Chapter Text
When he finally climbs down from the roof, the black box is tucked carefully against his side, protecting the paper-wrapped ceramic bulldog -- (“The whole office goes up in smoke and that bloody thing survives,” he says with a chuckle. “An exemplar of British fortitude, or some such, I imagine. Like that god-awful obituary.” M smiles thinly, lifting her glass in his direction, “I knew you'd hate it.”). It’s the last tangible reminder of his M now that she's cold and embalmed downstairs while what seems like the whole of the British intelligence community and more than a comfortable number of politicians make small talk and attempt to furtively further their political agendas have turned out to make Mansfield’s funeral about them and not about laying to rest a true exemplar of British fortitude. He nearly drops it when he comes across a wedged-open door in the stairwell and catches a whiff of cigarettes and the new-familiar shock of unruly raven hair and grey-hazel eyes hidden behind thick glasses of the new Quartermaster. Q looks infinitely thinner dressed in mourning all-blacks, he notes, the pale length of his neck longer, fingers capable of easy destruction yet long and delicate as they pull another cigarette from a crumpled pack to light it from the one in the corner of his mouth. Bond, silent as a big cat stalking prey, pushes the door open with his free arm and squashes his grin when Q flinches whole-bodily, almost dropping the newly lit cigarette in his fingers when Bond speaks.
“Those things’ll kill you, you know.” Contrary to his words, he steals the pack from Q’s other hand, flicks one out in a practiced way that speaks of years of smoking and leans in close enough to light it from the end of Q’s own. Q has the decency to not look shocked at the blatant invasion of his personal space, and what had become a personal moment as well, and coolly recovers, bracketing his coat as he leans his arms on the parapet and looks down over the street. The blonde agent leans against the wall opposite, still protectively holding the black box under his arm. Q takes a long drag of the cigarette and flicks the ash out over the edge, leaving it between his fingers for the moment.
“Aren't you of the worst sort to deliver that kind of warning? How many times have you been killed now?” Q attempts for humor, but his tone is wrong, all strained and tight, and when Bond sweeps his eyes over him again, he notices belatedly that Q’s eyes are red-rimmed and the color in his face is blotchy. Q stubbornly doesn't allude to it, and Bond sweeps past it with a half-second delayed chuckle, but they both know he's noticed the intrusion. Bond doesn’t know whether the technician cries at all funerals he attends, or if M’s is of some significant importance to him, the way she’s another name in the list of people that he’s loved and lost -- his parents, Tracy, Vesper, Ronson, a list of friends too long to detail in short succession but each one he continues to feel as a stab in the black pit where his heart would be.
Q takes a breath and pushes forward, aiming for level and steady, his Quartermaster voice, the unflappable head of Q Branch, the calm voice in a hundred different ears depending on the day. “Do you know that the part that bothers me the most? That when Mall-,” he stops hastily, clearly it’s not the first time he’s made this slip, “That when M found me in the middle of creating the trail we were leaving for Silva to follow the only thing I could worry about was what the bloody PM was going to say if he found out. Isn’t that awful?” He’s obviously glancing over the largest error on his own part, the stupid foolish mistake of plugging Silva’s laptop directly into the mainframe. He’s more than certain there will be an enquiry into it, that he’ll have to defend himself and his actions, but that’s for tomorrow’s Q to deal with. Today’s Q is grieving.
Bond shakes his head and lets out a low breathy chuckle. “Parliamentary politicking is nothing new, Q. You should get used to it. Why do you think I stay in the field?” The words blunt instrument come immediately to mind, something Mansfield had called him repeatedly but not always with the contrite that it usually carried. Particularly not now. The M in his head vacillates from crotchety old bitch to almost kinder than he ever remembers hearing her, a bit like a conscience if he would simply admit that maybe he does have one after all.
Q sighs out a breath that holds more than just smoke, lets it drift up and away as his red-rimmed eyes follow it. Crying makes almost everyone ugly and Q is no exception. “Be that as it may, I suppose it’s not too far gone to say that I didn’t imagine having to deal with it so soon after assuming the position. In hindsight, I also suppose that I should’ve expected it, though the Major never seemed to be too bothered by it.”
