In The Wake Of Spectre (Bill Tanner, Q)
A/N: I've been writing a little 00Q since watching Spectre, and reading a lot more, though this is the first story I've written set in the James Bond universe that I feel happy enough to share, and it's actually not 00Q after all!
The immediate aftermath felt strangely anticlimactic. After the showdown at the CNS building and C’s death, after the helicopter crash and the arrest of the man now calling himself Blofeld, after car chases and crashes and near-death experiences, everything just seemed to fall a little flat. At least, that was how it all felt to Tanner.
He’d stood there with Moneypenny and Q on Westminster Bridge, watching in shared surprise as 007 threw his gun aside before leaving with Dr Swann, then stood and continued to watch while M took decisive control of the scene. Moneypenny had calmly announced to anyone who might be listening that she was going home to see her boyfriend briefly before he left for work, saying she’d be back in the office at dawn, and eventually Tanner had found himself driving M and Q back to Whitehall.
There had been few words exchanged between the three men, for which Tanner was oddly grateful - they were all so far beyond exhausted at that point that any conversation would have been strained and stilted. There was no reason to talk, either, as they each knew almost instinctively what still needed to be done, and what they could achieve in these strange hours between midnight and sunrise.
M, of course, disappeared straight into his office to start making calls to whoever might need immediate explanations. Tanner hesitated for only a moment before walking slowly into his own office, just across the hall and down slightly from M’s, and it wasn’t until he collapsed into the chair behind his desk that he registered the fact that Q had followed him up from the car.
The quartermaster stood in the doorway, clutching his laptop bag against his chest almost as if for protection, his eyes wide and owlish behind his glasses as he watched Tanner. He tilted his head to one side, a question of sorts, and Tanner just nodded with a small smile.
No need for words, now more than ever before. With a tired smile of his own, Q padded across the office and settled himself on Tanner’s battered leather sofa, immediately starting to unpack his laptop without even pausing to take off his coat or scarf. He could work virtually anywhere, of course, and the trek down to Q-branch’s current subterranean home must have seemed far too long for that time of the night. Morning. Night. Whatever time it currently was.
They both started working in near silence, compiling forms and reports and sending emails to those who needed to know, as well as touching base with other ongoing operations around the world. After everything they’d been through together during the evening, it suddenly felt like just another late night at the office, and Tanner almost felt he needed to pinch himself to remember all that had happened.
The clean-up on Westminster Bridge would be going at full-tilt, no doubt, as pressure was doubtless applied on the work crews to get it reopened before the morning rush hour. The downed chopper would have been removed already for specialist examination, probably led by Q-branch if Q had his way, and Blofeld would be somewhere incredibly secure, receiving medical attention he scarcely deserved. The emails and messages coming through confirmed everything, some forwarded through to Tanner from the man sitting two metres away on his sofa, and yet outside the window the sky hadn’t even begun to lighten yet.
Movement jolted Tanner out of his near-daze, and he glanced up as Q placed his laptop deliberately on the coffee table before standing up from the sofa. With a cat-like grace even in his obvious exhaustion, Q stretched his hands up high above his head, rising up on his tiptoes as he yawned widely, then he left the room on silent feet without saying a single word.
Tanner didn’t worry; Q had left his laptop and his phone, so wherever he’d gone, he’d be back soon. Stifling a yawn of his own, he had fielded another few emails before the other man returned, brandishing two steaming mugs and heading straight back to his spot in the middle of the sofa.
Tea. Tanner smiled, suddenly realising quite how long Q must have gone without and how desperate he must be - the man was utterly addicted, quite unashamedly so, and actually caffeine really did sound like a good idea to Tanner at that moment. It had been a bloody long night, after all.
He locked his computer screen automatically and shuffled across the room to join Q on the sofa, gratefully accepting the mug held out to him as he sank into the battered cushions. Q had positioned himself in the very centre, leaving Tanner to squeeze in between the other man and the armrest, and Q leaned towards him ever so slightly with a soft sigh as they both settled with their tea.
“Cheers,” Tanner said softly, holding up his mug for Q to clink his own against.
