfortable, although Q can tell he doesn't know why. His demonic form is well concealed, like Bond's own angelic form. Wings are firmly tucked in the aether, angelic or demonic bodies folded and hidden away.
Q wonders if Bond is like him, almost mortal. Q is weakened by bringing out his supernaturalism, like his very spirit is being sucked out. He wonders if Bond is the same. After all, an angel in tangible form on earth is almost as rare as a demon cast out from both Heaven and Hell. And Q is rare in that sense. He is filled to the brim with questions, questions he would give anything to ask and be answered now, but he has a job.
But Q plays it off, because he can; he's had time to practice his acting. Because he's young enough in his human form to pass off and justify his cockiness, and his sarcastic smirk. He mocks time, because what does an angel care for time? What do demons care for time?
And Q's final quip- bring the equipment back in one piece- comes with a coy flutter of wings brought out of the aether, visible only to Bond and himself. He ruffles one inky obsidian wing almost playfully, before walking away.
James' slight widening of his eyes, his tense unfurling of both golden white wings was answer enough; Q would be resented, ignored as a quartermaster.
•••
They take to each other like ducks to water, balancing snark with professionalism perfectly, but firmly keeping their supernatural side to themselves.
Everyone is mildly surprised, but no one more so than Q, although he hides it better.
•••
Silva turns Q's stomach. He isn't a demon, he isn't a wretched creature from the depths of hell.
He is fully human, one untarnished (disbelievingly) by the black of hell. He is destined for Hell, but as of right now, his soul hasn't been touched by demonic spirits.
Q wants to drag him down to the abyss the moment Silva turns his head to stare unblinkingly into the camera, as if he knows Q's watching.
He probably does.
Q wants to lacerate his body and flail his limbs and turn him inside out and feed his soul to the hellhounds that starve and gorge and beg and repel the food given.
He wants to hurt Silva, if only for the vaguely lizard look in his eye. He looks bland, dead, decayed, and Q knows he's a sitting viper.
He wants to avoid the pitfall that Silva no doubt has planned by just going in there and damning him to Hell in one go.
The feelings he is exuding must be tangible energy, as the half of Q-Branch that is close by refuse to even look at him. He looks down to see his shaking form, his clenched fists, his wings unfurled out of the aether angrily.
He is sure his face holds almost nothing human anymore- a sharpening of cheekbone and elongation of eyes and oval, reddened pupil. If he were to smile now, his teeth would probably be sharpened like knives and his tongue a hideous, elongated serpent. He has a tough time keeping the most inhuman hidden in the aether, but now it is waiting for that final push to reveal itself.
He talks to Bond in the stifling silence, the silence that threatens to crush him. He talks, because Bond is good at deflecting and soothing him. Q doesn't think too much into it; Bond's very being cures the sick and delivers the pained, so it's only natural that he would soothe Q's frayed nerves and sick stomach. Bond is his rock, standing near as he hacks into Silva's laptop, murmuring and crooning softly under his breath, whilst Silva becomes more and more forgettable, a blur in Q's peripheral.
He has to trust that Bond knows what he's doing. Because Q feels a deep, roiling hatred for this tiny maggot of a man, capable of so much, that he is physically limited.
If Silva didn't unsettle Q so badly, he would be impressed by the level of genius he exudes. But as it is, he is only glad that Bond is chasing him down the Tube, because it means that Silva isn't staring intently at the camera.
He is a demon, Q thinks mirthlessly, completely unsettled by a simple human.
•••
M dies and MI6 becomes a place of eggshells and whispers. Q doesn't leave Q-Branch for any socialising after the funeral. He wasn't particularly close to Mansfield. He respected her immensely, but there were those closer to her. Like Bond. Tanner. He isn't so misled as to believe his grief is the same as theirs.
He doesn't grieve; not exactly. He can't bring himself to, past the idea that the world will sorely miss a brilliant leader. Mansfield was not set apart for Hell. She truly is in a better place now. Coming from Q, or Bond, they're not empty words thrown around as condolences.
It's three days after the funeral when Bond comes in, looking a bit more grim, but at least put together. Q is relieved; he was worried Bond would've gone on an alcohol binge. He does not forget the notes he read in Bond's file about the woman Vesper Lynd. Maybe that was why Bond was stuck on Earth; doubting his Father's predetermined wisdom and seeking out his own vengeance. Q is thankful for small mercies; thankful that Bond is not sporting signs of a hangover.
"He went to hell," Bond states. "Silva."
Q looks up at him, surprised. Did Bond need reassurance that Lucifer was going to flay that piece of filth? He confirms, "Yes. He did."
Bond sighs, and his shoulders lose their Navy tension. His parade rest becomes less rigid as he leans into the standing level desk. Q thinks he looks somewhat lost. It's moments like these Q can see the angel in him. The tired, straining, yet consistent steadiness in him, that most people- most humans- misinterpret as sociopathy. So he says, "Silva went where he deserved to go, the bastard. The hellhounds feast on his soul." Q pauses then whispers, "M is in Heaven, then."
This makes Bond smile, wistfully, sadly. "She was always a bitch. But yes, she's home." Q smiles a little. He loses that smile after a brief silence where Q turns back to the Arduino board he is fiddling with and Bond fiddles with some frayed wires, when Bond asks, "Do you remember home, Q?"
Q puts down the breadboard. Takes off his glasses and sighs. No, he doesn't remember Heaven. He fell aeons, lightyears, before Earth was but a thought.
"I fell a long time ago, Bond. I don't remember much."
Bond looks so broken, even more so than in the museum. Q thinks a stiff wind would snap him in two. To any other person in the branch at the moment, he looks stoic and calm, and the intensity in his eyes is just another Bond trait, but Q sees.
Bond's wings leave the aether, wilted and drooping, and he sighs. "No, I didn't think so," he murmurs. He blows out a breath and says, "I don't either."
Q sucks in a breath, which hollows his cheeks oddly. He brings his own wings out, wraps his smaller feathers around the golden white of Bond's. His wingtips brush the underside of Bond's wings in an imitation of a condolence. He feels the other man quivering. This is, to date, the only time he has seen James Bond weak. It's unnatural. "You loved her, brother." He whispers. "Your grief is understandable. But she is with God, now. You may rejoice in that peace."
