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Maybe he was getting too old for this job. It certainly was getting to be hell on his body, not to mention toll it took on his spirit—an entity he’d expected would have given up years ago. Yet, there it was, aching as badly as his bruised ribs and his sprained wrist. Every time he went into the field it was a little more difficult. The list of innocent dead in his ledger growing ever longer. He ran a hand over his face and sighed. He tended towards self-pity when he was on bed rest and tonight seemed to be no exception. A quiet voice came from the doorway to his bedroom.
“Lost in your own head?”
Bond glanced up and saw Q leaning against the door frame, a vague look of concern on his face. Bond suspected he was personally responsible for at least half of the fine lines that marred his otherwise perfect forehead when he frowned. All the lights in the flat had been turned out, so it was just the soft glow of the overhead light and bedside lamps casting the bedroom in a gentle, warm light.
“Maybe.”
“Your mind is like a dangerous neighborhood; you shouldn’t go there alone or after dark,” Q said, coming over to sit on the side of the bed. It made Bond chuckle and then immediately wince at the sharp pain on the right side of his chest. Q reached into his front pocket and took out a small bottle of prescription pills, took the top off, and shook out two.
“I thought you were against me taking these,” Bond said as the younger man dropped the pulls in his open palm.
“No,” Q said, handing him the glass of water off the bedside table. “I’m against you taking them when you’re stubbornly trying to avoid feeling any emotional discomfort. I want you to take them when you’re physically injured.” Bond downed the pills and let Q take the glass from him.
“To be fair, sometimes it’s both,” he said, tension in his voice. Q hummed thoughtfully.
“I suppose that’s fair after this one,” he said.
Bond raised his eyes to Q’s and immediately saw he wasn’t the only one deep in the fallout of this last mission. There was a tightness at the corner of Q’s mouth and a restless twitch to his left hand that were telltale indicators.
“You want one?” he asked, nodding towards the pill bottle. The slight smile would let him play it off as a joke, but he was eager to get that haunted look off Q’s face and he wasn’t physically up for his usual method of distraction. Q huffed and ran a hand through his already-ruffled hair.
“We can’t have the same self-destructive coping mechanisms. England would fall,” Q said. James smiled.
“Well, I have pills, sex, and alcohol covered,” he said with a hint of pride.
“As you’ve taken all the fun ones, what does that leave me with?”
“Insomnia, perfectionism, and too much caffeine,” Bond said.
He didn’t laugh, but some of the tension eased from his shoulders. Everything about this last mission had set the Quartermaster on edge. Their intel was full of mistakes, civilians had died, and Bond had come back littered with injuries. Almost hadn’t come back at all, Q remembered with a shudder. He reached down and turned Bond’s unharmed hand so it was facing palm up; then he ran his fingers down the smooth, tan wrist until they settled on his pulse point, closing his eyes and drinking in the steady, slow rhythm.
James saw the bob of Q’s Adam’s apple, an action that betrayed his calm exterior. He was fighting to get his emotions in check…and losing.
“What can I do?” he asked, keeping his voice low. Q shook his head.
“Just this…I just need this.”
His voice was thick, and Q pulled the sleeve of his cardigan over his hand and rubbed the tears from his eyes, leaving his glasses askew. James fought to hold still. He wanted to do something, take some kind of action, anything to ease Q’s pain. But he knew the comfort of a heartbeat, the relief in reassuring yourself that someone who was nearly taken from you is still on the right side of the ground. The pills were starting to do their job and Bond could feel the familiar white noise of pain medication dulling his mind and body. It also seemed to be loosening his tongue.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. Q sniffled and nodded. “And I’m sorry this last mission was so…so awful and unfair.”
“It really was.” I came out as a mix between a sigh and a sob. Q opened his eyes and shuddered. “I killed at least three innocent people today. Almost four.” The last part was almost inaudible, but Bond still heard it. There was no use having the “you can’t blame yourself for the people who got caught in the crossfire,” talk. It didn’t work and, if Bond was honest with himself, he didn’t want it to. The fact that Q felt responsible because of a freak train accident that happened while he was manipulating traffic patterns for Bond, well, that fact made him so beautifully human. While he didn’t like seeing the man in the state he was in, James didn’t think he could handle a world where Q casually shrugged, issued the phrase “collateral damage,” and went back to work. Bond almost hadn’t made it, crashing yet another beautiful car, and having to resort to hand-to-hand combat when the accident-induced traffic jam cut off all his other escape routes. His attacker had gotten the upper hand when he kicked Bond in the right side of his torso, bruising his ribs and knocking the breath out of him like a popped balloon. He’d seen it coming, but he’d been too damn slow. If it hadn’t been for the knife concealed in his ankle holster, Bond would have been in real trouble.
“James?”
Q’s voice cut in and he realized he’d gone an gotten lost in his own head again. He blinked and focused on Q’s worried eyes.
“To you need more ice?”
The question didn’t make immediate sense to him until Q nodded down at his chest. Without realizing it, Bond had brought his left hand up and was guarding the injured area. His left hand itself wasn’t in great shape either—firmly wrapped in a splint to take the pressure of the sprained wrist. Combined with the routine bruises and cuts he must have looked like a pitiful wounded animal there on the bed.
“No. It’s fine. The pills are starting to work,” he said. Q didn’t look like he entirely believed him, but let it go for the moment. James turned his right hand over and threaded his fingers through Q’s. “And what about you? What do you need to feel better?” he asked quietly. Q laughed bitterly.
“A long holiday and a career change.”
Not good.
“I can help with the first thing, but you can’t leave me alone at MI6.” James let the statement hang for just a moment before adding, “think of the damage I’d do with no one to keep me on the leash.”
“Look at the damage you do to yourself when I’m there to keep you on the leash,” Q sighed, gesturing at Bond’s body. James squeezed his hand.
“Come to bed, Q. Let’s talk about where we could go.” They’d never been on a proper holiday—just a stolen couple of days here or there, but it was a favorite game of theirs. The younger man stood. If he swayed slightly from exhaustion, neither of them mentioned it.
“Alright. You find a comfortable position to sleep in, and I’ll fit myself in where there’s space,” he said, heading towards the en suite bathroom.
It took some doing to find an arrangement that gave them the physical contact they both needed without painfully jostling Bond’s injuries but, finally, they found themselves in the darkened bedroom. Q’s head rested on a pillow below Bond’s bruised left shoulder instead of on it, his hand on the unscathed side of the man’s chest. James was able to rest his injured hand on top of Q’s head even though he couldn’t run his fingers through his hair the way they both would have preferred.
“So, where do you want to go?” James asked softly.
“Somewhere cold,” Q said.
“Cold? Skiing?”
“A ski resort is fine, but let’s not actually ski.”
“Hmm. Roaring fires and hot chocolate?” Bond’s lips curled with amusement.
“Snuggling under blankets, watching the snow fall.”
“Sounds nice,” James said. “How long should we go for? A month? Two?”
Q laughed.
“Any more than three days of that and you’d be climbing the walls with boredom,” he said.
“Like you’re one to talk,” Bond replied. “You’d be rewiring anything in the chalet with a circuit after three days of rest.”
This was what they both needed to feel better: a safe, dark bedroom, and the time to let the emotional vertigo of the last few days settle. To dream about what their lives could be if they were entirely different men with entirely different careers. Q yawned widely.
“You’re right,” he said. “But it’s nice to think about.