Work Text:
"You did this on purpose, didn’t you?"
Q crosses his arms standing at the doorway of his bedroom dressed in nothing but yesterday’s pair of boxers and a grim leer. He looks at Bond sprawled and languid and sleep-mussed on Q's bed, thumbing idly through Q's yellowed copy of The Brothers Karamazov. Propped on his chest, the behemoth of a book obscures Bond’s face from view. Q didn’t need to look at the digital clock on the side table to be reminded that he was absolutely late for work today. Eve already did that for him about twenty minutes ago when the deluge of text messages had first trickled in at precisely 9:01 AM.
where are you
good morning, starshine. the earth says get out of bed
q branch is just a stick without q. did you get that? tanner though it up. he thinks he is pretty clever. please come now.
Q, you do not want me to use your given name on sms.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v w x y z guess who’s missing in hq
wait a minute, do you happen to know where 007 is?
YOU DIRTY LITTLE TART.
top or bottom? tell me everything
no, don’t tell me everything
alright I’ve made up my mind. tell me everything but make sure I could still look at you and/or bond in the eye after.
you do know you now owe me a pair of stilettos with laser beam heels that doubles as a satellite mobile.
Q will deal with Eve later- one insufferable prat at a time. Right now, he needed Bond to quit acting like a coy toddler. Right now, he needed Bond to put some clothes on because there are only a few men who possess the fortitude to hold a coherent conversation with a mostly naked 007 (it turns out Q is not one of those men) clad only in a pair of briefs and a draping of rumpled sheets waist down. Right now, he needed Bond to put his book away and explain to Q why the jumper he intends on wearing today is suddenly three sizes too big.
“Bond,” Q tries, his voice even, “why is my Wednesday jumper suddenly three sizes too big?”
Q looks to Bond for a response, tugging at the too loose sleeves draped over his arm. Bond stills for a moment, Q’s hardbound first edition Dostoevsky (translation, fine, but it was still a first edition) held firmly in place with one Bond's calloused hands. After a beat, Bond clears his throat, adjusts his grip on the pilfered book, and gingerly turns a page, obviously not even bothering to read a single phrase, Q thinks.
“You name your clothes after days of the week?” Bond asks with an air of amusement and feigned detachment, his blonde mop the only part of his face left uncovered by the book.
Q inhales deeply, fights off a huff of exasperation, and tamps down the urge to do something with his hands. Like wring Bond’s neck, for instance. Or worry the tip of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Earlier this week Bond had pointed out to Q that he had a tell.
"A what?" Q asked as Bond handed him the barrel of the handgun he was commissioned- just the barrel, the rest of the gun appears to have been brutally cracked off.
"Yes, a tell," he replied, "Oh, and that indeed is your tell."
The corner of Bond's mouth quirked as he nodded at how Q was needlessly adjusting the bridge of his glasses on the crook of his nose. Q's hand promptly fell away from his face and he gave Bond a look that he hoped conveyed the enthusiasm of a man forced to sit through seven hours of the Home Shopping Network Thanksgiving Special.
"Right. I have a tell, and I assume you have an explanation," Q motioned to the what remains of Bond's handgun, and stared at Bond pointedly, "I do enjoy our give and take, 007."
"I ran out of bullets," Bond answered curtly, but Q almost certainly caught the flicker of sheepishness that crossed Bond’s face.
"So, your ammunition was depleted and you deemed it prudent to break your firearm in two and chuck half of it at some ruffian's face?" Q asked, his voice impassive belying the pleasure he takes from a flustered 007. He would deny it to the High Court or even in the face of her Majesty the Queen, but at the back of Q's mind there exists an imaginary scoreboard of the number of times him and Bond were able to subtly one up the other. The tally stands at Q – 11 James Bond – 62.
"He was an assassin," Bond intoned, the phrase clearly you knew that unspoken.
Q ducked his head under the pretense of picking up the remnants of Bond’s firearm while hiding a grin to himself.
"And it was his skull that did the gun actual damage, not my hands,” Bond quipped.
"This was a custom-made Les Baer," Q did not try to hide the wistfulness in his voice, "couldn’t you have employed your fists instead? They’re far more dispensable,” Q said frowning at the warped hollow of metal in his palm.
