Fic: Slow Dancing In a Burning Room (3/9)
Slow Dancing In A Burning Room, 3/9
Fandom: Skyfall (James Bond)
Characters: James Bond/Q, Eve Moneypenny, Gareth Mallory, Bill Tanner, OCs
Rating: Mature. Explicit in sections; depictions of canon-typical violence.
Word-Count: ~56,000. Complete, but chapters will be posted as they are returned from beta and undergo final edits.
Notes: This fic was Brit-picked by the lovely and patient starsandgraces, who isn't even in this fandom but still put up with my badgering. I was encouraged by multiple enablers, including jou and flatbear, but all credit and gratitude goes to circ_bamboo, who held my hand, cheered me on, read over every inch of this fic, plotted endlessly with me, and is hands-down the best writing partner in crime a fangirl could ask for. THANK YOU SO MUCH, BABY, ALL THE SCONES ARE FOR YOU. ♥
Summary: Q has a past, a cat, and a dangerous new boyfriend. Two of these things keep him up nights, the other pees in a box. Espionage, plot with porn, decoy flats, suit porn, scones for the Queen, invention porn, secret identities, snark, canon-typical violence, dysfunctional flirting by dysfunctional people, and Eve Moneypenny is HBIC.
Chapter Three. Unfortunately, the real world marches on.
You can also read here at the AO3. Part one of this fic posted here on LJ, part two is here.
“Q, did you get mugged by a pack of lampreys on your way to work this morning?”
Q glowered into the glow of his computer screen. Obnoxiously, it did nothing to stop Moneypenny leaning over the desk at him with that self-satisfied look on her face. Even more obnoxiously, her expression did nothing to diminish how pretty she was in her orange frock. Q wondered if there were some clause in the field agent manual that dictated all top-level field agents had to be unfairly attractive in order to qualify to work for MI6.
“I’ve got a condition,” he announced primly.
“Well-fucked-itis?”
“Sod off. Philistine.” Q’s fingers flew across the keyboard, determined not to look away from his screen. “Did you actually have something you needed to ask me?”
“No, just more paperwork for you to fill out.” Moneypenny dropped a fat stack of envelopes onto his desk with more glee than was really warranted. Q glanced at them and pursed his lips.
“How kind of you,” he said.
“We live to serve, dearest boffin,” she said, and left to go remind M who was really in charge of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
It was going to be that kind of day.
* * * * *
“Q, what the hell happened to your neck?”
Q turned in his chair, folding his arms across his narrow chest and leveling a stare at Tanner, who was standing by the door with clipboards in his arms and a nervous expression on his face. “What the bloody hell do you think happened, Tanner?”
“Moneypenny said you’ve got a condition, so I was worried...” Q stared. Tanner shifted from one foot to the other, and cleared his throat.
“She said what.” Q was going to throttle every single person in MI6 who wasn’t his immediate subordinate. Someone had to keep the servers running after he was executed for treason.
“I might have misunderstood her,” Tanner said hurriedly. “Only it’s just, your neck-”
“Doesn’t anything have anything better to do in this ruddy office than come and have a look at the quartermaster’s neck?” demanded Q. “I went on a date last night, alright? Good fucking God, Bill Tanner. Christ help you if you had to identify a bomb before you called someone to come defuse it for you, we’d be scraping you off the walls.”
“Oh, is that all they are.” Tanner actually looked relieved. Q couldn’t decide if he was more insulted that the idea of him going on a date was so unlikely that Tanner actually had to come up with alternative theories, or touched because M’s Chief of Staff came personally to investigate when he thought Q might be injured somehow.
“Yes. That’s what they are. Now either give me those clipboards you have tucked under your arm there, as I expect they’re my requisition forms for new parts, or get out of my office, because some of us have actual work to do.”
“You’re half-right.” Tanner finally crossed the room, passing the first of two clipboards over to Q. “These are your requisition forms. These, though, are loss itemization forms.”
Q stared at the second clipboard as though Tanner had said he’d sprayed it with bubonic plague aerosol before bringing it in. “Why the fuck am I filling out more of those, again? I just sent off a huge stack to Vicky two days ago, and that was bad enough, the other 00’s are taking after Bond more and more.”
“You’re at least a month behind, I’m afraid. The new reports from the Yakuza mission have just come in.”
“He actually brought back the car, though,” Q pointed out. “Which is a minor miracle. Alright, fine, just leave them there, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway.” Tanner added his forms to the stack Moneypenny had left earlier, and then excused himself, perhaps sensing the Guy Fawkesian mutiny Q was contemplating. Q glared stonily at the pile of paperwork, so large it now verged on obscene, as though the force of his regard could light it on fire. He fucking hated paperwork.
James Bond might have fingers that were deadly weapons and a cock that was the actual 8th wonder of the world, but that wouldn’t save him from the ocean of grief Q was going to pour on him the next time he saw the bastard.
* * * * *
Turned out, he didn’t need to.
“Q,” said Bond’s voice from behind him, moments after he heard the door to his work room slide open and shut. Q opened his mouth to tell Bond to get bent, but something about the tone of his voice gave him pause, and he sat up and actually turned around-
To see Bond standing in the door looking like he’d been mugged by a fucking kraken en route to MI6. He was covered from head to toe in splatters of black, viscous ink, and though it looked like he’d made a valiant effort to scrub the worst of it from his face and hands, splotches of it still stained his skin, and there was absolutely no saving that suit. Which was a pity; Savile Row always looked so good on Bond.
But Bond’s expression was calm. Expectant, even. Q wondered if it was the same expression he wore right before he strangled the life out of someone. He straightened in his chair, and took a sip of tea before setting his mug down on the desk. “I see you found another of my decoy flats,” he said. “Was Adrienne home, or did you just set off her home security system?”
“There was no one home,” said Bond. “Which is probably for the best.”
“Shame,” said Q. “She’s lovely, really. She owns that bakery down on Cheltenham-the one with the scones Tanner loves so much? Talented woman.”
“She owns a bakery,” Bond repeated. He crossed the room slowly, until he stood in front of Q, gazing down on him with those blue eyes made all the more piercing for the gunk that now stained his handsome face. He looked like something that had crawled out of the bottom of the sea. “Are you absolutely out of your bloody mind?”
“I’m sorry, which of us has ‘breaking and entering’ as a personal hobby? Just because others have put up with it doesn’t mean I’m obliged to.”
“That is not fair, and you know it,” said Bond accusingly.
Q smiled then, unable to resist, and it only grew bigger as Bond glared at him. “I shan’t apologize for being good at my job, or expecting you to keep up,” Q informed him. “But if you ask very nicely I probably have a solvent around here somewhere that will get the stain out of your skin. Your suit is a lost cause, I’m afraid.”
“Mmm.” Bond studied him for a few moments, then clasped his hands in front of him in a curiously school-boyish gesture, fixing a smile with entirely too many teeth onto his face. “Dearest Q, won’t you please be kind enough to get this ruddy ink off my face.”
