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“You know, this is not the way I thought tonight would go,” Q said, meditatively. He soaked a rag with vodka and stuffed it into the bottle, leaving a few inches for a tail. He lined it up next to the other two Molotov cocktails he’d made and started on a fourth.
“Oh?” Bond said. He peered over the bar and was greeted with a hail of bullets. “Shit.” He checked his clip. He had five bullets left, and then one more clip. He’d have to make them count or take a gun off one of their attackers.
Q soaked the rag, took a healthy swig from the bottle, and stopped it up. Four Molotovs, ready to go. He looked around for more tools to improvise with and grabbed a bunch of things, including some salt and pepper shakers. He stuffed it all into his messenger bag to sort through later. He supposed he could throw pepper into someone’s eyes. It probably wouldn’t make them very happy.
“Yep. When Moneypenny said she had someone for me, I thought, oh. Dinner with a nice bloke, and if he’s good looking, maybe a good shag. Delightful way to spend a Friday night. I did not expect my blind date to be you. Moneypenny might have to be assassinated for her trickery.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The night’s not over and I’m having a wonderful time. And you would shag on a first blind date?” Bond tutted, but he was grinning. “Q, how forward of you. I’m up for it if you are.”
Q shrugged. “Eh, why not? It’s not like I have a lot of other options, considering the hours I work. Do you know how much work and time it takes to pull quality beefcake at a club, and then get a good round out of it? I’d rather stay in with Netflix and the cats.”
Bond fired off a few more rounds. “That’s not the most enthusiastic response I’ve ever gotten, but I’ll take it and the backhanded compliment. So glad that I’m worthy enough to distract you from binge watching Lost in Space.”
“You should be. It’s rather an impressive feat.” Q giggled and lit two of his improvised bombs. He gave one to Bond, and when Q gleefully yelled “Fire in the hole!” they tossed them over the bar, to opposite sides of the room.
There was the sound of shattering glass and a whoosh as linen tablecloths and napkins caught fire, and judging by the screams, someone had been unlucky enough to be caught by one. The fire alarms started going off, and a few seconds later, the sprinkler system.
“I think we should sneak out the back,” Q said. “Shame. This was such a nice restaurant. I was looking forward to dessert.”
“Agreed. The chocolate mousse here is to die for,” Bond said.
Q gathered up his remaining Molotov cocktails, Bond’s lighter, stuffed some limes into his pockets, and snatched up a very sharp knife he found before scampering out of the bar and through the kitchen, Bond on his heels and laying down strategic cover fire.
“How are you not armed?” Bond asked. A few bullets missed him so closely that he felt the air move.
“I’m not a double-oh!” Q hissed. “Besides, as it turns out I have you, why should I be armed? I have a knife.”
“And some limes in your pocket? Or are you just really happy to see me?”
“Might be that I’m just an opportunistic klepto,” Q said. Bond shot the guy waiting for them in the alleyway, stole his gun, and then they were sprinting down side streets.
“I have more ammo in the car,” Bond said. “And more guns.”
“Of course, you do. But try and get to it when the carpark is crawling with men who’d like to kill us.”
“I like a challenge,” Bond said.
“So do I. Oh, look, here’s a park. I do love a good walk in nature.”
Q set down his Molotovs and knife, scaled the closed rod-iron fence, and then reached through the bars to retrieve them. Bond rolled his eyes and climbed over.
“Hardly a good time to take a stroll around the duck pond, Q,” Bond said.
Q pulled Bond behind some bushes. The sound of running feet pattered by on the pavement, before fading off. They waited for a count of ten to make sure no one was coming back around, and then Q tugged on Bond’s sleeve. He led a catawampus path over the running trails and through the carefully landscaped woods of the little park, until they got to the pond.
Q sat down on a bench, patting the spot next to him.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
“But you already have my name and number,” Bond said, handing it over.
Q grinned at him with a lot of teeth. “That I do, 007.”
