Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The strap of his laptop bag digs into his shoulder. Q quickens his pace, bypassing slow-walkers with a brisk pace that he hopes doesn’t display the full range of his annoyance. Can’t people see the way the grey clouds covering the sky hang so low over the city’s higher buildings? Rain’s coming, and Q forgot his umbrella at James’ flat. His computer could do without a soak, especially if it is avoidable; he estimates a kilometer of walking before reaching his flat, and at least twenty minutes before the rain starts in earnest. He can make it. 

The fact that Tanner has threatened to forcibly remove him from his office if he didn’t leave to get some sleep only serves to increase his urgency to reach his flat. Q doesn’t much care for Tanner, obviously; he could make the man regret his entire existence with a simple click of his finger on a keyboard. However, he does care for 007, who has been on a mission for over two weeks now and is a hair’s breadth away from closing in on his target, and who needs Q’s expert monitoring to finish the assignment properly. 

Q knows his colleagues underestimate him. They think he can’t perform past 45 hours awake, or that he can’t go on if he hasn’t eaten lunch earlier in the day. They think he needs breaks, and snacks, and coddling. He’s used to the teasing; teasing about his age, about his ‘abysmal’ ( not his words ) self-preservation habits, about his unremarkable and unassuming appearance, even about his arrogant wit. His work obsession, his single minded drive to ‘prove himself’ ( again, not his words ).

He doesn’t mind it. As he told James once, what feels like a lifetime ago, Q could do more damage with his computer in his pajamas before breakfast than any MI6 agent could hope to do in a year. Everyone else knows it too, despite the ribbing and the annoying insistence to grab some sleep before you fall over. 

What Q can’t take is the teasing about being the weak link . It is never worded as such, of course, and the badgering is, overall, well-meaning and thoughtless. But Q knows. 

He knows he’s not the strongest. He knows he’s not the fastest. He knows that, apart from his mind, he doesn’t have any skills in the field—which is why he is not a field agent. But sometimes the situation calls for him to wander out of Q-Branch, and then being MI6’s youngest quartermaster isn’t an achievement anymore, but a liability. He’s skinny, and untrained, and dependent on his glasses. He’s not fearless, or bold, or dangerous. 

And someone—Tanner, James, Alec, even Eve—always eventually voices some sort of joke: Q needs protection; Q needs to be rolled in bubble-wrap and confined to his computer chair; Q needs a bodyguard; Q needs a reminder of his job description; Q needs someone to tell him a soaking-wet hundred and thirty pounds will not be enough to knock over even a five-foot-five enemy; Q needs to stick to what he knows best; Q needs to invest in fucking contact lenses. 

He has heard it all, all his life. He knows he’s not made for the field, knows what happens when one is the smallest, the scrawniest, the dorkiest. Any of those superlatives turn anyone who is unlucky enough to fit them into a target. 

Q never says anything, but those jokes land over him like rotten fruits, their bitter aftertaste sticking at the back of his throat. Even though the physical aspect of the field isn’t his strong suit — and will never be — he doesn’t want to be catered to, protected, infantilized, or considered like a burden. The mere thought of it both humiliates and sickens him. He’d never forgive himself if James or Alec got themselves hurt because Q distracted them with his uselessness. 

Q, without pretentiousness, is fully aware of his mind’s and his hands’ worth. He can think of anything, and he can then make anything. There are no systems, no firewalls, no defenses that can keep him out. No weapons he can’t craft, no riddle he can’t solve, no code he can’t figure out. No plans he can’t make, no strategies he can’t try. He’s more than capable.

The contrast between his inadequacy and his competence annoys him. Q wishes he knew how to balance his outrageous pride in his proficiency with a computer with his crippling shame in his impotence without it.

The first raindrop hits his cheekbone. Q blinks, glaring at the sky. He still has a way to go before reaching his flat, and the small man walking his dog in front of him doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, unhelped by the insistence with which the dog plows on toward the street to reach a stray plastic cup rolling in the wind. The leash, stretched taut, blocks most of the sidewalk and prevents Q from sidestepping the duo’s aggravating leisureness. What if 007 needs his help right now?

Q bites back a sigh, clutching his laptop bag closer to his body. After a quick peek to the darkening sky, he strides to the sidewalk’s left, hoping to bypass the dog walker by quickly ducking into the small alley separating two sad-looking shop facades. He picks up the pace once he has succeeded, increasing the distance between him and the small fox terrier. 

Not even a minute later, another obstacle blocks Q’s route; a large group of teenage girls, walking side by side, elbow hooked to elbow, loudly gossiping and guffawing over something or other. They take up the entirety of the sidewalk’s width, a tall brunette girl even forced to walk on the street to keep up with her friends, sidestepping sewer grates with her heels. Q spares her a second of sympathy, then repeats his previous trick, diving into some forgotten alley to come out in front of them. 

A hand snatches his wrist. Q whirls around, flyaway strands of hair falling in front of his glasses. In front of him stands a narrow-faced, broad-shouldered young man with an unkempt beard and dark circles under his blue eyes. Q doesn’t have time to process the situation before he is tugged farther away from the street and the group of chuckling teenage girls. Shaking hair out of his face, he jerks his arm to free himself from the young man’s steel grip, mind running a mile a minute. 

Is this one of MI6’s enemies? One of James’? Has this man been waiting for Q all day, trailing him? Does he want Q, the Quartermaster, or is he simply interested in Q for his connection to James and the other Double-Ohs? Will Q be tortured for information?

Q jerks his arm again. The fingers on his wrist tighten and twist, pinching the skin. Towards the end of the alley wait two other men, just as broad-shouldered as the one holding him. A sick swell of fear tickles the back of his throat.

Should Q cry out? Scream? But who will help him, really? The dog walker, the group of girls? He can’t take the risk to endanger them; he will not. He works for MI6, for fuck’s sake, there must be something he can do. The odds are not in his favour (three to one), but when are they ever, really? Q has helped James out of worse situations countless times.

As of right now, the man holding Q’s wrist is the only obstacle blocking his path to the alley’s mouth toward the busy street. His would-be assailants must not be very bright; there’s no one at his back to stop him should he make a break for it. 

Which he will, once he has figured out how to free himself. Perhaps if he shrugs out of his coat quickly enough? Or if he creates a distraction of some sort? Maybe the effect of surprise will be enough if he quicks the young man in the groin? Would that be too much of a coward’s move? Q figures James and the other Double-Ohs would think so. 

But Q isn’t a Double-Oh, can’t pretend he knows how to use the same techniques and maneuvers as a trained spy. He needs to focus on making the best of what he can do. 

Q lets himself grow limp in the man’s hold, keeping an eye on him and his acolytes and angling his body away so his computer bag is mostly out of harm’s way. Carefully, he sneaks his free hand into his coat pocket. Inside it lies bits and pieces of gadgetry, discarded bolts and frayed wires and broken circuit boards. Q throws a handful in the man’s face. 

The stranger shouts, splutters and steps back. Q wrenches himself free. Runs. 

His wrist is caught again. This time, a fist crashes against his cheekbone, and he ends up in a sprawl on the ground. His heart drums so loudly in his ears that it takes him a second to understand that the young man is talking to him, flanked by his two friends. 

“Fuck right off, mate,” a glob of spit lands on the ground right next to Q, “Why you makin’ this so difficult?”

Q pushes his computer bag behind him. Drags himself to his feet slowly, using the rough brick wall as a crutch. His cheek throbs and his glasses stand askew. Drawing himself to his full height despite the untameable panic rising within him, he asks, in a voice so steady and unruffled that even James would be proud, “What do you want?”

“Give us your wallet,” the man says. 

“And that computer of yours,” his red-haired friend adds.

“And your cellphone too, mate,” the last idiot continues, “If you’ve got one.”

Q stares. There is no way this is real. 

“Are you serious?” The question slips out of Q’s mouth before he can stop it, the anxious storm of contingency plans and MI6 policies in his head grinding to a screeching halt. He can’t believe what’s happening. 

“Yeah, we’re fucking serious.” Viciousness contorts the first man’s narrow features. Q’s fingers work behind him, slowly unzipping his computer bag. “Do we look like we’re joking to ya, hmm, do we? You think you can mess with us, innit, but things don’t look too good for ya, do they? And cause we’re as serious as any other fucker, we won’t ask a second time.” 

Q got himself tangled in a common, everyday, boring, completely incidental mugging. 

The fucking laugh Alec and James will have at him. 

“I’m not giving you anything,” Q says, no longer as afraid as he ought to be, because the situation has reached a whole new level of ridiculousness. Here he was a second ago, preparing himself to a kidnapping, bracing his body and mind to withstand torture, considering ways to kill himself before spilling information. Now, those three morons in front of him don’t appear nearly as intimidating as they did when he believed they were not teenage thieves, but hardened agents out to break him three thousand different ways. 

And never let it be said that Q’s scandalous arrogance will not cause his eventual downfall. 

The three young men converge on him at once. Q ducks, pulls his laptop out of the bag, and slams it over the red-haired fellow with all his might. A shout, a fist, a burst of pain and adrenaline. Q tries to hit the narrow-faced thug with the laptop next, but quickly changes course, smacking it on the brick wall next to him with enough force to momentarily destabilize the three thieves. He whacks the laptop again and again, the four of them helplessly watching it break. 

The downpour begins at last. Someone bashes Q’s head into the brick wall just like he did a second ago with his computer. Q collapses, the world pitch-black for a blissful second before colors and sounds rush back in so fiercely he thinks the swirling intensity might kill him. Dirty shoes and boots crash against his ribs, his back. 

Hands reach for his wallet. Fumble for his phone, abandon when they don’t find it. Discard the broken laptop after a second of consideration. Leave. 

Q doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry. They could’ve taken the hard drive, which might or might not be destroyed, but they hadn’t. Why hadn’t they? Groaning, he uncurls his battered body from its scrunched ball of protection, blindly reaching for the laptop’s splinters. Something wet trickles down the side of his face. It’s raining more heavily than he’d thought. 

It takes him a minute to find his lighter. Q flicks it on, feels the flame on his fingers, and presses it under the mess of plastic, glass, polycarbonate and wires where he knows, blind or not, beaten or not, where he knows for certain the hard drive is. Despite the rain, the fire ignites and eats the evidence away, and Q slumps back on the dirty concrete. 

Mission over, the pain catches up with him, his vision dimming. He wants to sleep so badly that he considers giving up and sinking into the grey haze swallowing more and more of the world around him. But they took his wallet. 

They have his IDs. 

Fake ones, of course. Quentin Dawson, thirty-four years old, freelance worker. Insured. Proud owner of a driver’s license since two years ago. 

They have his IDs.

And it doesn’t matter that the cards are fake. Doesn’t matter that Quentin’s not really him. It’s enough to be considered a security risk. Enough to have M devising ways to pull the plug. Enough to put MI6 in danger. Enough to put James in danger. 

From the moment someone has Q’s driver license in hand, someone might want to take a longer look at it. Notice that there’s just this little oddity, this tiny detail that doesn’t fit. Research Mr. Dawson. Find out he doesn’t exist prior to four years ago. Investigate. Discover nothing, admittedly, because MI6 has become good at covering their tracks ever since he has gotten there, but still. Curiosity piqued, something fishy uncovered, left open, only waiting for someone to dig some more. Too late. 

Q moans. He needs to fix this, and fast. 

Gritting his teeth, he drags himself to his elbows. Gasps and pants through the agony, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes. Crawls over the concrete, lugging his uncooperative body further inch by inch like an earthworm on the sun-baked sidewalk. His arms give out. His head slams back down on the ground. 

The last thought that makes it to his attention spears through him like a knife. 

I can never let James know about this, ever.

The shame follows him even into unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

“Sir? Sir!”

Rain pitter-patters faintly on the side of Q’s right cheek. His left cheek, shoved against concrete, burns as he unsuccessfully tries to shift his head. Footsteps run closer to him, the strides hurried and short, sending shockwaves through the ground to his ear with a resounding echo. A horn blares in the distance. 

“Sir? Are you okay?”

The footsteps stop, very close. The shockwaves don’t, reverberating through his skull with no exit. The rain gathers near his hairline, then slips down the side of his face, its strokes brisk. His eyelashes flutter when water teases the corner of his right eye, trying to ooze in, but he doesn’t have the strength nor the will to open it. The concrete on his left side has rubbed his skin raw.

“That’s a silly question, of course you’re not. Do you need some help? You could use some help, I think; I’ll help you. Yes, yes, you need my help.”

The voice, deep but still soft, bends and twists around a foreign accent. It lifts towards the ends of the sentences, turning each into a lilting tune with no melody, in which the consonants eat each other to give the vowels the spotlight. The sound of it filters into Q’s foggy brain, though the meaning loses itself on the way, leaving him with O ’s and E’ s and R ’s and no tools to piece them together. 

“Can you tell me your name? Sir? Are you awake?”

A hand lands on Q’s right cheek and insistently taps the cheekbone, dislodging the raindrops garnered there. The touch annoys him, but doesn’t surpass the exhaustion weighing his eyelids down.  

“Sir! Wake up!” The voice comes from closer, almost a shout. 

Q jerks into consciousness, roused by the ice-pick of noise drilling through his skull. His eyes fly open, though they can’t focus; he sees a slanted expanse of wet concrete, a black shape that might’ve been a trash bag farther away, and the crouching form of a man. He blinks, but his vision remains just as blurry, almost watery. Unconsciously, he reaches for his glasses, hindered by the ache it sparks in his chest. 

“Ah, there you are,” the man sighs in relief, then seems to notice Q’s aborted movement. The sharp crunch of broken glass reaches Q’s ears. “Oh, fudging heck! I’m afraid your glasses are a total loss, sir. They don’t seem to be in much better shape than you.”

