Fic: Slow Dancing In a Burning Room (5/9)
Slow Dancing In A Burning Room, 5/9
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 Five. Q doesn't sleep much; first the reasons are good, and then they are decidedly not.
You can also read here at the AO3. Part one of this fic posted here on LJ, part two is here, part three is here, and part four is
“You work too late.”
Q jumped, spilling the dregs of his takeaway hot cocoa all down the front of his jumper. He rounded on the source of the voice, contemplating chucking the empty container at James in vengeance, but James was already coming down the fire escape towards him and would probably just dodge it anyway, the bastard.
He would just be waiting at Q’s building, wouldn’t he. Second time this week. The first time he’d followed Q home, and then taken a shortcut to get to the flat just ahead of him. “How long have you been waiting here?” Q demanded.
“Two and a half hours.” James hopped lightly down from the grating, looking at once bored and so attractive it made Q’s teeth hurt. “I would have let myself in, but you’ve made it quite clear that you aren’t fond of unexpected visitors and I didn’t want to startle your neighbors.”
Q pursed his lips, elbowing James out of the way, hating him for a few precious moments for how giddy and stupid he instantly made Q feel, just by appearing here, unexpected and unlooked-for. “Well you are going to scare them if you keep on like this,” he said irritably, flashing his card over the sensor and pulling the door open, James following behind. “I’ll make you a bloody card of your own, so next time you can just go inside.”
James followed him into the lift, gluing himself to Q’s back once the doors shut on them, smiling against the back of Q’s neck with the faintest brush of his lips on skin as he slid an arm around Q’s waist. “That’d be excellent,” he murmured into Q’s ear. “Sorry about your jumper, by the way.”
“Lies,” said Q flatly, but he leaned into James anyway.
* * * * *
He’d promised himself he’d worry about the fallout later, but “later” never seemed to come. Q’s life, already full even before “Behind Blue Eyes” became his personal theme song, now overflowed.
Q should have known that something so good could only be the calm before the storm. To be totally fair, though, James Bond was one hell of a distraction.
Nothing at work had changed; it wasn’t as if terrorists and drug cartels had stopped with the blackmail and the explosions and the sex trafficking rings. Q had no shortage of projects that were perpetually getting backed up or needing straightening out. Then there were the technical inventions and patents pending coming out of Q Branch, all of which needed to be vetted by Q personally before he’d put them in the hands of their agents, to say nothing of the devices Q himself was in charge of producing or perfecting. A thousand different requests for tech and system upgrades and intelligence came through Q Branch on a daily basis. If it weren’t for his extremely capable seconds-in-command, Tessa and Mark, there would have been no way Q would’ve been able to manage all the things that landed on his desk and still find time to step in as voice in the ear of the three most active 00 agents when the situation called for it. And on top of all his usual duties, planning for the new HQ building was full speed ahead now that all the department heads had signed off on the warehouse, and a day didn’t go by without someone (usually Tanner) stopping in to run some detail or other by Q before installation.
(There was one particularly weird conversation with Tanner that happened about two weeks after Bond came back from Mozambique; Q was never sure that they were talking about anything but equipment at all, only Tanner sort of stopped in the middle of what he was saying, and when Q looked up to see if perhaps he’d had an aneurysm or something he found Tanner staring past him at the wall.
“Tanner,” Q began, and Tanner refocused his gaze on Q.
“Sorry,” he said, and gave Q a small smile. “I just wanted to remind you that there are certain-assets of Her Majesty’s Secret Service that you ought to be particularly careful with, as they’re more brittle than you may realize.”
“Pardon me, what exactly are you talking about?” demanded Q. “Did you hit your head on the way in to work today?”
“Oh, probably,” said Tanner mildly. “Anyway, these forms by the week’s end, if you please.” He gave Q another one of those vague smiles, and left him in his office reminding himself that Bill Tanner the cheerfully clueless Chief of Staff was just a pretense for Bill Tanner the shady, clever bastard.)
Bond (Bond or 007 at headquarters, Q was very strict with himself on this) was just the same at work, as well. Despite marginal improvement, he still had an atrociously low ratio of equipment returned intact versus what he was initially sent with, and sometimes it was enough to drive Q up the wall, threatening loudly to send Bond with everything from water pistols to nail clippers on his missions for minding Q’s things so poorly. But-and perhaps this was Q’s imagination, his wishful thinking-he thought Bond was showing more care with himself on missions these days.
Well. He was coming home banged-up and bloody with less frequency, at least, but his interrogation methods had not changed much. Q would have had to actually be dead to not feel any jealousy each time Bond slipped into bed with yet another dangerous, lonely creature, but he found it rather like stubbing his toe in the dark: painful enough in the moment to make his eyes water, but gone by the time the morning came, with no lasting injury to dwell on.
Because while work hadn’t changed, Q was spending significantly less of his time off alone. He made a point to see Moneypenny at least one or two times a week, just as they had been doing for years, and while there was a short period where she’d been living at a hotel while the break-in to her flat was investigated, now she was all settled in a new place and Q did his best to help make it feel like home. While it was rare for Adrienne and Jonathan to have free time (4-year-olds had that effect on people), Q still at least came in to visit with them once a week, at the bake shop if not at their flat. But often as not, Q would just come home to his own flat to find James already there waiting for him.
(It was the things that James did while he waited that really blew Q’s mind. Q had come in, once, and the entire flat had smelled of garlic and onions and fucking basil, and Q had been so flabbergasted he’d just marched straight into the kitchen and stared at the sight of James “Danger is my middle name” Bond at his stove in trousers and a t-shirt sauteing vegetables in a saucepan like on some sodding cooking show. He’d just stood there in the door gawping like a moron until James had leveled a full-scale eyebrow at him and asked where he kept the thyme. Q still hadn’t decided if James Bond cooking for him was more or less weird than James Bond being hilariously competitive at XBox, or James Bond apparently having a soft spot for Dostoevsky.)
James had the homing instinct of a deranged carrier pigeon, and while at one point Q would have been disturbed to be involved with someone who could seemingly apparate at will to wherever Q happened to be, now he simply found it convenient. It was possible he was developing Stockholm Syndrome: a reaction to the crazed psychopath he couldn’t seem to get away from. That theory fell apart every time Q got James alone and climbed him like a tree, though, so perhaps it’d be best if he stopped entertaining it. James had more than proven his ability to respect Q’s boundaries, after all.
They went to James’ flat sometimes, too. Q was more pleased than he’d like to admit to catch Margaret in the hallway again, mostly because she lit up when she saw Q with James; the third such time they ran into her, she made a point to tell James how he’d keep this one if he knew what was good for him. Q thought he would never get sick of teasing James about his sassy matchmaking neighbor, but on that particular occasion he didn’t get much of a chance; everything he’d planned to say vanished into thin air when he got to James’ room and saw a familiar painting hanging on the wall.
“When the fuck did you get that?” Q demanded when he could find words again.
“I bought it the night you had your gallery showing. While you were in the lav.” James slid arms around Q’s neck, nibbling lightly under Q’s ear. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you take commissions.”
“You just need to accept the fact that you are never getting that exploding pen and move on with life,” said Q loftily, and got the unique pleasure of hearing James snort with laughter against his neck, right before he yanked Q’s shirt out of his trousers and thinking got hard.
There was no conversation about What This Is (and nor would there be, if Q had any say in it) but if Q didn’t know better, hadn’t convinced himself that there was no way this could be what he wanted, he would have said they were dating. And okay, it was true that they spent most nights that James wasn’t away on a mission at each other’s flats, and it was true that James now routinely brought him-presents, really, was the only word for it, presents like the first puzzle-box he’d got for Q. All of them ended up in Q’s flat, as precious to him now as the man who brought them to him in the first place.
Q had to break it off. He had to. He just… couldn’t find any believable reason to do it, and he couldn’t tell James the real one. There was no way this was going to end but badly, and that was why Q had to walk away.
If only it weren’t so bloody hard.
* * * * *
“Tell me about your tattoos,” James said.
Q glanced up at him from the Leonard Mlodinow book he was reading; there did exist some popular science books that weren’t so watered-down as to be insulting, and this was one of them. He and James were enjoying a quiet night in, James having just come back from another mission, this time to India. “Well James,” he said, rolling onto his side, “generally the first thing the tattoo artist does is make you sign a form alleging that you are not under the influence of any intoxicating substances-”
James cuffed his shoulder. “Knock it off,” he said, smiling slightly, and Q relented, returning his smile. “It looks like all one piece; did you get them all at once?”