“Cheers indeed,” Q replied, pressing himself against Tanner’s side from shoulder to knee, almost as if he needed the contact.
They both fell into an easy silence again, sipping quietly from their mugs and staring out of the window as the London skyline slowly began to brighten. Tanner didn’t point out that Q could leave at any time, could go snatch a precious few hours of sleep before the true clean-up began - Q and his team would have the worst of it in the coming weeks, he suspected, as the depths of C’s involvement with Spectre were dredged to the surface.
Q would know he could leave, but Tanner somehow knew the other man would stay with him a while longer; the company was far from unwelcome, in fact it was both reassuring and comforting. And Tanner would stay until M left, though that might not be until the following evening. It would be a long day, after a very, very long night.
They’d been friends for a long time, Tanner and Q. Close friends since the Skyfall mission, really, when Tanner had turned up in Q-branch with a bottle of beer and a fresh mug of Earl Grey, but they’d been friends of a sort before even that, since Q’s first days with MI6. The stories and mysteries that surrounded Q now always made Tanner smile, as he was one of the few who knew the truth about Q’s recruitment, and one of the few who knew it was about as far from dramatic as it was possible to get.
Q hadn’t been a hacker or a terrorist, nor had he been recruited straight from university as some sort of wunderkind. He’d come to them after a brief period working at MI5, having worked for GCHQ and at Porton Down before that, and he held two doctorates rather than being entirely self-taught as the legends had it. Tanner knew that Q encouraged the myths to a certain extent, enjoying the mystique particularly when he was surrounded by operatives with truly mysterious backgrounds, just as he encouraged the constant guessing and betting about his name.
Quentin, Quinn, Quilby - the suggestions grew crazier day by day, and Tanner had frequently found he had to resist the urge to shake some of the newer employees who believed so rigidly that the Q had to be an abbreviation of the man’s name, rather than accepting that Q stood for nothing other than Quartermaster. In Tanner’s mind, Q was simply Q; since becoming quartermaster, he’d never called his friend anything else, and hadn’t thought of him as anything else either.
The man in question was growing heavy against his side now, his tea long since finished and his head lolling limply against Tanner’s shoulder. Carefully, Tanner extracted the empty mug from unresisting fingers and leaned forwards to set it down on the table beside his own, smiling softly at the grumble of protest that slipped from Q’s parted lips as he was jostled slightly.
Sinking back into the sofa cushions as a thin yellow line started to become distinct against the dark sky outside the window, Tanner slipped one arm carefully around Q’s narrow shoulders to pull him a little closer. With a barely audible sigh, Q’s head came to rest fully on Tanner’s chest and one bony hand fell into his lap, the quartermaster finally giving in to the need for sleep after his long exertions.
Without Q, they wouldn’t have been able to stop the Nine-Eyes program from going live, and Tanner hoped desperately that Q wouldn’t face any sort of investigation over his actions. He’d been acting under orders from M, of course, and it had been the right thing to do, but the whole situation would be tricky to unpick and prove given C’s position and the fact that technically they had all been out of a job at the time.
Technically, Tanner suddenly realised, they actually were all still out of a job, so what the hell they were doing still working was something of a question mark. Thank goodness their offices hadn’t been emptied quite yet.
Q’s breathing evened out rapidly, becoming slow and deep as he sank further into sleep, and Tanner kept his arm around the other man’s shoulders, bringing his free hand up to stroke gently through Q’s messy curls. It wasn’t the first time they’d been close like this - Q was a tactile creature by nature, and they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms before, though usually there had been copious amounts of alcohol involved first.
Q looked so young when he was asleep, particularly with his glasses askew and his hair in a mess. Tanner knew the quartermaster was frustrated at times with his own appearance, even if it did give him the perfect opportunity to blend in with the crowds, though he also knew that Q was only three years younger than himself. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the quartermaster’s full head of thick hair, particularly as his own had started to thin dramatically in the last year or so.
As Q’s curly head slipped a little further down on Tanner’s chest, the scarf around his neck gaped slightly, and to Tanner’s surprise he could see a nasty graze across the back of the man’s pale neck, just brushing the very edge of his hairline. It had clearly bled quite heavily at some point as Q’s shirt collar was stained red, though thankfully the bleeding had stopped and the graze had already started to scab over.