“Eergh. Don’t smile like that, it looks like you’re about to unhinge your jaw and swallow something whole.” Q stood up, leaning close to inspect the ink that blackened the strong line of Bond’s jaw. He dragged a finger through it, trying not to think about how many times he’d kissed this face last night, and then brought the finger to his nose to sniff. “Mm. Right, that’s what I thought.” Bond raised an eyebrow at him; it was one of the only spots in his face still unmarred by ink. “It’s the same ink used in the anti-theft packets that they keep in money at the big banks. It’s meant to be extremely difficult to get out, as I’m sure you’ve found.”
“Q, are you going to fix this for me or not.”
“Well, since you asked so very nicely...” Q turned around and bent over his desk, scanning the surface and pausing for a moment to rummage through his mental checklist before he went unerringly for the lowest drawer of his desk. He came up with a slim tube that looked like paint one might find in an art-supply store, and turned around to hand it to Bond. “Here, use this. You won’t need that much, it’s extremely strong. Mind that you shower thoroughly when you’re done; you don’t want that sitting on your skin longer than you have to.”
“Thank you.” Bond took the tube with the solvent in it and tucked it into his suit pocket, then glanced back up at Q. “Was there anything you wanted to send me with on my mission tomorrow, while you have me here?”
Q pursed his lips. A plug up your arse so you’ll be thinking of me the entire time was not really an appropriate response, and even if they’d been somewhere entirely secure he’d rather choke to death on his own tongue than admit how besotted he was with the man in front of him. “Not yet,” was what he said, instead. “There’s a few last-minute changes that need to be addressed. Besides.” He smiled, beatific as Saint Francis. “I wouldn’t want to deprive myself of your shining presence tomorrow, would I.”
Bond stared at him. “You’re a nasty little bugger when you let your power go to your head, Q,” he said, but Q could spot the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Get out of my office, you’re turning me senile just standing there,” said Q. Bond gave him that obnoxious mini-salute he had and vanished, and Q was left alone in his lab debating the merits of just having himself chemically castrated so he could focus on his work without this blasted distraction.
He had to hand it to Bond, though; he was in a much better mood now.
* * * * *
Q was so busy with work the next few days that he barely even had time to eat and sleep, let alone miss Bond. The mission Q had sent 007 on was a rare type for them; Bond usually preferred to work alone, but this mission required at least 3 operatives, and Q’s job was to supply all of them and to keep their way clear. On the third day, his agents passed into deep cover, and Q found himself sitting at his work-station by mid-afternoon, staring in increasing annoyance at the pile of emails in his inbox, emails that his subordinates should have been able to handle without issue. He was going to have to wring a few necks; this level of passing the buck was unacceptable. He scowled at his screen as he opened up a new email and started adding recipients, he was going to-
“You’ve got that tic in your eye again,” said Moneypenny from behind his left shoulder. Q jumped, and his second-favorite mug went flying, spilling the dregs of his Earl Grey over half his desk before shattering against the bare cement floor, pieces flying everywhere.
There was a long pause. “That’s three mugs you owe me now, Moneypants,” said Q at length.
“And that’s why you’d never make it as a field agent,” said Moneypenny, and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, you’re going to get homicidal if I leave you here much longer, take a break and come out with me and Tanner.”
“I really can’t, you know I have an actual mountain of work that needs doing-”
“You don’t really want us reviewing candidates for the new building without you, do you?” Moneypenny crossed her arms and looked at him, eyebrows cocked. Q sighed and rubbed at his face, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“No, I bloody well don’t. You’ll pick something from back when Victoria was still shagging Albert round half of London-”
“Q!”
“And then I’ll be stuck trying to cross-wire our systems with bits of copper left over from William the Conqueror.”
“Q, MI6 is not that antiquated. We can’t all be brilliant little upstarts like you, darling. That’s why M wants you there.”
It was Q’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh, will M actually be there?”
“Of course not. That’s what I’ll be there for.”
“You’re really wasted as a secretary, you know that, right?” Q stood up, casting about for something to mop up the spill with, finally unearthing some paper napkins from one of his desk drawers. “I’ll never understand why you decided not to stay on as a field agent, you were rabid about it for so long-”
“Well if I were just a secretary I’d be inclined to agree with you,” Moneypants said in a low voice. Q looked at her sharply, and she smirked.
“Have you been holding out on me?” he demanded. She batted her eyelashes at him. “Moneypants.”
“Later,” she said, and reached over to squeeze his shoulder. Q glowered at her for a few moments, but when all Moneypenny did was crouch next to him to help him clean up the broken mug and spilt tea, he gave it up as a bad job. You couldn’t get secrets from Moneypants with a prybar if she didn’t feel like talking; it was something they had in common.
Probably one of the reasons they were such good friends, honestly.
* * * * *
They met Tanner at a tucked-away noodle shop a few blocks away, setting up in one of the private rooms and covering their table with folders and plates of sushi and rolls, and then the tablets came out. (Q provided all the department heads with tablets out of his own budget. It was worth it to him for the sake of cutting down at least some of his paperwork load. Some day everything would be on tablets, if he had a say in it, but in the meantime, it was an uphill battle.) They went through at least fifteen different building options before they came across a possibility that Q didn’t immediately pick apart as being useless.
“Well,” he said after a moment, flipping through the blueprints of the warehouse, “it has some potential, I suppose.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tanner and Moneypenny exchanging a gleeful grin, and he purses his lips. “Don’t think that you’re going to win me over on your favourite simply because you had the sense to bring it out only after some obviously inferior candidates. It’s earned an in-person inspection, that’s all.”
“Excellent,” said Tanner, and flicked through something on his phone. Q looked up in mild alarm.
“Excuse me, what just happened?”
“Tomorrow at nine am sharp looks good,” Tanner said to Moneypenny. “Think you can drag M along? I want to get this pushed through as quickly as possible.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Moneypenny.
Q sputtered. “I am sitting right here, do I have to crash all of your devices before you answer me?”
“We’re going to go look at the building tomorrow morning, before your agents resurface and there’s no prying you away from your station for Heaven or Hell,” said Tanner cheerfully. “I’ll reschedule your staff meeting. Moneypenny and I will pick you up. Just tell us where.”
Q gave a much put-upon sigh and hunched over his tablet, flicking irritably through its pages of data. “Fine,” he said. “Pick me up from A Piece of Cake, then. I’ll be there at half eight.” He did not bother to ask why he couldn’t just meet Tanner and Moneypenny at the site via the underground; if M was going to be there, there’d be a bloody entourage, and while he did not have to like it, he did in fact have to put up with it.
“Brilliant,” said Tanner. Q rolled his eyes.
“If only everyone were so easy to please,” he muttered, and Moneypenny kicked him under the table.
* * * * *
Bond disappeared from their trackers later that afternoon.
It wasn’t that unexpected. All the 00s were prone to going dark from time to time, and Bond more so than the rest of the lot put together. It was perfectly fucking normal. Nothing at all to be worried about.
