Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Q branch went through post-it notes like nothing else. They’d even gone to the lengths to develop their own, with special non-wearing-off glue that could stick to anything and could be used as explosives if needs be.  

And no one went through more post-its than Q himself. Oh yes, he could write notes up on his computer or his tablet or his phone, but it was not the same as jotting it down somewhere. You could ignore an email, flashing despondently on your screen, but it was harder to ignore when there was a fluttery paper object lurking about your desk, giving you paper-cuts when you tried to grab things.

Q branch may or may not have developed paper with extra special sharp edges especially for this purpose.

It had been a long day – a long series of days frankly, because he hadn’t gone home in a week and the beds in Q-branch’s little dorm were only beds in the vaguest sense of the word – when Q raised his head from the motherboard he’d been soldering and swore.

Now fucking someone was one thing – and since it was James Bond, it was a hell of a thing indeed – and fucking a co-worker was perhaps ill-advised but fairly allowable if they were both sensible about it. But his realisation was something entirely different.

He thought about him frequently, when his mind was only partially occupied with vague tasks that didn’t need his full attention, he worried about him when he was away, bantered and snarked with him when he was here. Whenever they were both off work they’d end up both in Q’s flat, making a happy little nest – mostly taking advantage of the time to fuck like demented rabbits, but often just being together. James had bought him silly little things – ties and socks and the warmest pair of flannel pyjamas he’d ever had the delight to wear – and he’d gifted him back with a few extra gadgets the likes of which the other 00-agents could only dream of.

He fucking missed him when he wasn’t there.

Shit.

As a rule Q did his best to never even crush on anyone anymore, let alone drift into the outer shores of love. Keep it as affection certainly, that was fine. But love was a risky thing, and he felt few worth the risk. He liked having James near, and the bone chilling idea he might scare him off – because really how else was double-oh-seven going to react to Q dumping all those feelings on his lap? – made him reach for his pen and a pad of special Q-branch post its.

‘STOP IT!’ he scrawled in huge messy letters on the little note, sticking it to the screen of his laptop where it would loom over his coding sessions as a reminder for next time he turned into a big girl’s blouse.

Chapter Text

Q regretted sometimes that his team was composed mostly of people who could quote memes off by heart. If they had that much time to waste on reddit and chzburger sites then clearly he wasn’t working them hard enough.

What he certainly didn’t want was them catching onto the fact their boss had turned into a love-sick fool, crushing on an agent like a school girl. He was pretty sure some must know they were fucking, because for a secret agent James could be incredibly unsubtle when he wanted to be, but none of them had pointed it out yet.

He sent double-oh-seven off with another new gun and a radio he had specially constructed to be Bond-proof but would almost certainly never see again regardless, and then went in search of lunch. He found most of his cyber security contingent in the break room: Martin and Alice and Krishna and Sam all eating sandwiches and looking very ill and sorry for themselves.

“Big night?” he asked, kneeling up on the countertop and reaching up to the top of the cupboard and grabbing the last tin of his soup stash. He used to belong to their little group, before things all went to pot and the old Q retired in a panic. Things that couldn’t be solved with explosives but with computer code hadn’t been his style, and so he had stepped aside and the head of cyber security had been promoted to his place. So Q was now quartermaster and he wasn’t entirely sure his old friends could remember what his name used to be anymore.

“We lost Si in a gay bar in Soho somewhere,” said Alice, wincing when Q shut the microwave door as loudly as possible. “And when he got him back he was drenched in neon paint and missing his trousers.”

“Amazing,” said Q, propping himself against the counter and surveying the woeful group in front of him. Last night, James had recalled his promise of fucking the quartermaster up against the shower wall and the resulting encounter still made Q’s toes curl in his shoes. “I’m guessing he’s unconsciousness in his granny’s house today then?”

“He moved into a flat of his own six months ago,” said Alice. “Didn’t you know?”

Q stirred his tomato soup once and placed it back in the microwave for another quick nuke. He vaguely recalled something similar being said, perhaps an invitation to a house party he’d had to turn down as another 00-agent almost died or the world had balanced on the edge of another nuclear holocaust.

“So he’s probably choking to death on his own vomit as we speak,” he said instead, watching the counter trip down. He wasn’t upset he’d missed the party, since Si had never been his favourite colleague and Q had been to enough shitty housewarming parties as a student to know it would have been a disappointing night. “Great. Who wants his job?”

“Only if I can get his holidays on top of mine,” said Alice, setting down her sandwich as her boss plucked his bowl of soup out of the microwave and the scent drifted over the room. Beside her Krishna dropped his head to the table, and Sam covered his mouth with his hands.

“As much as you deserve to be tortured, I’d really rather you didn’t vomit over everything.” He cushioned his hands with a tea towel and picked up his bowl. “Please go home if you feel that bad.”

“Yes, Q,” they echoed glumly as he exited the room.

He ate his lunch, feeling a bit lonely, in his office, watching as double-oh-seven’s tracker slowly moved across Europe. Before he finished the last of his soup, his cyber security team had returned to their desks, their emails and alerts starting to pour into his inbox. 

Taking his eyes off the tracker screen briefly, he scanned down the list of emails arriving and frowned to find himself one of many people cc’d onto the recipients’ list. Cautiously he clicked on the first and opened the attachment.

It was a bloody picture of bloody Grumpy Cat. Everything other bloody attachment was also a sodding lolcat, and Q sent an email copied to everyone in his office with a picture of a head-desking rabbit attached.

He was able to go back to watching Bond in air transit in peace, at least for a while.

A good number of hours later, Bond was freed from his plane and running wild across Lithuania. Q checked in with him a few times and once he was told to bugger off by a slightly out of breath agent left the nest of his office to take his soup bowl back to the kitchen and collect a big mug of tea.

Someone had covered three of the walls outside his office with memes.

“What the actual fuck?” He looked around slightly wildly, as his various workers all looked studiously at their computers. Only Alice didn’t look away quite quickly enough, and Q’s predatory instincts had been honed by much exposure to 00-agents, so he prowled over to her desk. “The paper comes out of our budget as well, you know,” he hissed.

“That’s fine, because we stole it from Human Resources,” she grinned as her printer came to life and began to spit out pictures of cats in weird positions. “We finished patching up the firewall yesterday.”

“I’d bloody well hope so.” Q scowled at her as she got up to stick her new memes on the wall and briefly commandeered her computer; logged her out, logged himself in and checked on Bond’s position.

“He’s still in the airport, boss,” said Alice, wryly, and Q regretted ever coming near her. She had always been the one to help him with his relationships – well, the various extended fuck buddies he’d acquired when he hadn’t been quartermaster and then had time to waste on people who weren’t James Bond – and she was permanently on the lookout to set him up with someone.

“Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking,” he said, watching as the little red dot that was double-oh-seven left the customs area, and then flipping the tracker over to one of the other agents’ positions. 002 was lost somewhere in Indonesia, 003 was in Dublin, bolting through the grounds of Trinity University, and 009 was still in hospital in London, nursing a broken nose where Bond might have punched him in the face in a ‘training spar’ session.

“Mr Bond is very attractive, isn’t he?”

Q stared at her for a second and then said, “All the 00-agents are; it’s practically a requirement for the bloody job. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Stop it, then,” growled Q, reaching over and peeling a picture of a kitten passed out on a laptop off the wall.

“It would be an interesting experiment,” continued Alice, pinning up another picture of an owl up in its place. “Some of us are operating under the idea that 00-agents and Q-branch are different species.”

“It’s not like we’re going to breed!” exclaimed Q, lining up a picture of an itteh bitteh kitteh commiteh up square with  one of a hovercat. “I worry about you sometimes.”

“At least it would rid the place of some of the sexual tension,” she said. “It’s making the more sexually deprived people antsy.”

“Bugger off,” said Q, without much heat.

“You should go bu-“

“Don’t say it!” Q rubbed his temples and logged off the computer. “Just do something that involves printing off fewer cat pictures. And stop trying to set people up with 00-agents. It’s just a bad idea.”

Bond came back from Lithuania with a bloodied arm and a handful of someone else’s teeth. Apparently he scattered these over M’s desk, and so found himself locked in medical for a few more hours than normal, and when he found his way to Q branch he was in a sour mood.

“What the fuck is on your walls?” Bond paused in Q’s office to peer out at the rest of the cyber security office. Alice had had her way and the lolcats had stayed up, decorating most of the surfaces of the office.

“Don’t worry,” said Q, reaching out a hand and making a grasping gesture. He didn’t look around immediately when James handed the remains of his gun over, but the scrunchy, burnt skeleton that used to be his Bond-proof radio made him sigh and look down in misery. “Oh god. How did you do this?”

 “I was set on fire at one point.” Bond straightened his suit lapels – the black one that he left in his locker as a spare – and wiggled a hand, well wrapped in bandages. “While you were here, printing out pictures of cats.”

Q gave him a slow look, and tucked the destroyed equipment into the metal box he was using as an in-tray until Staples made office equipment that could stand up to the occasional explosion. “I have been here, watching you, while my staff have gone insane.”

“You could tell them to stop printing out cat pictures,” suggested Bond, adjusting his cuffs this time, and Q’s eyes narrowed when he spotted the first spots of blood staining the bandage red.

“When I told them to do that they got bored and started trying to persuade me to sleep with you.” He rolled his eyes and went back to his computer. 003 was now lost in Donegal somewhere, without a car, fully functioning radio equipment or uninjured legs, and Q was listening in on the attempts to find him.

Bond quirked his head to the side and said, “You’re already fucking me. Or rather I’m fucking you.” He stepped in to loom in over Q’s shoulder, evidently taking the topic as an invitation to start making his moves. “Speaking of which…”

“Hands to yourself,” Q sang out, “And I don’t particularly want my entire branch finding out that we’re fucking. They’d never stop talking about it.”

“But then they would stop printing cat pictures.”

Sometimes Q suspected Bond of being purposefully obtuse. This was one of those times, and Q gave him a look, scowling deeply when he only received a frown in return.

The quartermaster opened his mouth to snark back, but then his ear piece beeped frantically and he turned his focus back to the computer and 003’s position. The team were getting frustrated and panicked, and Q waded into their digital midst, bullied some satellites into looking the right direction and gave them a search area to focus on.

The he turned back around and said, “Whose teeth were those anyway?”

Bond shrugged. “Some bloke. I was in a bad mood.” He stepped forward again, very much in Q’s personal space, and leant his elbow on Q’s shoulder. “I still might be in that bad mood, and I can’t say you’re helping. Why else do you not want them to find out?”

Because then I might have to confront the fact that I don’t just want to fuck you, thought Q suddenly, that what I actually want is you to entirely move into my flat and then we can just live together and be one of those revoltingly happy couples that’s rarely apart. But that wouldn’t work because we’d never be able to do our damn jobs and you would go mad in days, and so would I come to think of it, and love is such a terrible idea for men like us.

Instead he said, “Maybe I like the cat pictures?”

James sighed, eyes flashing briefly with irritation but then segueing into a mild sort of affection. He briefly leant his head forward against Q’s, almost visibly tamping his bad mood down and away, and then moved back a bit, one hand coming up to stroke a thumb over Q’s lower lip. “You do bear a certain resemblance to that unhappy looking cat when you frown like that.”

“You’re an asshole,” declared Q, bracing his hands on his desk and reaching back cautiously to shut his laptop and push it away from the edge. “A complete asshole. Also you’re bleeding on my floor.”

James harrumphed and leant closer in, until his breath was purring against Q’s earlobe, smelling hotly of blood and scotch. It shouldn’t have been as fucking sexy as it was, especially since Bond was now bleeding on his cardigan, but Q’s trousers suddenly felt considerably tighter than they should have.

