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At a new grave, 2013
Q doesn’t linger after the funeral. There are too many people, and far too few of them give much of a shit about the woman lying in the ground. He has always preferred visiting the dead when it is quiet. So the next day, he makes his day holding a bouquet of poppies. He is so lost in his thoughts that he barely notices the other person standing at the grave.
“Oh, 007. Sorry, I—“ He clears his throat. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Bond smiles ruefully. “It’s all right, Q. She’s probably sick of hearing from me anyway.”
Q approaches quietly, laying the flowers amongst the small mountain of other offerings from the day before.
“Always feels a bit weird, doesn’t it? Talking to a headstone,” says Q, immediately regretting letting anything out of his mouth at all. He hardly knows Bond. They’ve worked together once, and their sole mission together had been a disaster. Bond respects him, barely, but is still wary of Q’s youth. Q expects a stony silence in response to his babbling, but the vice in his chest loosens when he catches a look of understanding on Bond’s face.
“It’s easier for some than others,” admits Bond. “She always hated small talk.”
“I’m glad it’s not just me who feels a bit wrong about it.”
Bond doesn’t bother asking why he’s here. He’s likely read Q’s file thoroughly enough to know he’s not the only one who knew M well. Q keeps the file heavily encrypted, but M had always had access to it, and Bond had known her login details. It’s likely he knows Mallory’s too, though that’s no impressive feat of hacking. The man’s password had been 123456 when Q had done an initial security check.
He finds himself strangely undisturbed by the thought of Bond rifling through the details of his life. He’s read through the tumultuous rollercoaster of Bond’s file, after all. A quid pro quo seems fair.
“I’ve got a hankering for some decent whisky,” remarks Bond.
“Must be Tuesday.”
Bond lets out a surprised huff of laughter. “You sounded just like her then.” He looks at Q, and smiles in the funny way Q’s gotten used to over the past week or two. “Would you like to join me, Quartermaster?”
The answer should, of course, be a resounding no, but Q finds himself unwilling to live by the rules today.
“Yes, all right. Lead on then.”
In a modest bathroom, 2013
“I know the job description listed a varied number of skills,” grumbles Q, “But they said nothing about me having to patch up headstrong agents while they’re bleeding over your nice new tiles.”
James Bond had turned up at his door at an ungodly hour with gin on his breath and an open wound. Apparently, it had split as Bond was leaving his debrief with M. From his first look at it, Q doubts it was ever really pulled together. Bond had never struck him as a particularly talented tailor, despite his penchant for lovely suits. His attempt at sewing himself up with dental floss was abysmal.
“I’ll re-grout them for you,” grunts Bond as Q threads a needle through a wound on his side. He looks down at Q’s tessellated grey and white floor. “Nice choice, by the way. Very French.”
Q snorts. “Yes, just what I was thinking at the showroom, I really must get something that screams very French.”
“That’s not why you picked them?” Asks Bond, amused.
“I liked the pattern,” admits Q. “It seemed charmingly mathematical.”
Bond laughs, and it’s a rare, unguarded thing, likely the result of too much booze and a high from the pain he’s in. It’s cut short by a groan as Q pulls the final stitch tight.
“Sorry,” Q whispers, “That must be quite painful.”
Bond gives him a hazy look. His pupils are dilated from the whisky he’s downed as a numbing agent. “It’s all right, Q. I’ve had much worse.” His voice vibrates around the walls of the bathroom. “At least the company’s excellent.”
In a bathroom that’s all white, blue and grey, Q thinks his blush must stand out like a lighthouse beacon.
Bond just smiles.
On a Monday in July, 2014
Mondays are always shit, but this Monday is really taking the fucking cake.
“Agent down,” Q says, crisply, before taking off his headphones and slamming them down on his workstation. He’s sure the hurt will gut him later, but all he can feel now is a blazing anger moving up through his throat. He walks into his office and shuts the door.
