Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God - Chapter 5
Title: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Author: gwylliondream
Pairing: 00QAD (James Bond/Q/Alex Turner/Danny Holt)
Rating: R
Words: 50K
Warnings: Minor character death
A/N: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was written for NaNoWriMo 2017. Please see Chapter 1 for additional notes.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
“Hello.”
“It’s me, Adele Danny. Frances?”
Frances listened to Danny’s voice on her mobile. He sounded like he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel. That’s what a night of drinking and taking drugs would do to a person’s voice, wasn’t it? Frances hoped that he had simply spent the night with his old roommates who he visited in the East End the night before, but she’d be a fool to deny that she hadn’t been worrying about him as the evening wore on.
“Danny, where are you? It’s 6:00 AM.” Frances’ shoes marched toward the breezeway. She opened the garage door, but Scottie’s car that he had bequeathed to Danny sat there, untouched. Danny had never been comfortable driving in London traffic. He took the Tube, even when he no longer needed to scrimp for every pound note that he earned, rather than fill the tank with petrol.
“Frances, there are some people here who want to talk to you,” Danny said, his voice quivering uncomfortably. “You need to help me.”
“Danny, have you been arrested?” Frances had to ask. Danny had shared some tales of his past with her and despite his sudden fortune that he inherited from Scottie at his death, Frances always thought Danny was one step away from being thrown into jail for his many misdeeds. Alex’s death and the appearance of the clue that seemed to indicate he was still alive wreaked havoc on Danny’s emotions.
Had the breaking point finally been reached?
Frances became alarmed when she heard a woman’s voice laughing in the background.
“If you want to get your boy-toy back, you’ll need to follow our directions exactly,” K-Lee said, obviously taking the mobile of Danny’s hands.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frances said. “Daniel is young enough to be my grandson. Who is this? What do you want with us?”
“I see your boy wonder here driving around in fancy car, buying whatever suits his fancy,” K-Lee said. “I figure he’s got loads stashed away and I want some of what’s due to me.”
“Frances, you need to do what they say,” Danny yelled in the background.
A loud thump seemed to stop his shouting.
“Let me just say this,” K-Lee said, her mouth close to the speaker, “you’re damn lucky you have money or Danny boy wouldn’t be alive right now.”
“Marston will kill you if you tell her that,” another voice, a male who sounded nothing like Danny, spoke in the background.
Frances gripped the edge of the door frame, her knuckles turning white. She had already planned to call Eve Moneypenny when the call ended. She was certain that the people who took Alex now had Danny. If she could get to Danny, she could find Alex… alive.
“What is it you want from us?” she asked. “What do you expect us to do?”
“Plan to meet us at the intersection of Bromley Hall Road and Lochnager Street. There’s a little park, you’ll see us all right. Be there in an hour. And bring your chequebook. You’d better get here in a hurry, if you want to see Danny again,” K-Lee said before hanging up.
“Wait, how do I know that Danny is unharmed?” Frances asked, but there was no one to answer her.
She grabbed her coat from the hall closet and ran to Scottie’s guest room to search through the suitcase of belongings she had brought there from her home.
“Chequebook? Who still used a chequebook in this day and age?” Frances muttered to herself.
Fortunately, she managed to find a few blank cheques that she had stashed away in her purse in case of emergency. She threw her purse onto the passenger’s seat of Scottie’s car and drove toward Bow.
The rush hour traffic was terrible on a Friday morning. She fumbled with her mobile to search for the number Moneypenny had given to her days before. The MI6 agent turned administrative assistant was apologetic when she explained that there wasn’t enough to go on from the mysterious cardboard food box that had been sent to Danny, but that she was having a few of her MI6 colleagues look into the matter of Alex’s death.