Q was calm. He was. But when he came back from a trip to the loo, he found a brand new mug on his desk filled with steaming tea, which would have been suspicious if he didn’t work in an office filled with snoops. And at seven pm, Moneypenny appeared at the corner of his desk, her coat draped over her arm and a no-nonsense expression on her face. “Come on, we’re going,” she said brusquely.
“I have to find 007,” Q said, not looking up.
“No you bloody well don’t. You have to come get dinner with your best mate, or she’s going to tell everyone in the office exactly who gave you those bite marks on your neck a few days ago.”
Q’s stomach took a sickening lurch, and he turned slowly in his chair, leveling a glare at Moneypenny chilly enough to ice over every surface in the room. “You wouldn’t dare-you don’t even know what you’re talking about-”
Moneypenny picked up his scarf from where Q had tossed it at a chair that morning, and wrapped it around his neck. “Bring the laptop with you if you have to, but we’re going, now, and we’re picking up curries from the takeaway near my flat. Come on, boffin.”
Q gritted his teeth. He’d had every intention of staying at the office until Bond’s red dot had re-appeared somewhere, whether via CCTV or GPS or someone’s bloody mobile phone photo posted on fucking Facebook, but at the mention of curry his stomach gave an audible growl. Moneypenny arched a perfectly-manicured brow at him. Q sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “All right. Let me just…” He closed his laptop and stuffed in his bag, and cast one last glance at the display still glowing faintly on his far wall, before letting Moneypenny shepherd him out.
* * * * *
Moneypenny spilled her guts first. Q was so delighted that he forgot, for a few minutes, to be worried about a certain missing 00 agent.
“You’re WHAT,” he sputtered, spilling a bit of tea in his glee (Q never drank when he was tracking field agents on a mission). “Oh my god that has to be seventeen kinds of illegal, why didn’t you tell me sooner-”
“I had to all but beg M just to be allowed to tell you at all!” Moneypenny chucked him in the shoulder with her fist. (Just lightly, though. Moneypenny could take Q in a fight, easily, and they both knew it.)
“So, you’re, what, M’s Right Hand now? What does that mean?”
Moneypenny rolled her eyes. “You’re a prat, Q, really. I don’t specifically have a title. But I have a higher security clearance than anyone in MI6 except obviously M, and I do what needs doing for him.” Q huffed. “Yes, darling, higher than yours, though we all know what a joke that is.”
“Does he send you into the field?” Q demanded.
Moneypenny shrugged. “Might be, if it comes to that. He hasn’t yet, though.”
“‘It's True, I Actually Run MI6: The Eve Moneypenny Story,’” said Q, and Moneypenny laughed. “That’s brilliant.” Q leaned back against the couch, staring at the TV screen where an early episode of Black Books was playing. “What do you make of him, now you’ve had a few months to see? I mean.” Q glanced at Moneypenny. “Compared to herself.”
Moneypenny let out a slow breath through her nostrils. “Well, there’s no way to compare the two, really,” she said after a moment. There was a slight catch in her voice; Q reached over and took one of her hands. “But-I think in some ways he doesn’t seem as demanding as she was, or as hard as he needs to be, but it’s just an act. Or, it’s just his personality. But really I think he’s more manipulative than she was, and more willing to make you like him if it gets you to get the job done.”
“He gave both of us a second chance,” Q pointed out. He did not often like thinking about the week where he was absolutely sure he’d be sacked, in the wake of Silva’s destruction, but M had kept him on, and everyone had been too busy with the business of getting on with life to say much about it to him. And yes, manipulative was the right word. Mawdsley had never given a damn about whether anyone liked her. It was one of the things Q missed most about her, and mistrusted most about the new M; someone in M’s position needed to be able to get the job done, and to hell with being a nice person. Q might well have sacked himself, if he’d been in M’s shoes.
“I asked him about that, actually,” said Moneypenny. “He gave us a second chance because he thought it’d make us smarter about fucking up in the future.”
“And because now we owe him,” Q said slowly. “Bastard.” Moneypenny nodded.
“He wasn’t keen on me telling you about my actual position,” Moneypenny said after a moment. “He didn’t even want Tanner to know. But…” She sighed. “He’s good, actually. He really is. And he trusts me, and I trust you, so, here I am.” She smiled at Q, and Q suddenly felt like the world’s biggest arse, though he wasn’t actually hiding anything from Moneypenny that he hadn’t already been hiding the entire time he’d known her.
Well, one thing. “About that,” Q said, clearing his throat. “The, ah. I should have trusted you. About this. Thing.”
“You DID sleep with him!”
“Just the once!” Q whined. “Come off it, hasn’t half of MI6 slept with Bond at some point?”
“That’s not the point,” Moneypenny said, and dug an elbow into Q’s rib, making him yelp. “I told you not to sleep with him because you’ve had a crush the size of the Gherkin on him since he came back from the dead, and he leaves a trail of destruction behind him a mile wide.”
“That’s coming on a bit strong,” said Q defensively. “He’s not actually any worse than the other 00s, is he?” Oh god, she was right, she was dead right. Moneypenny gave him a significant look, and Q groaned, rubbing at his face.
“It’s true, it’s not entirely his fault,” said Moneypenny after a moment. “But Q, you have to know how hopeless this is. You’ve read his file.” Q did not respond immediately. “Q?” Moneypenny stared at him. “Q. Come on. You have read his file. Tell me.”
“The man’s got a right to his privacy,” said Q, sounding sullen now even to his own ears. “I read enough, alright?”
“How much is enough?” Q hunched his shoulders, staring resolutely at Dylan Moran flailing about on the screen. “Q, darling, please, this isn’t-” She sighed, and out of the corner of his eyes Q could see her pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration. “James Bond is a good man,” she said after a moment. “But he can’t give you what you deserve, even if he felt that way about you. Which I’m not sure he still knows how to do.”
Q didn’t respond. He was still staring at the screen, but what he was seeing instead was the paragraph in Bond’s file that had actually made him shut the page and go do something else: the details of Bond’s first mission as a 00 agent. It was just a few lines, detailing that Bond had been tortured and nearly died during a mission involving an operative named Vesper Lynd; that he’d tendered a resignation letter dated shortly before the date of Lynd’s obituary; and that Bond had returned to active duty a short while after. It was enough. It was more than he’d wanted to know.
Q knew all about those kinds of mistakes. He didn’t like sharing them with the rest of the world, either.
“I’m going to put on something different,” said Moneypenny after a few more long moments. She started to get up, but Q grabbed for her, pulling her in for a tight hug, and they sat there on the couch like that for a few minutes, not speaking. There wasn’t anything left to say.
* * * * *
It was lucky that Q asked to be picked up at Adrienne’s bakeshop, because Tanner was almost 40 minutes late to collect him.
