Archive of Our Own ^beta

2:14:05

If he survives, if he doesn’t descend into a mess of internal bleeding that can’t be stopped until he dies in a gelatinous blob of his own flesh, Q is absolutely going to demote the tech who dropped the phial to teaboy until the day he finally dies.  Q can’t wait.  Imagining the look on the tech’s face when he’s demoted is the only thing keeping Q from going utterly insane.  It may not work for the remaining twelve days of the quarantine, but it’s gotten him through the first two, so he’ll continue to cling to it for now.

Of course, if Bond doesn’t stop pacing, Q may lose his tenuous grip on sanity prematurely and use his laptop to beat Bond into a messy, bleeding pulp.  Well, no, he probably won’t, because Bond could kill him without any effort at all, but he’ll try and the resulting painful death will be better than the way Bond’s blurry shape moves back and forth across his peripheral vision.   

“Couldn’t you go back to push ups?” he asks sharply.  The pushups had gone on for ages, accompanied by heavy, grunting breaths that had set his teeth on edge, but at least he hadn’t felt like he was being circled by some kind of predator.

“I thought you were sick of those.”

“I am, but I’m beginning to believe it’s not your actions I’m sick of.  It’s you.”

“I  assure you, Quartermaster, that the feeling is mutual at this point.”

Q can’t contain the eyeroll.  “I’m sure.  I have yet to do anything that could possibly bother you.”

“The interminable tapping is going to drive me to violence or drink and, as Medical seems to be of the belief that England should be a dry nation, violence seems to be the only option.”

Q frowns, confused.  He hasn’t been squirming or tapping his toes.  He’s simply standing at the small counter, working through a coding problem and making sure he’s got the list of succession for Q-Branch updated.  “I’m not tapping.”

Bond sweeps over to reach over Q’s shoulder and smack his fingers against the keyboard a few times in irritation.  “What do you call that?  It’s endless, you never stop.  I’m not convinced you even sleep.  It never stops and I am going to destroy your laptop one key at a time and shove it down your throat if I have to listen to it much longer.”

“I’m working!  I can’t just abandon my branch while I wait to see if I’m going to die from someone else’s idiocy.  There are agents in the field and I have seventeen separate projects that require my attention immediately because if I die, there isn’t enough documentation for someone else to take over my work easily and our funding’s been cut for the third consecutive year.   We haven’t the money for someone else to start from scratch!”

“You’re only potentially dying right now.  You will certainly die if you don’t stop.”

“You realize that threatening a branch head is an act of treason?”  Q is not going to stop working.  He can’t.  The threat of death will be too much and he just wants to go home and see his cats.  He misses them, but they’ll be okay until the quarantine is up—he’d just filled their feeders and the timers will dispense wet and dry food on command for up to a month after he fills the hoppers.

“I’m fairly sure the insanity defense applies to treason and if you don’t stop tapping, I will lose my mind.  It may already be gone.”  Bond is looming.  Q isn’t sure how a man who’s scarcely an inch taller than he is can loom like this, but he’s looming and Q shrinks back.

“I suppose I could take a break,” he says, and heads to his bed to sit down.

2:15:20

Q clicks.  He clicks and he fidgets and he sighs and he hums lightly to himself and he mouths words and he sucks in air through his teeth and the result is something far, far worse than the tapping.  James is fairly sure that he’s going to strangle himself any moment, because Q without his work is worse than Q working.  He’s not sure how Q-Branch functions if this is their branch head is this annoying, obnoxious, horrible man.  James may never be sane again after this.  He’ll fail his psych exams even worse.  He’ll be pulled from the field for it and it will be all the scrawny little bastard’s fault.

It takes everything he has not to walk over to the other bed and start shaking Q until his teeth rattle.  It gets worse when Q makes himself a cup of tea.  Q attacks the tea when it is evidently too hot and he slurps.  He slurps and James has never in his life had a greater desire to seriously injure an ally.

“Wait for it to cool down.  That sound is disgusting,” James snaps after the seventh slurp.  The tea can’t possibly still be that hot.  It can’t be.  Seven slurps.  He tried not to count, but they were impossible not to—Bond’s life has depended on noting the number of times people do things before and it’s a subconscious habit at this point.

Q blinks at him from the other bed as if he’d forgotten Bond was there.  “What sound?” he asks, then takes another slurping sip of his tea.

“You are doing it on purpose,” he grits out, his jaw clenched so tightly it actually hurts to get the words out.

“Doing what?”

“You’re slurping.  You’re slurping your tea.”

“Am I?”  Q looks pensive.  “I don’t think I am.  I’m just drinking my tea.”

“Then do it silently.”

Q takes a slow, careful sip of his tea, watching James’ reaction. 

James flinches.  “Stop that!”

“I can’t drink anymore quietly than that.”

“How the fuck not?”  James can’t believe it. 

“I don’t know?” comes the puzzled response.  “This is just how I drink.”

“It’s obnoxious.”

“It’s only drinking.”

“Are you a toddler?  Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to drink properly?” James demands.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I’m not a child, but if you’re going to spend the next twelve days treating me like one, this is going to end very poorly indeed for you.”

“Pour the liquid into your mouth.  You only need suck it in if you’re using a straw, which you are most certainly not doing as a straw would not make that sound.”  James is aware that he sounds a little deranged at this point, but he can barely think.

“Why don’t you read a book or something and stop focussing on me?”

James stares at Q a moment.  Read a book?  How would that distract him from the presence of another person?  A book was for holding in an airport to let you blend in, for making people think you weren’t watching them.  It wasn’t that he hated reading or found no value in it, it was that reading for pleasure was something that James did in private, when he didn’t need to watch his back.  “No.”

“I could find you a game on my laptop?” Q offers, holding his mug in both hands.

James curls his lip in disgust before he can help himself.  He’s being asked to sit and wait peacefully for his own demise and he doesn’t do inaction well, not at all.  Not being able to fight this, not having a target is making his skin crawl and his limbs twitch.  He can’t stand this.  A computer game is not going to help.  It’s an exercise in futility.

Q looks shifty a moment, staring into his tea before looking up at James.  “If you wanted… it’s not a computer game, not really, you could play with my cats?”

“What, you’re going to have a technician bring them by for a visit?”

“Of course not!  I work 72 hour days sometimes and they need stimulation.  I’ve customized several devices to allow me to play with them via the internet when I can’t make it home.  They could probably use the attention about now and perhaps if you had something to do, I could drink my tea in peace.”

“You play with your pets by remote control?  Are they even actually alive or have you made them robots, too?”  He can’t help the sneer in his voice or the irritation.  He wants to be out of here or at least on his own.  He’s tired and he feels a little like he’s suffocating.

Q’s face shuts down and he turns away from James.  “Suit yourself, 007.”  He goes back to drinking his tea, his slurping a little quieter, but still perfectly audible.

3:10:09

Q is exhausted.  He’s always had a bit of a problem with insomnia—when the ideas won’t shut down, he can’t sleep, just has to keep trying to get them all written down or drawn or he needs to code.  To sleep, he needs everything to be quiet, the room to be totally dark and for there to be nothing to draw his attention.  It seems like a lot of work to others, but it generally works and lets him get enough sleep and he’s adjusted to it. 

The downside is, though, that he’s never been able to share a room with anyone.  It’s kept him from pursing any potential relationships.  His sleep hygiene is too important. 

James Bond has a license to kill and he’s using it to kill Q’s sleep hygiene.

It’s not anything Bond’s doing intentionally, Q’s gotten far enough past the point of rationality to be rational again, and he knows that, but it’s still happening.  He lays down to try and sleep and he can hear Bond breathing.  It starts him thinking about what Bond might be thinking.  Or what might help Bond on his next mission if they survive this.  Or what happens if they don’t survive this. 

It’s not Bond’s fault, but Q hasn’t slept in three days.  He’s gotten a few snatches, but he keeps snapping awake with the need to code.  His hands itch and he types until his hands ache and his wrists burn. 

He’s exhausted and his head is starting to ache and that sets his heart pounding, because it could be the exhaustion or it could be the first symptoms of the pathogen setting in and he’s scared to tell Medical his head hurts because if he says something and it turns out to be the pathogen, then he’s dying and he’s not ready to be dying.  He tugs his hands through his hair in frustration.  It’s greasy and he can’t remember if he’s showered in the past twenty four hours.  Maybe if he does, he’ll feel better, but standing up to go shower sounds so hard.  Sure, if he was working in Q-Branch, if there was a reason for him to be up this long, he’d be all right to keep working awhile longer and he wouldn’t feel like this—he’s been awake longer—but there’s no adrenaline keeping him upright.

“What’s wrong?” Bond demands and Q cringes, because of course a spy can see him falling apart.

“Nothing, I’m just frustrated with this whole mess,” Q responds, irritation spiking.  He’s not going to be afraid in front of Bond, he can’t.  Bond’s probably not afraid at all.

“You’re not well,” Bond says, an unmistakeable wariness in his voice.

“I’m fine.”

Bond gets up off of his bed and comes over to peer closer at Q.  “You’re a liar.”

“Do not question my integrity, Bond,” he snaps.  Bond’s voice is making his head throb and the headache is now completely undeniable.

“If you’re sick, the earlier they know, the better chances we have that either of us might survive.”

“I’m not sick.”

“What’s wrong?”

Q glares at Bond.  “I have a fucking headache.  I get headaches, it’s not abnormal!”

“It could easily be a symptom,” Bond replies, looking worried.

“Of any one of a dozen things.  I haven’t had time to see an optometrist in almost a year and a half, my prescription could have changed.  I could simply be spending too much time looking at my screen.  I could be low on caffeine.  It could be stress.  It’s just a headache.”

“Or it could be the pathogen.  I’m calling the doctor,” Bond says, heading for the control panel to page them.

“Don’t you dare.  I’m fine,” Q snarls, getting to his feet.

