Chapter Text
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“Care to tell me what that was all about, Q?”
Trust 007 to get right to the point, when for the first time, the Quartermaster was almost hoping he wouldn’t. They’d left the party and driven in silence, although they hadn’t driven very far, Q thought, before 007 had pulled over and was now focused on him.
Q still felt unsettled, as if something in his core had been knocked off its axis, and he didn’t know how to right it - although he was trying desperately. It was not unlike trying to build a model plane without instructions, though...or perhaps building it blind was a better analogy. Q blinked his eyes, which did actually feel hot and sore right now. “Caspian Rousseau has a romantic interest in you,” Q just shoved the words out, giving his report a bit gracelessly but at least all at once, no halting in his voice, “Or at least a very interested sexual one. I was unsure how to inform you of that development, but that was pretty much the gist of my conversation with him during your absence. Considering Rousseau’s connections, it might be worthwhile to consider getting him to flip on Mercer.”
There was silence as a response. It stretched on, making Q squirm on the inside, and outwardly making him purse his lips together and his hands start to clench on the seat and the edge of the car-door next to him. His cane was...somewhere...and his mental image of the inside of the car was somehow out of his grasp, the wildly conflicting thoughts in his head absolutely ruining his concentration. On the best of days, Q hated it when (for whatever reason) his focus was shot, but now it was ten times worse - because he needed that concentration to ‘see’.
Finally, 007 started talking, although Q still couldn’t find it in him to relax. “I was wondering what Rousseau was getting at.” A bit more incredulity entered 007’s tone as he asked, “He told you all that in the five minutes I left you alone?”
“He was quite bold,” Q replied primly, telling himself that he was annoyed...which was true. He just wasn’t entirely sure what precisely that irritation was tied to, although he wanted to believe that he simply couldn’t stand the utter impropriety of it all. “I don’t know if he cozies up this nicely to anyone with a handsome bodyguard, or if today he was just feeling extra outgoing, but either way, he was making very little polite effort to hide his interest.”
007’s chuckle filled the car, and while the sound was usually warm and soft and almost uncomfortably nice like velvet against Q’s ears, right now it rubbed him the wrong way. Whatever was tangled up beneath his skin bristled, and he couldn’t get comfortable where he sat. Bond went on with a jovial tone, “I wish I’d been there to see that.”
‘No, you really don’t.’ Q had hated it with a level of unexpected ferocity that was surprising him even now.
“From a distance, it had all looked quite polite,” Bond went on, easing at least a tiny fraction of Q’s thoughts with the acknowledgment that the agent had always been near enough to keep an eye on him - to step in if things had turned threatening. Q didn’t realize that he’d been worried about that until the fear was alleviated, and he sighed a bit, the death-grip he had on the door-handle easing. “Q? Q, I was always nearby,” Bond said in a suddenly softer voice, the uncanny ability of his to answer unspoken thoughts making Q jump a bit.
“I know you were,” Q lied, wishing that that were the only thing clouding up his head. “Can we return to driving now, please? I wasn’t actually fibbing about my eyes.”
“They’re hurting?” Worry had quickly edged its way into 007’s tone, although the car was shifted into drive again. The vibrations of the car on the tarmac assured Q that they were moving, even as he adjusted to the tiny changes in momentum that he’d always taken for granted before.
“I think it’s more the headache I’ve got. I was worried that it would distract me before long, and I’d say something stupid if we stayed,” was the reasonably truthful answer the Quartermaster gave. In fact, the more he said it to himself, the more he believed it. Yes, that was a totally sensible reason for dragging them both out of a sensitive but potentially pivotal situation.
Bond’s voice sounded like he - at least guardedly - approved. “A wise choice. You were doing well, though.”
Q snorted. He didn’t feel as though he were doing well now. “How nice of you to say things like that.”
“No, I mean it. Dammit, Q, just because you don’t think you performed perfectly didn’t mean you failed,” Bond shot back with his frustration finally slipping free a bit, and Q turned his head away uncomfortably, as if he could stare out the window. 007 didn’t take the hint, and kept talking, “Honestly, since we didn’t get shot at, I’m counting this as a win.”
“You have low standards.”
