Chapter Text
Benoit Blanc was running late.
In the expensive, overstuffed hotel bar where Q was waiting for him, he took a sip of his Earl Grey and checked his watch for the dozenth time. To be kept waiting was a rarity for a Quartermaster—usually, he was the one with poor timekeeping skills. An hour had passed since his and Blanc’s scheduled meeting time, and there was no hint of Blanc to be seen, though there were several frantic texts Q had received since he’d first sat down in his quiet little nook of the bar.
With a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, he read over the texts again.
I’m afraid I’m running late. My sincerest apologies.
Urgent incident at the airport with a spaniel and an Olympic sprinter.
Case solved. On my way.
Hells bells, how do you Londoners ever get anywhere?
Q had been considering rescheduling when the last came through. Sent a mere two minutes ago, it included a slightly blurry image of the traffic on the M4 and a string of grumpy-faced emojis.
By taking the Tube. We’ve always done our best work underground.
I’ll try to remember that next time.
He pocketed his phone and looked up to find a waiter standing over him. The man picked up Q’s empty cheeseboard with a look that rankled.
“Still waiting on your friend?” he asked.
Marvellous, thought Q. He thinks I’ve been stood up.
Did he look like a man who regularly got stood up? He supposed there was that one time at uni when the man he was supposed to be meeting for dinner hadn’t even remembered asking Q out, but that was theoretical mathematicians for you. In the decades since, he’d never been abandoned again. All his dates — rare as they were — seemed to find him interesting enough to show up for at least one evening. Not even at work did he get stood up. After all, the agents knew what was good for them, and the rest of the staff knew not to waste the time of a department head.
Perhaps he’d been sheltered in the halls of MI6 too long. He’d forgotten that outside of it, he was merely another inner-city twink. The thought was as depressing as it was freeing.
“Yes, I am. And if you’d be so kind, I’d like another one of those.”
The waiter didn’t seem to heed the message behind Q’s cool, sarcastic smile. He only looked more sorry for Q, who was, in his eyes, a man drinking alone, about to scoff a whole second round of artisanal cheese.
And so what if he did? This was London, where cheese cost twice as much as it should, and one was lucky to get a charcuterie board the length of his—
Well.
Q shook off his annoyance. The waiter would be proved wrong soon enough. Benoit Blanc was on his way, and the man had no small profile, even here in England.
A few years ago, Blanc had solved a case involving the stolen jewellery of a minor royal. The details were — and still remained — very hush-hush, but word had gotten around enough for Blanc to become a household name at the time. Q knew the details, of course, as everyone who worked above a certain level of government service did. Because he knew all the nooks and crannies of the case, it always amused him to hear the conspiracy theories peddled online. People so often missed the obvious. Wrapped up in their own theories about society gossip, affairs, and shadowy men in the night, they’d almost entirely forgotten about the butler.
To be fair to the amateur sleuths across the country, an opportunistic butler was hardly an exciting end to the tale, and it wasn’t their fault the Palace had the more exciting side of the case quiet. To this day, Q has never seen a single mention in the papers of the butler’s real motive: exacting revenge for the unjust firing and verbal abuse of his wife some years earlier.
In the end, the Palace let the matter go to save themselves the bad press. It was an approach Q privately hoped they’d use more often.
One more cup of tea and another ten minutes later saw Q engrossed in The Three-Body Problem, happily avoiding all manner of pitying stares from waiters and the bar’s other patrons. Even preoccupied as he was, it was impossible to miss the collective hush that moved around the room when he reached the end of his chapter. Whispers began to circle, and Q looked up at the table next to him to see two well-to-do women huddled close together in conference.
“That’s Benoit Blanc,” one of them whispered, her eyes fixed on the bar’s entrance. When her friend didn’t respond, she leaned even further in. Her voice became an urgent hiss. “Benoit Blanc? You know, the famous detective.”
Her friend remained clueless. “Blanc. Oh! Is he the French one? The murder on the train?”
“What? No, not Poirot. He’s fictional. And Belg — for goodness’ sake, how can you not know Benoit Blanc?”
Q was saved from listening to a response by the very man in question sliding into the armchair opposite. His voice boomed around the room in a way most Londoners might have considered distinctly impolite.
Privately, Q thought London could stand a bit more impoliteness.
“Q! My goodness, what a sincere delight it is to see you at last.”
“Likewise, Detective. It’s been far too long.”
“You’re looking well,” Blanc complimented, with a twinkle in his eye.
“As are you.”