An odd, seal-like bark comes from above him. Q frowns, confused, but then the bark comes again. It takes him a long five seconds — far too long — to understand that the short, wet noise is meant to be laughter. He frowns again, the spike of annoyance in his stomach awakened a second time. What’s so funny about this? He’s useless without his glasses, nearly blind. How will he fix whatever is happening right now if he can’t see? His agents are counting on him to be functional. 

The laughter peters off as abruptly as it began. “Do you know which day we are? What’s your name?”

The potent iron taste of blood coats the back of Q’s throat. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, numb and cumbersome like when he comes back from a dentist’s appointment. He tries to move it and answer, but he comes up blank. What’s his name?

Benjamin? Benjamin hasn’t been his name in a long time, and no longer even exists, wiped off the face of the Earth the moment MI6 set their sights on him. 

Quentin? Quentin isn’t real either, one of countless fake identities, and what’s to say it hasn’t been compromised already by his stupid carelessness?

Q? Q… Q’s the closest to a name he has, but it’s not meant for a stranger’s ears, and doesn’t even belong to him.

What’s his name?

“Okay, that’s fine, you don’t need to tell me. But you need my help, you do. You can’t stay in the rain forever, you’ll catch a cold, and you’re in bad enough shape already, aren’t you?”

The odd, choppy laughter makes a reappearance. Q wants it to stop. The hazy beige figure in front of him moves and slowly clears itself the closer it approaches to his own face. Only a couple of inches stand between them, and a faint trace of discomfort unfurls its moth-like wings in his belly even as he can finally discern something else than blurry shapes and colors; he notices a pair of brown eyes, disconcertingly pale, two bushy eyebrows, a wide nose. 

“My name’s Saul. Short and sweet, huh?”

The face moves away before Q can commit any of the details to memory. Even though he can’t see them anymore, the pale brown eyes stay with him and he clings to their image to anchor himself to the present. He can feel them on him still, watching. Q would like to watch them back, to assess and analyze and find a solution, but his mind spins on empty, stretched thin like taffy. He should go back to his flat and get some sleep. 

“Hey! Stay with me. I don’t live far from here, I could bring you home and patch you up, what do you say? Sounds good, innit? Yes, I’ll help you feel better, and then it’ll be like nothing happened at all. I’ll fix you up in no time, you’ll see.”

Q thinks about it. His body will not carry him to his flat without help no matter the strength of his will. He doesn’t believe he can get up alone, much less walk over a kilometer and then climb the flight of stairs to his front door. He can’t go to a hospital: for one, he doesn’t have his wallet anymore and thus has no identity, no insurance, no nationality; for two, being admitted to a medical facility means he can be traced back, either by his assailants or by any of his colleagues at MI6, which he can’t, under no circumstances, allow to happen. 

Q can’t let James find out about this. He can’t let M know either, not ever. Q has already turned himself into enough of a security risk without making it worse.  

Saul doesn’t know anything about him. Can’t figure anything out, either, because Q has already been stripped of his IDs. This man has no connection to Double-Oh agents, to MI6, or to any form of British Intelligence. 

Q clenches his right hand into a fist, forcing his muscles into action, and blindly reaches for Saul. The man catches on quickly and grabs Q’s arm, gently slinging it over his broad shoulders. The movement shifts his head, and he hisses in pain as his cheek drags over the concrete.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Saul says with delight. “We’ll go slowly, but it’ll hurt, okay? It’s a temporary hurt, though, don’t worry: I’ll make it all go away as soon as we’re home, I promise.”

Saul hitches Q’s arm higher on his shoulders. The man’s other hand snakes around Q’s back and settles on his waist. “Are you ready? On three, I’ll pull you up. One… Two… Thr—”

“Wait…” Q’s voice barely rises over the rasp of his breaths. “M-My head…”

“Oh, shoot, of course, of course.” Saul shifts his feet; his boots scrape against the concrete. “Give me a second, I’ll figure it out, just a second…”

Saul pulls. Q cries out. His vision lurches then flickers out, crossing a wide range of white to grey to black, as he is dragged in a sitting position by his arm. Blood rushes up from the back of his skull to his forehead, buzzing like the red and white cells have been magnetized. 

A hand settles on the right side of Q’s face and presses his head into the crook of Saul’s neck. “Shhh, it’s okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I had to. You understand that, right? I had to, so I can get you up and help you. Just a little bit more and we’ll be there.”

Panting, Q hums his assent between breaths. Heavy head secured over Saul’s shoulder, he braces himself for the next step of the harrowing processus. Saul repositions his arm and heaves them to their feet in one swift movement, as quick as a courageous toddler is to rip off a band-aid. Q loses himself to the physical sensations, rational thoughts driven out of his mind by the fireworks and explosions in his skull, rib cage and lower belly. The strangled whines slipping out from behind his clenched teeth don’t sound like they belong to him, animalistic and pitiful. 

Saul reaches up and strokes Q’s wet hair out of his face. Rain drips down his forehead. The cold humidity pierces his skin and nestles in his bones. He wants to go home. He wants to sleep. Standing upright requires more effort than he has the energy to give. 

Saul moves to take a step. Q sways, tries to follow, one foot in front of the other, but he can’t, he can’t, it’s too much— 

“S-Stop,” Q whispers, “Stop, stop.”

“C’mon,” Saul says, adjusting his grip to shoulder more of Q’s weight, “We’re almost there, I live just around the corner. A few steps and I’ll be able to set you up in my guest room. I have a queen bed waiting for you, you know. Lots of pillows. C’mon. I know you can do it.”

Q wonders about how lucky he is that Saul happened to find him. 

He grits his teeth and takes the next step. And the next. And the next.

Chapter Text

The next time Q wakes up, he’s sitting in pleasantly hot water, legs spread in front of him. The lapping waves reach his belly button, plunging him in a warm, soothing embrace from the waist down, while a strange draft of cold air blows over his upper body’s naked skin. His spine shakes with a violent shiver, agitating the pool of water around him. His shoulders ache from their unnatural position, his arms draped over a smooth, hard edge on either side of him. 

A trickle of warmth streams down his neck and back, and he leans backward to huddle closer to its source. Hands, steady and soft, settle over his shoulder blades and gently drive him forward again. Q breathes out in contentment, lashes fluttering. 

Then, the hands inch higher, stroking through his wet hair. Pain sparks behind his eyelids in a handful of white starbursts, and his eyes fly open as a garbled hiss escapes his throat. The world in front of him sways, white and indistinguishable, and he has a fleeting thought for the throbbing in his head, which will only worsen without his glasses to keep his eyes from their fruitless efforts to focus. Despite the blurriness of his surroundings, he understands that he’s in a bathroom, unrecognizable to him, and sitting in a bathtub, just as unrecognizable. 

Q shies away from the hands and the pain, the first sluggish tendrils of panic unfurling in his belly, but finds he can’t move without aggravating the dizziness and nausea clogging his senses, nor can he hold his head without the hands’ support. Gasping, he slumps forward, fingers clenched around the bathtub’s edges. 

“Shhh, shhhh,” a male voice whispers soothingly in his ear. “Stop moving. You’ll hurt yourself.”

That’s not James’ voice.

Q jolts again, the hot water splashing over his abdomen. His breaths come out in rasps, hindered by the exhausted angle of his neck, chin glued to his chest. He tries to get up, get away, gather his knees close and shift his weight forward, but none of his limbs move, stuck in place by the vertiginous lethargy he recognizes from serious head wounds. The panic in the pit of his stomach expands, trapped inside his uncooperative body and buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. 

“Wha’...?”

The voice shushes him again. 

“Don’t try to talk. Let me help you, I’ll make you feel better.” The voice and hands come from behind, out of Q’s blurry sight. The man grips Q’s head again and raises it until it sits straight, carefully avoiding the left side of his skull. “I need to clean you up before I can patch your wound. I know it hurts, but you’ll be alright. I’ll take care of you.”

With a rustle of clothes, the man reaches for something farther away from the bathtub, though he keeps a wide palm on the side of Q’s head, fingers creeping over his right temple. Q can’t help the instinctual urge to lean into the touch, seeking solace from the pain of holding a burden too heavy to bear on his own. 

The second hand comes back, and the man starts massaging Q’s scalp, gentle and thorough. Q squeezes his eyes shut to protect them from flyaway soap suds, the tension in his muscles first building at the unsolicited touch, then slowly leaking out as the repetitive movement appeases the soreness resting behind his forehead. 

The man behind him hums a sweet, lilting lullaby in a deep baritone. His stubby-fingered, wide-palmed hands glide down Q’s neck, slippery with soap, and start rubbing his shoulders, kneading the leftover anxiety away. Q’s fingers unclench from the bathtub’s edge as he lets himself slip backward, trusting the kind, self-assured touch to catch him. 

The hands drift from Q’s shoulders to his arms, then down his back, and then back up to circle around and reach his torso. He can feel the man’s body heat behind him as he bows forward to have a better reach, though the bathroom’s air remains uncomfortably cold as the soap dries on his skin. 

The man’s careful touch inches lower to Q’s belly, then lower, and lower. He recoils violently. The water splashes, blood roaring in his ears. Carried by his rabbit-nervous momentum, Q’s sluggish body slips in the soapy water with another splash, the side of his head banging against the hard edge of the bathtub. The metallic clang echoes in his skull, followed by an unrelenting video-glitch of agony as his brain sticks on the injury, alarmed by the frantic signals his nerves fire. Something warm and sticky oozes down the side of his face, pooling in his ear. A strangled, reedy groan falls from his lips. 

“Darn it! I told you not to move, didn’t I?” The man says, his voice still low and sweet, suffused with sympathy. “Look at you, poor boy, you went and made it worse. That head of yours doesn’t need any more banging if you don’t want it to break like a vase.”

Strange, pathetic gasps tumble from Q’s half-open mouth as he tries to breathe through the nausea, hunched in on himself in a defensive posture. His mind fills with the blare and incessant ringing of numerous alarms as questions pop up before his eyes like viruses on a computer: Who is this man? Where is he? What will happen to him? How long has he been here, and how long have those hands wandered over him while he was unconscious?

“Shoot, silly me, you must be in incredible pain, huh? Gimme a sec,” the voice drifts further away, then comes back, very close to Q’s ear as his head is manipulated up once more, “Here, drink this. The taste will probably be awful, but it’ll help you. It’ll make you better.”

The stubby fingers grasp Q’s jaw and pour a mouthful of liquid down his throat, still as tender as ever. He swallows reflexively, and regrets it immediately as the bitter, metallic taste coats his tongue. He knows what it means, but it’s already too late. 

There’s nothing to be done. 

****

The rest happens in flashes : 

Bright constellations of pain in a dark sky of unconsciousness. 

That same bitter, steel-like taste, again and again, constantly lacquering the back on his throat.

The blurry outline of a face, from which he can distinguish nothing but pale brown eyes.

A soft bed, covered with heavy, knitted quilts. A comfortable, worn armchair, whose cushions swallow him whole. A bathroom, and a bathtub, white and sterile. 

Kisses on his cheek, on his forehead, on his neck. Never on his mouth. 

Warm blood. Sticky bandages. Feverish dreams. Gasping breaths. 

A deep baritone voice, singing and soothing and humming. 

Hands. Stubby-fingered, wide-palmed.

Chapter Text

James’ flight home lands in less than thirty minutes. Considering Q performed a few magic tricks to book the spy in first class after his mission, it should take from twenty to thirty minutes to park the aircraft and exit its cramped hallway. And since 007 travels with nothing but a few gadgets, a suit and an extra dose of boldness, he doesn’t need to go through the endless wait at the baggage carousel, all of his items neatly folded in a small carry-on, so maybe another five to ten minute to walk through the airport to Q’s location. 

One hour maximum before he’ll see James, and James will see him. 

Q readjusts his cardigan, tugging on the sleeves to cover his wrists. Cold drops of sweat roll down his back in a slow trickle and he shivers. He shifts his clothes again (the undershirt, the shirt, the tie, the sweater vest, the cardigan, the coat), unnerved by the growing wet patches underneath his armpits. He should take his outer layer off, but then he’ll just be cold and James will spot the nervous sweat in seconds. Q needs to get a grip, and fast. 

The airport is bustling with activity. Q has always hated flying, but he finds he hates the airport just as much. Suitcases’ wheels screech on the worn linoleum floor and snag on the steps; people’s voices rise and fall in pitch as they greet each other after a long trip; cell phones beep and ring after hours on airplane mode; keys with new, obnoxious keychains jangle, souvenir bags rustle, shoes clap the ground after sitting for too long, luggage thwack against each other. 

Q wishes it would all stop. Fast-paced businessmen rush past him, followed by excited teenagers back from a solo trip and tanned families, and they walk by so close any of them could extend an arm and snatch Q’s wrist. There are too many people to watch at once, and he can’t properly keep track of them like he would while surveilling James on a mission, carefully monitoring even the slightest movement. Q regrets his decision to not wait in the car, but then he would’ve missed James’ smile upon singling him out of the crowd, the first familiar face after a two-month-long trip.

The sweat patches under his arms spread. Despite his multiple layers of clothing, he still feels chilled under the constricting, anxious heat. Q checks his watch; only from seventeen to twenty minutes before James finds him. What if the spy can tell?

In the 5 weeks that have passed since Q’s unfortunate mugging experience, the bruises on his torso have healed nicely, though his ribs remain slightly sore when he coughs or sneezes. His face bears no more signs of the injuries it received apart from a small, uneven scar on the left side of his forehead, artfully hidden by the thickness of his hair. James might notice that Q is in painful need of a haircut, but that’s it. He’s okay. 

He regrets not bringing his laptop. He could’ve gotten ahead on some work while waiting. But then what would’ve happened if someone spotted it? If they wanted to take it from him? Q thinks his computers are better left at home or at work, protected by multiple locks and heavily-encrypted alarm systems. It saves his shoulder (and ribs) the weight of carrying so many government secrets. 

