Fic: Slow Dancing In a Burning Room (6/9)
Slow Dancing In A Burning Room, 6/9
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 Six. They say it gets worse before it gets better; what "they" didn't mention is how bad "worse" can be.
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, part four is here, and part five is here.
They did not go to M’s office, or to his flat; instead they met at one of MI6’s upper-level safe-houses, to which only the highest-ranked agents and employees had access. Q wondered vaguely what it must be like to have a life where meeting to discuss a private matter wasn’t like an angry game of British Bulldog where you got shot at if you did it wrong and no one’s told you the rules. Most of the time he loved his job, but there was little he wouldn’t give right now to not have to jump through eight security measures and a flaming hula hoop just to have a piss.
M was waiting for them when they arrived, looking utterly unsurprised at the clandestine meeting. He was still wearing the same pinstripe suit and waistcoat he had on at work that day, his tie not even undone; Q suspected he had not stopped working at all. “Q, Moneypenny.” He nodded at them both as they entered the room, gesturing at the seats across from him. Q glanced over and noticed that Moneypenny now had out a Beretta (an M190 Special Force model that he’d just recently modified himself, actually) and was resting it across her lap, which wasn’t disconcerting at all. Where the fuck had she even hidden it in that frock of hers?
“So,” said M. “Out with it, quartermaster. Let’s not beat around the bush.”
Q took a deep breath. “Sir, you’ve read my file.”
“I have,” said M easily. “The official and the unofficial one, both.” M’s fingers curled lightly against his desk-top, his gaze on Q never wavering.
“Right,” said Q. Of course he would have. There was no way Mawdsley would have destroyed that file, would she, and Gareth Mallory was nothing if not thorough. Q straightened, forcing himself to be calm, to remain in control. He could do this. “Janessa and David Markham are missing, sir. I can’t find them in any prison manifesto in any country in the EU or the United States. And today a man was spotted in Adrienne Stanton’s bakeshop that matched the description of one of the Markhams’ old gang.”
M frowned. “I thought you gave them all up in your immunity agreement for yourself and the Stantons,” he said.
“In your what?” Moneypenny was looking at Q now, but went quiet again when M glanced at her.
“I did,” said Q flatly. “I gave M-uh, your predecessor-every file and code and bit of intel I had on our group and our contacts. But Eric Temple slipped the trap your agents laid for the rest of the gang, somehow, and evaded capture. Last I had heard, he was in Malaysia somewhere.”
“But you say he’s been spotted in London,” said M. “Are you sure it was him? Have you ID’d him yourself?”
Q winced. “No, not personally, yet,” he said reluctantly. “I’m having the CCTV from Adrienne’s bakeshop sent over to examine, but coupled with the unidentified break-ins of my and Moneypenny’s flats, and considering my past, I thought it prudent to assume the worst.”
M said nothing for a moment, his frown deepening. He drummed his fingers on the table, and then seemed to come to a decision. “That was the right choice,” he said. “Thank you for validating my faith in you by bringing this to me instead of trying to handle it by yourself, quartermaster.” M turned his attention to Eve, who was sitting like a sharp, eager weapon in the seat next to Q, her eyes bright. “Agent Moneypenny. Nothing we have discussed, or are about to discuss, is to leave this room. If you believe one of our staff must be involved, you are to clear it with me first.”
“Understood, sir,” she said.
“It was before your time, but you may still recall hearing about the activities of a criminal group known as the Machine, operating world-wide roughly five to six years ago,” said M.
“Vaguely,” said Moneypenny. “People talked about them sort of the way one does about conspiracy theory groups, though. I got the impression they were mostly rumor.”
“That was because they were incredibly difficult to find anything concrete about,” said M. Q stayed quiet, morbidly curious to hear what someone like Gareth Mallory would have to say about the group of people Q once thought of as his family. “There were six members: Agrippina, Fezzik, Nefertiti, Ramses, Ghost, and the Recluse. Adrienne and Jonathan Stanton were Agrippina and Fezzik, respectively.” M glanced at Q, raising an eyebrow in invitation.
Q exhaled. “I was Ghost,” he said, turning and looking at Moneypenny. He wondered if she’d get the joke; it didn’t seem as funny, five years down the line. “The man Adrienne thought came into her bakeshop today was the Recluse, real name Eric Temple. Named for the venomous spider. Incredibly dangerous sociopath.”
“What about Nefertiti and Ramses? These people are after Q?” If Moneypenny was fazed by any of this, she certainly wasn’t showing it. Q felt a sudden wash of desperate affection for her, her humor and her loyalty and her whip-smart, lethal competence.
“It seems that way,” said M. He glanced at Q again before continuing. “Nefertiti and Ramses were the pseudonyms for Janessa and David Markham. Along with Temple, they were wanted in over forty countries on multiple counts of extortion, murder, torture, and various other sins. We have no way of knowing how much longer it would have taken to apprehend them, but my predecessor’s email account was hacked by a young man who identified himself as a British national who was working inside the gang, name of Simon Dubois. In exchange for immunity and protection for himself and two others, he offered precise details of the Machine’s location, movements, personal accounts, criminal contacts, and plans, and for agreeing to aid law enforcement in the apprehension of the Markhams and Eric Temple, at great personal risk to himself.”
M paused; Moneypenny glanced over sharply at Q. He looked from face to face. “What?”
“Q,” said Moneypenny, after several long moments, “you’re shaking.”
“That’s hardly relevant,” snapped Q. Moneypenny’s expression did not change, and she kept her gaze steady; after a few moments it was Q who looked away, glaring at a spot on the floor adjacent to Mallory’s desk.
Out of the corner of his eye, Q saw M lean back slightly, enough to rest his elbows on the desk and steeple his fingers together. “The details and findings of MI6’s investigation into Simon Dubois’ personal activities are not relevant to the matter at hand,” he said. “However, I will note that Mawdsley herself oversaw the process, and that MI6 has an ironclad stipulation against the hiring of individuals who have been charged with an indictable offense.”
“Understood, sir.”
Q said nothing. What M had not said hung in the air: “not charged with” was not the same as “not guilty of.” He wasn’t going to try to defend himself to Moneypenny in front of M, and he wasn’t yet prepared to contemplate how this conversation was going to go with James. There was no real way to avoid it, now.
“Q, I realize that your real flat has not yet actually been broken into,” M continued, “but I still think it’s not safe for you to stay there, at least until we’ve identified and neutralized the source of their info.” Q nodded and then forced himself to look up, trying to school his features into something less sullen.
“The Stantons have already been moved to a safe house,” said Moneypenny.
“Excellent work, Agent Moneypenny,” said M. “See to it that they receive a security detail. Standard procedure for targeted personnel.” The tightness in Q’s chest eased a little; he’d been worried he’d have to argue for full protection, since Adrienne and Jonathan were not technically MI6 employees, but apparently it was not an issue. “I want you to escort Q to his flat to retrieve anything of a sensitive nature before he goes to ground. We will be utilizing all the resources at our command to locate the people stalking you. Q, this is of the utmost importance: absolutely no one is to be made aware of your location once you arrive there. I will arrange for a cover story to explain your absence, but no one save myself, Moneypenny, and Tanner will know your true location or circumstances. You are not to initiate contact with anyone for any reason.”
Q bristled. “But sir,” he began, “what about the agents in the field, I have to-”
“Bond can be made informed of your location upon his return, once he’s been debriefed, if you wish.”
Q froze, and then shot a dirty look at Moneypenny without thinking. “I didn’t say anything,” said Moneypenny.
“She didn’t need to, as I have eyes,” said M. Q wondered if there was an app for making the ground open up beneath you to swallow you whole.
“Uh,” said Q. “Right. Does Tanner already know about the circumstances, or-”
“He’s aware of some, not all,” said M. “Nothing about this changes anything, Q. I expect you to work on what projects you can while in deep cover, and I expect you to return to your full duties as quartermaster as soon as this threat has been neutralized.” He raised both his eyebrows at Q, a faint smile on his face belying the reproof in his words. “Are we done here?”
“Yes, sir,” said Q, because the urge to either vomit or to start babbling his thanks would simply not do. He stood up, Moneypenny rising a fraction of a second later.
“Good. I expect regular reports from both of you. Now go, and be careful.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, and then Q let Moneypenny walk him to the door.
* * * * *
The drive home was a new flavor of awkward that Q had not experienced before. It was clear that Moneypenny wanted to ask more about the information she’d just been made privy to, but Q had spent so many years burying it inside himself that he’d lost the words to tell her about it. He’d never been so grateful to pull up to the building with his flat in it.