It was always a spectacle, taking in Blanc, even if he’d reached for a more understated look. Today, he was dressed in a camel-coloured woollen suit with a large checked pattern woven into it. He’d paired it with one of his floral-print ties, one in a dark brown colour palette that wasn’t as attention-grabbing as usual. Even so, the overwhelming effect was one of an enormous presence. For all Blanc talked about observing passively, he was impossible to ignore.
He looked lovely and tanned, as if he’d been spending days lying under the Corsican sun rather than hurrying about on the case he'd called Q about. Q imagined London’s dreary winter weather was quite a shock to the system. If it was, Blanc didn’t let on. In the ensuing conversation, he had nothing but compliments for London, its food, and its people, which Q supposed would be the case if one were something akin to a household name in this city, and people tripped over themselves to give you second rounds of the food you liked instead of assuming you were a sad sack sitting alone instead of on a date.
All right, even nearing forty, it turned out Q wasn’t above a bit of pettiness.
He supposed everyone had their flaws, though. Even Benoit Blanc, who – with an age that should have signalled more maturity – was singularly nosy. He hid it well enough behind that near-impenetrable veil of charm and manners. Yet, when Q’s phone, which was lying on the table between them, pinged with a message, Q could feel the change in the air surrounding their little table. Blanc’s interest was piqued. Q clicked the screen off as soon as he could, but the damage was done. They’d both seen the message come through from Bond. Though he was only stored by the initials JB in Q’s phone, it wouldn’t take a world-class detective to figure out the connection.
Blanc was undoubtedly overqualified for the task.
Could use your help, said the message. I’ll be at The Duck and Bill in half an hour.
The Duck and Bill was a cosy pub he and Bond often frequented, the kind that was nice enough to have several excellent craft and European beers on tap but not so posh that there wasn’t always a lone alcoholic sitting at the end of the bar.
(That the lone alcoholic was often Bond was neither here nor there, in Q’s opinion.)
Blanc’s face began to take on a particular look, one that reminded Q of a dog at a fox hunt. For the first time since the man sat down, Q was reminded of how it felt to be pierced by Bond’s sharp, assessing gaze across a table. He supposed the two men did look alike after all, though Blanc’s usual wide-eyed, inquisitive approach was so different to Bond’s closed-off hoarding of secrets that it usually negated any physical similarity. Now, there was no missing it.
Q felt like an animal caught in a capture net.
“Oh, feel free to answer that,” Blanc insisted, with his inscrutable gaze still fixed on Q. “I kept you waiting long enough with that trifling business in Terminal Five.”
“No, no, it’s all right. It’s nothing urgent.”
Q tucked his phone in his pocket, determined to ignore it. Bond, evidently, wasn’t having it. The phone buzzed again a few minutes later, right as their waiter returned with fresh drinks (gin and tonics rather than tea, this time) and the cheeseboard he’d made Q feel quite awkward about ordering. The awkwardness was his now, and he shot Q an apologetic smile that Q did not return.
Feeling another buzz at his hip, Q fetched his mobile from his jacket and offered his apologies to Blanc.
Q?
Q? Where are you?
Well, he supposed this was what he got for his usual habit of either answering texts immediately or automating his responses. Q sighed. If he didn’t respond now, goodness knows what they might later be interrupted by. If he got lucky, it would be a covert couple of retired agents sent to check in on their former Quartermaster’s whereabouts. If he was unlucky, it might be a whole squad of active armed agents. Worst of all, if Bond completely overreacted, he’d show up himself, guns-blazing.
Best to avoid all interruptions. He tapped rapidly at his phone, firing off a response.
Can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got plans.
Plans? With who?
A friend. I’ll come by the office tomorrow morning. You can catch me up then.
Ignoring the few responding messages buzzing through his pocket, Q looked up to see Blanc still staring at him. He hadn’t touched his food or drink.
Curiosity obviously didn’t pair well with cheese, then. Or gin.
Q met his gaze head-on, feeling only a slight pang of trepidation. A life dealing with spies was excellent practice for this sort of thing.
“So tell me about this detective you work with. This James Bond.” Blanc waved his hands around his elongated vowels. “Are you partners?”
“No, not as such. I’m more of a consultant.”
It suddenly struck Q that he’d never talked in depth about Bond to an outsider of MI6. The task of describing a man so quintessentially a spy (even a retired one) without mentioning his explosive brand of espionage or any of their history together was more than a bit daunting. As it turned out, he needn’t have been anxious about it. A moment later, Blanc saved him the trouble of an explanation.
“Oh, I meant in the more personal sense.”
“Ah.”
