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When Bond moves into his new flat a few months after what is now termed as the Skyfall Incident, he doesn’t notice the playground in the courtyard right away. It’s something that comes to his attention weeks after he’s moved in his few boxes and spare bit of furniture, when, while sleeping off some post-mission jetlag late into midday, he hears the sound of children shrieking and laughing just beyond his window.
When Bond stumbles out of bed to investigate, he sees the playground for the first time in the autumn afternoon light. It’s not very big–only a single tower and slide, a narrow set of monkey bars, a few swings, and a roundabout–but there are plenty of children playing there. Parents sit nearby on a cluster of benches, monitoring the activities while chatting amongst one another.
Bond doesn’t mind the noise–actually likes that there is something other than the relative silence of this quiet street in London–and doesn’t give the playground any additional thought.
Until he sees a familiar face there one evening.
Bond has always had a bit of insomnia, and it’s gotten worse over the years, whether due to the natural course of ageing or the compounding trauma of the job where everyone he learns to care about either betrays him or dies (or both). He often finds himself lying on his back in bed, glaring at his bedroom ceiling at some ungodly hour of the early morning, not having slept a wink despite a bone-deep exhaustion. Sometimes, he can fall asleep after staring, unblinking, for a time at the odd swirls and patterns there, but other times (i.e. most of the time) he fails to even nod off, and is forced to watch as the morning light brightens the room. The only time he manages a few decent hours is when his body physically crashes from exhaustion after an assignment or he’s completely blackout drunk from too much whiskey and not enough food.
Tonight he is neither, so Bond knows he will get no sleep. After debating his options for a long while, Bond finally decides to get up instead of continuing to lie there in futile resignation. He goes into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, then flips on the television. Although he’d rather pick up a book, Bond has never been good at reading when the insomnia hits, unable to focus his eyes or attention on a page for too long. So these days, when he can’t sleep, he finds something easy to watch on television, like a nature show. If he's lucky, he might find one narrated by David Attenborough, who can usually, blessedly, lull him into a light doze.
Coffee at his elbow, he’s ready to settle in to watch a documentary about rainforest fungi when something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye: a brief flash of brightness beyond his balcony window. Looking, he doesn’t see it now, only half of his own reflection and the square light of his television screen in the glass.
Some might write it off, but Bond’s been in the field too long to ignore something odd, especially at this hour, when everyone should be sleeping. He feels his heart beating fast in his ears as he assesses the situation. He never pulls the curtains in the living room, so they’ve been open the entire time he’s been putzing about in the kitchen and fiddling with the remote on the sofa. After all, there isn’t a need to close them, when being up on the fourth floor offers a semblance of privacy from prying eyes. But he’d seen something, and if Bond had seen something, that means something–someone--had potentially seen him.
Bond slowly backs away from the sofa and into the hallway, where he goes for the kit that he keeps in his keycode locked closet. It’s a grab bag, filled with all sorts of things he might need if he ever has to bug out quickly. There are the standard things: fake identification papers and passports, guns and ammo, an assortment of knives, a lockpick set, two burner phones and their chargers, a small first aid kit, and cash in various currencies. There are also a few other necessities, like a few changes of clothes and socks, toothpaste and a toothbrush, and an empty water bottle. But what Bond is looking for is in the side pocket of his grab bag: a pair of compact field binoculars.
He gets down into a crouch, then an army crawl as he approaches his balcony sliding door. It might look ridiculous, but Bond would rather look and feel a little stupid than be shot dead in his own flat by an opportunistic sniper. M’s ugly bulldog seems to laugh at him from its solitary place on his mantle.
The light had been lower, on the ground, but Bond sweeps the tops of the buildings across from his anyway, looking for odd shapes or lights or movement. When he clears the roof, he drops the sightlines a little lower to survey the windows directly across from his unit. All of them have their shades pulled. The flats beyond are dark, housing normal people who are probably sleeping at this hour.
Bond feels his shoulders relax slightly, but then, out of his peripheral vision, he sees it again: a small flash of light in the courtyard. It’s rectangular, whitish blue, like a mobile phone screen. Adrenalin surging, Bond turns his binoculars from the units across from him and aims his sights towards the light.