Frances came to a stop near the intersection of Highgate Hill and Archway Road. Why the hell they needed to re-route traffic around a church mystified her. She hit the mobile to dial Eve, but it went to voicemail. Only the most staunch supporters of MI6 would be at work this early in the morning. She left a message saying Danny had got into a bit of trouble and that she needed help. She gave the address, just in case. There was no point to going on about the situation when she knew so little herself.
~
When Eve arrived at Le Papillon for her morning cup of coffee and toast, Barbara was in tears. She sat on the sideway outside the restaurant. Eve watched as Barbara tried to open a used tissue to get more real estate when blowing her nose, but it the tissue fell apart in her hands.
“Here, Barbara, let me help you,” Eve said, pulling up to a stop in front of her. She warily eyed the pedestrian traffic on the pavement so she could get closer to Barbara. Fishing through her purse in search of a handkerchief, she found one and brought it forth.
Barbara’s sobbing drew the attention of those who passed by, but apparently there were no friends to be found on the London street. She looked utterly miserable and, having never seen her in that state before, Eve decided that she could try to help her.
Grateful that she wore a pantsuit today, lest she flash all of London, Eve squatted down to Barbara’s level and offered her the clean handkerchief.
“Thank you so much, Eve,” Barbara said, still sobbing wretchedly. She blew her nose loudly before attempting to hand the handkerchief back to Eve.
“That’s all right,” Eve said with a smile and a wave of her hand. “You can keep it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Barbara said, looking around at the people who obliviously continued on their way. “I’m making a fool of myself.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Eve said, glancing at the people who stepped away unconcernedly from where Barbara sprawled across the pavement. “Whatever is the matter?”
More people passed, stepping over Barbara’s legs that were splayed across the bricks that adorned the sidewalk.
Eve tried to be patient, but truly the sooner she got Barbara out of the way of the pedestrians, the better. She wondered why Barbara was in such a miserable frame of mind. To make matter worse, a light rain began to fall.
“I’ve messed up one too many times,” Barbara said, fresh tears in her eyes. “Ingmar’s manager, Sylvain, has deemed me unfit to serve Le Papillon’s clients. I’ve been fired from my job.” Barbara’s body wracked with sobs.
Eve wrapped her arms around Barbara’s shoulders. “There, there,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Surely something can be done?”
“I should have known better,” Barbara sniffed. “When Monsieur Rabbat asked if the sole was fresh, I told him that the chef had added it to the special menu because it had been sitting out since morning.” Barbara dissolved into crying again, big ugly tears rolling down her face.
“Oh dear,” Eve said, leaning back from Barbara’s embrace.
“It was so stupid of me,” Barbara said. “I knew I should have lied, but the truth slipped out. It always does with me.”
“That seems like a forgivable offense,” Eve said. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’ve been a wonderful server when my colleagues and I have been seated at your table. It’s not that bad, you’ll be able to find another job soon.”
“Oh, you’re too kind,” Barbara said. “But that’s not all.”
“I see,” Eve said as raindrops began to fall, darkening the London sidewalk. She dreaded what Barbara might say next about her firing. “There were more complaints about me. Sylvain said I was the worst server ever and he would recommend that I look for a different line of work.”
Eve felt terrible for Barbara. She watched the spatter of rain as dark clouds moved over the city. The lunch crowd who gathered on the street promptly opened their umbrellas to keep dry in the sudden storm.
“You can tell me more,” Eve said, “but we should move inside or we’re going to get soaked.”
“Well, we can’t very well go into Le Papillon, can we?” Barbara began to cry again.
Eve looked up and down the street. Fortunately, a Costa Coffee shop was only a block away, although she detested their coffee, it wouldn’t hurt to get Barbara indoors.
“Let’s take a walk,” Eve said, rising to her feet. “Give me your hand.”
She carefully helped Barbara up from the sidewalk. Taking her arm, she guided her to the nearby coffee shop.
“I’ll never succeed at waitressing,” Barbara cried. “Everything is so complicated. I can’t get any of the orders right. I spend too much time tallying the number of chia seeds on the beetroot salad, counting how many eggs were in a gram of caviar, making sure each piece of cheese on the charcuterie board measured precisely four centimetres square.”
