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Usually, Bond had this thing about other people driving him places. But as the car was currently moving at around 1mph, and the London rain was so dense that you couldn’t see more than two meters in any direction, he was finding himself quite happy with being driven, if it meant he could hide in the back and pretend like he was getting some of the rest he’d been needing for the past week.
Besides, the chauffer had met him at the airport with a smile, firm handshake, congratulations on a job well done and a warning that M was in a bad move and living off caffeine. Bond seriously doubted he was a terrorist. Most terrorists didn’t chat that much when kidnapping you. Thankfully, however, when they got into the car and Bond collapsed onto the back seat, the chauffer had fallen silent, hopefully correctly assuming that Bond would find it hard not shoot the man, if it was his only way of getting silence.
Sleep would be preferable, especially if it looked like it would take near an hour to get across from London (perfect timing, arriving back in England on a bank holiday). But there was a dull ache that stretched from his left hip up to in between his shoulders that was refusing to let him zone out. It was probably just a pulled muscle, or a steadily healing scratch – he hadn’t bled out yet, so he wasn’t overly concerned about it.
So, with sleep not possible, Bond had twisted himself into a vaguely comfortable position lying across the back seats and was dozing, brain doing all but nothing, with his eyes watching the thick rain lashing against the window.
Which was why, when a form suddenly appeared in the rain only centimetres from the car and unhesitatingly rapped on the window, Bond promptly swore, jumped, and fell off the seats.
“Y’okay, sir?”
“Fine,” Bond groaned, “Just – slight malfunction-” Wincing every five seconds or so, Bond hauled himself back onto the seat, growling as his back pulled, only to still see a fist tapping away at the window, and a face just about appearing visible as the man tried to peer inside.
“The door’s open, sir, if you want to let him in.”
Let him in? Even through the rain Bond could make out the oversized mac covering ostentatiously covered cardigan and the flimsy umbrella, no doubt a freebee with a magazine. The guy was just a hipster, looking for a lift out of the rain. “Why on earth would I want to let him in?”
“’Cos it’s Q, sir.”
Oh, of fucking course it was.
Sighing, Bond leant over, grabbing the door handle and opening it with a careless flick. Within seconds, the skinny super-technician had bundled himself into the back of the car, umbrella, raindrops and all.
Chewing the inside of his lips to keep the scowl off his face, Bond shook his arms and hands, trying to remove the water Q had just thrown everywhere. “You couldn’t have left the storm outside?” he asked.
“Sorry,” Q said completely unapologetically, shuffling until he was sat rather than sprawled, and closing his compact umbrella. “I was a bit focused getting myself out of it, really.”
“What were you doing in the rain in the first place?” Bond demanded, reluctantly forcing himself to sit upright to give Q some space.
“Walking to work, obviously,” Q said, frowning at him like he’d just asked the stupidest question.
Unperturbed, Bond frowned right back. “You don’t have a car?” he asked, throwing into the mix a disapproving raised eyebrow.
Q just smiled quietly in amusement. “A car? With the radio reporting congestion on damn near every street in London? I’m not an idiot, double-oh, and I’m perfectly capable of walking the distance.”
“Oh, and you missed the forecast of torrential rain, did you?” Bond asking, trying, through his utter exhaustion, to express sarcasm.
He watched, amusement and exasperation developing in equal parts, as Q frowned first at the umbrella in his hands, then up at Bond. “Hm, I must have done.” Bond kept watching, silent, as Q’s eyes slowly slid slightly cross-eyed, before taking off his glasses and cleaning them, lips pursed as he used the corner of his cardigan to try and remove the water droplets and smudges.
His eyes looked a lot greener out of behind the glasses, Bond realised.
Eventually, Q smiled, a declaration that his glasses were back to an acceptable standard, and slid them back into place on his nose. He turned to face Bond, eyes shining and lips wide with a smile. “Ah, that’s better,” he stated, practically beaming. “I can see you clearly, now.” In an instant, the beam fell to a concerned frown, and Bond sighed out with resignation, knowing precisely what was coming next. “And you look dreadful,” Q muttered, raising a hand to hook a slender finger under Bond’s chin, using it to tilt Bond’s head back, no doubt revealing the stunning slice some jumped-up idiot with a knife had been able to carve into the side of his face. It was fine, Bond had managed to stitch it up. “James, what have you been doing?”
“Saving the world,” Bond muttered, not without a bite in his tone. A small hint of fury started to smoulder in chest, and he continued, biting out his words and not looking at Q, head being held in place by Q’s hands anyway, “Something someone made particularly difficult-”
“When did you even last eat?” Q asked, and Bond could tell Q wasn’t as such ignoring him as being caught up in his own thoughts – which were, apparently, on Bond’s well-being. Which didn’t help.
“Istanbul,” Bond said shortly, before continuing, “Particularly difficult because I was slightly distracted-”
“Hold up, I’ve got food in here somewhere,” Q muttered, hand falling from Bond’s chin to rummage in the huge pockets on his mac, “Some breakfast I didn’t get around to eating-”
“Due to some idiot – wait, breakfast, what time is it?” Bond asked, fury falling momentarily due to confusion.