Q cannot bring himself to resent God. For one thing, he's a devout believer. Not a follower, not anymore, but any demon who denies the existence of God is so pathetically dumb-witted to be laughable. Lucifer himself knows one day, he'll bow down once more.
Bond straightens, looks at Q's wings, barely an inch from Bond's own. Q wonders vaguely what they must look like, the two men famed in MI6 for their banter less than arm's length away, tense and straining, staring at something no one else can see.
Q says it, because he must- because he knows that Bond has no one else, not really; M, but she is dead, and himself. He uses Bond's angelic name and says, "You've got me as a friend, Uriel, for what it's worth."
This isn't Q and Bond, not anymore. This is a union of two souls left stranded in a world they'll never really belong in, left bereft and friendless. They make do with what they have, this bastardisation of unity between pure, raw holiness and unadulterated, dark damnation.
He turns away after a moment where verdigris grey meets frost blue and stay set in a staring contest. He really is quite busy fixing a world that will always be searching for newer ways to implode.
He doesn't miss, with his hearing, Bond's murmur at the door before he walks out, "It's worth more than you imagine, Azazel. Thank you."
•••
He fell with Lucifer, along with thousands upon thousands of other angels who were blinded by the charisma and brightness of God's former beloved angel.
But he wasn't a sycophantic follower, either. Azazel despised the idea of falling only to follow some self-absorbed demon into the abyss. Azazel wanted knowledge.
He wanted to learn past the things God gave them to know. And Lucifer promised him that, in exchange for a follower.
Azazel waited. Lightyears. Lucifer never showed him anything; nothing was new to him. He had more freedom amongst the fallen brethren, more than he would have had in Heaven, but he felt the pettiness of all of them tiring.
And then God created a new breed of angel. A new breed of children, for His praise and worship and what Lucifer called, "total blind devotion."
Humans, they were called. Borne into the image of God, and so different from the four legged beasts and the fauna God had put on Earth before them.
They were new, and untouched, and innocent. And Lucifer wanted. Azazel thought him as a toddler whelp, snatching back the toys of the bigger children in a strop.
But then Lucifer said, "Tempt the woman-child, Eve, and you shall receive your knowledge, Azazel. Tempt them to question their Maker, and you shall receive what you crave."
It was too easy, in the end. It was a challenge to deceive God's devoted child, but blind devotion in innocence teaches you never to question, and Azazel was skilled in the art of deception and doubt.
"Did God really say 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" He asked, watching the human-child in all her glory. She was pink skin and warmth and the purity of salvation.
And now, now Azazel wanted. He wanted to touch, and taste, and destroy, and build up. There was so much left to be filled in their brains and their hearts, these humans. So much knowledge to be attained, and not for the first time did Azazel ask himself why God refused to allow them knowledge.
She- the woman-child Eve, said to Azazel, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
And Azazel grinned, a bright, tempting, innocent grin that had the damnation of all of Hell behind it. It was almost too easy, honestly. Loopholes always were.
He touched the fruit first, and asked if he had died yet, to which she shook her pretty head. He had planted the seed of doubt, and could see it in her expressive eyes.
So he urged her to touch, and he showed her that she would not die, and then said, "God knows you'll be like him, knowing good and evil," and she touched.
So innocent, vessels waiting to be filled with intelligence and wisdom and questions, and the lust in Azazel's body practically hummed as first she bit, and then Adam bit, and he shuddered with the promise of everything.
Now, as he codes a new PPK/S to a specific palm print, while planting decryption bugs in a laptop owned by an agent gone rogue, he wonders if this was why God tried to deny limitless knowledge.
Because humans, deliciously adapting, always transforming and building and reforming- they have a way of becoming their own gods.
•••
The mission in Zimbabwe has Bond follow an international syndicate trafficking women from Bosnia into the UK and France. There is a computer with the best homemade programme Q has ever seen, apart from his own.
Bond types a code quickly in Java, which maybe impresses Q a little bit. It's more than the other agents know, at least.
He says, "Java, Bond?"
And Bond laughs, without stopping, and Q can see his slightly grainy figure on the screen shrug. "I like coding personalised weapons into my video games," he retorts, and it sounds a bit sarcastic.
Q hums and says, "I'm getting the information on the drive, 007. But it's basic, nothing more than flight itineraries. Can you hack further in?"
"That's your job, Q. I can't crack genius level algorithims." He replies, glancing to the camera in the corner quickly.
Q sighs, turning his mic to input only. Eve is making her way towards him; he can hear her heels click. M probably has more reports on the traffickers for Bond to use. He snaps his fingers to get his second in command's attention. "R, could TSS get into this laptop if Bond brings it back?"
R stares at the screen. "Programme running?"
"Homemade. From the ground up; even the laptop is homemade."
R grins. "I do like a challenge. TSS can handle it; bring it home."
"Q," Bond's voice is strained. "The computer sent out a distress signal."
"Fuck," Q breathes, turning the comms to input/output. "Turn the computer off, take it with you. Get out of there."
"Affirmative," On the CCTV, Bond yanks the wires charging the laptop and presses a button before stuffing the chunky thing into his rucksack. "Need a clear exit, Q."
This is when Q thrives. Bond gets his adrenaline in the field, but Q gets his fix behind the screen. He grins as R walks off to prepare TSS, and Eve settles next to him, politely waiting in understanding.
He says, "Take your immediate right and keep going until I tell you. Tell me you still have the watch I gave you."
Bond makes a noise of assent. "What, you want me to use it now?"
"Yes I do. Pop out the watch face, you'll find bridge wire and some nitroglycerin tablets attached to it, they'll look like microscopic pink pills."
Bond asks, "Nitroglycerin? Really?"
Q huffs. "Sometimes it's the classics that are the easiest to fall back on. Take the green door on your left, go up until you reach the roof. The bridge wire usually ignites at seven metres per millisecond. I modified it, of course, to twelve metres per millisecond, but there's a ten second pause between ignition and explosion for safety. Start rigging the place."
"Almost on the roof."
"Don't- I repeat, don't- press the button on the side of the watch until you are at least five hundreds yards away." Q orders, typing quickly to get eyes on Bond. "There's a market four blocks to your south. If you're being chased, it's peak shopping time now. The explosion should not cause casualties, just mass mayhem and confusion.
"I've made sure to order a ten block evac, but the modified wire will keep the explosion centered on that particular building, if explosions need exploding." Q assures, watching Bond break a window to escape and shoot at someone off camera.