Eve squinted at Barbara and she catalogued the number of times she ensured that she had counted a food item correctly.
“Well, at least they can’t say you didn’t pay attention to detail,” Eve said.
When they arrived inside Costa Coffee, Eve quickly found a table and ordered two cappuccinos.
“But I can’t possibly pay you for this,” Barbara cried.
“No, darling,” Eve said, squeezing Barbara’s wrist. “There’s no need. It’s my treat.”
Eve had never seen Barbara so upset. She could understand her concern over losing her job, but her level of distress seemed to be quite uncharacteristic. Eve knew Barbara to be nothing less than professional when she served the colleagues from MI6.
Barbara took a sip of her cappuccino and she seemed to calm down.
“I’ve always been so detailed and forthright,” Barbara sniffled. “No one appreciates it, except my pen pal-who seems to admire my attention to detail, even though he’s never experienced it firsthand. I never thought it would be something that would make me lose my job.”
Eve shook her head. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. We’ll find you another job straightaway.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry I’m such a wreck over this. I’m sure you’re right. I’ll find somewhere else to spend my days.”
The coffee shop bustled with activity at the lunch hour. The smell of freshly ground coffee wafted through the air. Although she had her heart set on a fresh cup of coffee at Le Papillon, Costa’s caffeine would have to do.
“Pardon my asking,” Eve said, “but if you’re short on cash… if you’re in debt, I could make you a small loan.”
Eve felt like she must do something to help Barbara, but she didn’t want to sound overly patronizing. She only wanted to help, but she felt entirely helpless. She remembered with trepidation the time when she thought she might be fired from MI6. She was so worried. Shooting Bond was a far greater offense than counting caviar eggs. She worried about paying her bills, she worried about having to leave an organization that she loved, but most of all, she worried that Bond would never forgive her. He died at her hands. He was dead. Shot to death by a weapon that Eve handled. Eve couldn’t bring herself to ever fire a weapon again. Of course, things became quite a bit sunnier when he returned form the dead, of course. If only Eve could offer Barbara that kind of relief.
Perhaps she could.
“Barbara, if I told you about an opening with my employer that might suit you, would you be willing to apply for the job?”
Barbara’s eyes flew open wide. “Do you mean it?”
Eve had known Barbara to keep gossip from the MI6 table in the strictest confidence. “Of course I mean it,” Eve said. “I think you’d be perfect for the job.”
“Is it waiting tables?” Barbara asked. “I think I’d like to give up on that as a career. I don’t know what else I’d be successful at doing.”
“It’s a little more challenging than waiting on tables, but I think you’d be up for it.” Eve squeezed Barbara’s hand. “Leave everything to me.”
~
Q awoke on his sofa with James Bond’s arms wrapped around him. The first thought he had was of how warm and cosy it felt to be surrounded by so much muscle. Bond’s chest was deliciously firm and the sleepy mixture of Bond’s cologne with the masculine essence of Bond himself made Q dizzy. The second thought was the strange aftertaste in his mouth. He didn’t remember drinking any vodka, and yet the impression left on his taste buds reminded him of his experimentation days in uni.
Q wasn’t a regular user of recreational drugs in uni, but his first year roommate, and sometimes fuckbuddy, Malcolm Beekman, was a pre-veterinary student. As part of his education, Malcolm spent the better part of the weekends volunteering at the RSPCA. The benevolent animal-loving Board of Directors never would have suspected that the young Mr. Beekman would abuse his privileges to access the various delights that were normally kept under lock and key in the RSPCA’s treatment room.
Malcolm introduced Q to Sodium Pentobarbital, not the silly so-called truth serum-Sodium Pentothal, although they tried that too. Much more blissful were the anaesthetics. Acepromazine when he wanted to sleep, ketamine when he wanted to forget, isoflurine if they wanted to have a party.