“A little blood loss hurt no one.” James bit softly as Q’s neck, and Q cleared his throat exasperatedly.

“This is not a little blood loss.” He forced the agent’s suit jacket down to his elbows, and pressed a pointed finger against the bulk of a bandage around the man’s arm. It was already soaked with blood and staining his shirt, the fluid trailing down to drip over his fingers. “This is a blood loss that medical should have impounded you for.”

“I talked them out of that,” grumbled Bond, reaching for the buttons of Q’s cardigan. “Like I’m trying to talk you out of your clothes.”

“Good luck.” Q pried the hands off. “If you’ve stopped bleeding by tomorrow morning, you can talk me out of my pyjamas. We’ll get a taxi home now.”

James checked his watch, the fancy thing that he never seemed to damage despite the wrecks he made of his other equipment. Q suspected it was due to the brushed titanium status symbol that the watch was – perhaps if he made more of his gadgets with shiny metal and stamped some Omega and Aston Martin symbols he’d get more of them back intact. “It’s only four o’clock. How will Q-branch cope without you?”

Q stuck his tongue out at him and opened his laptop briefly, sending a document to the wireless printer. He directed James to find a lump of blu-tack in one of his drawers and pulled on his coat and logged off the system.

“’Ceiling cat is watching you’?” read Bond in a wooden voice as Q stuck the picture onto the outside of his door.

“Out, out, out.” Q chivvied him past the smirking cyber security team, fixing them all with a stern glare. “Ignore the gawping fools. Just get out.”

He came back late the next day, ready to do an evening’s worth of work, to find all but two photos removed from Q-branch; the ceiling cat stuck to the outside of his door, and a new one tacked to Bond’s destroyed radio in his inbox. He scoffed, crumpling the picture of Mike Tyson and his pigeons into a tight little ball to throw it into the bin, but stuck the accompanying post-it note reading ‘now kith…’   into his pocket to show Bond as evidence his branch was full of nutcases and was to be feared.

“Behind the times,” he said to himself, thinking absently on James’ lips on his own just this morning, big calloused hands resting comfortably on his hips and legs entwined. He maintained the image a second longer and then went to work.

Chapter Text

Moneypenny was a saint and Q loved her definitely. Fuck James Bond and all other 00-agents, and fuck M and all the senior management types and definitely fuck all terrorist cells, rich psychopaths with more access to nuclear weapons that they really needed and nutty governments.

Technically Moneypenny had nothing to do with Q-branch, except for occasionally bringing down sheaves of files and notes and calling in favours for M, but she seemed to have taken a shine to the quartermaster since their first meeting. Either that or she had taken pity on him, but Q wasn’t going to be picky; she brought him tea and food and chivvied him to the Q-branch dorms whenever he was particularly sleep-deprived. And she chatted with him, which was even better. Q’s subordinates didn’t chat with him anymore, the other department heads were all too far up their own arses to have tolerable small talk with and James Bond had a remarkable talent for turning innocent conversation into a form of fore-play.

“Your tea…” The mug was steaming and full to the brim and Q hadn’t had a drink in two hours. He also hadn’t had sleep in thirty two hours, since Bond’s latest mission in Bali had gone spectacularly tits up, but caffeine was a suitable replacement.

“I love you,” groaned Q, dragging the mug closer and pushing the laptop away slightly. After the first twelve hours he’d been forced to abandon his traditional standing position and had been required to take up his duty in a chair instead when his legs had started to give out. “Have I told you that before? Because I certainly do.”

“Charmer.” She ruffled his hair and straightened his wonky glasses, before she hopped up onto the corner of his desk and sipped her own drink; coffee, hot and sweet for preference. “M wants an update, by the way. I know you’ve been ignoring your phone.”

“Bollocks.” Q took a healthy gulp of his tea – a good old fashioned milky, sweet and strong cuppa, rather than his normal Earl Grey – and rubbed his forehead tiredly.

Bond had gone off radar within fifteen minutes of first spotting his target, sending a large portion of MI6 into immediate panic, and then reappeared after three hours outside a market in Denpasar, apparently unaware that his handlers were desperately trying to find him. Communications had still been down – not even Bond’s phone appeared to be working – and Q had been minutes from throwing his head up and calling the whole mission too fucking risky, when Bond had looked up at a security camera that Q had been monitoring, winked and dandered off calmly. When Q had finished swearing, he’d allowed the mission to continue on the proviso he got to attempt to beat the crap out of double-oh-seven when he returned.

Q’s first instinct had turned out to be right, and now, thirty or so hours later, Bond was bleeding and lost in a rainforest with a murderous psychopath and a horde of goons hunting him.

“Q?” Eve poked him in the shoulder and he looked about blearily at her, slowly realising he’d just been sat there, head in hands, for a good few minutes now. “Are you sure you should still be working?”

“I’m fine.” He took another mouth scorching gulp of tea and stiffened his spine. “Where we are now is not much further on from where we were last time I spoke to M. Except I’m supposing Bond has lost considerably more blood.”

“Any leads on our friendly new psychopath friend?”

Q sighed and pushed over a tablet. “Bank accounts, houses, wives, girlfriends, stocks, businesses. Everything bar his exact location right at this second, which would be the most useful thing to know.”

She took the tablet thoughtfully, flicking a finger across the screen to display the data Q’s team had dug up, for all the good it was doing them. Meanwhile, Q had opened the tracker display again and picked up his mug to nurse his tea; the heat of the mug felt good on his hands, fingers and palms aching with the constant typing. All of him hurt, if he was honest, but there wouldn’t be time for sleep until James had been located and the waiting evac team was on their way.

Eve was about to ask him another question, one he was probably not going to be able to answer usefully, when his ear piece fuzzed into life and someone in the communication rooms screamed at him to tune into another frequency. Cursing at his fingers to move faster, to hit the right damn keys for once, he brought up the correct frequency and turned the volume up as high as it could go.

For a moment there was nothing but static, and Eve gave Q a disappointed look, but then there was a grumble of a noise and Q started.

“Q?” It was James, rasping and whispering. The quartermaster could just imagine how battered and bruised he would be looking right now, eyes wild with adrenaline and a hand clenched tight around the grip of a Q-branch issue gun.

“Double-oh-seven,” said Q, taking another mouthful of tea and nearly choking when Moneypenny gave him a knowing look. Shit, had he looked too delighted when Bond had turned up alive? Too late now; he had to focus on what his agent needed. “So glad you could finally join us.”

“If this is the welcome I get, next time I’ll just let the bad guy shoot me.” Bond was still talking in his business voice, the clipped cold tones that made the hairs on the back of Q’s neck rise up. “I don’t have much time. If I can get you the coordinates, can you send a team out.”

“They’re already waiting.” Q gestured for Eve to organise getting the whole thing organised. “The coordinates?”

Bond rattled them off, pausing a few times to listen hard for anyone approaching. Finally he finished and Q was able to question him more closely as Eve began to organise the evac team.

“Are you injured, double-oh-seven?”

“All the old injuries,” the man grunted, “A new sprain or two and a few grazes. Nothing serious.”

Q scoffed. “How fares your opponent?”

“Shot him once in the thigh.” Bond sounded pleased, as well he might. “Took out a couple minions, but there’s still a good number of them hanging about the place. Tell the evac team to watch for them.”

“They’re on the move,” reported Eve, craning over Q’s shoulder to talk to Bond. “Stay as close as you can to your current position if you can.”

“Got it.” There was a distant crackle of something that Q quickly discerned as gunfire, and Bond hissed out a curse between his teeth. “Shit. Got to run.”

“Have fun,” said Q.

The next time Q encountered Bond was two days later, both of them passing through the MI6 corridors, Q heading down to his branch and Bond being shepherded to M’s office by Moneypenny. The agent was bruised and had a thick growth of stubble on his chin, and he was wearing his spare suit again – Q can’t imagine his last Tom Ford survived very long in the rainforest – but the sight of him made Q swallow hungrily.

For his part, James certainly looked transfixed by Q; he had obviously stopped listening to a word Moneypenny was saying, and was staring at the quartermaster with a desperate light in his blue eyes. Q had made it home for ten hours of deep sleep the night before, and he had even managed to eat two meals, have a shave and change his clothes.

He might have even put his best cardigan on, just to make up for the general sloppiness of his appearance for the last few days. James did always like this cardigan.

“Eve!” he strode over and smiled winningly at M’s secretary. “I need a quick word with double-oh-seven, if it’s all right?”

“He’s on his way to M right now,” said the woman, but she smiled mischievously and was already stepping away.

Q tapped the screen of his tablet and said, “I’ll get him there, don’t worry.”

“By two, please,” said Eve, swivelling on her heel and walking smartly away, shoes clicking on the floor.

Silently they watched her until she was out of sight, and then they both stepped quietly into a side corridor. As soon as they were out of view of the main corridor, James pounced on Q, mouths pressed together, hands tangled in Q’s thick locks and his body slamming Q up against a wall so hard one of the paintings on it fell down. James bit down hard on Q’s bottom lip, one of his hands moving down to squeeze the back of the younger man’s neck in a possessive gesture that made Q’s pulse speed up until it was roaring in his ears.

He was gasping when James moved back, tugging on the quartermaster’s hair to tilt his head back and gain better access to his throat.

“Nice to see you too,” Q said, the words momentarily becoming garbled as James sucked a kiss to his pulse point. “Don’t suppose you have my equipment?”

“Consider this part one of the apology,” James growled, raising his head to look into Q’s eyes. He still looked wild and tired, but there was a current of softness under the blue ice, and Q couldn’t stop the sudden wash of affection. He stroked the man’s bearded chin, raising an eyebrow as he considered exactly how that heavy stubble would feel rubbing against his thighs and stomach. “Didn’t even manage to bring back the wreckage.”

“Once again you’ve exceeded even my expectations,” sighed Q, grabbing the back of the other man’s neck and towing him back in for another kiss, humming in contentment. “Come on. M will be pissed at you if you’re late.”

James drew him in for one long, toe-curling kiss, scratching his fingers through the shorter hairs at the nape of Q’s neck in the exact right way, and then drew back with a provocative lick of his lips. “M’s always pissed at me.”

Eve shot them both a knowing look as Q delivered Bond to M’s office – only five minutes late, thank you very much – but said nothing as the agent disappeared past the padded door, or when Q paused in her office to check her fax machine was still functioning correctly. With a distinctly suspicious feeling – possibly with a frisson of disappointment she had said nothing – the quartermaster returned to Q-branch to dole out jobs to his underlings and set himself down to a few hours of hacking an unfriendly government’s records.

Messages came through both in electronic and physical form – there were those in MI6 who seemed incapable of using an email system, despite Q setting it all up for them and personally designing an interface that was both incredibly secure and very, very simple to use. He despaired under his breath as he opened a few envelopes, ran his gaze down the contents and then threw them all into the bin. There was one letter, passed on from M’s office judging by the handwriting scrawled on the outside, that might be of use; it also had a yellow post-it note stuck to the front, not one of Q-branch’s judging by the way it had to be taped on, and Q read it curiously.

‘I knew it!’’ Eve had written large on the front side, with a big tick drawn in underneath. Q laughed to himself, sudden relief in his veins because he’d always wondered just a little about Moneypenny, if she had had feelings for James or even for Q himself. He hadn’t realised that he’d wanted approval from someone about him fucking James Bond.

Perhaps that boded less well for this not falling in love with him… Q put the post-it note down, not feeling as fantastic as he had done only seconds before. Bloody hell, he was going to have to do something about this – otherwise he’d be stuck, apparently reverted to his angsty teenaged days for ever.