"That phrase isn't grammatically correct," Bond tells him. There are the tell tale signs of a minor skirmish and Bond's gun being shot. "Explosions need exploding."
Q sniffs loftily. "Of course it is." It might not be. Maybe. He won't give Bond the benefit of being correct regardless.
Q hears Eve hum. He turns to her with a furrowed brow, but she just grins lopsidedly. "The pair of you. Could rule the world if we let you with a single laptop and a gun."
Q grins also. "Politics, Moneypenny," he says succinctly, turning back to the screen. "They're too much of a hassle."
Switching the comms to input/output again, he asks, "007, are you at a safe distance?"
"Yes." Bond's not even out of breath, running through the rooftops of Zimbabwe as if it was a leisurely stroll.
"And the laptop?"
"Still have it."
Q nods, typing to get eyes on Bond. "Permission to detonate. Your favourite part, I believe."
There's a pause after Bond makes a show of pressing the button in front of a CCTV camera, then Bond is knocked off balance by an explosion that registers through the comms.
Bond stands again, smiling in a self-satisfied way. "Mission success."
Q breathes out, able to relax. "There's an MI6 car coming to take you to the airport."
Bond hums. "Plane tickets?"
"There's a flight to London leaving in two and a half hours. Flight tickets are coming with your driver, a man called Jakobson."
"Affirmative. I'll check in," Bond assures. Eve sets the files down with a rueful grin. "World domination," she calls out as she walks away. "Thank god you too don't go rogue on us. We'd never survive the chaos."
Q smirks in her direction, and outright laughs when Bond says sardonically, "Pyjamas and morning tea, wasn't it? Better get a coffee carafe, I don't drink earl grey."
•••
"Long flight, was it?" Q asks. "Or do you just sleep here as well?"
Bond looks back at him, surprise written on his face. Below them, people are starting to get ready to tackle on Thursday morning commutes. Bond turns back to watching the horizon with a small shrug. "I like watching the sun rise."
Q takes him in. He is slouched slightly, the exhaustion from the trip probably weighing heavily on him. His wings are out of the aether, however, stretched wide and full. The morning sun glints off the golden white and it makes Q's heart ache. He brings his own wings out, enjoys the stretch and the warmth. The sun catches on the raven blue-black, streaked with hues of violet. Both are beautiful, in their own way.
Moments like this, Q wishes the divine could fly on earth.
"Like the painting," he murmurs, sitting beside him. "The Fighting Temeraire ." He goes silent. Q is aware that he's almost waxing sentimental, mentioning where they first met as if it was a bloody date. Then, pulling out a cigarette, he continues, because fuck it all, "You know the story behind the painting, don't you? The story of how one British ship, Temeraire , came to the aide of another, the Victory, in its moment of need and together they destroyed the French's Redoubtable at point blank range in the Battle of Trafalgar against Napolean.
"Some art historians, probably far too pompous and self-glorifying," He adds, to Bond's apparent amusement. "They believe that it's actually inaccurate, the painting. It looks like a sunset, but actually, if you care enough to… well care, then you'll see that the boat is being tugged upstream, and that based on the apparently purposeful brush strokes, and the position of the sun, it's a sunrise we're staring at. So, Henry Newbolt's lyrics to the poem are all wrong, is the actual message here, really, and that it's not supposed to be taken as a symbol of the death of an age because, in fact, sunrises symbolise rebirth."
Bond quirks a lip as he watches Q ignite the stick pursed between his lips. He says, "It's still a bloody big ship to me."
Q huffs. "Of course it is. Uncultured swine."
Bond makes a show of looking offended then asks, "Anyone ever tell you you're a bloody know it all?"
Q grins around the fag, still staring at the dusky pink and lavender of the rising sun. He blows out the smoke and ruffles his wings in mock indignation.
"All the time. Take it as a compliment, now. Have you checked in? Debriefed?"
Bond wrinkles his nose. It would be endearing, if the man was not covered in Zimbabwe dust, sweat, and almost reeking of exhaustion. "No. Are you going to tell on me, Quartermaster?"
Q takes one last long drag before flicking the cigarette away and turning his head to look at Bond with a glint in his eye. "Well, technically, it's not working hours just yet. So, right now, we're going to get coffee and breakfast, and later, when we're coworkers and I'm supposed to be angry at you for not delivering my equipment back, I'll harangue you then."
If Bond is surprised, he doesn't show it. Instead, he smirks slightly and stands, nodding.
Both he and Q pull their wings back into the aether before Bond helps him up and says, "I could go for a coffee. Where'd you have in mind?"
Q shrugs. "A little place not too far from here. I know the owner. But first we have a stop to the locker room to make; you need clean clothes."
•••
In the spaces between, the intermission between Quartermaster and special agent, they settle into something a little like fellowship.
Q wouldn't call it friendship, because they're not that, but they're more than acquaintances. He thinks. He could be wrong. But they stop being Q and James Bond, and become Azazel and Uriel.
He has often wondered what it would be like to simply fraternise- hang out, as it were- as James Bond and Q.
Now, he muses on that as he makes Bond coffee in his kitchen while the man showers down the hall. It's all rather disgustingly domestic, but not in a romantic sense or even in a best mates kind of scenario.
Q thinks it's domestic in the way that flatmates might be domestic. Distant, still (always) professional and serviceable.
"Do you think they talk about us?" Bond asks as he pads barefoot back into the kitchen. The steps sound slow. Tired. Q does not look away from the carafe.
He asks, "Who?" He already knows, though. MI6 has no reason to talk about them beyond the ever present orders to outfit Bond or commendation on a mission well done. They're the best, for a reason.
No, Q knows Bond refers to-
"Everyone else. My brethren and yours," Bond clarifies needlessly.
Q picks up the carafe and a mug and turn around to look at Bond. "I should imagine so. We're not exactly in a conventional friendship here. My very existence should put you off. Sugar?"
"As mine should you," Bond says dryly, picking up the offered mug. "And yet, look as us both."
Q smirks. "Well, I've always been the exception."
There's a silence, not exactly comfortable, but not off putting as Q putters around the kitchen cleaning up dishes and disappears to change his cardigan.
It's as they're leaving, as Bond turns to go in the opposite direction, that he turns halfway to Q- a twisting of his upper body, really- and says, "You are, you know."