The taste in Q’s mouth brought back memories.
Q shifted in Bond’s arms, suddenly aware that his cock was painfully hard. It had been a long week with the cast on his wrist and he could do with some relief. It was his own fault that it felt as if his semen had backed up into his brain. When he masturbated, he liked to encircle the base of his cock with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while he stroked himself off with his right. Too stubborn to change things up and try a new technique while he endured the casted wrist, and too concerned about soiling the plaster with his seed, he had decided to forego the pleasures of the flesh. He hadn’t planned to go the entire six weeks without relief, he just thought he would see how long he could refrain from pleasuring himself.
“Fuck,” Q said. He twisted his way out of Bond’s arms.
Bond’s eyes opened.
Q stood in front of the sofa and shouted, “You fucking roofied me!”
“What?” Bond asked, regaining the use of his arms.
“I can’t believe you,” Q yelled, folding his arms across his chest and pacing back and forth furiously.
“What are you on about?” Bond sat up.
“Of all the things to do to me after what I’ve been through these past couple weeks,” Q continued his rant. “And in my own home!”
“What are you talking about? You think I drugged you?” Bond asked, scratching the back of his neck.
“What’s this I taste?” Q asked, sticking his tongue between his lips.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bond insisted.
“You must have done it when we were in Le Papillon. Or maybe you spiked my tea,” Q said, picking up the mug that he had set on the coffee table the night before and taking a sniff of the dregs.
“Q, you’ve lost your mind,” Bond said.
“I know my animal tranquilizers,” Q said, licking his lips. “Did you think you would get me home and I would just fall into bed with you? Oh, that’s rich, Bond.”
“Jesus, Q, calm down,” Bond said. He moved to lay his hands on Q’s shoulders to calm him when his mobile began to ring.
“Of all the damn times,” Q complained. “Don’t answer that while I’m chastising you. We have mandatory drug testing at MI6, don’t you know!”
Bond reached for his mobile, which had apparently been lost in the cushions of the sofa. He dug around for it while the ringing continued.
“Bond here,” he said, finally locating it and putting it to his ear.
Q waved his hands in the air and marched into the loo. He turned both taps on and immediately regretted that he shoved both hands under the flow of water.
“Fucking fuck!” he shouted and grabbed the towel from the back of the door to dry the cast.
He tore off his glasses and tossed them onto the vanity. With his right hand, he splashed some water onto his face. He noticed the toothbrush that Bond had used sitting beside the toothpaste on the vanity. So, Bond must have slipped him a mickey, brushed his teeth, and then cuddled the night away while Q was passed out on the sofa. That man was so infuriating.
Q dragged the towel over his face. Jesus, he had a bad case of bedhead. He stopped to arrange his hair so it looked like it belonged to a MI6 department head and not James Bond’s fuckboy.
He’d kill Bond if he let word of this incident get out at MI6. On second thought, he should go to M directly and lodge a formal complaint. No, he’d just get himself in trouble for fraternizing with Bond, who apparently had no respect whatsoever for his superiors.
What could Bond hope to achieve by drugging him? Unless perhaps Eve put him up to it. Oh, yes, Tanner and she were probably having a good laugh about it right now. Well, he’d have a word with her about it when he got into work. It would not be pleasant.
“Q?” Bond asked.
Q looked up to see Bond standing at the door.
“That was Felix, my connection at the CIA,” Bond said. “Turns out, they are already on top of the Turner situation.”
“Are they going after Turner so he’ll work for them? Did they kidnap him?” Q asked, suddenly more calm and rational than he had been in the past five minutes.
Bond shook his head. “It’s not them, but they have one of their undercover agents on it,” he said. “I’d be willing to bet that he’s the one who passed the evidence of Alex’s survival to Danny Holt.”
“What are we going to do about it?” Q asked.
“I think we should fly to DC,” Bond said.
