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“007, if you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do,” Q’s voice comes crisply over comms, “I would advise against it.”
Bond at the moment is crouching behind a concrete barrier, bullets cracking overhead. He glances at the reinforced window across the courtyard and a plan formulates in his mind.
“You wound me,” Bond replies smoothly. “I’m simply considering an alternative entrance.”
“The alternative entrance is a forty-foot drop.”
“With a landing.”
“With a fractured femur at the bottom.”
Bond smiles faintly and adjusts his cufflink. His exploding cufflinks, the thought that Q had made such pristine looking cufflinks to explode still makes him giddy. “You worry” He adds, because Q always worries, about him, about all his agents, he is constantly trying to do better and that is evident given the drop in number of casualties since he took over.
“I calculate,” Q corrects. “And statistically speaking, you are overdue for an injury.”
Gunfire erupts again and Bond is on a move, precise and lethal.
“East stairwell,” Q continues. “Camera loop active. You have exactly thirty-nine seconds before someone realizes their visual feed is a recording of an empty corridor.”
“You’re very good to me.” Bond’s voice is as earnest as he feels.
They always do this, this effortless dance with each other, flirting bordering on the pattern of an old married couple who knows everything about one another.
“Yes, well, try not to die. The paperwork is atrocious.”
Bond’s voice softens just slightly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
In Q Branch, Q allows himself the smallest exhale.
Then his system flags another anomaly. There is no rest for the weary Q muses and opens the details.
Restricted server access. Internal.
That is weird Q thinks it is not Bond’s mission, so he is safe, but then why is his system alerting him. He frowns, fingers flying over his keyboard.
Agent clearance: 00 status.
His jaw tightens.
Behind the glass walls of his office, the door slides open.
Q doesn’t look up at first.
“R,” he says absently, “did you authorize a cross-division—”
He stops, notices the shift in the air, his body is instantly on alert because, It’s not R.
It’s a 00 agent. Senior. Decorated. Familiar.
Holding a gun.
Q’s fingers move subtly — muting Bond’s comm feed mid-sentence, no use breaking his focus.
“Agent,” Q says calmly, standing, calculating, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
The agent steps inside, the door sealing behind him.
“You should’ve stopped digging.”
“I rarely stop when I’m correct.”
The agent’s mouth twitches. “You think you’re untouchable up here.”
Q tilts his head slightly, his eyes assessing all the weaknesses of the 00 in front of him, bruised ribs and and old injury to L4 leaving it as weak point, because he knew he might have to throw arms, if not to save himself but to save everyone else “On the contrary. I’m acutely aware of my touchability.”
His hand hovers near his desk for the silent lockdown protocol, a slight tremble in his movement and the agent notices.
“Don’t.”
Q withdraws his hand slowly eyes never leaving the wayward agent in front of him.
“You’ve been diverting funds,” Q says evenly. “Off-book operations. Data siphoning. And your encryption work is sloppy. Frankly, I expected better from a double-O.”
“You weren’t meant to notice.”
“That’s rich coming from someone actively committing treason.. So what is your play here Daniel, kill me and get away with it?” Q challenged, it was always a good way to disarm a 00 using their given name.
“Don't you dare call me that” the agent snarled “Daniel has been dead for ages and none of you bloody cared and now I will build a life that is promised to us when we join, after all I have the licence to kill” his voice smug and eyes dangerously giddy.
Q sighed so there was a personal angle to Daniel going rouge, Q recollected all that he could remember from Daniel’s file and their past interactions and took a gamble, it would either delay the imminent danger and buy them some time or it would aggravate him enough that he might make a mistake and Q can have an upper hand, with a deep breath in he steeled himself and exhaled
“Daniel, I know you're hurting, I know that you miss your mother, but what happened was not on you, you can not let it ruin what you have built, you can still come back from this”
Down below, analysts are still working. Techs. Interns. R somewhere on the floor, Q took a stock of everything, as he continued speaking, in a calm controlled manner, R will soon realise that Q is not on comms with Bond and she might come to check on him, he thought, subtly shifting his body position, placing himself further into the office, drawing the agent’s line of fire away from the open glass wall overlooking Q Branch.