Q furrows his brow. "I'm what?"
And Bond's smile is secret and small and honest. He says, "The exception," and it's said with such softness and gratitude and honesty that Q believes him.
•••
There's a shift, after that. Sometimes, it's tangible, but sometimes it's not.
Sometimes, it's in the way that Bond lingers in Q-Branch a little longer, and how Q always says, "You're in my way, 007, you bloody great nuisance," a little less tetchily.
Sometimes, it's in the way they share a small smile as Q hands over the latest doodad ("they're highly effective tools for the field, Bond, calling them doodads is an insult.").
And sometimes, it's how Q will scribble a notation for an alteration to a gun that is specially coded to a specific palm print.
If his subordinates notice, they don't say, until a month later, when the gossipmongers smell blood in the water and swarm like sharks.
It begins after Bond's latest mission takes him to Uzbekistan and ends in Gdansk. He's tired, sore, bruised in numerous places, his right eye is swollen shut by the butt of a gun and two of his fingers are taped together to set.
He walks with a limp, due to his set floating rib and sprained ankle, all the way to Q-Branch instead of Medical, but for once it's not pig-headedness; he got emergency care on his flight from his forced evac.
When he gets there, he looks lost for a bit, blinking owlishly with his good eye and flexing the fingers of his good hand into a fist before someone- R, maybe- tells him, a bit awkwardly as he's not used to dealing with field agents outright, that Q is in his office, if he's looking to debrief.
Q watches from the windows in his office as Bond makes his painstakingly arduous way to his office, expecting a witty quip and a smirk and maybe a cleaved gun and crushed earpiece.
Routine.
The routine is fucked from the beginning, as Bond doesn't knock like usual; he opens the door with something that could've been aplomb in someone a little more whole.
Q stands from his chair as Bond gives up the pretence of physical strength and sags, sags, until Q comes around and hoists him up by the shoulders, mindful of the bruise he knows is blossoming from his right shoulder blade to his second rib, the floating one, while Bond's hands wrap around Q's side to support himself.
Bond reaches over to press a button on his desk, the button that darkens the windows to his office and just like that, Q-Branch begins to whisper.
The reality is that Q takes Bond by the hips and bends to throw one arm over his shoulders for better balance and deposits Bond onto his sofa, an opulent leather thing M gave him. He makes the agent tea, and when it's seeped and sweetened, Q adds a finger and a half of smuggled whiskey to it.
Bond looks at the whiskey with a raised eyebrow but thanks Q for the drink.
After that, Q works and Bond sleeps reclined on the sofa. Q's office becomes a surprisingly nice lullaby of typing, sipping of routine tea, and Bond's soft breathing.
Q notices vaguely, while he's finishing up Bond's after-mission report on his equipment, that the man doesn't snore.
It's on his third tea break that he decides to watch for a while. He is surprised to find Bond's wings, extended out of the aether, bloody and drooping. They look far from the majestic grace of the angelic, and more the pathetic moulting of tropical birds.
But his face, the half that isn't swollen and ugly mottled purple, is still and calm. He is reminded of the first time he saw Bond, and thought him ugly as a human. A flat face and crooked nose and too big ears and the exhaustion and age showing in the weary lines around his mouth and eyes and forehead.
Now, with one eye bruised the size and colour of a plum, a swollen cheekbone, a split lip, and a gash from temple to jaw that luckily didn't need stitches, Q thinks him beautiful.
Not beautiful in any inappropriate sense, or conventional, although he does have a type of rugged beauty that is surprisingly common. It's something deeper, maybe. Q sips his tea and muses that it's less flatmate fraternisation and more friendship support now, and thinks that Bond's throat is particularly fetching.
His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows in his sleep, and Q's tea goes cold.
He has the delightful moment of watching his wings, bloody and broken and tangled, reshape themselves and grow and fix. It doesn't happen quickly, in the blink of an eye, but it doesn't happen slowly. It takes less than two minutes for the torn feathers to reattach and heal like skin stitching together. Seamless.
Bond wakes a little after that, when Q is on his fifth cup of tea, and it's not a slow happening.
One minute Bond is relaxed and practically poured onto the sofa, and the next he is stiff and aware, although his eyes remain closed.
His voice is gravelly and warm with sleep when he asks, "What time is it?"
"Three in the morning."
There's a grunt; Q doesn't look up from his typing. Bond says, "You should get more sleep, Q."
Q snorts derisively. "I get plenty. Besides, I couldn't leave you locked in my office and just leave. Just imagining it is horrific: you, alone for hours with my computer and my half finished equipment."
Bond huffs a laugh, and then hisses in pain. Q doesn't ask the obvious, because of course it hurts; and he doesn't tell him to be careful because of course Bond is going to be careful when medics had to set a floating rib and his body is purple and green with bruises. Instead, he says, "You might as well stay. I know you like watching the sunrise; there's coffee and biscuits in the break room."
"Technically not working hours?" Bond asks dryly.
Q blinks at him. Bond raises his eyebrows in question. Q smirks, just a minuscule upturn of his lips and Bond smiles back, moving sluggishly to the break room.
Q has spent the entire night watching the way the other man's wings knit back together, and contemplating his throat, and now he's pleased that Bond and he can hold conversations entirely without speaking.
•••
Bond doesn't change. He is still the most foolhardy of all the 00s, never brings back equipment in one piece, banters back and forth with Q as if they were competing for the last word.
But he does, in the little things.
His warm smiles get warmer, his eyes brighten a bit more when Q bests him with a quip or a glance or sometimes just pointed silence. He stays around Q-Branch after debriefings and sometimes even on the days when he is prowling MI6 like a ghost.
Q doesn't fail to notice these things. Nor does he fail to notice Bond's continual comfort in his presence. His wings are always out in Q's presence now, and his shoulders are set a little bit higher.
Q wonders what changes are obvious in him, that they inspire a secretive smile in an otherwise expressionless face.
But Bond does not change.
He's in a Jeep, parked across the street from his mark as he eats supper, when he asks, "What's your favourite type of food?"
If Q is surprised, and he is a little bit, he doesn't show it. Instead, he says, "Kunisov a little slow there for you?"
"Bored," is the response he gets. "He's just eating."
Q sighs. He could indulge the bored agent; if he didn't, Bond could quite possibly go into a strop. "I like Ethiopian."
