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Q thinks that sex with Bond must be a production, a performance much like everything else about him. It wouldn’t be a shock, he's hardly different for it. Field agents regardless of special designation, are required to use every weapon in their arsenal to complete a mission, and Q can appreciate competency no matter what it looks like.
Still, a part of him is baffled by it. Much like he's baffled at anything he can't imagine doing himself.
Not the act, of course.
Despite office gossip, Q has had sex. He's good at it, he thinks, hasn't had any complaints thus far.
What actually baffles him is the level with which it's employed by agents, especially by agents like Bond for whom it's become old hat. Less an act of intimacy, and more a transaction. It's certainly enjoyable for all parties, even from the perspectives of ones like Q who is only a witness to it. However, he will admit he finds it as stimulating as he does pornography as a whole: contrived and obsessed with how it looks and sounds to someone else. Erotic only to bolster the sex, and in all, only for the sake of aesthetics.
Stimulating. Interesting. Silly, at times.
But the act itself is rote, almost.
Given any set of circumstances and any archetype of a partner, Q could probably walk Bond through the encounter as he's done with everything else: the hijacking of a jet, the disabling of a bomb, the remote hack of a terrorist cell.
He’s thought about doing it once or twice, when Bond mouths off about hoping Q had taken notes to employ in his own encounters.
"If I wanted paint-by-numbers sex, I'd go on the internet like everyone else, ta."
"Tsk tsk, Q, just because there are patterns doesn't mean there's a formula to these things."
"Aren't there," he wonders, and Bond knows a challenge when he hears one.
That, or he's convinced scientific inquiry requires multiple tests in which case, he's very lucky indeed his mission is a long one.
Moneypenny thinks Bond's showing off, Q knows he is.
It isn't the first time members of the team assigned to Bond at Q-branch need to be switched out. There's only so much awkward shuffling about that Q can take, and only so many hasty fumblings in the hallway closet he can excuse before it just gets downright inconvenient. That, on top of becoming increasingly irritated by the glances sent his way; his lack of reaction (boredom by this stage) is cause for a combination of awe, concern and pity.
It is the latter that has stewed his displeasure with Bond's usual negligence surrounding his equipment.
Thus, when Bond finally returns, trademark swagger, smirk, three-piece suit and no gun, Q is about ready to spit blood. "Must your brand of mayhem reduce my techs to randy teenagers?"
"I have no idea what you could mean." Liar. "Besides,I can't help that the mission called for what it did, one can say it was entirely out of my hands."
"Even if it were, you're too much of a control freak to allow it to remain that way."
"Meaning?"
"You're both director and actor in the longest spy porno ever created," Q deadpans. As an afterthought, "I'm surprised you don't chafe more than you do, the lot of you."
"There's no one like me."
With an absent flick of his wrist, Q gestures to the wall of monitors where Double-O-Eight, Double-O-One, Double-O-Six, and two field agents in the running for the newest Double-O designation, are all in various states of sexual congress. "Tell that to them." It would be impressive almost, how the timing aligned just so, but mostly Q just feels a vague sense of desensitisation after the amount of sex he's had to oversee during missions. Ah, perhaps that's what it is. "It's not like it's any of your faults," he says, shrugging, "it's part of your job, I imagine it's easier that way."
"You realise I've had sex outside of the job," Bond remarks, and though his vowels are drawn out and careless, there's a sharpness beneath them. A gleaming sort of awareness that feels a little bit like a threat, like seeing the glimpse of a knife before it catches on something tender.
"Have you?" It's not any more a challenge then it had been the last time Q's said it, but there’s a glint in Bond's eye (and the flash of PTSD that hits Q like a headache behind his eyes). Interrupts himself, Q scolds, "That is not an invitation to have sex with everyone within a thirty kilometre radius, you degenerate. I meant when was the last time you had sex without an end goal?"
Amused, "Does anyone have sex without an end goal?"
Q's cutting glance is dry as a bone, and perhaps if he'd been less irritated (by his staff and Bond both) he'd have noticed Bond's thoughtful frown.
The man is mostly a suit of armour, any emotion he allowed that wasn't pre-configured and designed to provide a certain response was something Q felt he should keep track of. If only because it was like finding a loose screw that came off a piece of tech. The tech still worked, but surely the loose screw was important somehow.
His puzzled expression deciphered, Bond’s expression shifts. "You're terribly strange," he decides, and there's a smile there, tucked in around the edges of his words and the slightest crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
It's about the only bit of honesty Q's witnessed from him since Bond left for this mission weeks ago, before all that armour came on; a glimpse of the actual man beneath.
To some extent, Q's known that he's one of the few who's gotten to see that side of Bond. But, well. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that. It seems the feelings mutual.
Abruptly, Q clears his throat. That's quite enough of that though, thanks. "Go away, or you're going on your next assignment with an elastic band."
If anyone notices that Q's looking a little flushed after the encounter, they assume it's because it's harder to feign nonchalance when Bond's sex appeal is actually aimed at you specifically.
Bond, of course, knows differently, and Q knows him.
With a softening around his eyes, Bond mutters, “As you say, my quartermaster”, and squeezes Q’s arm once as he walks past, and it’s hardly a production. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it interaction that happens more often than it doesn’t.
No one else would have noticed it, Bond knows.
But Q supposes that’s the point. It isn’t for anyone else, and that’s what makes him flush. It would be juvenile if anyone were to know what finally broke their immovable head of department after a near endless amount of sexual escapades he's had to watch in the past few days alone, but Q is in the business of espionage.
No one has to know that this is about as intimate as Bond can get, and that he's done it in front of everyone with no one to suspect a thing.
At the thought, Q chuckles to himself. Bloody spies.