“You’ve put me in a very inconvenient position,” Q continues. “I’ll have to report this, but I'll make sure that you get help, that this doesn't…” he knows he's bluffing and so does the 00, as Q sees his face turn into a truly demented grin and steals himself because apparently this has aggravated the rogue agent.
“You won’t.” is all Q hears before there is a shot ringing through his ears and shattering of the glass wall.
Screams echo below.
Q doesn’t flinch at the sound, but he does pivot immediately, dodging the bullet.
“Evacuate!” he shouts down to the floor. “Level three lockdown! Now!”
The agent fires again.
The bullet grazes Q’s side, tearing fabric and skin.
He stumbles but stays upright, looking for an in.
“You’re making this worse,” Q says through clenched teeth.
The agent advances. “You should have stayed behind your screens dear boffin”
Q’s eyes flash, as he calculated the best plan of attack.
“And you should have learned basic cryptography.”
He lunges. It is not as lethal as a 00, but it is as calculative and effective. He slams into the agent’s gun arm, elbowing him in his bruised ribs, knocking the next shot into the ceiling. They crash into the railing overlooking the lower level. And Q hits the weak spot on the agent's back he had calculated in his spine and Daniel foes down. But another shot rings out and this one hits.
Q gasps sharply, the impact stealing his breath.
Still, he grips the agent’s wrist with surprising strength.
“R!” Q shouts hoarsely. “Security override—”
The agent elbows him hard, breaking free. Fires again at close range.
The world tilts.
All hell breaks loose
Somewhere across the world—
Static explodes in Bond’s ear.
He’s mid-strike, disarming a hostile operative when Q’s voice cuts out.
“Q?” he snaps. “Q, I’ve lost audio.”
Nothing.
Just distant chaos bleeding faintly through the channel before it dies completely.
His pulse spikes. Panic settling in his bones, he knows something is wrong because Q would never lose connection with his agent, least of all Bond, and he knows it, something bitter spools in his stomach poisoning his thoughts.
“Control, this is 007. I need Q back on comms.”
A different voice answers.
R.
Tight. Controlled. Trying not to sound afraid. There is chaos in the background.
“007, remain focused on your objective.”
Bond freezes mid-step, mission forgotten, the only thought on his mind is Q
“Put him back on.”
A beat of silence.
“Is he alive?” Bond demands.
Another beat.
“Yes.” R's voice is controlled but fraying at the edges
Something cold settles behind Bond’s ribs, his legs feel shaky and in all his life of being a 00, of destruction, this is, he feels the desolution of his hope worse than what he had felt when Vesper was taken from him.
“What happened?” His voice is low now. Dangerous.
“There’s been an incident at headquarters,” R says carefully. “Security has it contained.”
Bond’s jaw tightens.
“Is he conscious?”
“—We’re stabilizing him.”
The world narrows, all of Bond’s focus shifts to one point in time and space Q. Bond is currently pressed against the interior wall of a warehouse office, three armed men between him and the primary target. Rain lashes broken windows. His comm crackles softly in his ear. But all of his focus is on one and only thing that matters most.
“Define stabilizing,” he says, his voice cracks a bit even though he tries to sound unaffected to R, because somewhere back home Q is fighting life and death, and Bond isn't there, this wasn't supposed to happen, they were supposed to keep bantering through the missions, and Bond eventually when ready would have asked him out for dinner, but now Q is hurt and Bond is here.
On the other end, R’s voice remains level. Controlled and efficient as ever, he sees now why she is Q’s second in command.
“He’s in surgery.”
Bond forgets to breathe.
Somewhere down the hall, footsteps approach.
“Put him on,” Bond demands, trying to hold onto the last of hopes, wanting to hear his voice to make sure that he will make it.
“He’s unconscious.”
A beat.
“What happened?” His voice lowers, but it trembles at the edges, hopes slipping out of desperate man.
“I cannot discuss that right now.”
Gunfire erupts in the corridor. Bond fires back on instinct, drops one, two. He doesn’t even register their faces.
“R,” he says, and this time it’s not a command. It’s something else. “I need to get back.”
“You are mid-operation, 007.”
“I don’t care.”
The words leave him before he can polish them, he needs to be there, needs to see for himself.
There's silence on the line.
“This mission required a week,” R continues carefully. “We are three days in. You are the only operative embedded. If you withdraw, the entire intelligence chain collapses.”