Bond sounds surprised when he says, "A bit exotic."
"Yes, well, you can imagine how many restaurants serve authentic Ethiopian cuisine," Q drawls, leaning back. "I only eat it on very special occasions."
There's a long silence, and Q goes back to rerouting the satellite for maximum surveillance when Bond's voice filters in. "When I get back, we should go out to eat."
There are a dozen ways Q could take this. A dozen directions that seemingly innocent sentence is. Because Bond and Q have eaten together before, but contrary to what his subordinates probably imagine, it was tea and chocolate digestives gone a little stale in the damp sunrise of a wet London morning.
He could dismiss the notion as completely silly. He could deny without reason. He could become sarcastic, and by proxy, defensive.
Instead, he sighs. "Come back with everything intact this time, 007, and I'll go to dinner with you. Mark's on the move, by the way."
Bond's grin is audible as he says, "Affirmative. I'll check in. Bond out."
••
Bond, the arsehole, doesn't bring back his equipment. Or, rather, he does, but one radio does not, in fact, full equipment make.
Q goes to dinner regardless.
•••
Q is a demon, and thinks accordingly, sometimes.
He is prepared for everything from Bond saying fuck it to the idea of actually eating, to falling into each other in a mad haze of probably a bit too much wine at dinner and built up lust that apparently has been simmering for the longest time after pudding.
He is not prepared, therefore, for Bond to drive him to his flat and leave him on his doorstep.
He raises an eyebrow at Bond's sudden chastity, and Bond smirks warmly. He says, "You're the exception, Q."
Q suddenly very much wants to not be an exception of any kind, not when his limbs are sluggish from great food and his head is fuzzy from even greater wine and Bond's eyes are so damn blue.
He asks, "Joining a nunnery anytime soon?"
Bond chuckles softly and cups his jaw, tracing his chin and dragging his nails lightly down the side of his neck. Q shivers, and Bond's eyes glint brightly in amusement.
He leans in, leans in, leans in until his lips are brushing Q's with every breath and says, "Goodnight, Quartermaster."
Q stands stock still as Bond saunters off to his car, gets in, and drives off. When he finally can move again, he mutters, "Bastard," once feelingly and walks in to take a cold shower.
•••
Things continue on after that.
Boats against the current, and all that rot. Q works hard to aid the agents, and all the agents work hard to bring their equipment back and stay alive.
Except 007, but that's old news.
Q thinks Bond might actually be torturing himself in some obscure, masochistic way. After that night, Q expected distance. Maybe some professionalism again.
He is not prepared for the intense moments of personal space invasion. Bond comes into Q-Branch and stands just to the side of Q, a bit closer than professionally necessary and breathes down his back.
When he speaks, it is in low, intimate murmurs that forces Q to lean in to hear or lean back to accomodate 007's breach of personal space.
When they are both in Q's office, for whatever reason, Bond darkens the windows purposefully and locks the office door.
He gets liberal with his touches, although those only happen in the privacy of Q's office and are as small and secretive as his smiles. A quick brush of fingers or a lingering palm on his wrist or the breath of a whisper against Q's ear.
Q is taking long, arctic temperature showers almost daily. Damn the man.
He knows, however, in their own unspoken language, when Bond is done playing his courtship game. After a month and a half of cold showers and furious wanks in the dead of night, and sexual tension in the workplace so thick Q could've cut it with a knife, Bond brings him coffee and a note:
It's not the sunrise, but it'll do.
Smirking, Q takes the coffee, prepared just the way he prefers, and makes his way to the roof, where he knows Bond will be.
•••
He's on the roof, wings spread to their entire glory, smoking a cigarette. The fag in Bond's mouth is so incongruous with the rest of him that Q takes a moment after sitting to watch out of the corner of his eye.
Bond, infernal man, knows he's watching. He lifts the hand holding the stick from where it rests on his thigh and pinches it between his teeth with his lips open and slightly damp. Then he purses, and sucks in, a hollow underneath each cheekbone definable. He keeps the smoke in his mouth until it billows out in curls like a lazy dragon. Then he takes the cigarette out and licks his lips, now red and spit slicked.
Q swallows with a dry and disgustingly audible click. Bond smirks.
There's a silence, and it's a testement to how far they've come that it's not longer uncomfortable. Finally Q sighs.
And Bond snorts in amusement.
"I've always been more partial to the sunrise," he comments lightly, flicking the ash.
Q nods. "Sunsets are more poetic though."
Bond shrugs. "If you like morbid poetry about death and endings."
Q turns his head to look at him. "And you don't?"
Bond is contemplative, until he sighs. "I've seen enough death and endings." He turns his head to look at Q and smiles. It's his honest smile, the one that tugs at Q's heart strings in the most innocent of ways. He says, "I think it's time for a beginning, don't you?"
Q is, despite himself, charmed by the sweet cheesiness. But they wouldn't work with each other as well as they do if they weren't who they were all the time, so Q sniffs loftily and upturns his nose. "I'd be a notch on a bedpost, Bond."
"And what's wrong with being a notch?" Bond asks, mock affronted, but his voice is laced with humour.
Q wrinkles his nose. "Does it even resemble a bed post anymore? I would imagine it's been hacked at so many times, it looks more like a small twig."
"It's a very nice bedpost."
"Mmm. Pine?" Q is smiling now, although he's trying to hide it. It is, after all, a serious conversation hidden with sarcasm.
"Oak, actually. But I've been meaning to do away with it for a while now. Seems I found something better than just another notch." Bond's voice is serious now, and when Q turns to look at him, his gaze is intense.
Q nods once. "You know, out of the two of us, you're apparently the worst one. It's embarrassing, frankly, considering I'm the actual demon. With me, it's all, 'my dear Q,' or 'darling,' and Moneypenny calls me the 'most boffinest of boffins'."
Bond raises an eyebrow. "What does she call me?"
"The spawn of Satan," Q deadpans, and Bond laughs. Q touches his cheek with two fingers and traces his cheekbone softly. "They don't see you like this. And I do?"
Bond's eyes turn warm as he shuffles closer to kiss Q, for the first time. As he pulls away, he nods. "You have, you do, and you will."
And, well… fuck if that's not the most romantic thing that Q has ever heard, and it came out of James Bond's mouth, of all people.