Carly came running out to meet them as soon as he let himself and Moneypenny up the hidden entranceway, maowing and twining around Q’s feet in her best attempt to trip him or con him into picking her up, whichever came first. Q couldn’t resist, crouching to scoop her up and burying his face in her soft white fur. She wriggled in his arms, purring like a miniature engine, and Q drew in an audible breath, sharp like a piece of glass in his lungs.
He felt a touch at his shoulder; Moneypenny’s hand was light, giving him a brief squeeze. “Shouldn’t be too hard to get a CCTV feed to your safe-house from here,” she said. “Then you can watch me stop by and feed your cat and seduce her into coming home with me.”
Q smiled. “I expect you won’t have to try very hard, she’s a traitorous brat,” he said. His voice sounded thin even to his own ears.
“Come on, boffin,” said Moneypenny, gently. “It’s not getting any less late.”
Q let out a short laugh, one devoid entirely of humor. “It’s already much too late,” he said. But he let Moneypenny slip her arm around his waist anyway, leaning mutely into her as they headed down the hall to his bedroom.
* * * * *
The next few days were some of the worst Q had experienced in years. More than the fear of knowing he was being stalked, he hated being powerless and stuck above all other things. The last time he’d gone through anything like this was before he’d worked for MI6, when he’d been on probation of a sorts, doing work on a contracting basis for MI6 but not technically allowed to access any secure files.
It had been a test, of course. While the investigation into the extent of his criminal activities had indeed exonerated him of any violent crimes-that and the fact that M had seen right through him to the scared, abandoned child he’d felt like at the time-MI6 had still not been keen to take him on. But that had left them with the sticky predicament of trying to decide exactly what they should do with him: this boy, this shell-shocked, desperate, brilliant young man, too dangerous to be allowed to go off-radar but questionable enough to not yet be brought into the fold.
M had hit upon the perfect solution, naturally. Be good, she’d said. She’d known what he’d wanted (stability) and what he needed (direction), and she’d dangled the carrot right in front of him. Three years and you’ll be working for Q Branch with the most cutting-edge department in the country. Prove yourself.
Three years! Oh, he’d been so upset. He’d thought her cruel, ridiculous, completely out-of-touch. She’d been utterly unmoved by his protests and so scathingly dismissive that he’d wilted on the spot under her rebuke, like a puppy swatted on its nose.
Don’t be an idiot, Simon, she’d said. Did you really think we’d simply leave you to your own devices during that time? I said ‘be good,’ not ‘wither away into a useless husk.’
The contract work they’d send along to him had been-engaging, and all-consuming while he was working on it. He’d thrived on it, had most especially loved the emails he got from his liaison at Q Branch when he’d send back a finished project days or weeks ahead of schedule. But the flip side of contract work was that you worked 80 hours a week for weeks on end, only to find yourself with nothing at all to do between projects. Q had coped by acquiring hobbies like some people did trading cards: running, video games, fractal art, app programming and other things. And he’d been good.
(Well, for a value of ‘good,’ anyway. Hacking into secure system just to see if he could was as second-nature to Q as breathing, but he damaged nothing and left no marks, and if the occasional email turned up in Q Branch’s inboxes alerting them to security flaws in their systems, he never actually caught any flak for it, so he counted it as a win.)
Now Q had both more and fewer resources at his disposal. He couldn’t leave the flat he was in, but he’d brought enough projects with him to theoretically keep himself occupied (the poison pen, a contact lens prototype with a miniature recording device, and several coding projects that he trusted with no one else, plus a promise from Moneypenny to bring him more should it come to that). But while M had forbidden Q from communicating with anyone not on their approved list and from drawing attention to himself, that left a wide range of other activities open to Q.
Which was why he was sitting curled up under a blanket in this unfamiliar bed with a headset on, listening to the blithering idiots that were in charge during his absence guide 007 over encrypted comms.
“I’m headed down the hallway. No sign of the bomb.” Bond was in ill humor. He hadn’t said much to Mark after coming online, ever the consummate professional (not to mention there were more pressing matters than inquiring about a missing quartermaster while running from the spray of gunfire), but even accounting for Q’s heightened sensitivity, Bond was uncommunicative.
“Very well,” said Mark, his voice clearer over the line than Bond’s far distant one. “Turn left at the end of the hallway, and-” Q jumped as gunfire crackled in his ears, like popcorn on a stove.
“A little help here,” hissed Bond, and Q had to jam his fist into his mouth to keep from entering the command that would let him override Mark’s access to Bond’s ear-piece, the display of Bond’s location already live on Q’s screen. Every fibre of his being sang with the need to take over from the fools who had no idea how to handle the extremely sensitive task of guiding a field agent that depended on you to keep him alive dear God he was going to infect every one of their computers with the nastiest virus he could come up with.
“Working on it,” said Mark shakily. Moments later, klaxons at Bond’s end came shrieking through the line, and Q winced, jamming his finger on the down-volume button to try to cut the screech of electronic feedback.
“What the fuck are you doing over there? Have you got your fingers in your arse or what? Put Q on for God’s sake!”
“He’s not here, he’s been sent off, I don’t know where the bloody hell he is-”
“Well you’d better go and find out before you get me killed,” said Bond darkly. Q put his face in his hands.
“-there, alright, back down the hallway, Bond, the maintenance lift is open for you now. We’ve found the bomb, it’s on the eighth floor.” Mark sounded more in control now, which was the only thing stopping Q from flinging all his expensive electronics out the window of the fourth floor flat and drowning himself in the toilet.
If this was what his life was going to be like till Janessa and David surfaced, it would almost be worth it to advertise his location on a billboard at Leicester Square just to end the pain.
* * * * *
Bond completed his mission objectives and then, as usual, he disappeared off the grid. It’d be close to a day before he was back on British soil, presuming he followed his most recent M.O. and came straight home, but despite the intimacy that had been building between them over the past month and a half, Q honestly had no idea what to expect. This was the first time he’d had to work through anything like this with a significant other in-ever, basically.
He spent most of the day disassembling and tinkering with the innards of the poison pen prototype, the sack of ink that would one day be replaced with poison sealed in a sandwich baggie on the counter, when his mobile vibrated against the coffee table he’d left it sitting on. Q set the pen-tube in his lap and stretched, trying to reach the mobile without moving, flopping onto his back and swiping his finger across the screen to unlock it.
It was a text from Moneypenny. Do us a favor and direct 007 to come in for debriefing when he tries to get a hold of you. Q wrinkled his nose, and turned the mobile horizontal to type out a quick message back.
Because I have such an excellent track record of getting 007 to do what he doesn’t want to. That’s why he always returns my equipment intact.
The response came in under thirty seconds. M wants to clear him on your situation himself before sending him to you. I have to say I agree with him.
Q rubbed at his face, frustration sticking in his throat like a bit of bone. I’ll do my best, he sent back, and then chucked the mobile in the direction of the couch in a fit of pique.
Predictably, he never even got the chance.
Q was doing a sort of Dali-esque drip off the couch, his legs on the cushions, back on the floor, tablet braced vertically against his thighs as he worked, when the alarm popped up on his screen warning him of unauthorized entrance to his wing of the building. He double-tapped, pulling up the CCTV feed, and felt some small amount of the tension drain from his chest when he saw the familiar figure moving through the halls to his door. Q’s fingers danced across the screen, disabling the alert and resetting the alarm before setting the tablet aside and rolling over to hands and knees. He was still climbing to his feet when he heard the front door open and slam shut.
“Q?” Bond’s voice was tight.
“In here.” Q stood, his heart crawling into his throat as Bond came stalking through the doorway wrapped in thunderclouds. “James-”
“You little bastard,” James growled, and god the man was quick. Q found himself with a hand in his hair, James’ other arm lashed around Q’s waist, Q pressed bodily against James’ chest.
“Have you even bothered to change clothes or shower, there’s this thing called personal hygiene-”
“Shut. Up.” There was something in James’ voice that was ruining Q’s ability to think, a dangerous waver that made Q’s brain go skittering sideways in panic. So he shut up, and then slid both arms around James’ waist in kind, slipping under his decidedly-dirty suit coat.
“I thought at first you were dead,” said James after a moment. To Q’s gratitude, he sounded more like himself. “When that little tosser second of yours came on the line and not you.”
“Come on James, give me some credit,” said Q peevishly. He shut his eyes for a moment, distracted by the stubble scraping against his cheek, James’ nose still buried in Q’s hair. “How did you even find me?”
“I used that computer pen you gave me to get the GPS history of Eve’s phone from the past week.”