There is someone on the playground, sitting on the roundabout, spinning slowly round and round. Judging from the height, it’s an adult, not a child. Their back is to Bond, and they are looking at their phone. The light remains visible for a moment, then disappears as the roundabout turns the screen away from Bond. When the roundabout makes another rotation, the light returns, then disappears, and reappears. Eventually, it reappears when the roundabout comes to a stop, and the person does not push out with their leg to continue with the circular motion.
Instead, they reach into their pocket and pull out a small object, which they bring to their mouth. A rush of smoke appears a few seconds later. It turns ghostly blue in the light of the mobile screen before fading away in the cold night air.
Bond feels his heart rate relax. It’s just someone having a late night smoke on the playground. Nothing to be concerned about, no threat to assess or neutralise. He doesn’t need to sit here any longer, on his stomach in his own flat, imposing on this person’s privacy.
He tells himself this, but does not lower the binoculars. He feels a strange and sudden kinship with this nighttime stranger. Who else would be out at this hour, smoking alone in the dark? Someone who works a job with unconventional hours, like Bond? Someone who also spends the nights staring up at their bedroom ceiling, wishing for sleep that never comes? It may be strange, but these thoughts soothe him. Often, when everyone is asleep and Bond is awake, and the nights are silent and the streets are empty, Bond feels incredibly alone. Like a ship, lost at sea, searching desperately for land.
His eye is drawn back to the person, and their bright little rectangle of light in the dark. In the night, it’s like a beacon, a lighthouse.
And Bond, for once, does not feel entirely alone.
But just as he’s thinking this, the light goes dark again. The person takes another puff of their cigarette. Then the person stands up from the roundabout and turns towards the building to return to their flat. And that’s when Bond sees the face of this stranger clearly through the high-powered binoculars.
No, not a stranger at all.
It’s Q.
Bond would know him anywhere, even in the dark. And he’s seen him in the dark, too, many times over the past few months: perched in front of a computer screen in his office far past the end of his shift, waiting in the half light of the lounge as he waits for the kettle to finish boiling so he can make a late night cuppa, leaning over a small bit of machinery in the labs at some ungodly hour with a headlamp strapped to him for light.
Bond has also seen him once, he thinks, in Medical, at his bedside, lit only by the glow of his bedside monitor. It had been after Skyfall, when they’d brought him back on a stretcher and M in a body bag. Bond supposes it could have been a dream, because Q’s never mentioned it, and Bond certainly hasn’t either. He’d like to think that it was not a dream, that Q had come to check on him, unable to rest until he had laid eyes on him.
Regardless, all of these encounters have cemented one fact in Bond’s mind: that Bond would know the shape of him anywhere: the slope of his nose, the curve of his cheek, the ripple of his hair, the plumpness of his lips…
Bond puts the binoculars down, feeling incredibly guilty.
It’s indecent to look at Q like this without him knowing. Besides, Bond much prefers it when Q knows he is looking, even more so when Q catches him. Q flushes, but tries to pretend like he doesn’t, as if Bond can’t see the colour accumulating in the hollow of his throat, the tips of his ears. Bond has always wondered if Q is shy at the attention, or if he likes it. Because sometimes, he thinks he sees Q looking at him, too.
Even still, it’s wrong to observe him like this. It doesn’t matter that Bond wants to look and not stop looking. He’s not sure when it started, not really–perhaps sometime around the moment Q told him, four months ago, to put his back into it--but he knows that, as of late, he’s been finding his gaze lingering more often. He also knows that it’s wrong of him, what with his lifestyle and track record of ruined relationships, and that he ought to stay away.
But when he sees Q again at the playground the following evening, he can’t help but watch him. Not in a persistent way, but more in short, measured glances out the window at him every now and then. He tells himself it’s for Q’s safety, of course, and nothing else.
He does the same the next night, and the next, and every night Bond is in London.
Bond wonders if he should say something to Q, but it feels wrong to bring it up at work, or to approach Q about it at all. They are not friends, not really, and they barely know one another outside of work. So it’s this strange, intimate little secret that Bond carries. And every time he sees Q at work, Bond can’t help but think about the silhouette of him on the roundabout, at the end of the slide, smoking at two or three or four in the morning, alone.
What are you thinking about? he wonders.
Bond thinks it’s one of those things that will never be acknowledged, like the midnight visit in Medical, or the way he thinks he feels Q looking at him, only to look back and see he’s turned away.