There was a message written on the back of the note that he noticed only now, and his jaw clenched as he decided that maybe he would take Eve up on her demand. ‘YOU WILL TELL ALL!’ Alice was all well and good, but perhaps Q needed someone knew for these relationship woes.

Chapter Text

Q worked long hours, as did Moneypenny and Tanner, and the three of them often found themselves together in one situation or another. The commonest was that something had gone wrong on a mission and it was only via a desperate sort of collaboration that they could fix things. The second commonest was for someone to be on the hunt for tea or coffee or food, and the third commonest was when they were bored, unable to go home or sleep and fancied talking to someone.

When Q was in MI6 there was always something for him to be getting on with, so it was normally the other two who came looking for him in Q-branch. He didn’t mind this; it was quite entertaining to have the chief of staff and M’s secretary lounging about in his office, imbibing drinks from his special cabinet of alcohol that he had thoroughly Bond-proofed and hidden in an old computer tower and gossiping about the other staff and what was on TV the last time they’d managed to watch some.

It was like this that he learned that Eve spoke at least ten languages, had intended to get a degree in French in university and then switched to international politics when MI6 had started sniffing around her and had a keen interest in fashion. For one she approved of Q’s look – something Bond was wilful about misunderstanding – and declared it very fashionable. She even approved of his several hundred pound cardigans, and directed him to a few pairs of new trousers that had made Bond grimace when he’d stripped Q of them later that week.

Tanner on the other hand, studied economics at university and, strangely, hospitality at a technical college. He had been infinitely jealous of Bond’s Aston Martin – the one that only existed as burnt remains in a crate in the belly of the building – and had a picture of a bulldog as the screensaver on his MI6 issued mobile. He enjoyed a good pop-culture chat, and kept Q up to date with the comings and goings of television and film when the quartermaster was too swamped with work.

Tonight – as they watched 009 traverse a glacier of all things, under the control of another group of handlers unless things went badly wrong  – Tanner was telling them all about the raft of new dramas on the Beeb. He was rhapsodising in particular about the Hollow Crown, insisting that Q would look remarkably like Richard II if he’d stop shaving and wear some drapes. Q paid little attention until the topic of Tom Hiddleston reared its exceedingly pretty head, and then he and Eve spend a good hour on attractive British actors, while Tanner plots their responses on a graph.

Q had plenty of good liquor in his cabinet of many secrets.

When Bond showed up, looking smart and clean for once, the three of them are nearly on the floor with laughter. They let Tanner try to explain the theory behind the Attractive British Actor Quotient, and this only leads to more hilarity when Bond offered his own opinions and severely skewed some of the results. He certainly horrified Moneypenny when he opined that Daniel Craig was a bit of all right.

Eve and Tanner were bickering amiably over the worthiness of Benedict Cumberbatch when Bond slipped over to Q’s side and whispered, “Is there a gas leak in here?”

“Scotch,” said Q succinctly, handing his mug over to Bond and watching as the man sipped the liquid within.

Bond made a surprised face and knocked back a little more. “Good scotch. I didn’t know you had such excellent taste.”

Q quirked an eyebrow at him and refilled his mug to the halfway mark. “That is rather up for debate.”

“This better not be about what I said about your cardigans again,” said Bond, straightening the collar of the cardigan Q was wearing today. “Haven’t I made that up to you yet?”

Many times over, thought Q, sipping more of the scotch. He wasn’t a big alcohol drinker normally, but he had had a long week of boring, normal office work and there was an opportunity for a long weekend as soon as he went home. James intercepted the mug and took a healthy slug for himself, before passing it back. Q made a face and topped up his mug again, smiling as Bond grimaces at the casual way he was knocking it back. When James Bond said a scotch was good, it was an excellent example of the species indeed and should have been savoured.

They fell into banter so easily, Q reflected, even when they weren’t bloody talking to each other. Bond had taken up position, hands in pockets and shoulders eased back, slightly too close to Q to be entirely innocent and he would quirk an eyebrow or smirk roguishly in response to Q’s facial expressions. They were so involved in making faces at each other like children, Q entirely forgot Tanner and Moneypenny were still in the room until the secretary spoke.

“One last one for the road then, Q!” She tapped her mug against his desk and laughed sweetly at him when he jumped, caught his foot on a trailing cable and only James’ hands appearing on his waist kept him steady. James leant over Q’s shoulder, snaffled the bottle and poured her a careful measure. “Miser,” she laughed and swallowed it down like an expert. “Right then. I’m going to go before the sexual tension causes someone to spontaneously lose all their underwear.”

Tanner blinked as he drained the last of his scotch, a vague recognition dawning on his face, and he exchanged a look with Moneypenny, whose mime of what Q and Bond had been doing in their spare time left little room for any other interpretation.

“I’ll just, ah, leave you to it as well then,” said Tanner, heaving himself to his feet and picking up his Attractive British Actor Quotient diagram. “Eve, fancy getting breakfast?”

“I could eat breakfast.” Moneypenny slid her feet back into her heels and joined him at the door. “See you later boys!”

Bond grunted and waved a distracted hand, plying Q with a little more scotch with the other hand. Q was feeling a bit sloshed – he wasn’t used to drinking much after all, and he was a skinny man who hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. He started to shut his systems down, having to pause every few moments to regain his balance until Bond cast a heavy arm around his waist again and held him steady.

“Lightweight,” the agent grumbled into his ear. “Time to go home, before you explode something important.”

“Ha ha,” said Q, allowing Bond to ease him into his coat and scarf and then followed the  man obediently to the door. His feet worked on autopilot to get him out to the lift, which was a well-trodden path whenever he was exhausted to the point of falling asleep on his feet.

The door hummed open and slid shut behind them. Q attempted to reach out and hit the button for the ground floor, but rather lost his balance and neatly tipped himself into the wall; Bond saved him with that arm around his waist again and a big hand slammed against the wall, hitting most of the buttons at once.

The lift lurched downwards, towards the holding cells and the archives, and Q gave the agent a slightly embarrassed smile. Bond gave him an unimpressed look in return, but bowed his head for a kiss anyway. Normally Q would have permitted a single kiss and then pushed him away with a snarky comment about his libido and lack of control, but today, well lubricated by alcohol and tiredness, he welcomed it.

The lift reached the bottom of its sweep and rebounded directly upwards – aiming for the highest button pushed no doubt – and Q staggered against James’ chest, looping a rubbery arm around his neck to hold himself up. James was wearing one of his nicer suits today – one of the dark grey Tom Fords, with a crisp, fresh shirt and a tie that Q rather fancied binding around James’ thick wrists at some point. He hummed into the kiss at the thought as the lift slowed to rebound at the top of its cycle, and drew back slightly.

James looked pleased at his indiscretions and immediately nuzzled back in for another kiss – he was evidently interested in whatever Q had to offer, but didn’t insist upon anything while his quartermaster was quite so drunk – but Q trapped the agent’s head in place with fingers laced into his short blond hair, perhaps clasping a little too tightly. Double-oh-seven has eyes like ice chips; varying between clear and calm or clouded and mysterious depending on his mood. Today he was evidently in a good mood, because his eyes were bright and clear and, if Q cared to look, the quartermaster could kid himself into thinking there was a glimmer of affection there. The look was almost hypnotising in its intensity, and Q found himself an utter sucker for it.

“You would almost be worth not being quartermaster anymore,” said Q, even as his brain clamoured that no, it definitely would not. He does like James, fuck he really likes James, but there was a bloody limit. He hopes James hasn’t heard, or at least sets his momentary madness down to the scotch, but the agent has a keen look in his bright blue eyes and Q knows he’s fucked up. There is no way this was going to end well anyway, but he’s fucked it up just that much sooner, and in the indignity of his drunken state as well.

With a dull hum, the lift reached the ground floor. Q staggered back out of Bond’s light grip, already mouthing denials of what he had just said – as soon as the older man’s lips started to open, Q was already tottering out onto the tiles of the foyer.

“Q!” Double-oh-seven caught his arm and towed him into the shelter of a potted tree, hiding them both from the bored gaze of the night guard. “What did you say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” grumbled Q, trying to free his wrist from James’ grip – something he wasn’t likely to be successful at even when he was sober. “Let go.”

“I want to hear it again,” said Bond, suddenly starting to look very predatory. Q, feeling a bit defensive, scowled and pried his fingers under James’ hand. “Say it again.”

“There’s no need to be an asshole about it.” He wrenched his wrist away, forcing James to let go or break his quartermaster’s arm in the process in holding on. “I’m going home.”

He stalked off, dropping his coat, bag and lanyard in the tray for the x-ray machine and stomping through the detector himself in a fit of high pique. Part of him was raging at the idea Bond would dare to make fun of his feelings, even if he wasn’t entirely sure that James actually was making fun of him. But there wasn’t any other explanation was there? Q’s soused brain supplied this, all alcohol induced paranoia and not much sense. He snatched his gear up as James began the lengthy process of emptying his suit pockets of all items, the night guard watching him like a hawk.

Q had hoped the cool air outside would soothe his ire, but it only added to the cold hollow in his chest, where the realisation that James Bond was not and never was going to be in love with him in the same way Q loved him.

“Q…” James had cleared the security – it always took longer for 00agents to get through, mostly because they were all laden down with weapons at all times and had probably all punched a security guard at one point – and was glaring at Q in the low light of the street lights.

“Fuck off,” said Q crossly, incredibly angry at everything, not least of all at James fucking Bond for having the temerity to even exist. “Don’t piss around. I’m not in the mood.”

“Neither am I,” growled Bond, looking very exasperated himself. “I just want to know what you’re thinking!”

Q opened and closed his mouth a few times, hands wind-milling wildly. He didn’t like being lost for words, but that’s what he was. The urge to simply man up and just tell Bond that he was wildly, hopelessly in love with him was overwhelming, but the urge not to have the man storm out and leave him entirely crushed and stranded on the wrong side of London overnight won out in the end.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said instead, and Bond held his shoulders and took his glasses as he retched into a gutter for a few minutes. Nothing came up, except possibly the last remnant of his dignity, and in the end Bond propped him against the wall and fetched one of the high powered Jags MI6 reserved for the high rankers.

“If you vomit over this upholstery then you’re the poor bugger that’s going to have to replace it,” Bond warned him as he was pushed down into the passenger seat.

“We’re going to talk about this when we get home aren’t we?” Q whined into his hands as James climbed into the driver’s seat. He doesn’t need to look around to sense the look the agent is giving him.

They didn’t so much talk as have a blistering argument in the end: Q snapped some uncomplimentary things about James’ personal life, while James took a few pot shots at Q’s personality and qualifications for the job. Q spent the remainder of the night after James did end up storming out kneeling by the toilet and having a one-on-one conversation with it about why no one was ever fucking worth it.

Five hours into his hangover the next morning, Q was then called in to work. 009 was now stuck in a crevasse on a completely different glacier, with a chemical bomb ticking down the minutes a mile ahead of him. Angry and still slightly drunk, Q blitzed through the bomb’s systems – who fucking installed a fucking bomb with a fucking unguarded satellite connection?  – in record time, earning them a few minutes more for 009 to haul himself from his icy tomb, bound across the snow and save the day.  Q offered him a terse congratulations and slugged back the remainder of the scotch from the night before.

His mood was only worsened by the arrival of the messages into Q-branch, and a post-it note attachment from Tanner in much the same manner as Eve’s.

‘dear god, stop shagging in the lifts!’ it said, and for a brief moment Q contemplated programming Tanner’s SkyBox to only record episodes of Teen Mom from now on before he decides that was a cruelty he wouldn’t even fix on Bond at the moment.