Q shook his head. “No, but I wanted it to look that way. I had several of them in mind when I first got started, but I had to look around for awhile before I found an artist whose style I liked. I brought in some sketches and print-outs and we sorted out a general design, and then I’ve just… added to it several times since then. Erika’s excellent about adding new parts and making it all look of a piece.”
“Mm.” James ran his hand along Q’s bicep, rubbing his thumb over the stylized computer keyboard, then following the arc of the calaveras sugar-skull. “Do they mean anything? Or are you one of those young people who just likes how tattoos look?”
“You make us sound like an alien species,” Q said, elbowing James in his stomach for his cheek. It was utterly ineffective, of course; he might as well have jammed his elbow against a brick wall for all that James seemed to feel it, but then Q hadn’t been intending any damage anyway. “It’s both. Yes, they all have meaning, but I wanted a particular aesthetic, too.”
“I recognize what most of them are,” said James. “Or, what the image is, anyway.” He glanced up at Q. “Is the sugar skull for someone in particular?
Q shut his book, setting it aside so he could twist his head around and look at the same pieces of skin James was examining. “I got it when my dad died, yeah.” He rotated his arm, turning out his tricep to peer at the design better, the colors as familiar to him now as the birthmark on the back of his thigh. “Last living member of my family.”
“Sorry to hear that,” murmured James. Q said nothing; it was something they had in common, and while losing his father had been hard, their relationship had always been strained. Papa had never quite forgiven him for disappearing for the better part of a year and a half on what was supposed to be just a 5-week trip to the States.
Carly chose this moment to butt her head against Q’s elbow, meowing plaintively before curling up against the S-curve of Q’s spine. James glanced at her and snorted before returning to studying Q’s arm, gently lifting and turning to better examine the landscape of Q’s personal art gallery. “The computer is self-explanatory… what about this? An ankh?”
“Yes. The crux ansata, symbol of eternal life,” said Q. “I was in need of a little life after death at the time.”
James raised an eyebrow, but when Q offered no more, he pressed no further. He returned his attention to Q’s arm, running his thumb over the simplified fractal pattern that swept over the muscle just above the back of Q’s elbow. “I bet your tattoo artist had a hell of a time with this pattern,” he observed, and Q smiled. “What about the plague doctor mask?”
Q paused, trying to assemble his thoughts into order. “That one’s difficult,” he said after a moment. “My mother was a nurse; she died of complications from pneumonia when I was five. But… I actually got that tattoo when I was hired on at MI6.” Q hesitated, dropping his eyes as he tried to explain this piece of personal history without straying into the maudlin. “I liked to think that I was doing the same sort of work she was,” he said finally. “It’s not pretty and it can be grim, and there’s a lot of death, but it’s important work and I’m proud to be the one doing it.”
James said nothing to this, just watched him with that clear, steady gaze. He gave Q a very small smile, the one that Q saw most infrequently, that he thought only a handful of people in the world ever saw, and it was that much more precious because of it. “What about this equation, here?” he asked after a bit, returning his gaze to the tapestry of color. “I don’t recognize it.”
It was Q’s turn to smile. “That’s not a surprise, as it’s from my uni physics classes,” he said. “It’s a Schrödinger equation used in quantum mechanics. It’s a partial differential equation that describes how the quantum state of some physical system changes with time. This one in particular is the general form, it...” Both of James’ eyebrows had gone up now, and Q left off before he could detour into a more complicated explanation, but he was stung by a sudden urge to justify this particular choice, this expression of self. “Some people think poetry or music are the only valid ways to express universal truth,” he said, his voice pensive. “But if you want the simplest, most elegant expression of existence, you’ll find nothing better than a maths equation. Everything changes with time.”
James stared. The corner of his mouth twisted ever so slightly, and then he leaned down and kissed Q, cupping his face in both hands as he literally took Q’s breath away, kissing him until Q was dizzy. “I think you may have missed your calling, my dear,” James murmured, still nuzzling Q’s cheek.
“Bollocks,” said Q, trying and failing not to sound like he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. “Besides, I like blowing things up.” He shut his eyes, gone dizzy all over again at the sound of James’ rich laughter in his ears, worth more than a thousand hours of ink or code or art.
* * * * *
Almost six weeks had passed since the night of Q’s gallery show when Q got the call.
A mobile rang at some ungodly hour of the morning, and both he and James fumbled at the side of the bed, answering almost simultaneously. “Hello,” said James beside him, and then grunted as he realized his mistake.
“What the hell is it,” said Q. James slung an arm over Q’s stomach again, and Q curled against him, wondering which of them had left the window cracked; it was bloody cold in his room and for no good reason.
“Sorry to wake you.” Adrienne sounded entirely too normal and chipper for-two in the morning, Q thought, squinting at the clock by the bed. “But I thought you ought to know that that agent of yours has broken into another one of your flats, the one on Downing Street.”
Q blinked a few times. Frowned. “What are you on about?” he demanded, feeling stupid and not liking it. “He can’t have.”
“It’s not that much of a surprise, is it? He found two of the other ones. I’m surprised it took him this long, really. He must be quite sweet on you.” Adrienne, because she was a sick woman, had reacted with delight upon discovering that the agent who’d broken into Q’s flats had asked him out to dinner, something Q had let slip only because he was bad at lying point-blank when he wasn’t expecting it and he could think of nothing else to say when asked so why is one of MI6’s field agents breaking into the quartermaster’s flat anyway?
“He’s not-he can’t possibly have broken into the Downing street flat. Check the feed, did anyone show up on the cameras?” Beside him, Q felt James go still, and then James’ head came up, the force of that regard leveled on him full-bore.
“I did; there’s a blank period when the cameras went offline, he must’ve cut the wires. Bit more subtle than the last two attempts he made. Why are you so sure it isn’t him?”
“Because he’s here with me,” said Q. The silence on the other end of the phone was suddenly very loud. It seeped into his bedroom, dripping in like cold water, and Q sat up, a stone settling into the pit of his stomach.
“Right,” said Adrienne after a few moments too long. “Do you want to come over and have a look at it?”
“I will,” said Q, looking at James, who was now sitting up in bed beside him and staring at him, hard. “But not right now. I’ll have someone by to pick it up tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know, Adrienne.”
“Take care of yourself, Ghost,” she said, and rung off.
“Someone broke into one of your flats,” said James, reaching up to take the mobile from Q and setting it aside. Q exhaled through his nose.
“Yes, well, that’s why I have the decoy flats to start with,” he said, unable to keep some irritation from creeping into his voice. “Because it had occurred to me that I might be a target.”
He glanced at James, trying to ignore the way the draft from the window was now creeping across his shoulders like spectral fingers, but his poker face wasn’t as good as his agent’s, and James brought a hand to Q’s face, cupping his cheek. “What is it?” asked James, softly. “You’re scared.”
Dammit. There were definitely downsides to James being so sharp. “I think I’ve a right to be a bit shook up over a phone call like that, thanks very much,” said Q, which was true enough.
“Mmm. Would it have anything to do with the fact that Eve’s flat was broken into a month or so ago?”
“I don’t know. We never did find out what the hell they were looking for at her flat, did we?” Q sighed, giving in and slumping against James, who wrapped both arms around him, resting his cheek against the top of Q’s head. “There are a few possibilities I can think of, and I don’t like any of them, but short of one of my interns having a fucking dreadful sense of humor, I don’t think I’m going to find an answer that I’m going to like.”
“It’ll be fine.” James smoothed a large hand along Q’s spine, his thumb rubbing gently at the ridge of vertebrae. One day Q would stop being surprised by how tender James could be; right now he just sighed, turning his face against James’ clavicle, feeling the slightly rough tracery of old scars against his cheekbone. “If I couldn’t find your actual flat, no bloody amateur is going to manage.”
“You’d have found it sooner or later,” Q murmured. “Had plenty of opportunities to follow me home.”
Q felt James shrug. “You told me not to,” he said. His deep voice sounded amused.
“Oh, because you’re always so keen on following the rules,” said Q.
“Some situations matter more than others,” said James quietly, and Q bit his lip, the tightness in his throat making it hard to think what to say. So he said nothing, just cupped James’ neck in one hand and kissed his throat, and tried to ignore the weight in his chest that whispered that something was wrong.
* * * * *
Predictably, work the next day was so batshit insane that Q didn’t get time to look at the video and meta-data Adrienne sent over till late afternoon. Equally predictably, Q’s plate was extra full due to 007’s impending departure; he was being sent on another mission in two days, and it looked to be a fairly long-term one, infiltrating a terrorist cell in Bolivia.