“You are a menace,” said Q after a moment, his breath hitching as James nosed lower along his neck, biting just under his ear, making Q gasp.
“I wouldn’t have needed to if you had fucking told me where you were,” growled James. The hand in Q’s hair tightened, pulling his skull back to expose more of Q’s throat, and Q shuddered, going limp and pliable in James’ hands, despite the swell of indignation at that statement.
“When exactly was I going to tell you?” demanded Q. “Over the comms line when anyone could hear? ‘By the way I’m in-ngh, fuck-I’m in hiding, be a good man and don’t tell anyone! Kisses, Q!’” James bit down hard on Q’s throat, and Q moaned, clutching at James’ back through his expensive silk shirt.
“What, a text was so difficult? As if I don’t know how simple that is for you.” Q flushed, shoving uselessly at James, who was backing him towards the couch, his big hands everywhere, making Q crazy.
“I’ll have you know that M ordered me not to communicate with anyone not personally cleared by him,” Q snapped. He shoved both hands against James’ shoulders, forcibly bracing himself, injecting some space between them.
James glared at him, his eyes like twin chips of ice in his face. His lip curled. “Right. Got to make sure to be M’s good little boy,” he bit out. Q stared at him, cheeks burning, his eyes stinging suspiciously, and then he slapped James hard across the face, shoving away from him.
“You fuck right off,” he snapped, hating his own voice in his ears. He sounded shaken, too stung to explain away easily.
“Q,” said James behind him.
“Just don’t. I can’t, you have no-no bloody idea-” Q stiffened as James came up behind him, but the hands on his hips were gentler now, cautious. Q took a long, shaky breath.
“Tell me.” Q bit the inside of his cheek till he tasted copper.
“I can’t,” he said finally, and then added before James could protest, “Not yet. Please, I will, but just…” He leaned back, letting James put his arms around him again, letting James kiss his neck in exactly the right place to make him shudder.
“You’d better,” murmured James. Q was still trying to think of an answer when James turned Q’s chin to face him and kissed him hard enough to banish everything else for a few precious moments. James took advantage of his weakness, and Q spent the next thirty-odd minutes having no thoughts beyond gratitude for James’ unmatched skill at taking Q apart.
By mutual assent, they lay in bed for quite some time afterward, neither saying anything. Q was half-tucked underneath James’ body, James having crawled on top of him once he’d disposed of the condom, as possessive as Q had yet seen him. One of James’ hand stroked slowly up and down Q’s arm, their legs tangled underneath the sheets. The bed wasn’t as nice as Q’s own, but the addition of James in it made it considerably more tolerable.
“I’m sorry you only had Mark to see you through your fight at the hotel,” Q murmured finally. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Mmm.” James pushed a lock of Q’s messy hair out of his face, and smiled faintly. “You’re tough to match.”
“It’s why I’m quartermaster,” Q observed, and then sighed. He could still see the spot where he’d slapped James across his face, and he reached up to slide his fingertips over the edge of the mark, the guilt like splinters in his lungs. “…We found out who’s been breaking into my flats.”
James’ hand on his arm stilled, though his expression did not change. Q fought the flip-flop of his stomach, and pressed on, keeping his voice calm. “Have you ever heard of a gang called the Machine?”
James raised an eyebrow. “I thought they’d been taken down,” he said. “It’s been a good five years, hasn’t it?”
“Mostly correct.” Q took a slow, measured breath. “Their leaders were Janessa and David Markham, a married couple from the States. As far as we’ve been able to tell, they’ve escaped from a maximum-security prison in France and are operating in London.”
“Why would Ramses and Nefertiti be looking for you, Q?” James cradled a hand against the side of Q’s face, watching him with a small frown.
“Because I was the one who put them in prison.” Q exhaled. “And I was part of their gang, before I turned them in.”
James stared at him. Q watched mutely, helplessly noting the way James’ nostrils flared, his pupils dilating. “You what,” he said after a few moments.
“Adrienne and Jonathan were in the gang too,” Q said. Now that he’d finally unstoppered himself, he was finding it hard to not just blurt everything out, all the details of the life he’d tried so hard to drown coming welling to the surface like a monster out of a nightmare. “We-”
“They were wanted for murder in over thirty countries,” said James. His voice had a terrible weight to it. “Q.”
“I didn’t know that!” Q clenched his hands into fists, dropping his eyes. “I didn’t know, I had no fucking idea how-how bad they were.”
“How the hell could you not have known?” demanded James. Q sat up, shoving James off him and hunching over his knees, but James refused to be put off, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder next to him.
“They hid it from me, alright?” Q shuddered. “I never went on any of their little… expeditions, their adventures, they wouldn’t let me. They made me stay home with Aggie-Agrippina. Her name was Carolyn then, if you can believe it.” Q swallowed thickly.
Beside him, James said nothing. The silence stretched out, every second making Q feel more like he might vomit. He suddenly couldn’t stand the fact that he was sitting here naked. “How could you have been so bloody stupid?” James asked finally, and the reproof in his voice burned like ice.
“The same reason you were so ready to believe Vesper would never betray you,” Q snapped, and James stiffened beside him.
“Don’t you ever talk about her,” James hissed. “And that is not remotely the same, she was-”
“She was just as much a fool for the people she loved as I was, and it cost her her life,” Q bit out, shoving away from James off the bed and going for a pair of boxer-briefs.
“You were shagging them? Which one?” Q stumbled as he got dressed, nearly tipping over in his haste to clothe himself, and did not answer. “Both of them? Answer me!”
“Yes! Fine! Both of them!” Q stalked to the suitcase open on the floor on the far side of the room, nearly shaking with the adrenaline flooding his system. “I was 20, I was just out of uni and on holiday in the States, I met them in New York City and was completely over the moon, do you want more details?”
“Yes!” shouted James, coming off the bed now too. “I want more details! Or maybe just any details, what the hell, Q, when were you planning on telling me this?”
Q barked out a laugh, yanking a shirt over his head. “Oh, I don’t know, how about the twelfth of never?” He turned around and found James looming in his space, backing him against the wall.
“Why not?” James said. His voice was dangerous, low and hard, like Q had heard in his ears during so many missions.
“Why? Because I knew you’d react like this?” Q’s voice shook, and he tried to push James away, but this time James wasn’t having it. He caught Q around the wrists, pinning him against the wall, his eyes blazing in his face. “Let go of me!”
“You thought it was a better course of action to keep the fact that you had a murderous pair of criminals as exes from me, people who’d come looking for you if they ever got the chance? People who would try to kill you?” James gritted his teeth. He seemed totally unaware of the fact that he was still naked, or perhaps he just didn’t care. A vein in his forehead stood out, and this close up there was no mistaking the hurt in his face, the expression Q had been desperately trying to not look at. God fucking damn him straight to hell.
“What should I have said? When should I have told you? No one knew, okay, not Moneypenny, not Tanner, no one but Mawdsley, I don’t even know if Mallory knows and it’s not like we had a chat about it until this came up.” Again Q tried to yank his wrists out of James’ hands, and this time James let him, though he just shifted his hands to either side of Q’s head against the wall, effectively pinning him in place.
“I thought you trusted me,” James bit out. Oh god, that hurt. Q squeezed his eyes shut against the burn of tears. He would not cry. He would not fucking cry.
“I do trust you, James, that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it.” Q ducked under James’ arm, feeling light-headed, like he was going to be sick. “You’re-you’re the lion in winter, you will always, always do the right thing, no matter the cost, and I was shagging Bonnie and Clyde round half the Northern Hemisphere. I can’t compete.”
“You should have told me.”
Q stooped, picking up James’ shirt from where it lay discarded on the floor. “The list of things I should have done could fill a book, 007,” he said tightly. He held out the shirt. “As would yours. At the top of it currently is returning to headquarters for debriefing from your latest mission.”
James stared at him for a few moments, looking as though Q had slapped him again. Then he nodded, and all the emotion there just moments before drained away, leaving nothing behind but the cold eyes of a trained killer. “Understood, quartermaster,” he said tonelessly.
He picked up his clothes from the floor and left without another word exchanged. Q did not see him out. He waited for five minutes, and then reset the alarm. Then Q went into his kitchen and got down the bottle of whiskey from the top shelf, and retreated to his room.
He didn’t bother with a glass.
* * * * *
Moneypenny found Q a few hours later, nearly passed out in a tub of quickly-cooling water, the half-empty whiskey bottle on the floor next to the tub. It was well that it was only Moneypenny who’d come into the flat, because Q would have made an easy target for anyone who wished him harm.
They’d be hard-pressed to wish him more harm than he wished on himself, though.