It’s too late, though, Bond’s hit the button and Q spends the next hour having to take his temperature, blood pressure, hook himself up to various machines, take blood samples, answer questions and generally he feels more harassed than if the doctors were actually able to come into the room with them.  Finally, though, thanks to Bond’s snarking, they decide that his insomnia may be at least slightly to blame, if it’s not the first symptom of the pathogen.  The best way to test which is which is, they say, to give Q a mild sedative and turn out the lights so he can sleep.

Passing out is the best feeling he’s had in days.

4:03:15

James is a bit surprised by two things.  The first is that his quartermaster is apparently a complete lightweight when it comes to sedatives and is still slipping in and out of sleep, drowsing in between naps.  The second is the sheer volume at which his quartermaster snores.

It’s like living in an echo chamber with a freight train and he’s asked twice for someone to bring the noise cancelling earmuffs from the shooting range, but no one’s bothered to do so yet.  He’s virtually immune to most sedatives himself at this point—the dosage it takes to render him more than lightly drowsy is a bit ridiculous and medical is refusing on the basis that it might stress essential body systems and make him more susceptible to disease.  He wishes this weren’t the case, because he’d like to be sleeping as deeply as Q.  The nurses say that the snoring is a side effect of the sedatives.  James hopes that he never has to be in Q’s presence again whilst Q is on sedatives.

Sleep is now entirely out of the question.  He doesn’t sleep well in the presence of another human being, generally, but when one adds in a man whose nasal passages apparently have acoustics rivalling the Royal Albert Hall, sleep is about as likely as sprouting wings and flying free of the quarantine.

Instead, he’s managed, during one of the brief periods where Q has been semi-awake, to relieve Q of his laptop whilst his cats are onscreen and he’s now been playing with Q’s cats off and on for the past three hours.  The cats seem fickle—this makes sense, cats are terrible pets, after all—and will only play with him for a few minutes at a time before going to mewl piteously at one of the cameras by the food.  He’s fed them four times and the fatter cat seems to be quite pleased with this while the thinner one has lost interest in the feeding apparatus.  He’s frustrated by the cats’ short attention span and spends fifteen minutes at a time trying to get their attention. 

Sometimes he gets it, sometimes he doesn’t.  Either way, it’s better than sitting waiting for Q to stop snoring.  It’s also better than sitting, fantasizing about smothering Q with his own pillows.

5:19:32

Q no longer has much sense of whether or not it’s actually day or night in the rest of the world.  He and Bond are no longer constrained by normal working hours thanks to the quarantine and the sedative has left Q’s internal clock off kilter even as it sorted out his headache.  His headache is gone and he feels rested and well and overall just a little giddy.  So far, he’s not dying.  He’s still alive and apparently the tech isn’t symptomatic either.  There’s hope.

Hope is letting him ignore Bond just a little better as the man runs through various exercises until the thick, spicy musk of his sweat permeates the room.  The sounds are easier to ignore than the smell, but he’s trying.  It’s not Bond’s fault that Medical’s given them entirely inadequate toiletries.  There is no deodorant or shampoo but plenty of cheap body wash.  It’s leaving Q’s hair coarse, lank and matted but, worse still, it’s making spots start to rise on his skin, which is embarrassing.

He knows, of course, that spots aren’t actually a sign of youth, necessarily, at least not in the way Bond likes to imply.  Q has been cursed with the type of skin that doesn’t wrinkle or age much.  His father didn’t look a day over nineteen until well into his thirties and by the age of fifty barely looked thirty five.  Q expects that his appearance will do similarly.  The trouble with having the type of skin that doesn’t wrinkle or show age is that it’s generally oily and sensitive.  Q’s skin does like to come up in spots if he mistreats it and cheap body wash and too many hot, steamy showers—they’re something to do, a change of scenery—is a wonderful combination to irritate his skin terrifically.

It’s annoying.  He isn’t sure if Bond’s noticed yet—Q’s only noticed because he spends far too long trying to get his hair not to look like it does, which translates to far too much time staring at himself in the mirror—but he knows that, when Bond does, it’s going to be a problem.  He has enough trouble getting respect from the double-ohs and the other field agents without spending the next nine days looking like a spotty adolescent.

He needs a distraction, something to keep Bond from prodding Q’s sensitive spots out of a sense of fun.  The trouble is, he can’t think how to distract Bond.  He’s fairly sure Bond is slowly going mad from the lack of stimulation of his preferred types.  The workout today has gone on too long.  If Q thought that Bond was stalking around like a predator before, they’ve gone from slightly feral dog with a cornered rabbit to injured, hungry shark.  It seems as though Bond might drown if he stops moving and Q isn’t sure what to do about this.

He sets aside his various projects and starts carding through ideas, trying to find the way to soothe the savage government assassin.

6:11:58

James’ temper is still a frayed mess and now he’s scared on top of it.  He’s not going to admit to being afraid, of course, he’s not the type of man who does that and besides, it wouldn’t do to frighten the quartermaster, but he’s seen an awful lot of activity in the hallway since Q went down for a nap and he thinks the tech might be ill.  It could still be nothing—they’ve been in quarantine six days and James is pretty sure the common cold has a longer incubation period than that, after all—or it could be the pathogen.  He doesn’t think the odds are in their favour.

The idea of dying in a hospital room, of sitting around waiting for death to come, is making James’ skin crawl with increasing intensity the more activity he sees through the window.  He doesn’t know the tech’s name, but he wishes that he did so he could curse it for all the good it would do. 

A stupid dropped phial from an overexcited Q-branch minion and now James was going to die, slowly and painfully, without anything to fight.  He can’t stop pacing and moving as he waits to see what’s going to come next.  Will they try to keep it secret from Q and James or will they just come give them the hand-wringing bad news?

James isn’t sure which option he prefers.  He’s still debating it, pacing back and forth in front of the window, when one of the nurses stops in front of him. 

“Are your vaccinations up to date?” she asks through the intercom.

It’s not what he expects and he gives her an unimpressed look.  “Shouldn’t you have that on record?”

“We would if your record were in any way accurate,” she responds brusquely.  “As it stands, you’ve avoided us and lied to us and caused so many problems that we’ve given up hoping your records are actually useful.”

He frowns.  “That’s hardly my problem.”

“It becomes your problem when we need to know when you were last vaccinated for pertussis.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems that Mr. Jones’ incident with the phial hasn’t been his only PPE violation, unless he was exposed elsewhere.  We’re awaiting test results, but it seems that everyone in Q-Branch may have been exposed.”

“I keep my vaccines up to date.”

“Good.  Wake the quartermaster, please, we need to discuss this with him.”

“He’s just fallen asleep.”

“Wake him, Mr. Bond.”

James doesn’t like this, but he pads over to Q’s bed and shakes his shoulder roughly.  “Wake up.”  Q blinks up at him owlishly, his eyes not tracking well.  James is fairly sure that Q can’t see much of anything without his glasses, so he grabs them from Q’s bedside table and thrusts them towards Q’s face.  “Your tech has fallen ill.”

Q’s whole face collapses and he snatches his glasses out of James’ hand, scrambling to his feet.  “That’s it, then, we’ve been exposed?”

“Not to the weapon, not for sure.  He’s got whooping cough.”

Q stares at him for a moment, then strides over to the window where the nurse is waiting, irritation evident in his every movement.  He demands answers.

James finally sees exactly how it is that this tiny slip of a man can command the respect he does of his people.  It’s oddly attractive.  James needs out of quarantine.  He can’t remember the last time he was both idle and had been this long without sex, but if he’s seeing Q as attractive, then he’s clearly hard up.

7:21:47

Q is a bit worried and it’s keeping him awake.  He’s pretending it’s not, he’s pretending to sleep, because he’s been working hard all day to get Q-Branch sorted and everyone’s vaccines updated and all the other things that come with a potential pertussis outbreak.  They can’t track the source—it may have been a PPE issue, but also may not have been—and that means they have to assume that virtually all of MI6 may have been exposed.  Q is irritated by this and also worried he’ll end up with whooping cough.  He’s been cautioned since childhood about keeping up with his immunizations—he was born very prematurely and spent weeks on a ventilator and has had mild asthma his whole life—and he’s done so, but immunizations don’t guarantee immunity and he’s now worried he’ll end up surviving the weaponized pathogens only to die of a disease that shouldn’t even exist anymore if idiots would keep the vaccination rates up. 

So he lies there wondering if it would feel like a prolonged asthma attack, curled up on his side in the darkness, his breathing carefully even and his eyes closed so that Bond will, hopefully, respect that he’s asleep and leave him alone.  It’s been a long time since he had an asthma attack, but he’ll never forget the panic that seized his chest every time, that made him think he was dying, choking.  He really hopes that he hasn’t been properly exposed.  The odds are in his favour since the disease is hardly contagious until the first sniffles start, but since he’s stuck in quarantine due to one of the most spectacularly stupid PPE failures he’s ever encountered, he doesn’t think his luck is terribly good.

He’s considering whether he thinks that one can spend all of one’s bad luck in a single bout of terrible luck, then have nothing but good luck for awhile, when he hears something from Bond’s side of the room.  It’s something he’s heard before and he’s suddenly furious, because this isn’t a mission and Bond has no right to make Q listen to him get off.  It’s not a matter of global security for Q to be listening while Bond sighs softly to himself and Q doesn’t have enough patience left in his frayed nerves for this shit.

Q sits up.  “The lavatory is over there.”

He can’t see Bond, not without his glasses, but the sound stops abruptly and there’s a moment of silence, then a brief rustling sound and the shape that is Bond’s bed changes in a way that suggests that Bond has either sat up or propped himself up on his elbows in some way.

“Your point?” comes the question.

“I spend enough of my life listening to you get your end away that I am not going to spend my night listening to you masturbate,” Q snaps, because he’s sick of Bond’s shit.  Bond is an entitled bastard and Q is out of fucks.

“It helps me sleep.”

