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1.
A cluster of dark-suited men and women gather in a cemetery, black umbrellas lifted against the cold autumn rain. There is nothing that London seems to like more than cliche weather. It always seems to be raining at funerals in films, too, and it's all rather dreadfully symbolic. M would have hated all of it.
Q turns the collar of his jacket up against the rain and wind, ducking his chin into it in a vain attempt to stay warm. His umbrella is fighting a losing battle in keeping him dry. London rain is sneaky like that; it ignores all rules of common courtesy and blows right past the umbrella to get into every possible crevice. His glasses are water-spotted, making the simple double headstone at the front of the crowd blurred and indistinct. Not that it matters. The name carved into the stone is a stranger's name, not one that he'd ever connect with the woman he knew only as M. That's what ought to be on her headstone.
Someone sniffles beside him, but he's not sure if it's due to crying or just an incipient cold. Either way, he has to resist the urge to offer them his handkerchief. It wouldn't be any use, anyway, it's as soaked as the rest of him.
He glances around, trying to pick out individual faces in the crowd. A lot of MI-6 staff is here, even a fair few of the double-oh agents. He's never seen so many of them in one place. It seems that Bond has not bothered to make an appearance. He wonders why he's surprised, and then, why he cares at all. It's hardly his concern where Bond goes or when he goes there, but he would have thought Bond would want to see her off. More fool him for the assumption.
After the burial, Q joins the rest of Q-branch at a pub and gets rather more pissed than is probably wise. He's working on drink number four and vaguely listening to Goode describe the first time he ever met M when his mobile buzzes in his pocket. It takes him a second or two longer than usual to recognize the pattern vibrating against his thigh. Three short, three long, three short. Not a text or a call.
S. O. S.
Someone's breaking into his flat.
Q excuses himself from the conversation and steps out into the brisk evening air. The message from his security system is precisely what he'd expected - intruder detected at 19:26:45. His thumbs fly over the screen of his mobile, pulling up the CCTV footage from the security camera just outside his flat that he's jacked into so it points more at his front door than the street. Rewinding, he finds what he's looking for at 19:26:23.
Bond.
Q goes back into the pub long enough to say his good-byes and settle his tab before he catches a cab home. His mobile is still steadily buzzing the emergency tone, so he know Bond hasn't left yet. He manages to unlock his front door, and, closing it behind him, he calls,
"It was a bit stupid of you to think the head of Q Branch wouldn't have a good security system."
No answer. Q turns off the silent alarm, which quiets his phone in turn. He goes into his living room and there's Bond, looking out the window, a bottle in hand. It is, in fact, Q's vintage bottle of Laphroaig that he'd been saving for a special occasion. He strides forward as steadily as he can, with the extra-deliberate movement of a drunk man trying very hard to seem sober.
"Should have rung," Bond agrees, taking a drink straight from the bottle, moving it just out of Q's grasp.
"That's incredibly unsanitary," Q grouses, finally snagging the bottle from the older man. "Use a glass." He finds two glasses and pours the Laphroaig into them. This is as special an occasion as any. It's not every day the world's greatest spy breaks into one's flat, after all. Bond takes a glass and drinks half in one go before Q can even think of a toast. A moment later, he follows suit. When in Rome, etc., etc.
They don't talk about it. Bond doesn't want to know and Q finds he doesn't want to tell. There's no denying the reality of what happened, but talking about it gives it a finality neither of them care to acknowledge.
It isn't even a surprise, near the bottom of the bottle of Laphroaig, when Bond crowds Q against the back of the couch and their mouths meet in something heated and hungry, with something slow-burning beneath it. Even after all that scotch, when Q is graceless and his words elide, Bond moves with the catlike ease of the consummate lover, someone who has loved well and loved often, who is used, and willing to, perform under all circumstances.
When Q wakes the next morning with a terrible hangover and an empty bottle of expensive scotch, he is as alone as though his alarm had never sounded.
2.