Q spots James cleaving his way through the crowd even though he shouldn’t have been there until at least six other minutes. He waits for the spy to notice him, absentmindedly tugging on his sleeves. Should he wave hello? Probably not; 007 doesn’t need an overenthusiastic housewife needily calling for his attention. 

As if apprised by Q’s musings, James raises his head, his blue eyes latching onto Q with laser-like focus. Q smiles, his hand raised in a tiny, childish wave before he can stop himself. The spy doesn’t react until he is close enough to grab and protect Q should 007’s attention suddenly urge someone to attack. 

“Q.” James nods.

“007.” Q nods back, swallowing back his smile and keeping his voice neutral. 

But then James steps forward and grabs his jaw to bring their lips together. The kiss isn’t brutal, nor hungry; it is slow and softened by relief. Q freezes in place, shocked by James’ unexpected display of affection, and the kiss ends before he can gather his wits again. The spy wraps Q in a tight embrace, sinking into Q’s arm with the kind of abandon that can only come from two months of exhaustion and solitude. 

James draws back just as quickly, not giving Q the time to reciprocate this time either. James settles a hand on the small of Q’s back, gently guiding him towards the airport’s exit. Q rolls his shoulders, trying to dislodge his sticky clothes from the sweaty nape of his neck. 

Outside, the wind blows lightly, cooling his flushed skin. James doesn’t hold his hand, not yet, which Q feels a rush of gratefulness for. The sidewalk stretches along the long line of cabs and frustrated drivers trying to parallel park, and Q ignores James’ tug toward an idling taxi as they walk by. James holds his questions, though Q imagines he can sense them crowding the air between them.

A bit farther away stands a nondescript grey 1980 Mini, parked slightly crookedly near the curb. Q stops near it, grabbing the keys from his coat pocket and unlocking the doors. James stops as well, staring at the vehicle with suspicion. 

“MI6 doesn’t own any Minis,” James says. 

“It’s my car.” Q opens the driver’s door, though he doesn’t slip inside, the weight of James’ eyes scrutinizing him holding him in place. The slightest movement might reveal the subterfuge, break the illusion. 

James rolls with the information, skirting around Q’s motionless figure and folding himself into the driver’s seat. The spy looks a bit absurd inside the Mini, the car too dull and harmless for someone of his skill. His hands linger over the steering wheel, the gear stick, the dashboard. “What have you done to it? Can it fly? Explode? I’m sure Alec would look dangerously dashing driving this around.”

“It’s a normal car. You know, to drive in the city like a law-abiding citizen,” Q says drily, circumventing the vehicle to reach the passenger’s side. He ignores the tickle of annoyance at the back of his throat at being supplanted as the driver.

James stares at him as he settles in the passenger seat. “Since when do you own a car?”

“I bought it a month ago.”

“But you hate driving. And traffic. “ James’ blue eyes are relentless. “And you like your walks.”

There’s no point in lying, even though Q is tempted to do so. He rolls the window down, hair shaken by a soft gust of wind, and suppresses a shiver. He has never sweated so much in his life before. “I know.”

James reaches over him and rolls the window back up. Q stiffens in his seat, breath stuttering. He prays his five layers of clothes obscure the tension running through his muscles, though he still forces himself to relax, counting down from a hundred using only prime numbers in his head. 

“You changed the windows for bulletproof glass, though, right?”

“Obviously.” Q doesn’t understand this odd urge to snap, this unexplained short temper. He swallows, tries again: “Yes, yes, of course.”

James refrains from plopping himself back in his seat, body still stretched over the gear stick and angled toward Q. Mere inches keep them apart, the narrow space between them fraught with a buzzing sort of suspense. Q feels on hold, suspended in the moment, as he sits tight in anticipation of what will happen next, waiting for James to decide which course of action will be prioritized. 

The pause stretches on for too long. Q’s unease skyrockets with each second of inaction, spent wondering and worrying about what will be done to him. He’s used to calling the shots, that’s why. It’s part of his job, and it bleeds a bit into his life outside of work. It’s completely normal.

“Let’s go.” Q calls the shot. “Your place.”

James stays silent. Reaches into Q’s coat pocket and roots around bolts, circuit boards, rivets and wires to snatch the Mini’s keys. Turns the key in the ignition and dashes out of the parking lot with an unnecessarily loud roar of the engine. Q gazes out the window, watching the airport shrink in the side-view mirrors. 

Q doesn’t ask about the mission, nor does he ask about medical needs. He should, but he doesn’t. He’d monitored the first two strained weeks with rapt focus, eyes barely leaving the screen. Then, the story is that he’d taken an unexpected vacation for a week and a half, and worked from home like a maniac for the following month, catching up on what he’d missed with an obsessive drive to learn everything. He hasn’t been back to Q-Branch in over a month and a half, nor has he talked to any of his colleagues except over the phone or by email. 

Q knows what happened to 007 during those two months in Lithuania by heart. He memorized every detail, every escape route, every close calls. Learned which problems were solved and which will lead to more problems in the future. Directed James left and right, up and down, in and out of danger. Q should ask, but he doesn’t, because he’d been there for every minute of it, scarcely sleeping. 

On the other end of it, though, James has no idea what happened in London. Hasn’t been informed about Q’s little break, only that R would take over his monitoring for a few days. The only thing James has is a handful of questions without answers and a load of too-keen hunches, which Q will need to work particularly hard to thwart. 

James parks the Mini in the parking lot adjoined to the building he occasionally lives in. His place isn’t a shit-hole, per say, but it’s not far from it; the tiny, rectangular flat seems to shrivel under the imposing cage of steel-reinforced walls, the light blocked from the windows by tinted, bullet-proof glass. A few disparate belongings populate the space: a ratty couch, a mattress on the ground, a fridge, a magnet from Mexico, three bottles of Russian vodka and a quite impressive number of handmade classic car figurines. 

Q would rather have suggested they go to his flat, which is cramped as well, but prettier and cleaner. But, even though he’s embarrassed to admit it even to himself, the reason he chose James’ place is because he’d like to get his umbrella back from where he’d left it lying on the floor all those weeks ago. His good old umbrella, which is fitted with a knife in the handle and blades in the metal branches. His good old umbrella, which could’ve been used to whack any common attacker over the head. His good old umbrella, which can still be used to protect him from the dreadful sensation of rain sliding down the side of his face. 

James drops his carry-on on the floor, toeing off his leather shoes and loosening his tie as soon as the door clicks shut behind him. He whirls on Q, drawing him closer in one swift movement, and kisses him. This time the action carries more weight, shielded from curious and potentially dangerous eyes; James throws himself in the embrace with a strange mix of relief, disbelief and despair, relief that he can finally let his guard down, disbelief that he’s somehow still alive, despair that perhaps he won’t come back home again next time. 

Q, prepared this time, reciprocates the kiss, sinking into James’ arms with his own kind of desperate relief. James’ strong, muscled grip closes around him like a shield, and those hands that have killed so many people settle tenderly over his body, one on his waist and one on the back of his neck. Q, perhaps a bit unfairly, pictures the blood on them staining him, marking him. Red streaks announcing to everyone in the world that hurting him will come with a price.

Similarly, he imagines his hands imprinting their own brand in James’ skin, a long signature of code and instructions that disclose Q’s constant presence, his perpetual vigilance. Sometimes, despite how childish the thought is, he sees himself as James’ guardian angel, and James his indestructible protector, like they’re characters in a fairy tale and not spies and hackers. 

The kiss breaks and they simply breathe together, forehead to forehead. Q’s glasses dig uncomfortably into his face. He shifts his head to readjust, an almost imperceptible movement, but James spots it and reaches up to remove the glasses. 

A spike of terror electrifies Q’s heart. His hand twitches with the reflex to snatch James’ arm midair, but he restricts himself with another spike of panic, unwilling to find out which of James’ ingrained defensive techniques such a reflex might trigger. What if 007 accidentally snaps his wrist in half?

Instead, Q squeezes his eyes shut as James gently sets the glasses aside and leans in for a soft, slow kiss, irrationally afraid to witness the world’s vanishing behind the blurry haze of his defective sight. Darkness swirls behind his eyelids and all of a sudden he doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t remember who is in front of him. 

Thin, wet lips on his right cheek. A large hand holding the left side of his head, the palm wide enough to cover nearly half his forehead. Bushy eyebrows and sunken brown eyes in an otherwise indistinguishable face. A soothing murmur, an affectionate call. 

“Shhh, dear, don’t you worry.”

Still blind, heart pounding a staccato beat in his throat, Q plucks his glasses from James’ hand and shoves them back on his nose. James is staring at him bemusedly, blue eyes wide, before he schools his expression back into neutrality. But Q knows James by heart, has watched him countless times on missions, interacting with targets; this cautious, practiced neutrality hides a hundred assessments, a thousand doubts. 

“Q?” James asks, still watching, analyzing. 

Q pushes his glasses higher, clinging to his surroundings’ sharp definition. The three bottles of Russian vodka. The ratty couch. James’ carry-on. The Aston Martin figurine he’d gotten James as a gift. James’ blue eyes. Not pale brown. 

Q strides into the kitchen and roots through the cabinets. “Are you hungry? I’ll fix you something.”

The cabinets reveal a few dusty cans, while the fridge displays a bag of rotten carrots, their skin bluish and oddly textured. Q presses his lips together, unsurprised, but still disappointed by the phenomenal failure of his attempt at distraction. “Forget it. You ate on the plane anyway. You should take a nap, catch up on some sleep. Go to bed, I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Q,” James says again. 

“I’ll be there in a second,” Q repeats, swallowing back the weird trepidation in his voice. His skin itches under his clothes, his limbs thrumming with too much energy. Perhaps he shouldn’t have drunk that last coffee before picking James up. 

James wordlessly takes Q’s arm, his grip light and easy to shake, and guides him towards the mattress on the floor. Q follows without thought, pressure building in his ribcage with each step. The strain gobbles up so much space that he can’t breathe. As they enter the bedroom, he finds he can’t go further, trapped in the doorway by an invisible wall. He pulls his arm out of James’ hand, as casual as still possible. 

“I completely forgot,” Q says, arms held tightly to his body, “but I need to give R a call, fill her in about that report she needs to complete about… well, it’s not important, I’m keeping you. Go to sleep, I’ll— In a moment. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He dashes out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Q willfully ignores the crushing feeling in his chest at the idea of James alone again for the sixtieth night in a row, stripped of comfort even in his own home after a long, painful mission.

Chapter Text

James sleeps. 

He doesn’t, usually. On a normal day, he enters a strange state of purgatory between sleep and wakefulness, oscillating between his exhausted mind’s genuine need for rest and his job’s constant need for alertness. He stands on the edge of a very thin cliff, balancing his weight on a single foot, always ready to take the plunge and snap back into consciousness to defend his life with a body that would rather lie down and finally unwind. 

At home, back from missions, James doesn’t sleep , either. He sinks into the same greyish haze of asleep-but-not-quite, and is brutally yanked from it by nightmarish memories: gunshots a few centimeters from his head; heavy smoke in a crumbling building; bloodied hands after another kill; cold water in a deadweight lift, a cold hand reaching for him, cold lips on his cold, cold skin. 

James sleeps on rare occasions. Back from a drawn-out, draining mission, so weary that it’s more like blacking out than resting. In bed with his arms wrapped protectively around Q’s slim form, appeased by the solidity and steadiness of his presence. 

Freshly returned from two months of hell in Lithuania, James had expected some mix of both. But Q had drawn away at the last second, eyes shifty and body closed-off, stammering some excuse about a call to R. James had stood in the doorway, mind whizzing up and down the long list of odd little details he’d noted about the Quartermaster in the few hours he’d been back on English soil. 

Tight shoulders; stress. An unfamiliar pattern of stiffening, then forcefully loosening; undetermined. Sweat patches, under the arms and on the back; anxiety. A slippery gaze, hiding behind too-long hair; avoidance, lies, guilt, fear…? Careful, studied poise; hypervigilance, appearances ( or something to hide) . A new car; undetermined. 

James had watched Q disappear behind the bathroom’s closed door, considering whether he should press the issue. He’d elected not to; Q’s tight, coiled posture broadcasted quite clearly that poking at him would only prompt a retreat further into his shell. James had sat on the mattress on the floor, watching his idle hands. Laid back on the bed, waiting. Stared at the ceiling, eyes dry and burning. 

Q had joined him, eventually. Over an hour later. James had broken his self-imposed stillness and turned, wrapping his arms around Q like he always does. He’d slept. He still sleeps. 

But then he wakes up and there’s no one at his side. James sighs softly in the silence, squinting as a rare ray of sunlight enters the room through the roughly-drawn curtain and hits his retinas. The bare bedroom has warmed considerably since he entered it a few hours ago, the air slightly humid and nearly suffocating. The covers, pushed back, trap his lower body in a tangle, and he kicks them away efficiently, sitting up on the mattress. 

Sweat darkens the sheets where he’d lain. Nightmare, then, though James doesn’t remember a second of it, nor does he remember waking up at some point during his impromptu nap. This means Q had left quite a while ago. The Quartermaster never left him trapped in the throes of a dream gone wrong even though he should; his waking James up put him in danger of retaliation, 007 snapping to life with violence ingrained in his limbs and fear singing a dangerous song in his veins. 

James removes his wet shirt, throwing it on the cement floor. Sometimes he regrets the starkness of his flat, its grey industrial style and constantly dusty surfaces. Its perpetual state of half-obscurity, half of the windows condemned, the other half heavily-tinted. Its restrictiveness, the narrowness of the space and the lack of proper furniture. He’d like to give Q something better, prettier, more to the man’s image. Respectable, composed. Neat.

Perhaps one day James will. He’d bought this terrible place because he’s never there, always on a plane, in an unknown country, trapped in Medical, loitering at the office. When he’d deepened his bond with Q, he’d assumed they’d go to the Quartermaster’s place, an elegant little flat on the sixth floor of an equally elegant little building, which is what they’d done, mostly. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, Q insists they sleep at James’. 