"Are you telling me you’d rather I lost a pair of my limbs?” Bond snapped, his tone sharp but not with any real bite, as if laced with something else, something less black and white- a hint of ruefulness, maybe, or even a vague sense of resoluteness.
Q spotted the twitch of a vein on Bond’s forehead. He caught the slight almost imperceptible downturn of the corners of his mouth. He noticed Bond’s eyes. He never regarded them too closely before (more like he never let himself, if he were being honest). Bond’s eyes always were the same shade of blue, he thinks- always the same shade, the same shade of blue since the first time they met, since Bond turned to Q, offered his hand and Q shook it firmly. His eyes are the color of the sky during summertime; a blue that was both pale and vivid at the same time. Q blinks, swears that for a moment he watched as the hue of Bond’s eyes blot away into dimness- like turquoise gradually losing its luster due to time, like blue skies overcast during summer storms.
Huh. Q thinks he’s starting to grasp the concept of what a tell is. Also, Q – 12 James Bond – 62.
“No. Of course not, 007,” Q pinned Bond with a look, assessing, “I’m glad you’re back in one piece.”
“You’re glad,” Bond repeated, a question without sounding like one.
Q held Bond’s gaze, Q absentmindedly rolling the barrel of Bond’s gun betweenhis fingers, Bond subtly pursing his lips into a line. A flutter of eyelashes and blink, and Q was sure he saw rain clouds parting.
That was Monday. That was when Q smiled against Bond’s lips for the first time, when he closed his eyes and thought of summer, when he binned his imaginary scoreboard calling it a dead even draw.
But today is Wednesday. And today, Q is twenty-five minutes late for work and counting.
“Bond, we’re both late enough as it is so could you please get your arse off my bed,” Q pads his way across the bedroom, stops by Bond’s side of the bed and as if on instinct, smothers Bond's smug blond mug with Q’s orange jumper.
Q continues his assault of Bond’s face. He snatches the book away from Bond’s clutches and lays it on the side table by the clock. Thirty minutes past nine, Q notes, and not once has he ever been tardy to work before today. Not for the SIS, not for his on-the-job-training at IBM back when he was a senior in Cambridge, not even for babysitting the O’Shea twins who lived five blocks away on top of a ruddy hill. Instead of walking away and speeding through a bath and a change of clothes, Q takes his frustrations out on Bond.
“This is for turning the alarm off and not waking me, and also for stretching out my Wednesday jumper on purpose,” Q shoves one last cashmere-covered hand against Bond’s face and then promptly gets reminded that he’s attacking an MI6 agent when he unceremoniously gets swept off the floor and dumped onto Bond’s lap.
“Thmhmphmngmph,” Bond eloquently breathes out from underneath a layer of cloth.
“Pardon?” Q replies, making a show of straddling Bond’s torso, his legs bracketing Bond’s thighs, until finally setting his bum atop Bond’s stomach. Q slides the sweater off Bond's face.
“I said, this isn’t usually how sane people say good morning,” Bond says with a frown but his eyes are all mirth. Q attempts to give Bond the look his mother would shoot him as a child whenever his misbehaved but the wave of fondness he felt as he peered down at Bond’s pink face and tousled hair wiped the sneer clean off his face.
“Good morning. Could you kindly tell me why you thought it would be a perfectly rational idea to allow me to go to work drowning in knitwear?” Q muses.
To prove his point, Q put on the sweater.
Bond’s arms snaked around Q’s waist while Q pushed his arms through the sleeves. Q had barely slipped the sweater through his head, neckline nearly gaping when one of Bond’s warm hands clasped Q’s bare shoulder and the other hand tugged at the threadbare jumper, pulling Q down for a slow sweet kiss.
“I personally think it’s a brilliant idea,” Bond turns his head and skims his lips against Q’s, gives Q’s bottom lip a light pull with his teeth before adding, “even though it wasn’t mine to begin with,” Bond nibbles at the line of Q’s jaw, flicks his tongue once, twice, at the skin just beneath Q’s earlobe, sucking a path of wet kisses down his neck, licking at Q’s collar bone, all the way to the jut of bone at the peak of Q’ shoulder.