Bond leans back against the wall, chest heaving, nothing matters now, just Q.
“He’s alone.”
“No,” R replies immediately. “He’s not.”
“You don’t understand.”
Her voice softens — just slightly. “Then make me.”
Bond doesn't know how to respond that “Book me on the next flight to London,” he says eventually.
“007—”
“Book me the flight.”
He’s not suave or cool now. He is on his knees begging to a God he long stopped believing in. There’s something stripped in his voice, almost child-like in the plea.
“I will finish this,” he adds, swallowing hard. “But I am getting on that plane.”
R is silent for a long moment. She can hear it — the fracture in him. The urgency that has nothing to do with protocol.
“James,” she says deliberately, using his name to anchor him. “Are you making a tactical decision?”
“No.”
“Are you compromising national security?”
“I’ve already calculated the fallout, I will eliminate the threat”
That stops her.
“And?” she presses.
“And I accept the consequences if any”
Gunfire cracks closer.
Bond closes his eyes briefly.
“If he dies while I’m chasing ghosts in a foreign warehouse—” His voice breaks. He forces it steady. “I will not forgive myself.”
The line goes very quiet.
When R speaks again, her tone has shifted.
“Finish the objective,” she says. “As cleanly as possible. No civilian exposure. You have ninety minutes before I can justify moving assets for your extraction.”
Bond exhales, his focus that of a feral animal on the hunt.
“Ninety is generous.”
“James.”
He pauses.
R’s voice has a careful edge now. She is definitely testing him, trying to determine the exact objective, making sure if she can believe what she suspects.
“Is this personal?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. He doesn't know how to, because yes it's personal, but how does he explain, that it is also because Q. brilliant, efficient, caring, precise yet kind Q.
Across the hall, the primary target begins evacuating through a reinforced exit.
Bond watches him go, he knows he'll get him soon, right now something much more important is at stake
Then he soeaks, voice low and unguarded:
“Yes.”
There it is, his heart naked and out in the open, R to her credit doesn’t react audibly. But she hears everything in that one word.
“Understood,” she says quietly. “I will provisionally secure you a seat on the first military transport out of Bucharest. It will not wait.”
“It won’t need to.”
“And 007? If this is what I think it is,” she says carefully, “make sure you’re certain.”
Bond doesn’t hesitate or pause this time because “I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
He disconnects.
What follows is not the elegant dismantling MI6 prefers.
Bond abandons subtlety. He rigs the warehouse’s structural columns with the full extent of his remaining explosives. Fuel lines. Secondary munitions storage. Every exit point. The target realizes too late before the hurricane of Bond hits them. As he steps out into the rain just as the first round of detonation rips through the building.
The blast wave punches outward, glass and steel folding inward in a thunderous collapse.
Fire climbs into the night sky.
No loose ends.
No survivors.
“Objective terminated,” Bond says into comms, already moving toward extraction coordinates.
R inhales slowly on the other end.
“That was excessive.”
“It was effective.”
There is a pause on the comms line and Bond wonders just how much of himself has he flayed open for R to prod around.
“Your transport is en route,” she says simply “Forty-three minutes.”
Bond is already running before she finishes.
By the time he boards the aircraft, it had been over twelve hours that Bond hadn't rested and moreover his own universe feels like it was collapsing in on itself.
Now that he’s forced to sit, it hits him.
The stillness and the not knowing.
He stares at nothing, jaw tight, fingers flexing restlessly against his thighs. His knee bounces once — he forces it still. Fails. It starts again.
His phone vibrates sometimes after he has boarded the plane, he doesn't even realises before he has picked up the call and registers the voice as belonging to
Moneypenny.
He doesn't know what he said initially but after realising who was calling, the first words out of his mouth are a desperate plea.
“Tell me he’s awake.”
“He’s not,” she says gently.
Bond leans forward, pressing his knuckles to his mouth.
“What happened?” he demands, his entire body trembling, tense.
There’s a pause.
“I can’t go into details yet.”
“Was it internal?” His voice is razor thin. “Was it one of ours?”
Another pause, he can actually see Moneypenny calculating whether she should tell him or not
“Yes.”
Something dark flashes behind his eyes.
“Name.”
“James—”
“Name.”
“I can’t.”
His hand curls into the armrest so hard the leather creaks.