He arrived at A Piece of Cake at 8:25 am and was immediately attacked by Vanessa, Adrienne and Jonathan’s precocious pig-tailed daughter. Vanessa was all of four, and very fond of Q; the feeling was entirely mutual. Jonathan was watching the shop today (Q wondered if Adrienne was at the decoy flat, cleaning up Bond’s mess) and forced an entire box of scones on Q, who honestly didn’t try very hard to deflect them. Q spent a few minutes sipping his tea, surreptitiously watching Vanessa boss her father around and hiding his grin behind his takeaway cup. Jonathan might be terrifyingly huge (and ginger, good god, Q always forgot exactly how red the man’s hair was), but he was a kitten where Vanessa was concerned. At quarter to 9, halfway through a cinnamon scone, he got out his mobile, opening a text to Moneypenny. Problems?
The text came back immediately, and Q choked on his next bite as he read it: Someone broke into my flat last night after we left.
Q coughed for a few moments, eyes watering, and just as he was madly thumbing a response, a new message appeared. I’m fine, I went to Vicky’s after I got you in a cab. More when I see you. xx
“Everything alright?” Q looked up at Jonathan, who was looming over him in concern.
“Uh… I think so. Nothing major is wrong, I don’t think.” Q adjusted his glasses, frowning, and then opened his mobile, flipping through the apps, trying fruitlessly to find one that would help him find out what the bloody hell was going on. He was all but twitching in his seat by the time the familiar black car finally pulled up outside the shop, and Tanner emerged from the driver’s side. Q dropped one last kiss on Vanessa’s head and then darted outside before Tanner even made the door.
“I’ve got scones,” he said, cutting Tanner off and thrusting the box of scones at him by way of distraction. “Where’s Moneypenny?”
“She’s with M,” Tanner said. “She’s fine, Q, calm down, alright? I’m going to get a coffee, I’ll be right out. Get in the car.” Q most definitely did not huff and throw himself into the car in a fit of pique, but a small-minded person might have described it thusly. And he most certainly did not glower out the window until Tanner returned.
“What happened?” Q said, before Tanner had even got the key back in the ignition.
“Are you five, now? Don’t you start too.” Tanner started the car, guiding it into traffic without looking at Q. “Eve is fine. Someone broke into her flat, and we don’t know who it was, but they didn’t take anything, just knocked things about a bit.”
Q stared at Tanner, trying to brow-beat him into giving him more information by force of his glare. He failed spectacularly. “What the fuck were they doing in her flat?” he demanded, when no more information was forthcoming. Tanner was merging lanes or else Q might actually have smacked him for his nonchalance.
“Q,” Tanner said patiently, “I just told you, we don’t know. Eve thinks they might have been looking for something, but she’s sure nothing’s missing and everyone’s fine. Be realistic; what do you actually think would have happened if someone had broken in while you and Eve were home?”
Q pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “Moneypenny would’ve broken all their faces and I would have had you all at the flat in under five minutes,” he said impatiently. “And then I would have ruined their credit ratings and posted their mug shots on every digital billboard in London, because I’m a spiteful git, that’s not the point, Tanner, the point is-”
“The point is that no one is hurt, and we don’t have any more information yet, and we are meeting M and Eve at the warehouse for inspection, because your time is precious and I’m not wasting a free morning.” Tanner finally looked over at Q, eyebrows raised. “Does that about cover it?”
Q shut up. He also sulked the entire rest of the drive.
* * * * *
His day never really recovered after that.
He got no answers when they arrived at the warehouse, though he was assuaged somewhat by seeing Moneypenny with his own eyes. Investigating the viability of the warehouse as a new HQ was put on hold for five minutes as the scones Q brought were immediately inhaled; Q never ceased to be amused by the idea (however ridiculous) that the old M had only been so keen on striking a deal with Q because she'd been getting Adrienne's magnificent baking in the bargain.
They walked the whole length of the warehouse, from the roof to the basement. They lingered extensively only in a few rooms, referring frequently to the tablet Q had brought with him with the notes on the structure in it. Q stuck close by Moneypenny the entire time, and she had to notice the way he kept bumping her shoulder with his, but she only smiled and said nothing. Tanner could tell Q that Moneypenny was fine and not to worry all he wanted, but Q was all too aware how easily that might not have been the case.
“Have you caught wind of 007 at all since he went off the radar?”
Q turned, more flustered at the question than he wanted to admit. M was looking at him expectantly, hands in his pockets; he’d finally lost the sling two weeks ago, and was now in fine form for popping up unexpectedly to see what his staff were up to. “No, he hasn’t resurfaced yet,” Q admitted. It galled him to be unable to track down Bond despite all of his technological might, but there was no point in lying.
“Mmm. Well, keep us posted.” M reached out, resting a hand on Q’s shoulder for a moment before turning to follow Tanner into the next room, leaving Q feeling vaguely rattled. It made sense for M to ask his obsessive quartermaster if any of Q’s toys had found their missing agent-if anyone would be able to do it, it’d be Q- but it still made Q feel like M knew or guessed more of Q’s mind than Q was comfortable with.
He wondered briefly how much of Q’s full file Gareth Mallory was actually privy to, and decided he didn’t want to think about it today. His dance card was too full as it was.
By the time Q returned to HQ at noon, agents 004 and 002 had both emerged from deep cover to check in at their appointed locations and were awaiting further instructions. 007 was nowhere to be found. Naturally. Q consoled himself with the fact that if Bond had actually died, he would no doubt have gone out in some spectacularly unforgettable fashion with lots of explosions and a death toll surpassing some common plagues. In the meantime, Q had paperwork to fill out and programs to code and the hard drives Bond had brought him to finish cracking, and he was not so fucking pathetic as to be unable to concentrate on his work just because of one damnably handsome field agent.
Besides, it had only been one day. Surely Bond wouldn’t stay dark for long.
* * * *
Ten days had passed since 007 went dark. In that time, Q hadn’t had so much as a flash of him on any of his cameras, GPS, or radio, no matter what programs he broke into or how flagrantly inappropriate the places that he looked.
In terms of Bond’s personal history, ten days was nothing. Tanner was unconcerned; Moneypenny was more annoyed than anything else, but Q guessed that was because M was being a git and not related to Bond at all. 004 and 002 reported no contact with 007, but when the compound of crime ring they’d been sent to infiltrate went up in flames on day eight, MI6 called them home, and officially put 007 on MIA status. It didn’t mean much, considering the number of times he’d gone on and off that status.
Q was-fine. Bond did not owe him anything; Q had given him a list of numbers by way of invitation, that was all. There would always be more to do at work than he had time for, and on the nights when Moneypenny did not drag him over to her flat to hang out, Q would go home and strap on his trainers and run until shards of glass lodged themselves in his lungs and the stitch in his side crippled him to a fast walk. He slept like a sack of bricks, and most mornings woke with a tiny white cat curled against his neck (Carly had apparently decided that winter made it too hard to deal with being an outdoor cat, and had taken up permanent residence in Q’s flat).
He did not dream. Which was probably for the best. And though he woke several times in the middle of the night at half-heard noises, there was never anyone at the window.