~
Author: gwylliondream
Pairing: 00QAD (James Bond/Q/Alex Turner/Danny Holt)
Rating: R
Words: 50K
Warnings: Minor character death
A/N: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was written for NaNoWriMo 2017. Please see Chapter 1 for additional notes.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
“Hello.”
“It’s me, Adele Danny. Frances?”
Frances listened to Danny’s voice on her mobile. He sounded like he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel. That’s what a night of drinking and taking drugs would do to a person’s voice, wasn’t it? Frances hoped that he had simply spent the night with his old roommates who he visited in the East End the night before, but she’d be a fool to deny that she hadn’t been worrying about him as the evening wore on.
“Danny, where are you? It’s 6:00 AM.” Frances’ shoes marched toward the breezeway. She opened the garage door, but Scottie’s car that he had bequeathed to Danny sat there, untouched. Danny had never been comfortable driving in London traffic. He took the Tube, even when he no longer needed to scrimp for every pound note that he earned, rather than fill the tank with petrol.
“Frances, there are some people here who want to talk to you,” Danny said, his voice quivering uncomfortably. “You need to help me.”
“Danny, have you been arrested?” Frances had to ask. Danny had shared some tales of his past with her and despite his sudden fortune that he inherited from Scottie at his death, Frances always thought Danny was one step away from being thrown into jail for his many misdeeds. Alex’s death and the appearance of the clue that seemed to indicate he was still alive wreaked havoc on Danny’s emotions.
Had the breaking point finally been reached?
Frances became alarmed when she heard a woman’s voice laughing in the background.
“If you want to get your boy-toy back, you’ll need to follow our directions exactly,” K-Lee said, obviously taking the mobile of Danny’s hands.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frances said. “Daniel is young enough to be my grandson. Who is this? What do you want with us?”
“I see your boy wonder here driving around in fancy car, buying whatever suits his fancy,” K-Lee said. “I figure he’s got loads stashed away and I want some of what’s due to me.”
“Frances, you need to do what they say,” Danny yelled in the background.
A loud thump seemed to stop his shouting.
“Let me just say this,” K-Lee said, her mouth close to the speaker, “you’re damn lucky you have money or Danny boy wouldn’t be alive right now.”
“Marston will kill you if you tell her that,” another voice, a male who sounded nothing like Danny, spoke in the background.
Frances gripped the edge of the door frame, her knuckles turning white. She had already planned to call Eve Moneypenny when the call ended. She was certain that the people who took Alex now had Danny. If she could get to Danny, she could find Alex… alive.
“What is it you want from us?” she asked. “What do you expect us to do?”
“Plan to meet us at the intersection of Bromley Hall Road and Lochnager Street. There’s a little park, you’ll see us all right. Be there in an hour. And bring your chequebook. You’d better get here in a hurry, if you want to see Danny again,” K-Lee said before hanging up.
“Wait, how do I know that Danny is unharmed?” Frances asked, but there was no one to answer her.
She grabbed her coat from the hall closet and ran to Scottie’s guest room to search through the suitcase of belongings she had brought there from her home.
“Chequebook? Who still used a chequebook in this day and age?” Frances muttered to herself.
Fortunately, she managed to find a few blank cheques that she had stashed away in her purse in case of emergency. She threw her purse onto the passenger’s seat of Scottie’s car and drove toward Bow.
The rush hour traffic was terrible on a Friday morning. She fumbled with her mobile to search for the number Moneypenny had given to her days before. The MI6 agent turned administrative assistant was apologetic when she explained that there wasn’t enough to go on from the mysterious cardboard food box that had been sent to Danny, but that she was having a few of her MI6 colleagues look into the matter of Alex’s death.