But then one night he’s coming home, tired from a long mission and a twice-delayed flight, and decides to cut through the courtyard on the way to his unit.
And Q is there, sitting on the swings.
Bond looks and Q looks and he knows he can’t just walk by, because they’ve seen each other now. It would be awkward if he just kept going without saying anything.
“Q,” Bond says, and comes closer, dragging his wheeled suitcase behind him. It makes a quiet thunk thunk thunk on the brick path.
“Bond?” Q asks. “What’re you… doing here?”
He sounds surprised, and slightly suspicious.
“Going home,” Bond says, and gestures vaguely towards the top floor units.
“You live here?”
“You didn’t know?” Bond asks, and then, teasingly: “Thought you knew everything about your agents?”
“I don’t pry into your personal lives,” Q answers. “You’re entitled to privacy.”
Bond is surprised to hear this. Here he thought Q might keep tabs on all of them, even when off mission, just for security’s sake. Bond doesn’t know if he’s relieved or dismayed that Q’s surveillance stops when his agents are not in the field. He thinks he might be a little disappointed that Q isn’t looking at him like he’d imagined.
“Though, I should have supposed you might end up here eventually. A lot of people from Six, do, actually.”
“Really?” Bond asks.
Q shrugs. He looks tired.
“It’s just one of those things,” he explains. “The area’s relatively safe and quiet, the rent’s good, and it’s not too far of a commute.”
His fingers are tapping, almost nervously, against a vape pen he holds in his right hand. Something is bothering him, but Bond doesn’t know if it’s the conversation or something else.
“Why are you out here so late?” Bond asks, and then, to tease some more: “Sure you weren’t waiting up for me?”
Q huffs a laugh, and then goes for a tug at his pen.
“I can’t sleep sometimes,” he says, through an exhale of smoke. “Well, most of the time, actually. Hard to turn my brain off, I guess.”
“Me too,” Bond says.
Q gives him a small smile.
“I come out here sometimes. The night air helps. Well, it’s supposed to. The articles on the internet say it should, anyway. But honestly, it’s not doing much for me these days.”
Bond feels like this is his chance to get this secret out and off his shoulders.
“I’ve seen you,” Bond says.
“Oh?”
“When I can’t sleep, I look out the window,” Bond explains. “I’ve seen someone down here at night. On the roundabout.”
“Oh, well, yeah, that’s me,” Q admits, and looks a little embarrassed. “Hopefully you didn’t see me face plant from the monkey bars a few weeks ago.”
Bond laughs. He’s surprised at how easy it comes.
“I did not, your secret is safe with me.”
He’s not sure what compels him–maybe all of those nights, noticing Q down here, alone, or his own exhaustion and isolation–but instead of saying goodnight and leaving for the solitude of his own flat, Bond nods at the empty swing beside Q.
“Mind if I join you?
Q inclines his head slightly in invitation.
“You’re just back from Belize, though,” Q says. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Exhausted,” Bond admits, as he takes a seat on the too-small swing, “but I won’t sleep.”
Q nods in understanding. He holds out his pen. Bond takes it. It feels intimate, this moment, sitting beside Q at nearly two in the morning. Even more intimate when he places his mouth on the place where Q’s had just been. The metal is warm. The nicotine tastes sweet, like candied apples. His lips tingle, as if he’s just been kissed.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” Bond says, passing the pen back to Q.
“I’m trying to quit,” Q replies, and takes another hit.
Bond thinks about Q and all of his responsibilities, the endless conference calls, the budget meetings, his incredibly long hours. Sometimes, Q will be on the comms with him late at night, even after working a full day.
I’m awake, so it’s fine, Q always says. I’ll stay on in case you need me.
They don’t usually talk, but it’s nice, just sitting in the silence of the live line, knowing that someone else is there. It’s peaceful, comforting. But sometimes Bond wishes Q would talk to him a little more, tell him about himself beyond his tea preferences.
“Hard when the job is stressful,” Bond says.
Q nods.
“Do you ever feel like you want to do something different?” Bond asks. “Less stressful, I mean.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” Q asks.
Bond doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s smiling, teasing, but he looks anyway. He’s struck, suddenly, by how beautiful Q is. Even in the dark, even tired, there’s just something about him that is so alluring that Bond wants to look and not stop looking. Maybe that’s why Bond can’t make a joke in return, and instead, the honest truth tumbles past his lips:
“Just worried about you.”