It would need cleaning and dressing, and sooner rather than later, but it had waited this long and it could wait just a little longer. Tanner didn’t want to wake Q just yet, even if a not-insignificant part of him wanted to shout at the younger man for not mentioning that he’d been injured, though he supposed it was possible that Q hadn’t even realised with adrenaline flooding his system at the time. The only thing Tanner could think of was that Q had been either cut by glass when the back window of their car had been shot out, or that the graze was actually from the bullet itself - exactly how close had they come to losing this brilliant man?
Hugging Q a little closer still, Tanner contemplated closing his own eyes, but found he was bizarrely wide awake. The adrenaline from earlier had worn off entirely, leaving him drained but alert, and comfortable with the reassuring yet slight weight of the quartermaster in his arms and against his side. In front of his eyes, dawn was breaking with a vengeance now, and the rest of the regular staff would soon be on their way in to start their day and begin the difficult task of unpicking the tangled web of Spectre’s involvement with both the CNS and other worldwide events.
The immediate aftermath of the night’s dramas might well be drawing to a close, as much of an anti-climax as it all still felt, but Tanner knew in his gut that they would all be caught in the wake of Blofeld’s capture for a long time to come. Q should certainly rest while he could.
“Tanner?” M’s voice was quiet and decidedly rough around the edges, and Tanner blinked up at his boss in surprise as he was startled from his thoughts, having not even heard the man enter his office.
“Sir,” he started, feeling as if he should sit up straighter or at least shake Q awake, but M waved a hand to keep him where he was.
M looked beyond exhausted but still very much like a man in total control of his world, dark shadows under his eyes and lines prominent on his face as he stood to his full height. He’d taken off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and loosened his tie, though Tanner thought he could still see the faintest glints of glass fragments in his hair from earlier in the night.
When he spoke again, M’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I thought you’d gone.”
It wasn’t quite a question, but Tanner shook his head in response anyway. “If you’re still working, sir, then I’m still here,” he explained, hushing Q automatically when the quartermaster shifted slightly against his chest with a faint grumble, head slipping down a little further.
“Go home,” M whispered firmly, a tiny yet visible smile hovering on his lips as he looked over the pair of them, his eyes lingering on his sleeping quartermaster. “Take him with you. I don’t need to see either of you before noon at the very earliest, understand?”
For a moment, Tanner thought about protesting - there would be incredible amounts of work to do, as soon as London woke up properly - but Q chose that very moment to nuzzle closer with a sleepy and contented little noise. “Understood, sir,” he whispered, tightening his arms further around Q’s slender body with a tired smile. “And thank you, sir.”
“No, thank you, both of you. What you both did tonight, and Moneypenny too…” M broke off with a shake of his head. “We’ll talk more, of course, but later. Take him home. Get some sleep. You’ve both earned it.”
“Yes, sir.” But M had already gone, as swiftly and as silently as he’d arrived, and Tanner stared out at the sunrise for just another moment before sliding one hand back into Q’s messy hair, stroking gently yet with a firmer pressure than before. “Q? You with me?”
“Hmm?” Long body still limp and warm, Q shifted closer at first, sliding one hand further around Tanner’s waist in a casual embrace. “Bill? What…?”
“Come on, Q. Home time.” Tanner tightened his own arms in a brief hug before reluctantly letting Q sit up, his glasses completely askew now and his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions.
Q blinked wildly at him, clearly trying to focus and not quite succeeding. “Home?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep. “Really?”
Tanner reached up and very gently straightened Q’s glasses, blaming his exhaustion and worry over the graze on Q’s neck for the sudden and unexpected urge to lean closer and peck a gentle kiss to the corner of Q’s mouth. He managed to bite back the desire, and stared into those sleepy eyes for a moment before smiling instead, and whispering, “Home, Q.”
Q stared right back at him, holding Tanner’s gaze, his own sudden smile brighter than the early morning sunshine in spite of his exhaustion. He reached deliberately for Tanner’s hand as they both started to unfold themselves from the sofa, and Tanner allowed himself to squeeze those clever fingers tightly in his own as they left the office together, ready to finally call it a night.