Q whimpers slightly as he pushes back into Bond's mouth and ruffles his wings to stroke Bond's and suddenly Q wants to go home immediately.
•••
For all that Bond's courtship of Q was painstakingly slow, deliberate, sweetly chaste and yet laden with enough sexual tension to last Q a lifetime, they fall into each other like a pair of touch starved, randy teenagers.
Bond takes a second to look around Q's home, a remastered two storey warehouse flat, before he all but pounces on Q, crowding him against the wall.
There's a table with a lamp that shatters as Bond slams Q against the wall, kissing him like a man starved for affection. Q kisses back with teeth and tongue and nothing in this is soft and warm. It's desperate and hard and loud and lewdly wet; the lamp shattering and the table almost toppling as Bond trips over it to lift Q up against the wall and sit him down on it.
Q watches in the foyer mirror as Bond sucks new marks into his neck and collarbone, his back muscles and arm muscles rippling through the shirt. He pushes Bond back and sucks his own marks into his neck, and bites Bond's earlobe before freeing the hem from the waistband of his trousers and raking his nails down Bond's back.
Bond growls and lifts, throwing him bodily into the opposite wall, almost against the mirror.
"Well, fuck," Q breathes, panting as Bond pins him by the wrists and grinds hard against Q's groin, groaning.
"No… fucking idea," he breathes, until Q licks into his mouth with newfound need. "I've waited so damn long." He continues, hiking Q's shirt up without remorse for the glasses that skid away violently. He wraps his hands around Q's thighs and lifts him up, humming agreeably as Q wraps his legs around him and latches his mouth onto Bond's neck.
"Where's your bedroom?"
Q dislodges with a final nip and sucks on Bond's tongue lightly. "Too damn far… later… sofa."
"Jesus fuck," Bond stutters out as Q grinds his erection against Bond's.
Q chuckles, and says in a disapproving voice even as he grinds harder to hear Bond groan, "Blasphemy, 007."
He bites down on Q's collarbone hard enough to sting until Q stills and Bond takes the opportunity to deposit Q on the sofa. "I'm going to fucking take you apart."
"Promises, promises," Q replies breathily, although his hips are thrusting futilely, trying to find friction.
Bond kisses him once, before moving down his neck and chest, moving to suck Q's right nipple in his mouth and nibble until it's pebbled. Q writhes, pulling out breathless gasp after breathless gasp, clutching the back of Bond's head and the golden hairs cropped close to his hair.
Bond licks wet stripes down each of his ribs and sucks on his navel, and his hipbones, and his inner thighs, and his scrotum, but avoids Q's cock as Q all but wails in frustration.
"Damn it, Bond, get the fuck on with it," Q growls, thrusting.
Bond makes an amused sound, a huff of damp air against his pelvis that makes Q's abdominals clench and reaches up to press two fingers into Q's mouth.
The message is clear: shut up and have patience.
Q growls, but sucks Bond's fingers into his mouth, sucking lewdly and wildly and sloppily, past the point of decorum. He is aware the sounds both are making are disgustingly obvious.
Bond finally moves his mouth to Q's cock, and takes him to the hilt, sucking up fiercely. Q's mouth goes slack on a garbled wail.
He looks down and Bond is staring at him with almost frightening intensity and no small amount of lust and Q thrusts into his mouth sloppily, feeling Bond gag awkwardly twice before breathing through his nose and swallowing around the head of his prick.
Bond lets go with a wet pop and a thin thread of saliva is connecting his lips to Q's head, deliciously filthy and picture perfect. The thread breaks when Bond asks, "Lube? Condoms?"
Q heaves a breath, only to let it out in a frustrated whine. "Bedroom. Damn it."
Bond chuckles and grabs him by the hips, lifting him up almost effortlessly to walk to the bedroom.
Q makes a noise of assent. He nuzzles Bond's jaw and earlobe, taking it between his teeth to suck gently while moving his hips in an almost lazy way. He presses kisses to Bond's neck- that neck Q could've written symphonies about- and sucks small marks down the left side before lifting and kissing Bond gently before moving to the right.
Bond hums, and the vibrations make Q's lips quiver. Q shuffles closer as Bond enters the bedroom.
"Easy, love," Bond murmurs, moving to the nightstand. Q vaguely wonders how Bond knows the lube and condoms are there, and muses on how the fevered need of earlier suddenly became this soft, slow thing.
"How did you know they were in my nightstand?" Q slurs.
Bond grins. "I went through your medicine cabinet and bedside tables when I showered."
Q snorts. "Shameless."
Bond throws the lube onto the bed and frames Q's body with his arms as he leans down and kisses Q gently, once, twice, three times before popping the cap open. "I've wanted this for so long."
"Whereas I was rather indifferent," Q quips with a smirk, watching Bond massage lube onto his fingers and palm.
Bond's other hand slaps him on the bum lightly. "Cheeky. Move," he adds, separating Q's thighs and leaning back on his haunches. "You're beautiful like this."
Q, damn it all, blushes and gives him a small smile.
Of the two of them, Bond is the one Q could wax rhapsodic about. Sitting there between his thighs, naked and glistening from a faint sheen of sweat. His wings are out, twitching with need and stretched over them; he looks like a winged Adonis. Q knows his wings are also out, probably twitching as well.
Q reaches to run his fingers through Bond's feathers, the ones he can reach, and Bond's eyes darken and glow.
"Q," he breathes, moving down to press possessive, needy, hard kisses that Q returns tenfold, grasping his shoulders and back and kneading the muscles there, scratching his nails down his back and sides. He runs his fingers where wing meets shoulder and sucks a mark into Bond's collarbone as his fingers trail lightly on Q's hole.
Q keens, pressing against the digits and letting out a breathy, "Please," against Bond's lips. "Please, I need-"
"Tell me," Bond whispers, but he's already pressing his index finger and Q pushes out and it's all so good and it stings from where he hasn't had sex in months and Bond is swallowing every groan and moan of his name like a man starving.
"Ah, shit!" Q grits out as Bond pushes in a second and stretches him with soft murmurs. "More, please!"
Bond scissors his fingers and his other hand is cupping his bollocks and it's all Q can do not to sound like a dying whale when Bond adds a third and finds his prostate.
Instead he presses his hand to the nape of Bond's neck and squeezes hard enough to bruise. "I'm ready, for fuck's sake, do it!"