“You pathetic arsehole,” said Moneypenny, and Q bleated a half-formed protest before realizing he must have said that last thought aloud. She crouched next to the tub, resting a towel against the edge and attempting to get her arm around his shoulders. “Come on, up you get, you’re turning into a prune on top of trying to pickle yourself.”
“Nooooo,” whined Q, but offered no actual resistance. He leaned heavily against her, shaking as he tried to balance himself, and he let her sit him on the closed toilet wrapped in a towel while she left the room for a minute. She returned shortly with pyjamas, by which point Q had started to slowly tip off the side of the toilet, face mashed against the bathroom tile. Q thought she muttered something about him being lucky she was such a good friend, and proceeded to somehow pour him into his pajamas without Q toppling over and cracking his head against the floor like the idiot he was.
He must have blacked out then, because he didn’t remember the stumble down the hall to the bedroom that must have happened, but when he woke up he was curled on his side in bed, and Moneypenny was in the chair opposite. She looked up as he stirred.
“Oh, you’re alive,” she said. “That’s brilliant. Good job on not having to get your stomach pumped.”
“Ohgod,” he slurred. “Leave me alone to die.”
“Fat chance,” she said. “Do you need to be sick?”
Q thought about it for a moment, then nodded fractionally. Moneypenny rose and vanished down the hallway before returning with a bucket she’d gotten from god knew where. She helped Q to sit up, and rubbed his shoulders as he retched, holding his hair back out of his face. Afterward, she appeared like some kind of hangover fairy with a glass of water and some aspirin, and a wet rag for his face.
“Pretty sure this isn’t in your job description,” Q said finally, when he no longer felt like he was in imminent danger of turning himself inside-out. His head throbbed as though someone had taken a jackhammer to his skull and his mouth felt as desiccated as a field of cotton balls, but death by Famous Grouse appeared to be off the table, at least for now. “How long was I out for?”
“There’s a lot I do for you that isn’t in my job description, darling,” said Moneypenny. “Babysitting the quartermaster is way above my pay-grade.” She curled up in the chair across from him again, watching Q steadily. “And you were out a few hours. Long enough for Tanner to send me a few updates on 007.”
Q groaned. “Oh god,” he said despairingly. “Is that why you came over when you did? What happened?”
“Mmm.” Moneypenny raised her eyebrows. “He came in for debriefing and asked to take his regular psych and med evals as soon as he left M’s office. He apparently asked Tanner how soon he could be deployed on a new mission.” Q put his face in his hands. “I figured it’d be good to come check on you. That was fucking moronic of you, by the way, getting in the bath like that, you might have drowned.”
“If only,” said Q darkly, and then rubbed at his face, feeling the faint urge to vomit yet again. He was grateful that Moneypenny did not ask why Q hadn’t sent Bond along to headquarters to be debriefed before talking to the man himself. Some things just weren’t doable.
“The fuck happened with you two? I have to say I’m surprised he took the news that badly, lord knows that man is no saint. I thought better of him.”
It was a mark of how bad he felt that Q could barely be grateful that even after knowing what she did about him, Moneypenny was still on his side. “No, it’s me, I’ve cocked it all up, Moneypants,” he said dully. Beside him, he felt the bed dip as Moneypenny sat down next to him, and then her fingertips were in his hair, lightly scratching his scalp. It was such a small, tender gesture that Q had to swallow a few times to clear the lump in his throat. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, not looking up.
“Go on then, boffin.”
Q took a deep breath and steeled himself. “Janessa and David Markham are my ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend,” he blurted.
The hand in his hair stilled, and for a few terrible moments Q wondered if he was going to lose himself the other most precious person in his life after all. But then Moneypenny slid her arm around his shoulders and tucked him against her side. “Q,” she breathed.
“They had me completely fooled,” Q said blearily. “I was so mad for them. I thought they were perfect. And they were so good to me. I had no idea the kinds of things they were doing. I-” He gestured vaguely, at the wall, at the frosted window, at his lovesick younger self. “Did you know that David insisted that we give a quarter of everything we stole to charity? Like fucking Robin Hood. I’d hack into some orphanage’s accounts to deposit money, or we’d send a check from an anonymous bank account in Switzerland to sodding Doctors Without Borders. I’ve no idea if that was something they really meant, or if it was just to keep the wool over my eyes.”
“What happened?” asked Moneypenny. God, she was a saint; his breath must reek right now of sick and stale whiskey, but she had him nestled against her like he might drown if she let him go.
Q sighed. “Adrienne got pregnant. She told me while David and Janessa were on one of their ‘missions’ for a day or two. She made me promise not to tell them. She and Jonathan wanted out, and she was so scared and I just couldn’t understand why. …So I started spying on Janessa and David.”
“That can’t have gone well,” Moneypenny murmured.
Q shook his head. He said nothing, still staring at a spot on the carpet. “I was so upset and scared; I didn’t want them to know what I’d found. Then, I… we had a fight. It was just about some job they wanted to do, but I supposed I wanted to see if they would listen to me at all,” he said after another moment. He could feel Moneypenny’s eyes on him. “They made me very sorry that I said anything.”
“Was that when you contacted M?” Q nodded. He shut his eyes. The aspirin was starting to work; his head still felt like an ironsmith’s forge, but perhaps one that wasn’t currently in use.
“I never told her any of this, you know,” said Q eventually. “She just-knew. She could tell. Maybe I was terribly obvious, I don’t know. But it isn’t in any official record anywhere.” He let some injury creep into his voice. “I did everything she asked of me. I went to a psychiatrist, I didn’t date anyone for two years, I took all the work they sent me. I was good.”
Moneypenny squeezed his shoulder. “I know, sweetheart,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
Q nodded, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it anymore. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever believed it. “They sent me a letter, you know,” he said abruptly. “About… God. A year after they were arrested. Right after they went to prison.” He took in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly, suffering another wave of nausea at the memory. “I still don’t know how they got the address I was living at. It-they promised me they’d find me. They said I would never be safe and they would find me, no matter how long it took.” Q’s voice shook at the end of his sentence, and he had to take another moment to compose himself.
“Was that when MI6 had you declared dead?” asked Moneypenny shrewdly. Q nodded. “I did wonder. Since I’ve seen your papers, ‘William.’”
“Yes. Well. I wasn’t really going to argue with them on that one. Adrienne and Jonathan had their identities changed then, too.” Q shook his head, pushing away the memory of his horror at getting something like that in the post. “…Anyway. James took it badly. He asked me how I could be so stupid for not seeing through them, I insulted Vesper, and it went downhill from there.”
“I still think it’s a bit much for him to be so hard on you about it,” said Moneypenny, and to Q’s never-ending gratitude she sounded pretty pissed off. “You turned the people you loved in to the authorities and saw them sent to jail, I’d call that pretty fucking morally upright.”
“Might wash a bit better if I hadn’t been fucking them both for a year first,” said Q wearily. “But he’s angry I didn’t tell him sooner. Angry I kept it from him till, you know, crazy exes showing up in my decoy flats. And your flat as well, by the way.” He rubbed at his face with the palm of his hand. “I threw him out. I don’t-know what to do.” Q’s voice shook, and he put his face in his hands for a moment. Moneypenny rubbed his shoulder, thumbing gently at the curve of his clavicle.
“Well,” she said after a beat, “for starters, you could come down off the cross, as we could use the wood.”
Q snorted despite himself. “Ah,” he said, “I see why M keeps you around. It’s your brilliant insights.”
“Almost as clever as you, I daresay,” she said dryly. “But for now, you should drink some more water, and let me make you something awful and covered in cheese, if you think you can keep it down.”
Q turned his head, peering at her hopefully. “Something with bacon?” he asked, and Moneypenny smiled and tweaked his nose.
“I’ll make you the whole pack if you like,” she said, and Q hugged her tightly.
“Best secretary in all of London.”
“Watch it, brat, or I’ll drown you in the tub myself.”
* * * * *
Q strongly suspected that Moneypenny put a phone call in to M while he was drowsing on the couch with the last half-hour of Shaun of the Dead, because that was her job, after all. But it didn’t stop her from dragging him to bed when he was finally done, or from crawling in with him despite his weak and flustered protests.
“Don’t flatter yourself, darling,” she said, and Q laughed and curled up against her and surprised himself by dropping off to sleep almost immediately.
Moneypenny stayed through breakfast the next morning, gently delivering the news that 007 had already left the country again (apparently still reeking of whiskey but functional enough to be sent off). She didn’t leave before extracting a promise from Q not to torture himself by spying on Bond the entire time he was gone. “You’ll be able to ambush him soon enough, I’m sure,” she said. “Not that I expect him to be capable of staying away from you for long. He’s all but scent-marked your desk in Q Branch.”