Bond leaned over Q’s shoulder and watched him pull up an app that Bond hadn’t noticed before. The screen started showing a picture of the restaurant, and it only took a few seconds for Bond to realize that the feed was from his car.
They watched the confused milling as the henchmen scattered when they heard the sirens heralding the imminent arrival of the police and fire department.
Q clicked over to another screen and tapped a control labeled “Retrieve.” There were two options: Immediate and Coordinates, and Q chose the latter, typing in the name of the park. “The first option means you need the car to get to you ASAP and by any means necessary. The second directs it where to go and wait.”
“Clever.”
“I thought so.”
The car’s engine started, and the car slowly backed out of its parking space.
“I both love and fear driverless AI technology,” Q said, conversationally. “Here, you monitor, I’ll call it in.”
“This is not your first time escaping capture, is it?” Bond thought Q was as calm and as matter-of-fact now as he sounded while guiding Bond through the process of disabling a bomb. Most people would be in hysterics, but Q gave the impression that this was business as usual.
“I’m old hat at giving bad guys and exes the slip by now.”
He returned the phone to Bond along with one of the bottles and called Tanner on his phone to explain the situation while they walked to the park’s entrance.
“Bad luck,” Q said, hanging up. They hopped the front gates to slide into the idling car. “We’re going to spend the night in the safehouse while the perps get rounded up. I didn’t recognize them, did you?”
“They did look vaguely familiar. But then, one henchman is much like another.”
“True,” Q said. “R will run them through facial recognition.”
“I have a better idea than the safehouse,” Bond said. “If you’re up for an adventure.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
007_Q_007
Outside of London, off a dark country road in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night, two men sat on the warm hood of a classic Aston Martin and looked up at the clear, starry sky. One of them, a rugged blond fellow with a nice suit, watched the hands of his companion as he carefully sliced a lime into quarters. They leaned back against the windshield, a blanket and a scattering of random items carefully perched around them.
“You really are an opportunistic klepto,” Bond said, a touch wonderingly. “And here you get stroppy whenever we try to liberate things from Q branch.”
“The things we dislike in others are projections of our own faults,” Q said philosophically. “Now, pay attention, 007. This is what is called a poor man’s margarita.”
He pulled the dried rags out of the bottles—to his delight, he’d managed to filch nearly full tequila bottles. Top shelf, too. He licked his hand between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and salted the same spot with a stolen salt shaker he’d found in his messenger bag. Then he showed a supremely amused Bond the process, with the flourish of a bad stage magician.
“Salt,” Q licked up the salt, “tequila,” he swigged from the bottle, “and lime.” He bit into a wedge of lime and tried not to wince as the tang of flavors hit him just behind the jaws and made his eyes water. “Gah. Now you try.”
“Are we uni students?” Bond asked.
Q’s nose wrinkled. “I mean, if we’re going to roleplay, I’d prefer not to be a uni student, if it’s all the same to you. I get flashbacks from exams and it’s a turn-off,” Q said. He pointed at Bond. “Salt, tequila, lime. Drink up, buttercup.”
Bond huffed a laugh. Licked his hand, salted it, swigged tequila, and bit into a lime.
He was too well trained to show any distress, And Q was staring at him intently from less than a foot away, looking for the tell-tale signs that the sourness was getting to him, and finding it in the agent’s unnatural stillness.
“That was awful,” he told Q, finally.
Q leaned back and reached for the salt shaker. “Isn’t it, though? Another!”
They salted, swigged, and when Bond looked around for a lime he saw Q, the picture of mischief, grinning at him with a lime in his teeth, waiting.
Oh, it was like that, was it? Bond bit the lime, spat the rind over the side of the car, and hauled Q in close by his tie to chase the taste of tequila and lime in a more fun way.
“Did you know that the passenger seat reclines very nicely? I made sure when I rebuilt the car,” Q gasped, as Bond nipped his way down his neck and his hands shucked Q’s jacket.
Bond grinned. “Does it really? We should try it out, make sure it still works.”
“Fabulous,” Q breathed. “Bring the tequila.”