Chapter Text

M didn’t appear to mind that MI6’s quartermaster and their premiere 00-agent had been fucking like bunnies. Of course he would know – the head of an international spy bureau had to know what his subordinates were up to, otherwise he wouldn’t last very long in the job. The news obviously hadn’t started doing the rounds that their relationship had soured; everyone was too busy twittering quietly over the original rumours, as they had yet to notice the sudden huge rift between the two men. This simultaneously suited Q very much indeed and makes him feel incredibly shit, as he listened to the whispers.

Sometimes it wasn’t just whispers. M, for all his not minding, took Q aside one day and loomed over him, terrifying him briefly because, while Q was a ballsy sort and very good when sat at his computer, he was no match for M with his extensive experience in the field and his chilling, quiet innocence. The dapper man in his waistcoat had been a killer, just as scary as any of the 00-agents in his day and Q didn’t fancy his chances.

They chatted briefly, and slightly cryptically, and Q only understood what the man was talking about when he handed him a letter with a post it attached and dismissed him. Q paused in Eve’s little anteroom – she was thankfully absent at the time -  and read the elegant letters on the post it with a grim face. ‘keep the interoffice flirting to a minimum, q, and certainly out of the lifts…’ it read and Q made a mental note to definitely hack Tanner’s SkyBox this time and fill his recordings with episodes of Teen Mom and Cribs, or something equally horrid.

Q marched back down to Q-branch and arranged himself in his office with a load of fiddly work he’d been intending to do for a long time. Moneypenny arrived fifteen minutes later, bearing a new tin of Earl Grey and a pastry for both of them. She left the pastries there and left, returning in five minutes with a mug of tea for him and a coffee for herself. Then she arranged herself in the corner and didn’t say a damn word. Q just focused on his work, concentrating until he had managed to forget she was there at all and his mind sort of wandered away from the work he was meant to be doing. 

Once the original hangover and then the secondary hangover from the bout of anger induced drinking had faded, Q had found himself feeling a bit stupid. If he had been bloody sober, he could have saved himself the heartache and still be shagging Bond happily in his spare time, because he wouldn’t have bloody said any of that.

In his more retrospective moments he also added to himself that Bond had looked more keen than mocking immediately afterwards, and perhaps that had meant something. This just made him feel worse, so he didn’t think that too often in case he had to break out another bottle and descend into maudlin drunkenness a second time.

M didn’t need to worry about the office romance anymore, at any rate, because there was no more banter or snark in Q and James’ interactions. Double-oh-seven reported to his quartermaster with a steely, closed off look on his lined face, took his equipment with only a grunt of acceptance at the instructions and then stalked off. He didn’t come down to Q branch in his hours off anymore, and he didn’t come bearing tea or coffee or sandwiches.

Q thought he had already lost a few pounds to the lack of snacks being brought to his desk; Moneypenny’s offerings were still appreciated, but it wasn’t the same at all. Not even his favourite Earl Grey tasted the same without James Bond delivering it to his office.

“What did you do to him?” Moneypenny asked, suddenly appearing at his side and leaning on the other side of his table – where James used to stand when he was afraid that Q was going to beat him  - sipping her mug of coffee with an expectant expression.

“What?” Q raised his gaze from the gun he had been tweezering sensitive parts into, having nearly dropped the damn piece when she’d startled him.

“He is furious.” Eve raised an eyebrow at him. “He punched 002 in the throat yesterday, and then he and M had a bellowing match afterwards.”

Q snorted, ducking his head down to pretend to focus on his gun. “Not my problem if double-oh-seven has some anger issues.”

“He was remarkably good on his anger issues right up until, say, a week ago.”

Q did not deign to answer.

“Perhaps you should attempt to soothe him?”

He darted her a purely poisonous look, pleased to see her flinch slightly from his irritation.

“You haven’t been much nicer either,” she added, standing up and crossing her arms across the pretty blue dress she was wearing today. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Q dropped the part in the correct place and pressed it down securely. “I need to take this down to the armoury, if you’ll excuse me.”

“You won’t get away so easily,” said Moneypenny, but she excused herself to go do secretarial things and let Q go on his way in peace. He spent the rest of the day lurking in the armoury and shooting experimental, and therefore very powerful, guns at cardboard cut outs that probably don’t deserve his wrath.

Bond was being sent off to Canada – Canada of all places, where is the need for a secret agent with a license to kill in Canada, Q wanted to know – and Q is ordered to equip him fully

Gun – coded to Bond’s palm print -, a knife – because Bond insisted on always having one these days -, a radio and cold weather gear were the order of the day. Q sent one of his subordinates to fetch the gear from the stores, reciting Bond’s preferences for knife and his clothing sizes off by heart.

 He had to check everything was in full working order and then hand it over himself of course, which meant one of Bond’s chilly visits to his office. Today was no different, even as Q had hoped – a little, tiny, sad hope - that maybe Bond would forgive him and he could pretend that it hadn’t all been his own miserable fault, as he took his equipment and his documentation without a word or a flicker of emotion in his eyes. Q dismissed him coldly, and then watched him go – hating himself for it just a little bit. Bond stopped briefly to have a quick discussion with Alice, and Q nearly bit through his own tongue in a silent spike of rage, turned away and went back to his work like he was a calm, sensible man, who hadn’t just fucked up his love life spectacularly.

It was probably better this way, he thought to himself, and didn’t believe a single word of it.

Chapter Text

MI6 was not impenetrable, despite all best attempts. Q kept the systems as safe as he could, kept the cameras working constantly, helped Human Resources run checks on the newcomers and generally did all he could to prevent another occasion when he had to shift all his stuff down to Churchill’s bloody bunker again.

But if someone was determined, smart about what they did and prepared to be very, very patient, it was possible.

Q was working late, unwilling to go home and be alone in his cold flat with his dead plants and no indication that Bond was ever going to come and warm him up again, when a silent alarm flares briefly in the accounts department and then fell silent just as quickly. This was suspicious, because while accounts set off their silent alarms at least once a week they had so far always called Q and apologised meekly for their little blunder. Quickly, he called up the security footage for their offices and found something he definitely didn’t like the look of.

There were strange men with guns where strange men with guns should not have been. Q inspected the slightly gritty footage grimly, and then tried to bolt for the door and the phone at the same time. He stuck his head out the door and bellowed for his cyber security team to start fucking working, because if those people could switch the silent alarms off they had to have access to his systems and he hated people having access to his systems. Ever since Silva and his fucking ‘clever boy’ attitude, Q had created a veritable minefield for anyone who tried to get in, and it rankled that some fucker had managed it.

Alice leant her head in, eyes wide and horrified. “They’ve got Si.”

“Shit.” Q hopped back to his laptop and switched back to the camera feeds. And sure enough, there is Si, standing amid the accounts department and something was odd about the whole picture. “Bastard!” It was less that the intruders had Si, more Si seemed to be in charge of the intruders. As Q and Alice watched, Si pointed at one of the women in the department, a gun was raised and blood spattered gruesomely across the people standing near her. Alice nearly screamed in horror, Q merely grabbed his mobile and speed dialled Moneypenny.

“Bit busy!” She said as she picked up. Q heard the whine of a bullet speeding past her head and swore. “Yeah,  exactly.” The phone clattered to a desk top and Q leant away from his own mobile as crashing shots rang out. In the interim, he told Alice to make sure the rest of the damn department was well sealed and then come back to help the others figure out what Si had done to his fucking systems. Eve picked up the phone again, panting quietly. “What the fuck is happening?”

“We’re compromised. Intruders in…” He flicked through a range of security cameras, grimacing as he discovered armed men in most. “Accounts, human resources, the armoury, your offices, the cell blocks and advancing on Q-branch as we speak.” He pauses on the cameras outside the multiple entrances to Q branch and watches as he talks. “How is life in senior management at the moment?”

“Hectic,” she said. “There’s something of a hostile takeover going on at the moment.”

“Hah.” The intruders appeared in one of the views, complete with Si, the little fucker, guns raised and twitching. “Bastard,” he hissed again.

“Problems, Q?”

“Simon Albright, you know him?”

“Weedy guy in your department?” Of course Eve would know him, the bastard’s been here longer than Q himself. “Surely he’s not helping? He’s not the sort.”

“He’s full of surprises,” growled Q, panning his camera as they reached the doors of Q-branch – firmly locked for now. But Si already had his laptop out and was dismantling the door controls, and wasn’t that just the only thing that Q hadn’t had a finger in when strengthening the systems. No, that had been Si’s remit, and the little arsehole had pulled a Silva on them.

Q was going to strangle him. He would beat off all competition for the task, and he would strangle the bastard to death for betraying Q-branch. And MI6, of course.

“Shit. We’re trapped in here. Tanner’s got a graze and one of the junior secretaries has an arm wound, but we’re all fit aside from that. How many outside us?”

Q checked quickly. “Seven. All loaded with semi-automatics.”

“Joy.” She tutted irritably. “We’ve got the police on their way, and we’ve had a brief contact with MI5, but aside from that…”

“All the double-ohs are abroad,” said Q. He had thought it a strange coincidence, but now he was starting to worry that it had been part of the same plan. “There’s a couple other field agents hanging about, but…” He flipped back to the view of the entrance to Q-branch and discovered the door completely open at the same time he heard gun fire nearby. “Shit.  Shit, shit, shit.”

“Q?”

“Q-branch has been compromised.” He scowled and ran over to grab his own gun, hidden under a broken laptop and a pile of files. Krishna shouted from the neighbouring room that their network is going down, and he shouted back to keep working at it, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this lovely chat short, and go do my job.”

“Have fun, Q,” Eve said, more amusement in her voice audible that should have been in woman trapped in a shoot-out situation. Q shoved his mobile back in his pocket, hunted out a full clip of bullets from underneath another computer shell and made sure the weapon clunked together nicely. He set it on the desk beside his laptop and tried briefly to focus on shoring up his defences. Si had always been nasty little hacker, and Q was already discovering flaws in his previously pristine defences when his mobile vibrated, drumming against his hipbone.

“Yes?” he spat, tucking the device between his ear and his shoulder and putting a few makeshift blocks in place to prevent Si from simply opening the cyber security door like he had done the outer Q-branch one. A thought struck him to check what had happened in the foyer. He did, and regretted it immediately – the place looked as though double-oh-seven had hit it, all blood and spent bullet casings – and at least one of the back entrances was no better.

“Q?” Speak of the devil. It was James Bond. He didn’t sound pleased to be speaking to the quartermaster, but Q had bigger things to worry about than his own petty little woes. Men with guns were already prying at the cyber security office door, and his remaining team were starting to look nervous. At the first spatter of gunfire against the bulletproof door, Q darted out into the main office and told his team to get out; there was a handy little passageway that led through the tangle of air vents supplying Q-branch with oxygen, meant so the vents could be serviced but repurposed for emergency exits. They were reluctant to go, and Q couldn’t promise what they would find on the other end of the passage would be safer than what waited for them outside their office, but he chivvied them in anyway and went straight back to his desk.

“Q!” Bond was definitely pissed now. “What is happening? I can’t get through to anyone.”

“We’re under attack. Men with semi-automatics.” He checked the camera feed again and scowled to see Si grinning up at him cheekily. “And one miserable little arsehole of a traitor.”

“Tell me exactly what’s happening,” Bond demanded. For want of anything to do while he fought off the electronic attacks on his door, Q explained all he knew. “Are you safe?” Bond asked as soon as Q had finished, and, despite the fact he was apparently about to die, Q’s heart did a little soppy somersault.

“For now. I’ll have to run eventually.” He glanced over his shoulder and added, “I can hold them for a few minutes, what do you want?”