Q was no more going to send Bond unprepared or under-equipped than he would leave his own flat without trousers on, so he sent the tape along to Tessa with strict orders to not show it to anyone until after she’d run her assessment by Q. Then he set himself to the task of finishing reviewing Bond’s weapons and recording devices. There was a pen with a hidden cartridge of deadly poison that Q had hoped to have finished before Bond got sent off again-it wasn’t as flashy as many of the things Bond liked to work with, but it would get the job done, if Q could manage to better safeguard its carrier from accidentally poisoning him- or herself. Sadly it wasn’t yet ready for commission, and so Bond would have to settle for his by-now standard issue palm-ID’d Walther, radio, and various other items of espionage.
“Anything on the recording Adrienne sent over?” Moneypenny peered at Q’s screen, arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t even have the excuse of clipboards or paperwork to bring him this time, but really, she didn’t need an excuse; no motive or perpetrator for the break-in to her old flat had yet been discovered, and it was a hell of a fishy coincidence for Q’s flat to be broken into so soon after, decoy or no.
“Nothing, according to Tessa.” Q pursed his lips, saving and minimizing the program he’d just had open as he pulled open the email Tessa had sent along with her findings. “The only reason we knew there was a break-in at all was because a silent alarm went off when they opened the front door without one of our encoded keys. But whoever it was had gone by the time security arrived.”
“Did they take anything?”
“Nothing there to take. You’ve seen my fake flats, nothing of substance in any of them. There’s just some furniture and some basic amenities to make it look like someone lives there.” Q flicked through the images, glaring irritably at the few seconds of footage that repeated themselves over and over, and the timestamp that skipped from 0134 hours to 0153 hours like a blinking eye.
“Well, that’s obnoxious.”
“Tell me about it.” Q sighed and glanced up at Moneypenny. “There’s been a team through it to search for prints, but no one’s sent me back any word yet.”
“Same as my flat. Professional, that.” Q nodded, wishing that there’d been another conclusion for him to come to aside from that one. His discomfort was not made any better by Moneypenny reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder and adding, quietly, “If the same person got into your flat as mine, darling, I’d have to say that it’s probably you they’re looking for.”
Q said nothing. But if he he took an extra twenty minutes to get home that night via a combination of cabs and the Underground, he felt he could not much be blamed.
* * * * *
To exactly no one’s surprise, James Bond was an effective distraction when he wanted to be. And since tonight was his last night with Q for the immediate future, he had a vested interest in commanding all of Q’s attention, which Q was only too happy to give to him.
Q did not open his computer at all that night. He thought about very little except James’ eyes, and his mouth, and other parts less mentionable in polite company but no less worthy of his praise. But the thing Q was most grateful for that night was the deep, exhausted sleep James gave him, undisturbed by bad dreams or rumors.
It would be his last night of good sleep for several weeks.
* * * * *
It wasn’t until Bond was several hours gone on his plane ride to Bolivia that Q got around to doing some more serious investigation. He went home to do it, hacking into MI6’s servers remotely from the safety of his bedroom. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to access work systems from home, but as far as he knew no one else was even aware that he did it, and as it wasn’t as though he was dropping in viruses or trojans, he saw no harm.
Q hadn’t done digging quite like this in awhile; most of the intelligence-gathering for their agents was done by other people, though of course he was more than competent at finding what he was looking for. It was just that it’d been years since he’d had much occasion for it.
The truth was, despite what he’d told James, Q did not have many people who even knew enough about his existence to target him. There was a reason the head of Q Branch was simply called Q, the same reason Mallory was simply M now. And Q had hidden himself about as well as it was possible to hide, short of removing himself to a deserted island somewhere; his birth name had been officially declared dead by the British government several years ago, and almost no paper trail existed of his current legal identity, one William Monk who had multiple decoy flats listed under his name in MI6’s secure servers. His actual residence was listed as rented to a fictional corporation by the name of Domestic Gains & Holdings, LTD.
It took him several minutes to get access to the current roster of the maximum-security prison in France that he was looking for, and then Q sat staring at his screen as two separate searches of the list brought back the same null return. Not found, the little window informed him.
“Bollocks,” he said aloud. He broadened his search, scanning impatiently through files, trying to quell the growing nausea in his stomach. This time he set the program to search for all files within the past 6 months, and ten seconds or so later several hits popped up.
Markham, David; Markham, Janessa. An external transfer, signed off by the warden. The previous files were all run-of-the-mill entries, detailing inmate activities, health records and the like. Q blanched as the continuing search popped up several photos, hastily killing the program before it could return more results. He sat there for several seconds, his eyes averted, before taking a deep breath and forcing himself to look at the faces on the screen.
The first was of a man, early thirties, with streaks of grey in his close-cropped light brown hair; shorter than Q remembered, and lacking the facial hair he’d often sported. There were harder lines around his eyes now than the last time Q had seen him, but the strength in his features remained, the dimple at the corner of his mouth, the true brown eyes. David Markham wasn’t smiling in the photo, but Q had seen it so many times that he had no problem remembering the way his face had crinkled when he laughed, his slow Texan drawl that dripped with humor. He did not look like he’d had much occasion to laugh recently.
The second photo was similar to the first, a woman staring straight at the camera, the intensity in her gaze a little unnerving. Prison had not dulled Janessa’s attractiveness, but it had made her expression harder, and Q suffered a pang at the tightness in her full lips, and at the scar across her elegant nose, the asymmetry reminding him obliquely of James’. But her blue eyes were as clear as ever, her blonde hair pulled back from her face in an unforgiving ponytail.
Q took a long, slow breath, jumping a little as Carly leaped up onto the bed next to him. “Fucking hell,” he muttered to himself, scooping up his purring cat to cradle her against his chest. The feel of her calmed him a little, and he flicked the photos away, paging through the other results instead. He pulled open the transfer form again, checked the date.
Just over five months ago. Right after a certain former MI6 agent had been ripping a trail of destruction across London. Right when Q’s hands were too full to even think of checking on something like this… not that he would have, probably. Q swallowed.
It had been five years, after all. Why should he have thought to check on them after so long? They were in prison.
…weren’t they?
Q suddenly felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with open windows or the snow outside on the ground. He went back to his original search screen, and set it to run a nation-wide search of France’s prisons for those two names. The search had a lot more items to scroll through, and thus took several minutes longer, several minutes of Q staring uneasily at the two photos in the corner of his screen and petting his oblivious cat.
Not found, the search came back finally. Q’s mouth went dry, and then he sighed, broadening his search to include the whole of Europe.
It was going to be a long evening.
* * * * *
When Q came in the next day looking like he’d been backed over repeatedly by a mail truck, Moneypenny gave him a long, questioning look to which he did not respond. He had work to do. Specifically, he would have at most 48 hours before Bond went into deep cover, and there were a number of goals he had to help Bond achieve before that happened.
They couldn’t talk about personal matters over their comms channels, of course. Which didn’t stop Q from staying on the line with 007 whenever opportunity permitted it, even when not strictly necessary for his assignment. And it wasn’t like Q could stop Bond from signing off on the other end, but 007 seemed as disinclined as Q to break the connection. He lingered longer on the line than he might have otherwise, checked in more regularly than normal.
It was unnecessary, but Q found himself obscurely grateful for it. He’d have socked Bond in the jaw had he so much as implied that Q was unable to cope with the security situation on his own, but it was nice to at least know that 007 was thinking about him. They talked about nothing in particular: the weather in Bolivia; the idiotic book Bond had read on the plane ride over; the new installation that would be on at the Tate Modern in a few weeks. It absolutely rated as one of the most boring conversations Q had ever had.
That did not stop him from feeling stupidly abandoned when Bond finally signed off, though, or from allowing Moneypenny to persuade him to stay the night at her new apartment.
* * * * *
A week passed. The meta-data and physical evidence from Q’s decoy flat yielded absolutely nothing, which was made all the worse when another of Q’s flats was broken into four days after Bond left for Bolivia. The break-in was exactly the same as the previous two: nothing taken, no physical evidence, and no video recording of the intruders. “Nothing” was also what Q had turned up on his two missing convicts, and the maddening lack of any concrete leads was just serving to amplify Q’s increasing paranoia.
Several times, he was close to breaking down and calling a private meeting with Moneypenny to confide in her, but every time he held himself back. The damnable thing was that he simply had no reason to think that Janessa and David’s escape from prison (if they had, in fact, escaped, and had not been invisibly extradited to somewhere back in the US, a possibility Q had not yet ruled out) was connected to the break-ins of his and Moneypenny’s flats. They certainly had motivation, but so did plenty of other people Q had helped to destroy or discredit during his work with MI6, even if they only knew of him in a general way. If someone had gotten ahold of sensitive information from their servers (Q could not help but think of the virus outbreak a few months back that had dragged him from his bed), then any one of a great number of dangerous people could be hunting for Q. He simply needed more information.