“If he dies,” Bond says quietly, each word carved in stone, “I will kill whoever did this.”
“James.”
“I mean it.”
Moneypenny’s voice shifts — softer, perceptive.
“I know you do.”
The cabin hums around him.
“You ended a week-long covert op in under two hours,” she says carefully. “R told me.”
Bond says nothing, but he is grateful for R's perceptiveness that she went to Eve rather than M.
“You scared her,” she adds.
That almost pulls a hollow surprised laugh from him.
“Good.”
Silence stretches between them, Bond is surprisingly out of all the clever words, then she asks gently, “How long have you known?”
He closes his eyes, he isn't sure what exactly he is being asked “Known what?”
“That you’re in love with him.”
That word lands like a strike to the chest, and after a beat, because yes that is what this is love, his breath stutters and it takes him a moment before he continues carefully
“I didn’t allow myself to.” he whispers quiety
“That wasn’t my question.”
His throat tightens.
“If he doesn’t wake up,” Bond says, voice raw now, stripped of everything, “I will never get the chance to tell him.” There is not an ounce of the 007 charm in his voice, just fear.
“And that terrifies you,” Moneypenny says softly.
“Yes.”
It’s barely audible. But it’s true.
The plane cuts through the night toward London. Bond stares out the window, jaw set, eyes burning.
For once in his life, he is not afraid of dying.
He is afraid of arriving too late.
The cabin is dark except for the low emergency strip lighting along the floor. Bond hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. He sits forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles ache. The engine’s hum fills the silence, but it doesn’t drown out his thoughts. They’re worse and so so loud.
He remembers Q’s voice the first day they met — sharp, unimpressed, utterly unafraid of him.
“I’ll hazard, I can do more damage on my laptop before my first cup of earl grey than you can do in a year in the field.”
Bond had smirked.
“You still have spots”
“Age is no guarantee of efficiency”
“Youth is no guarantee of innovation”
He swallows.
He remembers Q leaning over his shoulder, adjusting his cufflink transmitter with steady hands.
“Try not to bleed on it this time.”
He remembers Q’s eyes lighting up when something worked perfectly. The quick, private smile he never showed anyone else. The way he would quietly monitor Bond’s vitals on long missions and pretend it was purely procedural.
He remembers the concern Q never voiced outright.
“Your heart rate is elevated.”
“I’m being shot at.”
“Yes, well, perhaps stop.”
A breath shudders out of him.
He presses the heel of his hand against his eyes.
He remembers the way Q looks at him when he thinks Bond isn’t watching.
Soft.
Dedicated.
Brilliant.
Braver than half the field agents who carry guns and the one who Bond wanted to protect his whole life, walked into danger alone to protect his people.
His vision blurs and he blinks hard — but the tears come anyway, silent and furious. They track down his face before he can stop them. He doesn’t wipe them away immediately, letting them fall
“I should have been there,” he whispers into the empty cabin.
He has buried lovers before. He has stood at graves and told himself that this is the life he chose. But Q wasn’t supposed to become one of them. Q was supposed to stay in glass-walled safety. Q was supposed to keep scolding him for reckless driving.
Q was supposed to—
The plane hits minor turbulence.
Bond inhales sharply and forces himself upright.
“Hold on,” he murmurs to someone thousands of miles away.
The plane hasn’t fully stopped landing before Bond is unbuckled and by the time the hatch opens, he’s already moving.
Moneypenny is waiting on the tarmac.
She takes one look at him and her expression shifts — professional composure cracking.
He looks wrecked.
“James.”
He stops in front of her, searching her face before she even speaks.
“He’s alive,” she says immediately.
Bond exhales shakily feeling the last drops of hope falling on desert ground.
“But he’s not out of danger.”
The air between them goes tight again as they start walking briskly toward the waiting vehicle.
“I have handled M,” she continues. “Told him the mission deteriorated due to hostile escalation. Which, technically, it did.”
Bond glances at her.
“I informed him I ordered you back,” she adds. “On the grounds that the rogue 00 is ex-military. Similar background to yours, even though you're from the Navy, but it had to work.. and also the fact you’ve run operations with him before. You might anticipate behavioral patterns.”
Bond understands what she’s done.She’s shielded him.
From M.
From inquiry and the consequences.