* * * * *
Fandom: Skyfall (James Bond)
Characters: James Bond/Q, Eve Moneypenny, Gareth Mallory, Bill Tanner, OCs
Rating: Mature. Explicit in sections; depictions of canon-typical violence.
Word-Count: ~56,000. Complete, but chapters will be posted as they are returned from beta and undergo final edits.
Notes: This fic was Brit-picked by the lovely and patient starsandgraces, who isn't even in this fandom but still put up with my badgering. I was encouraged by multiple enablers, including jou and flatbear, but all credit and gratitude goes to circ_bamboo, who held my hand, cheered me on, read over every inch of this fic, plotted endlessly with me, and is hands-down the best writing partner in crime a fangirl could ask for. THANK YOU SO MUCH, BABY, ALL THE SCONES ARE FOR YOU. ♥
Summary: Q has a past, a cat, and a dangerous new boyfriend. Two of these things keep him up nights, the other pees in a box. Espionage, plot with porn, decoy flats, suit porn, scones for the Queen, invention porn, secret identities, snark, canon-typical violence, dysfunctional flirting by dysfunctional people, and Eve Moneypenny is HBIC.
Chapter Three. Unfortunately, the real world marches on.
You can also read here at the AO3. Part one of this fic posted here on LJ, part two is here.
“Q, did you get mugged by a pack of lampreys on your way to work this morning?”
Q glowered into the glow of his computer screen. Obnoxiously, it did nothing to stop Moneypenny leaning over the desk at him with that self-satisfied look on her face. Even more obnoxiously, her expression did nothing to diminish how pretty she was in her orange frock. Q wondered if there were some clause in the field agent manual that dictated all top-level field agents had to be unfairly attractive in order to qualify to work for MI6.
“I’ve got a condition,” he announced primly.
“Well-fucked-itis?”
“Sod off. Philistine.” Q’s fingers flew across the keyboard, determined not to look away from his screen. “Did you actually have something you needed to ask me?”
“No, just more paperwork for you to fill out.” Moneypenny dropped a fat stack of envelopes onto his desk with more glee than was really warranted. Q glanced at them and pursed his lips.
“How kind of you,” he said.
“We live to serve, dearest boffin,” she said, and left to go remind M who was really in charge of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
It was going to be that kind of day.
* * * * *
“Q, what the hell happened to your neck?”
Q turned in his chair, folding his arms across his narrow chest and leveling a stare at Tanner, who was standing by the door with clipboards in his arms and a nervous expression on his face. “What the bloody hell do you think happened, Tanner?”
“Moneypenny said you’ve got a condition, so I was worried...” Q stared. Tanner shifted from one foot to the other, and cleared his throat.
“She said what.” Q was going to throttle every single person in MI6 who wasn’t his immediate subordinate. Someone had to keep the servers running after he was executed for treason.
“I might have misunderstood her,” Tanner said hurriedly. “Only it’s just, your neck-”
“Doesn’t anything have anything better to do in this ruddy office than come and have a look at the quartermaster’s neck?” demanded Q. “I went on a date last night, alright? Good fucking God, Bill Tanner. Christ help you if you had to identify a bomb before you called someone to come defuse it for you, we’d be scraping you off the walls.”
“Oh, is that all they are.” Tanner actually looked relieved. Q couldn’t decide if he was more insulted that the idea of him going on a date was so unlikely that Tanner actually had to come up with alternative theories, or touched because M’s Chief of Staff came personally to investigate when he thought Q might be injured somehow.
“Yes. That’s what they are. Now either give me those clipboards you have tucked under your arm there, as I expect they’re my requisition forms for new parts, or get out of my office, because some of us have actual work to do.”
“You’re half-right.” Tanner finally crossed the room, passing the first of two clipboards over to Q. “These are your requisition forms. These, though, are loss itemization forms.”
Q stared at the second clipboard as though Tanner had said he’d sprayed it with bubonic plague aerosol before bringing it in. “Why the fuck am I filling out more of those, again? I just sent off a huge stack to Vicky two days ago, and that was bad enough, the other 00’s are taking after Bond more and more.”
“You’re at least a month behind, I’m afraid. The new reports from the Yakuza mission have just come in.”
“He actually brought back the car, though,” Q pointed out. “Which is a minor miracle. Alright, fine, just leave them there, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway.” Tanner added his forms to the stack Moneypenny had left earlier, and then excused himself, perhaps sensing the Guy Fawkesian mutiny Q was contemplating. Q glared stonily at the pile of paperwork, so large it now verged on obscene, as though the force of his regard could light it on fire. He fucking hated paperwork.
James Bond might have fingers that were deadly weapons and a cock that was the actual 8th wonder of the world, but that wouldn’t save him from the ocean of grief Q was going to pour on him the next time he saw the bastard.
* * * * *
Turned out, he didn’t need to.
“Q,” said Bond’s voice from behind him, moments after he heard the door to his work room slide open and shut. Q opened his mouth to tell Bond to get bent, but something about the tone of his voice gave him pause, and he sat up and actually turned around-
To see Bond standing in the door looking like he’d been mugged by a fucking kraken en route to MI6. He was covered from head to toe in splatters of black, viscous ink, and though it looked like he’d made a valiant effort to scrub the worst of it from his face and hands, splotches of it still stained his skin, and there was absolutely no saving that suit. Which was a pity; Savile Row always looked so good on Bond.
But Bond’s expression was calm. Expectant, even. Q wondered if it was the same expression he wore right before he strangled the life out of someone. He straightened in his chair, and took a sip of tea before setting his mug down on the desk. “I see you found another of my decoy flats,” he said. “Was Adrienne home, or did you just set off her home security system?”
“There was no one home,” said Bond. “Which is probably for the best.”
“Shame,” said Q. “She’s lovely, really. She owns that bakery down on Cheltenham-the one with the scones Tanner loves so much? Talented woman.”
“She owns a bakery,” Bond repeated. He crossed the room slowly, until he stood in front of Q, gazing down on him with those blue eyes made all the more piercing for the gunk that now stained his handsome face. He looked like something that had crawled out of the bottom of the sea. “Are you absolutely out of your bloody mind?”
“I’m sorry, which of us has ‘breaking and entering’ as a personal hobby? Just because others have put up with it doesn’t mean I’m obliged to.”
“That is not fair, and you know it,” said Bond accusingly.
Q smiled then, unable to resist, and it only grew bigger as Bond glared at him. “I shan’t apologize for being good at my job, or expecting you to keep up,” Q informed him. “But if you ask very nicely I probably have a solvent around here somewhere that will get the stain out of your skin. Your suit is a lost cause, I’m afraid.”
“Mmm.” Bond studied him for a few moments, then clasped his hands in front of him in a curiously school-boyish gesture, fixing a smile with entirely too many teeth onto his face. “Dearest Q, won’t you please be kind enough to get this ruddy ink off my face.”