Frances came to a stop near the intersection of Highgate Hill and Archway Road. Why the hell they needed to re-route traffic around a church mystified her. She hit the mobile to dial Eve, but it went to voicemail. Only the most staunch supporters of MI6 would be at work this early in the morning. She left a message saying Danny had got into a bit of trouble and that she needed help. She gave the address, just in case. There was no point to going on about the situation when she knew so little herself.
~
When Eve arrived at Le Papillon for her morning cup of coffee and toast, Barbara was in tears. She sat on the sideway outside the restaurant. Eve watched as Barbara tried to open a used tissue to get more real estate when blowing her nose, but it the tissue fell apart in her hands.
“Here, Barbara, let me help you,” Eve said, pulling up to a stop in front of her. She warily eyed the pedestrian traffic on the pavement so she could get closer to Barbara. Fishing through her purse in search of a handkerchief, she found one and brought it forth.
Barbara’s sobbing drew the attention of those who passed by, but apparently there were no friends to be found on the London street. She looked utterly miserable and, having never seen her in that state before, Eve decided that she could try to help her.
Grateful that she wore a pantsuit today, lest she flash all of London, Eve squatted down to Barbara’s level and offered her the clean handkerchief.
“Thank you so much, Eve,” Barbara said, still sobbing wretchedly. She blew her nose loudly before attempting to hand the handkerchief back to Eve.
“That’s all right,” Eve said with a smile and a wave of her hand. “You can keep it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Barbara said, looking around at the people who obliviously continued on their way. “I’m making a fool of myself.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Eve said, glancing at the people who stepped away unconcernedly from where Barbara sprawled across the pavement. “Whatever is the matter?”
More people passed, stepping over Barbara’s legs that were splayed across the bricks that adorned the sidewalk.
Eve tried to be patient, but truly the sooner she got Barbara out of the way of the pedestrians, the better. She wondered why Barbara was in such a miserable frame of mind. To make matter worse, a light rain began to fall.
“I’ve messed up one too many times,” Barbara said, fresh tears in her eyes. “Ingmar’s manager, Sylvain, has deemed me unfit to serve Le Papillon’s clients. I’ve been fired from my job.” Barbara’s body wracked with sobs.
Eve wrapped her arms around Barbara’s shoulders. “There, there,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Surely something can be done?”
“I should have known better,” Barbara sniffed. “When Monsieur Rabbat asked if the sole was fresh, I told him that the chef had added it to the special menu because it had been sitting out since morning.” Barbara dissolved into crying again, big ugly tears rolling down her face.
“Oh dear,” Eve said, leaning back from Barbara’s embrace.
“It was so stupid of me,” Barbara said. “I knew I should have lied, but the truth slipped out. It always does with me.”
“That seems like a forgivable offense,” Eve said. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’ve been a wonderful server when my colleagues and I have been seated at your table. It’s not that bad, you’ll be able to find another job soon.”
“Oh, you’re too kind,” Barbara said. “But that’s not all.”
“I see,” Eve said as raindrops began to fall, darkening the London sidewalk. She dreaded what Barbara might say next about her firing. “There were more complaints about me. Sylvain said I was the worst server ever and he would recommend that I look for a different line of work.”
Eve felt terrible for Barbara. She watched the spatter of rain as dark clouds moved over the city. The lunch crowd who gathered on the street promptly opened their umbrellas to keep dry in the sudden storm.
“You can tell me more,” Eve said, “but we should move inside or we’re going to get soaked.”
“Well, we can’t very well go into Le Papillon, can we?” Barbara began to cry again.
Eve looked up and down the street. Fortunately, a Costa Coffee shop was only a block away, although she detested their coffee, it wouldn’t hurt to get Barbara indoors.
“Let’s take a walk,” Eve said, rising to her feet. “Give me your hand.”
She carefully helped Barbara up from the sidewalk. Taking her arm, she guided her to the nearby coffee shop.
“I’ll never succeed at waitressing,” Barbara cried. “Everything is so complicated. I can’t get any of the orders right. I spend too much time tallying the number of chia seeds on the beetroot salad, counting how many eggs were in a gram of caviar, making sure each piece of cheese on the charcuterie board measured precisely four centimetres square.”