He’s not stupid, nor is he deaf. He realises what most of the agents say about him — that he’s too green, too clever to have any common sense, too much of a paper-pusher to know what it’s like in the field. They ignore his perfectly rendered, multilayered maps and his sophisticated databases packed with intel. They ignore him when it seems convenient for their own ego, and now it’s finally gotten one of them killed.
“Sir,” says R softly, knocking on his door. “I’ll fill in for now. Here. You should get out of the office for a while, take a walk.” He takes a steaming cup of tea from her hands and nods in thanks.
His day had started off terribly when an ageing sleaze of a man took the opportunity on a crowded train to grab between Q’s legs. He’d gotten a taser for that, which Q thought was no less than he deserved. However, explaining it to police had been a shambles. One hour and a thousand questions later, he’d ended up late to a meeting with M, who, as a matter of personality, did not take his late arrival well.
Q rubs a hand over his eyes, walking out of his branch with the intention of brooding on the rooftop. His day plummets further when he rounds the corner only to run smack-bang into James bloody Bond. Tea spills everywhere, staining the silk of Bond’s fine, smoky grey suit.
“Jesus!” Exclaims Bond.
“Oh, shit. Shit, I’m so sorry, 007.” Q works to shrug off his own (far less expensive) suit jacket for the task of mopping up. “Here, let me—“
Humiliatingly, Q feels a burning pressure behind his eyes, the hotness of tears gathering in his tear ducts. This cannot be happening, he thinks. I’m not about to cry over some fucking spilt tea in front of a Double-0.
Yet it’s not just spilled tea, is it? It’s a hand on his cock on the Tube, and being bollocked for being late because of it, and both of those things being insignificant in light of losing an agent. A blustering fool of an agent, but a human being nonetheless, who’d let out an ungodly scream before death’s swift silence fell over the comm line.
Bond starts, as if he’s only just realising it’s Q standing in front of him. His face seems to lose its hard edge all at once. “Q, it’s all right.”
Of course it fucking isn’t. Q places his mug of tea on the ground, far enough from either of them to keep from tripping on it, and focuses on his task of blotting away the tea on Bond’s sleeve. “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning bill. I know you think I look like an undergraduate student, but I am actually a highly-paid man in my thirties, I can afford it.”
“Stop.” Bond’s hands cover his, ceasing his dabbing motions. “It’s all right, really.”
“No it’s not,” rasps Q. “You’re wearing a bloody Tom Ford.”
Bond smiles gently. “It’s just clothing. It can be cleaned or replaced. Tea’s not even the worst it’s seen.”
“We lost Williams,” blabs Q. “He should have gone right, but he went straight into a dead end instead. They ambushed him.” He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“I know. M’s messaged me about taking over the mission.” Bond takes Q’s blazer from him and steers him back towards his office. “Sit down. I’ll bring you a fresh cup of tea.”
Bond is on his way to the kitchenette when Q calls, “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning, really.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my least favourite suit.”
Hidden from sight, 2015.
Q sits at his desk, staring at the bottle of Bollinger in front of him.
He’s never had Bollinger. Q rarely drinks champagne at all. Contrary to his public school elocution, his parents had always been more likely to choose Prosecco in the name of value, and he’d never developed a taste for anything more expensive. When he spends his money on drink, he prefers red wine and brandy. If he’s on holiday, he buys a decent bottle of the local specialty.
The frugal part of his personality tells him to keep the bottle for a special occasion. A birthday, perhaps. At the very least, a dinner party with Moneypenny and Tanner. If he can get one, perhaps a dinner date with a very honest, very nice, very civilian man.
Well, fuck that. He rips the foil off the bottle and pops the cork. It makes an especially pleasing sound in the vast emptiness of his makeshift office.
Two drinks in, Q taps at his phone, the heaviness of his last few weeks on the job weighing down on him. When he’d started this job, he’d foreseen cars, guns, explosives, and debilitating computer viruses. He had not expected the dystopian menace of Smart Blood. Regardless of his annoyance about the DB10, he feels a wave of hopelessness and regret. Bond, for all his flaws, never deserved to be a guinea pig.