“Professional to the last, quartermaster,” said James softly, and Q was drawn back to the blistering argument they had had, about how Bond had told him he wasn’t experienced enough for the job. There was an apology in double-oh-seven’s voice now, he was sure – certainly a softness he hadn’t heard for weeks. “Nothing that can’t wait a few weeks. Get me a flight back to London. Now.”

“You’re going to be a day late for the action,” said Q, scoping out the list of flights to London anyway. “Which city are you in?”

“Toronto.”

With a few clicks Q had Bond booked – first class, because if the man did need to kick some arse when he arrived, it would be best if he had been well rested beforehand – and rattled off the details to him. “Police and MI5 already informed, all the other 00-agents are swanning around elsewhere and I really don’t have time to play travel agent for all of them.”

“I always was your favourite,” said Bond. The banter was back, Q realised as he skipped back to propping up his defences again, and whether it was prompted by genuine care or just a method of keeping the quartermaster calm enough to fight the intruders off, Q wasn’t sure. He didn’t really care either, because he had missed this and he was about to die. There wasn’t time for introspection, and there wasn’t time to wonder why James had picked now to have a sudden change of heart.

“You certainly are,” he said, and smiled when James laughed down the phone, a short, sharp bark of a chuckle. “It was probably the bad attitude. I like a man who doesn’t listen to a word I say.”

“I listen to some words very carefully, Q. And if certain snappy little sods would give me half a chance, I might respond favourably yet.”

“Oh,” said Q, licking his lips nervously. “Good.” He glanced over his shoulder again at the door and frowned. “Um. I should probably say sorry about… A lot of things actually.”

“No last minute confessions, Q.” Bond’s voice had hardened slightly, warning him as if James himself hadn’t been making a few little admissions of his own only moments before. “You don’t need to make those.”

“Fuck,” said Q, again checking on the progress the team were making on his locks. Another few minutes and they’d been the cyber security office and battering on his door, so if he was to make a break for it, now was the time. “James-“

“No famous last words either, Q,” the agent warned, as if he could read his quartermaster’s mind. “I’m not going to listen to any of those.”

Q growled, checked his gun was loaded and cocked and gritted his teeth. “Sometimes I wonder why I love you so damn much,” he snapped, hand already reached out to pull up his own specialised little program for making his laptop unusable. The next bastard to touch it would be getting a torso full of shrapnel.

Bond took a breath, audible over the connection, and then laughed. “Good thing I never had you down as the romantic sort, Q.”

“I’ll buy you flowers to make up for it then,” said Q, fingers hovering over the keys.

“I expect roses.”

“Nothing less.” He licked his lips again, not liking the way the next words lined up on his tongue. “Good bye, James.”

“I’ll see you with my roses,” said Bond, and the connection cut. Q snorted to himself, activated the program, shut the laptop and darted out into the cyber security office.

It was lit with dull emergency lighting, the door humming and thumping as the intruders forced their way in. For a moment, Q entertained the idea of standing his ground here and protecting his little domain with his life, but sense prevailed and he scrambled for the emergency exit he’d sent his team staggering down before.

The corridor was dark, lit with red lights and strips of LEDs on the floor. Q stumbled along it, wondering if this was what being in an airline crash would be like – terror and darkness and blood and the probability of screams later on – and had to force himself to think of other things to keep a panic attack from taking him. It was strange that the immediate danger of being shot or kidnapped by unknown insurgents was a much smaller fear than being in a crashing airliners he wasn’t even in. Possibly because he could certainly influence only one of those situations…

A bullet winged off a doorframe near his legs, and he sped up as heavy footsteps marched behind him. If he’d been a better shot, he might have taken cover and returned fire, but the light was too dim and he’d just be letting them gain ground. Better to keep running for now.

Q had never been the best in at shooting, or barehanded conflict, but he had always been surprisingly good at concealing himself. He could hear the fire-fights on the floors above, and brought up a little mental map of the MI6 building. From the camera footage, he could guess where the majority of the intruders were, but if they were good, and they had to have been to get in so far, then he’d run into them wherever he went. Best to move quickly and try to stay out of sight as much as possible.

He diverted into a secondary passage that would lead him out the back of the armoury and directly opposite a set of stairs. Perhaps he would be safer on one of the floors not filled with high explosives, guns and poisons; somewhere where papers and laptops ruled supreme. He could try to meet up with Moneypenny, Tanner and M – if he broke them free, then the intruders would have something to reckon with, but there were seven men in between the quartermaster and the people in question, so perhaps that wasn’t a great idea.

Before he slipped out the door at the other end of the passage, Q took a moment to stop and listen. The footsteps behind him had died away, and the sound of gunfire had quietened momentarily in his immediate vicinity. Taking his chance, he tightened his grip on his gun and stepped out into the bright lights of the main corridor.

Nothing to the left, nothing to the right, he moved quickly into the stairwell and took the first couple flights two steps at a time. There was shouting audible on this floor, so he moved on up to a quieter level, stepped out into the corridor and came face to face with a man in a gasmask wielding a fuck-off massive gun. He was standing over one of the junior field agents, a man Q had had little direct contact with but still recognised in a distant way. Judging by the blood pool, he was definitely dead and the gasmasked intruder seemed to be revelling in that fact too much to react quickly: Q shot him twice and bolted, dreading the burning line of gunfire he expected to carve across his back as he ran.

He reached a closet, yanked open the door and ducked inside to catch his breath. It had been a long time since he’d done this much terrifying physical activity – since he’d been in school and they’d insisted he play rugby with the other boys in fact, which had lasted until he’d mixed together a mild explosive that reacted badly to sudden pressure and coated the ball in it thoroughly and after that he’d had to change schools again – and while he kept fit enough to pass the annual physical fitness checks that working as a spy entailed, he’d  never really improved on that. This was definitely more James’ scene, and Q was starting to regret leaving his office at all.

There had been no noise outside his closet, so he nipped out and padded down the corridor quickly. No one interrupted his journey, so he aimed in the direction of one of the exits and took another set of stairs up. No one was here either, and Q was just starting to worry about the sudden silence when he went around a corner without pausing to check and walked right into a big bastard of a man who swung the butt of an assault rifle against the side of his head without so much as a bye your leave. Q went down onto his knees, fingers painfully clenched about his gun but completely unable to raise his arms to shoot the arsehole anywhere it would do more than take off a toenail. A booted foot knocked his glasses flying and sent him tumbling to the side, and then the rifle butt descended again and the last thought Q managed to have was that James was going to be pissed when he didn’t get his flowers.

Chapter Text

Q was disappointed to wake up and find himself not already rescued by MI6 – and preferably James Bond himself – but sitting on a wobbly wooden chair, hands handcuffed behind his back, and in the middle of an abandoned warehouse. An abandoned warehouse, honestly! Q despaired sometimes.

Ranged about the walls were a bunch of huge men in bullet proof vests and toting big guns, and Si was pacing back and forth. He clearly planned to make himself look like a predatory animal, stalking hungrily, but he remained short and shrimp and Q remained unimpressed. All Si looked like was a worried little rat.

“I thought you’d have learnt your lessons from Silva, Q,” said Si, suddenly spinning on his heel and marching towards the bound quartermaster. One of the big bastards followed him, hand resting pointedly on his gun, and Q scowled at him first of all, just so Si didn’t get the pleasure of being acknowledged. “I was worried for a while that you would fill in all my little gaps. I’ve been working on this plan since before you were even hired!” He laughed, and grabbed Q’s hair, pulling his face up to meet his gaze. “I do really like watching you fuck up.”

“Must be novel. You normally watch yourself fuck up.” His wit was feeling a bit weakened mostly because he had the mother of all headaches, there was blood oozing into the corner of his mouth and his glasses were missing. Si jerked his handful of hair, the movement pulling painfully at a sore bruise where the butt of the rifle had struck him, and then let go with a disgusted noise. Q cursed at him under his breath, and scowled again at the bodyguard, just to make himself feel better even as terror swirled uncomfortably in his stomach. The man sneered back, unmoved by his captive’s attitude, and Q gave up and huddled down into his fear. This was much more Bond’s sort of situation – the 00-agent would be able to growl back and snarl replies and generally be more of a hindrance that a benefit to his captors. Q could do sarcastic replies no matter how scared he was, and he thought his teeth might be in a good enough state still to maybe bite someone. “Any reason why  you’ve kidnapped me then, or is this just a bonding exercise?”

Si glared at him, high colour splashed across his cheeks. He was scowling already and Q made sure he smiled in a particularly obnoxious fashion, just to piss the man off a little more.

“You don’t get to be the one giving the orders this time, Q,” sneered the man, leaning down to growl into Q’s face. “Just sit back and listen to me.”

“As you say.” Q shifted his knees, happy to find his ankles weren’t bound to the chair, and crossed his legs pointedly to find his most comfortable possible position.

“This is the thing, Q.” The man strode away a few paces, did a sharp heel turn and strode back and forth. He repeated the action several times, until Q began to feel less scared of his situation and more fucking irritated that Si wouldn’t just spit it out. He had almost given up on even having his kidnapping explained to him when Si stopped in his tracks, fists clenched behind his back and said, “You’re better at me at your job.”

Q blinked and said, “Well, yes. Because I didn’t lead a horde of armed men into MI6. That’s going to count against you in a big way in your next employee evaluation.”

Si clicked his fingers, and the big guard punched Q in the side of the head. Relative to the blow from the rifle butt he’d been given earlier, it was a mere tap, but Q’s already blurred vision swam sickeningly and he decided maybe he would lighten up on the sarcasm for the benefit of his few remaining brain cells.

“I have plans, Q, big plans. And I need you to make them work.”

Oh god, thought Q.  Si was that sort of villain then. There would be some way to work this nicely for himself, he was sure, but he would need a minute of calm to think this through. Right now, tied to a chair and surrounded by scary men with guns was not a good time to think anything through. He didn’t think he could work his way through an eleven-plus test at the moment.

“I’m good at what I do,” said Si, ignoring Q’s disrespectful snort. “But you are, sadly, better.” He made a face like he had been sucking lemons. “You, know,” he continued, in a conversational tone, “That it’s very hard these days, for a single, poor person to get a hold in the international crime stage. But I thought I had done well to get where I was, with a little jobbing hacking; destroying former Bloc credit, making trouble for the French, that sort of thing. But the  big boys were keeping me down, taking my acclaim, destroying my work…” He tutted dramatically and said, “And MI6 were watching me all the time, until they wised up and offered me a job. And I had a brainwave then!”

“You joined MI6 because you wanted to eliminate your competition,” said Q, realisation dawning slowly in his throbbing head.

“I’m so glad you’ve got it.” Si swung away, marching back and forth in front of him. “I did. I knew the big boys, and I helped you all take them down. But now you’ve eliminated that factor for me and it’s my time to shine!” He laughed, a mild hysterical madness to the sound, and Q grimaced. “But my work there also drew my attention to you, dear Q, and you have proved yourself to be incredibly useful. So I decided to bring you along!”

By now Si was full on ranting, face an unattractive crimson as he strode back and forth in front of his captive. Q was tempted to yawn ostentatiously, just to point out that the gloating and the ranting was a bit dull, but decided not to disabuse him of the habit because it was possibly something useful to cultivate.  The least Q could say for Si was that he ranted like a proper villain.

“You can do anything you put your stupid hipster head to, and I have orders to fulfil, a criminal tree to climb. You will be helping me.” He was smiling like a shark now, and Q didn’t have to ask what would happen if he refused any of Si’s demands, because it would clearly be unpleasant. “You!” Si span about suddenly, jabbing a finger out at the big bastard of a guard still standing by Q’s shoulder. He was still crimson about the face and panting slightly, but he’d  calmed himself enough to speak about something aside from his own genius. “We’ve talked enough! Get him ready for transport. Hurry about it!”