The door beeps, the quiet cheerful beep of an authorized person admitting themselves into Q-Branch. Q doesn't even notice. The quiet tinny strains of his music leak out around his earbuds, the white cord snaking along the front of his cardigan, ending in his front pocket with something that used to be an iPod - until Q was allowed near it. He's utterly oblivious until someone appears across from him, apparently out of nowhere, and taps on the table.
Q nearly drops his torch, coming a hairs-breadth away from destroying several thousand dollars' worth of equipment.
"What the hell are you doing in here, double-oh seven?" he demands, pulling out an earbud and scowling. "This is for members of Q-Branch only. Agents aren't allowed in here after hours."
The look Bond levels at him is silent but incredibly eloquent. It says, hello, I'm James Bond. If I want to stroll into the heart of Q-Branch, then I bloody well will. Q frowns at him.
"How did you get an access card?"
Bond slides it across the table to Q, who picks it up. "Susan Watkins? You stole her card?"
"I wouldn't say 'stole.'"
Susan Watkins is a pretty blonde in her early thirties with a penchant for high heels and pencil skirts. In that moment, Q hates her.
"I'll have to tell her to be more careful with her things in the future," he bites out, pocketing the card. "It could have led to a dangerous security breach."
"Shameful," Bond agrees mildly, and Q gets the feeling that Bond is laughing at him.
"Why are you here?" he asks. The night of M's funeral has never been breached between them, not even in uncomfortable glances or awkward innuendo, and sometimes Q thinks it must have been a drunken hallucination brought on by loneliness and unrequited lust. He also sometimes thinks he must be imagining the tension that hangs heavy between them, or that it's all one-sided.
Bond shrugs. He idly picks up one of the projects Q has scattered over his work bench, fingers tracing the surface. It might look like he's barely paying attention to it, but Q is sure he already knows how to use it.
"I wanted to see what you were making nowadays, since exploding pens are out." He sounds almost sad, like a Q-Branch without exploding pens is a Q-Branch lacking something vital.
"Don't play with that, it's still a prototype," Q scolds the other man. "That is liable to explode, and I don't fancy explaining to M how one of his double-oh agents ended up splattered across a wall in a room he technically doesn't have access to."
Their fingers brush as Q liberates the prototype from Bond's callused fingers, and there it is - that spark between them. Q looks up, dark meeting steel blue. Bond barely smirks, and one finger slides beneath the cuff of Q's cardigan.
3.
Margaret is an inch too short to put the star on the top of the tree, and she frowns at Q, engrossed in his tablet.
"Aren't you going to help?" she demands, stepping over and dropping the star on his lap. "I can't reach."
Q picks the star up and sets his tablet aside, getting to his feet. "It's called a stepladder, Maggie," he tells her, carefully setting the star on top.
"It's called 'you're right there, and Mum said you were to help me decorate,'" Margaret retorts. She puts her hands on her hips, critically examining his handiwork. "It's a bit crooked. More to the left."
He adjusts it.
"No, a bit more - to the right now, it's gone too far the other way - yes, there!" Her smile lights up her face. "Just right."
Q would have been happy to celebrate with her, but a familiar rhythm has started buzzing in his pocket. Short short short, long long long, short short short. His heart stutters in his chest, and easy as you please, he eases his mobile from his pocket and checks the message.
Intruder detected at 13:12:55.
His eyes flick to the clock display at the top of his phone. 13:13:26. The intruder has only been in the flat for about thirty seconds.
"Julian?" Something in Margaret's tone says his worry has leached onto his face. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, just a text from work; I'm going to step out and make a call." Before she can inquire further, Q steps out of the living room and into the gently falling snow. Curling over the display, he taps into the camera and rewinds. It's snowing in London, too, and the figure walking into Q's flat is almost unrecognizable - that is, at least, until Q recognizes its stride.
He breathes out, then dials a number. The phone rings twice.
"Bond."
"It's creepy enough when you break into my flat when I'm in town; what makes you think it's any less so when I'm out of town?"
"You're not in town." Bond can never sound surprised or questioning, because that would show that he has feathers to ruffle, as opposed to being an unflappable android.
"No, I'm not in town. I'm in Bedfordshire. Now get the hell out of my house."
"What happens if you don't deactivate the alarm?" He almost sounds amused.
