Skyfall fic to go unnoticed
At first, there are five cats.
"Specifically, they're four kittens and one cat, but I'll let your inaccuracy slide," Q tells Bond, as the agent looms over them, a disdainful godlike figure in the horizon.
Bond rolls his eyes a little, just a miniature flicker of an expression. Q thinks it may even be a tic, for all he knows of Bond's repertoire of reactions. "Either way, there are cats in your department. I was under the impression that creatures with an IQ of single digits would combust upon entrance."
Q looks up at him sharply and yes, there it is, the barest ghost of a smile just playing along 007's lips. Q resists the urge to throw his hands in the air in celebration, and settled for pushing his glasses up his nose. "Cats are highly intelligent animals," he defends.
Bond's blue eyes shed their glacial sheen and light up with amusement. "Careful there." He deadpans, looking utterly carefree and approachable and human. Q is doomed. "You may have competition. I hear that espionage is a game that belongs to a new generation."
"I'll have to keep my wits about me." Q says dryly, and looks back down at the bundle of fur and ungrown limbs, the mother cat blinking knowingly up at him.
*
"They're like the branch mascot," Harriet explains to him, cuddling the mother cat closer. "Everyone knows Juliet here."
Behind them, Bond snorts.
Q ignores him with aplomb. "So we just...keep them?" he asks doubtfully.
Harriet beams. "Pretty much." she makes the cat wave a paw at Q. "Say hello to daddy, Juliet."
Once she's flounced away, Q busies himself with not looking at Bond. Bond clears his throat.
"Not a word." Q says rigidly, trying to hide his blush.
Bond raises his hands in mock surrender. "I just hope you're taking your fatherhood seriously, Q." he says gravely. "Maybe you should name them."
"I am not naming kittens, Bond!" Q yells furiously, and 007 retreats, chuckling.
Q watches him go until Moneypenny clears her throat pointedly from behind. "Distracted, are we, Q?" She spots the kittens, and looks delighted. "And you have children, too! How domestic of you and 007. I didn't pin him for the type."
"Fuck off and die," Q says bitterly.
*
The first to go is the mother.
Barely two weeks into Q's discovery and a full three months after his unenviable introduction to the world of espionage in the form of an agent, M, and a bloody big old house up in Scotland, he trundles by the familiar nook where the young family of cats is tucked away and notices that the mother isn't there.
He thinks nothing of it, just bends down and looks at the kittens. They try to peer up at him with their not-quite-open-yet eyes, and he delivers the obligatory stroke on each's head.
The next morning, his brisk walk for his first cup of Earl Grey has dwindled down to a zombie-like shuffle. He didn't actually go home the day previous, and having 007 repeatedly nearly get shot through the intercom and typing so fast his fingers blurred is beginning to take its toll.
Harriet's on her knees near the wall as he stumbles back out of the kitchen after sprinkling the entire kitchen floor with sugar in an attempt to aim the spoon at his mug.
He raises his eyebrows.
When she looks up at him, her eyes are dangerously swimmy. "Their mother," she sayys, and bites her lip. "I think she got shot."
Q blinks at her. "Pardon?"
Her mascara blots a little. This, Q thinks, swaying a little with exhaustion, was more like what he pictured when he first got recruited. Pretty girls with their makeup running, looking up at him through their eyelashes pleadingly, that sort of thing.
"When Dunning came in." Q's too tired to make the connection; away from his station, his brain feels soft and woolly, no razor-sharp wires running from one point to the next, thoughts like quicksilver. Away from his computer and the immediate call of duty, he feels more human than ever. Whoever this Dunning fellow is, he's going to have to live with the fact that MI6's quartermaster can't remember who he is at short notice.
"He was aiming at the cats?" Q asks, a little belatedly. "What was he trying to do, shoot at our ankles?"
Harriet just looks at him, as if realizing that her chief of department was rather slow. "Well...yes."
Q nodded, and tries to look as if that makes perfect sense to him. "Right. Of course he was." he sees her opening her mouth, and adds quickly, "So what are we to do with the kittens?"
But before she can reply, more of his underlings come running, yelling something about 007 getting stabbed with a popsicle stick, and Q's mind, inevitably, veered away from the bundles of fur for the time being.
*
Bond looks perturbed as he comes into Q Branch to hand in the debris of his equipment. "Q," he says, "there's a box near your office."