“ ‘Alive’ is a perfectly sensible standard. And besides that, I think that Rousseau rather liked you. Maybe he wasn’t coming on to you-” Bond sounded rueful and maybe a bit peeved, and that, for some reason, unravelled at long last some of the buzzing tension in Q’s chest...which shocked him as he noted this. “-But he definitely looked and sounded like he enjoyed your company, and you two really have a lot in common. He wouldn’t have just opened up and talked like that otherwise.”
Q tried to tell himself that that was a good thing - and unexpected advantage that they would likely be thankful for later. Instead, he found that he didn’t have any words, and he simply felt tired. A few times, he opened his mouth, but it was as if his voice had just dried up like a desert well, and nothing but little puffs of air came out before he closed his mouth again. In case 007 was looking at him and expecting a response, the Quartermaster merely nodded, and resumed his sightless staring out the side window.
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Although Q was admittedly clumsy all the time now, he was worse when they got out of the car again. Whatever innate balance he’d managed to draw on seemed to have been switched off, leaving him feeling like he had the first day after the accident: very crippled, very unaware of how to react to surroundings he couldn’t see, and just generally not very good at anything. It was incredibly frustrating, and if he’d been a bit less wrung out, he might have cursed a bit more. Instead, he just swallowed his pride and clung a bit closer to 007’s arm, his trust being rigorously tested as he moved timid foot after timid foot in front of the other, keeping up with 007’s more assured strides and trying to hide that he flinched preemptively every few moments. He didn’t hit anything and he wasn’t allowed to trip, and Bond was merciful enough to say not a word the whole way into their hotel room. There was the remote possibility that he didn’t notice Q’s increased ungainliness, but Q wasn’t optimistic enough to bet on it.
“Take me to my laptop,” Q commanded the instant he sensed the familiar room around them - the combined smell of gun-oil and Bond’s aftershave wrapping around Q’s alert senses like a familiar cloak. “I need to do a bit of hacking.”
“Now?”
Ignoring the surprise and disbelief in 007’s tone, Q kept to the agent’s side until he felt around and hit the hard wooden corner of the desk. He hit it with the backs of his knuckles, which bloody hurt, but he was already too focused to notice. “Yes. I need to find Rousseau’s phone number. It would please me to no end to know that I could find it, and besides that, I think that he’d be tickled if you called him.”
Bond didn’t argue anymore, but Q could hear his sigh out a resigned heave of breath. There was the occasional sound of movement, coming sporadically from around the room as if Bond were teleporting rather than moving, but then he started whistling again. This time, it took Q a second to recognize the tune as ‘Reviewing the Situation’ from the old movie ‘Oliver.’ The whistled notes moved with lilting laziness through ‘I am reviewing...the situation...’ picking up pace to the familiar lines ‘...Can a fellow be a villain all his life?’ Bond was mimicking only the tune, of course, and not the words, but Q found himself following along in his head even as some of that horrible tension left his shoulders, and the unaccountable tremor in his hands vanished. “Ever considered switching careers to something more musical?” he found himself asking dryly but with some very real appreciation just slipping into his tone, “You’re really rather good at whistling old show-tunes.”
“It distracts from the fact that I can’t sing,” the agent deadpanned back, and Q wasn’t surprised to find Bond at this side, because the skillfully pitched notes had painted a watercolor trail of the man’s progress in Q’s minds-eye. He’d actually been able to track Bond into the small bathroom and then back out again, and didn’t flinch now as one of 007’s fingertips tapped twice against the back of his wrist, although Q did stop typing. “Turn over your hand?”
“Why?” Despite the question, Q was doing it anyway, half-listening as the modified Dragon program read off some data from his screen.
Something was pressed against his palm with a warm and calloused touch. “Because so long as you are still determined to work - which you clearly are-” Q imagined the agent gesturing resignedly at the laptop, and warmed unexpectedly at the flash of familiar memory. 007 never had totally understood Q’s addiction to work. “-You should probably do it without a headache. Those are Paracetamol. This-” As soon as Q’s fingers had folded around the two tiny pills, 007 enfolded his wrist in a light but immovable grip and pulled Q’s hand to the side just enough for his knuckles to brush against plastic nearby. “-Is a glass of water. I’m going to call M and give her our progress report.” And with that, James was moving away again, a few more whistled notes just touching the air like a banked fire keeping a room warm and homey.