Partners. Q would call Bond many things, but the term partners would vastly oversell the current state of affairs. With some amusement, Q thought the term consultant might not be a bad one for their more personal encounters. He was certainly good at getting the job done when Bond preferred a particular set of skills for the night.
If that seemed like a cold assessment, well. Bond had never given him the green light for a warmer one, and Q had never pressed for it.
Q’s silence stretched on a beat too long. Blanc’s pleasant smile tightened until it was nearer a frown, the very same one that came across his face when he saw some great injustice evolving before him. Q hadn’t spent much time with Blanc in person, but he’d seen that look often enough in the background of newspaper photographs to recognise it. He’d only seen it once in real life, back when they’d met for the first time, and it had been aimed at a man who was treating his drunk girlfriend quite callously. That he was wearing that look now didn’t bode well for Bond. Q felt a sudden, mad urge to defend his partner. He reined it in.
“No,” Q continued. “Not in the personal sense, either.”
“Is that right?” Blanc leaned back and sunk unto his great, leather wingbacked chair. He looked far more at ease in it than Q did, swallowed up by his own. “Forgive me—old habits. You’re under no obligation whatsoever to indulge my rampant curiosity.”
“I would indulge you if there were anything to tell.”
Blanc laughed. “I’m not sure that’s true. No matter. It’s none of my business anyway. I only hope he’s treating you well as a...” Blanc paused for the briefest of moments, “consultant.”
“Perfectly well. And he pays me far too much money.”
Thankfully, at least when he wasn’t being paid for it, Benoit Blanc knew when to give up on the chase. His shoulders relaxed, and his face once again took on a banal sort of congeniality.
After that, they turned to the subject of work and to the death of some financial advisor with a name so quaint it seemed like the sort of case only Benoit Blanc could solve. Blanc begged Q’s technical help, something Q was happy to oblige him with.
“I have a room here,” said Blanc upon Q’s agreement. “If it’s not too much trouble, I suggest we relocate from any prying eyes.”
Had it been any other man making that enquiry, Q would have assumed he’d just been hit on. Perhaps he had. There was a sparkle in Blanc’s eye that looked an awful lot like a tease, and Q considered the forward trajectory of the day for a moment.
It came as no surprise to Q that he found Blanc attractive. Q knew he had a type. It was less about the physicality or the age (though there was that—both the physicality and the age) and more about the ability to read people. All of Q’s partners who had been worth their salt had been incisively curious types with keen intellects. It might have been snobbery speaking, but Q never could abide taking a stupid man to bed.
And Benoit Blanc might have had a silly accent, but he was not a stupid man.
An image intruded upon Q’s thoughts, one of Bond sitting alone in The Duck and Bill. He tried to ignore the little flip of unease it caused, but it remained there, as vivid and stubborn as if Q were looking at him in real life. Bond would be nursing a beer if it was a good afternoon, whisky if it was a bad one, and a martini if it was a day draped in the heavy silence of ghosts. Q tried not to think about what kind of afternoon it was. It was none of his business. He and Bond weren’t like that, and it frustrated Q that his heart couldn’t seem to remember it. All he wanted to do today was catch up with an old friend, yet here Bond was, invading his spare time even with a conspicuously absent body.
It was that prickle of righteous indignation that decided the matter. Q would follow Blanc to his room. After all, he’d only accepted an invitation to help with private investigative work. He was under no obligation to do anything more than hack a few video feeds or a database or two.
And surely whatever ended up happening or not happening was of no concern to Bond.
“All right,” replied Q with a smile. “Let’s relocate.”
With one last withering look at the waiter, they departed. Through the foyer, the ride in the lift, and down the hotel corridor, Blanc engaged him in excellent conversation. It had been years since Q talked this much to anybody. In fact, the last time was probably during his first-ever encounter with Blanc, which was a raucous affair. He found it refreshing. Q’s everyday life in London tended to be much quieter. Spies weren’t chatty types, not even Moneypenny, who Q chatted to most.
And wasn’t she going to have a field day over this?
Q tried to forget anything involving MI6 or James Bond as he stepped over the threshold into Blanc’s room. Blanc had been a paragon of understatement when he’d called it merely a room. In reality, he was staying in the hotel's finest suite. The windows and the bed were framed by flouncing gold curtains; the sort Q had never seen anywhere except in manor houses or palaces. The seating area looked like something out of a Gatsby novel, and the walls were covered in gaudy picture frames, which held all manner of English countryside paraphernalia and wartime pictures. He should have expected no less since the bar downstairs featured all the same and more. Nevertheless, he had to do a double take when he spotted an honest-to-god gramophone in the corner.
“Would you like a drink?” asked Blanc. “Fair warning, I am terrible at making anything more convoluted an Old Fashioned.”