Q types out a text and presses send before he can think too hard about it. It wasn’t my idea to experiment on you. I’m sorry.
Christ, he feels as if he’s texting an ex. In the morning, he’ll remind himself of the value in turning off his phone between the hours of 2200 and 0600.
Those telling three dots appear for a few seconds. At least Bond is merciful enough to be quick. I know. It’s all right. You’re still my favourite Quartermaster.
Experimentation aside, fuck you for taking the car.
Fuck me? You hardly even know me ;)
Q throws his phone to the other side of his desk.
A date-ready flat, 2021
Moneypenny corners him in the kitchen, looking crestfallen and guilty. “I’m sorry about this, Q, I really am. It’s just this one last thing, then he’ll be out of your hair.”
Bond has been away five years, longer than Q spent being friends with him in the first place. Yet, the memories are vivid: a version of himself (who seems much younger in hindsight) handing over anything James Bond wanted. He can recall the helpless resignation that came with the knowledge he would do anything for Bond. He remembers all the defiant lies he told himself after Bond left in the Aston Martin he'd spent a year rebuilding. That it was all fine, that Bond would write him one day, that he might not stay away at all.
And Moneypenny, dear Eve, stands before him knowing all of it. She’d likely tried to stop Bond from showing up tonight. He appreciates the effort, futile as it was.
“It’s always one last thing though, isn’t it?” He says, taking off his glasses and wiping steam off them.
She leaves with another quiet apology. With dinner still cooking, Q doesn’t have time to find the silence awkward. While he is taking the dumplings off the stove, he catches Bond messing about at his computer. The cats are moving around his feet, sniffing curiously at his shoes.
“Oh, could you not?” Snaps Q. He feels as highly strung as he has in years, and he knows that’s just the effect James Bond likes having on people. Five years as a ghost, not a single postcard sent, and he turns up at Q’s flat to turn everything to shit. The man must feel more alive than ever.
Q’s oncoming rant is cut off by a buzz from his phone. He looks down to see a text. Let’s not worry about rescheduling. I know a cop-out when I see one.
He takes off his apron and throws it on the counter.
“Everything okay?”
Q barks a laugh. “No, not really. Thanks for asking. I know how difficult it must be to concern yourself with someone else’s life for once.”
Bond recoils a little. Q catches the guilt on his face before he shuts it away behind his usual impenetrable mask. Try as he might, he cannot maintain his annoyance then, because this really isn’t Bond’s fault. It’s Mallory’s.
“Sorry,” sighs Q, fighting the tightness in his throat. “It’s the first time — well. It’s hard to do more than one night when you’re in our business.”
“Third date?” Asks Bond, with faux nonchalance.
“Fourth. And this was the third time I was rescheduling. No wonder he’s running for the hills.”
Q opens the steamer to see twelve perfectly formed gyoza, just translucent enough to reveal the colour of their pork filling.
“They look good,” comments Bond. He’s leaning in close, over Q’s shoulder. Amongst the other smells coming from his kitchen, Q notices the faint woodiness of Bond’s aftershave. It seems as familiar as ever, even after years of distance. He berates himself silently for remembering at all.
“Yes. They’re a favourite of mine,” he says of the dumplings. They would have got him a very nice thank you later on. Q spares a very quick thought for his neglected libido.
“Then let’s tuck in, shall we?” Suggests Bond.
When Q looks up, he sees the dining table is already laid, complete with an extra bottle of Merlot in the centre. He snaps his mouth shut to keep from gawping. “Yes, I suppose so. Let me get all the food on serving plates. I’ve got some other dishes as well.”
When the table is piled high with gyoza, tempura, vegetables and salmon, Bond looks at the spread appreciatively and raises a glass. “To one nice night before the world explodes.”
To hell with it, thinks Q. He never could maintain any real anger at Bond for longer than a few minutes at a time.
Hours later, they are buzzed and sitting on Q’s couch, both of them laughing over the story of how Bond met Nomi. Q forgets himself entirely for a moment and lays a hand a bit too high on Bond’s thigh to be appropriate.