And no matter how scared Q was, he just couldn’t bring himself to drag all of his skeletons out of the closet to taint his new life unless he absolutely had to. He and Adrienne and Jonathan had worked so bloody hard to start over; he couldn’t bring it all crashing down for nothing.
So he worked overtime, and monitored his agents, and coded until his eyes wanted to shrivel up and roll out of his head. He ran new searches every night for new information, and he ran himself more literally into the ground at MI6’s indoor gyms until he could barely stagger to the showers. And he waited.
* * * * *
Q worked late that night.
He worked late often, true, but today was more necessity than Q’s terrifying work ethic or even his dread of being home alone with his own thoughts. Between the paperwork piling up related to their upcoming transition and the forms Tanner had brought by around 4 pm, it was almost nine before he finally dragged himself away from his work station. He would have stayed later, in fact, were it not for the text he’d gotten shortly after Moneypenny came by to force some dinner on him.
The message was short and to the point, from an unlisted number: Agrippina and Fezzik need a seance. 2130 @ the old stand by. M would throw a fit if he knew, probably, but Q was the head of Q Branch for a reason and didn’t have any spare fucks to give today. Not after the week and a half he’d had.
Q walked briskly out of the compound, taking the most unobtrusive exit from MI6’s no-longer-that-temporary location. He hailed a cab, then sent it along without getting into it. He did this twice more, before finally getting into the next one that happened along, and he took that across hell’s half-acre and back before getting out, paying the driver, and hailing yet another cab. This one he took to the Charing Cross Road tube stop, and then got out and walked eight blocks to a run-down hole-in-the-wall that had no right to call itself a pub and yet insisted on operating anyway.
He wormed his way through the crowd to the back end of the pub, and broke into a grin at the sight of Jonathan’s bulk squashed into the booth next to Adrienne’s smaller, curvier form. “Well aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes, out for a drink with no four-year-old attached,” he said, and slid into the booth to submit to a round of hugs and a kiss on the cheek.
“Only because you’ve been staring at computer screens all day,” said Jonathan-Fezzik-once he was done crushing the Q’s ribs into putty. He was dressed to the nines tonight, an old-fashioned pinstriped suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an American gangster film. Q had no doubt it would make him look even taller than he was when Jonathan was standing instead of hunched over a too-small table.
“Hello, my sweet boffin,” said Adrienne, smiling. Adrienne was Agrippina, of course; the poisoner. Her hair was dark as her eyes, and twisted up in an elaborate up-do tonight. She reminded Q of old Botticelli paintings, with ample curves and soft olive skin, and Q never failed to be delighted by the bright sleeve of tattoos that snaked up her arm to cascade over her shoulder to her back. She was one of the reasons he’d wanted some of his own in the first place. “Sorry for the short notice, but I’m afraid it’s quite urgent.”
“I was afraid of that, if you had to call a seance to do it.” Q had been Ghost, back when their pseuds had been their whole lives instead of just clever plays on words. He’d picked the name when he was, what, 15, and then been stuck with it, because by the time Janessa and David came along he had a reputation attached to it. As a rule, Ghost had never been involved unless he absolutely had to be; Janessa and David had preferred to keep him away from the action. Of course, where they’d actually liked to keep him was just as dangerous in its own way.
Funny, really. Janessa and David had had their own pseuds, Nefertiti and Ramses, but Q never thought of them by those names. They were only ever Janessa and David.
Adrienne and Jonathan exchanged a look. Q raised an eyebrow, doing his best to squash the panic that immediately welled in his chest. “Go on, out with it, no point in all the cloak and dagger otherwise, is there.”
Adrienne sighed. “Terry told me a tall thin man with a limp came into the shop today with a tattoo of a spider in its web on the back of his right hand.” Terry was one of Adrienne’s employees. He was also not privy to Adrienne’s history, which made that bit of intel so much worse.
Q stared at Adrienne, feeling all the blood run out of his face. “Oh god,” he said, and swallowed thickly. He realized abruptly that he hadn’t ordered a drink, but then Jonathan was pushing a pint of cider at him and Q picked it up to sip at it, not even tasting it. It helped ease the tightness in his throat, though, and he swallowed past the knot, trying to think. “Was he after anything? What did Terry say?”
“Terry said no. Just that he dawdled for awhile with a coffee and took a box of scones with him when he left. Didn’t ask any questions.”
Q nodded, exhaling slowly. “Right,” he said heavily. “Well. I think that settles it, then.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Just because that old creeper has made an appearance doesn’t mean-”
“No, it’s worse than that,” Q cut in. “They’re off the radar. I can’t find Nefertiti or Ramses in any prison that has a functional computer, I can’t even find a fucking mention of them that’s more recent than five months ago.”
The three of them sat there for a few moments, and then Jonathan raised his drink, tossing the rest of it back in one go. “Right,” he said. “Time for a back up plan.”
“No,” said Q flatly. “No back-up plan. We’re not doing this alone. No don’t even start,” he snapped, as Adrienne opened her mouth to protest. “You have a four-year-old, and we’re out of practice, and there’s no point in working for MI6 and not asking them for help when we need it. They’re too dangerous and you know it.”
Jonathan glowered at him for a few moments. Adrienne reached over and laid her hand across the top of his, and he deflated, sighing and leaning back in the booth. “Alright,” said Adrienne, and Q nodded, glad that they weren’t going to argue with him on this.
“It’s not safe for you to stay at your place tonight,” he continued. “If they know where your bake shop is, I’m sure they know where your flat is. I’ll get ahold of Moneypenny and we’ll get you sorted somewhere safe.”
“I’ve just left Vanessa with Johanna,” said Adrienne, referring to one of the nannies MI6 (well, Q) had vetted for her. “Should we go home, or-”
Q hesitated, and then sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, dragging a hand distractedly through his hair. “If you’ve an escort, then yes. Let me just ring up Moneypenny.”
The phone call was short and to the point; Q asked for a security team to be sent to Charing Cross Road tube station, with the assignment of escorting Adrienne and Jonathan to pick up their daughter and return to their flat before being taken to a safe house. Moneypenny would be coming herself to collect Q, and Q was more grateful than he had the words to express that she did not ask him why over the phone.
This was a conversation he was going to have to have in person. He figured there was less of a chance of her walking out on him than there was of her hanging up.
* * * * *
Adrienne and Jonathan refused to get in the car with their security team until Moneypenny’s sleek silver Mercedes had pulled up next to the curb and they’d watched Q climb inside. He shut the door, buckling the belt across his waist and slumping in the seat, avoiding Moneypenny’s gaze. She put the car in gear and slipped back out into traffic, and for perhaps forty-five seconds neither of them said anything. Finally, Q could take it no longer.
“Eve,” he said, glancing over. “Thanks for coming.”
Moneypenny snorted. “Good god, Q,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road, “did someone die?”
“What? No-what-”
“You never call me Eve.” She sounded calm, and totally unconcerned. “Of course, you don’t often call me at quarter to ten asking me to send a security team to your location, either. I’m guessing this is a conversation that needs to be had in private?”
“You could say that,” said Q, trying not to sound like he was facing a firing squad and failing.
“Is it about those break-ins?”
“…Yes.”
“Ah, so you’re actually going to tell me what’s had you looking like you’re scared of your own shadow for the past week and a half.” Q swallowed, gripping the tops of his thighs very tightly. Moneypenny glanced over at him, eyebrows going up. “Q. Breathe. Believe it or not, I have some idea of what you’re going to tell me, so you can stop looking as though you expect me to take your head off at the neck.”
“I very much doubt that,” said Q shortly.
“Oh, no? I suppose I’ll just tell M to not wait up for us, then.”
Q stared. “What?” he managed, after a few moments. “Wait, are we going to M’s, why are we going to M’s?”
“Is this a conversation you want to have more than once?” Moneypenny glanced at him again before returning her eyes to the road.
Q dropped his gaze to his lap. “I hadn’t honestly thought that much past telling you and asking what you thought I should do next,” he admitted. “But no, I don’t. I don’t want anyone to hear this except you. And M, because I suppose he has to.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Moneypenny, and reached over to squeeze Q’s knee. “Don’t worry, darling. We’ve got you.”
Q said nothing, but after a moment he covered his hand with hers and squeezed back.
* * * * *
Adrienne Stanton. Jonathan Stanton, looking particularly ostentatious and possibly with worse facial hair than he normally does. Janessa Markham. David Markham. As played by Adrienne Armstrong, Sheamus, Tricia Helfer, and Ryan Bingham, respectively.
