Chapter Text
“What do you think the chances are that James will say yes this time and we’ll never have to make the trip back to New York again?” Q’s fingers dug into the armrests of the chair so tightly that his fingers turned white as the plane began to descend.
“Well, we are coming with a more attractive offer from M this time,” Alec remarked, putting his hand over Q’s. He somehow managed to pry Q’s fingers away from the armrest, instead tangling their fingers together. If the pressure from how hard Q was now squeezing his hand hurt, he gave no indication of it.
“That hasn’t stopped James from saying no every other time,” Q said, only slight petulant about that fact. He sucked in a sharp breath and barely held back a squeak as the wheels of the plane finally touched down. It felt good to be back on the ground, but Q couldn’t really relax until the plane had come to a stop. The instant the seatbelt light went off, he wrenched his hand out of Alec’s and started fumbling with his seatbelt.
“Here, let me.” Alec easily unsnapped his own belt and stood, reaching over to let Q free. Q stood up, nearly bonking heads with Alec in his haste, and practically trampled the flight attendant in his haste to get to the exit. He heard Alec trailing along behind him, issuing apologies, but Q was past the point of caring as he all but fell down the steps to the plane.
“Thank you, thank you,” he breathed, knees so weak that he had to brace himself against the side of the plane. No matter how many times Alec patiently explained that flying was safer than driving, Q just couldn’t get used to it. He hated literally everything about flying – which was exactly why he was MI6’s Quartermaster in the first place. It wasn’t very often that the Quartermaster was needed out in the field.
But this was sort of a special occasion.
“Q!” a very familiar voice called out, and Q’s head snapped up.
“Uncle James!” he cried, launching himself forward.
James Bond laughed and easily caught Q up in a huge hug, lifting Q’s feet right off the ground in the process. Q wrapped his legs around James’s waist and clung to him, burying his face in James’s shoulder. The familiar smell of the cologne that James favoured helped to calm him down a lot more, as did the feel of James’s strong, competent arms wrapped around him.
“Oh, did your mean old papa make you go on a plane ride?” James asked, his voice warmly sympathetic, and Q sniffed and nodded.
“Uh, excuse me? Mean old papa? I’ll have you know that Q threw a fit when I mentioned coming by myself,” Alec said from somewhere behind them. “He’s the one who insisted on coming with me. We had to come up with a credible reason for M and everything.”
“I dunno, that sounds like a lie to me. I think you were just being mean,” James teased, shifting Q’s weight to one arm. He reached out to Alec and they clasped hands, which was par for the course with the two of them. They weren’t big on public displays of affection, especially Alec. Q knew that later, behind closed doors, they would greet each other properly.
“Story of my life. Always the mean one,” Alec said, rolling his eyes. “Q, I’ve got to finish up delivering the package. James is going to take you right to SHIELD. Will you be okay?”
“Uh huh,” Q said, not letting go of James for even a moment.
“I’ve got it, Alec,” James said.
“Right. I’ll meet up with you later.” Alec moved away from them, and Q turned his head slightly to watch. Even he wasn’t completely sure what Alec was delivering to SHIELD. Whatever it was, it was being kept under lock and key. Q could have found out if he’d wanted to – there wasn’t much at MI6 that could be hidden from the Quartermaster – but sometimes, he’d found, it was better not to know.
Alec walked over to a helicopter that was about three hundred feet away from the plane. Q watched as he got onto the helicopter and said something to the driver. Then he sat down and buckled himself in. James tightened his grip on Q as the helicopter stuttered to life, blades whirring around rapidly, and began to rise from the pavement. Within minutes, the helicopter was merely a dot on the horizon above open water.
“I’m sorry you had a rough trip, Q,” James whispered into Q’s ear once they could hear again, gently patting Q’s back.
“It was okay,” Q said, finally letting his feet drop back down to the ground. Truthfully, the trip had been about as good as a plane trip could get. But that didn’t mean that Q had found it easy. He found himself wondering what a plane trip with James would be like. He thought that James would probably be a lot more comforting than Alec usually was.
James still looked at him with concern. “Coming from you, okay really isn’t that inspiring,” he said dryly, wrapping an arm around Q’s shoulders. “Let’s go. They’ve got your bags.”
They? Q glanced back to see that a couple of men in dark suits had indeed gathered up his and Alec’s luggage and were towing the bags into a building. James wrapped an arm around Q’s shoulders and guided Q over into the building as well. Q felt a bit better as soon as they were out of the sun and out of the sight of all the planes behind them, leaning comfortably in James’s embrace.
“Where are we going?” he asked, and James smiled mysteriously.
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” he said with a wink, and Q rolled his eyes.
“You enjoy working for SHIELD way too much,” he muttered.
