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The first time Q sees 007, he thinks his heart stops. There has to be some mistake, he thinks, staring at the blond who hasn’t quite noticed him standing at the doorway. That, or fate has a twisted sense of humor, reuniting him with this man of all people.
He remembers those electric-blue eyes staring down at him and the rough scrape of stubble on skin, his skin - and it doesn’t help that obviously 007 hasn’t shaved in a while either - and Q thinks he might actually have a lack of blood to the brain.
Maybe he doesn’t recognize me, Q crosses his fingers and hopes; he had been younger than, clad in a suit a little too big for him with hair cropped close and wearing contacts instead of glasses, and Bond has slept with so many others that he probably doesn’t even remember the flirty boy with short hair and a cigarette between spindly fingers.
Q sits down, sliding closer to Bond. The agent spares him a cursory look, and Q recognizes it for what it is: a threat assessment. He must not look much, because Bond glances back to the painting, a hint of impatience showing on his features.
Now it’s more obvious, Bond doesn’t seem to reconcile Q to that one night in Prague that he’s probably already forgotten about, and Q stops the sigh of relief that threatens to slip out.
Instead he steels himself and makes a comment on the painting before remembering that Bond isn’t really the arts type of person.
Of course, the agent doesn’t expect a young man to actually be his Quartermaster. Q can hear the thinly veiled disbelief that laces James’ voice when he introduces himself, and in that moment all the worry that James will recognize him burns away, replaced by the slight indignation when people - like Bond, he decides - underestimate him.
Then the blond offers a smile and an acknowledgement, and it’s all Q can do to stop his voice from cracking.
Bond is everything he remembers, barbed wit and dark humor rolled into one gorgeous package. His fingers brush against the agent’s as he hands the box over, and Q wants to bury himself in the nearest hole as his traitorous body remembers those callused hands against skin. He hopes that 007 doesn’t notice how his fingers hesitate - it’s a bit much to hope, considering that Bond is trained to notice - when he drops the radio onto the agent’s palm.
Then the man climbs to his feet, graceful in the way all predators are, and Q’s eyes are drawn to the spot in between his shoulders, where his fingers have once scratched marks into corded muscle.
Q swallows, visibly sagging when 007 starts to walk away.
But apparently it’s too much for the night to pass unscathed, as Bond turns to face Q. By now, the room is empty, and Q has a horrible, horrible sense of foreboding.
“You were bloody brilliant in Prague,” and the sheer casualness of it makes Q wants to bury his head in his hands as he flushes a brilliant red, because he knows that James obviously isn’t referring to his hacking skills.