“Oh, shit, sorry. I didn’t — I know you’re not…”
“It’s all right, Q,” says Bond, eyes burning in the ambient light of Q’s living room. He traces a thumb gently over Q’s wrist. “All you’ve ever had to do was ask.”
It is impossible to deny himself, even with the warning klaxons in his head that tell him Bond will leave in the morning and Q will have to pick more pieces of himself up than ever before. He could blame the wine, but in reality it's just Bond and the effect he's always had on Q. “May I?”
Bond answers him with a kiss. Q’s too much a man of science to believe such things can rewrite one’s DNA, but he thinks the feel of this might live within him forever. Bond’s lips on his are rearranging history. It feels elemental.
They have a very nice night, indeed.
The last day, 2021
Names of Living Retired Agents:
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED] REINSTATED.
Q crosses out the last name on his list of retired agents on a Friday. On Monday, he is flying tens of thousands of feet above an ocean that looks ready to swallow him.
He’d always thought he’d be Quartermaster forever, but sitting above a poison island that shouldn’t exist but for the scientific evil of powerful men, he thinks this might be his last hurrah. At the very least, M has to go before he considers staying.
For an hour or so he believes, as last hurrahs go, that this is going to be an excellent one. He’s running tactical communications from a plane in his pyjamas, for heaven’s sake. He’s never been more comfortable at work in his life. They’ve saved a woman and child from a horrible death, and Bond is on his way off the island to walk off into the sunset. That is, if he ever stops questioning Q long enough to let him get on with his job.
“For Christ’s sake James, just get off the island!” He snaps, before reiterating the permanence of Heracles.
“Well, that’s not gonna work,” Bond grunts, and horror blooms in Q’s gut, burning up through him until it’s choking his lungs.
There has never been a thing Bond’s asked him for that Q has been unable to fix. When he came back with a scraped, bullet-riddled Aston Martin DB5, Q had had it repaired in days; child’s play after restoring it with from a steering wheel in the first place. When he’d requested the Smart Blood be taken out of his system, Q had found a way to gather the nanotech into a small enough blood sample that would take all of five minutes and a syringe to eradicate from Bond’s body.
They have plans to remove it after this mission.
Therein lies the rub, the real reason M never told Q about Heracles. Q never would have stood for something this permanent being used to kill. He is an computer scientist at heart, and it’s instilled him with a belief that everything should be reversible in the event of a catastrophe.
He would never have condoned it because he cannot fix this. He doesn’t know how, and he can’t make promises. A part of him wants to lie to Bond, to tell him he’ll find a way because that’s what he always does. It’s well-known around MI6. Q is the tinkerer, the fixer, the man who manages the impossible. Yet to fix this, he would need three more degrees and more time than ten people have in their lifetimes. It could take decades, and Q is not a cruel enough person to keep this man, an orphan by birth and by trade, away from his new family indefinitely.
“It’s all right, Q. It’s all right,” Bond says, though he knows just as well as Q that there’s never been anything less all right in all the time they’ve known each other. His world hangs suspended, and Q feels like he’s in freefall, despite the steadiness of the plane. “Would you put Madeleine on, please?”
And that’s that, the last words James Bond is ever going to say to him. In another life they might have been sweeter. He might have stayed on the line for Q, just as he did years ago when they always seemed to have a moment between the gunfire, explosions and the seductive gazes of beautiful women. In that other life, he might have given Q his full attention, as he had just nights ago over Japanese food and two excellent bottles of red wine. But they are in this life now, and Q is not going to be bitter about it, not when a man’s life is about to end and he has a wife and child to say goodbye to.
“Yes, of course. How stupid of me.”
When Q returns home, he throws his pyjamas into his fireplace to burn and curls up nearly naked on his bed. His cats position themselves around him, purring and chirping, as if they know the heaviness of Q’s heart.
Q falls into a fitful sleep, Bond’s voice playing like a record in his head. It’s all right, Q. It’s all right.