Now that Q and him have been together for a while, maybe James should reflect about investing in a new flat. But he knows he won’t, or at least not anytime soon. It’s too big a declaration, too big a promise. James never knows if he’ll come back; buying someplace for joint living is like speaking a vow he can never guarantee he’ll stick to. It wouldn’t be fair to Q. James’ uninviting steel-reinforced place will have to do until then.

Shirtless and shivering, he climbs to his feet, attentive to the flat’s usual sounds: the howl of the wind corridor on the east side of the building, the hum of the empty fridge, the buzz of the bare lightbulbs illuminating the space with their crude glow, the brisk click-clacking of agile fingers over a well-known keyboard. So, Q hasn’t left completely, then. 

James stops in the doorway and watches. Q is seated on the kitchen’s floor, back to the cabinets (because James had never bothered to buy a table; he eats standing up, on the go), fingers dancing over the keyboard of James’ backup’s backup laptop, this old machine he keeps in the back of the tiny closet near the bathroom.  

Posture straight and rigid; uncomfortable. Unwavering stare; focused. Quick hands; ease or urgency, it depends, could be either. Too many layers of clothes; cold ( or something to hide). 

Something tells James he should announce his presence. “You could’ve sat on the bed, you know. I know the mattress is a bit bumpy, but it’s not that bad. And the company’s better.”

Q’s head snaps in his direction. His eyes snag on James’, deviate toward the floor, then come back up with a small smile meant to mask guilt. “Sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

James figures as much; now that the matter has been brought to his attention, the circles under Q’s eyes appear darker than ever, unaided by the shadow his glasses cast on his upper cheeks. 

Q continues typing, though he barely glances at what he’s doing, looking at James with an intensity that resembles yearning. “How are you doing? Are you hungry? I slipped by the store earlier and bought a few things.”

James blinks. He must’ve been more exhausted than he’d thought for Q to exit and then enter the flat without waking him. Either that, or Q has developed some new skill for stealth. Automatically, James glances at the doorway; beside it stands Q’s black umbrella, leaning upright on the wall. Outside, the sun shines brightly. 

“I could eat something,” James says. 

Q immediately closes the laptop and gets up, setting it aside on an unused portion of the counter. Before the younger man can open one of the cabinets, James slips behind him, drawing him closer. Q stills, then unwinds with a soft sigh, sinking into James’ embrace. James tightens his grip on Q’s waist, almost uncomfortably so, muscles right on the edge of straining. Q settles his arms over James’ as if urging him to bring them even closer. 

James leans in, mouth an centimeter away from the shell of the Quartermaster’s right ear. “Maybe you, if you’d let me.”

James can’t see Q’s face from this angle, but he imagines he feels the flush of heat coloring the younger man’s cheeks. Q’s hand spasms on James’ wrist. James nuzzles the Quartermaster’s neck, breathing him in. He’d missed it so much, this faint honeyed green tea aroma, mingled with something sharper, almost metallic. It smells familiar, comforting. 

“Maybe later,” Q whispers, “I don’t think I’d be very filling.”

“I beg to differ.”

Q chuckles, his amusement shy and nearly silent. James realizes that this is the first time he has heard Q laugh ever since he left; the Quartermaster is too professional to laugh over the comms (though 007 had managed to make him break a few memorable times), and hasn’t smiled much since the airport. James wishes Q would snort that way he sometimes does when he pretends he doesn’t think it’s funny but fails miserably, bursting into wheezing snickers after a second or two. Q’s laugh is the less graceful thing about him, and coincidentally one of the things James likes the most. 

“I’ll make tea and…” Q trails off, turning around in James’ arms to face him. “What time is it?”

James smirks, a bit mocking. “Weren’t you on the computer a second ago?”

“I didn’t check.” A casual shrug; sheepishness. 

Rolling his eyes fondly, James gazes out the tinted window near the kitchen sink. Another building blocks most of the sunlight, but, remembering the bright glare that he’d seen in the bedroom after waking up, he hazards a guess, “I’d say it’s around 4 pm.”

“Umm…” Q pushes his glasses up his nose, lips quirked. His greyish eyes crinkle at the corners. “I bought breakfast supplies.”

“Let’s eat breakfast, then.” James begins to pull away to check the fridge, but an involuntary twitch of Q’s hands stops him. Holding himself still, James blinks at his partner, waiting a split second to see if the younger man will reach out and bring him closer like he clearly wants to if his body language is anything to go by, but Q simply gives him a tight smile and steps back. 

James steps forward in the same movement, bridging the gap between them. He gently drives Q backward until his back hits the wall on the kitchen’s left. Framing the Quartermaster’s face with both hands, James holds him like a bomb about to detonate, something beautiful and dangerous to handle with all the care in the world. 

“Kiss me,” James orders, peering deep into the younger man’s eyes to try and reach the bottom of whatever is going on, to read what Q will not tell him with words but will perhaps reveal by some other mean. 

A beat, stretched taut with anticipation. Q’s gaze drifts down to James’ lips, then rises again, though nowhere near his eyes. “No,” Q says, voice slow and tentative. Then, more commanding, “You. Kiss me.”

James strokes Q’s cheek. “Where?”

“Kiss me under my right ear,” Q instructs, and James does as asked. “Under the jaw. Down my neck; don’t loosen my tie. Find my adam’s apple. Go back—”

As is their usual, James goes off mission; he pecks Q on the mouth, smirking at the younger man’s small sound of surprise. He deepens the kiss, pressing Q back against the cabinets. Q pushes back against him, though James recognizes that it isn’t because he’s trying to escape a trap, but rather because he wants to bring them even closer. 

James wonders just how lonely Q becomes during his long absences. Wonders why the younger man hadn’t stayed in bed earlier even though he couldn’t sleep, if only to seize the opportunity to soak in the human contact without even having to confess to missing James. 

James pauses before it can devolve into full-on making out and catches Q’s affective momentum in a hug. Not a sensual squeeze or a teasing embrace or a quick snuggle. A proper hug, tight and comforting and warm; a gesture meant as a reassurance, a reminder that he’s here, that both of them are. 

Q takes a while to find his footing, first shocked, then tentative, then blissfully content, then embarrassed. James can tell by the spasms of his muscles, the rythm of his breaths, the angle of his head. 007 has been trained to learn the body’s every secret; he knows every melody, every murmur, every scream of the human physique by heart. Every line, every crevice, every ridge. He reads and speaks the language with natural ease, attuned to strangers and not-so-strangers both. 

James still sometimes wishes he could read minds instead of bodies. Why is Q so skittish? Why doesn’t he reach for James if he wants to? Has it been that long? Has James done something two months ago, has he accidentally messed up? Does Q really miss him that much? Should James leave less often, come back quicker? (what is Q hiding?)

Q moves, ready to draw back, but James doesn’t release him. Q slumps in his hold. James lets go. Q turns around, digging in the fridge. James stares at the younger man’s back. Why hadn’t Q pulled away? Why had he let James stop him so easily? (What is he HIDING?)

“Eggs and toast?” Q asks, voice muffled by the fridge’s humming.

“Scrambled,” James says.

Q sets a milk carton on the counter, a brick of butter, and two eggs. Rummages in the cabinet for white bread and a tiny, tiny pot of honey that could easily be carried around in someone’s pocket. Pours water in the kettle. 

James waits for Q to retrieve two more eggs. He doesn’t. Instead, he carries on, pulling out a pan and turning on the stove. Cracking the two eggs, whisking them with a splash of milk. Melting butter in the pan. Placing the slices of bread in the pan before the eggs because James doesn’t own a toaster. 

“Aren’t you hungry?” James asks, tone casual, but not so casual that Q won’t be able to pick up on his suspicions. 

“I ate while I was out,” Q says, flipping the bread. The butter sizzles. The water in the kettle seethes. 

James can tell by the meager bunching of the Quartermaster’s shoulders that it’s a lie. 

“Too bad. You’ll miss out on your own delicious cooking,” James teases. The younger man huffs a breath, ducking his head. 

(WHAT IS Q HIDING?)

Chapter Text

Q knows he has failed to fool James. 

He had expected as much. The agent is too proficient at his job to be duped by a standoffish hacker with mediocre acting skills. Still, surprisingly so, James had refrained from slipping into interrogation mode, taking Q’s odd behavior in stride. Q can only hope that it’ll stay like this, though he knows it won’t. 007 will not be able to resist a mystery for long. 

The first night James is back, after they’ve eaten breakfast at 4 pm and ordered take-out at 10 pm, Q lies awake in bed for hours, trying to pretend he’s asleep. He keeps his eyes closed (he has to; sleeping requires him to take off his glasses, and he doesn't want to witness the world without them anymore), and his breathing as even as possible, but he knows he’ll have to keep doing this for hours and hours, at least until the sun has risen; the idea exhausts him. 

James doesn’t sleep much either, but Q thinks the spy nods off at some point. He must have been aware of Q’s stupid subterfuge, but he doesn’t bring attention to it. Q waits for dawn, mind whirling with anxieties; what if he accidentally falls asleep and has a nightmare? What if he says something damning while unconscious? What if he shifts a bit too much and wakes James?

What will happen tomorrow? Will the ruse go up in smoke? Will James confront him?

The next morning, Q shrugs on the same clothes as the day before (because he doesn’t have any clothes at James’, and can’t borrow the man’s suits; he’d be mortified if even a single drop of sweat were to touch the expensive textile), wincing at the fabric’s stiffness under the arms where his deodorant has seeped into the fibers. He dresses mechanically, undershirt-shirt-pants-belt-tie-sweater vest-cardigan, sticking to the routine he has established with obsessive devotion. 

Today will be his first day back at Q-Branch in a month and a half, and he needs to look his utter best. He needs to exude professionalism, composure, authority and confidence. No cracks, no doubts, no hints that his time away could’ve been anything else than a vacation. 

James drives them to Six in Q’s car, assuming without question that he’ll take the commands like they’re on a field mission. Q, bundled in his coat, sits in the passenger seat, silently irritated. Does James really believe that Q has no skills at all, that he can’t even drive his own car?

He doesn’t keep his mouth shut for long. “Switch lanes. Turn left at the next light.”

James side-eyes him. “Why would I turn left?”

“Because there’s traffic ahead.” Cars idle front to back, packed so tightly together that Q can feel time slipping away from him, the minutes counting down and bringing him closer to arriving late at work. He cannot allow this to happen on his first day back. “It’s a shortcut.”

“It’s longer this way.” James points out, fingers clenched around the steering wheel. Q knows the agent is resisting the urge to abruptly bifurcate on the sidewalk and bypass everyone like he’d do on a mission, ruining both the city’s efforts to embellish the streets with strips of flowers and Q’s million-dollar equipment in one fell swoop. “It’s a residential street, the limit’s barely 30.”

Q’s lips pinch together. The idiot driving the truck in front of them keeps changing his mind, flashing his indicator left, then right, then left again. “I know that, but when there’s traffic on the boulevard, it’s faster.”

James must hear the annoyance in Q’s tone because he starts switching lanes without regard for the other cars around them. Q grips his thighs, wincing at the thought of the spy scratching the Mini’s paint or getting them in an accident. This isn’t an assignment; Q bought the car with his own savings, paid insurance for a single driver (him), and doesn’t have the time for a civil lawsuit nor the money to purchase another vehicle. 

Someone honks at them. Q shrinks in his seat, embarrassed. He wishes he could write in the windows, put up a sign that says Sorry, I know how to drive, but the madman currently holding the wheel only knows how to do car chases and impossible stunts. They only have twenty minutes left to arrive on time to Six. 

James turns left without having priority, so brusquely that the tires screech. Q winces again, heart picking up the pace. The agent barrels on at the same break-neck speed even though they’ve entered a residential street, narrow and lined with crookedly-parked cars.

“Slow down.” Q shifts in his seat uneasily as the first drops of cold sweat drip down his arms. “Slow down, you’ll run someone over. And turn right at the next intersection.”

“I’m not—”

“I know what I’m doing, James, okay?” Q snaps, tongue acidic. “I can do this, I calculate escape routes and untraceable passages all the time . It’s part of my job, so don’t you dare doubt me. When have I ever led you astray?”

“What, Q, what the hell?” James finally slows down, transferring his focus from the road to Q. His blue eyes land like ice on Q’s skin. “When have I ever implied that?”

The genuine bewilderment in the spy’s voice immediately lowers Q’s hackles. Cheeks reddening, he stares down at his hands, lying uselessly in his lap. Why is he behaving like such a brat? “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m— I just. Please excuse my mood, I’ll fix it if you give me a second.”

James doesn’t say anything for a minute. Slowly, the car inches further down the road. Q’s self-reproach worsens in the quiet. What is wrong with him? He knows James didn’t bring up Q’s skills at all, he knows, but deep down the hurt feels the same even if it doesn’t belong there at all. Q would like to be listened to, for once, and perhaps even trusted; he may not have much field experience, but he has watched and learned enough to act as a good guide, as an asset.

If people took Q seriously, then maybe he’d waste less time and energy trying to prove himself.

“Are you mad at me?” James asks coolly, driving at a steady 30 as he turns right. 

Q’s eyes widen as they shoot to James’ face. “What? Why would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I was only supposed to be gone for two weeks, but instead it’s been two months.” James has stopped looking at Q, keeping his focus on the road in a carefully constructed picture of nonchalance. His knuckles, white as bone, contrast sharply with the steering wheel’s dark leather as he flexes his fingers. 

Q opens his mouth to deny James’ claim, then closes it again. Is he mad? Is that it? Can his raw susceptibility be explained away so simply?

“No, I’m not mad. The length of your assignments are entirely out of your control.”

Yes, I’m mad. I’m mad because you weren’t supposed to leave me that long, and if you’d come back the day you were supposed to, there’s a chance you could’ve saved me. 