Before Q could figure out what he meant by that, the bodyguard had produced a very large knife from somewhere about his person – he must be compensating for something, Q thought rather wildly as he approached, and almost said as much before he realised that the way to not survive a kidnapping was to insult the penis size of the man in charge of the big knives. His speeding heartbeat – a few beats per minute off ascending into hysterical palpitations it felt – roared faster as the big bastard forcibly ripped his cardigan off and shredded one arm of his shirt with the tip of the knife, none too careful when the blade scratched Q’s skin.

“That was an expensive cardigan, you know,” Q said absently, careful to keep  any tremor out of his voice as the blade pressed at the little pucker of the vaccine scar on his arm. “What are you planning to do with that?” he continued, rolling his head over to peer into the bastard’s big face. The man didn’t speak, but shoved his head back to the other side, where Si was leaning over curiously. Q considered attempting to head-butt him in the crotch, but then the knife bit into his arm and he hissed through his teeth.

At the very least, it was a sharp knife and the big bastard knew what he was looking for, driving a fat finger – that he certainly hadn’t disinfected, a part of Q’s brain that was unaffected by the blazing pain and fear said in a peevish voice – into the wound to drag out a little pebble of a thing. Q whipped his head around to squint at the thing, when the bastard squished it between his sausage of a forefinger and his thumb.

Only Q noticed that part of the pebble squeezed out of the bastard’s grip and tinkled to the floor near his chair, because only Q was listening to it. A tracker that spat out part of its mechanism when it was removed from the body. If Q could retrieve that surviving part then MI6 would be able to find him with only minor difficulty, despite what Si was now crowing.

“Oh fuck up,” said Q tiredly. “Seriously, just shut the fuck up. You frankly weren’t good as a cyber security expert, and you aren’t good as a villain.”

Si punched him in the side of the head. Q had been expecting a heavier blow than that, and so feared his toppling sideways out of the chair and writhing on the floor in pain might be a bit overblown, but no one seemed to notice. They laugh at his apparent weakness, and the big bastard heaved him back up just as Q’s fingers close on a little warm, slimy metal object. He was wrenched up by his shoulders and then held in position by the hair, while he hurriedly slipped the remains of the tracker into the back pocket of his trousers.

“Take him away,” snapped Si. “He’s just trying to piss me off.”

“I’m succeeding,” replied Q, as the big bastard started to drag him away. “I always pissed you off, Si, and you fucking know it.”

“And teach him to shut the fuck up while you’re at it.”

They had more than a mere lesson in manners in mind when Q was dragged off. The bastard – the utter, utter bastard because he had Q’s glasses stuck in a pocket in his bullet proof vest – towed him away, gave him a beating he wasn’t going to forget until his next blow to the head, and then shoved him in the boot of a car.

Q had never considered how uncomfortable being stuck in a boot was before – not that he had had much occasion to do so before now – and it was remarkably unpleasant. He couldn’t tell how long he was stuck in there, head throbbing and arm burning, his back bent over uncomfortably and the air growing hot and humid with his breath. The car thumped over sleeping policemen and into potholes, screeched around corners that crushed his head against one side of the boot and braked suddenly enough to almost roll him over.

By the time the boot lid was opened and Q was hauled out over the lip, he was starting to feel intensely claustrophobic and was almost glad to see the face of his captors again. But he didn’t have much time to enjoy, as it were, the sights, because he was hustled into a building, down a rabbit’s warren of corridors and shoved forcibly into a dark room.

Buckling to his knees amid what he hoped was merely a puddle of water, Q winced as the big bastard nearly dislocated his shoulders in wrenching his arms up and unlocking the handcuffs. Immediately, because Q had listened in his self-defence lessons not matter what his instructors had believed, he swivelled and caught the bastard a sharp blow on one already cauliflower-ed ear. It was the source of some pride to  hear the man grunt in surprise and pain, right before he smacked the quartermaster right over the sensitive bruise the rifle butt had left and Q buckled in pain.

“Little shit,” grunted the big bastard, giving Q another kick in his ribs.

“Oh you can talk,” wheezed Q, because he had a death wish apparently. “Who trained you to do that?”

The man kicked him again a few times, and then stormed out, slamming a heavy door behind him and leaving Q sprawled on the floor in the dark.

For the sake of his bruises and wounds, Q allowed himself to lie still for a while until the cold of the floor and the damp seeped in and made it too uncomfortable to stay there much longer. Slowly, he sat up and looked about: the dark was too deep to see anything beyond his own nose, so he had to heave himself to his feet and totter about the place. There was the bare bones of a steel framed bed and the depressed culvert of a blocked off window, where the wood left  splinters in his fingertips, and several large puddles of water.

Having exhausted the possibilities of his prison, Q sank down on the edge of the bed frame and went through his pockets. There was little here as well; the tracker piece, a little circlet of wire, a couple of scrumpled post-its.

A wave of nausea swept over him as he tried to focus on what he could do to get out of here, and he had to drop his forehead into his hands and do his best not to vomit. His head ached like little else had ever done, his arm burnt as if he had been scalded rather than stabbed, and, even in this safe little space, his heart pounded fast in his chest. He wanted out of here now; he wanted to be back in MI6, in his office, safe behind his computer screens. Or, even better, to be in bed at home, with a cup of tea and an episode of Star Trek to watch.

He wanted James to come and get him.

Groaning, partially out of pain and partially out of misery at his own soppiness, Q drove his fingertips into the arch of his eyebrows in an attempt to dim the pain of his headache. All it did was make that part of his head hurt more, and he gave up and tried to think.

Si would have surely shown some element of craftiness in hiding Q from those who would want him back, so all Q had to do was help MI6 out think him. As long as his workers weren’t too shocked, or injured, by the invasion of their sanctuary, then they should have already been searching for the signal of his tracker. The splitting capability had been a prototype design Q had only placed within himself, due to worries it would split inside  the body and create some horrible metal-associated embolism that the doctors had really not been keen on at all. He was glad to see it had worked so well for him so for, but now he was starting to wonder.

It was a matter of them picking up the tracker signal. That was really it. But with the size of the pellet halved, it had lost some almost essential boosting equipment. There would still be a signal, but would it be enough?

Q shook himself gently, casting the faintly negative thoughts from his mind. The reality of his situation was grim and fucking terrifying, but he was the Quartermaster and his job was to create tools that people could use to get themselves out of other grim and terrifying situations. Normally he did it in the safety of his labs, but today would be a nice exercise in working in stressful conditions.

He would need some sort of boosting device to get the signal out there, even if it didn’t work brilliantly a small improvement might be what it would take. A basic sort of antennae system would be the simplest and easiest to make with the resources he had, and wouldn’t take much effort to make.

His head wounds were bleeding extravagantly – further ruining his already tattered cardigan and shirt – and he wished that he’d paid a little more attention in his first aid training, rather than drawing up circuitry diagrams for a new form of defibrillator like he actually had been doing. Clumsily, he removed his cardigan, and ripped off both arms of his shirt with the help of a sharpened piece of wire he liberated from the bed frame. He bound the already sliced sleeve around his arm wound, and then other vaguely about the worst of the bleeding from his scalp. It was difficult to tie the makeshift bandage in place, and it kept slipping down over his forehead and into his eyes, but it made it feel like he’d done something, so he kept it there. He put his cardigan back on for all the warmth it would supply, and collected his resources again.

The other good thing about trying to build something was it kept his mind off the grimness of the situation. He was being held captive, injured and at the whims of a total fucking nutcase. MI6 had been breached to its very core, people had fucking died in his branch – an involuntary shudder struck him at that thought, and he thought again that he might vomit – and while the remains of his team might be able to locate Q, the people who would be able to get him back were all out of the country. In despair, Q thought of the 00-agents – the closest was 004, in France and probably out of contact knowing her, and double-oh-seven was heading back right this second, but Q had no idea how long it had been since they had spoken last. He had no idea how long it had been since he’d been fucking knocked out the first time, or even how long he’d now been in this dank little cave.

Fuck it, he wanted out now.

Shivers took over Q’s hands, and he was forced to set down the remains of the tracker lest it skip out of his grip and be lost forever in a puddle. A few stubborn tears eked out of his eyes, but he refused to let them grip him entirely, and forced himself to take a couple deep breaths and tried to calm himself.

James Bond was coming to get him, even as Q sat on a cold metal bed and moped about how fucking screwed he was. That was a good thing, he told himself, and he would do well to remember it. And if he focused on building this antennae, then James would get to him all the quicker, Si would get the fate he so richly deserved, and then Q would be able to go home, buy James some roses and try to put the whole ‘I’m in love with you and I’m angry that you know’ thing behind them.

Maybe he would actually tell James. Maybe James would appreciate the sentiment – he doubted that briefly, but the thought made his hands shake too much again, so he latched onto happier thoughts. They could go back to being together without really being together – waking up in the same bed, legs all tangled, James’ hand more often than not settled on Q’s waist.

These thoughts kept Q’s mind bizarrely focused as he bent wires and craned his head in to find a focus point where he could work on the tiny components of the tracker. His glasses were still with the bastard, and it was exceptionally dark in here, but he found a good enough position and manipulated the pieces with a thin piece of wire in lieu of tweezers. He worked fast and dirty, not entirely sure whether his bodgejob would work in the end but determined to try, and was nearly done when he heard heavy footsteps in the corridor. If they spotted this they’d destroy it, so he wedged it into the corner between the bedframe and two walls and sat as far away from it as possible.

Light glared in from the corridor when the locks were opened and the door shoved open. Q squinted painfully, shuffling nervously away when the big silhouette of the bastard filled the doorway and stomped in.

“Come on, you little shit,” grunted the man, lunging for the quartermaster. Q hurriedly threw himself out of the way, and almost made a leap for the open door when he heard the clunk of a gun being armed and froze. “Good boy. Hands out.” The gun muzzle pressed to the back of his neck, grinding to the bump of one of his vertebrae, and Q raised his hands in front of him, closing his eyes so he couldn’t see how badly he was shaking.

Cold handcuffs clicked shut over his wrists and he was directed out into the corridor, the gun still a sinister touch at his nape. Such was the distraction of the metal on his spine he struggled to focus on the twists and turns he was forced to take, until he was pushed through a door and found himself facing Si again. Rage flared in Q’s chest, burning the fear away until he was ashamed of how low he had felt only seconds ago. No, he would be angry at this little wanker  and he would use that anger to get himself out of there, so he could go home and be retrospectively terrified of how close to being shot in the back he had just come.

“Good to see you, Q,” said Si. He cocked his head to the side and added, “How are you feeling?”

“Too late to go the friendly villain route,” said Q, his voice cold. “You went with power hungry nutter the first time. I would stick with that.”

“Fuck up!” Si gave him a slap over the back of his head, which made Q grit his teeth and swear to himself he would shoot the man in the kneecaps himself. “Time to do your work.”

“What company am I destabilising for you then?” grunted Q, looking about the room. There were a number of men lining the walls, all armed and scary, and a bank of computers. The bastard pushed him over and sat him down in front of one of the machines, and Si followed to lean over his shoulder. Q briefly considered head-butting him in the face but the bastard gave him a dirty look in the reflection in the computer screen and Q decided that was a bad idea indeed.

“Country, dear Q,” said Si, tapping the computer screen. “We’re taking down China today.”

“Oh, good,” said Q faintly. “That’ll end well.”

“For me, yes.”  Si smiled at him nastily and said, “Ready to do your work?”

“No.” Q tried not to tense too noticeably, worrying about another blow to his aching head. Si merely tapped him lightly, but managing to hit the epicentre of his original injury with unerring accuracy.