“Excuse you, we were more subtle than that-”
“Were you! News to me.”
“-and while it’s appreciated, blowing smoke up my arse is not actually necessary, Moneypants.”
“Mmmm.” She smiled, and kissed him on the cheek. “Stay out of trouble, darling. And no more of that whiskey, alright?” Q rolled his eyes but saw her to the door anyway, only slumping against the wood once she was well and truly gone. Wouldn’t do to let down the side, after all.
* * * * *
Of the two promises he made to Moneypenny, Q kept one and broke the other. The one he kept was the promise not to drink; he took the whiskey to the kitchen and poured out every last drop. The one he broke was the promise not to listen to 007’s mission to France, but at least he had the foresight to wait till after he’d poured all the whiskey down the sink.
Bereft of the chance to run till his lungs were ready to burst, denied access to the computer programs that let him make art, unable to focus enough on coding to get through any projects, Q took to counting.
In his first three days in France, James Bond slept with five different women. One was a blonde, three were brunette, and the last was raven-haired. Six was the number of people James shot in the same time period: four men, two women. Two of the dead women happened to overlap with the women James had slept with. The algebra gave him no comfort, though on another day it might have.
Three was also the number of pieces of Q Branch equipment James took with him. He broke one within twelve hours, lost another in the first forty-eight, and broke an assailant’s jaw with the last near dawn on day three.
Six was the number of presents James had brought back for Q from his missions. Two perfect Chinese finger-traps, one Japanese puzzle-box, one delicate, golden Rube Goldberg machine that Q had all but melted with delight over, and two maddeningly intricate Rubik’s cubes.
One was the number of Q’s paintings sitting in James’ flat. One was also the number of paintings that Q had done at James’ request, though it was still unfinished. Thirty-six was the number of times they’d fucked, in various locations, not all of them each other’s flats; fourteen was the number of times they’d shagged and interrupted themselves laughing at something dumb (often the cat), once to the point of tears on Q’s part; and twice was the number of times that they had done something Q only thought people did in those insipid romance novels-he wouldn’t call it making love, because he hated that phrase, but there was nothing else to call it, either.
Seventy-six was the number of hours into James Bond’s mission at which Q powered down his computer program and took off his head set. During that time period, Q’s name was mentioned exactly once:
“007, I do ask that you be more careful with your equipment.” Mark was trying for cavalier, but he wasn’t particularly successful. “The quartermaster will be quite cross with you.”
Bond’s voice was cool. Not angry, just completely uninterested. “Not my problem,” he said.
* * * * *
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 Six. They say it gets worse before it gets better; what "they" didn't mention is how bad "worse" can be.
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, part four is here, and part five is here.
They did not go to M’s office, or to his flat; instead they met at one of MI6’s upper-level safe-houses, to which only the highest-ranked agents and employees had access. Q wondered vaguely what it must be like to have a life where meeting to discuss a private matter wasn’t like an angry game of British Bulldog where you got shot at if you did it wrong and no one’s told you the rules. Most of the time he loved his job, but there was little he wouldn’t give right now to not have to jump through eight security measures and a flaming hula hoop just to have a piss.
M was waiting for them when they arrived, looking utterly unsurprised at the clandestine meeting. He was still wearing the same pinstripe suit and waistcoat he had on at work that day, his tie not even undone; Q suspected he had not stopped working at all. “Q, Moneypenny.” He nodded at them both as they entered the room, gesturing at the seats across from him. Q glanced over and noticed that Moneypenny now had out a Beretta (an M190 Special Force model that he’d just recently modified himself, actually) and was resting it across her lap, which wasn’t disconcerting at all. Where the fuck had she even hidden it in that frock of hers?
“So,” said M. “Out with it, quartermaster. Let’s not beat around the bush.”
Q took a deep breath. “Sir, you’ve read my file.”
“I have,” said M easily. “The official and the unofficial one, both.” M’s fingers curled lightly against his desk-top, his gaze on Q never wavering.
“Right,” said Q. Of course he would have. There was no way Mawdsley would have destroyed that file, would she, and Gareth Mallory was nothing if not thorough. Q straightened, forcing himself to be calm, to remain in control. He could do this. “Janessa and David Markham are missing, sir. I can’t find them in any prison manifesto in any country in the EU or the United States. And today a man was spotted in Adrienne Stanton’s bakeshop that matched the description of one of the Markhams’ old gang.”
M frowned. “I thought you gave them all up in your immunity agreement for yourself and the Stantons,” he said.
“In your what?” Moneypenny was looking at Q now, but went quiet again when M glanced at her.
“I did,” said Q flatly. “I gave M-uh, your predecessor-every file and code and bit of intel I had on our group and our contacts. But Eric Temple slipped the trap your agents laid for the rest of the gang, somehow, and evaded capture. Last I had heard, he was in Malaysia somewhere.”
“But you say he’s been spotted in London,” said M. “Are you sure it was him? Have you ID’d him yourself?”
Q winced. “No, not personally, yet,” he said reluctantly. “I’m having the CCTV from Adrienne’s bakeshop sent over to examine, but coupled with the unidentified break-ins of my and Moneypenny’s flats, and considering my past, I thought it prudent to assume the worst.”
M said nothing for a moment, his frown deepening. He drummed his fingers on the table, and then seemed to come to a decision. “That was the right choice,” he said. “Thank you for validating my faith in you by bringing this to me instead of trying to handle it by yourself, quartermaster.” M turned his attention to Eve, who was sitting like a sharp, eager weapon in the seat next to Q, her eyes bright. “Agent Moneypenny. Nothing we have discussed, or are about to discuss, is to leave this room. If you believe one of our staff must be involved, you are to clear it with me first.”
“Understood, sir,” she said.
“It was before your time, but you may still recall hearing about the activities of a criminal group known as the Machine, operating world-wide roughly five to six years ago,” said M.
“Vaguely,” said Moneypenny. “People talked about them sort of the way one does about conspiracy theory groups, though. I got the impression they were mostly rumor.”
“That was because they were incredibly difficult to find anything concrete about,” said M. Q stayed quiet, morbidly curious to hear what someone like Gareth Mallory would have to say about the group of people Q once thought of as his family. “There were six members: Agrippina, Fezzik, Nefertiti, Ramses, Ghost, and the Recluse. Adrienne and Jonathan Stanton were Agrippina and Fezzik, respectively.” M glanced at Q, raising an eyebrow in invitation.
Q exhaled. “I was Ghost,” he said, turning and looking at Moneypenny. He wondered if she’d get the joke; it didn’t seem as funny, five years down the line. “The man Adrienne thought came into her bakeshop today was the Recluse, real name Eric Temple. Named for the venomous spider. Incredibly dangerous sociopath.”
“What about Nefertiti and Ramses? These people are after Q?” If Moneypenny was fazed by any of this, she certainly wasn’t showing it. Q felt a sudden wash of desperate affection for her, her humor and her loyalty and her whip-smart, lethal competence.
“It seems that way,” said M. He glanced at Q again before continuing. “Nefertiti and Ramses were the pseudonyms for Janessa and David Markham. Along with Temple, they were wanted in over forty countries on multiple counts of extortion, murder, torture, and various other sins. We have no way of knowing how much longer it would have taken to apprehend them, but my predecessor’s email account was hacked by a young man who identified himself as a British national who was working inside the gang, name of Simon Dubois. In exchange for immunity and protection for himself and two others, he offered precise details of the Machine’s location, movements, personal accounts, criminal contacts, and plans, and for agreeing to aid law enforcement in the apprehension of the Markhams and Eric Temple, at great personal risk to himself.”
M paused; Moneypenny glanced over sharply at Q. He looked from face to face. “What?”
“Q,” said Moneypenny, after several long moments, “you’re shaking.”
“That’s hardly relevant,” snapped Q. Moneypenny’s expression did not change, and she kept her gaze steady; after a few moments it was Q who looked away, glaring at a spot on the floor adjacent to Mallory’s desk.
Out of the corner of his eye, Q saw M lean back slightly, enough to rest his elbows on the desk and steeple his fingers together. “The details and findings of MI6’s investigation into Simon Dubois’ personal activities are not relevant to the matter at hand,” he said. “However, I will note that Mawdsley herself oversaw the process, and that MI6 has an ironclad stipulation against the hiring of individuals who have been charged with an indictable offense.”
“Understood, sir.”