I’m mad that I needed you to save me and you weren’t there. I’m mad that I needed you at all, that I couldn’t save myself. 

“Are you sure?” James’ blue eyes cut back to Q, insistent and all-seeing. 

“As sure as the fact that we sound like teenage girls right now,” Q replies, trying to drain the last of his temper from his voice and to infuse it with as much playfulness as he can find from under the ugly weight of his mood. 

James allows them to slip back into banter easily, though Q knows the spy’s doubts couldn’t be further from being appeased. “Says the man who took nearly thirty minutes to dress and fix his hair.”

“Contrarily to you, I do have a respectable reputation to uphold.”

“Q… Even hours in front of the mirror wouldn’t change the fact that you look like an overeager student who wants to play with the bigger kids.”

Q grits his teeth. It’s a joke. It’s just a joke.

***

When they finally park the Mini in Six’s underground parking, all in one piece, they still have five extra minutes to get to where they’re supposed to go. James has a meeting in M’s office to discuss his mission in Lithuania, and Q is expected back at Q-Branch. They part ways with a quick, furtive kiss right before the elevator doors open on the top floor for James’ meeting. James exits the small cubicle with a flirty wink thrown over his shoulder. Q, struck dumb, stares back at the spy, and by the time he shakes himself back to reality, the doors are already shutting and it’s too late to wink back.

Once alone, Q presses the button that’ll bring him all the way down to Q-Branch. Watching the numbers on the wall flash as they steadily decrease, he fiddles with his clothes to make sure everything is in place. He abruptly wishes for a mirror so he could check his hair and confirm that the messy curls properly hide the ugly scar on the left side of his forehead. He reassures himself that it must be fine because if it had been visible, James definitely would’ve had something to say about it. 

Q’s nervousness increases with each floor that the elevator bypasses; what will he say to R and his minions? What will they say? Will they ask questions? Ask for pictures of his vacation? 

No, of course not. He needs to stop being so stupidly paranoid. No one at MI6 cares about what the Quartermaster does with his free time; no one really even cares about the Quartermaster unless he can do something for them, which Q can always do. He can do whatever they ask, which is what he’ll focus on, like usual. Like normal. 

His tie feels constricting around his neck. He loosens it, then tightens it again. He must look flawless today. Experienced and serious. 

Not hesitant. Not incapable or young or weak or unfit. Not like a target, not like someone who could get mugged in the street and then be foolish enough to get caught like a rabbit unsuspectedly walking in a trap for a carrot, oblivious even as the trap’s steel jaws snap closed around its neck.

The elevator doors open. Q adjusts his sweater vest one last time. MI6’s Quartermaster steps out, chin held high. 

This early in the morning, Q-Branch is nearly deserted. A few exhausted minions are closing their computers and clearing their desks of countless coffee mugs, ready to crash at home after a long night of monitoring. On the complete opposite, another tiny batch of them just arrived, coffee fresh and steaming, settling in their chairs for the day. R is staring at a screen at the front of the room, eyes blank. 

Everyone stops and swivels their head in Q’s direction as soon as he enters as if they’re all secretly attuned to his electromagnetic frequencies. He supposes every worker has a keen sense for a superior’s presence, always on alert for when they need to impress and for when they can release the tension. 

Q nearly falters. Should he announce something? Smile? Remain collected and cool? What would he do on a normal day? What did he use to do before, before— ?

He hates that his life is now split between before and after. 

R saves him. “Hey, Q! Long time no see!” 

The woman traipses closer, hair severely pulled back from her face in a bun. Q smiles at her, but a needle-like prick of guilt spoils his joy at seeing her again after so long; from up close, R looks deeply tired. Face pale, eyes circled by dark rings. Even though Q had done everything he could to assume his normal charge from home in the last month, he’d had to delegate a few things to her, and now feels terrible for forcing her to bear this extra workload on top of her own.

“R,” he greets, voice warm. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” R replies quickly. “Everything’s in order here. We’re finally wrapping up 009’s mission, which wasn’t as much of a breeze as it should’ve been, but I think you’ll be satisfied by how things were handled. The only thing I haven’t had the time to do is—”

“R,” Q says again, gently cutting her off. She needs sleep, fast. “Thank you for your work. You did a great job while I was away. Go home, I’ll take it from here.”

R grins at him, shoulders slumping in relief. The minions still stare, curious to see if they’ll be dismissed too. “Speaking of your time away,” R starts, “you don’t look all that well-rested, Quartermaster. You do know what a vacation is for, don’t you?”

Q forces a smile, the weight of everyone’s gazes on him like the pressure of water when one swims too deep. “I’m as well-rested as I’ll ever be.”

R leans in, dropping her voice, “It’s certainly hard to be well-rested when there’s a certain Double-Oh keeping you up at night.”

Q attributes the teasing to fatigue; he doubts R would have the guts to say something like this if she was operating on all cylinders. The camaraderie surprises him, and for a moment he doesn’t know what to say. Q would like to think his coworkers appreciate him, but he doesn’t believe any of them would call him a friend. His constant striving for professionalism makes him appear distant, sometimes even cold. 

He makes sure to greet everyone everyday, to remember names, and to smile from time to time. Good workplace etiquette. But otherwise, he never discusses much with the minions, or even with R, or with the Double-Ohs; he doesn’t have anything worth sharing in his life outside of MI6, and anyway, why would that interest anyone? Small talk has never been his strong suit. 

“Yes,” he replies after a beat, “keeping me up with worry that he’ll blow something up or sink another one of my cars.”

Even though he and R are practically whispering, he frets about someone hearing the conversation. Q doesn’t want to project the image of a gossip, or to seem frivolous. Such chattering could easily be associated with high school practices, and Q is not a child, not a student, not a blabbermouth. He’s here to work. 

So, with calculated poise, he straightens back up and stares at the room at large. “Those of you that have been here all night, go home, get some sleep, and come back bright and early tomorrow. And for everyone that has just come in, settle in and strap yourselves for another day of wrangling agents back into order.”

The minions cheer quietly and return to their tasks, growing suddenly uninterested in Q and R’s encounter now that they know which foot to stand on. R claps him on the shoulder and bypasses him to head for the elevator. Once inside, she adds, “Hey, Q, see you soon, yeah?”

Q nods. “Yes. But you take a week off, you hear me?”

Through the elevator doors, which are quickly sliding closed, Q thinks he can hear a small, relieved “Thank you.”

Now left to his own devices, Q strides through the room purposefully and shuts himself off in his office.

Chapter Text

After his meeting with M, James loiters. He distracts himself by bothering Eve and Q’s minions; he wants to bother Q himself first and foremost, of course, but he knows it’s too early in the day. Q’s unbreakable focus never fails to both impress and annoy him and, at this time in the morning, before the sleep deprivation and lack of food have kicked in, it’ll be impossible to draw the Quartermaster away from his work. 

The spy makes a nuisance of himself with half-hearted pleasure, eyes drifting to his watch every so often. Noon, mid-afternoon, late afternoon, early supper, late supper… Late supper is late enough, James figures. 

He heads out quickly (not in Q’s terrible little car) to grab some take-out Lebanese food for two. Back at Six, balancing the food bags and the cup holder in the elevator, he steps out into Q-Branch, delighting in the attention he garners from the minions. So now, with the delicious aroma of seasoned potatoes and chicken shawarma, he gets all of them staring at him… James will know how to properly sidetrack them next time.

He winks at a woman with long red hair sitting behind a computer as he passes her, then to a young man who seems to have tried to impersonate the Quartermaster by copying his clothes. Eyes snapping back to their work, the concerned minions blush and start typing furiously the second James stands near them. 

 Q-Branch is such a funky little place. James should drop by more often. 

Q’s office door looms at the far end of the room, the blinds drawn over the window on the left. James wonders if Q, for once in his life, made the wise decision and opted for a little nap. For some reason, he doubts so. Placing his bounty in one arm, he turns the knob without knocking and steps into the Quartermaster’s sacred lair.

Inside, obscurity shrouds the office; the only visible light, bluish and artificial, teems from the multiple screens arranged around the desk. Hunched in his chair sits Q, glasses askew and nose inches from his computer, cast in a sickly glow that washes out his skin and draws deeper shadows under the sharp lines of his face. Q doesn’t look up at James’ entrance, hypnotized by the screens. The rapid-fire click-clacking sound of the hacker’s fingers on the keyboard seems to echo in the otherwise silent room. 

“Later, D,” Q says absent-mindedly, “Unless it’s an emergency.”

James flips the light switch. A blinding yellowish light floods the office at once. Q startles, blinking like a mole that sees the sun for the first time, and finally glances away from his computers and monitors. The younger man’s eyes widen when he notices James, then drift back to his main screen before snapping back to the food. 

“Yes,” James rolls his eyes, “Time passes and the world has actually moved past lunch already. It has probably moved past supper too, but it’s not too late for you if you ever want to catch up to the normal, boring train of life.”

Q tilts his head, blinks again. His gaze keeps switching back from James to his screens as if magnetically drawn to the work. James steps further in the office, gently dropping the food bags on a chair (nowhere near any technology; he has already made that mistake once and the lesson’s officially learned), and slots himself between the wall and Q’s back. Placing both hands on the Quartermaster’s tight shoulders, he begins massaging the worst of the tension out. 

“You really need to work on that posture,” James says as he kneads a particularly hard muscle knot. 

Q takes a while to warm up to James’ contact, as strained and jumpy as a rabbit circled by wolves, but slowly but surely relaxes as the minutes slip by, melting in his chair. James knows intimately the long process of pulling Q out of his head; he knows it is best not to rush it, but to slowly ease the man back into the world as he gradually re-acquaints himself with the load of sensory input that he’d blocked to perform his job without distractions.

James has never met someone who invests himself as deeply as Q. The Quartermaster dives so far into his technological universe he sometimes seems to forget his own universe; the phenomenon is only accentuated when he’s monitoring an agent on a mission, living the danger and high-stress of the situation as if it were him standing there, his own life at stake if he doesn’t find an escape route or a solution to an impossible problem. 

Q blocks his environment out — the sounds, the smells, the people —  in profit of submerging himself in the environment of whoever he’s helping in the field. He does it so well, so completely, that he actually manages to fully immerse himself and discard his own reality. 

James finds it scary, at times, though he’d never admit it. He likes Q’s devotion, admires it even, but it would be so easy to take the man by surprise and shoot him in the head without him even glancing up from his work. Q would die and he’d never even know why, mind so far away on someone else’s mission that it would never occur to him that he can be killed in his own world too. 

But this undivided commitment is what makes Q the best of the best, and what has ensured that James himself is somehow still alive. 

“Are you with me?” James asks, hands moving from Q’s shoulders to his neck. 

Q sighs softly, a small sound of contentment. “Yes. Thank you.”

James smiles, silently pleased with himself for a mission well-executed. He reaches a bit higher to readjust Q’s slanted glasses, nearly jumping himself when Q recoils so violently his back knocks into the backrest of the chair and sends it skidding a few inches back with a screech of the plastic wheels on the linoleum floor. 

Q’s hand reflexively flies up to his face, clinging to the frame of his glasses and keeping them firmly on his nose. James steps back, bewildered, though he carefully keeps his expression blank. Q swivels the chair around and stands up, putting them at eye-level. 

“I’m sorry.” Q offers James a sheepish smile, though the unease doesn’t leave his features. “You surprised me.”

James stares for a moment longer. Wiping invisible dust on clothes; nervousness. High shoulders; anticipation, jumpiness. Smiling; attempt at diversion. Spine straight, legs locked; an effort to assert dominance? 

(... What. The. Fuck. Is. Q. Hiding???)

“I can see that,” James says slowly, careful to keep the suspicion out of his voice. It’s wiser to wait before going for a confrontation. Gather more clues, have a real try at figuring out what’s going on, collect some real ammunition in case he needs it if Q plays the denial or ignorance card…

“You brought food,” Q says, stating the obvious. 

Except, usually, Q never states the obvious. 

“I figured you could use some.” James watches as Q circumvents the desk and rummages through the food bags. The younger man pulls out a grease-stained container of potatoes and starts munching on the crispier edge of one. He hands James the other bag with a small smile. 

They eat in silence. James keeps an eye on Q, waiting to see what his next move will be. He expects the Quartermaster to either settle on the worn couch pushed on the office’s far right wall or to sit back in his chair to continue working, but he does neither. Q stands near the chair with the food, nibbling on his potatoes and avoiding James’ gaze like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

James has half a mind to bridge the distance between them and to guide Q to the couch, but he ends up staying where he is. He waits. Watches. 

Q will slip up eventually. 

Once Q has finished, James wraps up the leftovers (which are basically the whole meal; Q barely ate anything) and says, off-handedly, “I’ll lift you home when you’re ready.”

Q frowns. “I have my car now.”

“I don’t know if what you have counts as a car,” James says, switching tactics for humor. “We’ll take mine. This way you won’t have to worry about insurance.”

“I’d feel reassured if I had proof that you take better care of your equipment than mine, but it’s hardly the case, is it?” Q shoots him a wry look, finally coming unstuck and sitting back down in his work chair with his chin held high in a pretentious manner.

James puffs up his chest. “I take very good care of my cars, I’ll have you know.”

“Say that to the last Aston Martin.”

“Technically, that was yours, not mine.”

“It was 009’s, actually,” Q quips in the most posh accent James has ever heard from him, and for a second he forgets about his ploy, lips quirking in genuine amusement.

“There’s no way that’s true, though.” James takes his place behind Q again, and because he can’t quite turn off his training, he leans over the younger man like he means to wrap him in an embrace, and examines the computer screens. “You were just messing with me.”

Q shrugs. “If it helps you sleep at night to tell yourself that, go ahead.”

“Mmm,” James hums, committing the images on the computers to memory. Blueprints for some kind of gadget. For who…? Switching tactics again, he runs a hand over Q’s chest, slow and languorous, and whispers in his ear,  “I’ll ask you for a favor, then, so I can sleep even better tonight...”