James just chuckled. “We’re not going anywhere too interesting, Q. I thought I’d take you to your room first so that you could get changed if you wanted to. I know that the plane ride from London to New York is a long one.”
“It really was long,” Q said. He was tempted by the thought of a shower, but equally tempting was the thought of getting his hands on SHIELD’s computers. That was one of the reasons he was here. MI6 had officially offered his services to SHIELD to test SHEILD’s firewalls, and SHIELD had accepted. Q was excited by the idea of getting to legally test his skills against another agency.
“And then once you did that, I thought we’d –” James cut himself off, reaching out to grip Q’s arm. No sooner had he done that than Q felt the ground rumbling beneath them.
“What’s going on?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows, and James winced a bit before turning to him with a guilty smile.
“Don’t freak out, Q, okay?”
Q narrowed his eyes. “What? Why?”
“I brought you to the Helicarrier,” James admitted, and Q sputtered for a few seconds.
“The – the – you mean we’re flying again?!” he squeaked, horrified by words. He’d only just got to the ground and now they were going back up? He’d thought that they were on a submarine!
James winced. “Well… yes.”
“James! How could you?” Q whined, his heartrate speeding up.
“Hey, it’s fine. You can’t even see that we’re high up, right?” James said, his unfairly voice low and soothing. “You don’t ever have to get close enough to the edge to look down. I promise. Now that we’ve taken off, you won’t even know that we’re flying. The Helicarrier is kind of like being on a cruise ship that way.”
Q stared at him flatly. “A cruise ship is in the ocean. It doesn’t fly. Those are two totally different things!”
“It’s the cruise ship of planes,” James persisted. “You can’t feel that we’re flying. Can you?”
Begrudgingly, Q had to admit that James was right. When he was on a plane, he couldn’t forget that they were up in the air even if he wanted to. Even when the plane was flying smoothly, and there was no turbulence, he was horrifyingly aware every single moment that they weren’t on the ground. And when there was turbulence, forget it. Usually it was all he could do to not have a panic attack.
But right now, the floor was reassuringly steady beneath his feet. He had the feeling that Helicarrier very rarely ran into turbulence; it was so huge that nothing short of a hurricane or tornado would be enough to have an impact. If Q had been asleep while they’d taken off, and only just woken up, he wouldn’t have even known that they were flying until he went outside.
“No,” he muttered after several long seconds.
“Exactly. Plus, you’re here to see SHIELD’s computers, right? Well, this is where they’re located.” James gestured around grandly.
“But I could look at them on the ground,” Q said stubbornly, and James smiled.
“Oh Q,” was all he said, slipping an arm around Q’s shoulders. “Let’s get you changed, and then I was going to say we’ll head to the cafeteria for something to eat. If I know you, you probably haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Q would have liked to have argue with him, but he couldn’t because James was right. First he’d been too busy getting things settled for his time away from MI6 – he’d spent all day yesterday with R, trying to brief her on everything she needed to know. And then, once he’d got home to the flat he shared with Alec, he’d been too nervous dwelling on the trip to even think about food.
So he decided to give in on this one small thing and let James escort him the rest of the way to SHIELD’s guest quarters. They weren’t great, of course – every space on a flying ship was sized for practical purposes, not for comfort, even on a ship as big as the Helicarrier. But Q knew that they wouldn’t be spending long in their rooms anyway.
He let James help him get changed into a fresh nappy and clothing before they set off for the cafeteria. James was talking excitedly about a pudding when –
Well, Q wasn’t really sure what happened at first.
The world just exploded.
Q cried out in surprise as he hit the ground hard. He heard James shouting too. The corridor went dark for a few frightening seconds before the emergency lights snapped on. Everything was dim. Q pushed himself up on his hands and knees, automatically straightening his spectacles. Alarms started to blare. His heart was racing. It felt like they were moving.
No. Falling.
“James – ” he started to say, but he was cut off by an automated announcement ordering all SHIELD agents to the main quarters.
“Come on, Q!” James shouted, grabbing Q’s shoulders and pulling him up. He half-carried, half-pulled Q along.
“James, what’s happening?” Q said, struggling to keep up. Was there something wrong with the Helicarrier’s engines? Was that why they were falling? Panic surged up, threatening to drop him to the floor in a state of terror, but Q clamped down on it as best he could. There was no time for panic and no time for his headspace. He needed to be an MI6 agent right now, the Quartermaster, not a liability.
“I don’t know. Q, keep going straight. You’ll come to the main comm room. You’ll be helpful there,” James said loudly into his ear.
“Where are you going?” Q exclaimed.
“I need to find out what’s going on. Just go, Q.” James looked at him, clearly torn even in the dim lighting – but they both knew he didn’t have a choice. James was a SHIELD agent before all else. He had a duty to SHIELD.
And so off James went, and Q pressed forward… alone.