“Breakfast time, I don’t know, uh, 8:52,” Q muttered, simultaneously pulling a Costa bag from his pocket and checking his watch. “What time did you think it was?”
“I genuinely had no idea, I was a bit focused getting myself out of a hot zone, really,” Bond said tonelessly.
Q stayed still, considering him, Costa bag frozen in mid-air, before he smiled. “Oh, I see what you did, using my phrase back at me, well done, very witty I’m sure,” he said, in a tone bordering on mocking. Then he thrust the brown paper bag at Bond, shaking it and declaring, “Food. I strongly recommend you eat it.”
That, that small sign of caring, combined with Q’s open gaze and wide green eyes and honest expression destroyed any intent Bond had had of calm and controlled discussion of what had been distracting him throughout the entire mission.
Ignoring the bag, and deciding preamble be damned, he said, “You kissed me.”
Q’s face remained blank, save for the slightest tilt to his lips, which could either have been a confused frown or a gentle smile.
Bond found he really wanted to find out which it was.
“Yes,” Q said eventually, his head tilting sideways slightly, matching his lips, “I did, didn’t I?”
“Sixteen minutes before I had to leave,” Bond said, voice just as impassive, face, hopefully, just as blank.
“I know, I remember,” Q admitted. His eyes, his bloody depthless green eyes, darted down to the brown bag and back to meet Bond’s. “Are you going to eat this? Because I’m not going to stop going on about it until you do.”
“You kissed me,” Bond reiterated, voice rising, and any pretence of ambivalence going out of the window.
“I still can’t tell I you want me to apologise or not,” Q mused, and that was definitely the confused frown of him trying to work Bond out like one of his damned contraptions.
“I want you to apologise for making me daydream like a bloody teenage girl when I was meant to be focused on killing bad guys and not dying!” Bond was trying very, very hard not to roar, give up entirely, or grab Q by the collar until he understood.
As a grin spread on Q’s face, Bond still hadn’t quite decided why, out of two possible reasons, he wanted to grab Q’s collar. “So the kiss was a good thing?” Q asked, and he was beaming again, more than he had been before.
Almost out of breath with fury and confusion and – and – and Bond didn’t even know, Bond stared at Q, unable to form a coherent answer. Eventually, he settled for grabbing the Costa bag, and muttering out an, “For a genius, Q, you can be right idiot sometimes.”
He heard Q chuckle lightly, as he opened up the bag. Inside was a completely untouched raisin pastry. Q hadn’t even touched it. Besides, Q liked overly-sugared things, cupcakes and muffins, Bond had spent enough time with him to know that. It was Bond who went in for pastries.
Bond looked up at Q, considering and questioningly. Q smiled back, and shrugged.
Perhaps Q had checked the forecast, after all. Flight times, too, maybe.
“I was wondering,” Q said, said slowly as Bond ripped a chunk off the pastry and shamelessly stuffed it into his mouth (he hadn’t been lying about Istanbul), “If you would let me kiss you again, at a time when you weren’t so rushed?”
If he’d been in a slightly better condition, Bond might have said something like, “Well, I’m not so rushed now,” or “Q, I believe you could kiss me any time,” but he was tired, in pain, and his mouth was now an explosion of pastry and fruit, so he scowled in a way that said, quite plainly, ‘Now? You say that after I’ve started eating?’
Q smiled again. “Oh, I can wait.”
Bond swallowed, licked his lips clean, and threw the paper bag down onto the floor. “You might be able to, but I fucking can’t,” he said, before finally grabbing the collar of Q’s cardigan and pulling him forwards, slotting their lips together easily.
However, the sudden lean did pull his back, and he flinched just that bit.
But of course, Q didn’t miss it, especially not when their lips were pressed together. And, all too soon, the feel of Q’s soft, smaller lips under his own vanished too quickly, as Q pulled back frowning. “You’re in pain,” he muttered, scanning Bond as if he could see the injury through his clothes.
A whole line of dismissals, almost all old and practised, waited to be used. “Back,” Bond admitted reluctantly, slightly wondering himself where the confession came from. “Think it got caught, scratched, something along those lines.”
For another few seconds, Q considered him, lips pursed in concern. Then, wordlessly, he placed a hand on Bond’s shoulders and started to pull him down. When Bond froze, frowning questioningly across at him, Q rolled his eyes, smiled slightly and said, “For once in your life, 007, just do as you’re told.”
And Bond did. He let Q pull him until he was lying on his back across the rear seats of the car, his head resting on Q’s lap. And when Q told him to pick the pastry bag up off the floor, he did that, too. But when Q told him, once more, to eat, Bond opened his eyes to look up into Q’s face, and snorted. He barely managed to stop himself smiling when Q smiled down at him, shaking his head.
“Why don’t you, James,” Q muttered, a hand starting to card through Bond’s hair, “Try and get some shut-eye. We can... talk more, when we get to HQ, and after you’ve been to medical.”
And, lying there with Q’s fingers in his hair, his head in Q’s lap, and with his eyes closed, he found he didn’t have the energy to disagree – but just enough energy left to smile.