James is so close he feels Q’s face heating up. The younger man tilts his head in James’ direction, the tips of his hair tickling James’ cheek. James opts for bolder; he trails his hand up, splaying his fingers over the left side of Q’s jaw possessively. Q shudders: good sign or bad sign? 

“How can I help you?” The Quartermaster murmurs, sounding out of breath.

“Come home with me,” James says. 

There’s a silence; James can hear how tortured it is. If he nudges, just a bit… 

“One more thing… Let me drive you in my car.”

“James…” Q sounds hesitant, but like he wants to give in, like he’d rather listen to James.

What’s stopping him? Work? Something else? (His secret…?)

James just needs to push a tiny, tiny bit more, and it’s in the bag.

A seductive breath: “I’ll take very good care of you.”

This sets off a reaction, but not the one James was hoping for. Q pulls away quickly, playing it well enough that James can’t tell if it was an instinctive flinch or a deliberate move. The younger man’s eyes, wide and oddly dark, fall on James in an unblinking stare, and for an odd second, the look that flashes over Q’s features appears distinctly dangerous. 

There’s something ugly hiding behind the Quartermaster’s otherwise empty expression, something unreadable but that could be likened to resentment, perhaps even hatred. 

This settles it for James. He can feel the jagged pieces finally snapping into place, and it paints an awful, awful picture.

“I still have a lot of work to do,” Q says in a somber voice, and James can tell that the younger man has sensed the shift in the air too. The office feels cramped all of a sudden, the atmosphere charged with electricity. A drop of water and everything will blow in a shower of sparks. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” James says, matching the seriousness of Q’s voice. If the Quartermaster is surprised that James lets it go so easily, he doesn’t say so. Q brings his attention back to the screens, blocking James out. James observes him for a second longer, trying to keep a cool head. 

Circles under the eyes; tiredness. Tight expression; worry. Stiff, still posture; disquiet. Coiled muscles; alertness. Purposeful, single-minded cold shoulder; avoidance, guilt. Thrumming heartbeat in the throat; fear, guilt. Pinched, bitten lips; guilt. Colored cheeks; guilt. Repetitive swallowing; guilt. 

Body as a whole; GUILT. 

James leaves Q’s office without another word.

***

“M,” James calls as he bursts into the man’s office. M glances up from the documents spread over his desk, raising an eyebrow at the strange urgency in James’ voice. James doesn’t care. 

“It’s a bit late to bother me, 007, don’t you think?”

“What happened to the Quartermaster while I was away?” James jumps straight to business, not bothering to humour M. He has honed into his purpose like a bloodhound once it has caught a scent, and he’ll find out what’s going on no matter what he has to do to gather the information. M’s position doesn’t matter. It won’t stop him. 

M frowns, staring at James like he has lost his mind. “What are you talking about?”

“What happened?” James repeats slowly, not backing down. He won’t be fooled by beginner techniques; M can play dumb as long as he wants, James can play longer. 

“007,” M says, standing up to point to the chair in front of his desk. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

James gets it. Put them both on the same level. He won’t sit unless M sits, but the man’s clothes don’t hide the readiness of his posture; he’s not going to lower himself a second time. Standing up it is, then. 

M has always been easy to read. Far easier than Q. 

James sometimes wonders why. Why can’t he properly translate Q? Why can’t he understand him when it matters? The question haunts him; is it purposeful? Does Q know he is so inexplicable? Does he use this to his advantage against James?

“Did someone hurt him? Did he hurt someone? Which missions, apart from mine, did he supervise? What went wrong? Why did R take over for week three?”

“James,” M barks. James’ eyes jerk to the man’s face. “Calm down.”

James forces himself to take a breath. Under the rapid-fire questions lurks a writhing mess of cynical conjectures, terrible theories that he can’t give voice to but that he fears might be true. That fear overtakes everything, tints his every thought; once it has been activated, it cannot be tamed or dismissed, eating away at him like a trapped animal that chews its own leg off to escape a trap. 

So far that fear has always been right. Has always saved him when it counted the most. 

“What has the Quartermaster done while I was in Lithuania?” James asks again, voice harder than steel and colder than ice. “What is he hiding?”

M sighs, shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not,” M says tiredly. “Look at me, James.”

James looks. Unclenched hands, relaxed shoulders, open posture. A little slump. Easy stare, direct eye contact. Sincerity, exhaustion. Temporary surrender of superiority. 

“The Quartermaster went on an unexpected, but well-deserved, vacation. That’s all. The rest is your paranoia talking.”

James pauses and takes the explanation in. M is telling the truth, James can see it now. 

But this can only mean that Q lied to M too.

Chapter Text

Q spends the night at Q-Branch, developing ideas and blueprints for a myriad of new gadgets, most of which he ends up tossing aside. He wants to come up with the perfect new device for 007, some innocuous appliance that the spy will be able to carry on himself at all times and that’ll help him out of danger whenever he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. 

But 007 already has so many of Q-Branch’s latest innovations, most of which he doesn’t seem to care much about. He’s so skilled, so bold, so clever, that he doesn’t need Q’s ridiculous gadgets. In fact, he thinks them so unnecessary that he easily throws them away or breaks them up, all those little gifts Q has spent countless nights conceptualizing and building from scratch. 

Q wishes 007 was easier to protect. How is he supposed to do his job properly if the spy acts so carelessly with his own life all the time? Q sometimes wonders if it would be better to relegate the monitoring of 007’s missions to someone else considering it nearly stops his heart every time he sees James dive headfirst into danger without regards for himself, but then again he knows he’d never be able to trust another person with James’ wellbeing. 

He knows no one does a better job than himself when it comes down to it, no matter how arrogant it sounds. 

Q scrubs his dry eyes with his fingers, careful not to dislodge his glasses. The numbers on the screen in front of him jump and blur whenever he stares at them too long. Nothing seems to work; none of his ideas are good. It’s a catastrophe, and it’s only his first night back at the office. 

Explosives in small, banal objects? Been there, done that. Tracking devices? Better to stick to normal ones after the Smart Blood disaster. All-equipped, weaponized cars? He’s starting to run out of new concepts for updates. Lockpicks? 007 already has a dozen. 

It’s a catastrophe.

Q has no idea what he’s even looking at on his computer anymore. Perhaps he should take a tiny nap to set his head straight? What time is it? A quick glance at the screen’s top right reveals that it’s nearing 4:30 AM. No nap, then; it’s basically morning. He can’t spare the time to sleep anyway. He has already missed too much work in the last month and a half and it is imperative that he catches up on some of it, especially since he gave R the week off. The Quartermaster will never be considered a slacker if he has something to say about it. 

Q wipes his eyes again, blinking heavily. The white lines on the blueprint in front of him disappear in the wide expanse of blue, swallowed up like they’d never even been there. He closes the window, figuring whatever was illustrated was useless in any case. 

Maybe he should make 007 an umbrella like his. Q doesn’t know why he didn’t think of that before. It’s always raining in London anyhow; James will be safer in the streets with this. 

A knife in the handle’s shaft. Poison-dipped pins at the end of each rib. Blades in the stretcher? Reinforced outer canopy. Steel end tip. What else…? 

Mmm. He’ll start with this. Where did he put the last blueprints? Q navigates the computer’s desktop, the hundreds of files and folders mixing together in an indistinguishable mess. Why is it so hard to focus? Why can’t he see well?

His heart picks up the pace. He’s wearing his glasses, why is the screen so hazy? Q swallows, again and then again, panic squeezing the breath from his lungs at the prospect of discovering that horrible, horrible taste at the back of his throat, this bitter, metallic tang that he couldn’t rid himself of for weeks after— After. 

Q’s fingers clench around the armrests of his chair. He forces himself to breathe slowly. He can’t taste anything, it’s fine. It’s fine. His head pounds, a heavy, inert beast rumbling and pulsing behind his forehead, knocking on his skull with terrifying preciseness. His vision flickers in his left eye, momentarily blinking out into white, then coming back online at half-force, the colors and shapes washed-out. 

He raises a hand to his face. He touches the glasses on his nose, pushes them closer. Why is it so blurry? He swallows again, throat locked. Nausea swells in his stomach, cresting like a wave in time with the pulse in his head. He’ll throw up. What will happen to him if he throws up?

He’s lying in a bed, face up. Covered by scratchy knitted quilts. Heavy. Surrounded by pillows, lots of them. Trapped. 

Someone’s there. Deep, steady breathing. Low, subtle snores. Next to him. 

He’s lying in a bed. The mattress is too soft to be his. The blankets weigh as much as his head, his skull filled with cement and rubble. He can’t move. 

There’s a leg hooked around his. 

He swallows. Swallows. His tongue is bitter, his throat dry and metallic. The taste sickens him. His chest tightens, flooding with a churning upsurge of dirty water. The waves foam and froth, furious. 

He can’t move. He can’t breathe. His head thumps like an angry foot on the floor, full of violence. He’ll throw up. He’ll throw up and he can’t move. 

He throws up. Half-hearted, weak. Watery, bitter, so bitter. He chokes. He can’t turn his head.

Coughing, spluttering. His chest spasms. Liquid streams back down his throat. His stomach somersaults again. It’s so sick. 

Vomit trickles from his mouth over his chin, his cheek. Drips into the sheets. He’s drowning. 

“Ah, darn it!” A baritone voice, shocked. “What the heck?” 

Hands on him, flipping him on his side. Convulsive hacks, desperate spitting. The taste repulses him. A bright, yellowish splatter of bile, dappled with white spots, on the pretty knitted quilts.

“Oh my gosh, look at you. You made such a mess, jeez, my poor sheets.” Disgust, so much disgust. 

Hands again, wiping his mouth. The touch brusque, but still considerate. Fingers tangled in his hair. His head hurts. It’ll explode. 

“In the bath you go, dear. What a shame.”

Q bends over, away from his desk, and throws up. Vomit splashes all over the linoleum floor of his office. A sob follows, then another, spilling out of his mouth before he can control them. A shrill ringing sound thrills in his ears, covering the worst of his pathetic, breathless gasps. The left side of his head throbs in time with his too-quick heartbeat, the pain somehow both too deep to reach and too close to forget. He feels like he has been skinned, rubbed raw. 

The vision in his left eye has gone out entirely. His right eye doesn’t fare much better, blurred by tears. Still, choking on despair, Q scans the pool of vomit, terrified to find it flecked with white dots. With pills. 

There’s nothing. Just this shameful, acrid smell. 

Curling on himself, he scoots the chair away from the mess with the tip of his toe to put as much distance as possible between him and the haunting overlap of past and present at his feet. He wipes his face aggressively to rid himself of all evidence; tears, snot, sickness. 

He needs to get a grip. He’s still on the clock. 

Q sucks in a breath, then another. Thinking rationnally; that’s what he’s good at. He knows what’s happening: it’s just another one of those headaches he has been getting ever since– ever since he came back from his vacation. There’s nothing he can do except wait it out. Q feels a sudden rush of gratefulness that he only has to work on gadgets tonight and not on an agent’s assignment. 

He readjusts his glasses again, annoyed at the white stains dancing in front of his left eye. He can’t help the tiny drop of fear festering in his stomach acid at the thought that this might be the time that his vision will fail to come back. But there’s no use wasting time in conjectures; he has a mess to clean and work to do, and he’ll be damned if he allows a little headache to stop him. He has pushed through worse. 

Q grips the edge of his desk in a white-knuckled grip and hauls himself to his feet, biting back a small gasp of pain as the world lurches and he stumbles. Carefully slow, he shuffles his way to the door, keeping close to the wall to avoid taking an unexpected dive to the floor. 

Through the drawn blinds covering the window, he peeks outside his office, relieved to see that he appears to be the only one left. Between 4 and 5 AM has the advantage to be this odd interlude in which it’s too late for the work-obsessed but too early for the morning people, a suspended moment in time in which no one really exists.

Q cracks the office’s door open and ventures out, wavering every so often as dizziness ovetakes his balance. The sound of his footfalls echoes in the empty space, resonating like a blare of alarm in his skull. Wincing, he sets off for the closet in the hall adjacent to Q-Branch. 

Q doesn’t dare open the lights, knowing the added stimuli would stab through his eyeballs like a knife and worsen his symptoms, but stumbling around in the dark on unsteady legs takes him so long he considers giving up, sinking to the floor, and leaving the mess to someone else for once. But even as Q thinks it, he knows he won’t do it. 

The trek back to his office, this time with his arms full of cleaning supplies, nearly takes double the time. He stops in the doorway, leaning against the sturdy frame, and pants harshly through his mouth, winded. His stomach churns as the vomit’s smell reaches his nose again, and he wonders if he’ll be sick a second time. 

Q sinks to his knees next to the mess. He feels like there’s a creature in his skull, a vermin pushing and clawing against his brain to create more space for its tiny nest. The strong, stinging smell of disinfectant assaults his senses at once, and he scrubs the floor with much more force than necessary, holding himself up with a hand on the edge of his desk. 

Once his office stinks of antiseptic enough to cover the stench of puke and the tiles gleam in the dark, he throws everything in the trash, ties the bag and shoves it in a drawer under his desk. It revolts him slightly, but he doesn’t have enough strength nor will to get up again. He slumps into his chair, wipes his eyes and returns his attention to his computer.

So. Blueprints for a weaponized umbrella. He opens a new file and gets back to work.

***

The sharp, sour stink of alcohol fills his nostrils next. Q glances up, jolted out of his trance by the foul odor, so out of place in Q-Branch. Blinking harshly, mind fuzzy with pain, he stares up at James, struck dumb. What…? What time is it? There’s no way it’s morning yet. 

11:57 AM. 

“Have you been drinking?” Q asks, voice raspy and full of cracks. He clears his throat, straightens in his chair. Bites back a wince. 

“What are you hiding from me?” James says, pointing accusingly at Q’s chest.

