Chapter Text
For a long time afterward, Q cannot decide what bothers him more.
The silence.
Or the fact that no one seems particularly surprised by it.
In the weeks before Bond leaves, nothing feels unusual. Which, in hindsight, is the actual problem.
There is nothing dramatic, no usual 007 theatrics, no confessions waiting to happen, no last lingering glance that might have warned Q that something was ending.
It is a simple, ordinary day when Bond walks into Q Branch like he owns the building, and he proceeds to lean in the doorway while engineers try very hard not to stare. Q, in turn, tries very hard not to roll his eyes, even as a well of fondness settles quietly in his chest.
Then Bond says “Quartermaster” in that particular low voice that somehow manages to sound amused and sincere at the same time—the one Q has always pretended means nothing. Later he would realise that pretending had been the exact mistake on his part.
He had let James Bond in.
Their relationship—if it can even be called that—grew the way moss grows on stone. Gradually.
At first there was irritation, and a distinct absence of respect.
Q made things.
Bond broke them.
Q fixed them.
Bond treated expensive equipment like disposable toys. Q treated them like delicate surgical instruments.
“You do realise,” Q said once while repairing a tracking device Bond had apparently used as an improvised weapon, “that these are not meant to survive explosions.”
It was sometime after the entire Skyfall debacle when Bond leaned comfortably against the lab table, and their dynamic had shifted just slightly, a thin thread of mutual respect had started to form between them.
“And yet,” he replied mildly, “it did.”
“It did not,” Q said sharply. “I’m rebuilding half of it.”
Bond watched him work for a moment, then he smiled—that irritating, crooked half-smile “Well then, I suppose I’m lucky you’re here.”
Q pointedly ignored the warmth that crept into his ears.
That was the turning point. After that, Bond started appearing more often.
Sometimes he had a reason. A demonstration of new equipment from Q Branch. A clarification about a piece of equipment he would almost certainly misuse later. A briefing with M that had put him in a bad mood, which inevitably led him down to Q Branch to play with the toys and talk to their creator. (Because it put him in a good mood—but no one needed to tell the Quartermaster that.)
Sometimes he didn’t, he would simply stand nearby, observing Q work with quiet interest.
Q tried not to notice, failed miserably, and then pretended not to notice anyway. They were both aware of the truth, but they never spoke about it. Every now and then Bond would step closer to inspect something on the workbench, their shoulders brushing for a brief second. Those moments would linger longer in his mind than Q would ever admit.
It wasn’t the typical 007 charm Bond would use on marks. It was something far more real, and slowly but surely they grew closer, the walls between them breaking down bit by bit.
They both felt it, but it was something neither of them ever acknowledged.
And that is why, when Bond disappeared after the whole SPECTRE debacle, Q didn’t take it seriously at first. He knew Bond would come back.
And he did come back… for the car. The bloody fucking car.
Q had given it to him, and with it Bond was gone again. Q had not realised that Bond would leave for good this time. It felt as though someone had taken out his heart and run the DB5 over it.
There was a small, hollow sensation somewhere beneath his ribs, like the absence of a sound you hadn’t realised you had grown used to hearing. For years Bond’s presence had been a constant disruption in Q’s carefully ordered world. Now that he had grown used to it, it was gone, and Q realised his mistake.
He had let Bond in.
Now the disruption was gone, and the order felt… wrong.
Q swore to himself that he would never let anyone else get that close again. His life only had space for his cats now, who would never break him like this. The world had taken too much from him already, and he refused to let it take anything more.
So Q did what he always did when faced with a problem. He threw himself into his work. He started arriving earlier and leaving much later. Sometimes he simply slept on the office sofa.
There was a shift, and everyone around him noticed it. Prototypes multiplied across the lab, security protocols became stricter, meetings shorter and strictly to the point. Q became sharper. He was still Q—still kind in the face of adversity—but he no longer tolerated recklessness or carelessness.
On one particularly spectacular day he put an intern, who had attempted to flirt with the Quartermaster, firmly in his place. R handled the matter afterward and made the intern understand that Q maintained strict boundaries between his professional and personal life, and that respecting them would be wise.
“You terrified a new intern today,” Eve Moneypenny said when she sauntered down to Q Branch that afternoon.
Q didn’t look up from his tablet “I corrected a boundary violation.”
“You made him think he was about to be reassigned to Antarctica.”
“That seems excessive.”
“Q.”
He sighed faintly “Is there something you need, Moneypenny?”
She studied him carefully, her eyes softening. She knew that Q had already lost too much, and she knew how much Bond had meant to him. Whether it had been platonic or something more she didn’t know, but she had seen them together, and it had felt real—even for Bond.
“You know he might come back one day and pretend nothing ever happened… he does that, you know?” Her voice was light and easy, but Q’s fingers paused and he looked up, his eyes dark.
His mind screamed If he comes back he’ll have to beg for my forgiveness. If he comes back I will run him over with the Aston. If he comes back and brings Dr. Swann with him I might actually die. If he comes back I would never let him go. If he comes back I might punch him. If he comes back. If he comes back. If he comes back…
Then he resumed typing “I’m not sure who you’re referring to.”
“Right,” she said dryly, but let the matter rest. Still, she made sure that Q went home at a decent hour that night.