In The Cold Light Of Morning - sequel.
The immediate aftermath felt strangely anticlimactic. After the showdown at the CNS building and C’s death, after the helicopter crash and the arrest of the man now calling himself Blofeld, after car chases and crashes and near-death experiences, everything just seemed to fall a little flat. At least, that was how it all felt to Tanner.
He’d stood there with Moneypenny and Q on Westminster Bridge, watching in shared surprise as 007 threw his gun aside before leaving with Dr Swann, then stood and continued to watch while M took decisive control of the scene. Moneypenny had calmly announced to anyone who might be listening that she was going home to see her boyfriend briefly before he left for work, saying she’d be back in the office at dawn, and eventually Tanner had found himself driving M and Q back to Whitehall.
There had been few words exchanged between the three men, for which Tanner was oddly grateful - they were all so far beyond exhausted at that point that any conversation would have been strained and stilted. There was no reason to talk, either, as they each knew almost instinctively what still needed to be done, and what they could achieve in these strange hours between midnight and sunrise.
M, of course, disappeared straight into his office to start making calls to whoever might need immediate explanations. Tanner hesitated for only a moment before walking slowly into his own office, just across the hall and down slightly from M’s, and it wasn’t until he collapsed into the chair behind his desk that he registered the fact that Q had followed him up from the car.
The quartermaster stood in the doorway, clutching his laptop bag against his chest almost as if for protection, his eyes wide and owlish behind his glasses as he watched Tanner. He tilted his head to one side, a question of sorts, and Tanner just nodded with a small smile.
No need for words, now more than ever before. With a tired smile of his own, Q padded across the office and settled himself on Tanner’s battered leather sofa, immediately starting to unpack his laptop without even pausing to take off his coat or scarf. He could work virtually anywhere, of course, and the trek down to Q-branch’s current subterranean home must have seemed far too long for that time of the night. Morning. Night. Whatever time it currently was.
They both started working in near silence, compiling forms and reports and sending emails to those who needed to know, as well as touching base with other ongoing operations around the world. After everything they’d been through together during the evening, it suddenly felt like just another late night at the office, and Tanner almost felt he needed to pinch himself to remember all that had happened.
The clean-up on Westminster Bridge would be going at full-tilt, no doubt, as pressure was doubtless applied on the work crews to get it reopened before the morning rush hour. The downed chopper would have been removed already for specialist examination, probably led by Q-branch if Q had his way, and Blofeld would be somewhere incredibly secure, receiving medical attention he scarcely deserved. The emails and messages coming through confirmed everything, some forwarded through to Tanner from the man sitting two metres away on his sofa, and yet outside the window the sky hadn’t even begun to lighten yet.
Movement jolted Tanner out of his near-daze, and he glanced up as Q placed his laptop deliberately on the coffee table before standing up from the sofa. With a cat-like grace even in his obvious exhaustion, Q stretched his hands up high above his head, rising up on his tiptoes as he yawned widely, then he left the room on silent feet without saying a single word.
Tanner didn’t worry; Q had left his laptop and his phone, so wherever he’d gone, he’d be back soon. Stifling a yawn of his own, he had fielded another few emails before the other man returned, brandishing two steaming mugs and heading straight back to his spot in the middle of the sofa.
Tea. Tanner smiled, suddenly realising quite how long Q must have gone without and how desperate he must be - the man was utterly addicted, quite unashamedly so, and actually caffeine really did sound like a good idea to Tanner at that moment. It had been a bloody long night, after all.
He locked his computer screen automatically and shuffled across the room to join Q on the sofa, gratefully accepting the mug held out to him as he sank into the battered cushions. Q had positioned himself in the very centre, leaving Tanner to squeeze in between the other man and the armrest, and Q leaned towards him ever so slightly with a soft sigh as they both settled with their tea.
“Cheers,” Tanner said softly, holding up his mug for Q to clink his own against.
“Cheers indeed,” Q replied, pressing himself against Tanner’s side from shoulder to knee, almost as if he needed the contact.