“I’m not talking to you while you’re drunk.” Q pushes the chair away from his desk to fight the urge to glance back at his screen. This situation — whatever it will turn out to be — requires his full attention; James like this, standing too close to his demons, becomes unpredictable and elusive. Q’s hands tighten around the armrests, knuckles white.

“I’m not drunk.” James stalks deeper into the room. “I was, last night. When I was trying to figure out why you lied to M.”

Q scoots the chair further back, neck craned to look at James’ face. Through squinted eyes, he takes in the spy’s carefully neutral expression, his features made harsh by blankness. James’ blue gaze swims with distrust as he meets Q’s. Sharp, analytical, cold. 

Q scrambles up, incensed, though a rush of blood to his forehead quickly douses his fire. Ears roaring, he strides up to James, blinking in dismay when he finds that the vision in his left eye still hasn’t returned. Bitingly, he asks, “What are you talking about?”

James doesn’t miss a beat. “About your vacation.” The agent shifts closer like a vulture circling a corpse. Q shifts too, angling his body to keep James out of his blind spot. “Where did you go, Quartermaster? Did you get some sun? Did you visit pretty, touristy little places? I’d like to see pictures of that nice trip, can you show me?”

“Tone it down,” Q snaps. The condescending accusations burrow under his skin like shrapnel, leaving behind rough to the touch, itchy scar tissue. “Come back to talk to me when you don’t smell like a bloody brewery and after you’ve had some time to reflect on what you’re insinuating.”

Who the hell does James think he is? Q isn’t dumb, nor is he naive (despite what his age seems to suggest to others); he understands that it’s 007 in front of him, 007 with his cold blue eyes and dangerous reflexes. 007 with his paranoid mind, ingrained with suspicions. 

Q understands, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he’d thought James trusted him, after all these years, after all the occasions in which Q has proved his loyalty. All those times he has stepped over his principles, his respect for authority, his sense of morals, even, all those times, for James , always for him, do they mean nothing? Is it this easy to believe Q a traitor? To think Q would betray him, MI6, his country?

“I’ve thought about it,” James says. The spy has done a full circle around Q now, and he stops near the computer, staring at the blueprints for the umbrella. Q looks away, ashamed that he has barely progressed even after spending the night on the case. James taps the screen with a finger. “Isn’t yours enough?”

Q wedges himself behind the computer, nudging James aside. Q closes the window with a click of his finger. “It’s for you,” he says through gritted teeth, “It’s not ready yet.”

“Was it raining, where you went? You must not have gone far. Ireland, maybe? Scotland?”

“Stop it.” Q turns around to face James, fire behind every word. His heartbeat flutters in his neck, echoes in his ears, quick like a rabbit’s. His cheeks feel hot, and he can only hope it doesn’t show. That his fury and hurt remain behind closed shutters, protected from the spy’s scrutiny, his determination to prove Q guilty like he’s just another criminal. “Don’t treat this like an interrogation. Don’t treat me like a target.”

James reaches up and cups Q’s jaw. Q tenses up, unwilling to be mollified by physical contact. He knows James’ tricks and games, has watched him in action enough times. He stares into James’ blue eyes, broadcasting a defiance that he doesn’t truly feel, scared to lean fully into the rage lodged in his throat. Rage at being suspected so easily. Rage too strong to voice. 

Rage he doesn’t have a right to nurture.

“Do one more thing for me.” James brings their bodies closer. “Tell me the truth.”

Chapter Text

“Tell me the truth.”

Q’s office smells sharp and clean, too clean. What lurks underneath the sterile scent? Nothing seems out of place, a thin layer of dust covering the furniture like soft peach fuzz. The floor gleams under the fluorescent light pouring in from the cracks in the blinds over the window, the office otherwise plunged in semi-obscurity despite it being the middle of the day. 

“What are you asking of me? A confession?” Q stands still, staring James in the eyes despite how much the younger man obviously wants to avoid his gaze. The Quartermaster looks like he’s nearly vibrating in place, containing himself only by the skin of his teeth. “Because you won’t have one.”

Squared jaw, blazing eyes; anger. Shoulders thrown back; defiance. Shaking hands; adrenalin, stress, turmoil. Ghostly pallor, sweaty skin; anxiety (...something else? Sickness?)

James strokes Q’s clenched jaw, touch feather-light. The younger man is holding himself strangely, slightly turned toward the left. James redirects him with a press of his palm against his cheek, cataloguing Q’s reflexive twitch (...unease?). James leans in and whispers in Q’s left ear, “I’ll figure it out either way. You know that.”

A tremor runs through Q’s body, reverberating through James' due to their proximity. James notes the reaction, distantly proud of the younger man’s backbone, his determination not to bend despite how much easier it would make it for him.

But is that determination a sign of guilt, or is it a genuine defense for himself in the face of wrongful accusations? Is it a show, or is it sincere?

James draws back and does another quick scan. Q looks drained, washed-out, like he’s the one who went on a bender last night, hungover and with little to no sleep to carry him through the day. The clamminess of his skin and the unfocused, glazed quality of his gaze sparks an ember of concern deep under the heavy, waterproof blanket of James' doubts.

James doesn’t dare move or speak, at war with himself. Rationally, tactically, now would be the best time to push for answers, to exploit the hacker’s vulnerability to break his weakened resolve. But it’s Q in front of him. If James drives him too hard and he turns out to be wrong, there will be no going back. Whatever careful equilibrium they’ve managed to achieve, whatever fragile, tentative trust they’ve built over the months of their budding relationship, it’ll all crumble to dust in the snap of a finger,

There’ll be too many shattered pieces to put back together. 

James moves his hand over Q’s face to check his forehead for fever. Q flinches back, but it’s too late by then. Behind that curtain of limp curls hides a red, angry scar, situated near the Quartermaster’s hairline on the left side of his face. The skin around it looks inflamed, the scar itself raised and crooked. James easily recognizes amateur medical care; the wound was not fixed surgically, even though its size and appearance suggests it should have been. 

James gapes. “What’s that? What happened?”

Q avoids James' shocked gaze, eyes pointed towards the floor with a decisive kind of stubbornness and remorse. His arms hug his frame tightly like he’s cold even though he’s wearing at least four different layers of clothes. 

James steps forward, wanting to see the injury again, but Q moves back just as fast, accidentally bumping into the desk behind him. The younger man wavers on his feet and James jolts into motion, instinctively reaching for him. The Quartermaster allows James to steady him, but he shrugs out of the contact as soon as he has properly regained his footing. 

“It’s nothing,” Q mutters. It’s his turn now to appraise James with distrust, his posture closed and defensive. 

Has James read it all wrong?

James' hands twitch with the need for action: he wants to grab Q and erase that wild look in his eyes, to soothe and heal with his touch; he wants to seek out whoever did this and rip every hair from their scalp one by one, to put a bullet in their skull; he wants to shake the hacker by the shoulders, force him to explain what went on while James was in Lithuania. 

Those bits and pieces aren’t enough. James needs to see the whole picture, needs to understand just how bad the situation is. Needs to know how many weapons to pack before throwing himself into a revenge spree. 

“Stop lying to me,” James says, biting back a wince at the harshness of his voice. He’s fucking this up, he knows, but he can’t stand to be kept in the dark. “Who did this to you?”

“James, I don’t think we should be having this conversation right now.” Q sighs, holding himself up with a hand on his desk. “I still have work to do and it’s already midday. You obviously need a shower and some sleep. We’ll talk later.”

Slumped shoulders; dejection, lassitude. Dark circles, shadowed eyes, pasty complexion; exhaustion, illness? Repetitive, difficult swallowing; nausea? Tense features, squinted eyes; headache?

Headache. Of course. Obviously. 

How could James have been so blind?

Closed lights. Soft voices, even during their fight. Shakiness, disequilibrium, dizziness. The odd smell of disinfectant… a bout of vomiting? The bloody scar.

James comes closer slowly, mind miles away from his previous paranoid notions of betrayal. He steers Q towards the couch, unsettled by how easily the younger man lets him. They both sit in silence, James stiff and alert, Q wilted and tired. James stretches an arm and closes the blinds all the way, cutting off the light from the outside. The office fades into a deeper darkness, the glow of the computer screen barely illuminating the chair behind it. Q sighs again, the sound tinted by relief. 

In the distance, they hear the muted hustle and bustle of the rest of Q-Branch. The hum of the heating system. The whisper of the pipes. The soft sound of their breaths. The echo of James' unfair recriminations, the resonance of Q’s righteous indignation. It feels like an offense to speak again. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” James asks anyway. The question tastes foreign, delicate and brittle and mindful, as far from any of his usual tricks to obtain answers as it could get. No deviations, no misdirections, no manipulation. A straight, honest appeal for the truth. 

Q stares forward doggedly. James wonders if he should move, put himself in the younger man’s line of sight, but decides against it. He’ll let Q choose how it goes; James has already proved what a nearsighted asshole he can be when he slips into his old ways. 

He’d known, before starting this thing with Q, that they’d hit a wall eventually. James has tried relationships before, but he functions better alone. He functions better when he has a clear motive, an objective to reach, an easy way out once the mission is done. He can charm and please short-term, but his charisma fades over time, wearing itself out until it exposes the uglier sides: the wariness, the paranoia, the constant traps he lays to catch others in a lie; the drinking, the bitterness, the careless, apathetic way he treats his life, and others’ by extension. 

“I was mugged,” Q says. “That week I left your comms to R.” 

James stares at him, heart and fists clenched, but Q doesn’t seem to notice at all. He rubs his eyes under his glasses, brow pinched. The voices from outside the office seem to swallow more space, to exist both with them and far from them; their murmurs indistinguishable, but all too-present in the fraught silence.

Guilt gnaws at James, his stomach filled with vermin, their tiny claws and teeth sinking into his earlier certainty of betrayal and tearing it to shreds. He’d been so quick to point fingers, so quick to assume the worst, all the while neglecting the countless times Q had proved his loyalty, again and again, whether rightly or wrongly. 

Trust isn’t easy to come by for him, but it isn’t necessarily easier for Q. James knows this assumption will cost him, can hear it in the silence, see it in the younger man’s obstinate avoidance. Even before this mess, Q apparently hadn’t felt comfortable enough to tell James what happened; how much worse will it now be? How much worse has he, James, made it?

“It was about to rain,” Q begins tentatively, “and I was stuck behind a group of slow-walkers. You know how I despise that. I’d left my umbrella at your place, so I was in a hurry.”

“They took me by surprise. I thought– I was ready for worse. I thought they were there because of what we do here; I thought it was a targeted, planned attack.” Q scoffs bitterly, wringing his hands in his lap. “But it wasn’t. It was just a plain old cliché mugging. They didn’t even care about my computer. They took my money and my IDs, but that’s all.”

Anger stirs in James’ gut, hot and low like incandescent coal waiting for just another breeze of air to ignite. He watches Q with new eyes, mind overtaken by a different perspective of Q’s behavior in the last few days, movie flashes of their interactions that flip everything upside down. 

The constant, involuntary twitches and flinches. The self-contained posture. The distance, the far-away eyes. The avoidance, the lack of sleep. The umbrella, carried everywhere even on a sunny day like today. The bloody new car. 

“Who did this? Who’s ‘they’?” James fires the questions through gritted teeth, already picturing himself wringing the life from the culprits with his bare hands. “I want names.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Q’s breaths pick up the pace, the words tumbling out in a waterfall of information, “I hacked into all known criminal databses, even went as far as juvenile delinquants. I looked into CCTVs and car cameras, I combed the neighbourhood, I tried to retrace my cards, I– I–”

James cuts Q off, voice tinted by disbelief, because if anyone can unearth even the most well-hidden ghost in the world, it’s MI6’s youngest Quartermaster, “And you didn’t find them?”

Q still isn’t looking at James, but James watches, startled, as the younger man’s jaw clenches in anger as he continues in a hiss, “I even checked hospital records; I hit one of them on the head with my computer, hard, but it was three against one, and I fought — I swear to you I fought — but it… Well. Look at me.” Another bitter laugh. “You know the rest.”

James doesn’t understand the sharp, recriminating acerbity infusing Q’s tone. He slides on the couch to sit nearer to the younger man, placing a hand on his lower back. From this close, the Quartermaster exudes the same smell as his office, this clean, sterile scent of disinfectant, burying yet another secret. “Why didn’t you tell me? You could’ve called me, I would’ve ditched the assignment, I would’ve—”

“No, no, no.” Q interrupts, whirling around to finally face James. His eyes blaze with affront, though their glassy quality overshadows the purpose of the glare. James meets the scowl head-on, stomach churning with worry. That scar… it speaks of a serious head wound. Terrifyingly serious. 

“No,” Q repeats, voice shaking but leaving no place for arguments. “I did not want to tell you. I still don’t. I said this to you once before, but you have no idea, no idea, the damage I can do with a computer without even breaking a sweat. If I’d found them – and I will, eventually – I’d be able to destroy them with a simple click of my finger, put them in jail for life and then for longer, no parole, no nothing. I’d be able to blackmail them, blacklist them, put a target on their back forever. They’d have no choice but to run, all their bloody lives. If I wanted to, I could ruin them.”

James’ eyes widen a fraction, surprised by the younger man’s defensive vehemence. Q is shaking in place, fists clenched, staring at James like he’s ready to pick a fight and determined to win. 

“I know that,” James says softly, thoughts whirling in a storm as he tries to assess the change of mood. 

“No you don’t. You don’t. You think I need protection, that I need coddling, but I don’t. I can manage on my own. I’m not a Double-Oh like you but that doesn’t make me any lesser, doesn’t take my skills away. You can do nothing of what I can do, and yet you don’t hear me joking about it or questioning your competency.” 