Bond says, "Don't rush me, Q," but chuckles, but takes his fingers out with a final wriggle.
He grabs the condom and Q takes it from him, places it on his weeping cock with slightly unsteady fingers. Q whines as Bond lifts Q's knees to his chest and aligns himself.
It's a long, slow thrust in, and both men are left gasping for breath, Q's arsehole fluttering spasmodically around Bond's cock, fitted to the hip against him, until Q nods minutely.
Bond pulls back and presses in again, harder but still slow, and Q catches his huff of breath against his lips and sucks his tongue. Bond speeds up and Q moans, traps Bond's lower lip and worries it before latching on with his mouth like an incubus to Bond's shoulder.
Bond's wings jerk and beat as his thrusts get even harder and his grunts and moans of effort mix with Q's needy whines.
The headboard sounds against the wall with a loud semi-crash and Bond's eyes glint mischievously before thrusting just as hard. He chuckles as the headboard crashes against the wall again.
"Quit fooling around," Q laughs breathlessly. "I'm dying of need here."
Bond laughs, nods. "You're so whiny!"
"Fuck you," Q retorts, thrusting his hips up to meet Bond's thrusts. "Ah! Do that again!"
Bond moves his hips and rolls into his next powerful thrust, grinning as Q throws his head back with a soundless wail. "That's it," he encourages.
Q moans brokenly, a litany of more, harder, fuck, James falling from his slack lips. With a few more thrusts, Bond's hand wraps around his prick and his mouth closes around a pebbled nipple. Q arches as his cock paints stripes of come across his stomach and chest and Bond's arm.
Bond moans into Q's neck as he presses deep, coming with a groan that reverberates through Q's body and sends delicious shivers down to his toes.
After a while of heavy breathing and slack lipped open kisses, Bond rolls to the side and throws an arm over his head. "We waited too damn long."
Q laughs as he stands on wobbly legs to find a flannel. "You mean you did. Your fault. Courting me as if we were teenagers."
Bond grins, opening an eye as Q kneels next to him to clean his arm of the come. He cleans his own stomach and chest before throwing the flannel aside and snuffling up next to him.
Bond puts an arm around him, and kisses the nape of his neck, damp from exertion. He says, "It was worth it. Every part of it."
And Q agrees.
•••
They spend months like that. MI6 dubs them the government's power couple, since combining the two of them means a successful mission in half the time.
Bond still doesn't return his equipment, and they continue to watch the sunrise together when they have the chance.
Bond moves in with him, and it's all so glaringly domestic in the small ways that Q should've run for the hills, but he quite likes it.
It's a novel thing, having two toothbrushes in the holder, and a straight razor next to Q's electric one.
It's in the way Q moves his kettle a few inches to the left to plug in Bond's coffee carafe, and how Bond's clothes take up the left side of the wardrobe and Bond's suits are all hung up in neat colour coded sections.
Bond brings his books, and his CDs, and his laptop, and he claims Q's larger leather armchair that constitutes the living area of the library upstairs.
Q uses Bond's body wash when he runs out and Bond drinks out of Q's tea mugs and stains the bottoms with telltale signs of black coffee when he leaves it dirty in the morning.
Q buys red wine, and Bond splurges on 30 year Glenfidditch.
Q codes and calls Q-Branch and R&D at all hours, and Bond cleans his guns.
Their version of domestic.
It all goes to shit months after that first time they had sex, and a month after Q said those three little words and Bond repeated them, somber and seriously because neither of them are known to be flippant with their emotions.
It all goes to shit in Colombia.
•••
They're guerrilla fighters smuggling cocaine into parts of the world in exchange for enough government secrets to blackmail the Colombian government into allowing them political immunity.
003 gets sent first, but the mission becomes a cock up when the man guarding her gets paid to set her up for an ambush.
Bond gets sent in after her, and it's there that Q loses him in a flurry of movement.
Bond is stalking the outer perimeter of a cocaine factory, gun primed and ready to fire, and Q is in his ear because the satellite above Bond is spotty and there's no CCTV in the middle of the rainforest.
Sensory deprivation in the worst sense, when he's responsible for the life of the man he loves.
It's as Bond is exiting the makeshift factory that he swears vehemently.
"007?" Q asks. "Problem?"
"A bit." Bond sounds strained. "I think I'm being ambushed. Can't be sure. It's a trap, though. Gut feeling."
"Get out of there." Q's tone brooks no room for challenge or question.
Q can hear the sounds of Bond quickly backtracking his steps until there's a gunshot and a grunt that sounds too close for comfort. "007, report."
"Got hit. Sniper. Bit busy at the moment." At least Bond's shooting back. Small mercies.
Q hears the sounds of sudden gunfire- AK-47s, his brain provides as he counts the seconds between each round- and shudders. His wings quiver in fear. "Someone get me eyes!" He orders, typing furiously into the satellite's override commands.
Suddenly there's a pained, and rather wet grunt, and the white noise static grows intensely loud. "007? Bond?"
There's a beat, then two, before the earpiece is clicked off with a crunch.
Q blanches, and the rest of Q-Branch quails in the light of recent events. "Get M," Q barks. "We've got an agent in the dark."
•••
He vehemently refuses to break down. He isn't a weeping damsel in distress. He is a grown man of thirty-two years, the head of a branch in the government with arguably the most intense job, and he's a bloody demon.
He refuses to break down.
Instead, he gets M into his office, and diplomatically states that they are doing everything in their power to find Bond. He explains that Q outfitted a tracker into his hip, and they're working on coordinates.
M asks him if he's capable of handling this, with a pointed emphasis on handling. Q sits a little straighter.
"Sir," he says, and his tone is distant and deadened, and his eyes glint dangerously red, so differently from the cool verdigris of his usual shade. "I can handle this better than anyone else in this branch."
He respects Mallory. He is never going to be Mansfield, because Mansfield was something else- set on a pedestal no one else had never and will never achieve. But Mallory is professional and a hard ass and gets the job done efficiently.
"If Bond cracks, I will take steps," M says.
Q's wings snap out angrily, flapping like a crazed raven with the very idea of Bond becoming a mark, but his face is a study in tense nonchalance.
"Understood."
M continues, "And if you work yourself to the ground and become a hindrance, I will suspend you. I don't have an issue with your relationship: you made each other better. But the second you become a nuisance due to emotional liability, that's it."