It’s then that Bond realizes why Q’s tone sounds so melancholy - he’s another one of M’s orphans. Blasted woman had some sort of sixth sense about finding them and promising them the moon or something. Vaguely, there’s a thought in the back of his head that Mallory doesn’t seem of the same sort, of a different stock than Mansfield despite his dealings with the IRA during The Troubles. “When did they recruit you?” he asks finally, eyes trained on Q’s side profile.
“I was 24,” Q replies succinctly, all tight-lipped and level voice, but the minute widening in his eyes of surprise would’ve been missed had Bond not been looking for it. “The Major caught me in a hacking honey-pot of his own design after I’d hacked them a few times. They hauled me in and gave me a choice, I could come to work for MI-6 and help them shore up security or I could rot in a maximum-security prison with nothing more technological than paper and pencil for the rest of my life.” He doesn’t bother to close the story, they both know how it ends. “Next year is my tenth anniversary at Six.”
Bond isn’t surprised by the fact that he hadn’t noticed the technician before he became Quartermaster -- he doesn’t have a habit of haunting Q Branch unless it was to pester the Major for something new or to turn in his battered and bruised equipment. Q Branch was famous for squirreling away its best and brightest to work on codeword Top Secret material. Or it’s entirely possible that Q wasn’t even assigned to the Home Office until recently. Regardless, Q looks much younger than his self-admitted 33 years, and in contrast, Bond feels that he is starting to show the signs of his age. He’s only six years from mandatory 00 retirement, and yet he inevitably feels that he’ll never see 45. Mallory has already told him he’s going to have to re-qualify for active service (“ Properly this time, 007, after you’ve had time to recover and a full debrief.”) which Bond knows means another attempt by Psych to disqualify him for his so-called sociopathic tendencies .
“Huh,” is all he says in reply for the moment, and after a beat, he adds, “I was 22 when I joined the Royal Navy. My first tour out I spent a year on the Armilla Patrol before we rotated in. Most boring deployment you can imagine, but when we got back into Bahrain, Major Boothroyd was waiting for us. Said he had some tests he wanted to run on us since we’d been at sea for a year. We had no idea just how sadistic he was when he asked for volunteers.” Bond chuckles, shaking his head slightly at the memory. “Qualification and requalification never had anything on the Major.”
Q practically holds his breath during the aside because James Bond is attempting to make him feel better. He turns to brace his back against the opposite wall but keeps his head turned, looking out over the buildings embracing the sky. He feels less like dying now and more like he wants a stiff drink, something for his head (because crying gave him god-awful headaches), and a long lie-in. Instead, he’s patiently and patently quiet, smoking the rest of his cigarette in the silence before Bond speaks again.
“I didn’t see him again for two years, but he remembered me right away. I had just finished my rescue diving certifications on the Illustrious when he appeared again asking for volunteers. Something about the way he said it made it sound like he was there to see me, but maybe that was just my ego at the time talking. I realized later on that it was probably true - M had sent him to see how I’d done in the certs. See if it was worth recruiting me, I suppose. They did manage to recruit me at 28 and drafted me out of the Navy and into Six. Not a moment too soon or else I’d have been back on the Illustrious going into Saif Sareea II.”
Q’s eyes widen marginally again, briefly surprised at the timing of Bond’s draft to MI-6. “The 9/11 bombings happened during Saif Sareea II,” he adds matter-of-factly. “But the HMS Illustrious wasn’t sent to Afghanistan, the HMS Ocean was.” He momentarily contemplates another cigarette but shoves the pack back into his pocket, rucking up the line of his mourning coat as he does, exposing the slim set of his shoulder, the brace cutting a black line across his crisp white shirt. “The Illustrious rotated back into Portsmouth when the Ocean went into Operation Enduring Freedom with the Americans.”
The blonde holds his surprise close to the vest because of course the Quartermaster knew his military history. “That’s correct, though most of the officer crew joined the Ocean since the Illustrious was due for a re-fit shortly after returning from Oman.”
“That was a whole year later,” Q interjects quickly. “A year doesn’t count as ‘shortly’, Bond.”
“Yes, yes, impress me further that you know your naval history, why don’t you?” Bond quips sarcastically, fishing a lighter from the inside pocket of his jacket to re-light his cigarette that’s gone out while he’s been distracted comforting Q (and himself) talking. He relights it, inhales, and sighs in a satisfied way, as if the nicotine has been sorely missed.