“Tough. Because if you don’t, you might lose a few fingers.”

“Ah,” said Q, “I was wondering when you’d bring out the big guns.”

“Those aren’t even the big guns.” Si slipped a finger down under Q’s collar in an uncomfortably familiar fashion and said, “You don’t want to know about the big guns…”

“Ah-ha,” said Q, pointedly taking his gaze off Si’s reflection in the screen. “Got it.” He stared at his own bleary reflection instead, focusing on his tightly pinched lips and the gritted angle of his jaw, until Si chuckled and moved back.

“Glasses,” said Si, holding his hand out vaguely. The bastard dropped him into his employer’s hand and Q watched blearily as the little tosspot inspected them thoughtfully. “God, how bad is your sight?” he asked after breiefly trying them on and Q merely rolled his eyes at the question.

You’re a shit villain, he thought to himself, a shit person frankly and if we weren’t surrounded by men with giant guns I would punch your weaselly little face in. But he’d been punched enough times in the head for now, so he kept the words to himself. The bastard undid the handcuffs and Q rolled his wrists carefully. His glasses were tossed onto the table in front of him and he just stopped himself from snatching them up, and merely inspected them thoughtfully for a second.

The lenses were both cracked, the left more so than the right, but Q slipped them on anyway and blinked in relief as the world coalesced into a firm form. He had worried for a while that the blurriness in his vision was down to his head injuries rather than his astigmatism, so it was exceptionally relieving to have his glasses back and to prove that theory wrong.

“Get to work,” said Si, “And I’ll maybe think of adding a mattress to your room.”

“How kind,” sneered Q, poking a finger at the keyboard and watching glumly as the screen lit up. The machine was preloaded with the programme he would need to do what Si wanted – that was if he had intended to actually do it. But in that second’s glance over the screen, Q had also noticed that the computer was connected to a network, which was almost certainly composed of all the other computers in this building. All he needed was a few minutes and Q could have the whole place in tatters. What a fucking amateur, he thought with no small amount of malicious glee and pretended to consider the screen for a moment. Si and his guards weren’t moving – the bastard was starting to look impatient in fact – so Q opened a few programmes he might have used to do Si’s dirty work and smirked when the tosspot grunted in satisfaction.

“I’ll be back in an hour to check you’re not slacking.” He exited the room, followed closely by the bastard and a couple of the other guards. Q typed a few lines of nonsense code just for the look of the thing and then considered his new situation.

They had left him alone with one of the smaller men, he noted in the reflection on his computer screen, and he didn’t know how long he was going to have. Groaning as he did so, Q stretched luxuriously – trying not to show it actually hurt like buggery thanks to the blows he’d taken to the ribs earlier –and cast a look over his shoulder.

“Oi you,” the man took a step closer, changing his grip on the knife in his belt. “Keep working.”

“All right, all right,” muttered Q, subsiding obediently but not typing anything more yet. The man stepped closer, prodding out a finger to encourage Q on, and the young man counted silently to twenty before he moved.

It was an attack he was sure even James Bond would have been proud of – he leapt up and punched the man twice in the face, grabbed his chair and smashed it over his head. The man went down like a pile of bricks and Q allowed himself a small moment of celebration before he bent down in front of the computer and set to his own work.

Of course,  Si was going to realise what was happening soon enough, but Q reckoned he could find something to do in the short amount of time he had left. He dived into the system, cracked a few codes open and did a hefty lump of damage to some important looking programs Si was probably counting on working. He also filtered in a few lines of nonsense code to some infrared sensors attached to the system, so anyone approaching would find it a bit easier to get inside, and then sprang back with a smile when the door slammed inwards and rebounded off the groaning heap of the original guard.

“You can’t get the employees these days,” said Q as the big bastard pushed his way into the room and stared down at the unconscious man on the floor. “I should know.”

“You little shit.”

Chapter Text

The room wasn’t any more pleasant with his glasses on. Q took them off after he was dumped on the floor, and hauled himself onto the bed frame with a hissing groan. The little antennae arrangement was still balanced on the corner and he fiddled with it hopefully for a few minutes to distract himself from the new aches and pains, until he was fairly sure it might have some effect on the tracker signal. This he placed in the corner of the window, where there was a tiny gap between the wooden boards and the wall.

That done it was time to consider proactive escape attempts – perhaps if he recalled the little of what he had seen of the lair, he’d be able to wind his way out and run for a road or a police station or even just hide in a hedge for a while. He just needed a method of opening the door and causing a bit of a distraction.

He chuckled to himself, feeling a bit of a maniacal scientist, as he shredded the post-it notes into a puddle and mushed up the remains into a little ball of putty. Some people said that Q branch wasted its time on the most esoteric of its creations, but frankly Q was very glad he’d spent a week helping the chemical weapons people formulate the explosive glue for his post-it notes. It was turning out to be very helpful invention and when he got back to MI6 he was going to demonstrate its usefulness to all his previous naysayers. Preferably with a practical demonstration on their doors.

Perhaps this was hysteria settling in, but Q didn’t care to think of that too closely. It was easier to be the proud inventor, than the heap of blubbering tears on the floor. 

Finally, the mush settled into the putty like texture that indicated it was time to think about structural weaknesses and running. The dark was still too deep to really inspect the walls carefully enough, so Q wedged a few strips of the putty into the hinges of the heavy door and used a sharp piece of wire to unravel part of one of his socks until he was able to braid it around a wire and create a little fuse. He wished they hadn’t taken his shoes from him – he had always made a little pocket into the heel where he could stow various handy things, including several things he would have been able to use to create fire. Now he was stuck grubbing about the floor to collect little chips of stone he could hopefully use to create a little spark.

When Q found two stones of appropriate size and type to create little flinty sparks, he arranged his fuse just so and practised diving behind the bed frame for protection a couple times before he knelt by the door and chipped the stones together.

And at that exact moment someone dropped out of the ceiling and landed almost directly on top of him. Q tipped backwards, cursing as his sore head struck the floor, with the hefty weight of the newcomer pinning him to the stone in an incredibly uncomfortable position.

“Shh!” The person said urgently, clasping a leather gloved hand over Q’s mouth and holding him still. Q would have fought – he could probably have brought a leg up hard into a place the man would not have appreciated it and wriggled away in the resultant confusion – but the newcomer was oddly familiar. The voice was familiar, the smell of the glove pressed beneath his nose, even the weight braced over his hips.

“Mmh!” Bloody hell, it was James fucking Bond.

“Going to stay quiet?” James hissed, bringing his head down to whisper right in Q’s ear.  His gloved hand lifted off Q’s mouth, and all the quartermaster did was flick his tongue out to lap away the blood from a scab the agent had disturbed. “Good boy.”

“Less of the patronising, more of the getting off my already aching ribs.” Q groaned quietly as James levered himself up, and rolled over onto his side to push himself up clumsily. When he was standing – not quite able to straighten the whole way up with the throbbing in his ribs – he added, “How the hell did you get in?”

“Air vents,” said Bond.

“That’s not even possible!” said Q.  Bond merely smiled and whipped a cylinder out of his pocket – the arse was still wearing a suit, and it was barely rumpled at all –, his lock picking pen Q recognised it as moments later.

“You can run?” he asked, as the mechanism chunked and squeaked.

“I can certainly try.” He flexed his calves and bent his knees to prove his legs were certainly operational, even if his lungs weren’t at full capacity. “Is this your escape plan?”

“I creep in, and blow my way out,” said Bond as the pen finished its work and the lock opened with no fuss. “You’ve watched me enough times.”

“Lacking in style, but certainly efficient.” Q smiled in relief; the flow of banter between them was as fresh as ever, and it was a load and a half off his shoulders to have James standing right here in front of him.

“Sounds more like you,” said Bond, one hand brieftly reaching out as if to touch Q’s cheek and then falling to his shoulder abruptly. “I’m chock-full of style.” His tone became serious. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Nothing serious,” said Q, as if he knew. Possibly his brain was filling up with blood or something equally horrid, but he could still think and move his head so he was supposing that wasn’t the case. “I’ve lost some blood, but that’s the risk with fieldwork.”

“Tell me if you need to stop,” said Bond, taking his hand firmly. “But do try to keep up.” He paused before he opened the door and carefully peeled away the explovie putty from the hinges. “And let’s bring this. For effect.”

“Chock-full of style,” repeated Q, tucking the explosive into his pocket. “I think you might be right.”

They ran. Q almost immediately discovered how hard it was to move swiftly with recently bruised ribs, but did his best to keep up nonetheless. Their progress was good, and they went undetected until they turned a corridor, and came against a group of bored looking guards. Bond shot three of them and then dragged Q fast in the opposite direction.

This turned out to be a bit of good luck; they came across an exit within a minute of that wild flight, and burst out into cold, fresh air and deep darkness.

“Give me the explosive!”

Q shoved the ball of putty into James’ hands, winced at the flare of a lighter and followed the little trail of light as James lit the fuse and lobbed the ball into the open doorway. Gun fire spattered the leaf litter near them, and they hurtled off again.

It was almost a pity that they missed the explosion, but it sounded impressive. Q felt laughter bubbling up in his chest, until it was nigh on impossible to breathe and he was tugging James’ grip to tell him to stop. James dragged him onward though, through a thicket and down a dark, grim dirt path that led to a silent, one lane road. Q expected them to turn one way down the road and walk to safety, but James practically threw him over a farm gate and up a hill.

By the time they reached the summit, Q was almost suffocated, breath coming in staccato gasps through uncontrollable giggles, and he sank to his knees in a refusal to carry on.

“Just down the other side of this hill,” said James, still standing. Q rolled his gaze upwards to tell the man exactly where he could stuff the other side of this hill, and saw the agent’s face highlighted with red light. He turned his gaze in the same direction and laughed properly to see the flames spearing high from what appeared to be a concrete warehouse. “Up you get.” James pulled Q to his feet and steadied him carefully as they both watched the sight; the agent was tensed and ready, while Q was wheezing faintly to get his breath back after his attack of hysteria. Eventually he felt ready enough to move and squeezed James’ hand.

The man squeezed back, and they moved on.

Hidden at the foot of the hill, against an overgrown hedge, was a Land Rover. Q hauled himself into the back seat at James’ insistence, and then climbed over into the front with no small amount of cursing when James hopped into the driver’s seat. The older man merely rolled his eyes, started the engine and drove on.

They weaved through fields for a few minutes, both of them silent, and then joined the one lane roads. Here James sped up to what Q felt were incautious speeds, and then brought his phone out of his pocket.

“Give me that!” he exclaimed, telling Bond to focus on the road instead. He hit speed dial number one, and waited impatiently for M, Moneypenny or Tanner to pick up. With every ring he grew more fearful that they had been incapacitated during one of gunfights, presumably after he himself had been taken.

The call hit the answering machine and Q gaped out of the window at the sound of the recording.

It was his own fucking answering machine. The one attached to his office phone, the one he rarely ever used because he had earpieces and computers and tablets and mobiles to keep him connected instead.

“Why am I..?” He started and then shook his head, gently for mind of his injuries. “Never mind. Which is M’s number?”

“Speed dial two,” said Bond, with a certain amount of amusement. As the phone rang against Q’s ear, the agent added, “You’re the most important one, you know. Even when you piss me off.”

Q thought it was dreadfully unfair that he didn’t get time to respond to that before M picked up his receiver.

The resultant debriefing over the phone and medical care lasted for hours, and Q found himself left in a guarded hospital room in Manchester – Manchester of all places, why had Si brought him up here? – with nothing to do. Bond had got them to safety, directed a team of soldiers to the warehouse, taken one look at the looks on the doctors’ faces when they had examined Q, and set off to follow the trail of destruction and gunfire. Q had merely rolled his eyes and told the agent to shoot Si in the kneecaps for him.