Q is gripping his thigh so hard he is sure he's leaving bruises in his own leg, and his claws, extended from the aether into the physical world, tear into the fabric and leave welts. He grits out, "Understood."
•••
The Colombians have taken out the tracker and the cyanide tooth, because Q would've gotten an alert of it being used. They probably forced Bond to tell them where every single tracker was, or methodically went through every part of his body with meticulous patience.
Q flushes with rage when he thinks that. He had placed a tracker on the inside of Bond's thigh, high up where it met the inside of his hip. Bond mocked him for it, but Q told him he'd rather be safe than sorry.
Now he imagines them running meticulous fingers through the insides of Bond's thighs, pressing hard and gentle in turns, their ugly faces sneering and preparing the same torture they gave 003, bless her soul.
He thinks about the bruises on 003's inner thighs and the records he hacked that labelled things like vaginal tearing and branding and whipping and he breaks his biro in half.
He's blind, and deaf, and on the end of his rope. But he hides it because M is watching and he really feels like M doesn't make empty threats. But he probably doesn't hide it very well; his subordinates avoid meeting his gaze.
It's three days late when he gets the damn satellite images from the middle of that goddamn forest (and fuck blasphemy, thank you very much).
Q sits down to run facial recognition programs on the boorish men surrounding and pouncing on Bond.
He watches it on replay, watches the sniper in the trees shoot Bond in his shooting arm. He watches ten men swarm like flies onto his body and start beating him with the butts of their AK-47s and Bond fights back until one slams the butt of his machine gun into Bond's temple and he crumples like a puppet without strings.
He watches the man dig into Bond's ear canal and take out the earpiece. Crush it. Watches as they heave Bond onto their shoulders haphazardly and walk off.
It's on repeat, and branch technicians stop looking up away from their monitors because the video is blown up on the large screens and Q is unshaven and has a tired, fierce gaze on his face and more often than not his eyes are serpentine and as red as molten lava.
He works without watching the video play, but he doesn't take it down.
•••
It's a week and a half with no word or findings, and M types up the obituary. The third obituary James Bond has had written. KIA in Colombia.
Q argues against it until he is sent home indefinitely.
He once told Bond he could do more damage with one laptop and a cup of tea than he could in a year.
He wants-needs to prove himself correct.
•••
It's two weeks later and Q gets nowhere.
So he does what he doesn't want to do; he calls to ask for help from his brethren. Find him, he begs. Please.
It's three days later when a demon Q doesn't recognise sends him coordinates.
Q forgoes MI6, and prepares himself for a conjuring. It drains him, and leaves him sick and groggy and disgusting afterwards, but he's going to have to conjure himself over there.
So he does. In the blink of an eye, he's outside a bare house in the middle of the rainforest. The windows are boarded up and mould is growing everywhere. The place smells of blood and sex and damp and sweat.
He is livid and it takes no effort at all to break down the door in a rage of hellfire and smoke and an unearthly trembling of the ground that rattles the walls and breaks the glass of the windows.
The men are screaming and yelling, some are reaching for their guns as some run out of the door.
Q screams in a distorted voice as his body elongates and his face thins and his jaw unhinges. His teeth drip black blood and his wings burn and bleed and he is ten feet of raging, livid demon and there are men now crossing themselves as Q damns them in the ancient language of his brethren.
It takes ten seconds, roughly, for some men's necks to snap, while some catch fire from the inside out, or get decapitated, or get ripped, or melt. Q has no patience.
He lies with the wreckage of his damnation and changes back into skinny, unassuming Q, before going to find Bond.
What he finds startles a pained keening noise out of the back of his throat and makes him away with nausea.
•••
They're on the roof, after James had come back from Colombia. Q sits with his back to James' chest, taking comfort in the other man's wings.
James tightens his arms as Q shudders. He almost lost this. He almost lost James. The very thought makes his stomach roil and lurch.
"I'm here, love," James murmurs. His cheek is stitched and his left arm is in a sling and there's a thick gash going across the bridge of his nose. He walks with a limp from repeated sexual assault and his ribs are cracked and bruised and there's whip marks on his back and three separate brands on his body and his leg is set in a cast from three separate breaks. "I'm alive, Q. I'm here, it's fine."
And this is the grand difference between Q and James. James is an angel. He is inherently good in a bad world. His job has him fight, fuck, kill, and explode things, but that's not who James is. That's the way he must be to keep the world from destroying itself.
James Bond, after Q rescued him from the fucking pig sty of a cell he was thrown into in the middle of fucking nowhere in Colombia, had flown to MI6 and got stitched up and forgiven them, because that's what he did. He forgave. He forgave Vesper Lynd, after a time where he needed direction and God distanced Himself to allow His child to grow in his faith. He forgave Mansfield for the shite she put him through. He forgave Silva for the death of the only mother he ever knew.
James Bond would always forgive, because he was an angel, and angels are good.
Q, upon saving James Bond and leaving him secured in the airport, went back and wrought fire and brimstone on their families. Their mothers and fathers, for birthing such abominable defects; their wives and husbands for marrying them; the children destined for Hell, and destroyed their homes. He made them suffer, because he had the time and the anger. They were slow deaths, merciless deaths, and he relished in the sounds of their suffering.
He snapped the neck of the Colombian government officials who sponsored them, and killed everyone involved who wasn't set apart for Heaven.
He almost lost James, and Q doesn't take to losing things well.
"Moneypenny is right," James muses. "We could do so much damage if we went rogue."
Q sniffs, and burrows deeper into James' chest. He loves James. Moneypenny is right to fear that, however flippantly that fear is.
Mallory is right to be wary of them both together. Tanner is right to not comment. Q branch technicians are correct in being unnerved at the thick tension whenever James wanders into Q's space.
Q loves James Bond. He would kill, damn, torture for James Bond. He has. He lives and breathes James Bond. He can't imagine a day when he doesn't wake up to James' arm slung around his waist and wing stretched alongside his.
Q lifts his head to stare at James, who looks back with fondness and gratitude and so much god damn love it hurts Q's heart and fuck blasphemy because he doesn't care anymore. He says into James' mouth, "I would destroy civilisations and raze the entire world to ash and damn nations to save you."
And James kisses back with equal want and need and love and says after they part, panting and breathless, "I would make you my god."
Their own brand of adoration; chaos confessing love.