Chapter Text
There was no shortage of data on 007.
Q had read the files. Some he’d written himself. Mission logs, psych assessments, surveillance fragments from places Bond was never meant to be. Patterns of behavior flagged by half a dozen departments — some accurate, most reactive.
A known quantity, they called him. Predictable in the way hurricanes were: classified by scale, measured by damage, discussed mostly in past tense.
Q didn’t dispute it. Statistically, Bond was a volatile asset.
But statistics had never told the whole story.
What the records didn’t reflect — what didn’t make it into post-mission summaries or psychological risk matrices — were the moments in between. The intervals. The quiet after motion.
Q had seen it firsthand: Bond alone in a corridor, just off shift, posture still as if waiting for something that hadn’t arrived yet. Bond in Q Branch, silent, unrushed, not seeking instruction — just… being there.
And lately — more often — Bond with tea in hand. Always Assam. Strong, no sugar. Set down without fanfare. Sometimes without a word.
It wasn’t in his file that Bond could sit beside another person for hours without speaking and never make it feel like a silence owed explanation.
That he could notice when Q hadn’t eaten, and say nothing, and quietly hand him a sealed ration bar the next time he passed.
No mission tag. No agenda. Just a kind of attention so rare in their line of work it bordered on foreign.
Q hadn’t marked the first time it happened. But he remembered when he started noticing it.
When the gesture stopped being noise in the background and became a signal he couldn’t ignore.
The thing with Bond was that he didn’t repeat himself unless he meant to.
Q began noticing the rhythm after the fourth or fifth appearance — not mission-linked, not summoned. Just quiet arrivals. A biometric check at security. A nod to the analysts in the corridor. No fanfare, no file.
At first, Q assumed he needed something.
A firmware patch. A system query. The kind of field request he preferred to deliver in person so he could argue about its necessity.
But nothing was requested.
Bond would drift in, pause near the decrypt queue or the far table, sometimes sit. He’d stay long enough to help run two legacy scripts or finish a test cycle. Then leave again, like weather passing through.
No disruption. No demands.
At some point, Q stopped asking why he was there.
Because a pattern had formed — not rigid, but steady.
Mondays, sometimes. Thursdays more often. Never on Fridays. Mornings only if Q had been in early himself. And always after active rotation ended — when Bond was between things, neither in nor out.
Q tracked patterns for a living. He saw what most people missed.
He saw that Bond always left space when he approached. That he never interrupted active tasks, but waited at the edge of Q’s periphery until invited closer — usually by silence.
That he brought tea when Q had been speaking less. That he stayed longer when the week had been harder. That he left before anyone else could ask why.
It was not the kind of behavior MI6 encouraged.
But Q didn’t discourage it, either.
And eventually — without any formal acknowledgment — a kind of permission settled between them.
Bond came. Q let him.
Sometimes, that was all.
And sometimes, it was enough.
---
It happened during a routine handoff — the kind Q could do half-blind. Midweek. Mid-afternoon. Nothing remarkable.
Bond had just finished verifying a legacy decrypt. Q passed him the next segment — not even looking, attention fixed on a telemetry spike in the corner of the screen.
Their fingers touched.
It wasn’t significant. Shouldn’t have been. A brush of knuckles. Skin against skin, brief and unmarked. No sharp movement, no stumble.
Q didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink.
Bond didn’t comment. Didn’t make it into a joke or an apology. Just accepted the contact and moved on.
That should have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Later — after Bond had gone, after the lights in the lab had dimmed to evening mode — Q found himself replaying the moment.
Not the touch itself. Not the temperature or texture or any of the data his mind usually tagged and filed away. What stayed with him was the absence of any demand.
There was no shift in Bond’s expression. No subtle lean. No calculated escalation. He hadn’t used it as a test or a message. He’d simply let it happen.
That, more than anything, unsettled Q.
He was used to people who reached. Who touched to anchor, to distract, to claim. Even well-meaning colleagues often grasped for reassurance in the form of proximity.
But Bond hadn’t reached.
He hadn’t even lingered.
And still, the moment stayed. Lodged somewhere behind Q’s ribs, quiet as breath.
It wasn’t the touch that mattered, he realized.
It was the way it didn’t try to take anything.
After that, Q started watching him.
Not professionally — not like field surveillance or asset monitoring. Those methods were clean, clinical, useful.
This wasn’t.
He caught himself noticing things that had no bearing on performance:
• The way Bond’s shoulders settled half a second before he spoke.
• How he always stood to Q’s left, just out of arm’s reach unless Q moved first.
• That he never crossed into Q’s personal space without some silent signal, and never pushed if it wasn’t answered.
It wasn’t deference. It wasn’t caution.
It was respect. Or maybe recognition — that space mattered.
Q hadn’t expected that from him.
What he expected was bravado, challenge, deflection. But Bond had always called him Q — never with edge, never to provoke. Just… plainly.
He hadn’t used charm as a tool in Q Branch. Hadn’t tried to turn the air between them into something clever. No posturing. No push.
What he did do — consistently, unerringly — was notice.
Q hadn’t mentioned the new glasses prescription, but Bond had shifted the terminal font up a point during shared work without asking.
He’d changed the milk ratio in Q’s tea after one particularly exhausting week.
He’d stood beside Q during an all-night data rebuild without once checking his watch, even when the room emptied to just the two of them.
And Q, in turn, had stopped offering explanations for why Bond was there.
He let him plug into decrypt queues. Left the spare chair pulled out. Kept a second mug clean without acknowledging it.
He left the biscuit tin half open once — unintentionally, he thought — and the next day found it quietly refilled. No comment. No note.
The kind of exchanges that didn’t need confirmation. Only recognition.
He wasn’t analyzing anymore.
He was responding.
---
It wasn’t a dramatic moment.
No thunderstorm, no op gone wrong, no shared glance held too long across the lab.
It was a quiet Thursday. Light rain misting against the upper windows. The servers had synced early. Most of Q Branch had already packed up.
Q stayed behind, as he often did — small calibrations, prep for the next week.
He brewed tea out of habit, not expectation.
Poured one cup.
Then reached for the second mug.
Hesitated.
But didn’t stop.
He poured it anyway.
Set it down beside the first.
Bond hadn’t come that day.
There’d been no check-in, no quiet arrival at the decrypt queue, no silent offer of help. Q hadn’t thought much of it during the day — Bond was a 00. His absence wasn’t unusual.
But now, alone with the weightless stillness of an almost-empty lab, Q realised he’d been waiting.
Not actively. Not with tension. Just… aware.
He hadn’t made two cups out of routine. He’d made them because part of him had expected Bond to appear — not for any reason, but because he had, so many times before.
Because Q had started to look forward to it.
He exhaled, slow. Let the pause linger.
That was it, then.
It wasn’t observation anymore. Not detachment. Not curiosity. Not even comfort in pattern.
He missed Bond when he wasn’t there.
That was the difference. The turning point.
It didn’t need a name. It didn’t need action.
But it was real.
He picked up his mug. Left the second one beside it — full, untouched.
And when the door finally opened five minutes later, Bond didn’t say anything.
Just walked in. Set down his coat. Saw the second cup.
And stayed.