"The police come, of course."
"As the policy holder, won't you be fined if the police get here and it's a false alarm?"
Q's mouth opens, then shuts. That son of a bitch.
"Yes, but I'm not giving you the deactivation code. Get out!"
"Perhaps if I broke some things," Bond muses. "Made it look like a proper break-in." Q hears an ominous scraping sound in the background and his heart nearly stops.
"Bond, don't you dare - "
Bond is silent. The scraping sound repeats.
Q's nerves fray before Bond can make good on his threat. "Fine! Fine!" He rattles off a string of numbers, and hears a sequence of beeping as Bond enters them. "And be sure you re-arm it when you go," he adds, rattled. "I won't have someone else breaking in just because you had a fancy to."
Bond rings off without another word. Q scowls at his mobile before shoving it back in his pocket and going back into the house.
"Important?" his mum asks from the kitchen, poking her head out.
"Just putting out some fires at work," he replies. "Can I help with anything?"
It's about two hours later, just as they're sitting down to dinner that there's the distinct sound of car wheels crunching up the drive. Maggie's seat faces the windows, and she looks out with interest.
"Since when do you know anyone who drives an Aston Martin?" she asks her parents. Q spins in his seat, though he already knows precisely what he's going to see. A silver Aston Martin, vintage and impeccably kept up, comes to a stop in front of the house, and a tall, muscular form steps out, examining the front of the house.
"Who is that?" Q's dad asks, frowning as he adjusts his glasses.
Q wonders if any jury in the world would convict him for what is, from where he's sitting, the most justifiable homicide ever.
"One of my co-workers," he says, brain whirring to think of an appropriate excuse. "Sorry, I thought I'd mentioned that I'd asked him to dinner - " He lowers his voice, full of sympathy. "He hasn't got any family."
His mum's expression turns to one of sadness and empathy, and Q knows she'll treat Bond like a lost puppy as long as he's staying here, which he will hate. Serves him right, bloody gatecrasher.
"Of course he can stay," she says. "Edgar, get another plate for our guest. Julian, for heaven's sake, see him in."
So instructed, Q gets up and answers the door just as Bond reaches for the doorbell.
"This is creepier than breaking into my flat," he says without preamble.
"Sorry, should have rung," Bond replies with that barely there smirk, and waits with his eyebrows pointedly raised until Q, reluctantly, lets him in.
4.
Three weeks after New Year's, Q vanishes. Footage from the CCTV feed outside his flat shows an ominous scene: the young quartermaster steps up to his door, pulling his keys from his pocket. A man, slim and well-dressed, steps up behind him, calling to him. Q turns, mouth open to reply, when the man leaps forward and shoves a hypodermic needle into his neck. Q collapses against him, and the man smuggles him out of view.
Q has no idea how long it's been since he was taken from London. He spent the flight unconscious (mercifully; he very much doubts even the most patient captors would have tolerated a mid-air panic attack), so he has no idea where he might be. His mobile was confiscated and likely destroyed, also while he was unconscious. His watch is gone as well, and his glasses along with it. Even if he had been able to see, there are no windows in his small cell.
There is small consolation, at least, in that they don't seem inclined to torture him. Aside from aching joints and some bruises from the initial journey, they haven't hurt him. They just keep him constantly sedated, letting him have an hour or so of lucidity every day, just long enough to eat, have some water, and take care of any necessary unpleasantness. Sometimes Q wonders if anyone has noticed he's gone, when he's in that violet time between sleep and wakefulness. He tries to figure out how long he's been gone, his addled brain calculating anywhere between two weeks to a year and a half, based on factors that make perfect sense at the time but have been forgotten by the time he's been woken the next day. He's sure someone has picked up on it, however long it was. Surely M noticed when his quartermaster failed to report to work, or his dad noticed when Q didn't call when he'd said he would. Maybe even Bond noticed when he came back and Q wasn't there to receive Bond's broken equipment with ill grace.
Time drags on, or he thinks it does, and he tries to listen when his captors talk near him so he can have something to tell when he's rescued.