“I ask myself, ‘do I care?’  The answer, 007, is an unequivocal ‘no, not in the slightest.’  When we get out of quarantine, you’re welcome to scrawl out your name in ejaculate on Mallory’s desk for all I care, but while we share this space, you will keep it to yourself!”

“I wasn’t sharing.  I thought you were asleep.”

“And you think that it’s appropriate to rub one out while I sleep?”

“It hasn’t bothered you yet.”

Q shoots out of bed furiously, stalking over towards Bond.  “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard and you are an appalling excuse for a human being.  I should have let them put me in the other isolation room with Jones because a rotting corpse would be better company than you are.”

“You wouldn’t actually have killed him.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Q mutters.  “If you think that I am not capable of homicide, then you should really keep in mind that much of my technology can operate by remote when needed and that I design customized ends for people who need special attention from a double oh.  Now take your hands out of your pants and go wash them before I set off the sprinklers in this room and leave them on until we both—“ His spectacular rant of wrath is embarrassingly interrupted by him tripping over a chair and landing on his shoulder awkwardly.

He really should have put his glasses on before he’d left his bed and he regrets this failure immensely when Bond begins laughing.  He forces himself to his feet and makes his way to the landline phone next to the intercom, shuffling over to avoid tripping while he clutches his injured shoulder.  He dials by touch and holds it to his ear, pointedly ignoring Bond’s laughter.

It’s a breath of fresh air when the line connects, for all it’s nearly midnight.

“Eve, if you do not obtain a significant amount of alcohol and get it into my room by whatever means necessary within the next two hours, I am going to end the world with nothing more than my laptop, are we clear?” he snaps as soon as she picks up.

“Is everything all right?” she asks, sounding like she’s somewhere between amused and concerned.

“If you mean ‘are you and Bond coming down with a horrifying deadly illness’ the answer is ‘no, not so far’ but if you mean ‘is Q serious about ending the world?’ then the answer is yes and don’t think that I won’t because I am done with this.  I am done with Bond, I am done with everything and I can hack the nuclear launch codes for every country other than North Korea that has nuclear weapons capabilities, so don’t think I won’t take you all down with me in a flaming, horrible death.”

“It can’t be that bad,” she says, her tone turning pacifying.

“Give me alcohol or I put the world out of its misery,” he responds without a hint of a joke in his tone.

8:04:22

James is very, very, very drunk.  It feels good, like coming home and he thinks maybe it should worry him that being drunk feels more like home than his flat does.  It doesn’t, though, it can’t.  He knows what his file says, he’s read the reports Silva had.  He knows he’s got a problem with alcohol (not with painkillers, though, he needs those and the morons down in Psych just don’t understand that) but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t get in the way of the job and the job is really the only thing that matters, the only thing that can matter.

Everything else is just a distraction from the ice slowly settling into his veins and the sinking feeling that he knows how Silva really came to be. 

He hates it when liquor makes him morose.  He needs something to pull him out of it before he ends up depressed.

The only thing that catches his attention as he looks around the room is Q, who is sitting miserably at the head of his bed, clutching a bottle of cheap vodka and glaring at the universe.  He thinks maybe Q could use a distraction, too.  James sits up just a little straighter.  He’s a very practiced drunk and he controls his movements well, maintains coordination much longer than most people.

“Tell me something about yourself,” he demands, his words not slurred in the slightest.

The look Q shoots him is disbelieving.  “You realize that practically everything about me is classified.  And far above your clearance.”

James smiles at him, the smile he keeps for making people think he’s charming in bars and clubs and casinos (he hates casinos).  “I didn’t say you had to tell me anything that could compromise your security.  I already know you have cats, you aren’t entirely hidden.  Tell me something like that.”

Q takes an angry swig of the vodka and makes the most terrifically disgusted face.  He’s gone a bit spotty and James wonders how old he actually is.  He can’t be over twenty five, James thinks, and the cheap vodka makes him look like a petulant student.

“It seems you already know more about me than I do about you.  Perhaps you should be the one telling me something,” Q says, practically cuddling his vodka.

“My files aren’t redacted like yours.  You know everything you want about me.”

“I know what your files say.  I don’t know you, though.  Your files are missing big chunks and made up of observations by people who aren’t smart enough to engineer a decent bow in their shoelaces.  I highly doubt they actually know you and all I know about you is what they say and how you sound when you’re having sex.”

James has the idea that maybe he should apologize for that, but he’s never been one for apologies.  “You could cut the transmissions when I begin the seductions, you know.  And I had no idea you were still awake, earlier.”

If looks had powers attached to them, Q’s glare would freeze James in a solid block of ice.  It makes James actually feel a little cold but then he always feels a little cold, has since the lake and the fire and his hands covered in the blood of the only woman he could honestly say had ever loved him as much as he’d loved her.  James finds himself swallowing hard against the bile that rises in his throat at the idea of the cold and the blood and he misses Q’s response.  Part of him wonders if Psych is right and permanent retirement is the right option, but then he’s fine in the field.  It’s only when they ask him to settle that he runs into trouble with the memories slowly exploding through his skull like bloodied fireworks.

He must miss more than one response, because Q’s leaned forward some and he’s peering at James worriedly.  “Are you really that drunk?” is the petulant question when he bothers to listen enough to actually hear it.

“I’m fine,” he replies.  “And I suppose I could go first.  I’ve never been buried alive in the literal sense, only the figurative and of all the things that would happen to me, I would think it would have by now.”

Q groans.  “No, no, if we’re going to do this, we’re not doing this this way.  I am not a twelve year old girl who’s stolen my mother’s cooking wine.  We’re not playing ‘Never Have I Ever.’  We’ll do this properly.  We each get a question because I’m not doing this this way.  I am not nearly drunk enough and, as I intend to remain drunk for some time, I refuse to be drunk enough so early.”

“Never Have I Ever?” James asks, confused.

“It’s an idiotic game and your little confession took the format of the game and I refuse to play.  Questions, like adults, or I’ll drown us both with the sprinklers and put me out of my misery.”

James shrugs.  “Sure.”  He takes a long swig of the scotch that Moneypenny had brought him, savouring it.  He considers possible questions, trying to think of ones that won’t make Q defensive about his identity.  “What was the first car you ever drove?” he settles on.

“Hard question,” Q replies, considering it.  “Define drive and I might have an answer.”

“What do you mean, ‘define drive?’” James asks.  “I don’t mean sitting in someone’s lap pretending to steer if that’s what you mean.  I mean properly driving.  I mean getting behind the wheel and being in control of the car getting from one location to another.”

“Ah, in that case, I still haven’t driven a car.”

James finds himself staring for several long moments and he slowly asks “But how can you build me cars if you don’t drive?”

“I sit in the passenger seat and measure the precise vibrations of the car.  I run the car in the garage with full vents on or I put it up on a jack lift and I hit the gas.  Qualifying for a driver’s license would be fairly difficult for me, at best.”  Q looks more smug than upset by this.

“Why don’t you drive?” James asks.

“Three questions in a row?  No, it’s my turn.  What’s your favourite city?”

“London,” James replies easily.  “Heart of the country I love best, like living in a lover’s soul.”

Q actually looks impressed.  “That’s oddly poetic.”

“Didn’t think an old murderer had it in him?” James teases, having a bit more whiskey.

Q shakes his head.

“All right, then.  Why don’t you drive?”

Q shrugs.  “Limited depth perception.  I can see out of one eye or the other and I can switch back and forth very naturally.  I can’t imagine seeing out of both at once, but the end result is that I have virtually no depth perception.  Those 3D movies are lost on me, sadly,” he says, with a  little smile.  “It never seemed smart to get a license, especially in a city like London, with so many things to crash into.  Besides, the tube gets me around just fine, probably faster than the surface routes and much safer.”

“I could teach you,” James says, impulsively, because it seems wrong that Q builds all these glorious cars and never gets to drive them. 

Q’s smile grows and he rests his chin on his knees.  “I don’t think so.  I know how to, in theory, should an emergent need ever arise, but it’s not as if I need to know how.  It’s London, the traffic is appalling.”

“Theoretical knowledge isn’t the same as practical knowledge,” James says.

Q laughs, a little bitterly.  “Yes, because practical knowledge keeps you from crashing multi-million pound cars.”

“Practical knowledge could keep you alive someday, you know.”

Q shrugs.  “Honestly, I’m far more likely to kill myself driving than save myself.  I have hardly any peripheral vision anyway.”

It’s possibly the longest conversation they’ve had without insulting each other, James realizes suddenly.  He finds he likes it.  “And it doesn’t bother you?”

Q honestly doesn’t look bothered by anything but the taste of the vodka as he takes a sip.  “I am a very, capable, very competent man,” he starts, confidently.  “I could make governments topple from my laptop.  Why would I be bothered by a handful of facts that have been true since I was born?”

“Because you can’t drive…  Anyone can sneak up on you.  Aren’t you afraid?”  James would be terrified if his vision were permanently impaired.  It sounds like hell.

“No,” Q responds.  “Are you afraid of computers?”

James scoffs.  “Of course not.  They’re just machines.”

“Machines love me.  If you think anyone can sneak up on me in my home or in Q-Branch, save for when I am absorbed in work, then you haven’t paid much mind to my capabilities.”

James likes the arrogance that underlies those words, enjoys immensely the way Q’s lips curve into a smirk.  “Why do you love them?” he asks.

“Computers?”

James nods.

Q contemplates it.  “I suppose it’s rather like loving anything.  Emotions aren’t rational, just invoked by certain things.  I like speed, challenge, logic, language and puzzles.  Computers combine many of my favourite things and I have a remarkable talent for them.  I can build and destroy dynasties with little more than the power of my imagination.  Why do you like killing?”

James pauses at that.  “Who said that I liked it?”

“Oh, we all know your first love is the Queen.  She’s a bit old for you, but then who’s judging age?  There’s more than one way to love her, more than one way to love your country and yet you consistently choose the ones that require you to kill.  Some would say this was an indicator of antisocial tendencies and your psych profiles do lean in that direction.  That being said, your answer to the question of why you like killing is far more relevant when it comes to an evaluation of your stability than any of those tests, in my opinion.”