“Eidetic and photographic memory, I’m afraid. Sometimes being an actual genius has its uses.” Q lacks a large amount of modesty when it comes to his accomplishments but, he supposes, that’s also partially why Psych labeled him as a potential for sociopathic tendencies in his initial interview with them. He’s made a better attempt at keeping it quashed, though he realistically knows that Bond will be able to see through any filter he puts on it.
And for his part, Bond merely laughs, because of course Q has a memory based on total recall. He can’t even attempt to be surprised now, though he’s certainly not about to let Q know that. It’s the same feeling he had when Q had quipped about Silva’s laptop -- (“Only about six people in the world could program safeguards like that,” Q says, adjusting his glasses and barely restraining himself from looking at the laptop like a kid with a shiny new toy. Or, more accurately, a Quartermaster with an intriguing puzzle. “Of course there are. Can you get past them?” Bond queries, arms folded over his chest as he oscillates between Q and the display. “I invented them,” the technician replies coolly.) -- that there’s more to Q than rumpled jumpers, fragrant Earl Grey, and dark rumpled hair that looked made him look perpetually well-fucked. For all he knows, maybe Q is perpetually well-fucked. For a split second, he imagines stretches of unmarred pale skin on dark-as-night sheets, greengrey eyes closed in self-abandon, and his name in a gasp from bite-swollen lips, and Bond is surprised to realize that he wants. The thought is gone quickly, dismissed by the follow-up realization that Q is probably technosexual, if anything.
“Perks of being a genius or of a well-trained mind,” Bond amends without a beat, nothing to belay the fact that he’d been imagining the tech naked.
Q does chuckle at that, it makes his nose crinkle under the bridge of his glasses and his eyes go soft in the corners. Bond can tell it’s real, instead of the fake serene smile he gives when he’s annoyedpretendinghiding. The blotchy red is fading from his face, and he looks more-or-less like the professional that haunts Q Branch instead of the grieving waif Bond had stumbled upon. “I’ll give you that addition,” the tech gibes, “but I don’t think it applies to you.” He finally looks away from the open air and meets Bond’s eyes for the first time that day, only the faintest impression that he’d been crying left around his sharp, intelligent eyes.
“Is that so?” Bond queries with a self-deprecating chuckle, draws the last of the cigarette and flicks it over the edge of the parapet, not watching as to where it lands. They’re far enough up that no one will be able to tell which balcony it came from, and frankly, he doesn’t care.
Q, of course, has other thoughts about that.
“You shouldn’t litter. The cellulose acetate fibers in the filter take up to ten years to decompose, depending on the conditions.”
Bond smiles sarcastically and shoves his now-free hand into his pocket, leveling a casual gaze at the tech before he speaks again. “How old were you when your parents died?”
Q simply can’t hide the look of shock and surprise on his face. None of his personal information is available on the MI-6 servers, one part because he had stipulated it in his employment contract and one part because when anything other than his designation does show up, he has a program written to immediately erase it and move it to his private server for review. How Bond has leapt from the small amount of information they’ve discussed to his history, Q will never understand. Probably the same thing that made him a bloody good spy.
Bond counts it as a win that Q’s almost too flabbergasted to answer. Right on the money.
“I was 11 when my parents died in a mountain climbing accident,” Bond continues entreatingly. “I lived with my adoptive father for a while before he sent me to Eton. Finished at Fettes, went on to the University of Geneva, joined the Royal Navy almost as soon as I graduated. From there--.” He shrugs one shoulder as if to say ‘and you know the rest ’. “I figure if you’re going to be my only handler from here on out, you should hear the real version of it and not whatever is written in my file, epistolary action novel that it probably is.”
Q is again momentarily flabbergasted, rapidly adding all of this information to the mental file he has on the blonde, but it’s the words at the end that strike him the most. “Only handler? Apparently I’ve missed something.”
“Oh, M didn’t tell you? Pending my requalification in four weeks, I will be working together with you. Exclusively.”
The headache behind Q’s eyes throbs and he vaguely wonders if it’ll ever go away now because Bond has a destructive streak 5 kilometers wide and how on Earth is he meant to handle Bond when he’s not even fully repaired Q Branch to his standards. For fuck’s sake, they’re still operating out of a rat-infested bunker. He pinches the bridge of his nose, shifting the thick frames of his glasses upwards as he does, and lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll be sure to thank M when he asks why my equipment expenditure triples.” He’s still rubbing at his eyes and misses Bond’s grin. “This does not mean that you get to ask for whatever you want equipment-wise.”