Resisting the urge to ask Bond where the sudden interest in old tunes had come from - or why he’d apparently never showed off this skill to anyone else, because Q was sure he would have heard of such by now - Q popped the pills into his mouth, finding the cheap, plastic glass provided by the hotel. He dearly missed his personal mugs, but drained the water anyway, imagining that the coolness of it was already soothing the ache in his head and eyes. Behind him, the whistling was replaced by Bond’s low and professional voice as he gave their report. 007 kept it brief, and even though Q was focusing on other matters, the Quartermaster was more than able to follow the conversation.
“You didn’t mention Rousseau,” he commented when the lack of verbal responses indicated the end of the phonecall.
007 was silent again, but presumably standing between the two beds. Finally, he replied, “Because we don’t know much about Rousseau yet, at least beyond what MI6 knows already of his track-record.”
“Well…” Q sighed, sitting back from his laptop and moving his hands away with unavoidable reluctance. When he was touching his keyboard, he felt safe - connected. The world was more or less the same so long as he could feel where every key was, ready to respond to his touch even if his eyes were no longer there to watch his progress flitting across the screen. “We now have his personal number as well. He struck me as the kind of fellow who likes pleasant surprises, so you could probably call him tonight, and see how much of his interest in you is genuine - and whether we can use it.” Some of that buzzing unease was coming back again, and this time, as Q observed it, he realized that unhappiness was that the core of the emotion. He frowned, wondering why he was feeling so out of sorts when he was no longer being subjected to a formal criminal event.
There was a faint sigh from 007 that Q was too busy thinking to interpret, but then the bed creaked under the addition of weight and Bond was asking sensibly, “How am I supposed to explain how I got his number?” Another pause, then a more cautious, “How did you get his private number?”
Q found himself grinning a tiny, sly smile into the darkness. “Oh, believe me, it wasn’t easy. Still, just about everything nowadays has a finger or two in the cyber-world, if you’re good enough to find it. Which I am.”
“One of these days, maybe I’ll get used to how immodest you are when it comes to tech.”
“I have a right to be immodest,” Q argued back, his displeasure with Rousseau fading in the face of his pride now, “I’m good at what I do. And if Rousseau asks, you can tell him so: he made his interest clear to me, so I decided to help him out and allow the two of you to talk.”
“And coincidentally show off your own skills at the same time?” Bond asked back.
Q’s smile widened by small but definite degrees. “Rousseau thinks he’s the best, and can have anything he wants,” Q replied, putting this together based on the criminal hacker’s records as well as his cock-sure attitude at he party, “I’m just showing him that he might want to rethink all that, just a smidgeon.”
Bond chuffed out a short laugh, soft enough that Q probably only heard it because the room was small and quiet, and his ears were always on the alert now. “Fine then. I’m always up for a bit of ego-bruising. Tomorrow, though - it’s already 3 AM, and I can say from experience that even the most enamored person will be more irritated than flattered by my calling him now.”
“Drat.” Q returned his fingers to the keyboard, prompting the program to speak the time through his earpiece - confirming what 007 had just said. “I lost track of time again.” Frustration sizzled through him, but also tiredness, as if he’d been denying the time and sleepiness alike until now, as it all crashed into him. He sagged a little, feeling small and breakable after the long, trying day.
“Your eyes still hurting?” Bond asked after a long minute, words unexpectedly low and soft, like waves lapping at a shore at night. Since Q was living in perpetual night, it was fitting.
Sighing, Q removed his glasses with careful fingers, lowering them to his desk before bringing his hands up to his face. He wanted to rub at his eyes, lids fluttering closed, but just touching the edges made him wince. “A bit. Not much worse than they usually do - they’ve ached on and off since the incident.”
“Can I see them?”
The question was unexpected, and had Q reflexively turning his head, as one would do if they wanted to give someone a surprised look face-to-face. Q’s fingertips lowered to his lap to flutter uncertainly over the material of his trousers. “I can’t think of any pressing reason why not,” he replied after too long a pause to seem nonchalant, although he did his best to fake a light, uncaring voice as he waited for the sound of bedsprings to herald Bond getting up. Quite suddenly he missed Bond’s idle whistling, and wondered if, perhaps, it was not so idle as he had thought. Either way, Q tensed as if the new silence of the room were some beast wrapping around him, settling down inky coils in concentric, tightening circles that he could neither see nor shake off. A clearing of Bond’s throat seemed to do the trick, though, and Q breathed out a little shakily as he pinpointed the sound as being only an arm’s-length away already.