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 Five. Q doesn't sleep much; first the reasons are good, and then they are decidedly not.
You can also read here at the AO3. Part one of this fic posted here on LJ, part two is here, part three is here, and part four is
“You work too late.”
Q jumped, spilling the dregs of his takeaway hot cocoa all down the front of his jumper. He rounded on the source of the voice, contemplating chucking the empty container at James in vengeance, but James was already coming down the fire escape towards him and would probably just dodge it anyway, the bastard.
He would just be waiting at Q’s building, wouldn’t he. Second time this week. The first time he’d followed Q home, and then taken a shortcut to get to the flat just ahead of him. “How long have you been waiting here?” Q demanded.
“Two and a half hours.” James hopped lightly down from the grating, looking at once bored and so attractive it made Q’s teeth hurt. “I would have let myself in, but you’ve made it quite clear that you aren’t fond of unexpected visitors and I didn’t want to startle your neighbors.”
Q pursed his lips, elbowing James out of the way, hating him for a few precious moments for how giddy and stupid he instantly made Q feel, just by appearing here, unexpected and unlooked-for. “Well you are going to scare them if you keep on like this,” he said irritably, flashing his card over the sensor and pulling the door open, James following behind. “I’ll make you a bloody card of your own, so next time you can just go inside.”
James followed him into the lift, gluing himself to Q’s back once the doors shut on them, smiling against the back of Q’s neck with the faintest brush of his lips on skin as he slid an arm around Q’s waist. “That’d be excellent,” he murmured into Q’s ear. “Sorry about your jumper, by the way.”
“Lies,” said Q flatly, but he leaned into James anyway.
* * * * *
He’d promised himself he’d worry about the fallout later, but “later” never seemed to come. Q’s life, already full even before “Behind Blue Eyes” became his personal theme song, now overflowed.
Q should have known that something so good could only be the calm before the storm. To be totally fair, though, James Bond was one hell of a distraction.
Nothing at work had changed; it wasn’t as if terrorists and drug cartels had stopped with the blackmail and the explosions and the sex trafficking rings. Q had no shortage of projects that were perpetually getting backed up or needing straightening out. Then there were the technical inventions and patents pending coming out of Q Branch, all of which needed to be vetted by Q personally before he’d put them in the hands of their agents, to say nothing of the devices Q himself was in charge of producing or perfecting. A thousand different requests for tech and system upgrades and intelligence came through Q Branch on a daily basis. If it weren’t for his extremely capable seconds-in-command, Tessa and Mark, there would have been no way Q would’ve been able to manage all the things that landed on his desk and still find time to step in as voice in the ear of the three most active 00 agents when the situation called for it. And on top of all his usual duties, planning for the new HQ building was full speed ahead now that all the department heads had signed off on the warehouse, and a day didn’t go by without someone (usually Tanner) stopping in to run some detail or other by Q before installation.
(There was one particularly weird conversation with Tanner that happened about two weeks after Bond came back from Mozambique; Q was never sure that they were talking about anything but equipment at all, only Tanner sort of stopped in the middle of what he was saying, and when Q looked up to see if perhaps he’d had an aneurysm or something he found Tanner staring past him at the wall.
“Tanner,” Q began, and Tanner refocused his gaze on Q.
“Sorry,” he said, and gave Q a small smile. “I just wanted to remind you that there are certain-assets of Her Majesty’s Secret Service that you ought to be particularly careful with, as they’re more brittle than you may realize.”
“Pardon me, what exactly are you talking about?” demanded Q. “Did you hit your head on the way in to work today?”
“Oh, probably,” said Tanner mildly. “Anyway, these forms by the week’s end, if you please.” He gave Q another one of those vague smiles, and left him in his office reminding himself that Bill Tanner the cheerfully clueless Chief of Staff was just a pretense for Bill Tanner the shady, clever bastard.)
Bond (Bond or 007 at headquarters, Q was very strict with himself on this) was just the same at work, as well. Despite marginal improvement, he still had an atrociously low ratio of equipment returned intact versus what he was initially sent with, and sometimes it was enough to drive Q up the wall, threatening loudly to send Bond with everything from water pistols to nail clippers on his missions for minding Q’s things so poorly. But-and perhaps this was Q’s imagination, his wishful thinking-he thought Bond was showing more care with himself on missions these days.
Well. He was coming home banged-up and bloody with less frequency, at least, but his interrogation methods had not changed much. Q would have had to actually be dead to not feel any jealousy each time Bond slipped into bed with yet another dangerous, lonely creature, but he found it rather like stubbing his toe in the dark: painful enough in the moment to make his eyes water, but gone by the time the morning came, with no lasting injury to dwell on.
Because while work hadn’t changed, Q was spending significantly less of his time off alone. He made a point to see Moneypenny at least one or two times a week, just as they had been doing for years, and while there was a short period where she’d been living at a hotel while the break-in to her flat was investigated, now she was all settled in a new place and Q did his best to help make it feel like home. While it was rare for Adrienne and Jonathan to have free time (4-year-olds had that effect on people), Q still at least came in to visit with them once a week, at the bake shop if not at their flat. But often as not, Q would just come home to his own flat to find James already there waiting for him.
(It was the things that James did while he waited that really blew Q’s mind. Q had come in, once, and the entire flat had smelled of garlic and onions and fucking basil, and Q had been so flabbergasted he’d just marched straight into the kitchen and stared at the sight of James “Danger is my middle name” Bond at his stove in trousers and a t-shirt sauteing vegetables in a saucepan like on some sodding cooking show. He’d just stood there in the door gawping like a moron until James had leveled a full-scale eyebrow at him and asked where he kept the thyme. Q still hadn’t decided if James Bond cooking for him was more or less weird than James Bond being hilariously competitive at XBox, or James Bond apparently having a soft spot for Dostoevsky.)
James had the homing instinct of a deranged carrier pigeon, and while at one point Q would have been disturbed to be involved with someone who could seemingly apparate at will to wherever Q happened to be, now he simply found it convenient. It was possible he was developing Stockholm Syndrome: a reaction to the crazed psychopath he couldn’t seem to get away from. That theory fell apart every time Q got James alone and climbed him like a tree, though, so perhaps it’d be best if he stopped entertaining it. James had more than proven his ability to respect Q’s boundaries, after all.
They went to James’ flat sometimes, too. Q was more pleased than he’d like to admit to catch Margaret in the hallway again, mostly because she lit up when she saw Q with James; the third such time they ran into her, she made a point to tell James how he’d keep this one if he knew what was good for him. Q thought he would never get sick of teasing James about his sassy matchmaking neighbor, but on that particular occasion he didn’t get much of a chance; everything he’d planned to say vanished into thin air when he got to James’ room and saw a familiar painting hanging on the wall.
“When the fuck did you get that?” Q demanded when he could find words again.
“I bought it the night you had your gallery showing. While you were in the lav.” James slid arms around Q’s neck, nibbling lightly under Q’s ear. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you take commissions.”
“You just need to accept the fact that you are never getting that exploding pen and move on with life,” said Q loftily, and got the unique pleasure of hearing James snort with laughter against his neck, right before he yanked Q’s shirt out of his trousers and thinking got hard.
There was no conversation about What This Is (and nor would there be, if Q had any say in it) but if Q didn’t know better, hadn’t convinced himself that there was no way this could be what he wanted, he would have said they were dating. And okay, it was true that they spent most nights that James wasn’t away on a mission at each other’s flats, and it was true that James now routinely brought him-presents, really, was the only word for it, presents like the first puzzle-box he’d got for Q. All of them ended up in Q’s flat, as precious to him now as the man who brought them to him in the first place.
Q had to break it off. He had to. He just… couldn’t find any believable reason to do it, and he couldn’t tell James the real one. There was no way this was going to end but badly, and that was why Q had to walk away.
If only it weren’t so bloody hard.
* * * * *
“Tell me about your tattoos,” James said.
Q glanced up at him from the Leonard Mlodinow book he was reading; there did exist some popular science books that weren’t so watered-down as to be insulting, and this was one of them. He and James were enjoying a quiet night in, James having just come back from another mission, this time to India. “Well James,” he said, rolling onto his side, “generally the first thing the tattoo artist does is make you sign a form alleging that you are not under the influence of any intoxicating substances-”
James cuffed his shoulder. “Knock it off,” he said, smiling slightly, and Q relented, returning his smile. “It looks like all one piece; did you get them all at once?”