“Eergh. Don’t smile like that, it looks like you’re about to unhinge your jaw and swallow something whole.” Q stood up, leaning close to inspect the ink that blackened the strong line of Bond’s jaw. He dragged a finger through it, trying not to think about how many times he’d kissed this face last night, and then brought the finger to his nose to sniff. “Mm. Right, that’s what I thought.” Bond raised an eyebrow at him; it was one of the only spots in his face still unmarred by ink. “It’s the same ink used in the anti-theft packets that they keep in money at the big banks. It’s meant to be extremely difficult to get out, as I’m sure you’ve found.”
“Q, are you going to fix this for me or not.”
“Well, since you asked so very nicely...” Q turned around and bent over his desk, scanning the surface and pausing for a moment to rummage through his mental checklist before he went unerringly for the lowest drawer of his desk. He came up with a slim tube that looked like paint one might find in an art-supply store, and turned around to hand it to Bond. “Here, use this. You won’t need that much, it’s extremely strong. Mind that you shower thoroughly when you’re done; you don’t want that sitting on your skin longer than you have to.”
“Thank you.” Bond took the tube with the solvent in it and tucked it into his suit pocket, then glanced back up at Q. “Was there anything you wanted to send me with on my mission tomorrow, while you have me here?”
Q pursed his lips. A plug up your arse so you’ll be thinking of me the entire time was not really an appropriate response, and even if they’d been somewhere entirely secure he’d rather choke to death on his own tongue than admit how besotted he was with the man in front of him. “Not yet,” was what he said, instead. “There’s a few last-minute changes that need to be addressed. Besides.” He smiled, beatific as Saint Francis. “I wouldn’t want to deprive myself of your shining presence tomorrow, would I.”
Bond stared at him. “You’re a nasty little bugger when you let your power go to your head, Q,” he said, but Q could spot the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Get out of my office, you’re turning me senile just standing there,” said Q. Bond gave him that obnoxious mini-salute he had and vanished, and Q was left alone in his lab debating the merits of just having himself chemically castrated so he could focus on his work without this blasted distraction.
He had to hand it to Bond, though; he was in a much better mood now.
* * * * *
Q was so busy with work the next few days that he barely even had time to eat and sleep, let alone miss Bond. The mission Q had sent 007 on was a rare type for them; Bond usually preferred to work alone, but this mission required at least 3 operatives, and Q’s job was to supply all of them and to keep their way clear. On the third day, his agents passed into deep cover, and Q found himself sitting at his work-station by mid-afternoon, staring in increasing annoyance at the pile of emails in his inbox, emails that his subordinates should have been able to handle without issue. He was going to have to wring a few necks; this level of passing the buck was unacceptable. He scowled at his screen as he opened up a new email and started adding recipients, he was going to-
“You’ve got that tic in your eye again,” said Moneypenny from behind his left shoulder. Q jumped, and his second-favorite mug went flying, spilling the dregs of his Earl Grey over half his desk before shattering against the bare cement floor, pieces flying everywhere.
There was a long pause. “That’s three mugs you owe me now, Moneypants,” said Q at length.
“And that’s why you’d never make it as a field agent,” said Moneypenny, and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, you’re going to get homicidal if I leave you here much longer, take a break and come out with me and Tanner.”
“I really can’t, you know I have an actual mountain of work that needs doing-”
“You don’t really want us reviewing candidates for the new building without you, do you?” Moneypenny crossed her arms and looked at him, eyebrows cocked. Q sighed and rubbed at his face, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“No, I bloody well don’t. You’ll pick something from back when Victoria was still shagging Albert round half of London-”
“Q!”
“And then I’ll be stuck trying to cross-wire our systems with bits of copper left over from William the Conqueror.”
“Q, MI6 is not that antiquated. We can’t all be brilliant little upstarts like you, darling. That’s why M wants you there.”
It was Q’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh, will M actually be there?”
“Of course not. That’s what I’ll be there for.”
“You’re really wasted as a secretary, you know that, right?” Q stood up, casting about for something to mop up the spill with, finally unearthing some paper napkins from one of his desk drawers. “I’ll never understand why you decided not to stay on as a field agent, you were rabid about it for so long-”
“Well if I were just a secretary I’d be inclined to agree with you,” Moneypants said in a low voice. Q looked at her sharply, and she smirked.
“Have you been holding out on me?” he demanded. She batted her eyelashes at him. “Moneypants.”
“Later,” she said, and reached over to squeeze his shoulder. Q glowered at her for a few moments, but when all Moneypenny did was crouch next to him to help him clean up the broken mug and spilt tea, he gave it up as a bad job. You couldn’t get secrets from Moneypants with a prybar if she didn’t feel like talking; it was something they had in common.
Probably one of the reasons they were such good friends, honestly.
* * * * *
They met Tanner at a tucked-away noodle shop a few blocks away, setting up in one of the private rooms and covering their table with folders and plates of sushi and rolls, and then the tablets came out. (Q provided all the department heads with tablets out of his own budget. It was worth it to him for the sake of cutting down at least some of his paperwork load. Some day everything would be on tablets, if he had a say in it, but in the meantime, it was an uphill battle.) They went through at least fifteen different building options before they came across a possibility that Q didn’t immediately pick apart as being useless.
“Well,” he said after a moment, flipping through the blueprints of the warehouse, “it has some potential, I suppose.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tanner and Moneypenny exchanging a gleeful grin, and he purses his lips. “Don’t think that you’re going to win me over on your favourite simply because you had the sense to bring it out only after some obviously inferior candidates. It’s earned an in-person inspection, that’s all.”
“Excellent,” said Tanner, and flicked through something on his phone. Q looked up in mild alarm.
“Excuse me, what just happened?”
“Tomorrow at nine am sharp looks good,” Tanner said to Moneypenny. “Think you can drag M along? I want to get this pushed through as quickly as possible.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Moneypenny.
Q sputtered. “I am sitting right here, do I have to crash all of your devices before you answer me?”
“We’re going to go look at the building tomorrow morning, before your agents resurface and there’s no prying you away from your station for Heaven or Hell,” said Tanner cheerfully. “I’ll reschedule your staff meeting. Moneypenny and I will pick you up. Just tell us where.”
Q gave a much put-upon sigh and hunched over his tablet, flicking irritably through its pages of data. “Fine,” he said. “Pick me up from A Piece of Cake, then. I’ll be there at half eight.” He did not bother to ask why he couldn’t just meet Tanner and Moneypenny at the site via the underground; if M was going to be there, there’d be a bloody entourage, and while he did not have to like it, he did in fact have to put up with it.
“Brilliant,” said Tanner. Q rolled his eyes.
“If only everyone were so easy to please,” he muttered, and Moneypenny kicked him under the table.
* * * * *
Bond disappeared from their trackers later that afternoon.
It wasn’t that unexpected. All the 00s were prone to going dark from time to time, and Bond more so than the rest of the lot put together. It was perfectly fucking normal. Nothing at all to be worried about.