“I’m going to touch your chin. That all right?” James’s low and steady voice came in, sounding neither unsure nor hesitant, but at the same time… It sounded like he’d back off and not touch Q at all if the Quartermaster replied ‘no’ at this moment. Somehow, that did a lot to relax a knot that had been tight and cold in the smaller man’s chest. Q just nodded, unexpectedly grateful for 007’s explicit questions and explanations, and twitched only barely as battle-hardened hands gently came into contact with this skin - first just fingertips on the point of his chin, then more of James’s hand as he slid his grip into something more familiar and solid. Q was almost surprised to find the right side of his jaw cradled. He let Bond then tip his head this way and that, a bit self-conscious because he didn’t know what his eyes were directed at, blinking occasionally.
“Fuck, it’s like they never changed,” Bond swore under his breath, so transparently surprised that Q couldn't help the tiny burst of laughter. He tensed the muscles of his neck as if to lift his head out of Bond’s grasp, but somehow never ended up doing so.
“The damage isn’t very noticeable, apparently,” Q was able to reply with surprisingly little trouble. Somehow, with Bond being the bemused one for once, it made this easier to talk about. Or maybe the slightly rough palm against his jawline helped. “Medical actually said that I was lucky, in some ways, because no actual shrapnel got into my eyes - the light from the explosion was what did most of the damage. I’d spout off more of what Medical said, but as neither of us are doctors, it hardly seems worth it.”
Likely absently, James’s thumb shifted, brushing back and forth on Q’s cheek before coaxing him to turn his head one more time. Breath startled the Quartermaster for a second as it ghosted over his face, but then 007 was letting go and stepping back. “We should get some sleep. Now that we’ve passed that first test, I have a feeling things will move a lot faster in the near future.”
Q pushed himself up, feeling for and picking up his glasses as an afterthought. He still liked to carry them, as if they contained all of his hope that he might someday need them again. He tried to pull up his mental image of the room, his thoughts bogged down by weariness, but then realized that he wasn’t even sure which one of them was sleeping in which bed at the moment. They’d already switched once. “If we really can find an in through Rousseau, it might move even quicker. Ideally, I’d love to steal back Genecode before it even goes up for auction.” He took a guess on which bed he’d be sleeping in when he heard 007 moving about near the other. Suddenly, a long sleep sounded heavenly… “It somehow seems like losing to simply buy Genecode from the man who stole it in the first place.”
007 made a low noise like a growl as Mercer was indirectly mentioned. “It also sounds damn expensive,” was all he commented back, though.
Scoffing, Q replied as he removed his earbud and shoes, “As if I needed to use MI6’s money.”
“You’re going to use your own?” 007 sounded sincerely surprised.
Another delicate snort and a shallow smirk make Q’s opinion clear even as he explained, “No, I’m just fairly good at getting into other monetary sources. How do you think Rousseau would feel about paying for his boss’s stolen item?”
“You’re a bit of a monster, Q. Why again are you working for MI6 instead of just freelancing, again?” Bond sounded amused, but there was also something else in his jovial, chuckling tone - something dark and low that skimmed like hot silk up Q’s spine. It made him shiver, and temporarily decide that not all things dark were bad, at least if some of them made his toes curl like 007’s voice did.
Feeling a bit light and floaty as tiredness combined with the relief he was starting to get from the Paracetamol - he could feel the various aches in his head fading to the background - Q sat on the edge of his bed and smiled again. “For the entertainment value. Freelance hackers may get to dance around the law, but they don’t get to work with 00-agents.”
Bond laughed softly again, still that delicious noise that Q suddenly couldn’t get enough of. He began to wonder if maybe he was more tired than he thought, of if the panic of the day had left him with no more fucks to honestly give. “Quartermaster, are you telling me that 00-agents are a better adrenalin high than criminal activities?” 007 teased.