Q blinks, looks at him, then away. It’s dark, but Bond thinks the tips of his ears might be red. Bond still doesn’t know if it’s pleasure or embarrassment.
“You? Worried about me?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” Bond asks. “I mean, you worry about me.”
“Yes, well, you don’t worry about you,” Q explains. “Someone has to do it.”
Bond doesn’t know why–perhaps his tiredness, or the late hour, or the aching sense of kinship he feels even more now that they are side by side–but he asks:
“Is that why you came and saw me in Medical?”
Q tugs at his pen and is quiet for a long time.
“You remember that?” Q asks.
“I thought it was a dream,” Bond admits.
“I thought you were in outer space with all the drugs they gave you,” Q says.
Bond could make a joke here, but he doesn’t. There’s no need when he can just say the things he wants to say aloud.
“Why did you come?” Bond asks. “That night?”
“I told you. I worry about you.”
The words warm Bond inside. When was the last time anyone had ever spared a thought to worry about him?
“And who worries about you?” Bond asks.
Q taps at his pen but doesn’t take another hit.
“No one,” he says, and tips his head back to look at the night sky.
Bond looks, too. There are no stars–never are, with all the light pollution–but he feels hopeful all the same at the thought of catching a glimpse of one.
“No one wanted the job. Not like I had that many applications, mind you,” Q says, and then shrugs, and sighs. “Too hard, I suppose.”
There’s something there beneath the words, something personal, and painful. Something that resonates. It hurts that Bond understands this unspoken thing, feels it like a familiar hallway in the dark, because it means that Q has suffered, too. Is suffering even now. And because Bond has felt, and does feel, this same thing, he knows there really is nothing he can say to make it better. But he wants to try.
“What about me?” Bond asks.
“What about you?” Q asks.
“I said I worry about you,” Bond reminds him.
Q sniffs in the cold, takes another hit from his pen.
“You have enough to worry about,” he says eventually.
“You do, too. Yet you still have time to worry about me.”
Q looks at him, very softly, not at all like he looks at him at work, and Bond feels something shift between them. He feels almost as hopeful as he did looking up at the London sky, searching for stars.
“So did I get the job?” Bond asks.
Now, Q smiles, and oh it’s like something brand new. Something Bond has never seen before. Gone is Q’s professionalism, melted away like a spring snow, and in its wake, something warm, hopeful.
“Well, I suppose,” Q says, and then, trying for seriousness: “It could be a trial period.”
“Thirty days or your money back?”
Q laughs. It’s a nice sound.
“Deal.”
Bond smiles. It feels like a promise. He wonders if this sort of thing is only easy in the dark at two in the morning. He wonders what it will feel like tomorrow. He finds himself hopeful that it will be the start of something. Something just for them.
“Should we shake on it?” Bond asks.
“A true gentleman’s agreement,” Q says, amused.
He holds out his hand, and Bond takes it. His skin is cool to the touch. Bond lingers, and Q does too, his fingers a slow whisper of a promise against the inside of his wrist. It’s incredible, how the simplest touch alights something in him, something he thought long dead, drowned at the bottom of a murky canal in Venice.
Guilt comes with this desire, a reminder of how all things have ended and will end, and Bond regretfully pulls away.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it,” Bond says, and stands from the swing.
He’s halfway from the playset to his luggage when Q’s voice rings out behind him:
“Hey.”
Bond turns towards him. Q is looking at him with an expression that Bond has never seen from him before. At work, Q is so stoic and serious, his gaze sometimes hard and piercing, his wit dry, his tongue sharp. Now it’s like all of that has slipped away, like he’s just dropped all of his armour to expose the soft, vulnerable self beneath. But Q lets him look, doesn’t gather it all back on to hide himself away again, and asks:
“Push me?”
Bond blinks, thinking he might not have heard correctly.
“What?”
“It’s two-thirty in the morning and I’m on a swing in a playground for the first time since I was like five years old,” he explains, and then asks again: “Push me?”
Bond laughs. The request is so uncharacteristically innocent and sweet, so in contrast with everything that he knows Q can be. And in this moment, he knows that he would do anything for Q if he asked.
“Okay, hold on tight,” he says, and gives the centre of Q’s back a gentle push.