“And before you say anything,” Q barrels on, “I scrubbed all security risks; I avoided hospitals, I blocked my cards, I erased Quentin Dawson from all databases. I–”

“I don’t care about that, Q!” James raises his voice, feeling like a bystander witnessing a trainwreck; helpless to do anything but watch the tragedy unfold, unable to slow the machine down as it hurtles by inches from his nose. “I care about you .”

As he says the words, the fear suddenly catches up to James’ protective rage. The realization that he could’ve lost Q slaps him in the face like a fist with rings on every finger, and his lungs stutter as the air leaves his body at once. Q could’ve been killed and James wouldn’t have known until weeks later; he knows MI6 policies, knows they would have kept the news from him until he completed his mission. 

Can’t have a distracted agent in the field, can they?

“I– I– I can’t– You can’t, you–” Q stammers, eyes big and haunted by shadows. A tear slips out, and he wipes it away with an aggressive hand, accidentally knocking his glasses off his nose. They fall to the ground with a quiet clatter. “Bloody hell!”

James immediately bends down to pick the glasses up, prompted by the shaky panic in Q’s voice. When he straightens up, the Quartermaster’s eyes are firmly squeezed shut, one trembling hand covering half his face. The other blindly reaches for James. “Did– Did they break? Are they broken?”

James gently pries Q’s hand away, revealing his scrunched features. He puts the glasses back in place carefully, filing the strange reaction away to bring up later. “It’s fine. They’re still in one piece.”

Q slumps in relief, though he doesn’t open his eyes yet. James uses the opportunity to sneak a peek at the scar again, brushing Q’s thick curls aside. He can’t quite estimate its length, a majority of the injury disppearing in the younger man’s thick mane of hair. It’s worrying in and of itself that whoever fixed it didn’t shave a section of hair off; it means they could not stitch the wound all the way shut. 

A nightmarish image assaults James’ head: Q beaten and limp in the street, head framed by a pool of blood, drenched by rain as passerbys hurry past him without a second look. Q, stripped of his phone, computer and money, stripped of his pride. Q, unprotected and alone, left to himself. Q, unwilling to go to the hospital, dragging himself home by the elbows. 

“If you didn’t go to a hospital, who stitched your head wound?”

Chapter Text

Q had failed. 

He’d folded like wet cardboard in the rain. A headache, two all-nighters in a row, and a little pressure from James, and that’s all it took. How can Q not represent a security risk to MI6 when it’s so easy to break him? He’d always believed himself better than this, but perhaps it’s time he stops overestimating himself. 

“If you didn’t go to a hospital, who stitched your head wound?”

The question lodges himself in the cracks of Q’s brain and hammers against his skull. He has no answer to this; he refuses to fail again. He has already confessed to the mugging, but he will not mention the week after, not ever. He doesn’t even remember most of it; there’s nothing to say. He wouldn’t know how to explain anyway, and wants to avoid rubbing salt in the wound of just how helpless he was made by his inability in the field. 

Q could lie. He could say Eve took care of him. Maybe even Alec, who hadn’t been on a mission at the time. But James would figure it out in the blink of an eye; a quick word to either of them and the charade would go up in flames. Then, James would only conduct another inquiry, wrangle the two of them in another dead-end interrogation that would only split them apart when Q inevitably refuses to fess up and James inevitably lets his paranoia get the better of him. 

“James, I–” Q hates this, hates himself, this is so pathetic, he can’t stand it, begging for pity like this, Jesus, “I… My head really hurts. Can we do this another time, please?”

James sits still for a second, looking unusually unsure of what to do. His blue eyes soften, losing the cold ice that had been directed at him only minutes earlier. “I’ll take you home.”

Q is careful to hide his relief, though he knows it’s too early for such a feeling; the spy will not give up this easily. Q has only managed to delay the conversation, not to avoid it. He’ll have to figure something out by then, some way to explain that sounds plausible enough while giving the truth a wide berth. 

“Thank you,” Q says, a bit breathless. For once in his life, he thinks sleep is in order. He needs to get away from all of this, close his eyes and forget about the blind spots in his vision, the ache behind his forehead, the pain in his chest at the thought of James’ blatant lack of faith in him. 

James gets up from the couch and extends a hand to help him up. Q pretends he hasn’t seen it and drags himself to his feet, wobbling in place like a newborn foal when his surroundings topple as the change in altitude paints the world anew too fast for his stupid, sluggish brain to catch up. James jerks forward to help, but stops himself before actually touching him. Q has never seen the spy look so lost before. 

Hand on the knob, James starts opening the door, but Q stops him with a small exclamation once he remembers the bag of vomit he has shoved in his desk drawer. The idea of leaving it here until he comes back sickens him. The spy turns to look at him, a question in his eyes, and all of sudden, under the spotlight of his blue gaze, Q feels deeply ashamed. How is he supposed to explain such a display of weakness in front of such a strong man?

“Nevermind,” Q mutters, glaring at the floor. He can’t picture himself pulling the bag out in front of James, nor walk with it in his hand in front of all his coworkers in Q-Branch until he finds a proper way to dispose of it. “Let’s go.”

It’s so disgusting. He’s disgusting.

James opens the door and light floods the darkened office. Q cringes away from it as it causes his head to twinge unpleasantly. James roots through his pockets and wordlessly hands him his favorite pair of aviator sunglasses. Q hesitates to take them, remembering that James’ eyes themselves must be sensitive to light with that hangover of his.

James waves the pair. “You can wear them on top of your glasses.”

Ah. Another thing Q will need to find a lie for. 

Q grabs the sunglasses with a word of thanks, placing them in front of his own glasses. He must look ridiculous, yet James doesn’t tease him about it. They step out into Q-Branch’s blinding fluorescent lighting together, Q pressed to the spy’s shoulder. Thankfully, most of the minions still haven’t returned from their lunch hour, so the place is mostly empty, populated by only a few people. They’re all too busy staring at their screen to pay attention to James and Q anyway.

Outside MI6, the world attacks his senses mercilessly. The sunlight pierces through the sunglasses’ protection, forcing him to squint and shade his eyes with his hand. The exterior’s sounds — car horns and engines, chatter, wind and birds, tree leaves, phone rings — blast into his ears like a volley of bullets, each one embedding themselves in his brain’s unprotected soft tissue. Even the smells participate in the assault, the aroma of street food and the stench of car exhaust newly pungent and repulsive to his nose. 

Q gags and throws up again, bending in two over the curb. James’ hand lands on his back, gently rubbing circles between his shoulder blades as he heaves pitifully. The spy helps Q straighten up without a word, glaring at passerbys as they widely circumvent the pair of them. Q stares at the ground, cheeks ablaze. 

The short trek to the car and the subsequent car ride pass by like a fever dream, fuzzy and discontinuous as time performs its various tricks of speeding up and slowing down and disappearing altogether. James’ hand never strays far, either gripping his own or resting around his waist or settling on his thigh, the older man’s body heat the only constant.

Once in front of the door of his flat, Q fumbles with the keys, his grip annoyingly shaky. James takes them from him and unlocks the door, holding it open for him. Q resists the urge to bristle at his own bloody uselessness and ducks inside, ready to shut himself off from the world and wallow in self-pity. When that will be done, he’ll pick himself up from the floor, find a way to dodge James’ questions in a subtle and clever way, and make a game plan for how he’ll salvage his slack at work. 

Except, standing in the middle of his living room, he finds he doesn’t know what to do next. Should he crash in bed? Drink water? Take a shower? Feed his cats? Perhaps he should clean a bit first, rid himself of the dust, wash his laundry so his bed smells nice. Draw the blinds. Water his plants; it’s been a while. Organize his desk to avoid having to do it later. Had he left dirty dishes in the sink last time he’d been here?

Q has no idea where to start first. There are so many things to do even when he has nothing to do but close his eyes and rest. How can he sleep if his sheets haven’t been washed? If his plants die while he isn’t looking? If the dust in his bedroom lands in his lungs and afflicts him with a chest infection on top of the headache?

He needs– He needs… If only…

He’s nestled in an armchair. Surrounded by cushions, the textured fabric worn soft by time and use. Somewhere to his left, a baritone voice hums softly. So softly it doesn’t even hurt his sensitive head. 

The room is plunged into semi-obscurity. Farther away in front of him, a thin strip of light splits the wooden floor in two. His blurry eyes struggle to distinguish any other detail about his surroundings, the darkness swallowing up what little he’d normally be able to see. 

The voice drifts closer. “What do you say about a little reading, my dear, huh?”

He can’t find the words to answer. His tongue swallows all the space in his mouth. His voice sticks in his throat, choked-off.

An amused chortle, seal-like. “Don’t you worry. I’ll pick a title for you.”

Some noise. Water running, pages being flipped, a fork clattering on a porcelain plate. He wants to get up, get somewhere, get away, but the chair is so comfortable, and he’s so deep in its embrace. He’s so tired.

“Here, let’s eat something first.” 

A hand with a fork appears in front of his face. He presses his lips together, nauseated at the idea of food. Another hand appears and pries his jaw open. The fork scrapes against his teeth. Under the sweetness of applesauce, a bitter, metallic taste. 

Then, a glass of water is brought to his lips. The cold liquid trickles in, the wide-palmed hand now pinching his nose to force him to swallow. He chokes and sputters, but his nostrils remain clamped shut mercilessly, the voice above him shushing him. 

“Alrighty, that’s enough for now. You did very well, dear.”

Stubby fingers spread over the left side of his face, cradling his head tenderly. A warm body settles next to him on the armchair, broad-shouldered and slightly chubby. The man smells like tea and biscuits, like a late October afternoon. 

The deep, cadenced voice begins to read, lilting around the vowels with its strangely melodic accent, 

“Act One: A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer’s study. Between the doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door, and beyond it…”

A long-fingered hand lands on Q’s arm. “Q?”

Q blinks. “Wha–? What?”

“How about a bath? Then we’ll–”

“No,” Q says, heart climbing in his throat. Not this, anything but this. All he hears is the blood in his ears, its panicked pulse, and he meets James’ blue eyes pleadingly. “Can we take a shower instead?”

“Of course,” James replies, eyebrows raised. Q expects questions, but perhaps James has chosen the safest route and decided he has pushed enough for today, because he  doesn’t say anything else. The spy heads for the bathroom and Q follows after a moment of hesitation. 

James starts the water and steps back from the shower stall, wiping his hand on his pants. “Get in there, I’ll go pick some clothes and I’ll join you in a second.”

The door clicks shut behind James and Q stands in his tiny bathroom, at a loss again. Steam has already begun to circulate in the rectangular, white-tiled room, coating the mirror in a misty sheen. The green potted plants on the windowsill look a bit dull; he should really take care of them sooner rather than later. It’s a wonder his cats haven’t ruined them in his absence already. 

The roar of the running water nearly muffles the sound of the door opening again. Q turns around and James halts in his tracks, two pairs of sweatpants and a selection of four different hoodies slung over his left arm. “What are you still doing with your clothes? I’d much rather see you without them.”

Q rolls his eyes, lips quirking up in a tiny smile. “If you had your way, I’d be naked all the time.”

“Everyone at MI6 would have to thank me,” James says with a smirk, featherlight fingers teasing the collar of Q’s shirt.

“Wouldn’t you get jealous, though, 007?”

James pretends to ponder the question, blue eyes sparkling. Q stares at him, mesmerized all over again. His heart squeezes painfully as he thinks of the wall of secrets he has built between them, as he thinks of the accusations lodged in the cracks of their relationship. Q feels the pull of the truth then, the urge to spill everything and have James pick up his pieces.

But it’s not what the spy signed up for, this. What he even sees in Q in the first place, Q has no idea. James could have — has had — anyone he wants, and yet he’d settled with Q, which is something 007 doesn’t do. 

007 accumulates lovers and nights of pleasure, one after the other, reveling in the freedom and the simplicity of one night stands. He doesn’t bother with expectations and strings attached. He does what he wants because he can. He breaks hearts as easily as he breathes and he doesn’t care because it’s been stated from the start that this is exactly the plan he’ll follow through. 

He’s not cruel or apathetic. He’s simply honest, maybe brutally so, about what he desires. Q has always distantly admired James’ confidence in himself, his clear way of categorizing people. He doesn’t pretend, doesn’t lie to spare feelings or entertain illusions; it may seem callous to most, but when one is lucky enough to share 007’s bed, they know before getting into it that it will not be a repeat performance. 

“Nobody would dare try anything,” the older man murmurs in Q’s ear, deftly loosening his tie and unbuttoning his cardigan even without looking. 

Q has loved James for a while. He’d known better than to fall into the spy’s orbit, known he’d get his heart stomped on. He’d avoided the trap of a one night stand for so long, out of self-preservation, despite being aware it was accessible, that James’ smooth flirting meant he could have his way for a night and life would go on. 

But Q hadn’t wanted a taste and then nothing more. He’d wanted — stills wants — the whole thing, the tenderness and the loving touches and promise of a future. 

However, Q’s resolve hasn’t ever been unbreakable. A simple kiss from the older man had it dissolving, and had him in the infamous Double-Oh’s bed for a night. Then, a week later, to his shock, for another one. Then another, and another. 

Q is always waiting for this night to be the last. Always waiting for it to end. There have been no promises, no I love you’s, no easy categorization of whatever the hell they’re doing. He fears that bringing it up will shatter the fragile equilibrium they’ve managed to find. Q knows he loves James, knows he’s ready for hell and high water, but he can’t expect the same from the other man when no such vows have been made. 

“You really think so?” Q whispers back, breath hitching as James removes his cardigan slowly. The piece of clothing falls to the tiled-floor with a soft swishing sound.

Which is why he can’t dump the truth on James. It wouldn’t be fair to him; this is not what he signed up for. It is not even clear what he did sign up for. Good sex? A trial run of domesticity? A kinder touch? A relationship? Q can’t force James to deal with his half-recollections of a week in hell. 

“I know so.” James’ hands stop moving, two tethers on Q’s shoulders as they gaze in each other’s eyes. “You’re mine.”