Still staring at the gramophone, Q muttered a distracted, “No, thank you.”
Blanc turned to watch Q take in the room. He stood slouching slightly, his hands in his pockets, slightly self-conscious about all the luxury.
“Outrageous, isn’t it? There’s even a roof terrace with a freestanding copper bath,” he confessed, nodding to a staircase. “I admit I would have argued more about the room if it had not been for that. A good bath is something no man should turn down.”
“Quite right,” agreed Q, regretting his own paltry budget in the field and on holiday. “I didn’t know you could make this much money as a private detective.”
Blanc laughed. “Oh, I don’t. My client is a woman of some means. She insisted, even after I provided her with a list of more sensible hotels.” More quietly, he muttered, “I do worry, sometimes, that they hire me for the publicity rather than the puzzle itself.”
“That must be vexing.”
Blanc shrugged and smiled. “Less so when there is a good bath involved. Now, we should get started. Unless I can change your mind about that drink.”
Again, Q declined. He’d had enough. The two gin and tonics he’d gotten through downstairs may have been well-paced, but he wouldn’t risk drinking more. He needed a clear head to hack anything, even if it was only a council’s CCTV footage. Occasionally, even the most straightforward jobs had traps he needed to be wary of.
It took him no time at all to set up his laptop, though he did have to perch it precariously on the coffee table, which was overflowing with magazines and a cocktail-making set. Not that Q minded the clutter. He had done more urgent work in worse places, the worst of all being in the back of a speeding car, avoiding a hail of bullets. A cocktail set was hardly going to come between Q, Benoit Blanc, and the truth of the case they were investigating.
Hours of companionable silence passed, so many that Q lost track of the day entirely. By the time he considered wrapping up, he looked out the window to find it was dusk. In all that time, the truth of the case remained a stubbornly distant realisation. It would take a lot more sleuthing before it came to light, not that Blanc seemed bothered, and if he wasn’t, Q wasn’t either.
As he emailed Blanc a copy of the CCTV footage, he felt the other man’s hand land behind him on the back of the couch. His arm tucked itself warmly around much of Q’s frame, bleeding warmth even through a few thick layers of clothing. At one point, Q called him Detective, and Blanc moved in closer to lightly rebuke him for it. His breath warmed Q’s cheek, which was already a bit warm from the heat of the room and the effort involved in case-solving.
“Oh, it’s Mr Blanc. In fact, just call me Benoit.”
“Benoit.”
Inadvertently, the pronunciation slipped out in perfect French. Beside him, Blanc made a delighted noise.
“Well, now, that is a lovely accent.”
Q coughed. “Ah. My mother’s doing. My grandmother was French, you see, but my mother never kept up with the language. She regretted it all her life, and I was the one to atone for her error. She sent me to classes about as soon as I could talk.”
“I scarcely want to hear it said any other way again,” replied Blanc in a deep voice that seemed stripped of most of its Southern quaintness.
Q looked to his right, where Blanc was still leaning in and no longer squinting at the laptop screen. The late afternoon light made him look softer, more of a man than a myth. They were little more than a hair apart now, and it was close enough for Q to make out the light five o’clock shadow at Blanc’s jaw. To smell the faint hint of the man’s spiced aftershave. To have Q wondering what might happen if he moved forward a fraction and brushed his lips over that stubble.
It was a mad thought but an enthralling one. Certainly compelling enough for a dry spell.
Blanc turned to face him, his face giving away very little, and his eyes, which were usually extraordinarily captivating, acted like a bucket of cold water. They were startling. Uncanny, even. They were the right colour, and perhaps because of that, they were nothing at all like the eyes Q really wanted to see.
He’d been an idiot.
“Detective…”At Blanc’s reproachful look, Q corrected himself, keeping his French accent out of the matter this time. “Benoit. I’m afraid I…not to say you aren’t, it’s just…”
Q trailed off, lamenting his lifelong ineptitude when it came to matters of intimacy. He never had been any good at rejections, especially not romantic ones. All of a sudden, he felt as if he were a teenager again, gangly and awkward and too proper for his classmates. Here was Benoit Blanc, a mature, successful, lovely man looking for, well, whatever he was looking for, and Q couldn’t manage a polite no, thank you. It was absurd.
As it turned out, his regret was for nought. After a moment of silence where his tongue grew thicker and more unwieldy from awkwardness, Blanc’s face twitched with quiet smugness. Q, who was no stranger to the small deceptions of detectives and spies, realised with indignation that he’d been played.
“Did you just—?”