Eve squinted at Barbara and she catalogued the number of times she ensured that she had counted a food item correctly.
“Well, at least they can’t say you didn’t pay attention to detail,” Eve said.
When they arrived inside Costa Coffee, Eve quickly found a table and ordered two cappuccinos.
“But I can’t possibly pay you for this,” Barbara cried.
“No, darling,” Eve said, squeezing Barbara’s wrist. “There’s no need. It’s my treat.”
Eve had never seen Barbara so upset. She could understand her concern over losing her job, but her level of distress seemed to be quite uncharacteristic. Eve knew Barbara to be nothing less than professional when she served the colleagues from MI6.
Barbara took a sip of her cappuccino and she seemed to calm down.
“I’ve always been so detailed and forthright,” Barbara sniffled. “No one appreciates it, except my pen pal-who seems to admire my attention to detail, even though he’s never experienced it firsthand. I never thought it would be something that would make me lose my job.”
Eve shook her head. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. We’ll find you another job straightaway.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry I’m such a wreck over this. I’m sure you’re right. I’ll find somewhere else to spend my days.”
The coffee shop bustled with activity at the lunch hour. The smell of freshly ground coffee wafted through the air. Although she had her heart set on a fresh cup of coffee at Le Papillon, Costa’s caffeine would have to do.
“Pardon my asking,” Eve said, “but if you’re short on cash… if you’re in debt, I could make you a small loan.”
Eve felt like she must do something to help Barbara, but she didn’t want to sound overly patronizing. She only wanted to help, but she felt entirely helpless. She remembered with trepidation the time when she thought she might be fired from MI6. She was so worried. Shooting Bond was a far greater offense than counting caviar eggs. She worried about paying her bills, she worried about having to leave an organization that she loved, but most of all, she worried that Bond would never forgive her. He died at her hands. He was dead. Shot to death by a weapon that Eve handled. Eve couldn’t bring herself to ever fire a weapon again. Of course, things became quite a bit sunnier when he returned form the dead, of course. If only Eve could offer Barbara that kind of relief.
Perhaps she could.
“Barbara, if I told you about an opening with my employer that might suit you, would you be willing to apply for the job?”
Barbara’s eyes flew open wide. “Do you mean it?”
Eve had known Barbara to keep gossip from the MI6 table in the strictest confidence. “Of course I mean it,” Eve said. “I think you’d be perfect for the job.”
“Is it waiting tables?” Barbara asked. “I think I’d like to give up on that as a career. I don’t know what else I’d be successful at doing.”
“It’s a little more challenging than waiting on tables, but I think you’d be up for it.” Eve squeezed Barbara’s hand. “Leave everything to me.”
~
Q awoke on his sofa with James Bond’s arms wrapped around him. The first thought he had was of how warm and cosy it felt to be surrounded by so much muscle. Bond’s chest was deliciously firm and the sleepy mixture of Bond’s cologne with the masculine essence of Bond himself made Q dizzy. The second thought was the strange aftertaste in his mouth. He didn’t remember drinking any vodka, and yet the impression left on his taste buds reminded him of his experimentation days in uni.
Q wasn’t a regular user of recreational drugs in uni, but his first year roommate, and sometimes fuckbuddy, Malcolm Beekman, was a pre-veterinary student. As part of his education, Malcolm spent the better part of the weekends volunteering at the RSPCA. The benevolent animal-loving Board of Directors never would have suspected that the young Mr. Beekman would abuse his privileges to access the various delights that were normally kept under lock and key in the RSPCA’s treatment room.
Malcolm introduced Q to Sodium Pentobarbital, not the silly so-called truth serum-Sodium Pentothal, although they tried that too. Much more blissful were the anaesthetics. Acepromazine when he wanted to sleep, ketamine when he wanted to forget, isoflurine if they wanted to have a party.