After that, he had been dosed to the gills with painkillers and left to fall into a slightly nervous sleep, waking every few hours when the guards changed on the door outside. He had the worry that the guards would be replaced by Si’s men, probably the big bastard and the little twerp with the knife that Q had knocked out, and then the whole situation would start again, but the only newcomer he ever work up to find was Moneypenny, leaning over him and tucking the sheets tight under his chin.

She had a black eye and a grim set to her mouth, but otherwise looked fine. “Didn’t mean to wake you, Q,” she said softly, settling into her chair beside his bed. “Go back to sleep.”

“Don’t they say people with concussions should avoid falling asleep?” he asked, yawning anyway.

“You’re in a hospital, you fool,” she sighed, “If there’s ever a place a man with a head injury can sleep, it’s amid a bunch of doctors. Now sleep, or I’ll get them to drug you.”

Q obeyed for a few hours, until he woke up again and found that Moneypenny had vanished. So had the hospital room, for he was now in an ambulance and Tanner was beside him. Tanner of all people, who probably had many other things to do, all of them in London. Who was paying for the helicopter flights to bring all these people back and forth, Q wanted to know.

“What the hell?”

“You’ll be in St Bart’s in two hours,” said Tanner, checking his phone absently. “M wanted you to be life-flighted over, but then we remember the fear of flying thing, and Bond’s not available to do nursemaid duties.”

“Funny man,” growled Q, drawing a look from one of the paramedics also sharing the back of the ambulance.

“He insisted we move you,” said Tanner, adding, “And he insisted either Moneypenny or I play guardian.”

“Who? M?” It was both the drugs and the injuries making him feel slow, Q told himself. The world didn’t seem to be travelling at the right speed for him to deal with anymore.

“Bond.” Tanner smiled quickly. “And M agreed. You’re bloody important, Q. We were kicking ourselves for losing you.”

“As well you might,” grumbled Q, closing his eyes again.

“Good work with the separated tracker, by the way. Although I thought that was prohibited by medical, last time I heard of it.”

Q declined to answer that time and went back to sleep.

St Bart’s gave him a nice room, without too many guards, because according to Tanner, Bond and his military squad had dealt out a fair punishment to Si and his men.

“He kneecapped the poor bastard,” Tanner had said, reading the news off his phone with a resigned face. Q had only smiled and said nothing in return. Within an hour of arrival, M and Moneypenny had visited, declared him off duty, extinguished his worry that all his branch had been horribly murdered, and left him, taking Tanner with them. A few doctors and nurses swept in and out, as he settled down to sleep again, disturbing him neatly ever hour, until he was ready to bite someone, or possibly cry with exhaustion.

Finally, he was left alone, with no more colleagues to talk to or doctors to examine him, and Q slept and slept and slept. Fear and pain had drained him just as much as days of flat out working had, and by the time he woke up, it was dark again and Bond was sitting by his bedside.

“We,” said Bond, before Q could even open his mouth, “Are going to talk.”

Q blinked and then shrugged carefully, mindful of his ribs and arm. “Fine. But you have to get me a drink of water first.”

Bond poured out a glass from a jug on the bedside drawer and pressed it to Q’s lips himself, refusing to let the younger man reach up and take it himself. Feeling like an invalid, and not a happy one at that, Q sipped anyway, until his throat no longer felt parched and his lips were smoother with liquid. Bond sat back down in the chair and gave Q a long look; resolve weakened by pain and drugs and the mind numbing fear he had experienced, Q broke under the long silence and hated himself a little bit for it.

“I think it’s unfair to trap me to talk about this while I’m in my hospital bed.” Q tried to fold his arms, but a burning pain high on his right arm reminded him of the wound there and he subsided.

Bond shrugged and leant forward, elbows on his knees. He looked predatory, in a focused, honed fashion, like a hawk that had spotted the perfect pigeon. Q suspected he was that pigeon.

“Talk then,” said the young man, because if he was going to be the pigeon, he was going to be a nasty, difficult London pigeon and fight to the end.  

Bond gave a mildly exasperated sigh and asked, “You do care for me?”

“Of course! I can’t even begin to deny that one!” Q gritted his teeth at the stupidity of the question.

 “But it doesn’t stop there, and you know it now.”

The young man sighed and rolled his eyes, wishing he could cross his arms over his chest and be petulant without hurting his wounds. “You practically don’t need me here for this conversation.”

“Q,” said Bond, voice deep. He leant forward even more, one hand reaching out to close over Q’s own hand. “You’ve led me on a merry goose chase with this one.”

“What?”

“I had thought… The first time…” Bond had flushed a remarkable shade of pink, and was looking incredibly discomfited. Perhaps he was drunk, Q thought, because 00-agents rarely went colours like that unless they’d been at the whisky or someone was strangling them. “But you threw your little hissy fit, and I figured you didn’t actually…”

“Ah,” said Q, experiencing another moment of realisation. His panic at James finding out his feelings had caused the agent to think the exact opposite of the truth, and the pair of them had been absolute knobs and fucked something quite nice up in a fashion that wouldn’t have been out of place in a romantic comedy. “I think I might have been a twat.”

“I think that too,” said James, in mild fashion. He reached out his spare hand and carefully tucked a strand of Q’s forelock behind his ear, fingertips trailing there in a familiar manner. “You changed your tune when MI6 was compromised.”

“You said no last minute confession, or famous last words,” said Q.

“And you don’t listen to a word I say.” James’ face was calm, but his eyes were alive with something Q couldn’t quite read. Fear? Anger, more like, that was more a double-oh-seven emotion. “I realised then what you meant, when I was in Canada and you were about to get yourself shot for being a wise-arse. I realised what I had wanted you to say.”

He didn’t explain further, and lapsed into a morose silence of the sort only James Bond could manage. Q wasn’t sure how to intervene anymore, and sat there quietly too, biting the inside of his lip in an old nervous gesture. His bottom lip was still split from a blow to the face, and the scab cracked under his attentions, metal spilling onto his tongue.

“I can’t promise anything,” said James suddenly, his thumb sweeping slowly over the ridges of Q’s knuckles. “You know what I’m like.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” said Q, meaning it entirely.

“I don’t know what you’ll be getting.” The agent met his gaze again with cool eyes, sadness creeping in about the corners. “I…” He stopped and started again. “I don’t know yet, Q.”

“Of course.” His tongue felt thick with disappointment, but he was proud he managed to tuck it down so well. This was more than he had expected to happen: James Bond was actually considering his love. He seemed pleased to have it, in some odd way, and he was thinking about returning in kind. Q could cope with that.

“I’ll certainly think hard on it.” James’ hand drifted up to Q’s cheek again, and the quartermaster could fool himself the touch was lined with affection if he closed his eyes. “You’re certainly worth thinking hard about.”

Q returned to work in a week, with a huge bandage on his arm – bigger than was strictly necessary to be honest  - and bruises on his scalp. His office, and the cyber security department, was still a mess; someone had obviously tried to tidy up, but there were banks of shattered screens, his inbox had been emptied over the floor and his laptop had exploded and splattered someone over a wall. They had left a silhouette, where the cleaning team had managed to remove the blood and gore but struggled with the burn marks, and Q considered the shape for a moment before deciding he would just ask for the concrete to be painted another colour – preferably not silver or beige this time, thank you MI6 interior design  – and live with the reminder that his sanctuary was not entirely secure for the time being.

His emails were already stacking up when he checked his tablet, set on his desk where his laptop should have been, and he flicked through them absently. Most of them were various departments asking for help resetting alarms and computer systems, a few were asking if he had been killed, and a few more were telling him he was shit at his job and this was the fucking second time he’d let this happen. The guilt was undeniable, but only momentary – every day, hundreds of people attempted to access MI6’s computer systems, and a couple would try to sneak inside in person, and most days every single one of them failed. Two, only two, very smart men with plenty of resources and no small amount of time on their hands had gotten in. Q’s track record would only get better, and he doubted there was a better man for the job than he was.

Perhaps he would go give a demonstration of how well his post-it explosive worked after all.

He finished checking his emails and took a moment to stand very still and try to figure out what needed done most of all. He had to get Q branch cleaned up again, had to get replacement equipment in, patch the holes in the security that Si had left on purpose. The doors would need replaced, and all the electronic locks – should they go back to good old fashioned keys, or was that odd? – and he’d have to get the other departments that had been plundered set up again as well. Accountancy had been particularly badly hit, and they were anal bastards about how they wanted things set up, because if Q didn’t do what they wanted bang went quite a lot of his budget.

His other problems included Tanner and Moneypenny fussing over him – Moneypenny obviously feeling guilty that Q-branch had been stormed and she had been stuck in M’s office and unable to help, and Tanner because Bond had apparently charged him with Q’s care while he was gone. The pair of them were intolerable – how they spared the time to come down to his branch and aggravate him, he could not tell - , and Q had already worked a bit of magic on the cyber security branch doors to prevent them from opening when either M’s secretary or his Chief of Staff approached. Q had expecting M to be an annoyance as well, but the man had merely given Q a mildly interested once over, asked if he was fighting fit and sent him off to do his work.

The last problem was double-oh-seven.

Bond had already been dispatched back to Canada, not long after his talk with Q. There had been no more contact between the two of them, and thinking about it made Q’s stomach clench. He’d been forced to show all his cards, Bond had kept his all close to his chest, as was his way, and now he was left to wait for some sort of communique that would give him a clue as to whether Bond was prepared to accept his affection.

But he wasn’t going to be waiting around like a teenaged girl – angsting, he sighed to himself – not this time. He would get on with his job, and if Bond ever deigned to contact him, then that would be great. If not then…

Then he’d figure something out.

He picked up his tablet and went out into the cyber security department. His little team were all at their desks – one short obviously – tapping away grimly on their own tablets and laptops. Q crossed to Alice’s desk and leant over her shoulder, feeling immediately horrible when she jumped in shock. She was pale today, her hair a mess and her clothes flung on; shock at being chased from their almost impregnable castle again, this time by one of their own. Q couldn’t think of how to help her, but to give her something to do so she wouldn’t think too long on what had happened, and what might have happened if things had gone even slightly differently.

“I’m going to need to get this place re-equipped,” he said. “What do you say we need?”

Face lighting up slightly with the power to choose, Alice rhymed off a list of things she needed to get the department fully operational again, and Q became increasingly despondent at the list of stuff that had been broken. By the end of the list, he was drooping slightly; a position that was only worsened by Alice dropping a sheaf of official requisition forms into his hands.

“Oh, and here.” Alice handed over a little yellow slip of paper, sticking it to the top of the pile of forms in Q’s hands. “He wanted to make sure you’d get it, that it wouldn’t be lost in that bombsite.” She nodded to his office and smiled, a level of mischief rising beneath the shock in her eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, glad to see evidence she’d be back to normal soon enough. “I’ll requisition a new coffee machine for that.”

“You’re going to have to get one anyway,” said Alice glumly, “Did I miss that one out?”

Q retired to his office, dropped the requisition forms in a corner and turned his attention to the little yellow slip. It was Q-branch’s finest, so none of the senior staff then, and no one in his department would make Alice leer quite like that. This was a very important little note and Q’s heart climbed into his throat.  

The post-it note was smooth and precise, clearly plucked fresh from a new batch, and Q tested the glue with his fingers for a few seconds to prolong the anticipation. When he read it, the message was short and simple and joy rose in his chest until he thought his mouth might split open with his smile.

“Q,” it read, in James’ bold, strong hand, “You still owe me roses.”