Q said nothing. What M had not said hung in the air: “not charged with” was not the same as “not guilty of.” He wasn’t going to try to defend himself to Moneypenny in front of M, and he wasn’t yet prepared to contemplate how this conversation was going to go with James. There was no real way to avoid it, now.
“Q, I realize that your real flat has not yet actually been broken into,” M continued, “but I still think it’s not safe for you to stay there, at least until we’ve identified and neutralized the source of their info.” Q nodded and then forced himself to look up, trying to school his features into something less sullen.
“The Stantons have already been moved to a safe house,” said Moneypenny.
“Excellent work, Agent Moneypenny,” said M. “See to it that they receive a security detail. Standard procedure for targeted personnel.” The tightness in Q’s chest eased a little; he’d been worried he’d have to argue for full protection, since Adrienne and Jonathan were not technically MI6 employees, but apparently it was not an issue. “I want you to escort Q to his flat to retrieve anything of a sensitive nature before he goes to ground. We will be utilizing all the resources at our command to locate the people stalking you. Q, this is of the utmost importance: absolutely no one is to be made aware of your location once you arrive there. I will arrange for a cover story to explain your absence, but no one save myself, Moneypenny, and Tanner will know your true location or circumstances. You are not to initiate contact with anyone for any reason.”
Q bristled. “But sir,” he began, “what about the agents in the field, I have to-”
“Bond can be made informed of your location upon his return, once he’s been debriefed, if you wish.”
Q froze, and then shot a dirty look at Moneypenny without thinking. “I didn’t say anything,” said Moneypenny.
“She didn’t need to, as I have eyes,” said M. Q wondered if there was an app for making the ground open up beneath you to swallow you whole.
“Uh,” said Q. “Right. Does Tanner already know about the circumstances, or-”
“He’s aware of some, not all,” said M. “Nothing about this changes anything, Q. I expect you to work on what projects you can while in deep cover, and I expect you to return to your full duties as quartermaster as soon as this threat has been neutralized.” He raised both his eyebrows at Q, a faint smile on his face belying the reproof in his words. “Are we done here?”
“Yes, sir,” said Q, because the urge to either vomit or to start babbling his thanks would simply not do. He stood up, Moneypenny rising a fraction of a second later.
“Good. I expect regular reports from both of you. Now go, and be careful.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, and then Q let Moneypenny walk him to the door.
* * * * *
The drive home was a new flavor of awkward that Q had not experienced before. It was clear that Moneypenny wanted to ask more about the information she’d just been made privy to, but Q had spent so many years burying it inside himself that he’d lost the words to tell her about it. He’d never been so grateful to pull up to the building with his flat in it.
Carly came running out to meet them as soon as he let himself and Moneypenny up the hidden entranceway, maowing and twining around Q’s feet in her best attempt to trip him or con him into picking her up, whichever came first. Q couldn’t resist, crouching to scoop her up and burying his face in her soft white fur. She wriggled in his arms, purring like a miniature engine, and Q drew in an audible breath, sharp like a piece of glass in his lungs.
He felt a touch at his shoulder; Moneypenny’s hand was light, giving him a brief squeeze. “Shouldn’t be too hard to get a CCTV feed to your safe-house from here,” she said. “Then you can watch me stop by and feed your cat and seduce her into coming home with me.”
Q smiled. “I expect you won’t have to try very hard, she’s a traitorous brat,” he said. His voice sounded thin even to his own ears.
“Come on, boffin,” said Moneypenny, gently. “It’s not getting any less late.”
Q let out a short laugh, one devoid entirely of humor. “It’s already much too late,” he said. But he let Moneypenny slip her arm around his waist anyway, leaning mutely into her as they headed down the hall to his bedroom.
* * * * *
The next few days were some of the worst Q had experienced in years. More than the fear of knowing he was being stalked, he hated being powerless and stuck above all other things. The last time he’d gone through anything like this was before he’d worked for MI6, when he’d been on probation of a sorts, doing work on a contracting basis for MI6 but not technically allowed to access any secure files.
It had been a test, of course. While the investigation into the extent of his criminal activities had indeed exonerated him of any violent crimes-that and the fact that M had seen right through him to the scared, abandoned child he’d felt like at the time-MI6 had still not been keen to take him on. But that had left them with the sticky predicament of trying to decide exactly what they should do with him: this boy, this shell-shocked, desperate, brilliant young man, too dangerous to be allowed to go off-radar but questionable enough to not yet be brought into the fold.
M had hit upon the perfect solution, naturally. Be good, she’d said. She’d known what he’d wanted (stability) and what he needed (direction), and she’d dangled the carrot right in front of him. Three years and you’ll be working for Q Branch with the most cutting-edge department in the country. Prove yourself.
Three years! Oh, he’d been so upset. He’d thought her cruel, ridiculous, completely out-of-touch. She’d been utterly unmoved by his protests and so scathingly dismissive that he’d wilted on the spot under her rebuke, like a puppy swatted on its nose.
Don’t be an idiot, Simon, she’d said. Did you really think we’d simply leave you to your own devices during that time? I said ‘be good,’ not ‘wither away into a useless husk.’
The contract work they’d send along to him had been-engaging, and all-consuming while he was working on it. He’d thrived on it, had most especially loved the emails he got from his liaison at Q Branch when he’d send back a finished project days or weeks ahead of schedule. But the flip side of contract work was that you worked 80 hours a week for weeks on end, only to find yourself with nothing at all to do between projects. Q had coped by acquiring hobbies like some people did trading cards: running, video games, fractal art, app programming and other things. And he’d been good.
(Well, for a value of ‘good,’ anyway. Hacking into secure system just to see if he could was as second-nature to Q as breathing, but he damaged nothing and left no marks, and if the occasional email turned up in Q Branch’s inboxes alerting them to security flaws in their systems, he never actually caught any flak for it, so he counted it as a win.)
Now Q had both more and fewer resources at his disposal. He couldn’t leave the flat he was in, but he’d brought enough projects with him to theoretically keep himself occupied (the poison pen, a contact lens prototype with a miniature recording device, and several coding projects that he trusted with no one else, plus a promise from Moneypenny to bring him more should it come to that). But while M had forbidden Q from communicating with anyone not on their approved list and from drawing attention to himself, that left a wide range of other activities open to Q.
Which was why he was sitting curled up under a blanket in this unfamiliar bed with a headset on, listening to the blithering idiots that were in charge during his absence guide 007 over encrypted comms.
“I’m headed down the hallway. No sign of the bomb.” Bond was in ill humor. He hadn’t said much to Mark after coming online, ever the consummate professional (not to mention there were more pressing matters than inquiring about a missing quartermaster while running from the spray of gunfire), but even accounting for Q’s heightened sensitivity, Bond was uncommunicative.
“Very well,” said Mark, his voice clearer over the line than Bond’s far distant one. “Turn left at the end of the hallway, and-” Q jumped as gunfire crackled in his ears, like popcorn on a stove.
“A little help here,” hissed Bond, and Q had to jam his fist into his mouth to keep from entering the command that would let him override Mark’s access to Bond’s ear-piece, the display of Bond’s location already live on Q’s screen. Every fibre of his being sang with the need to take over from the fools who had no idea how to handle the extremely sensitive task of guiding a field agent that depended on you to keep him alive dear God he was going to infect every one of their computers with the nastiest virus he could come up with.
“Working on it,” said Mark shakily. Moments later, klaxons at Bond’s end came shrieking through the line, and Q winced, jamming his finger on the down-volume button to try to cut the screech of electronic feedback.
“What the fuck are you doing over there? Have you got your fingers in your arse or what? Put Q on for God’s sake!”
“He’s not here, he’s been sent off, I don’t know where the bloody hell he is-”
“Well you’d better go and find out before you get me killed,” said Bond darkly. Q put his face in his hands.
“-there, alright, back down the hallway, Bond, the maintenance lift is open for you now. We’ve found the bomb, it’s on the eighth floor.” Mark sounded more in control now, which was the only thing stopping Q from flinging all his expensive electronics out the window of the fourth floor flat and drowning himself in the toilet.
If this was what his life was going to be like till Janessa and David surfaced, it would almost be worth it to advertise his location on a billboard at Leicester Square just to end the pain.
* * * * *
Bond completed his mission objectives and then, as usual, he disappeared off the grid. It’d be close to a day before he was back on British soil, presuming he followed his most recent M.O. and came straight home, but despite the intimacy that had been building between them over the past month and a half, Q honestly had no idea what to expect. This was the first time he’d had to work through anything like this with a significant other in-ever, basically.