James doesn’t have an answer.  He needs more time to think, so he does what he does best and he stalls.  “You think that your evaluation skills are better than the best psychiatric professionals that MI6 can find?”

“Of course.  They don’t see you in the field.  You know they’ve never once asked for surveillance video of you working?”  This obviously bothers Q and James can’t figure out why.

“Very few can stomach what I do.”

“Then they shouldn’t be at all involved in the decisions to order you to do it,” Q says.  “I don’t have the stomach to pull the trigger myself, but I will be damned if I don’t know precisely what I am sending you to do.”  His diction is oddly precise and James thinks Q might be drunker than he’s letting on.

“Psych doesn’t make those calls.”

“You can’t evaluate a weapon you can’t detect.  If they can’t see you, hear you or feel you doing what you do, then they can’t evaluate you.”

“I’m just another weapon to you?” James asks, trying to sound amused but he thinks it falls flat.  It feels flat.

“I build weapons.  When you have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail, et cetera.  You’re a very human weapon, if that helps, one to be used against humans, for humans.  We couldn’t use a machine to do some of the things you do and we shouldn’t.”

James thinks that’s the closest Q will ever come to calling him irreplaceable and, while things still feel flat, something loosens in his chest.  “Damn right you couldn’t.”

“Machines love me.  They bend to my will, but they haven’t any emotions of their own.  You do.  So tell me why you like killing?”

James closes his eyes and thinks.  Q isn’t going to let go of it, not going to stop until he gets his answer.  James should never have started this game.  It’s dangerous.  He lets himself slide backwards in his head, sinking slowly through layer after layer of memory and the tacky feeling of blood on his hands.  When it threatens to overwhelm him, to suck him into a place with no air (the place that Vesper lives her last, over and over again, the place that M’s life drips slowly across the floor in an unending lake that drags Vesper away), he takes a swig of the whiskey, the burn sliding down his throat grounding him and letting him breathe again.

He isn’t sure how long he sits like that—only he is and the answer is not long enough—before he hears Q.  “Bond, are you asleep?”

He opens his eyes slowly, the room wavering with too much drink.  “No.”

“Don’t drink yourself to death, it would upset the staff.  They’re hoping you’ll dry out while you’re in here and they’re going to be angry enough that I’ve ruined that.”

“Are you still waiting for an answer?” James asks, because now that he’s sat letting it all wash over him like this, he feels poisoned. He’s fairly certain he needs it out before he’ll be able to move on.

“Of course,” Q says.

James is quiet a few moments longer, trying to collect everything that seems to have slid over his skin.  “I outlive everyone and everything,” he says, his voice slurred in a way drink hasn’t made it in a very long time.  “I like killing because it’s the only time that outlasting is on my own terms.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything Q can say to that, because he falls into silence.  James falls slowly into the bottle, emotions lapping at him like waves and dragging him under.  He passes out at some point.

9:12:15

Bond has been so silent for the past twenty four hours that Q wants to scream at him.  What does one even say to the revelation that the only reason Britain’s best spy and assassin keeps doing his job is the same reason he’ll likely kill himself one day?  Because that’s the rub of it and no amount of alcohol—Q is still drunk in that unpleasant way that comes about when one drinks too much for too long and wakes up before the hangover sets in—will erase the certainty.  Bond is a hairsbreadth from suicidal and Q doesn’t know how to change it, but he feels responsible for it.

It’s something of a problem, the way he feels responsible for virtually everyone under his command or even briefly under his purview.  He’d watched so much loss under his predecessor and he’d been determined not to watch agents die and it catches up to him.  There are too many missions, too many variables and he can’t save them all.  They know what they’ve signed on for.  Q wishes he’d understood better—he might not have taken the job—but then, battlefield promotions and all.

He’s much better at people than he once was, but it feels like a great chasm has opened up in their hospital room.  He doesn’t know how to bridge it.  He doesn’t know when things went from where he wanted nothing more than to escape Bond to where he wants nothing more than to communicate with him, but there it is.  Somewhere, something’s gone wrong and he needs Bond to talk to him or he thinks he’ll go mental.

“Are you ever going to take your turn and ask me another question or are you going to end the game?” he asks Bond after turning the words over in his head for hours, rehearsing them like they’re Shakespeare.

Bond has stopped drinking for the time being and he’s taken four showers in the past twelve hours.  He seems startled by Q addressing him or at least he looks like he hadn’t expected it.  “We only have five days left of this, we could easily spend it ignoring each other.”

Q was afraid of this.  “I can’t.  I’m sorry , but I can’t.  I should have said something after what you said but I didn’t know what.  It wasn’t what I’d thought you’d say.”

“Isn’t that the point of asking a question?  Not knowing the answer?” Bond sneers.

“I’m not used to that happening,” Q admits.  “I know everything or near enough that I can usually anticipate the direction an answer will take.  I was too inebriated to think through what I was asking of you.”

“You’re still drunk.”

“Somewhat, but not nearly as much as before.  I thought it prudent to avoid the hangover.”

“You’re a complete lightweight if you’re worried about a hangover after drinking that little.”

“I weigh 140 lbs, Bond, you’ve slept with women half a head shorter than me that outweighed me by ten pounds.  Of course I can’t hold my drink as well as you.”  Q is a little defensive, he can’t help it.  He’s sick to death of people sneering at him.

“You look even smaller in scrubs,” Bond says.

“Doubtlessly.  They don’t fit terribly well.”

“They itch,” Bond says flatly.  “They choose the worst fabrics.  It’s like they want us to be uncomfortable.” 

Q chooses to take this as an olive branch, this change of topics.  “I think it’s just that the fabric is easy to launder.”

“Engineer something better and I might let Medical do a full workup when I come back from the field.”

Q’s fairly sure that this is Bond slamming up walls to charm him and he doesn’t want that.  He wanted the olive branch.  He wishes people were as easy to work as machines.  “I’ll see if I can squeeze it into the budget.  Or at least convince them to invest in fabric softener.  These aren’t so bad, but it could be better.”

“How can you think these aren’t so bad?” Bond asks.

Q shrugs.  “I’ve worn a few hospital gowns in my time.  These cover my bum, seems better than some of the alternatives.”

Bond looks interested.  “Lab accidents?”

Q wishes it was something that made him sound that good in the face of a double-oh agent.  “I was born at 23 weeks’ gestation.”

“And?”

“Lung problems, vision problems, necrotizing enterocolitis.  I wasn’t expected to live, at first, and when I did, I had a few lingering problems.”  Q says it confidently.  They’re just facts, after all.  He still worries about judgement.

“So you’re medically fragile?” 

Q rolls his eyes.  “Only if I get whooping cough.  I’m fine, now.  The only lingering effects are that I’m a little thinner than average, have a couple of extra scars and absolutely no body shyness.”

“I haven’t seen any scars.”

“They’re pretty faded.  Hard to see unless you know what you’re looking for.  I’m not surprised you missed them.”  Q’s more surprised by the idea that Bond’s been looking at him enough to immediately catalogue his body without looking it over.

Bond pulls off his shirt. “Mine show up pretty heavily.”

“You spend a great deal more time in the sun than I do without your shirt.”

Bond points at a long thin scar down the side of his abdomen.  “Slashed with a knife by a 12 year old girl working for a drug lord in Thailand.”  He looks at Q expectantly.

Q stares at him.  This cannot be happening.  He is not going to get into a scar competition with a man who kills for a living. 

Bond is still looking at him expectantly.

Apparently, Q is doing this.  He pulls his shirt off over his head, but then pulls his glasses off and points at his right eye.  “Can’t see it unless you get very close, but there’s a little blue tinge there.  Scarring from when they partially repaired my vision when I was eight.”

“Partially repaired?”

“Strabismus…  I used to be severely cross-eyed.  It’s why I see out of one eye or the other, not both at the same time.  They performed a surgery that made that slightly better and made me look normal.  The surgery didn’t improve my other vision problems and I don’t have a scar from the vitrectomy they did when I was a baby.  It preserved my vision overall, but reduced my peripheral vision.”

Bond looks a little grossed out and he points at a small, puckered scar near his armpit.  “Cigarette burn, during torture in Myanmar.”

Q points at a small mark on his rib cage almost on his back, turning to show it off.  “Chest tube.  Pneumonia when I was three led to pleural effusion.”

Bond points at a scar lower on his abdomen.  “Appendectomy when I was 12.”

Q nods.  He points at one just above and to the left of his belly button.  “Feeding tube until I was six.”

Bond frowns.  “What for?”

“It’s your turn.”

Bond irritably points at the gnarled scar tissue on his shoulder.  “Moneypenny.”

Q runs his finger along a faint scar running across his stomach.  “Removal of four inches of my small intestine when I was six weeks old.  Led to mild malabsorption syndrome so I was tube fed at night until I could eat enough food to sustain myself.  I have greater caloric needs than most people, even now.”

“So you are still medically fragile?”  Bond’s eyes haven’t left the scar.

“As I said, no, I’m not.”  Q is a little irritated with Bond, now.  “I healed.  I grew.  I got stronger.  Would I pass the field tests to join the double-oh program?  No, but we both know that you’ve failed them as often as you’ve passed.”

Bond looks, for lack of a better term, really bitchy about that.  “So what?”

“We all have scars, Bond.  Every one of us.  If you want to compare them, I can keep up for awhile.  I’ve got a really nice one on my bum from the time I climbed a hospital crib and fell on the foot of an IV stand, if you want.”  He puts his hands on his scrub pants, ready to drop them. 

Bond shrugs and Q gives into the childish urge to moon him.  Bond looks on interestedly and Q pulls his pants back up.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the source of the scars makes a person weak.”

“I don’t.”

“You think I’m too much a nerd, a man of inaction to understand you.”

“Aren’t you?”

“You aren’t the only person in this room with blood on his hands, Bond.”

