Work Text:
Q wakes up at four in the morning.
He’s not having a nightmare, actually. He doesn’t need to go to bathroom. He hasn’t even remembered a snippet of code he was going to try. He just… wakes up.
He notices his breathing and pulse are still steady, which is probably why James hasn’t immediately woken up as well. James, who is currently lying on his side, sacrificing the circulation of his arm. It’s a habit they’ve picked up - James will slide his arm against Q’s pillow, and Q will end up firmly draped over it. James insists that he can’t feel a thing, and Q points that’s probably because he’s got someone lying on top of his arm for hours. In the end, though, Q has to admit that his bony torso has got nothing on James’s bicep, because, well, it’s James’s bicep.
It’s surprisingly comfortable, though, and it works, so neither of them are complaining.
It’s still dark out, but at least it’s not blurry. Q finally sucked it up and got Lasik a year ago, but he still wears his glasses for the electronic displays he’s installed in the lenses. There’s a just a smidgen of light that soaks the room charcoal gray, and it paints James in broad, ashen, strokes.
Q watches him. He watches the minute rise and fall of his chest, and the way his eyelashes lie flat on his cheekbones. He watches the folds of the covers crumpled between his arm and his body, and the relaxed curl of his fingers.
He’s gorgeous, Q thinks. Even with those blue eyes shuttered away, his short blonde hair mussed, and each line of his face standing in bas-relief.
James is not a person that one wakes up alive with in the morning. He is a killer, a man who bleeds gun-oil and minor inconveniences, not blood. He is a man whose job is to make sure nobody sees his eyelids shut, his muscles uncoiled, or his hands defenseless. It should be hard to believe that Q of all people, gets to wake up in the morning and see him sleeping.
But it’s not, because James is also someone who can choose to be gentle when he can. When he’s with someone who knows him on paper, on maps, and in data, but also in skin and scratches and exhales. It's so real, the silent dynamic between them that lies warm and still. When they're tired of themselves, they know where to find quiet in each other. Quiet is ordering meals in and sharing them on the couch. Quiet is listening to the rise and fall of two pairs of lungs at night. They’ve both had more than a lifetime’s worth of games, so no one’s keeping score when they’re at home.
He and James, they don’t live around each other. They don’t spend their days and nights dancing in and out of each other, lighting fires that burn their walls down faster than they can build them up. They don’t fight, don’t even love hot enough to singe. No, they live with each other. That's all they really need. No killing, no saving, no surviving. Instead, it's sharing air, bed, and breakfast when they’re both home. Just living.
People probably think their home life is much more exciting than it is - full of arguments and clever bantering and sex in creative ways. Yes, those do happen, but mornings like this are what the others don’t see. Mornings like this, Q decides, are the best of all.
Q lets James sleep, and seconds after he closes his eyes, joins him there again.