The taste in Q’s mouth brought back memories.
Q shifted in Bond’s arms, suddenly aware that his cock was painfully hard. It had been a long week with the cast on his wrist and he could do with some relief. It was his own fault that it felt as if his semen had backed up into his brain. When he masturbated, he liked to encircle the base of his cock with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while he stroked himself off with his right. Too stubborn to change things up and try a new technique while he endured the casted wrist, and too concerned about soiling the plaster with his seed, he had decided to forego the pleasures of the flesh. He hadn’t planned to go the entire six weeks without relief, he just thought he would see how long he could refrain from pleasuring himself.
“Fuck,” Q said. He twisted his way out of Bond’s arms.
Bond’s eyes opened.
Q stood in front of the sofa and shouted, “You fucking roofied me!”
“What?” Bond asked, regaining the use of his arms.
“I can’t believe you,” Q yelled, folding his arms across his chest and pacing back and forth furiously.
“What are you on about?” Bond sat up.
“Of all the things to do to me after what I’ve been through these past couple weeks,” Q continued his rant. “And in my own home!”
“What are you talking about? You think I drugged you?” Bond asked, scratching the back of his neck.
“What’s this I taste?” Q asked, sticking his tongue between his lips.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bond insisted.
“You must have done it when we were in Le Papillon. Or maybe you spiked my tea,” Q said, picking up the mug that he had set on the coffee table the night before and taking a sniff of the dregs.
“Q, you’ve lost your mind,” Bond said.
“I know my animal tranquilizers,” Q said, licking his lips. “Did you think you would get me home and I would just fall into bed with you? Oh, that’s rich, Bond.”
“Jesus, Q, calm down,” Bond said. He moved to lay his hands on Q’s shoulders to calm him when his mobile began to ring.
“Of all the damn times,” Q complained. “Don’t answer that while I’m chastising you. We have mandatory drug testing at MI6, don’t you know!”
Bond reached for his mobile, which had apparently been lost in the cushions of the sofa. He dug around for it while the ringing continued.
“Bond here,” he said, finally locating it and putting it to his ear.
Q waved his hands in the air and marched into the loo. He turned both taps on and immediately regretted that he shoved both hands under the flow of water.
“Fucking fuck!” he shouted and grabbed the towel from the back of the door to dry the cast.
He tore off his glasses and tossed them onto the vanity. With his right hand, he splashed some water onto his face. He noticed the toothbrush that Bond had used sitting beside the toothpaste on the vanity. So, Bond must have slipped him a mickey, brushed his teeth, and then cuddled the night away while Q was passed out on the sofa. That man was so infuriating.
Q dragged the towel over his face. Jesus, he had a bad case of bedhead. He stopped to arrange his hair so it looked like it belonged to a MI6 department head and not James Bond’s fuckboy.
He’d kill Bond if he let word of this incident get out at MI6. On second thought, he should go to M directly and lodge a formal complaint. No, he’d just get himself in trouble for fraternizing with Bond, who apparently had no respect whatsoever for his superiors.
What could Bond hope to achieve by drugging him? Unless perhaps Eve put him up to it. Oh, yes, Tanner and she were probably having a good laugh about it right now. Well, he’d have a word with her about it when he got into work. It would not be pleasant.
“Q?” Bond asked.
Q looked up to see Bond standing at the door.
“That was Felix, my connection at the CIA,” Bond said. “Turns out, they are already on top of the Turner situation.”
“Are they going after Turner so he’ll work for them? Did they kidnap him?” Q asked, suddenly more calm and rational than he had been in the past five minutes.
Bond shook his head. “It’s not them, but they have one of their undercover agents on it,” he said. “I’d be willing to bet that he’s the one who passed the evidence of Alex’s survival to Danny Holt.”
“What are we going to do about it?” Q asked.
“I think we should fly to DC,” Bond said.
~