“Maybe next time you’ll deign to give me more than a radio and my Walther,” Bond quips quickly, a sorry attempt at assuaging his new handler, but passing on the opportunity for a well-timed innuendo. For once. He honestly hadn’t known M was purposefully being tight-lipped about being under Q’s direct purview.
“ Your Walther? You’ll be lucky if I give you more than a squirt gun and a piece of tinfoil after you fed my Walther to a Komodo Dragon in Macau,” Q replies incredulously, greygreenhazel eyes snapping open to find the blonde still grinning at him. “And left the other one at the bottom of a lake.”
“I didn’t feed it to him. A very burly guard attempted to fire it and didn’t see the Komodo Dragon come from behind him. He dropped it and I barely got out of there before the other one got me. I didn’t have time to pick it up.” Bond is still grinning, and the longer he grins, the more infuriated Q seems to become.
“All of which I would’ve heard had you not also purposefully dropped your earpiece into Ms. Moneypenny’s glass of champagne,” Q adds icily. The headache now has a name, and its name is James fucking Bond. He swears he’s going to have to invest stock in Nurofen at this rate.
“Accidentally misplaced,” Bond replies with the same grin.
“That’s not what Ms. Moneypenny wrote in her After-Action Report.”
“Oh, Q, you know how things are, sometimes in the heat of the moment, things get misremembered. I’m sure she didn’t mean to write that.” His grin is bordering on cheeky now. Needling Q might be his new favorite pastime if the tech is going to get all worked up every time.
It does bring a bit of flushed color to his previously blotchy face, and once again, Bond is momentarily distracted by his earlier thoughts of how the Quartermaster might look spread out in his bed. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Silva that it wasn’t his first time. Wouldn’t even be his sixththirtyseventhfiftieth time.
Q abruptly realizes he’s being toyed with and shuts down, retrieves his coat and scarf from the parapet, and slides it on with innate gracefulness. He very nearly smirks when Bond’s grin disappears, leaving in its place an almost puzzled look. Point - Q, he thinks, doing up the buttons with less-than-practiced ease, looping the scarf around his neck before tucking the ends of it down into the front of the coat. He’s uncomfortable in such formal dress, but Mansfield’s funeral warranted it to him. He could stand to be uncomfortable in order to pay his proper respects. He slides one hand into the pocket of his coat and makes for the wedged-open door, pausing only momentarily with his other hand on the doorknob. “Car crash killed my parents and older sister. A drunk driver ran the light and t-boned us on our way home from the cinema. I was 12.”
Bond stares at Q’s back, unsure of what to say for the first time in his dealings with the younger man. No witty retort, no snappy comeback. Fortunately, Q doesn’t give him time to answer and disappears through the door without another word, half-tempted to shut it completely and lock Bond out onto the balcony, dress shoes clicking on the stairs as he makes his way down them. Bond gives him until the silent count of five before following, his own steps noiseless as he continues his trek from earlier back downstairs.
By the time Q reaches the bottom floor, he’s already firmly back in his Quartermaster headspace, cool and unflappable, the quiet and staid leader of one of the most formidable technology branches in the world. He bypasses the rest of the crowd milling about to pay their respects before Mansfield is entombed and does his best not to notice the silent foreboding presence at his back. He can feel Bond only steps behind him as he makes his way out onto the street and immediately heads left towards the tube.
“Q,” Bond calls after him, stopping in his tracks when the Quartermaster does so himself, decidedly not looking over his shoulder. “I can give you a ride, if you like.”
“No, thank you,” Q replies, looking down at his shoes. “Though I appreciate the offer.”
Perhaps it’s the car Q has a fear of, Bond notes mentally. He’s about to speak when Q continues, finally half-turning towards him with a cheeky smile.
“I know how you drive.”
Bond puts his free hand to his chest, mock offended. “Why, Quartermaster, I would never ever endanger you with reckless driving.”
“I guess we’ll never know. Good evening, Bond.” Without giving him time to respond, Q turns back and heads off towards the station again, hands shoved down into his pockets, leaving Bond standing there shaking his head with a smirk, the black box still tucked under his arm. Geniuses, he comments to himself, briefly musing over how strange the afternoon turned out to be. He turns on his heel and heads towards his car, thoughts of the Quartermaster occupying his mind for the entire drive back to his empty new flat and well into the night.