“Not yours?” Q murmurs fingers carding lazily through Bond’s hair before the thought sinks in, “what?” Q splays his palm right in the middle of Bond’s chest and shoves himself upright.
“I didn’t wear your Wednesday jumper,” Bond gazes at Q through half lidded eyes his mouth smiling around the last two words like he thinks saying them out loud was the most delightful thing in the world. Q discreetly chews on the inside of his cheek, willing himself to get back to the task at hand. Which was what again now? Right. His job. Q hazards a glance at the clock-thirteen minutes until he is officially an hour late.
“Then why is this all terribly loose and-” Q stops, flaps his arms earning a bemused chuckle from Bond, until the sleeves he rolled up and pushed over his elbow hang taut and dangle feebly over his hands.
“This is not my Wednesday jumper,” Q sighs and turns to his bedside table, possibly looking to find commiseration. Or at least his glasses. He finds them beneath the alarm clock and secures the frames on his face. He looks at the seven year old Casio he’d refurbished. The numbers set against a faded neon green read 9:47 not before long flickering to 9:48.
“We’re already late, you know,” Bond pries the tarnished but still completely usable clock from Q’s fingers and settles it on the side table. Bond rushes upward, heaving himself up and propping his back against the headboard. He rests his hands on Q’s hips.
“I believe I already said that. It was right before the unmitigated cashmere attack against your person,” Q says, “I suppose this is your jumper then?”
“No,” Bond replies with cocked eyebrow that says I’m lying but you best get on board with it.
“So this is your Wednesday jumper?” Q asks Bond, smiling.
“No. This is your jumper now. Your get reasonably debauched by me every time you wear this jumper jumper,” Bond says toying with Q’s hipbones in his palms.
“Well, in that case,” Q replies, palms resting on Bond’s shoulders, leaning until Q’s breath ghosts over Bond’s lips.
“Yeah?” Bond’s eyes slide shut with a contented look on his face.
“In that case,” Q whispers, mouth grazing the shell of Bond’s ear.
Bond only breathes out a hum. Q maps out the lines on Bond's face with his gaze, Bond's eyelashes, longer than Q thought, resting on the apples of Bond's cheeks.
“In that case, I wish you good luck for the rest of the day, 007,” Q says still poised over Bond but sounding like he’s about to give Bond a weapons briefing instead of a blow job, among other things.
“Neither of us is skiving off work today,” Q jerks away from Bond’s hold and rolls to the side, up and off the bed, and he’s out the door and across the hall in the bathroom before Bond could even properly open his eyes.
“And you still insist on wearing the jumper?” Bond bellows rubbing his face with his palms and trying to ignore the fact he’s been half hard ever since the moment it dawned upon him that Q had mistakenly grabbed one of his jumpers and proceeded to pull it on his much smaller frame.
“I recall you saying it was a brilliant idea,” Q says thickly then spitting out a wad of toothpaste into the sink.
"Да, но он злобен. Он смеялся надо мной. Он был дерзок, Алеша.*,” Bond laments.
“Did you just quote Dostoevsky?” Q squints at Bond as he briskly made his way out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom, his toothbrush still in hand.
Bond looks up at Q with a mostly blank expression, kicks his legs off the bed, finally, Q thinks, as Bond grabs the toothbrush Q had in a loose grip. Q barely noticed.
“Did you just quote an obscure line from Братья Карамазовы**? In Russian?” Q gapes as he reaches for the book on the table. He was pretty sure he never scribbled annotations on this copy. He was positive he never even dared to write on this copy.
“Q, don’t dawdle. It’s nearly ten o’ clock.” Bond traipses, actually traipses, out the door and into the bathroom. He pauses leaning his side against the doorframe and says, “je parle aussi le français. Und ein bisschen Deutsch***,” Bond pins Q with a look, a look that looked a lot like a challenge, and shuts the bathroom door.
“You are going to regret this, James Bond,” Q calls out loudly but with a crooked smile on his face. He shuts the tome he has in his hand, places it back on the side table, eyes flitting past the yellow glow of the clock, not lingering. Q gives himself a moment of respite. Q - 1 James Bond - 1.