Q shook his head. “No, but I wanted it to look that way. I had several of them in mind when I first got started, but I had to look around for awhile before I found an artist whose style I liked. I brought in some sketches and print-outs and we sorted out a general design, and then I’ve just… added to it several times since then. Erika’s excellent about adding new parts and making it all look of a piece.”
“Mm.” James ran his hand along Q’s bicep, rubbing his thumb over the stylized computer keyboard, then following the arc of the calaveras sugar-skull. “Do they mean anything? Or are you one of those young people who just likes how tattoos look?”
“You make us sound like an alien species,” Q said, elbowing James in his stomach for his cheek. It was utterly ineffective, of course; he might as well have jammed his elbow against a brick wall for all that James seemed to feel it, but then Q hadn’t been intending any damage anyway. “It’s both. Yes, they all have meaning, but I wanted a particular aesthetic, too.”
“I recognize what most of them are,” said James. “Or, what the image is, anyway.” He glanced up at Q. “Is the sugar skull for someone in particular?
Q shut his book, setting it aside so he could twist his head around and look at the same pieces of skin James was examining. “I got it when my dad died, yeah.” He rotated his arm, turning out his tricep to peer at the design better, the colors as familiar to him now as the birthmark on the back of his thigh. “Last living member of my family.”
“Sorry to hear that,” murmured James. Q said nothing; it was something they had in common, and while losing his father had been hard, their relationship had always been strained. Papa had never quite forgiven him for disappearing for the better part of a year and a half on what was supposed to be just a 5-week trip to the States.
Carly chose this moment to butt her head against Q’s elbow, meowing plaintively before curling up against the S-curve of Q’s spine. James glanced at her and snorted before returning to studying Q’s arm, gently lifting and turning to better examine the landscape of Q’s personal art gallery. “The computer is self-explanatory… what about this? An ankh?”
“Yes. The crux ansata, symbol of eternal life,” said Q. “I was in need of a little life after death at the time.”
James raised an eyebrow, but when Q offered no more, he pressed no further. He returned his attention to Q’s arm, running his thumb over the simplified fractal pattern that swept over the muscle just above the back of Q’s elbow. “I bet your tattoo artist had a hell of a time with this pattern,” he observed, and Q smiled. “What about the plague doctor mask?”
Q paused, trying to assemble his thoughts into order. “That one’s difficult,” he said after a moment. “My mother was a nurse; she died of complications from pneumonia when I was five. But… I actually got that tattoo when I was hired on at MI6.” Q hesitated, dropping his eyes as he tried to explain this piece of personal history without straying into the maudlin. “I liked to think that I was doing the same sort of work she was,” he said finally. “It’s not pretty and it can be grim, and there’s a lot of death, but it’s important work and I’m proud to be the one doing it.”
James said nothing to this, just watched him with that clear, steady gaze. He gave Q a very small smile, the one that Q saw most infrequently, that he thought only a handful of people in the world ever saw, and it was that much more precious because of it. “What about this equation, here?” he asked after a bit, returning his gaze to the tapestry of color. “I don’t recognize it.”
It was Q’s turn to smile. “That’s not a surprise, as it’s from my uni physics classes,” he said. “It’s a Schrödinger equation used in quantum mechanics. It’s a partial differential equation that describes how the quantum state of some physical system changes with time. This one in particular is the general form, it...” Both of James’ eyebrows had gone up now, and Q left off before he could detour into a more complicated explanation, but he was stung by a sudden urge to justify this particular choice, this expression of self. “Some people think poetry or music are the only valid ways to express universal truth,” he said, his voice pensive. “But if you want the simplest, most elegant expression of existence, you’ll find nothing better than a maths equation. Everything changes with time.”
James stared. The corner of his mouth twisted ever so slightly, and then he leaned down and kissed Q, cupping his face in both hands as he literally took Q’s breath away, kissing him until Q was dizzy. “I think you may have missed your calling, my dear,” James murmured, still nuzzling Q’s cheek.
“Bollocks,” said Q, trying and failing not to sound like he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. “Besides, I like blowing things up.” He shut his eyes, gone dizzy all over again at the sound of James’ rich laughter in his ears, worth more than a thousand hours of ink or code or art.
* * * * *
Almost six weeks had passed since the night of Q’s gallery show when Q got the call.
A mobile rang at some ungodly hour of the morning, and both he and James fumbled at the side of the bed, answering almost simultaneously. “Hello,” said James beside him, and then grunted as he realized his mistake.
“What the hell is it,” said Q. James slung an arm over Q’s stomach again, and Q curled against him, wondering which of them had left the window cracked; it was bloody cold in his room and for no good reason.
“Sorry to wake you.” Adrienne sounded entirely too normal and chipper for-two in the morning, Q thought, squinting at the clock by the bed. “But I thought you ought to know that that agent of yours has broken into another one of your flats, the one on Downing Street.”
Q blinked a few times. Frowned. “What are you on about?” he demanded, feeling stupid and not liking it. “He can’t have.”
“It’s not that much of a surprise, is it? He found two of the other ones. I’m surprised it took him this long, really. He must be quite sweet on you.” Adrienne, because she was a sick woman, had reacted with delight upon discovering that the agent who’d broken into Q’s flats had asked him out to dinner, something Q had let slip only because he was bad at lying point-blank when he wasn’t expecting it and he could think of nothing else to say when asked so why is one of MI6’s field agents breaking into the quartermaster’s flat anyway?
“He’s not-he can’t possibly have broken into the Downing street flat. Check the feed, did anyone show up on the cameras?” Beside him, Q felt James go still, and then James’ head came up, the force of that regard leveled on him full-bore.
“I did; there’s a blank period when the cameras went offline, he must’ve cut the wires. Bit more subtle than the last two attempts he made. Why are you so sure it isn’t him?”
“Because he’s here with me,” said Q. The silence on the other end of the phone was suddenly very loud. It seeped into his bedroom, dripping in like cold water, and Q sat up, a stone settling into the pit of his stomach.
“Right,” said Adrienne after a few moments too long. “Do you want to come over and have a look at it?”
“I will,” said Q, looking at James, who was now sitting up in bed beside him and staring at him, hard. “But not right now. I’ll have someone by to pick it up tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know, Adrienne.”
“Take care of yourself, Ghost,” she said, and rung off.
“Someone broke into one of your flats,” said James, reaching up to take the mobile from Q and setting it aside. Q exhaled through his nose.
“Yes, well, that’s why I have the decoy flats to start with,” he said, unable to keep some irritation from creeping into his voice. “Because it had occurred to me that I might be a target.”
He glanced at James, trying to ignore the way the draft from the window was now creeping across his shoulders like spectral fingers, but his poker face wasn’t as good as his agent’s, and James brought a hand to Q’s face, cupping his cheek. “What is it?” asked James, softly. “You’re scared.”
Dammit. There were definitely downsides to James being so sharp. “I think I’ve a right to be a bit shook up over a phone call like that, thanks very much,” said Q, which was true enough.
“Mmm. Would it have anything to do with the fact that Eve’s flat was broken into a month or so ago?”
“I don’t know. We never did find out what the hell they were looking for at her flat, did we?” Q sighed, giving in and slumping against James, who wrapped both arms around him, resting his cheek against the top of Q’s head. “There are a few possibilities I can think of, and I don’t like any of them, but short of one of my interns having a fucking dreadful sense of humor, I don’t think I’m going to find an answer that I’m going to like.”
“It’ll be fine.” James smoothed a large hand along Q’s spine, his thumb rubbing gently at the ridge of vertebrae. One day Q would stop being surprised by how tender James could be; right now he just sighed, turning his face against James’ clavicle, feeling the slightly rough tracery of old scars against his cheekbone. “If I couldn’t find your actual flat, no bloody amateur is going to manage.”
“You’d have found it sooner or later,” Q murmured. “Had plenty of opportunities to follow me home.”
Q felt James shrug. “You told me not to,” he said. His deep voice sounded amused.
“Oh, because you’re always so keen on following the rules,” said Q.
“Some situations matter more than others,” said James quietly, and Q bit his lip, the tightness in his throat making it hard to think what to say. So he said nothing, just cupped James’ neck in one hand and kissed his throat, and tried to ignore the weight in his chest that whispered that something was wrong.
* * * * *
Predictably, work the next day was so batshit insane that Q didn’t get time to look at the video and meta-data Adrienne sent over till late afternoon. Equally predictably, Q’s plate was extra full due to 007’s impending departure; he was being sent on another mission in two days, and it looked to be a fairly long-term one, infiltrating a terrorist cell in Bolivia.