“I had a hunch,” said Blanc, with a flicker of mirth in his eye. He moved back from Q and stood up, sinking his hands into the pockets of his fine wool trousers.
“You baited me.”
“I did.” More seriously, Blanc offered his humble, slightly stuttered apologies. His Southern charm was back in full force. “Forgive me. I did not mean to offend.”
“But you did mean to find out about my…” Q struggled to find the right word, “situation with Bond. Are you normally this nosy about your friends?”
“Oh, only the ones I really like.”
Irritating as it was, Q was so charmed by the admission that he couldn’t help a smile. Blanc returned it with one of his own before turning back to Q’s computer. He kept a respectful distance this time as he looked over the pictures of the victim in his latest murder case cosying up to a woman who was assuredly not his wife.
Where Bond might have offered a dry and sarcastic quip, Blanc simply sighed, vexed.
“Marriage is so often a crooked game,” he murmured. “Two people enter with their respective fortunes — one usually much larger than the other — and they stand there at the altar like two turkeys being ushered to the slaughter. And divorce!” he tutted. “It is a quagmire of paperwork and agony, and only vultures profit from it.”
“And private detectives, one would imagine.”
Blanc scoffed. “New ones, yes. Or those destined to coast on a wave of mediocrity for the entirety of their careers.”
Q felt a bit offended on behalf of Bond, who was neither new at this game, nor mediocre at a single thing Q had seen him put his mind to. Then again, Q supposed his reasons for dealing with infidelity cases, particularly those involving beautiful women, weren’t exactly cerebral.
“All I’m saying,” Blanc muttered, “is that I could live without rifling through any more panty drawers for the rest of my life.”
“Is that—do you know what? I don’t think I want to know.”
“No, you do not.” Blanc hesitated for a moment more. The silence between them became thick with things unsaid. “I think we’re done for today, but before you go, may I offer you one last piece of advice?”
Wary, Q nodded for Blanc to go on.
He walked around the couch and took a seat in an armchair opposite Q. For a moment, he simply waited. His eyes were kind and serious and extraordinarily blue.
“You said earlier that you were a consultant. Now, in my experience, professional consultancy is a wonderfully freeing thing. But too much freedom in the personal sense is a difficult thing to navigate. One party inevitably ends up paying a higher price.” Blanc looked toward the phone sitting to the left of Q’s laptop. “You are an exceptionally good-hearted and clever man, Q. Just make sure you’re splitting the cheque, so to speak.”
Q ducked his head and mused, perhaps very stupidly, that he couldn’t imagine a cost he wouldn’t bear for James Bond. When he looked up at his laptop again, he made sure his face was clear of that thought.
“You needn’t worry.” Q pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I’ve budgeted for every eventuality.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
Their goodbyes after that were friendly and swift, made swifter by Q’s sudden jitteriness. He should be used to being seen through, to being read soundly and accurately by people who knew the intricacies of human expression far better than he did, but that didn’t make experiencing it any more pleasant. There was a code within the halls of MI6, as well as in his relationship with Bond. You mind your businesses much as possible, and I’ll mind mine, then neither of us will have to confess any uncomfortable truths. That same code didn’t apply to Blanc. And as wonderful as it was to consider him a friend, Q viscerally disliked being known.
On the way out of the hotel, Q stopped just short of the doors. It had been a long enough afternoon. He ought to be making his way to Marble Arch for the journey home, but the day felt unfinished. Dusk was turning to evening proper. It was his favourite time of night, and the light was turning his agitation to a buzzing sense of promise.
He pulled out his phone, composed a text, and stepped aside when a couple of tourists tutted at him from behind. As he pressed send, he hoped Bond hadn’t taken his earlier refusal as a slight. As casual as their situation was, Bond always did have a flair for being a bit possessive, even when things were strictly professional. In his MI6 days, Bond could never abide waiting long for Q when Q had the attention of another agent. These days, Bond would bristle at the mere mention of Mallory, not to mention any tease from Q about finding another detective to work with on his weekends.
(Him bristling at the latter was rather the point. Q only rarely threatened it when Bond, with his usual penchant for destruction, ruined little pieces of surveillance tech Q had made especially for investigative use.)
Change of plans this evening, Q’s text read. Are you still at the pub?
Bond’s reply was swift. Yes. Shall I order your usual?
Q thought about it for a moment. His usual was a gin and tonic. A Hendrick’s, to be precise, with one thin slice of cucumber. But he’d had his fill of them earlier. Now, thinking of a Southern twang and a smile that knew too much, Q felt he was in the mood for something with a bit more panache.
No. I think I’d rather an Old Fashioned.