They both fell into an easy silence again, sipping quietly from their mugs and staring out of the window as the London skyline slowly began to brighten. Tanner didn’t point out that Q could leave at any time, could go snatch a precious few hours of sleep before the true clean-up began - Q and his team would have the worst of it in the coming weeks, he suspected, as the depths of C’s involvement with Spectre were dredged to the surface.
Q would know he could leave, but Tanner somehow knew the other man would stay with him a while longer; the company was far from unwelcome, in fact it was both reassuring and comforting. And Tanner would stay until M left, though that might not be until the following evening. It would be a long day, after a very, very long night.
They’d been friends for a long time, Tanner and Q. Close friends since the Skyfall mission, really, when Tanner had turned up in Q-branch with a bottle of beer and a fresh mug of Earl Grey, but they’d been friends of a sort before even that, since Q’s first days with MI6. The stories and mysteries that surrounded Q now always made Tanner smile, as he was one of the few who knew the truth about Q’s recruitment, and one of the few who knew it was about as far from dramatic as it was possible to get.
Q hadn’t been a hacker or a terrorist, nor had he been recruited straight from university as some sort of wunderkind. He’d come to them after a brief period working at MI5, having worked for GCHQ and at Porton Down before that, and he held two doctorates rather than being entirely self-taught as the legends had it. Tanner knew that Q encouraged the myths to a certain extent, enjoying the mystique particularly when he was surrounded by operatives with truly mysterious backgrounds, just as he encouraged the constant guessing and betting about his name.
Quentin, Quinn, Quilby - the suggestions grew crazier day by day, and Tanner had frequently found he had to resist the urge to shake some of the newer employees who believed so rigidly that the Q had to be an abbreviation of the man’s name, rather than accepting that Q stood for nothing other than Quartermaster. In Tanner’s mind, Q was simply Q; since becoming quartermaster, he’d never called his friend anything else, and hadn’t thought of him as anything else either.
The man in question was growing heavy against his side now, his tea long since finished and his head lolling limply against Tanner’s shoulder. Carefully, Tanner extracted the empty mug from unresisting fingers and leaned forwards to set it down on the table beside his own, smiling softly at the grumble of protest that slipped from Q’s parted lips as he was jostled slightly.
Sinking back into the sofa cushions as a thin yellow line started to become distinct against the dark sky outside the window, Tanner slipped one arm carefully around Q’s narrow shoulders to pull him a little closer. With a barely audible sigh, Q’s head came to rest fully on Tanner’s chest and one bony hand fell into his lap, the quartermaster finally giving in to the need for sleep after his long exertions.
Without Q, they wouldn’t have been able to stop the Nine-Eyes program from going live, and Tanner hoped desperately that Q wouldn’t face any sort of investigation over his actions. He’d been acting under orders from M, of course, and it had been the right thing to do, but the whole situation would be tricky to unpick and prove given C’s position and the fact that technically they had all been out of a job at the time.
Technically, Tanner suddenly realised, they actually were all still out of a job, so what the hell they were doing still working was something of a question mark. Thank goodness their offices hadn’t been emptied quite yet.
Q’s breathing evened out rapidly, becoming slow and deep as he sank further into sleep, and Tanner kept his arm around the other man’s shoulders, bringing his free hand up to stroke gently through Q’s messy curls. It wasn’t the first time they’d been close like this - Q was a tactile creature by nature, and they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms before, though usually there had been copious amounts of alcohol involved first.
Q looked so young when he was asleep, particularly with his glasses askew and his hair in a mess. Tanner knew the quartermaster was frustrated at times with his own appearance, even if it did give him the perfect opportunity to blend in with the crowds, though he also knew that Q was only three years younger than himself. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the quartermaster’s full head of thick hair, particularly as his own had started to thin dramatically in the last year or so.
As Q’s curly head slipped a little further down on Tanner’s chest, the scarf around his neck gaped slightly, and to Tanner’s surprise he could see a nasty graze across the back of the man’s pale neck, just brushing the very edge of his hairline. It had clearly bled quite heavily at some point as Q’s shirt collar was stained red, though thankfully the bleeding had stopped and the graze had already started to scab over.