Q was no more going to send Bond unprepared or under-equipped than he would leave his own flat without trousers on, so he sent the tape along to Tessa with strict orders to not show it to anyone until after she’d run her assessment by Q. Then he set himself to the task of finishing reviewing Bond’s weapons and recording devices. There was a pen with a hidden cartridge of deadly poison that Q had hoped to have finished before Bond got sent off again-it wasn’t as flashy as many of the things Bond liked to work with, but it would get the job done, if Q could manage to better safeguard its carrier from accidentally poisoning him- or herself. Sadly it wasn’t yet ready for commission, and so Bond would have to settle for his by-now standard issue palm-ID’d Walther, radio, and various other items of espionage.
“Anything on the recording Adrienne sent over?” Moneypenny peered at Q’s screen, arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t even have the excuse of clipboards or paperwork to bring him this time, but really, she didn’t need an excuse; no motive or perpetrator for the break-in to her old flat had yet been discovered, and it was a hell of a fishy coincidence for Q’s flat to be broken into so soon after, decoy or no.
“Nothing, according to Tessa.” Q pursed his lips, saving and minimizing the program he’d just had open as he pulled open the email Tessa had sent along with her findings. “The only reason we knew there was a break-in at all was because a silent alarm went off when they opened the front door without one of our encoded keys. But whoever it was had gone by the time security arrived.”
“Did they take anything?”
“Nothing there to take. You’ve seen my fake flats, nothing of substance in any of them. There’s just some furniture and some basic amenities to make it look like someone lives there.” Q flicked through the images, glaring irritably at the few seconds of footage that repeated themselves over and over, and the timestamp that skipped from 0134 hours to 0153 hours like a blinking eye.
“Well, that’s obnoxious.”
“Tell me about it.” Q sighed and glanced up at Moneypenny. “There’s been a team through it to search for prints, but no one’s sent me back any word yet.”
“Same as my flat. Professional, that.” Q nodded, wishing that there’d been another conclusion for him to come to aside from that one. His discomfort was not made any better by Moneypenny reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder and adding, quietly, “If the same person got into your flat as mine, darling, I’d have to say that it’s probably you they’re looking for.”
Q said nothing. But if he he took an extra twenty minutes to get home that night via a combination of cabs and the Underground, he felt he could not much be blamed.
* * * * *
To exactly no one’s surprise, James Bond was an effective distraction when he wanted to be. And since tonight was his last night with Q for the immediate future, he had a vested interest in commanding all of Q’s attention, which Q was only too happy to give to him.
Q did not open his computer at all that night. He thought about very little except James’ eyes, and his mouth, and other parts less mentionable in polite company but no less worthy of his praise. But the thing Q was most grateful for that night was the deep, exhausted sleep James gave him, undisturbed by bad dreams or rumors.
It would be his last night of good sleep for several weeks.
* * * * *
It wasn’t until Bond was several hours gone on his plane ride to Bolivia that Q got around to doing some more serious investigation. He went home to do it, hacking into MI6’s servers remotely from the safety of his bedroom. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to access work systems from home, but as far as he knew no one else was even aware that he did it, and as it wasn’t as though he was dropping in viruses or trojans, he saw no harm.
Q hadn’t done digging quite like this in awhile; most of the intelligence-gathering for their agents was done by other people, though of course he was more than competent at finding what he was looking for. It was just that it’d been years since he’d had much occasion for it.
The truth was, despite what he’d told James, Q did not have many people who even knew enough about his existence to target him. There was a reason the head of Q Branch was simply called Q, the same reason Mallory was simply M now. And Q had hidden himself about as well as it was possible to hide, short of removing himself to a deserted island somewhere; his birth name had been officially declared dead by the British government several years ago, and almost no paper trail existed of his current legal identity, one William Monk who had multiple decoy flats listed under his name in MI6’s secure servers. His actual residence was listed as rented to a fictional corporation by the name of Domestic Gains & Holdings, LTD.
It took him several minutes to get access to the current roster of the maximum-security prison in France that he was looking for, and then Q sat staring at his screen as two separate searches of the list brought back the same null return. Not found, the little window informed him.
“Bollocks,” he said aloud. He broadened his search, scanning impatiently through files, trying to quell the growing nausea in his stomach. This time he set the program to search for all files within the past 6 months, and ten seconds or so later several hits popped up.
Markham, David; Markham, Janessa. An external transfer, signed off by the warden. The previous files were all run-of-the-mill entries, detailing inmate activities, health records and the like. Q blanched as the continuing search popped up several photos, hastily killing the program before it could return more results. He sat there for several seconds, his eyes averted, before taking a deep breath and forcing himself to look at the faces on the screen.
The first was of a man, early thirties, with streaks of grey in his close-cropped light brown hair; shorter than Q remembered, and lacking the facial hair he’d often sported. There were harder lines around his eyes now than the last time Q had seen him, but the strength in his features remained, the dimple at the corner of his mouth, the true brown eyes. David Markham wasn’t smiling in the photo, but Q had seen it so many times that he had no problem remembering the way his face had crinkled when he laughed, his slow Texan drawl that dripped with humor. He did not look like he’d had much occasion to laugh recently.
The second photo was similar to the first, a woman staring straight at the camera, the intensity in her gaze a little unnerving. Prison had not dulled Janessa’s attractiveness, but it had made her expression harder, and Q suffered a pang at the tightness in her full lips, and at the scar across her elegant nose, the asymmetry reminding him obliquely of James’. But her blue eyes were as clear as ever, her blonde hair pulled back from her face in an unforgiving ponytail.
Q took a long, slow breath, jumping a little as Carly leaped up onto the bed next to him. “Fucking hell,” he muttered to himself, scooping up his purring cat to cradle her against his chest. The feel of her calmed him a little, and he flicked the photos away, paging through the other results instead. He pulled open the transfer form again, checked the date.
Just over five months ago. Right after a certain former MI6 agent had been ripping a trail of destruction across London. Right when Q’s hands were too full to even think of checking on something like this… not that he would have, probably. Q swallowed.
It had been five years, after all. Why should he have thought to check on them after so long? They were in prison.
…weren’t they?
Q suddenly felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with open windows or the snow outside on the ground. He went back to his original search screen, and set it to run a nation-wide search of France’s prisons for those two names. The search had a lot more items to scroll through, and thus took several minutes longer, several minutes of Q staring uneasily at the two photos in the corner of his screen and petting his oblivious cat.
Not found, the search came back finally. Q’s mouth went dry, and then he sighed, broadening his search to include the whole of Europe.
It was going to be a long evening.
* * * * *
When Q came in the next day looking like he’d been backed over repeatedly by a mail truck, Moneypenny gave him a long, questioning look to which he did not respond. He had work to do. Specifically, he would have at most 48 hours before Bond went into deep cover, and there were a number of goals he had to help Bond achieve before that happened.
They couldn’t talk about personal matters over their comms channels, of course. Which didn’t stop Q from staying on the line with 007 whenever opportunity permitted it, even when not strictly necessary for his assignment. And it wasn’t like Q could stop Bond from signing off on the other end, but 007 seemed as disinclined as Q to break the connection. He lingered longer on the line than he might have otherwise, checked in more regularly than normal.
It was unnecessary, but Q found himself obscurely grateful for it. He’d have socked Bond in the jaw had he so much as implied that Q was unable to cope with the security situation on his own, but it was nice to at least know that 007 was thinking about him. They talked about nothing in particular: the weather in Bolivia; the idiotic book Bond had read on the plane ride over; the new installation that would be on at the Tate Modern in a few weeks. It absolutely rated as one of the most boring conversations Q had ever had.
That did not stop him from feeling stupidly abandoned when Bond finally signed off, though, or from allowing Moneypenny to persuade him to stay the night at her new apartment.
* * * * *
A week passed. The meta-data and physical evidence from Q’s decoy flat yielded absolutely nothing, which was made all the worse when another of Q’s flats was broken into four days after Bond left for Bolivia. The break-in was exactly the same as the previous two: nothing taken, no physical evidence, and no video recording of the intruders. “Nothing” was also what Q had turned up on his two missing convicts, and the maddening lack of any concrete leads was just serving to amplify Q’s increasing paranoia.
Several times, he was close to breaking down and calling a private meeting with Moneypenny to confide in her, but every time he held himself back. The damnable thing was that he simply had no reason to think that Janessa and David’s escape from prison (if they had, in fact, escaped, and had not been invisibly extradited to somewhere back in the US, a possibility Q had not yet ruled out) was connected to the break-ins of his and Moneypenny’s flats. They certainly had motivation, but so did plenty of other people Q had helped to destroy or discredit during his work with MI6, even if they only knew of him in a general way. If someone had gotten ahold of sensitive information from their servers (Q could not help but think of the virus outbreak a few months back that had dragged him from his bed), then any one of a great number of dangerous people could be hunting for Q. He simply needed more information.