Q keeps typing. "No wonder your observational skills mark you out, I never would've noticed on my own." he raises his head in time to catch Bond's smirk. "Tell me, 007, how many of my expensive, carefully-designed equipment do I have the pleasure of seeing in shattered pieces today?"
Bond turns over what used to be Q's most promising prototype of a long-range gun with a tracking device affixed, and Q nearly bursts into tears then and there.
"Holy hell, Bond." he says faintly.
Bond has the grace to look mildly ashamed.
"The kittens," Bond says, in an obvious attempt to sidetrack him from the inevitable rant. "Where's the primary caregiver?"
Q looks at him for a long moment, and then slumps. It's been a long week. "That would be me." he mumbles. "Their mother died."
Bond's eyes widen a little. Q wonders whether the mask really slipped, or whether that little display was just for his benefit. Probably the latter.
He wonders then, how exactly 007 must see him. A boy, certainly; Bond can surely see his self-confidence and the blush of infatuation. His brilliance, maybe. He wonders whether Bond views him as the sort to mourn the death of a cat and the abandonment of her offspring.
"And now you plan to raise them?" Bond asks, and there is something indefinable in his tone, something showing through the shards of glass in his eyes.
Q unconsciously tilts his head up, and stares the agent down. "I plan to give them a fighting chance."
Bond smiles. Q's heart stutters.
*
The first kitten dies a little while after Bond returns from Bolivia with a gunshot wound in his left shoulder to match the one in his right.
He stands beside Q as the kitten is taken away. Q tries not to think about how 007's still bleeding.
*
His mother's expert advice and her prescription of lactose-heavy milk powder doesn't stop the second cat from dying, either. Q watches blankly as the kitten is carried away, and thinks of the time he wasted prowling through the shelves of Sainsbury's to find just the right formula for their milk. Bond had showed up halfway into his shopping trip, and helped him scan the boxes with the kind of efficiency Q had only associated with the way he cleaned guns and killed off targets before.
He looks down at the two remaining kittens. One of them s the runt of the litter, surprisingly, and the strongest. He thinks of his mother saying gently, they're too young to survive without their mother, you know. You can't save them all, darling.
"Fighting chance," Bond reminds him.
Q nods, feeling like his throat's been scraped out.
Bond keeps looking at him, his gaze holding something warm and soft and precious, and Q swallows, his throat going dry for entirely different reasons. His eyes flick to Bond's mouth, the welcoming curve of them, and his eyes flutter shut.
M comes in then, followed by a swarm of hangers-on and saying something about the Indian Ocean. Bond steps away, his eyes lingering on Q for the briefest moment before he snaps to attention once more.
Q touches his lips.
*
The next kitten holds out for a solid week, but it's a near thing. It's all skin and bones, and Harriet had abandoned all pretense of working and taken on the role of surrogate mother, bottle-feeding them both and watching over the two remaining kittens obsessively. Q doesn't ask her to return to her work, and even M only looks at her curiously during his visits, meets Q's eye, and refrains from commenting.
Days are hectic, what with Bond in the Maldives and international liaisons not being what they used to be. Q keeps a wary eye on the box of kittens, who have now begun exploring the parameters of their confinement. He tries not to let slip that he had named them Punch and Judy, despite how they were both male. Bond would never let him live that down.
And then, the next kitten dies, and just three days later, so does Bond.
Q doesn't remember much. Just the gunfire through the intercom, Harriet sobbing at his side and Bond saying in a smooth voice, I'm fine, I'm perfectly fine.
*
The funeral is held on a rainy day, appropriately enough. No one says anything about how the body was never recovered. Nobody says much of anything, huddling close together and looking on in something like disbelief; men like that don't just die.
Q looks at the dome of black umbrellas and wonders.
*
He takes the remaining kitten home on a Friday.
His subordinates try to object, citing his schedule and the intensive care the kitten needs. He ignores them all, carefully carrying the box out on his way home.
The kitten blinks up at him with blue eyes, and Q tells him that everything’s going to be alright.
*
The kitten, despite its kaleidoscope of physical failings -Q's stopped going to the vet at this point, there's only so many times he can stand being told he was fighting a losing battle, that it was beyond hope.