“Pushing a button isn’t the same as pulling a trigger.”

“I didn’t spring fully formed from a computer screen.  MI6 doesn’t hire the well-adjusted and harmless.”

Q takes some satisfaction from the fact that Bond looks a little chastised.  He feels less satisfied when Bond’s next words are “All right then, I know my next question.”

“Yes?”

“What did you do to get recruited by MI6?”

Q wants to tell him.  It would actually be nice to talk about it for once, but he can’t.  He’s lost a lot and he can’t talk about any of it.  He grimaces.  “You’ve asked something I can’t answer.  The most I can say is that they took me because there’s no precedent for the crimes I may or may not have committed, so it was the only real option.”

“I get another question, then,” Bond says, seeming to accept that answer.

“Seems fair.”  Q digs his vodka out of the drawer in the bedside table.

“What’s it like to lose your name?”

Q feels a little like someone’s punched him in the gut, the wind goes out of him so fast.  It’s a hard question, a painful one and it’s exactly the kind of one that might actually be turnabout for asking Bond about the killing.  He takes a swig of the vodka and rubs his face.  “It’s a two part answer,” he says slowly.

“How so?”

“Well, the easy part is that, most days, I love being called Q because I earned it.  I earned this name on my merits.  I wasn’t promised being a branch head just for getting recruited.”

“But that’s not what I asked.”

Q sighs.  “No, it’s not, but it’s the easy answer, the one I remind myself of.”

“So give me the hard one.”

Q sucks in a long breath.  “Losing my name wasn’t about losing my name.  It was about losing my whole life.  Every single thing I owned, every single person I knew, I had to walk away from all of it.  Legally, I’m dead.  My parents went to my funeral.  I’ve gone and seen the flowers they leave on my grave every week.  I had to give up the cat I had—she lives with them.”

“What does that feel like?”  Bond isn’t pulling punches and his stare is intense.

“I couldn’t tell you.  So far, no one’s ever used the right vocabulary in my presence to let me express to you what it’s like to lose everything.  It breaks my heart,” he says, a little roughly, “to know that the parents who sat with me and fought to keep me alive before I could even talk are mourning me and watching over an empty grave.  I love them and I always will, but the only way to keep them safe is to lose them forever.  I’ve no past nor any future except here and the only thing being here brings is bloodshed.”

“Dramatic,” Bond says.

“True,” Q says, exhausted suddenly and clenching one fist to avoid crying.  It’s not working well, so he stands abruptly and sets the vodka down on the bedside table.  He makes a fast exit to the bathroom.

10:00:17

Peace has settled over the quarantine room and James doesn’t feel like he’s drowning anymore.  Oh, he’s probably drowning his liver, but there’s a sense of calm.  He’s not morose like he was and Moneypenny’s agreed to keep them in liquor for the remaining days of the quarantine.  They’re far enough in that the next four days are just a formality and no one really thinks they’re going to die anymore.  The chance is there, but it’s dropped down to approximately ten percent.  James feels a little like he should be celebrating.

None of his favourite ways to celebrate are available, though, other than the liquor, so he’s drinking and wishing he could at least have a wank.  He can’t, not a proper one, because Q would probably have vapours, but he wants it.  He wants something he hasn’t had a dozen times in the last few days.

“I’m bored,” he tells Q.

Q nods.  “Me too.”

“How are your cats?”

Q taps something on a tablet—his collection of electronics has grown as the time’s drawn on—and sighs.  “Sleeping.  They’re worn out.”

“Could Moneypenny get us some curry?”

Another tap or two.  “No, she’s busy at a meeting.”

“You could set off an alarm?”

“Not if I want my budget.  She’s speaking on my behalf, arguing that the suspension of the double-oh programme set my branch back and we need additional funding.” 

James wants something, anything to happen.  “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know.  I’m caught up on every piece of paperwork I’ve been behind on and I’ve green-lighted ten projects.”

“Are you telling me you’re out of work?”  James is surprised.  He didn’t think that would ever happen.  Q always seems to have work to do.

“In terms of things I can do from here, yes.  I’d need access to my development labs to do anything more.”

James takes a long swig of his scotch.  “There must be something to do.”

“There isn’t.”

“I want a gun.”

“Can’t shoot in quarantine.  You’d break the seals.”

“You could build me one that wouldn’t.”  James would give anything for the heft of a Walther in his hand and a mission, but he has to wait another four days.

Q sighs and stands up, going over to the sink.  “It would be utterly pointless as a weapon, then.”  He pulls off his glasses and starts washing them with soap and hot water, his movements reminding James of nothing more than a particularly myopic racoon. 

“Might do some damage.”

“Not with the way these rooms are constructed.  You could punch your way out with your bare hands.”

“Seems like a security issue.”

“If we were worried about security, we’d restrain the person who needed it.  You aren’t a security risk.”

James laughs.  “There are those who would disagree with you pretty strongly.”

“They haven’t spent ten days in a quarantine room with you, obviously.”  Q smiles at him, picking absently at a spot under his ear.

James smiles back.  “Most people wouldn’t have survived past day four.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No, you aren’t,” James says and it surprises him a little because he believes it. 

11:16:20

Q feels like celebrating.  He’s absolutely thrilled.  He’s gotten the funding and he can’t help the smile that seems like it might break his face.

Bond looks at him as he comes back into the room from the shower.  “What?”

“You’re getting a bloody exploding pen, that’s what.”  Q wants to dance with joy, but he’s a terrible dancer and he just knows that Bond will mock him.

“I thought you didn’t go in for those anymore.”

“They’ve trebled my budget!  Moneypenny is a goddess and I am taking her out to dinner and I will make sure she gets a full two days where no one can contact her to spend with her boyfriend.  No phonecalls from anyone, just a vacation.”  Q may be dancing just a little bit.  Only a tiny, tiny bit.  It’s barely a wiggle.

Bond clearly sees it and Q braces himself to be teased.  He can see the way Bond’s eyes crinkle a little and his mouth pulls up at the corners.  “Congratulations, Quartermaster,” he says.  “Are you sure you don’t want to steal her for your very own?”

Q bursts out laughing, because that’s hilarious.  “Hardly!”

Bond’s eyebrows shoot up.  “What’s so funny?”

Q starts laughing so hard he can’t talk, giddy with relief and joy.  He’s been terrified of further budget cuts.  He had been sure he’d have to start letting people go and under-equip field agents and now he doesn’t have to do either of those things.  Not only that, Bond thinks he wants Moneypenny and it’s all hilarious. 

Bond looks worried when Q glances at him and Q makes himself take a deep breath, enough to be able to speak to Bond at least briefly.  “I’m gay!” he manages, then starts cackling again, a little bit hysterical with relief.  He’s punch drunk, he realizes, and the last time he felt like this was right after he got back from Austria, when he’d realized he’d lived and hadn’t even been wounded and MI6 wasn’t really going to be destroyed by Denbigh.

“You are?” Bond asks, curiously.

Q nods through his hysteria and tries to make himself take deep breaths.  Of all the things for Bond to focus on, of course he’d pick Q’s sexuality.  Q isn’t sure how many same sex encounters Bond’s had, nor does he know the power differential in those and he worries a little that this might turn sour.  Q is fairly sure that Silva was gay or at least bisexual and Silva had definitely used sex in his time as a double-oh just as much as Bond does.  He stumbles over to the sink to splash some water on his face and turns back to Bond, dripping with his glasses a little spattered.  It takes a few more deep breaths to get him steady, but he manages.  “Is that a problem?”

“I’m not that much of a relic,” Bond says, watching him.

Q doesn’t like the wariness he thinks he sees there.  “I didn’t say you were.”

“Then why would it be a problem?”

Q shrugs, his mood shattered.  “There are a lot of people in the world with reasons to fear me.  I may not think they’re good reasons, but they exist and I try not to add to that.”

“I’m not exactly afraid of much.”  Bond’s getting defensive.

“Sorry, I didn’t say that right.  I’m really not used to coming out to work colleagues.  I haven’t any practice at all.”  He runs a hand through his hair, a self-soothing motion.  There’s some relief in the way it tugs slightly, sharp pinpricks as his fingers tear through tangles.

“Why not?  Are you ashamed?” Bond asks as he approaches.  He’s getting closer, not moving away and Q can’t decide if this is a good thing or a threat display.

“No.  It’s simply not relevant in the workplace.”

“It’s not?”  It’s definitely a threat display.  Bond’s getting into his space and Q takes a step back.

“No, it’s not,” Q says firmly.  “Given the position I hold, it would be unseemly for me to have a workplace relationship and the only people who need know about my sexuality are those who I may sleep with.”  Q’s gone from worried to afraid.  He’s trapped in a room with a man who may or may not want to kill him for his sexuality and he’s too frightened to hold his ground.  He takes another step back.

Bond leans in.  “You don’t think it’s relevant information for those under your command?  For those who you listen to in the bedroom?”

Q cringes.  “It’s my job to stay with you for certain parts of your missions.”

“And I would have done things differently at those points if I’d known about this.”

“Like what?  Destroyed your earpiece more regularly?”  He’s going for harsh and sarcastic but it comes out weaker and more thready than he wants.

“Like avoided some of the seductions.”

“I don’t listen to you for sexual pleasure, Bond.  I wouldn’t.”

“How could you when I’m with women?”

“I don’t.”

“So you shouldn’t have to listen to that.  It’s sick.”

Q freezes, because this isn’t where he thought things were going.  “Excuse me?”

“You shouldn’t have to listen to me shag women when they disgust you.”

Q stares a moment.  “I never said I was disgusted by women.  I’m just not attracted to them.”

“I thought all gay men hated the idea of women in bed?”

Q bites his lip so as not to laugh.  “No, no, we don’t.  I’ve actually slept with a woman.  It wasn’t… I didn’t enjoy it all that much, but it wasn’t terrible.”

“Why would you do that if you’re gay?”