There was a rustle of fabric, and Q found himself shifting as his mind supplied images of Bond undressing, while the Quartermaster was right there. Q couldn’t see a thing, but he was still present, and that made him feel unexpectedly like a voyeur. But was it voyeurism if Bond was totally aware of him? “You 00-agents are practically dozens of criminal activities rolled into one. If only you didn’t cause so much bloody damage that I had to fix later, I dare say you lot would be addictive,” Q replied before really thinking what he was saying. Then he zipped his mouth shut before any truths escaped the silence of his mind. It was all true, of course, but he hadn’t meant to ever say these thoughts out loud.
Bond hummed, a wordless reply that nonetheless still sounded pleased by the conversation. Q had no idea what the agent was doing anymore, or if he was finished undressing or if he’d ever started. Quite immune to his Quartermaster’s citrus-tart embarrassment or vinegar-harsh uncertainty, Bond suddenly came around the bed and offered easily, “Let me help you with your tie, Q. It would be a crime against good taste for me to let you sleep in your new clothes.”
Suddenly, the mental images of 007 undressing came back to the fore of Q’s mind, becoming almost crystalline in their sharpness until he found himself imagining the ridges and angles of hard muscles, the way they would roll and flex under tanned skin and over trustworthy bone. The unbidden thoughts were enough to effectively short-circuit Q’s brain for a second, and he could only sit like a puppet carved stiffly out of wood as he tipped his head back for 007 to access his tie. He felt the slide and tug of the knot being undone, slipping against his collar, finally sliding free even as the back of 007’s warm hand just grazed the underside of Q’s jaw accidentally. Q lowered his head as the silk pulled free, holding his breath until he was sure he could let it out without the exhale shaking incriminatingly. “I’m going to make use of the bathroom. You all right?” James asked, apparently not noticing Q’s sudden (and hopefully temporary) crisis.
“Ye- Yes,” Q replied, clearing his voice in between the two attempts, because his voice had sounded embarrassingly squeaky and breathy at first. He touched the buttons of his shirt - the new shirt that Bond had given him, and had even helped him into - as if to indicate that he planned to undo them...maybe once he was sure 007 wasn’t right there, watching. “I’m quite capable of undressing myself, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” There was a pause, and then 007 added sincerely but still lightly enough that Q knew it wasn’t in any way patronizing - because all 00-agents were hand-shy around the truth, so if they were joking or making light of it, it probably came from one of the few sincere places in them. “You did good work today, Quartermaster.”
“I imagine luck had a lot to do with that,” Q said self-effacingly, “and the fact that I had a competent babysitter - sorry, not babysitter. Ignore me, 007, I’m just babbling now. It’s been a long day, and I should just shut up before I get insulting.” Q pulled out a crooked, dry smile to match his words, making it clear that he meant well even if he was once again leaning towards snarkiness. Since being blinded, he’d gotten used to being taut and waspish, always defending himself or proving himself, so now it was surprisingly hard just to accept compliments and return with a plain and simple ‘thank you.’ “Good night, 007.”
Apparently unoffended by being called a ‘babysitter,’ Bond merely replied, “See you in the morning, Q.” The sound and echo of his voice said that he’d already turned, and before long, Q heard the door to the bathroom shutting. The Quartermaster sagged where he sat, unconsciously lifting a hand to brush it over the collar of his shirt as if he could still feel Bond’s deft fingers freeing the tie from there. A warm flush of interest had already pooled at the base of Q’s spine, and he was fervently grateful that he hadn’t gotten more obviously interested in the sensations floating down his nerves.
That didn’t change that fact, however, that he had been interested.
“Bond, you bloody bastard, can’t you see my life is already complicated enough?” Q hissed under his breath with a narrowing of his useless eyes, knowing that he was talking to empty air but not caring. Q was too smart not to connect the dots: he hated Rousseau for entirely unprofessional reasons that all revolved around a certain 00-agent who was too good-looking for his own good. It didn’t matter that Q couldn’t see him, because apparently the man’s appeal was omnipotent, covering all the senses, or at least affecting enough of them that Q could become quite affected even without eyesight. The Quartermaster was able to convince himself that part of his...connection...to 007 hinged on that fact that he needed James, both to make sure he didn’t walk into things and to make up for Q’s lack of field-knowledge. Ergo, some of Q’s dislike for Caspian Rousseau stemmed from a want to protect 007.
Q sighed in tired defeat, undoing buttons on the shirt that even felt expensive. It felt like class and it felt like Bond.
The ‘protective’ excuse sounded flimsy even in Q’s head.
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