Chapter Text
Everything is going swimmingly, until it happens. Q's halfway through his first day at MI6, and despite a few of his elders (but most decidedly not betters) grumbling about taking orders from a "spotty teenager", it couldn't be going better.
That is, until Tanner comes over to congratulate him and gives him a friendly pat on the back.
Q feels himself begin to react, can almost see the jump the electrical signal in his brain makes from touch to fear, but it's like he's watching himself on a TV screen: he is powerless to stop.
And so he flinches away, retracting into himself like a hedgehog, and everyone's staring at him and Tanner's stumbling over his tongue in his hurry to apologise - terribly sorry Q - my fault completely - should have realised - and Q's trying to tell him that it's fine, that he's fine, but his hands are shaking and his heart is pounding and the room's spinning like a carousel and he puts a hand on his desk to steady himself and then.
He wakes up in a bony metal bed in the sterile white of the infirmary, with M on one side and the psychologist on the other. His mind is still woozy, but he's clear-headed enough that he can sort of make out the words M is pushing into his ears, the psychologist nodding gravely all the while.
"And you will say if you're uncomfortable, or if someone's getting too close to you, won't you." It isn't a question. "The last thing we need is the Quartermaster fainting in the middle of hacking into Al-Qaeda or something."
Q nods and shakes his head in the appropriate places, and reassures everyone that he's fine until his voice is nearly gone, and finally, finally, they leave him alone to Get Some Rest.
It's only later, in the thick dark of the summer night, that he turns his face to his thin pillow and begins, quietly, to cry.