“Well I didn’t know I was gay at the time.  No, that’s not quite true.  I wasn’t sure I was gay at the time.  I thought it was best that I try sex with a woman to make sure I didn’t like it.  I didn’t hate it, but none of the things I really wanted to be there were, so I haven’t repeated the experiment.”  He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Bond doesn’t understand and he tries to be patient.

“But if you’ve had sex with both, that means you’re not gay.”

“If I were attracted to both, that would mean I wasn’t gay.  That would mean I was bisexual,” Q says patiently, proud of himself for keeping the insufferable know it all out of his tone.  “But I’m not attracted to both.  I’m attracted to men.  I’ve had sex with both.”

“So it was like a job for you?”

“No, I’ve never been a pro—“ Q cuts himself off as he catches on to what Bond means.  “I’ve never been ordered to have sex with anyone and I’ve never had to do it for work related reasons.  Save the one time that I picked up a woman in a pub to see if I would enjoy it, I’ve never had sex that wasn’t for pleasure.  Sex with men is better, as men’s bodies are the object of my sexual desire.  Women’s bodies aren’t.”

“Did you find it difficult to have sex with a woman?”

Q can’t believe he’s having this conversation, but he supposes if he hadn’t wanted to, he should have just accepted Bond’s teasing about Moneypenny.  “Not particularly.  I was about nineteen and probably would have had sex with a hole in the wall if splinters weren’t a risk.”  He hesitates a split second, then asks “Do you ever find it difficult on missions?” in as matter of a fact tone as he can manage.

Bond shrugs.  “It depends on the mission.  Sometimes I’m far too tired to enjoy it, or I’ve had a few drinks too many in the name of my cover.”

Q nods.  “Makes sense.  I barely have energy for a wank these days, let alone pursuing sex.”

“Sex with men is more work anyway,” Bond says, in solidarity.

Q raises an eyebrow.  “It is?”

“Well, yes.  Women self-lubricate.  You have to plan more for sex with men.”

He blinks in confusion, trying to figure that out, then it hits him.  “The end goal of my sexual encounters is very rarely anal penetration.  I much prefer giving or receiving oral sex, to be honest.  Less clean up, less preparation, less work in general.”  He can’t believe he’s having this conversation.

“Men enjoy penetration,” Bond says.

“Well, yes, most do, but that doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all.  How would you go about seducing a male mark?” Q finds himself asking, curiously.

“I haven’t been sent on a mission that would need that for years,” Bond hedges.  “They tend to send younger, slimmer male agents for that.”

“But you have done it?”

Bond nods.  “Yes.”

“Did you find it difficult?”

“I found the preparation annoying.”

“Bond, I don’t mean to pry, but what sort of preparation?”

“They’ve always given me the supplies to clean myself and lubricate well.  It’s been very effective to simply guide the mark’s hand to the evidence of my preparation.  I’ve never had that fail, it was good advice.”  Bond shrugs nonchalantly.

Q is appalled.  Straight men should never be given free reign to teach men how to pick up men.  “Was this part of your training?” he asks, a little furiously.

Bond nods and looks at him curiously in an oddly dispassionate way.

“I’ll be correcting that.  There’s absolutely no need for the seduction of a male mark to include anal penetration.  Straight men shouldn’t have been giving you that instruction.”

“How do you know my trainer was straight?”

“Because that reads like a bloody stereotype,” Q spits.  “There’s so much more to sex with men that it’s completely ridiculous that anyone would have made that so simplistic.”

“Like what?”

“I’m pretty sure I give better head than any woman you’ve ever been with!  And there’s something nice about rubbing off against a man until you both get off.  I’ve had some rather excellent evenings where I never even got my pants off until I went to clean myself up afterwards.  Shoving your dick into someone’s nether regions isn’t the only way to do it.  Spit and a hand will do in a pinch.”

“You seem upset,” Bond says.

“I bloody well am.  I thought MI6 was better than this.  Even if it weren’t idiotic advice, it’s putting agents in danger.  How can you possibly pose as a gay man if everything you’ve learnt about us is fucking stereotypes?”  Q is fuming and he can feel his face heating up.  He’s sure he’s gone all red.

“It works, though.”

“We can do better by the lot of you.”  Q turns on his heel and stomps over to his laptop to draft an angry letter to HR.  This is getting sorted out.

12:01:53

James is still bored and Q is still angry.  James is pretty sure that Q is doing something illegal with electronics to get people to stay up and be yelled at.  James had no idea Q was so passionate about this.  It’s an interesting tidbit of information, one he tucks away and holds tightly. 

He’s still bored, though.  And pretty drunk.  And Q hunching over his laptop and yelling at people—both via text and via a series of very irritated video calls—is getting boring, too.  Also it’s nearly two am and James thinks Q should let people sleep on his rage.

“You know,” he says, in his sexiest tone, “If it’s so very important that all of us be retrained, you could take a ‘one agent at a time’ model and give me some personal training, Quartermaster.”

Q turns to him and Q’s face is priceless.  James nearly laughs, because Q looks a little bit like someone just patted him on the head with a rubber chicken.  He looks like James has said the most absurd thing that he’s ever heard and James appreciates just how flexible his face is.

“Did you just try to use a line on me?” Q asks.

“I don’t use lines,” James says.

“Oh, you use lines.  I’ve heard virtually all of them and that one was particularly appalling.  Do you always make that face when you attempt a seduction?”

“What face?”  James doesn’t make faces.

“You looked like your soul had wandered off and left you behind,” Q responds.

James scowls.  “I did not!”

“You did.  If that was your attempt at a sexy face, it’s a wonder that women think you think they’re at all attractive.”

“I have an amazing track record with women.”  James is a bit insulted and decides to bring things back to the point before they can get too far away from him.  “Anyway, you think I need retraining.  I’m incredibly bored.  You’re bored enough that a perceived failure of my training’s had you mouthing off and keeping people from their beds for hours.  We might as well do something about all of these things.”

Q shakes his head.  “I have a policy of not sleeping with straight men, Bond.  It never ends well.”

“Who said I was straight?”  James tries for a smirk, this time.

“You’ve made it pretty clear that the only advances you’ve made on men have been for missions.”

“You’ve slept with women and you’ve made it pretty clear that you’re not straight.  Or bisexual.”  James shrugs.  “Seems like who I’ve slept with doesn’t matter.  I’m whatever I need to be.”

“That’s not how sexuality works, Bond.”

“I’ve lived long enough I think I know how it works.”  James has seen all sorts of things in clubs and casinos and underground circles.  He’s seen everything from public sex to private beatings to paedophilia.  The last was one of the only missions he’s ever been physically ill over, but he’s seen it.  And killed over it.  He knows what sex looks like, every kind of sex there is.  He’s dealt with every perversion under the sun.

“Really?”  Q raises an eyebrow.  “Then by all means, enlighten me.  What’s your best guess at your Kinsey score?”

“I thought you said Psych’s tests were bullshit for people like me?”  James is confused.  He’s too drunk to keep up with a man who is definitely smarter than he is.

Q laughs, actually laughs, a harsh sound.  “You honestly haven’t the slightest idea of anything relating to sexuality in any meaningful way.”

“Maybe I know this Kingsley thing by another name.”  Wait.  No, it was Kinsey.  But it’s too late.  The word is already out there.

“You don’t, I can tell you don’t.  Have I actually encountered you too drunk to bluff?”

“It’s not bluffing.  It’s recalling a name I’ve never heard before.”

“Exactly.  Kinsey was one of the pioneers of the ideas behind human sexuality being a spectrum rather than a binary.  Me, I’d probably prefer it if it was a binary, I like things being neat and tidy like that, but this is why I’m a programmer and engineer, not a psychological researcher.”

“But binary is two and there are three.  Straight, gay, bisexual.”  James is pretty proud.  Three is maybe a bit of a spectrum, after all.

“It’s slightly more complex than that.”

“Then enlighten me.  It’s hardly my fault I’ve never learned these things.” 

Q makes a harumphing sound and there’s a flurry of typing, then he stomps over and shoves his laptop into James’ face.  “Touch anything but the arrow keys and I will have your head on a platter, but read this.”

James reads.  It’s… interesting.  Enlightening.  Probably Q thinks it’s far more efficient than explaining, but it also leaves him with a lot of questions.  He decides to google rather than ask them and the moment he touches the keys to type in his search terms, a very loud alarm goes off, startling him into reaching for a gun he doesn’t have, because quarantine, and Q snatches his laptop away before it falls off James’ lap.

“I told you not to touch anything!”  Q shuts off the alarm rapidly.

“I just wanted to read some more.  There were things I didn’t understand fully.”

“Because you don’t actually understand sexuality.”

“I understand arousal, that should count for something.”  James is not going to let Q win, not entirely.

“Then tell me, Bond, do you understand your own arousal?  Do men arouse you or is it just the thrill of serving your country?”  Q’s gone mocking and James thinks maybe he’s a little angry.

“I’ve never achieved an erection by lying back and thinking of England, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Q huffs.  “What I’m getting at is that it is entirely possible to have sex with men whilst being unattracted to them.  If you actually read what I pulled up for you, you would have some basic understanding of the fact that action and attraction are separate concepts.  Ponder this.  Consider it.  When you sober up a little and realize that you’re straight and just bored out of your mind, perhaps you’ll have the good graces to feel at least the slightest bit of shame that you’ve just propositioned a coworker and your superior.”

James grins wickedly, humour suffusing his body in a warm trickle.  “Now why on earth would I feel shame over something I’ve done with great success on many occasions?”

“You just exhale impropriety, don’t you?” Q asks.

James shrugs.  “A bit.”

“I don’t sleep with straight men, Bond.  I swore it off and even if I hadn’t, I don’t sleep with coworkers.”

“You’re at MI6 more than anyone else.  When do you have time to date civilians?”

“I have more important things to do than worry about when next I’ll have a decent fuck.”

“I think you’re a little uptight, maybe a decent fuck should be a priority,” Bond quips.