It's always 'when.' He won't let it ever become 'if.'
One day, or night, Q hears his captors talking in quiet but plainly excited tones. They must still think he's under, he realizes, and lets his head droop to help that impression. He doesn't speak the precise language they do, some Eastern European dialect, but his knowledge of Russian helps him piece together what's going on. Someone is - here. No, arriving. Soon. A 'hidden man.' Then he hears a word that's the same in any language.
Bond.
His instincts dulled by the sedative, Q is unable to stop a reaction to the name, his shoulders jerking in surprise as the pieces fall into place. He's not the goal at all, never was. He's the cheese and Bond is the mouse.
Noticing his wakefulness, a man comes over and jabs another hypodermic needle into Q's neck. As blackness covers his vision, his last coherent thought is I hope you know what you've got yourselves into.
Perhaps Q's captors had had it all planned out. Perhaps they had thought they would catch Bond off his guard and ready to be taken. But they must not have realized that Bond's guard is wider and flatter than any other man's, and that in a battle between a gang of men and a one-man wrecking ball, the wrecking ball usually wins.
Bond always leads with his gun in situations like this. The snub-nosed barrel pokes around the corner first, and there's the sharp pop! pop! pop! of return fire. Bond glances, lightning-fast, to get a bead on the others in the room, then fires back. He waits, mentally ticking off the number of people he'd seen (eight) and shots (sixteen), then edges his gun round again. Nothing.
Sliding along the wall, he eases in, eyes flicking over the damage. Three plus four equals -
- wait, that leaves -
He dodges aside at another volley of gunfire. Two more shots, and that's taken care of. He wipes dust off the front of his suit and continues on his way, gun extended. A door is cracked open on his left, and he nudges it open with the barrel of his gun. It's empty, except for a chair in the center of the room. A thin figure sits slumped on it, head bowed, disheveled dark hair covering its face. Bond feels a flare of anger, striding across the room, and he presses two fingers to the pale neck to find a pulse. And ... there. It's slow and thready, likely the result of constant sedation, but it's there. Q is still unconscious, not even stirring as Bond slices the ropes holding him to the chair. Once he's unbound, Q pitches sideways, like a marionette with its strings cut. Bond lunges to catch him, scooping him up and checking him over for any apparent bloodstains or marks. Not seeing any, he hoists the quartermaster over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, leaving his other hand free to hold onto his gun.
They don't come across any trouble as they leave. Bond hadn't really been expecting any, but he knows that one of them could have been out or hiding. As he steps outside, he holsters his gun and slides his hand into his dusty suit jacket, fingers closing around something small and hard in the interior pocket. He pulls it out, giving it a brief, dispassionate glance. It's a Cross pen, shining silver in the bright sunlight overhead, and he clicks the button at the end of the barrel. Normally, the nib would have popped out, but now, a quiet ticking sound begins. A satisfied smirk touches Bond's lips and he tosses the pen over his shoulder, hearing it roll into the building. Five minutes - hopefully enough time to get to the car and get the hell out.
When they get back to England, he thinks, he can't wait to tell Q just what the other members of Q branch had been more than happy to make for him.
5.
Q is bored.
Sure, fine, recovering from extreme dehydration, malnutrition, shock, and detox from all the sedatives probably requires a stay in hospital, but surely they could let him do some work?
His mum had brought him his tablet and a pile of Sudoku books, but he aches to get back to Q branch and find out what he's missed. In the twilight world of nighttime at the hospital, he absentmindedly fills out a puzzle, pen sliding over the newsprint. Since he got back, he hasn't slept for more than an hour or two, more cat-naps than properly sleeping. It worries the nurses, who ask if he has nightmares or if he's scared to sleep. Q just tells them that he's slept enough. They don't know the details, think he's just being glib, and he's happy to let them think so.
A soft scrape against the floor startles him, and he looks up quickly, grip shifting on his pen so it's more of a weapon. Bond lifts his brows, a glint of amusement in his eyes.
"Were you planning to edit me into submission?"
Q lowers the pen. "Visiting hours ended ages ago."