He swings forward, just barely.
“You call that a push?” Q asks, and there’s a challenge there. “Shame on you, Double-Oh Seven. And here I thought you could put your back into it.”
The words make Bond laugh again, and his heart flutters, just slightly, remembering that exchange. That had been the moment, hadn’t it? Staring into the light of the oncoming train, Q’s voice in his ear as he shot through the lock: Told you. Had that been the moment he’d been smitten with Q? When his eyes sought Q and no one else? When the only person he wanted to hear on the other ends of the comms was the man before him now?
“Oh, I’ll put my back into it,” Bond promises.
When the swing comes back, Bond pushes him again, a little harder this time. It makes the frame creak a little as the swing goes high, and Q gives out a little shout of surprise and delight.
Bond lets him swing once, twice, and then pushes him again. Q whoops and laughs as he goes higher. The joy of it is infectious. Bond forgets all about his exhaustion, his aches and bruises from the mission. All he can think about is how much he’s having fun, here on this playground, of all places, with Q, of all people. Who would have ever thought he could be given this kind of chance again? This chance at being happy? Is it right to want this? To be given this after everything?
I want to try, Bond thinks. I want to try, with him. If he’ll let me.
“Too high!” Q says cheerfully.
The swing set is making a much louder noise now, obviously not built for an adult weight, so Bond reaches out and slows him down. Before the swing comes to a full stop, Q does a little jump off the seat, landing on his feet just a few feet away. Bond gives him a little golf clap, and Q takes a few bows. They’re both smiling, and before Bond knows it, they’re very close, too. He’s not sure which of them moved forward first, but they’re so close that Bond can feel the heat of him in the cool autumn night. He tastes candy apples on his lips. He wonders what it might taste like on Q’s.
But before he can act on these thoughts, the light in one of the ground floor units flicks on. It bathes the courtyard in yellow light.
“Pretty sure that’s the landlord’s unit,” Q says, still in high spirits. “So, we’d better run.”
And then Q darts away, laughing. Bond is momentarily stunned at this playfulness, before he too is running in the direction Q had gone, picking up his small suitcase as he passes, which bangs against his leg as he dashes towards the building entrance. Q has the door open for him, and Bond makes it inside just as he hears the building door on the other side of the courtyard open.
“Narrowly escaped with our lives!” Q whispers conspiratorially.
Bond doesn’t know why, but that sets him to laughing, and Q is barely holding it together as well. They take turns shushing each other as they climb the stairs, as if they are schoolchildren trying to avoid being caught in the halls by a prefect or headmistress to be berated for their unruly behaviour. It’s the most fun Bond has had in a long time.
By the time they make it to the third floor, Bond’s face is hurting from smiling and laughing. There are tears at the corner of his eyes. When was the last time he’d laughed like this?
Q opens the stairwell door and peeks down the hallway and listens, but it’s quiet.
“Looks like we live to fight another day,” Q says, as he heads out into the third floor hall.
“A successful mission,” Bond acknowledges.
Q laughs, and then stops outside of a door.
“This is me,” he says.
His cheeks are flushed from the cold and their run and all the laughter. And his eyes are bright, bright green. Bond thought he looked beautiful before, but it doesn’t compare to now. He’s never seen Q look so alive, and he’s drawn to him. Their bodies are close, closer than they were outside at the swings, and Bond feels Q lean in closer. Those eyes look down at the floor for a moment, and then meet Bond’s. The hollow of Q’s throat is a lovely shade of pink.
“Do you want to come in?” he asks.
The invitation is unexpected, but not unwelcome.
“Don’t you have work in the morning?” Bond asks, raising a brow.
“I do, but I won’t sleep tonight,” Q answers.
Hot fingers brush along the back of Bond’s hand, and he shivers with a rush of desire. Their lips are inches away from one another. There is no mistake about what Q wants, what Bond wants. And there’s no reason to deny it, either. They might not know very much about one another–likes and dislikes, past history, future desires–but Bond feels a connection all the same. It has Bond thinking about ships and lighthouses again. One really can’t exist without the other, can it?
“Me neither,” Bond says.
Q smiles, his eyes mischievous.
“Stay up with me?” he asks.
“I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do more.”
Q’s smile widens as he opens his front door and takes Bond by the hands to lead him inside.