“Just shut up,” Q snaps.  There’s a finality about it, especially when he snatches up his headphones and jams them on over his ears.

James is bored again within minutes.

12:07:49

Q wakes up with a start.  He’s not sure when he fell asleep, but it can’t have been long.  Bond’s been asleep for hours, finally drank enough to pass out a couple hours after propositioning Q and driving Q to hide under his headphones.  It takes him a moment to take stock of his surroundings.  He’s fallen asleep with his glasses on, again, and the imprint of his eyelids against his lenses makes everything a little hazy.  He can’t see anything that might have woken him, so he pulls them off and wipes them on his shirt, squinting into the darkness. 

There’s nothing, for several long beats.  He jams his glasses back on just as a soft sound comes from Bond’s bed.  For a moment, fury rises and he understands the phrase ‘seeing red.’  He’s sure that Bond is masturbating again and he’s ready to start shouting because it’s not fair to be trapped with that, not when it’s not for work, when it happens again and he realizes it’s something akin to a whimper.

That’s not good.  It could indicate any one of a number of things and none of them are good.  Bond could be in pain.  Bond could be manipulating Q.  Bond could be having a nightmare.  The first one seems like the most terrifying, at a glance, because the sudden onset of pain indicates that maybe the quarantine being dropped down into ‘formality’ range was a little premature.  The second seems like par for the course, but Q discards it as unlikely.  Bond doesn’t fit the profile for using ‘vulnerability’ to manipulate a smaller, objectively weaker man. 

That brings the third option into focus and Q immediately decides that it’s the largest threat of the three options.  James Bond has PTSD.  It should be obvious to literally anyone who’s ever spent any significant amount of time with him or even just read his files.  Bond hides it admirably, but it is an absolute truth.  James Bond is a trained killer with honed instincts.  This is also a truth.

The truth that makes this the most terrifying is that Q, while dangerous in his own right, is not the same type of dangerous as Bond.  He’s no match for Bond in a hand to hand fight and Q isn’t sure if he should wake Bond or not.  Waking Bond might shake him free of the nightmare’s grip, but he might also wake up disoriented.  Not waking him seems safer on the surface, but then if things intensify, Q thinks that the odds of Bond waking himself up and being even more disoriented are pretty high.

He thinks he should try to wake Bond up gradually, so he flicks on the lights to see if that rouses him.  Bond burrows into his pillows, but keeps making the sounds.  If Bond weren’t such a quiet sleeper normally, Q doesn’t actually think this would have woken him, but he’s awake now and he can’t, through inaction, let even this much harm come to an agent under his command.  The light isn’t working.

Q decides to start playing music, softly at first and increasing in volume in the hopes that it will rouse Bond.  He goes for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons because it’s recognizable and relatively light, without any lyrics that might influence Bond’s dreams.  He doesn’t think that Bond’s been undercover at anything that included Vivaldi so he hopes it won’t trigger anything.  He doesn’t have time to look it all up, though, to be sure.

At first, it seems to work.  Bond seems to quiet and Q thinks maybe they can get through this without any further complications, but then Bond makes another soft sound that just about breaks Q’s heart.  He isn’t ashamed of that—he’d be more ashamed if he’d managed to live for twelve days in this kind of proximity with another person without learning new ways to care about them, even if they do annoy him immensely—but he doesn’t know quite what to do, now.  He can’t turn up the music any further because he’s never bothered upgrading the speakers in any of his tablets or his laptop.  He doesn’t use them, no point in devoting resources to them.

He’s going to have to touch Bond.

If he wasn’t sure that Bond doesn’t drink this much in the field, he would be recommending that Bond be pulled from active service immediately.  He’s fairly sure that the alcohol is at least partly to blame for Bond sleeping this hard.  As it stands, he shuffles closer to Bond, cautiously, and taps the side of Bond’s bed, near the foot, and hopes the vibrations will wake the man.

They don’t, and he’s out of options, so he tells himself to put on his big boy pants and he approaches a highly trained assassin who’s having a nightmare.  He’s pretty sure this is how he dies.  He stands back as far as he can and leans forward, reaching a hand out slowly towards Bond’s shoulder.  He reminds himself that he absolutely must not fight Bond.  He won’t win.

A hand clamps down hard on his wrist, eyes snap open and his hand brushes Bond’s shoulder, all of it happening so quickly it might as well be simultaneous for all that Q can sort out which comes first.  He cries out as his whole arm is wrenched away from his body and it takes every bit of brain power that he has left in the panic he feels to make himself go limp.  He crumples to the ground intentionally and Bond twists his wrist, hard.  “Not my hands!” he wails, panicked enough that he lashes out, hard, with his free hand and his feet.  The idea of losing his hands is possibly the most terrifying of all ideas he can come up with, more than death.

Suddenly Bond is on top of him, crushing him, one forearm tight against Q’s trachea, the other still on his wrist and Q can’t stop kicking and flailing, because it hurts and he’s going to lose his hand and he can’t breathe and he can’t think, he can’t think and he’ll die and then there’s a crunching sound in his wrist and he arches up, screaming reflexively but no sound comes out because he’s being choked out.

Then the pressure on his throat disappears and the screaming gets volume and he can’t stop screaming, because it hurts, his wrist hurts like his hand’s been ripped off and he can’t breathe because he’s screaming.

12:08:01

James doesn’t know how any of this happened, but he knows a broken wrist when he sees one and now he’s stuck trying to explain to medical personnel who are afraid to let them out of quarantine that no, actually, he’s very sure Q’s wrist is broken and that Q needs attention right this instant.  Q’s screamed himself sick in the past five minutes and James is sure that the largest part of the screaming is panic because the only vaguely coherent thing that James can make out from Q is ‘not my wrist’ like a frantic marching cadence that will somehow set things into order. 

“I don’t care what it takes, he needs medical attention right now!” James snaps at the doctor.

“We have to call in the orthopaedic surgeon and get her suited up before we can help you.”

“At least get me a fucking x-ray machine and tell me how to use it on him!  We don’t have to wait for everything, do we?  Couldn’t he have some pain relief?”

“We can’t just give you a radioactive device, Bond.”

“Pain relief, then.”

There’s some discussion back and forth that James can’t hear because they haven’t activated their side of the intercom and then finally someone nods.  He waits at the small door that normally their food comes through as they give him a prepared syringe of morphine.

Q cringes away as James approaches him, sobbing in terror and pain.  “No, stay back!”

James doesn’t doubt that Q is a strong man, a powerful man.  He’s seen it enough in the past two weeks to be sure that he is.  He doesn’t doubt that Q can hold his own in most things.  He doesn’t doubt that Q has what it takes to survive. 

He also knows that Q isn’t a field agent, isn’t trained for this.  Yes, he managed to go out and be helpful in Austria, but Q isn’t trained to withstand pain and James is fairly sure he’s never been hurt quite like this.  He’s certainly never been hurt like this by an ally.

James crouches in front of him.  “Q, you need to focus on me.”

“Get back!”

James isn’t prone to apologies, especially not when he’s hungover and woke to screaming, but if there was ever a time for an apology, it’s now.  “I’m sorry,” he says, and shocks himself with how much he means it.  “I don’t know how this happened, but I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I wouldn’t do that, not on purpose, not unless I had to.”

Q’s clutching his broken wrist to his chest and shaking his head.  “It’s my fault, it’s my fault but don’t touch me, oh god, don’t touch me.”

“It’s not your fault, but I have to give you this.  It’s going to make you feel better until the doctor gets here.”

“There are doctors right there!  Tell them to help me!”

“They can’t.  The quarantine.  They’ve called an orthopaedist to come and help you but she’s got to get suited up.  In the meantime, there’s some morphine for you, if you’ll just let me give it to you.  I’d give you the syringe, but you’re right handed.”

“It’s a damned good thing I don’t use a mouse!” Q snarls, and a little of James’s panic recedes, because there’s Q, a little glimpse of him.  He’s not in shock or at least not badly enough in shock that James needs to worry.  He thinks Q might calm a little now.

“Yes, well, you’re not doing yourself any favours refusing pain relief.  Hold still and let me inject you.”

There’s a moment where James thinks Q’s going to refuse and try to cringe further away from him but it passes and Q nods, taking deep breaths.  James slides the needle into muscle and depresses the plunger. 

Q tenses, hissing.  “Burns,” he says.

“It’s cold, that always makes an injection burn a little,” James says, not unkindly.  “Give it a minute and it’ll start to feel better, then I’ll go yell at them some more to come help you.”

“You don’t have to do that.  I was an idiot.”

“I attacked you in my sleep,” James replies, the words painful to say, because they’ll pull him from the field for that.  He knows they will.

“No, not exactly,” Q replies shakily, his whole body shivering with pain still.

“I know what happened.”

Q takes a moment apparently to collect himself.  James has no doubt the pain is coming in waves and he tries to be patient because he knows Q by now and he can see when Q has something more to say.  “You don’t,” Q responds.  “I could see what was going to happen.  Should’ve locked myself in the toilet.”

“How could you tell I’d attack you in my sleep?”

“Nightmare.  Couldn’t wake you.  Shouldn’t have touched you.  We don’t do that.”

Things settle into place suddenly and James is hit with an image of his foster-brother that can only have come from a nightmare.  “Shit.”

“You weren’t ready for me.  I know better than to wake someone like that, especially someone who kills for a living.  You didn’t attack until I touched you.”

“You were standing over me.”

Q nods.  “Tried to stay back, but you grabbed me.”  He’s white with agony and James doesn’t need him to say anything more. 

James shuffles back a little, to give him space, irritating relief rubbing through his body like sandpaper.  He won’t be retired, but that doesn’t make this okay.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t care, just go away.”

James beats a retreat, heading over to go yell at the doctors.