Bond aims that look at him again, the one that says, hello, I'm still James Bond last I checked, and if I want to come to the hospital after visiting hours, I bloody well will. "The nurses didn't stop me," he points out, because that clearly legitimizes his visit and doesn't mean he just snuck past them or seduced them into submission.
Q closes the book. "Did you just come to harass me?"
"Came to see what you were working on." Bond reaches out and plucks the Sudoku book from Q's unresisting grip. He makes a token attempt at wresting it back, but it's half-hearted. Bond turns it over in his hands, calloused fingers running along the spine. "Does it explode?"
"Don't be daft," Q returns. "It'd be stupid to have an exploding book in hospital." There is a brief, playful glint in his dark eyes. "I've got to get it back to Q branch, first."
That barely there smile touches the corners of Bond's mouth, and Q feels an answering lightness in his own chest.
When Q wakes up the next morning, not having remembered falling asleep, the chair by his bed is empty. He blinks sleepily, sitting up and reaches for his glasses. Something slithers off his chest with a papery rustle, and as he blinks again to focus, he sees he'd fallen asleep with his Sudoku book on his chest. He picks it up and opens it.
Every single puzzle in the book is solved.
Q fights off a smile and thinks that if he does make the book explode, he isn't necessarily going to tell Bond first.
+1.
Bond has been missing in action for three weeks. The effect on all of MI-6 is unmistakable, a pall cast over the people within. It's not unlike when Q had been first recruited, when everyone thought the double-oh agent had been killed. But the effect on the quartermaster is much different. He's antsy, spends from sunrise to sunset holed up in Q branch, working. He's as snarky yet professional as always, and it doesn't affect his output, but there's no missing that razor's edge of worry lined with despair.
One night, he gets home and changes into his pajama pants and an old Oxford t-shirt, then settles on his couch with a generous pour of whiskey and a laptop. The rest of the flat is dark, and the screen gives his face a cold white pallor and reflects off his glasses, hiding his eyes.
He hears the door creak, and a second later, his mobile beeps in warning. Q's instincts aren't as well-honed as a field agent's, but he still moves quickly, grabbing his gun and heading to the entry hall, thumb pressed to the safety. Some of the agents have been teaching him how to use it properly, and he's decent, but he prays tonight isn't the night he has to find out if 'decent' is good enough.
Standing in his entryway, soaked by the late spring rain, is James Bond. Aside from a cut along his forehead, he seems fine, and he's watching Q with a sort of quiet interest.
"That's new," he says, nodding to the gun, which Q is slowly lowering, then moving to set on the side table. "Your hands are shaking too badly for it to be of much use, though. You're more likely to shoot yourself in the foot than hit anything useful."
"You're dripping all over my floor," Q retorts, which is true, but probably not the most important thing to focus on at the moment. "Where have you been?"
"Taking care of some unfinished business." Bond raises his eyebrows. "Are you going to offer me a drink?"
"It's still creepy if you break in when I'm here," Q says, but he steps aside in a silent invitation. Bond doesn’t step inside right away, just moves forward, taking Q’s face between his hands, and he seals their mouths together. The kiss is long, slow, almost molten in its intensity, and Q had always sort of thought that a kiss making one’s knees go weak was a metaphorical thing but apparently it’s not. It seems to last forever, and then Bond is pulling away, leaving Q gasping. Bond’s steel-blue eyes bore into Q’s, and Q stares back, not sure what the point of this whole exchange is. Maybe it’s supposed to be an I missed you or I love you or something, but all of that seems too needlessly sentimental for Bond.
And then the moment is over and Bond is stepping away, turning to go into Q’s living room. “Is there any of that Laphroaig left?”
“We drank it all months ago.”
“Damn shame. That was good.”
“Perhaps if someone hadn’t broken into my flat and drunk half of it before I got home, there would be some left.”
“You’re right. Should have drunk all of it.” Bond finishes pouring his drink and takes a sip of it. “That whiskey was probably older than you.”
“It was not.” In that moment, Q thinks that maybe he gets it. It’s not I love you or I missed you or even your flat was closer than mine. It is, maybe, I’m glad.
And he is, too.