It would need cleaning and dressing, and sooner rather than later, but it had waited this long and it could wait just a little longer. Tanner didn’t want to wake Q just yet, even if a not-insignificant part of him wanted to shout at the younger man for not mentioning that he’d been injured, though he supposed it was possible that Q hadn’t even realised with adrenaline flooding his system at the time. The only thing Tanner could think of was that Q had been either cut by glass when the back window of their car had been shot out, or that the graze was actually from the bullet itself - exactly how close had they come to losing this brilliant man?
Hugging Q a little closer still, Tanner contemplated closing his own eyes, but found he was bizarrely wide awake. The adrenaline from earlier had worn off entirely, leaving him drained but alert, and comfortable with the reassuring yet slight weight of the quartermaster in his arms and against his side. In front of his eyes, dawn was breaking with a vengeance now, and the rest of the regular staff would soon be on their way in to start their day and begin the difficult task of unpicking the tangled web of Spectre’s involvement with both the CNS and other worldwide events.
The immediate aftermath of the night’s dramas might well be drawing to a close, as much of an anti-climax as it all still felt, but Tanner knew in his gut that they would all be caught in the wake of Blofeld’s capture for a long time to come. Q should certainly rest while he could.
“Tanner?” M’s voice was quiet and decidedly rough around the edges, and Tanner blinked up at his boss in surprise as he was startled from his thoughts, having not even heard the man enter his office.
“Sir,” he started, feeling as if he should sit up straighter or at least shake Q awake, but M waved a hand to keep him where he was.
M looked beyond exhausted but still very much like a man in total control of his world, dark shadows under his eyes and lines prominent on his face as he stood to his full height. He’d taken off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and loosened his tie, though Tanner thought he could still see the faintest glints of glass fragments in his hair from earlier in the night.
When he spoke again, M’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I thought you’d gone.”
It wasn’t quite a question, but Tanner shook his head in response anyway. “If you’re still working, sir, then I’m still here,” he explained, hushing Q automatically when the quartermaster shifted slightly against his chest with a faint grumble, head slipping down a little further.
“Go home,” M whispered firmly, a tiny yet visible smile hovering on his lips as he looked over the pair of them, his eyes lingering on his sleeping quartermaster. “Take him with you. I don’t need to see either of you before noon at the very earliest, understand?”
For a moment, Tanner thought about protesting - there would be incredible amounts of work to do, as soon as London woke up properly - but Q chose that very moment to nuzzle closer with a sleepy and contented little noise. “Understood, sir,” he whispered, tightening his arms further around Q’s slender body with a tired smile. “And thank you, sir.”
“No, thank you, both of you. What you both did tonight, and Moneypenny too…” M broke off with a shake of his head. “We’ll talk more, of course, but later. Take him home. Get some sleep. You’ve both earned it.”
“Yes, sir.” But M had already gone, as swiftly and as silently as he’d arrived, and Tanner stared out at the sunrise for just another moment before sliding one hand back into Q’s messy hair, stroking gently yet with a firmer pressure than before. “Q? You with me?”
“Hmm?” Long body still limp and warm, Q shifted closer at first, sliding one hand further around Tanner’s waist in a casual embrace. “Bill? What…?”
“Come on, Q. Home time.” Tanner tightened his own arms in a brief hug before reluctantly letting Q sit up, his glasses completely askew now and his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions.
Q blinked wildly at him, clearly trying to focus and not quite succeeding. “Home?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep. “Really?”
Tanner reached up and very gently straightened Q’s glasses, blaming his exhaustion and worry over the graze on Q’s neck for the sudden and unexpected urge to lean closer and peck a gentle kiss to the corner of Q’s mouth. He managed to bite back the desire, and stared into those sleepy eyes for a moment before smiling instead, and whispering, “Home, Q.”
Q stared right back at him, holding Tanner’s gaze, his own sudden smile brighter than the early morning sunshine in spite of his exhaustion. He reached deliberately for Tanner’s hand as they both started to unfold themselves from the sofa, and Tanner allowed himself to squeeze those clever fingers tightly in his own as they left the office together, ready to finally call it a night.
In The Cold Light Of Morning - sequel.