And no matter how scared Q was, he just couldn’t bring himself to drag all of his skeletons out of the closet to taint his new life unless he absolutely had to. He and Adrienne and Jonathan had worked so bloody hard to start over; he couldn’t bring it all crashing down for nothing.
So he worked overtime, and monitored his agents, and coded until his eyes wanted to shrivel up and roll out of his head. He ran new searches every night for new information, and he ran himself more literally into the ground at MI6’s indoor gyms until he could barely stagger to the showers. And he waited.
* * * * *
Q worked late that night.
He worked late often, true, but today was more necessity than Q’s terrifying work ethic or even his dread of being home alone with his own thoughts. Between the paperwork piling up related to their upcoming transition and the forms Tanner had brought by around 4 pm, it was almost nine before he finally dragged himself away from his work station. He would have stayed later, in fact, were it not for the text he’d gotten shortly after Moneypenny came by to force some dinner on him.
The message was short and to the point, from an unlisted number: Agrippina and Fezzik need a seance. 2130 @ the old stand by. M would throw a fit if he knew, probably, but Q was the head of Q Branch for a reason and didn’t have any spare fucks to give today. Not after the week and a half he’d had.
Q walked briskly out of the compound, taking the most unobtrusive exit from MI6’s no-longer-that-temporary location. He hailed a cab, then sent it along without getting into it. He did this twice more, before finally getting into the next one that happened along, and he took that across hell’s half-acre and back before getting out, paying the driver, and hailing yet another cab. This one he took to the Charing Cross Road tube stop, and then got out and walked eight blocks to a run-down hole-in-the-wall that had no right to call itself a pub and yet insisted on operating anyway.
He wormed his way through the crowd to the back end of the pub, and broke into a grin at the sight of Jonathan’s bulk squashed into the booth next to Adrienne’s smaller, curvier form. “Well aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes, out for a drink with no four-year-old attached,” he said, and slid into the booth to submit to a round of hugs and a kiss on the cheek.
“Only because you’ve been staring at computer screens all day,” said Jonathan-Fezzik-once he was done crushing the Q’s ribs into putty. He was dressed to the nines tonight, an old-fashioned pinstriped suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an American gangster film. Q had no doubt it would make him look even taller than he was when Jonathan was standing instead of hunched over a too-small table.
“Hello, my sweet boffin,” said Adrienne, smiling. Adrienne was Agrippina, of course; the poisoner. Her hair was dark as her eyes, and twisted up in an elaborate up-do tonight. She reminded Q of old Botticelli paintings, with ample curves and soft olive skin, and Q never failed to be delighted by the bright sleeve of tattoos that snaked up her arm to cascade over her shoulder to her back. She was one of the reasons he’d wanted some of his own in the first place. “Sorry for the short notice, but I’m afraid it’s quite urgent.”
“I was afraid of that, if you had to call a seance to do it.” Q had been Ghost, back when their pseuds had been their whole lives instead of just clever plays on words. He’d picked the name when he was, what, 15, and then been stuck with it, because by the time Janessa and David came along he had a reputation attached to it. As a rule, Ghost had never been involved unless he absolutely had to be; Janessa and David had preferred to keep him away from the action. Of course, where they’d actually liked to keep him was just as dangerous in its own way.
Funny, really. Janessa and David had had their own pseuds, Nefertiti and Ramses, but Q never thought of them by those names. They were only ever Janessa and David.
Adrienne and Jonathan exchanged a look. Q raised an eyebrow, doing his best to squash the panic that immediately welled in his chest. “Go on, out with it, no point in all the cloak and dagger otherwise, is there.”
Adrienne sighed. “Terry told me a tall thin man with a limp came into the shop today with a tattoo of a spider in its web on the back of his right hand.” Terry was one of Adrienne’s employees. He was also not privy to Adrienne’s history, which made that bit of intel so much worse.
Q stared at Adrienne, feeling all the blood run out of his face. “Oh god,” he said, and swallowed thickly. He realized abruptly that he hadn’t ordered a drink, but then Jonathan was pushing a pint of cider at him and Q picked it up to sip at it, not even tasting it. It helped ease the tightness in his throat, though, and he swallowed past the knot, trying to think. “Was he after anything? What did Terry say?”
“Terry said no. Just that he dawdled for awhile with a coffee and took a box of scones with him when he left. Didn’t ask any questions.”
Q nodded, exhaling slowly. “Right,” he said heavily. “Well. I think that settles it, then.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Just because that old creeper has made an appearance doesn’t mean-”
“No, it’s worse than that,” Q cut in. “They’re off the radar. I can’t find Nefertiti or Ramses in any prison that has a functional computer, I can’t even find a fucking mention of them that’s more recent than five months ago.”
The three of them sat there for a few moments, and then Jonathan raised his drink, tossing the rest of it back in one go. “Right,” he said. “Time for a back up plan.”
“No,” said Q flatly. “No back-up plan. We’re not doing this alone. No don’t even start,” he snapped, as Adrienne opened her mouth to protest. “You have a four-year-old, and we’re out of practice, and there’s no point in working for MI6 and not asking them for help when we need it. They’re too dangerous and you know it.”
Jonathan glowered at him for a few moments. Adrienne reached over and laid her hand across the top of his, and he deflated, sighing and leaning back in the booth. “Alright,” said Adrienne, and Q nodded, glad that they weren’t going to argue with him on this.
“It’s not safe for you to stay at your place tonight,” he continued. “If they know where your bake shop is, I’m sure they know where your flat is. I’ll get ahold of Moneypenny and we’ll get you sorted somewhere safe.”
“I’ve just left Vanessa with Johanna,” said Adrienne, referring to one of the nannies MI6 (well, Q) had vetted for her. “Should we go home, or-”
Q hesitated, and then sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, dragging a hand distractedly through his hair. “If you’ve an escort, then yes. Let me just ring up Moneypenny.”
The phone call was short and to the point; Q asked for a security team to be sent to Charing Cross Road tube station, with the assignment of escorting Adrienne and Jonathan to pick up their daughter and return to their flat before being taken to a safe house. Moneypenny would be coming herself to collect Q, and Q was more grateful than he had the words to express that she did not ask him why over the phone.
This was a conversation he was going to have to have in person. He figured there was less of a chance of her walking out on him than there was of her hanging up.
* * * * *
Adrienne and Jonathan refused to get in the car with their security team until Moneypenny’s sleek silver Mercedes had pulled up next to the curb and they’d watched Q climb inside. He shut the door, buckling the belt across his waist and slumping in the seat, avoiding Moneypenny’s gaze. She put the car in gear and slipped back out into traffic, and for perhaps forty-five seconds neither of them said anything. Finally, Q could take it no longer.
“Eve,” he said, glancing over. “Thanks for coming.”
Moneypenny snorted. “Good god, Q,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road, “did someone die?”
“What? No-what-”
“You never call me Eve.” She sounded calm, and totally unconcerned. “Of course, you don’t often call me at quarter to ten asking me to send a security team to your location, either. I’m guessing this is a conversation that needs to be had in private?”
“You could say that,” said Q, trying not to sound like he was facing a firing squad and failing.
“Is it about those break-ins?”
“…Yes.”
“Ah, so you’re actually going to tell me what’s had you looking like you’re scared of your own shadow for the past week and a half.” Q swallowed, gripping the tops of his thighs very tightly. Moneypenny glanced over at him, eyebrows going up. “Q. Breathe. Believe it or not, I have some idea of what you’re going to tell me, so you can stop looking as though you expect me to take your head off at the neck.”
“I very much doubt that,” said Q shortly.
“Oh, no? I suppose I’ll just tell M to not wait up for us, then.”
Q stared. “What?” he managed, after a few moments. “Wait, are we going to M’s, why are we going to M’s?”
“Is this a conversation you want to have more than once?” Moneypenny glanced at him again before returning her eyes to the road.
Q dropped his gaze to his lap. “I hadn’t honestly thought that much past telling you and asking what you thought I should do next,” he admitted. “But no, I don’t. I don’t want anyone to hear this except you. And M, because I suppose he has to.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Moneypenny, and reached over to squeeze Q’s knee. “Don’t worry, darling. We’ve got you.”
Q said nothing, but after a moment he covered his hand with hers and squeezed back.
* * * * *
Adrienne Stanton. Jonathan Stanton, looking particularly ostentatious and possibly with worse facial hair than he normally does. Janessa Markham. David Markham. As played by Adrienne Armstrong, Sheamus, Tricia Helfer, and Ryan Bingham, respectively.