He slows for half a second, heart full of gratitude instead of dread for the first time since his comms cut off, like a sudden ray of brief sunshine.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
Moneypenny studies him.
“You destroyed a building instead of conducting a covert extraction.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t hesitate.”
“No.”
She softens.
“You scared R.”
“I scared myself,” he admits as they reach the car.
As they get in, he turns to her, his mask breaking again.
“I thought I’d have more time,” he says, voice low and raw. “I thought I could—” He swallows. “Ease into it.”
“Into what?”
He laughs weakly.
“Into allowing myself to care.”
Moneypenny’s expression are soft as she says “James.”
“I’ve lost enough,” he says. “Maa. Paa. Vesper. M. Too many names to even keep a count” His jaw tightens. “I wasn’t supposed to feel this again.”
“But you do.”
“Yes.”
There’s no denial and the word comes easier then he had imagined.
“I love him,” Bond says, and the words are steadier now. Terrified, but steady. “And if I walk into that hospital room and he doesn’t open his eyes—”
He can’t even finish the sentence. Moneypenny leans closer, squeezing his arm briefly.
“He will” she says firmly. “Because he’s Q. And Q doesn’t go quietly.”
Bond nods once, looking out of the window hoping that the vehicle would move a bit faster.
The corridor is too bright, too sterile, too inhumane, almost alien.
Security nods him through without question.
Bond doesn’t slow down. He passes nurses. Doctors. The faint smell of antiseptic hits him. At the right end of the corridor, through a pane of glass— He sees him. Q is laying on a bed, more pale and still than he has ever known him to be.
Monitors humming softly around the bed. An oxygen line beneath his nose and bandaging at his side. And for a second, Bond can’t move, frozen out of fear.
Q looks smaller somehow. Fragile in a way Bond has never allowed himself to even imagine.
The steady beep of the heart monitor is the only sound keeping Bond upright.
He steps forward. Hands trembling — he pushes the door open.
Consciousness returns in fragments to Q. A distant, rhythmic beeping. The faint antiseptic scent of hospital air. The weight of something tight across his ribs.
Then the memory comes back
Gunfire.
Shattered glass raining down over Q Branch.
Daniel’s expression of utter madness. Calculation.
The moment Q had muted Bond’s comms.
James was mid-mission.
The thought slams into him harder than the bullet did. His eyes snap open. Light floods in, too bright, too sharp. Pain blooms across his side as his body instinctively tries to move.
“James—”
It comes out broken, barely audible, but too urgent, too panicked to be taken lightly, his heart monitor spikes immediately, its rhythm jumping erratically.
A nurse rushes into the room. “Sir, you need to stay still.”
“He was in the field,” Q tries again, words slurring slightly. “He doesn’t— he won’t—”
The room tilts violently. His body feels too heavy, like gravity has doubled.
“You’ve had surgery,” the nurse says firmly, adjusting his IV. “You’re safe.”
Safe.
That’s not the problem, he feels his sanity fray and tries to lift himself again. Agony explodes under his ribs.
“James—”
But anesthesia pulls him under again before he can finish.
Night has settled fully outside the windows. The hospital wing is quiet, the chaos of earlier reduced to soft footsteps and distant murmurs.
Bond hasn’t moved.
He sits close enough to the bed that his knee touches the frame. His jacket is draped over the back of the chair. His tie has been loosened, sleeves pushed back. He looks less like a 00 agent and more like a man who has been wandering the rings of hell stuck in purgatory.
Q looks small, and somehow weak like this and it costs something to Bond that he wasn't here to protect him, he is pale against white sheets. Dark curls slightly matted at the temples. Bruising shadowing his jaw. Bond stares at him as if memorizing every detail. As if committing him to memory in case—
He stops that thought immediately, he refuses to even let the thought materialise.
Slowly, carefully, he reaches out and takes Q’s hand.
It’s warm.
He is alive Bond reminds himself.
His thumb brushes over familiar knuckles, tracing faint calluses from years of dismantling devices and building impossible ones.
“You terrified me,” Bond murmurs quietly.
“You muted your comms mid-mission.”
His voice wavers despite himself.
“I’ve endured torture more calmly than that silence.”
He swallows.
“I destroyed an entire operation to get back to you.”
The confession spills out softer now, into the dim room.