It had been a long day, and Q had almost fired one of his technicians for leaving out a corrosive agent that had spilled onto blueprints for a new prototype he had been developing. It was an exploding pen, but nobody had to know about that, and R had worked beside him long enough to ignore his deflections, she was concerned.
“You’re impossible lately.”
“I’m efficient.”
“You’re miserable.”
Q glanced up over his glasses “Those do not have to be mutually exclusive.”
She folded her arms “You haven’t gone home for more than five hours in the last three days.”
“There is work to do.”
“There is always work to do,” R said, exasperated.
“Then perhaps we should both be doing that instead of engaging in this useless chatter,” Q replied, his voice tired.
R took a breath before speaking quietly, because there was no point in arguing when Q got like this, but she wanted to bring his attention to his own behaviour, because maybe insight would give way to acceptance.
“You banned music in the lab.” she said eventually
“It was distracting.”
“But you love the music.”
Q’s mind flashed back to those early days just after Skyfall, when they had been rebuilding Q Branch after Silva’s mess. Bond had stopped by while Q was working on the DB5, earphones in, humming softly. The next day a small but remarkably efficient music system had appeared on his desk, with James’s terrible scrawl across the box:
Boffins work best with music.
Q looked back at the screen and blinked himself into focus “I’m busy, don't have time for music”
R watched him for a moment longer “You could just admit you miss him.”
Q’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly “It was a failing on my part, one that will not be repeated again. Please let me focus...." And after a sigh he added "If you want music on the floor have it, but nothing too loud”
R knew then that the discussion was over. She only wished Q wasn’t so hard on himself. He deserved happiness.
When Bill Tanner brought him tea, Q suspected some sort of manipulation.
“You’ve been here sixteen hours,” Tanner observed.
“That’s hardly unusual.”
Tanner hesitated “You know Bond plays these disappearing tricks every now and then.”
Q stared at the screen “Yes,” he said quietly. Only this time it seemed to have stuck.
“Drink the tea and go home, Q,” Tanner said kindly.
Q remembered the day alarms had been blaring all around him—002, 003, and 008 all out on missions—and he had been awake for nearly two days guiding them through it. Once he had directed 003 and 008 and ensured that 002 was out of danger, he had handed command to R. When he had stepped out afterward, Bond had been waiting for him in a company-issued Jaguar.
Bond had driven him home.
Only later, collapsing into bed, had Q realised that during the previous fifty hours he had never once run out of tea. Bond had been in the branch the entire time, quietly making sure someone kept bringing it to him.
His heart had felt too big for his chest then as he had fallen asleep.
Q shook himself out of the memory. “Thank you for the tea Tanner, but I have work to get to.”
Tanner left, understanding that arguing with the Quartermaster was pointless and he would go home only when he chose to.
It really should not have come as surprise when eventually M called him into his office. He studied Q for a long moment.
“Take a seat, Quartermaster. I’m told morale in Q Branch has declined.”
“Productivity has increased.”
“That wasn’t my concern.”
Q folded his hands neatly. “Then I’m afraid I don’t understand the problem.” His tone was sharp and clipped, with a hint of irritation he allowed very intentionally. He did not need M interfering in his work—or his life. He was more miffed at the prospect of how he didn't see this coming.
M leaned back slightly “You feel disappointed... It is okay ”
Q met his gaze with a calmness that carried thunderstorms beneath it. He didn't appreciate being patronized like a child “I’m not disappointed.”
He held the eye contact so convincingly that for a moment he almost fooled himself.
Eventually M sighed “Go home, Elliott. Get some rest.”
The use of his name made Q’s eyes darken “Thank you for your concern M, but I have work to do. I will leave once it’s finished.”
And with that, he was gone.
That evening Q remained in the lab long after everyone else had left. He felt oddly off-kilter and wondered who hadn’t noticed the change in him if M had to intervene. But he couldn’t bring himself to go home and face the reality waiting there.
He remembered the day he had forgotten his umbrella and run through the heavy London rain to catch the Tube. Before he reached the station, a car had stopped beside him.
Of course it had been Bond.
Bond—with Chinese takeaway and a smile so inviting that Q had gotten into the car without argument. Bond had refused to let him eat inside it.
“No one eats in my car.”
Q had pouted all the way home.
Bond had followed him inside anyway and ordered him to change while he plated the food as though he had always belonged there. Q had come out dry, wearing a jumper and flannel pyjamas, and collapsed onto the couch where the cats—and the agent—joined him.
“No matter how much you try to bribe me with Chinese, I am not making you an exploding pen, Bond,” he had said.
Bond’s answering smile had been radiant.
“Call me James, won’t you?”
Q had hesitated only briefly.
“Elliott then. But never at work.”
James had smiled like a child on Christmas morning and given him a scout’s salute.
Q shook his head, forcing himself out of the memory. After all, it was just that—a memory. He wondered, briefly and dangerously, if Bond remembered him at all.
“Don’t,” he muttered to himself. The building had grown quiet around him. Rain tapped softly against the tall windows, and only then did he realise he had wandered down to the lower level without quite knowing why.
The empty space where the Aston Martin DB5 once stood was still there. Empty, Waiting, and Q realised that was exactly how he felt.
He had made room for James Bond in his life, always expecting that Bond would come back through that door eventually. Now the space remained, but Bond was long gone.
Q exhaled slowly. Then he turned off the lights and walked back upstairs. There was work to do and if he kept working long enough, maybe, eventually the emptiness might stop sounding like James Bond’s name.