Q was calm. He was. But when he came back from a trip to the loo, he found a brand new mug on his desk filled with steaming tea, which would have been suspicious if he didn’t work in an office filled with snoops. And at seven pm, Moneypenny appeared at the corner of his desk, her coat draped over her arm and a no-nonsense expression on her face. “Come on, we’re going,” she said brusquely.
“I have to find 007,” Q said, not looking up.
“No you bloody well don’t. You have to come get dinner with your best mate, or she’s going to tell everyone in the office exactly who gave you those bite marks on your neck a few days ago.”
Q’s stomach took a sickening lurch, and he turned slowly in his chair, leveling a glare at Moneypenny chilly enough to ice over every surface in the room. “You wouldn’t dare-you don’t even know what you’re talking about-”
Moneypenny picked up his scarf from where Q had tossed it at a chair that morning, and wrapped it around his neck. “Bring the laptop with you if you have to, but we’re going, now, and we’re picking up curries from the takeaway near my flat. Come on, boffin.”
Q gritted his teeth. He’d had every intention of staying at the office until Bond’s red dot had re-appeared somewhere, whether via CCTV or GPS or someone’s bloody mobile phone photo posted on fucking Facebook, but at the mention of curry his stomach gave an audible growl. Moneypenny arched a perfectly-manicured brow at him. Q sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “All right. Let me just…” He closed his laptop and stuffed in his bag, and cast one last glance at the display still glowing faintly on his far wall, before letting Moneypenny shepherd him out.
* * * * *
Moneypenny spilled her guts first. Q was so delighted that he forgot, for a few minutes, to be worried about a certain missing 00 agent.
“You’re WHAT,” he sputtered, spilling a bit of tea in his glee (Q never drank when he was tracking field agents on a mission). “Oh my god that has to be seventeen kinds of illegal, why didn’t you tell me sooner-”
“I had to all but beg M just to be allowed to tell you at all!” Moneypenny chucked him in the shoulder with her fist. (Just lightly, though. Moneypenny could take Q in a fight, easily, and they both knew it.)
“So, you’re, what, M’s Right Hand now? What does that mean?”
Moneypenny rolled her eyes. “You’re a prat, Q, really. I don’t specifically have a title. But I have a higher security clearance than anyone in MI6 except obviously M, and I do what needs doing for him.” Q huffed. “Yes, darling, higher than yours, though we all know what a joke that is.”
“Does he send you into the field?” Q demanded.
Moneypenny shrugged. “Might be, if it comes to that. He hasn’t yet, though.”
“‘It's True, I Actually Run MI6: The Eve Moneypenny Story,’” said Q, and Moneypenny laughed. “That’s brilliant.” Q leaned back against the couch, staring at the TV screen where an early episode of Black Books was playing. “What do you make of him, now you’ve had a few months to see? I mean.” Q glanced at Moneypenny. “Compared to herself.”
Moneypenny let out a slow breath through her nostrils. “Well, there’s no way to compare the two, really,” she said after a moment. There was a slight catch in her voice; Q reached over and took one of her hands. “But-I think in some ways he doesn’t seem as demanding as she was, or as hard as he needs to be, but it’s just an act. Or, it’s just his personality. But really I think he’s more manipulative than she was, and more willing to make you like him if it gets you to get the job done.”
“He gave both of us a second chance,” Q pointed out. He did not often like thinking about the week where he was absolutely sure he’d be sacked, in the wake of Silva’s destruction, but M had kept him on, and everyone had been too busy with the business of getting on with life to say much about it to him. And yes, manipulative was the right word. Mawdsley had never given a damn about whether anyone liked her. It was one of the things Q missed most about her, and mistrusted most about the new M; someone in M’s position needed to be able to get the job done, and to hell with being a nice person. Q might well have sacked himself, if he’d been in M’s shoes.
“I asked him about that, actually,” said Moneypenny. “He gave us a second chance because he thought it’d make us smarter about fucking up in the future.”
“And because now we owe him,” Q said slowly. “Bastard.” Moneypenny nodded.
“He wasn’t keen on me telling you about my actual position,” Moneypenny said after a moment. “He didn’t even want Tanner to know. But…” She sighed. “He’s good, actually. He really is. And he trusts me, and I trust you, so, here I am.” She smiled at Q, and Q suddenly felt like the world’s biggest arse, though he wasn’t actually hiding anything from Moneypenny that he hadn’t already been hiding the entire time he’d known her.
Well, one thing. “About that,” Q said, clearing his throat. “The, ah. I should have trusted you. About this. Thing.”
“You DID sleep with him!”
“Just the once!” Q whined. “Come off it, hasn’t half of MI6 slept with Bond at some point?”
“That’s not the point,” Moneypenny said, and dug an elbow into Q’s rib, making him yelp. “I told you not to sleep with him because you’ve had a crush the size of the Gherkin on him since he came back from the dead, and he leaves a trail of destruction behind him a mile wide.”
“That’s coming on a bit strong,” said Q defensively. “He’s not actually any worse than the other 00s, is he?” Oh god, she was right, she was dead right. Moneypenny gave him a significant look, and Q groaned, rubbing at his face.
“It’s true, it’s not entirely his fault,” said Moneypenny after a moment. “But Q, you have to know how hopeless this is. You’ve read his file.” Q did not respond immediately. “Q?” Moneypenny stared at him. “Q. Come on. You have read his file. Tell me.”
“The man’s got a right to his privacy,” said Q, sounding sullen now even to his own ears. “I read enough, alright?”
“How much is enough?” Q hunched his shoulders, staring resolutely at Dylan Moran flailing about on the screen. “Q, darling, please, this isn’t-” She sighed, and out of the corner of his eyes Q could see her pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration. “James Bond is a good man,” she said after a moment. “But he can’t give you what you deserve, even if he felt that way about you. Which I’m not sure he still knows how to do.”
Q didn’t respond. He was still staring at the screen, but what he was seeing instead was the paragraph in Bond’s file that had actually made him shut the page and go do something else: the details of Bond’s first mission as a 00 agent. It was just a few lines, detailing that Bond had been tortured and nearly died during a mission involving an operative named Vesper Lynd; that he’d tendered a resignation letter dated shortly before the date of Lynd’s obituary; and that Bond had returned to active duty a short while after. It was enough. It was more than he’d wanted to know.
Q knew all about those kinds of mistakes. He didn’t like sharing them with the rest of the world, either.
“I’m going to put on something different,” said Moneypenny after a few more long moments. She started to get up, but Q grabbed for her, pulling her in for a tight hug, and they sat there on the couch like that for a few minutes, not speaking. There wasn’t anything left to say.
* * * * *
It was lucky that Q asked to be picked up at Adrienne’s bakeshop, because Tanner was almost 40 minutes late to collect him.
