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Q was used to sleeping with company; when he was younger, he’d often crawl into bed with his siblings, and when he’d grown up, his younger siblings in turn often shared space with him if they were troubled by nightmares or felt a bit chilly. It was common for rabbits, as they often had large families in small houses with more children than rooms. Therefore, waking up to hear someone else breathing, feeling someone else’s warmth, and brushing another body whenever he shifted wasn’t necessarily abnormal - and even was rather comforting.
Until he woke up enough for the events of the day before (his father’s gambling debt coming due, offering himself up in place of that debt, a snow leopard named James Bond taking him up on that offer, and the two of them entering into a farcical marriage that had not felt much like a farce by the end) came rushing back in. Even as Q’s breath caught in his throat and his eyes snapped open, his senses also registered that the body next to him was most definitely not one of his generally small and willowy siblings, but instead a very muscular, very warm cat. And because Q was used to sleeping through literal rabbit-kicks, he’d not woken in the slightest as James had glommed onto him like a clingy octopus at some point during the night. Last Q remembered, Bond had had an arm slung over his shoulder, but now they were all but pressed up against each other from head to toe - and at some point James had tucked his head under Q’s jaw. The young rabbit could feel breaths against his throat, warm and regular, and he’d apparently tipped his chin back unconsciously in his sleep to give James more room.
While Q blinked up at the headboard, frozen while his brain tried to come up with a way to react to this situation - specifically to a predator’s mouth that close to his jugular - there was a deeper inhale and exhale against neck that sent a shiver through his skin. He thought he felt a nose nuzzling against the hinge of his jaw.
Something kicked into gear in Q’s brain at long last. “Are you-?” His voice was thick with sleep still, and he cleared his throat before awkwardly trying again, “Are you nosing where my scent-glands would be? Because I’m quite sure I don’t have any.”
There was a faint burr of noise that was definitely sleepy, breathy laughter - and also proof that James was no more asleep than Q was - and possibly hadn’t been for a while. “I wasn’t sure if you did or not, and got curious - should I have woken you to ask?”
One of Q’s hands had been curled on the bed between them, and now turned unconsciously to press against a warm pectoral but didn’t push James away. Otherwise, Q stayed where he was, head tipped back and all. James showed no inclination to move either, despite how very odd it must be to have Q talking towards the headboard and James in turn talking into Q’s throat. James felt a lot bigger up close like this, and it took Q’s brain a moment to process everything and come up with a semi-coherent reply, “In all honesty, I would have probably half-woken up, mumbled whatever answer came out of my mouth the easiest, and nodded back off again.”
Q’s answer must have been funny enough to get a chuckle out of even a snow leopard, because James’ whole body shook, and the vibration of his laughter (and the brush of his stubble against Q’s sensitive skin) had Q shivering again, and his ears twitched up - or one of them did, at least. His right ear was flush with the pillow, and it seemed that James had carefully but firmly trapped the end of it in his fingertips again. “I’ll make a note to never trust late-night answers if you give them,” James finally murmured, and then fell quiet again. His breathing evened out. It seemed like Q wasn’t the only one capable of rising out of sleep just long enough to talk, then sinking back into it again. And the quiet was… rather nice. Now that Q’s brain had woken up a bit and he’d had a moment to catalogue everything that was happening and everything he was feeling, the knee-jerk reaction of fright had also faded almost entirely - all that was left was the same effervescent buzz that he’d so frequently felt the night before, the little whisper of adrenaline that came with sharing space with a predator.
And he was certainly sharing space now. Much like any pet cat Q had ever heard of, James seemed to have a rather warped sense of personal space - or else he felt rather entitled to Q’s. At least James hadn’t tried to sleep on his face. When Q tried to be annoyed with the smothering, though, he found himself focusing instead on how warm James was, like a hearth in a cold room; the soothing sensation of fingertips lightly rubbing the end of his ear, not quite worrying at it but too firm to tickle; then James shifted as if to get comfortable, and threw a leg over Q’s hips as if it were natural. At the same time, the man nudged his nose up under Q’s chin again, and Q took a risk and rubbed his jaw down against James’ cheek. He didn’t have scent-glands, nor did he know a thing about them besides what he’d learned from James last night, but he must have done something right because a low purr - almost rough, almost rasping, so strange and wonderful that Q froze to listen - rattled out between them.
If James was even awake, there was no other indication of it; he may as well have been doing all of this in his sleep, and perhaps that was what gave Q the courage to slide his arm further around James’ back, until he could just dance his fingertips lightly across the man’s far shoulder-blade. James arched into it. Q tried not to ponder the way that made the rest of their bodies slide together. The softness of Bond’s docked tail whispered against Q’s knee where it was now wedged between James’ thighs. All of James was muscled and heavy in a way that Q wasn’t used to - rabbits were always built light and lean - but sometime between now and yesterday, that had stopped making Q feel afraid.
Q’s free ear slowly relaxed, flopping back down against his head. His left leg was pretty trapped and the toes on that foot were cold, so he went ahead and pressed his foot against James’ calf. When James made a hissing sort of growl against Q’s throat, all the rabbit could do was laugh - because all of this was so far beyond the pale that he really didn’t know what sort of response was otherwise appropriate. He did his best to stifle his snickers, and even as his toes warmed and James’ grumbling faded away, Q realized that he’d felt not so much as the faintest scratch of claws - his velveteen ear was still safe in Bond’s grasp, like a valuable prisoner.
There was something so novel, humbling, and yet so silly about making a cat mad without either getting his throat torn open or his ears shredded that Q nearly dissolved into manic laughter again. Instead, after battling with the urge for a bit (and perhaps deciding to ignore the confused screaming that had also started up in his head yesterday but seemed to come and go since), Q let his entire body relax. His eyes closed, his free ear rested against Bond’s knuckles, and his torso quietly rocked into the lee of Bond’s body. It would have felt weird to have his chest and belly brushing James’ with every breath if the threshold for ‘weirdness’ hadn’t recently been reset so high.
Despite the fact that he’d seemed to have drifted back to sleep minutes ago, James’ voice rumbled, low and calm, against Q’s collarbone, “Okay now?”
“ ’M okay,” Q mumbled without opening his eyes, and fell back asleep surprisingly quickly - lulled, perhaps, by the thumb brushing rhythmically down the short hairs of his nape and the intermittent purring that vibrated periodically against his chest, softer and gentler than before.
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