He spent most of the day disassembling and tinkering with the innards of the poison pen prototype, the sack of ink that would one day be replaced with poison sealed in a sandwich baggie on the counter, when his mobile vibrated against the coffee table he’d left it sitting on. Q set the pen-tube in his lap and stretched, trying to reach the mobile without moving, flopping onto his back and swiping his finger across the screen to unlock it.
It was a text from Moneypenny. Do us a favor and direct 007 to come in for debriefing when he tries to get a hold of you. Q wrinkled his nose, and turned the mobile horizontal to type out a quick message back.
Because I have such an excellent track record of getting 007 to do what he doesn’t want to. That’s why he always returns my equipment intact.
The response came in under thirty seconds. M wants to clear him on your situation himself before sending him to you. I have to say I agree with him.
Q rubbed at his face, frustration sticking in his throat like a bit of bone. I’ll do my best, he sent back, and then chucked the mobile in the direction of the couch in a fit of pique.
Predictably, he never even got the chance.
Q was doing a sort of Dali-esque drip off the couch, his legs on the cushions, back on the floor, tablet braced vertically against his thighs as he worked, when the alarm popped up on his screen warning him of unauthorized entrance to his wing of the building. He double-tapped, pulling up the CCTV feed, and felt some small amount of the tension drain from his chest when he saw the familiar figure moving through the halls to his door. Q’s fingers danced across the screen, disabling the alert and resetting the alarm before setting the tablet aside and rolling over to hands and knees. He was still climbing to his feet when he heard the front door open and slam shut.
“Q?” Bond’s voice was tight.
“In here.” Q stood, his heart crawling into his throat as Bond came stalking through the doorway wrapped in thunderclouds. “James-”
“You little bastard,” James growled, and god the man was quick. Q found himself with a hand in his hair, James’ other arm lashed around Q’s waist, Q pressed bodily against James’ chest.
“Have you even bothered to change clothes or shower, there’s this thing called personal hygiene-”
“Shut. Up.” There was something in James’ voice that was ruining Q’s ability to think, a dangerous waver that made Q’s brain go skittering sideways in panic. So he shut up, and then slid both arms around James’ waist in kind, slipping under his decidedly-dirty suit coat.
“I thought at first you were dead,” said James after a moment. To Q’s gratitude, he sounded more like himself. “When that little tosser second of yours came on the line and not you.”
“Come on James, give me some credit,” said Q peevishly. He shut his eyes for a moment, distracted by the stubble scraping against his cheek, James’ nose still buried in Q’s hair. “How did you even find me?”
“I used that computer pen you gave me to get the GPS history of Eve’s phone from the past week.”
“You are a menace,” said Q after a moment, his breath hitching as James nosed lower along his neck, biting just under his ear, making Q gasp.
“I wouldn’t have needed to if you had fucking told me where you were,” growled James. The hand in Q’s hair tightened, pulling his skull back to expose more of Q’s throat, and Q shuddered, going limp and pliable in James’ hands, despite the swell of indignation at that statement.
“When exactly was I going to tell you?” demanded Q. “Over the comms line when anyone could hear? ‘By the way I’m in-ngh, fuck-I’m in hiding, be a good man and don’t tell anyone! Kisses, Q!’” James bit down hard on Q’s throat, and Q moaned, clutching at James’ back through his expensive silk shirt.
“What, a text was so difficult? As if I don’t know how simple that is for you.” Q flushed, shoving uselessly at James, who was backing him towards the couch, his big hands everywhere, making Q crazy.
“I’ll have you know that M ordered me not to communicate with anyone not personally cleared by him,” Q snapped. He shoved both hands against James’ shoulders, forcibly bracing himself, injecting some space between them.
James glared at him, his eyes like twin chips of ice in his face. His lip curled. “Right. Got to make sure to be M’s good little boy,” he bit out. Q stared at him, cheeks burning, his eyes stinging suspiciously, and then he slapped James hard across the face, shoving away from him.
“You fuck right off,” he snapped, hating his own voice in his ears. He sounded shaken, too stung to explain away easily.
“Q,” said James behind him.
“Just don’t. I can’t, you have no-no bloody idea-” Q stiffened as James came up behind him, but the hands on his hips were gentler now, cautious. Q took a long, shaky breath.
“Tell me.” Q bit the inside of his cheek till he tasted copper.
“I can’t,” he said finally, and then added before James could protest, “Not yet. Please, I will, but just…” He leaned back, letting James put his arms around him again, letting James kiss his neck in exactly the right place to make him shudder.
“You’d better,” murmured James. Q was still trying to think of an answer when James turned Q’s chin to face him and kissed him hard enough to banish everything else for a few precious moments. James took advantage of his weakness, and Q spent the next thirty-odd minutes having no thoughts beyond gratitude for James’ unmatched skill at taking Q apart.
By mutual assent, they lay in bed for quite some time afterward, neither saying anything. Q was half-tucked underneath James’ body, James having crawled on top of him once he’d disposed of the condom, as possessive as Q had yet seen him. One of James’ hand stroked slowly up and down Q’s arm, their legs tangled underneath the sheets. The bed wasn’t as nice as Q’s own, but the addition of James in it made it considerably more tolerable.
“I’m sorry you only had Mark to see you through your fight at the hotel,” Q murmured finally. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Mmm.” James pushed a lock of Q’s messy hair out of his face, and smiled faintly. “You’re tough to match.”
“It’s why I’m quartermaster,” Q observed, and then sighed. He could still see the spot where he’d slapped James across his face, and he reached up to slide his fingertips over the edge of the mark, the guilt like splinters in his lungs. “…We found out who’s been breaking into my flats.”
James’ hand on his arm stilled, though his expression did not change. Q fought the flip-flop of his stomach, and pressed on, keeping his voice calm. “Have you ever heard of a gang called the Machine?”
James raised an eyebrow. “I thought they’d been taken down,” he said. “It’s been a good five years, hasn’t it?”
“Mostly correct.” Q took a slow, measured breath. “Their leaders were Janessa and David Markham, a married couple from the States. As far as we’ve been able to tell, they’ve escaped from a maximum-security prison in France and are operating in London.”
“Why would Ramses and Nefertiti be looking for you, Q?” James cradled a hand against the side of Q’s face, watching him with a small frown.
“Because I was the one who put them in prison.” Q exhaled. “And I was part of their gang, before I turned them in.”
James stared at him. Q watched mutely, helplessly noting the way James’ nostrils flared, his pupils dilating. “You what,” he said after a few moments.
“Adrienne and Jonathan were in the gang too,” Q said. Now that he’d finally unstoppered himself, he was finding it hard to not just blurt everything out, all the details of the life he’d tried so hard to drown coming welling to the surface like a monster out of a nightmare. “We-”
“They were wanted for murder in over thirty countries,” said James. His voice had a terrible weight to it. “Q.”
“I didn’t know that!” Q clenched his hands into fists, dropping his eyes. “I didn’t know, I had no fucking idea how-how bad they were.”
“How the hell could you not have known?” demanded James. Q sat up, shoving James off him and hunching over his knees, but James refused to be put off, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder next to him.
“They hid it from me, alright?” Q shuddered. “I never went on any of their little… expeditions, their adventures, they wouldn’t let me. They made me stay home with Aggie-Agrippina. Her name was Carolyn then, if you can believe it.” Q swallowed thickly.
Beside him, James said nothing. The silence stretched out, every second making Q feel more like he might vomit. He suddenly couldn’t stand the fact that he was sitting here naked. “How could you have been so bloody stupid?” James asked finally, and the reproof in his voice burned like ice.
“The same reason you were so ready to believe Vesper would never betray you,” Q snapped, and James stiffened beside him.
“Don’t you ever talk about her,” James hissed. “And that is not remotely the same, she was-”
“She was just as much a fool for the people she loved as I was, and it cost her her life,” Q bit out, shoving away from James off the bed and going for a pair of boxer-briefs.
“You were shagging them? Which one?” Q stumbled as he got dressed, nearly tipping over in his haste to clothe himself, and did not answer. “Both of them? Answer me!”
“Yes! Fine! Both of them!” Q stalked to the suitcase open on the floor on the far side of the room, nearly shaking with the adrenaline flooding his system. “I was 20, I was just out of uni and on holiday in the States, I met them in New York City and was completely over the moon, do you want more details?”
“Yes!” shouted James, coming off the bed now too. “I want more details! Or maybe just any details, what the hell, Q, when were you planning on telling me this?”
Q barked out a laugh, yanking a shirt over his head. “Oh, I don’t know, how about the twelfth of never?” He turned around and found James looming in his space, backing him against the wall.
“Why not?” James said. His voice was dangerous, low and hard, like Q had heard in his ears during so many missions.