He arrived at A Piece of Cake at 8:25 am and was immediately attacked by Vanessa, Adrienne and Jonathan’s precocious pig-tailed daughter. Vanessa was all of four, and very fond of Q; the feeling was entirely mutual. Jonathan was watching the shop today (Q wondered if Adrienne was at the decoy flat, cleaning up Bond’s mess) and forced an entire box of scones on Q, who honestly didn’t try very hard to deflect them. Q spent a few minutes sipping his tea, surreptitiously watching Vanessa boss her father around and hiding his grin behind his takeaway cup. Jonathan might be terrifyingly huge (and ginger, good god, Q always forgot exactly how red the man’s hair was), but he was a kitten where Vanessa was concerned. At quarter to 9, halfway through a cinnamon scone, he got out his mobile, opening a text to Moneypenny. Problems?
The text came back immediately, and Q choked on his next bite as he read it: Someone broke into my flat last night after we left.
Q coughed for a few moments, eyes watering, and just as he was madly thumbing a response, a new message appeared. I’m fine, I went to Vicky’s after I got you in a cab. More when I see you. xx
“Everything alright?” Q looked up at Jonathan, who was looming over him in concern.
“Uh… I think so. Nothing major is wrong, I don’t think.” Q adjusted his glasses, frowning, and then opened his mobile, flipping through the apps, trying fruitlessly to find one that would help him find out what the bloody hell was going on. He was all but twitching in his seat by the time the familiar black car finally pulled up outside the shop, and Tanner emerged from the driver’s side. Q dropped one last kiss on Vanessa’s head and then darted outside before Tanner even made the door.
“I’ve got scones,” he said, cutting Tanner off and thrusting the box of scones at him by way of distraction. “Where’s Moneypenny?”
“She’s with M,” Tanner said. “She’s fine, Q, calm down, alright? I’m going to get a coffee, I’ll be right out. Get in the car.” Q most definitely did not huff and throw himself into the car in a fit of pique, but a small-minded person might have described it thusly. And he most certainly did not glower out the window until Tanner returned.
“What happened?” Q said, before Tanner had even got the key back in the ignition.
“Are you five, now? Don’t you start too.” Tanner started the car, guiding it into traffic without looking at Q. “Eve is fine. Someone broke into her flat, and we don’t know who it was, but they didn’t take anything, just knocked things about a bit.”
Q stared at Tanner, trying to brow-beat him into giving him more information by force of his glare. He failed spectacularly. “What the fuck were they doing in her flat?” he demanded, when no more information was forthcoming. Tanner was merging lanes or else Q might actually have smacked him for his nonchalance.
“Q,” Tanner said patiently, “I just told you, we don’t know. Eve thinks they might have been looking for something, but she’s sure nothing’s missing and everyone’s fine. Be realistic; what do you actually think would have happened if someone had broken in while you and Eve were home?”
Q pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “Moneypenny would’ve broken all their faces and I would have had you all at the flat in under five minutes,” he said impatiently. “And then I would have ruined their credit ratings and posted their mug shots on every digital billboard in London, because I’m a spiteful git, that’s not the point, Tanner, the point is-”
“The point is that no one is hurt, and we don’t have any more information yet, and we are meeting M and Eve at the warehouse for inspection, because your time is precious and I’m not wasting a free morning.” Tanner finally looked over at Q, eyebrows raised. “Does that about cover it?”
Q shut up. He also sulked the entire rest of the drive.
* * * * *
His day never really recovered after that.
He got no answers when they arrived at the warehouse, though he was assuaged somewhat by seeing Moneypenny with his own eyes. Investigating the viability of the warehouse as a new HQ was put on hold for five minutes as the scones Q brought were immediately inhaled; Q never ceased to be amused by the idea (however ridiculous) that the old M had only been so keen on striking a deal with Q because she'd been getting Adrienne's magnificent baking in the bargain.
They walked the whole length of the warehouse, from the roof to the basement. They lingered extensively only in a few rooms, referring frequently to the tablet Q had brought with him with the notes on the structure in it. Q stuck close by Moneypenny the entire time, and she had to notice the way he kept bumping her shoulder with his, but she only smiled and said nothing. Tanner could tell Q that Moneypenny was fine and not to worry all he wanted, but Q was all too aware how easily that might not have been the case.
“Have you caught wind of 007 at all since he went off the radar?”
Q turned, more flustered at the question than he wanted to admit. M was looking at him expectantly, hands in his pockets; he’d finally lost the sling two weeks ago, and was now in fine form for popping up unexpectedly to see what his staff were up to. “No, he hasn’t resurfaced yet,” Q admitted. It galled him to be unable to track down Bond despite all of his technological might, but there was no point in lying.
“Mmm. Well, keep us posted.” M reached out, resting a hand on Q’s shoulder for a moment before turning to follow Tanner into the next room, leaving Q feeling vaguely rattled. It made sense for M to ask his obsessive quartermaster if any of Q’s toys had found their missing agent-if anyone would be able to do it, it’d be Q- but it still made Q feel like M knew or guessed more of Q’s mind than Q was comfortable with.
He wondered briefly how much of Q’s full file Gareth Mallory was actually privy to, and decided he didn’t want to think about it today. His dance card was too full as it was.
By the time Q returned to HQ at noon, agents 004 and 002 had both emerged from deep cover to check in at their appointed locations and were awaiting further instructions. 007 was nowhere to be found. Naturally. Q consoled himself with the fact that if Bond had actually died, he would no doubt have gone out in some spectacularly unforgettable fashion with lots of explosions and a death toll surpassing some common plagues. In the meantime, Q had paperwork to fill out and programs to code and the hard drives Bond had brought him to finish cracking, and he was not so fucking pathetic as to be unable to concentrate on his work just because of one damnably handsome field agent.
Besides, it had only been one day. Surely Bond wouldn’t stay dark for long.
* * * *
Ten days had passed since 007 went dark. In that time, Q hadn’t had so much as a flash of him on any of his cameras, GPS, or radio, no matter what programs he broke into or how flagrantly inappropriate the places that he looked.
In terms of Bond’s personal history, ten days was nothing. Tanner was unconcerned; Moneypenny was more annoyed than anything else, but Q guessed that was because M was being a git and not related to Bond at all. 004 and 002 reported no contact with 007, but when the compound of crime ring they’d been sent to infiltrate went up in flames on day eight, MI6 called them home, and officially put 007 on MIA status. It didn’t mean much, considering the number of times he’d gone on and off that status.
Q was-fine. Bond did not owe him anything; Q had given him a list of numbers by way of invitation, that was all. There would always be more to do at work than he had time for, and on the nights when Moneypenny did not drag him over to her flat to hang out, Q would go home and strap on his trainers and run until shards of glass lodged themselves in his lungs and the stitch in his side crippled him to a fast walk. He slept like a sack of bricks, and most mornings woke with a tiny white cat curled against his neck (Carly had apparently decided that winter made it too hard to deal with being an outdoor cat, and had taken up permanent residence in Q’s flat).
He did not dream. Which was probably for the best. And though he woke several times in the middle of the night at half-heard noises, there was never anyone at the window.
* * * * *