“They’ll reprimand me. Possibly suspend me.” A faint, hollow huff of breath. “I don’t really care.”
He leans forward, lowering his forehead to their joined hands.
“I thought I was too late.”
The words scrape out of him.
“Too late to tell you that …” his voice breaks
“I love you.”
It was not dramatic or earth shattering but it's honesty in its purest form and somehow it was more devastating.
“I should have said it sooner. I should have—”
Q’s fingers twitch.
Bond freezes instantly, lifting his head, a million panicked thoughts running through his head.
Another faint movement and a shift in breathing.
“Q?” His voice cracks.
Slowly — Q surfaces again.
His lashes flutter. His eyes open, unfocused at first.
Bond leans closer immediately, panic and hope colliding in his chest like supernovas in the endless universe.
“Easy,” he whispers. “Don’t move.”
Q blinks, trying to orient himself.
Memory returns in pieces.
Gunshot.
Surgery.
And—
A voice.
James'
Low. Broken.
I Love you.
His gaze sharpens just slightly as it finds Bond. Bond is too close. Too raw.
Q’s lips part. “Now do you know…” he rasps faintly.
Bond stills, holding his breath because this seems like a miracle
“…how it feels,” Q continues weakly, “when you turn off your comms mid-mission.”
There’s the ghost of a smirk there. Fragile. Familiar.
Bond lets out a startled, breathless sound that’s equal parts laugh and pain and remorse.m and fondness. He goes through a million emotions in just under a second and worries his knees might give out in relief that courses through his veins.
“You insufferable man,” he whispers.
Q’s fingers shift faintly in his grasp.
“You hated it” Q murmurs. “The silence” it's a statement not even a question
Bond’s composure fractures completely at that, at how well Q knows him, how well even laying in bed he knows how to bring Bond back to himself.
“Yes,” he says honestly. “I hate it.”
There’s a pause and Q studies him more closely now, reading the signs the way he always does — the tight jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way he’s holding Q’s hand like a lifeline.
“You were whispering something” Q says softly, offering him a chance.
Bond goes very still, the room feels smaller suddenly and he struggles to breath.
And something must show because “I was sedated,” Q continues, voice still weak but teasing. “Not deaf.”
Bond’s pulse hammers.
“You heard—”
“Enough.”
Oh.
Oh.
And Bond actually looks nervous now but he soldiers on “I meant it,” offering the barest parts of his soul to Q as devotion.
Q watches him for a long moment.
“You destroyed an entire operation,” he says, and of course he has figured out, Brilliant brilliant Q
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s wildly inefficient.” he says but his eyes are almost reverent as they sought out Bond.
Bond huffs a shaky breath, leaning closer, their foreheads nearly touching.
“You were shot.”
“And you were reckless.”
“I would do it again.”
There’s absolution in that and Q’s expression softens despite himself.
“James,” he says gently.
Bond closes his eyes briefly at the tone, his body trembling.
“I love you too,” Q says.
The words are quieter than Bond’s had been but no less certain. Bond exhales like something inside him has finally unclenched, like a part of his soul finally free.
He presses his forehead fully against Q’s, careful of every wire and bandage.
“I refuse to lose you,” he whispers fiercely. “I’ve buried enough.”
Q’s thumb brushes weakly along Bond’s jaw.
“You didn’t lose me,” he murmurs. “You’re stuck with me. I still have to redesign your appalling field tech given your fetish of ruining my projects”
Bond laughs softly, tears threatening again but not falling this time.
“I’ll submit myself for retraining.”
“You will not,” Q breathes. “And you’ll ignore instructions.”
“Probably.”
Silence settles between them — but it’s warm now, like something in the universe has shifted and found its home.
Bond leans down carefully and presses the gentlest kiss to Q’s forehead. Devotion.
“You scared me,” he admits against his skin.
“Good,” Q murmurs faintly. “Perhaps you’ll think twice before hanging up on me next time.”
Bond smiles, brushing his thumb over Q’s cheek.
“Never.”
Q hums weakly.
“Stay.”
Q's voice is barely audible, but Bond hears and squeezes his hand.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
And this time, when Q drifts back to sleep, it isn’t dragged under by fear but out of comfort of knowing that for now life is okay.
Bond remains beside him, still holding his hand — as if daring the universe to try shifting again.