12:23:58

Q thinks that morphine is both the most excellent and most horrible thing he’s ever had.  He’s not entirely sure it’s actually warranted, but he can’t properly complain about the fact that his wrist, heavily encased in a cast, no longer hurts, nor the fact that he’s spent more than half his day sound asleep.  He does not, however, like that it feels like someone’s lifted the top off his head and shoved bits of cotton into the mechanical parts of his brain.  Focussing on anything for more than a few moments at a time is like trying to hold oobleck in an open hand, something he’s been contemplating at length.

He can’t stop thinking about oobleck and it’s driving him nuts because there is absolutely no practical application of oobleck in any aspect of his life.  It’s not focussed thought, which is driving him nuts, just a returning current where he wants to play with it, feel it flowing through his hands and he keeps being hit with the irrational idea that he should be able to force it to have practical applications.

He wants a different painkiller and he’s afraid to ask for one because he can tell that his wrist should still hurt.  He’s counting it lucky that it was the large bones in his wrist that were broken and not the smaller ones.  There’s less risk that he’ll be crippled.  He should heal fine. 

Maybe the lack of practical applications is a good thing and he’ll send Bond out with nothing but oobleck for his next mission.  The idea of Bond with cornstarch slime dripping out of the pockets of his ridiculously overpriced clothing is oddly appealing and makes him laugh under his breath.

“All right?” Bond asks.

“I should fill your pockets with oobleck,” he replies.  “You deserve it.  You deserve your stupid suits to be ruined and the next woman you try to kiss to slap you for dripping slime all over her dress.”

Bond stares at him a moment.  “This is exactly why I avoid Medical like the plague.  Their idea of an appropriate dose of painkillers is ridiculous.  I’ll stick with what I get elsewhere.”

“This isn’t inappropriate,” Q responds.  “Just infuriating.  My brain is filled with wool and I can’t work.  How am I going to run a branch like this?”

“Well, I’m fairly sure they’ll wean you off the morphine sometime tomorrow… or is it today.  What time is it?”

Q glances at his tablet.  “It’s tomorrow, by approximately seventeen seconds as of… now.”

“Do you know what the word approximate means?” Bond asks, a hint of amusement running through his voice.

“Of course I do.  My education may not have had the trappings of class that yours did, but it was perfectly serviceable.”  How dare Bond question his vocabulary.  “It may have been atypical, but it didn’t leave out anything pertinent and was probably of higher quality than yours.”

“I went to some of the best public schools on offer.”

“And took away very little other than a taste for luxury.”

Bond looks like he’s not entirely sure what to say to that.

Q feels smug.  “I took full advantage of all the educational resources offered to me.  You got kicked out of Eton for trying to shag the staff!”

“I wasn’t trying.  I just succeeded,” Bond replies.

“You were thirteen years old and should have been paying attention to your studies.”

“Some people would say that I was the real victim there.”

“Those people haven’t read the reports on both sides, Bond.  Nor have they seen that smirk.  You can’t try to proclaim yourself the victim whilst looking that smug.”

Bond shrugs and Q wants to smash him in the face with his cast.

“You have an enormous problem with keeping your bits to yourself,” he says instead.  “You propositioned your superior just because you’re bored.”

“It’s not the first time, it won’t be the last.  Besides, who says my boredom is the only contributing factor in propositioning you.”

“I am not going to debate your sexuality with you while I’m under the influence,” Q replies firmly.  “Even were you to win the debate, I would be entirely incapable of consent.”

“Oh, so you’d entertain it if you weren’t high?” Bond asks and he’s leaning forward, interested now.

Q feels like an insect pinned to a board for the amusement of a collector and he doesn’t like it.  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“But you would?”

Q rolls his eyes, the words sliding out before he can stop them.  “Of course I would.  For some idiotic reason, you seem to be everyone’s type.  It’s practically a rite of passage for anyone androphilic in this organization to be attracted to you at some point.”

“So when you’re sober, let’s have a talk, shall we?”

“We get out of here in less than thirty-six hours, I’m sure the urge to shag me will pass by then.”

“Oh, are you?”

“Yes.  I’m hardly your type.”

Bond is amused again and Q hates him.  “Is that so?”

Q pulls out the front of his top with one finger and peers down it.  “I know my vision’s terrible, but I seem to be lacking an enormous pair of tits, so yes, that is so.”  The cool air on his skin feels nice.  It’s distracting and he likes it.  There’s a nice breeze from the way the air circulates and he wants more of that.  He takes his shirt off and flops back down.

“You know, stripping isn’t exactly a good way to discourage me.”

Q blinks at him.  Discourage… Oh yes.  “I thought I’d demonstrate my complete lack of tits.”  He touches his chest.  “Nope.  None here.”  He then touches his own shoulders and the back of his neck.  “No, no, they’re not hiding.  No tits.  No tits at all.”

“I thought that was rather the point of an attractive man.  No tits.”

“Oh shut up.”  Q wants this conversation to go away.  The cool breeze feels so good, it’s a relief.  He hadn’t realized his skin was crawling until now because his head won’t hold onto anything and he scratches idly at his armpit.  It’s a bit itchy.

“Why would I do that when you’re so fun like this?” Bond asks.

“Maybe because it’s all your fault that I’m like this.  If you hadn’t broken my wrist, I’d be fine.”  Q decides that anything Bond says after this doesn’t exactly matter, because it’s a good last word and if he ignores Bond, then it doesn’t count him as getting the last word.  He rolls onto his side, still scratching at his armpit, away from Bond.  He reaches with his casted hand for one of his tablets, then grunts in frustration when he remembers he can’t.

It takes him a few minutes to get himself set up with his cats on his tablet and a few more to find a comfortable way to hold it while still activating their toys.  Soon, though, he’s curled up, pretending Bond doesn’t exist.  He manages to clumsily put his headphones on and get some music up and everything is lovely, wrapped in the haze of a morphine cloud.  The only downside is that his skin itches and he’s definitely going to have to get some kind of fabric softener for Medical because Bond is right, their fabric is so itchy. 

He wakes up abruptly to his headphones being pulled off his head and he flails in panic.  He’s never been good at this sleep thing. 

Bond’s face appears in his and he looks concerned.  “Does your skin itch?”

Q blinks at him, his hand stilling where it was scratching at his side.  “There’s no itching powder in MI6, so I know this isn’t some kind of prank,” he says, proud that he manages to hit a warning tone.

“Answer the question,” Bond demands.

“A little.  You were right about the fabric they use.”

“Have you had morphine before?”

“I think so, when I was a child?  I’m not actually sure.  Why?”  Q’s heart is starting to pound.

“You’ve got hives.”

Q looks down at himself.  “Well.  Shit.”

13:22:04

James can’t wait to be out of quarantine.  It’s less than twelve hours away and he’s hoping, a little selfishly, that they’ll let them out early to check Q over more carefully.  He’s not actually glad that Q turned out to be a little allergic to the morphine, but it wasn’t anything actually dangerous and a large dose of antihistamines had sorted it out.   He’s just hoping that it will get them a reprieve, largely because Q is at maximum grumpy now that he’s off the good painkillers.

James has tried to make up for this with increasingly desperate attempts to convince Medical that his shoulder is flaring up and he should get the good painkillers.

It isn’t working and they’re out of liquor.

14:04:17

Q has set off the alarms in Medical seventeen times in the past two hours, because it’s day fourteen, they’re not dead and he wants out.  He wants to go home and curl up in his bed, in his pyjamas, with his cats, and try to sleep off everything that’s happened in the past two weeks.  He hurts and he’s annoyed and he wants to go back to work but he’s now off work for at least more three days.

Of course, going home is a trying prospect.  He can deactivate his security system with one hand, but he’s not sure he can open so much as a tin of beans.  He’s right handed and of course he’s casted so thoroughly he can’t so much as twitch his fingers.  The orthopaedist had not been willing to risk his wrist.  He’s thankful, but also he isn’t sure how he’s going to live on his own one-handed.  The idea of buttoning a cardigan is daunting.

He sets off the alarm again.  It’s six hours.  Six hours won’t make any difference at all.

14:08:32

James is going to strangle Q if he sets off anymore alarms in the next hour and a half.  He’s going to suffocate him with his own pillow and enjoy it.

14:09:12

Q is going to kill everyone.  He needs out of this room.

14:09:40

James is going to murder everyone in Medical.  It’s twenty fucking minutes.

14:10:01

Q stumbles out of the quarantine room and goes to shout directly at the tech, who is also being released albeit with a mask on and orders to go straight home.  He’s down one tech by the time he’s finished and the only reason that isn’t through bloodshed is because Bond’s holding him by the back of his shirt and dragging him away.

14:13:52

James is stumbling through the streets of London trying to decide what hotel he’s going to stay at until his next mission.  They’re all similarly unappealing and he’s having trouble remembering which ones he’s currently banned from through the haze of pills he’s liberated from his locker at MI6.

15:17:23

Q absolutely cannot manage at home.  He’s trying so hard, but he can’t even wash his glasses properly, let alone put on anything with a button.  It’s easy enough to bypass being unable to manage to even heat up beans by calling for takeaway, but when he can’t even tie his shoes to go get milk for his tea, he gives up in despair and curls up on the couch to feel sorry for himself.

15:21:17

James is in the bathroom of a bar he would not normally frequent, with his hand on the cock of a slight, dark haired man.  The man, whose name James cannot recall, has his hand on James’ cock, so it all works out in the end.  It’s different than with a woman and James goes down to his knees for the man, wanting to see what it’s like. 

That doesn’t go so well, bringing up memories from a bout of captivity, but the man doesn’t seem to notice or care and James manages to avoid violence, so it works out and the dark-haired man takes his turn.

Q was right.  Men are better at sucking cock and he’s pretty sure this man won’t complain if he follows him home but doesn’t stay the night.

16:12:26

Q hasn’t moved except to piss and collect takeaway from the deliveryman.

16:14:53

James is knocking on Q’s door.  He’s got a mind to take Q out to dinner.

Instead, he’ll stay the week on Q’s couch in apology for the broken hand. 

23:16:14

Q thinks maybe having Bond live in his flat wouldn’t be so bad.  He’ll see if it might be something else after dinner.