He bumps against Q's feet companiably and seems absolutely delighted with the very fact of Q's existence, taking every opportunity to bat at his bare feet in an affectionate fashion. More often than not, Q finds himself feeding it biscuits and making up stories about Punch, Amazing Ninja Cat while it looks up at him adoringly.
*
Alex Rider is a field agent, quickly rising up the ranks. He isn't a 00, but it's only a matter of time.
Alex Rider has big brown eyes that have seen too much and a smile he uses like a blade. That smile's the first thing Q notices about him.
Alex Rider has a way of biting the expanse of Q's throat as he fucks him into the mattress, and when he comes, he makes a sharp, keening cry like he's been hurt. He always kisses Q after, long and thorough, even when Q makes it clear that it's not necessary.
Alex Rider is tall and young and handsome, and he will break many hearts in his promising career, but Q will break his first.
*
He comes home one day to find the kitten -two months old now, and everyone's told him he's sure to survive if he made it this far- curled up on his sofa. It makes a hurt noise when Q touches it, this little whimpering cry that feels like a swipe of a dagger against his heart.
He cries that night, long, choked sobs wracking his body as the kitten makes little sounds of pain. Q cries until he feels wrung out, an empty husk, his temples throbbing, and then he looks down at the kitten, still alive, in his lap and his eyes spill over again, hot tears trailing down his face and falling on to the kitten more often than not.
He falls asleep like that, staying very still as not to shake any fragile, weightless bones.
When he wakes up, all his limbs are stiff and protesting, and the kitten is dead.
This time, he doesn't cry.
*
Q realizes that Bond isn't coming back a little over a year after the memorial plaque goes up in M's office.
He's sipping tea in his flat on a rare off-day, watching the sun come in in slanted bars through the window.
It's a peaceful sort of realization, and it doesn't make him falter. He keeps drinking his Earl Grey, listening to Schumann drifting from his neighbor's radio.
He thinks about how his co-workers step on eggshells around him, orders coming in the form of gentle requests. He thinks about the shade of aquamarine of Bond's eyes as he stepped away that day, the unfulfilled promise of a kiss. Stupid, really, to think he would come back just because he never completed that kiss.
Q lets out a breath, and feels lighter somehow.
But something in the back of his mind knows very well about the difference between knowing that Bond is gone and giving up on waiting for him. Q will probably wait for James Bond his entire life.
He doesn't try to think about how he feels about that. He's content as he is.
*
Q wakes up in the middle of the night some five months after the celebration of his two years as quartermaster, knowing there is someone else in his flat.
He tries to keep his footsteps precise and soundless, padding across the floor to pick up his standard issue taser and curious, despite himself. His security is nothing if not elaborate, so that even the most intelligent burglar would have to be highly motivated to break in.
So he's not at all surprised when he comes into his living room to see James Bond with his hands clasped behind his back, examining a snapshot Q had of the last kitten.
Q just stands there for a moment, savoring the illusion. He thinks he may be unable to move if he tried, anyway; so he stays very still and drinks in the graceful line of Bond's back, the sharpness of posture that contrasts with the loose hang of his hideous shirt.
"His name was Punch." Q says finally, in a soft voice that seems to echo in the apartment.
Bond turns to face him slowly, and he's smiling a little. "I presume he had a fighting chance?"
Q smiles back. "True warrior, that one."
They stare at each other then, silence flooding the air between them. Q thinks of the taser and the Beretta he keeps in his drawer. He thinks of kisses that go unfinished for years, and the clear sharp call of agent down, agent down.
It's impossible to tell what Bond is thinking.
And then they step towards each other, movement in a dance, perfectly choreographed. Q's heart is beating so loudly it hurts, hammering away at his ribcage.
It's unclear who makes the first move. Maybe Bond leans forward or maybe Q does, but they end up kissing, so it ceases to matter.
The kiss isn't graceful. It's messy and painful, with teeth clashing and Bond savagely nipping at Q's lower lip and Q pushing forward roughly until he tastes blood. What took you so bloody long and I nearly died and I know, I'm sorry rolled into one.
No words. None. Q waited for a year for this kiss, and as it takes a turn for the gentle -Bond's hand curling in Q's mop of hair and his other hand tracing the curve of Q's cheekbone, his tongue questing playfully in Q's mouth- that's all it takes.
Q's happy.