“Why? Because I knew you’d react like this?” Q’s voice shook, and he tried to push James away, but this time James wasn’t having it. He caught Q around the wrists, pinning him against the wall, his eyes blazing in his face. “Let go of me!”
“You thought it was a better course of action to keep the fact that you had a murderous pair of criminals as exes from me, people who’d come looking for you if they ever got the chance? People who would try to kill you?” James gritted his teeth. He seemed totally unaware of the fact that he was still naked, or perhaps he just didn’t care. A vein in his forehead stood out, and this close up there was no mistaking the hurt in his face, the expression Q had been desperately trying to not look at. God fucking damn him straight to hell.
“What should I have said? When should I have told you? No one knew, okay, not Moneypenny, not Tanner, no one but Mawdsley, I don’t even know if Mallory knows and it’s not like we had a chat about it until this came up.” Again Q tried to yank his wrists out of James’ hands, and this time James let him, though he just shifted his hands to either side of Q’s head against the wall, effectively pinning him in place.
“I thought you trusted me,” James bit out. Oh god, that hurt. Q squeezed his eyes shut against the burn of tears. He would not cry. He would not fucking cry.
“I do trust you, James, that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it.” Q ducked under James’ arm, feeling light-headed, like he was going to be sick. “You’re-you’re the lion in winter, you will always, always do the right thing, no matter the cost, and I was shagging Bonnie and Clyde round half the Northern Hemisphere. I can’t compete.”
“You should have told me.”
Q stooped, picking up James’ shirt from where it lay discarded on the floor. “The list of things I should have done could fill a book, 007,” he said tightly. He held out the shirt. “As would yours. At the top of it currently is returning to headquarters for debriefing from your latest mission.”
James stared at him for a few moments, looking as though Q had slapped him again. Then he nodded, and all the emotion there just moments before drained away, leaving nothing behind but the cold eyes of a trained killer. “Understood, quartermaster,” he said tonelessly.
He picked up his clothes from the floor and left without another word exchanged. Q did not see him out. He waited for five minutes, and then reset the alarm. Then Q went into his kitchen and got down the bottle of whiskey from the top shelf, and retreated to his room.
He didn’t bother with a glass.
* * * * *
Moneypenny found Q a few hours later, nearly passed out in a tub of quickly-cooling water, the half-empty whiskey bottle on the floor next to the tub. It was well that it was only Moneypenny who’d come into the flat, because Q would have made an easy target for anyone who wished him harm.
They’d be hard-pressed to wish him more harm than he wished on himself, though.
“You pathetic arsehole,” said Moneypenny, and Q bleated a half-formed protest before realizing he must have said that last thought aloud. She crouched next to the tub, resting a towel against the edge and attempting to get her arm around his shoulders. “Come on, up you get, you’re turning into a prune on top of trying to pickle yourself.”
“Nooooo,” whined Q, but offered no actual resistance. He leaned heavily against her, shaking as he tried to balance himself, and he let her sit him on the closed toilet wrapped in a towel while she left the room for a minute. She returned shortly with pyjamas, by which point Q had started to slowly tip off the side of the toilet, face mashed against the bathroom tile. Q thought she muttered something about him being lucky she was such a good friend, and proceeded to somehow pour him into his pajamas without Q toppling over and cracking his head against the floor like the idiot he was.
He must have blacked out then, because he didn’t remember the stumble down the hall to the bedroom that must have happened, but when he woke up he was curled on his side in bed, and Moneypenny was in the chair opposite. She looked up as he stirred.
“Oh, you’re alive,” she said. “That’s brilliant. Good job on not having to get your stomach pumped.”
“Ohgod,” he slurred. “Leave me alone to die.”
“Fat chance,” she said. “Do you need to be sick?”
Q thought about it for a moment, then nodded fractionally. Moneypenny rose and vanished down the hallway before returning with a bucket she’d gotten from god knew where. She helped Q to sit up, and rubbed his shoulders as he retched, holding his hair back out of his face. Afterward, she appeared like some kind of hangover fairy with a glass of water and some aspirin, and a wet rag for his face.
“Pretty sure this isn’t in your job description,” Q said finally, when he no longer felt like he was in imminent danger of turning himself inside-out. His head throbbed as though someone had taken a jackhammer to his skull and his mouth felt as desiccated as a field of cotton balls, but death by Famous Grouse appeared to be off the table, at least for now. “How long was I out for?”
“There’s a lot I do for you that isn’t in my job description, darling,” said Moneypenny. “Babysitting the quartermaster is way above my pay-grade.” She curled up in the chair across from him again, watching Q steadily. “And you were out a few hours. Long enough for Tanner to send me a few updates on 007.”
Q groaned. “Oh god,” he said despairingly. “Is that why you came over when you did? What happened?”
“Mmm.” Moneypenny raised her eyebrows. “He came in for debriefing and asked to take his regular psych and med evals as soon as he left M’s office. He apparently asked Tanner how soon he could be deployed on a new mission.” Q put his face in his hands. “I figured it’d be good to come check on you. That was fucking moronic of you, by the way, getting in the bath like that, you might have drowned.”
“If only,” said Q darkly, and then rubbed at his face, feeling the faint urge to vomit yet again. He was grateful that Moneypenny did not ask why Q hadn’t sent Bond along to headquarters to be debriefed before talking to the man himself. Some things just weren’t doable.
“The fuck happened with you two? I have to say I’m surprised he took the news that badly, lord knows that man is no saint. I thought better of him.”
It was a mark of how bad he felt that Q could barely be grateful that even after knowing what she did about him, Moneypenny was still on his side. “No, it’s me, I’ve cocked it all up, Moneypants,” he said dully. Beside him, he felt the bed dip as Moneypenny sat down next to him, and then her fingertips were in his hair, lightly scratching his scalp. It was such a small, tender gesture that Q had to swallow a few times to clear the lump in his throat. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, not looking up.
“Go on then, boffin.”
Q took a deep breath and steeled himself. “Janessa and David Markham are my ex-girlfriend and ex-boyfriend,” he blurted.
The hand in his hair stilled, and for a few terrible moments Q wondered if he was going to lose himself the other most precious person in his life after all. But then Moneypenny slid her arm around his shoulders and tucked him against her side. “Q,” she breathed.
“They had me completely fooled,” Q said blearily. “I was so mad for them. I thought they were perfect. And they were so good to me. I had no idea the kinds of things they were doing. I-” He gestured vaguely, at the wall, at the frosted window, at his lovesick younger self. “Did you know that David insisted that we give a quarter of everything we stole to charity? Like fucking Robin Hood. I’d hack into some orphanage’s accounts to deposit money, or we’d send a check from an anonymous bank account in Switzerland to sodding Doctors Without Borders. I’ve no idea if that was something they really meant, or if it was just to keep the wool over my eyes.”
“What happened?” asked Moneypenny. God, she was a saint; his breath must reek right now of sick and stale whiskey, but she had him nestled against her like he might drown if she let him go.
Q sighed. “Adrienne got pregnant. She told me while David and Janessa were on one of their ‘missions’ for a day or two. She made me promise not to tell them. She and Jonathan wanted out, and she was so scared and I just couldn’t understand why. …So I started spying on Janessa and David.”
“That can’t have gone well,” Moneypenny murmured.
Q shook his head. He said nothing, still staring at a spot on the carpet. “I was so upset and scared; I didn’t want them to know what I’d found. Then, I… we had a fight. It was just about some job they wanted to do, but I supposed I wanted to see if they would listen to me at all,” he said after another moment. He could feel Moneypenny’s eyes on him. “They made me very sorry that I said anything.”
“Was that when you contacted M?” Q nodded. He shut his eyes. The aspirin was starting to work; his head still felt like an ironsmith’s forge, but perhaps one that wasn’t currently in use.
“I never told her any of this, you know,” said Q eventually. “She just-knew. She could tell. Maybe I was terribly obvious, I don’t know. But it isn’t in any official record anywhere.” He let some injury creep into his voice. “I did everything she asked of me. I went to a psychiatrist, I didn’t date anyone for two years, I took all the work they sent me. I was good.”
Moneypenny squeezed his shoulder. “I know, sweetheart,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
Q nodded, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it anymore. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever believed it. “They sent me a letter, you know,” he said abruptly. “About… God. A year after they were arrested. Right after they went to prison.” He took in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly, suffering another wave of nausea at the memory. “I still don’t know how they got the address I was living at. It-they promised me they’d find me. They said I would never be safe and they would find me, no matter how long it took.” Q’s voice shook at the end of his sentence, and he had to take another moment to compose himself.
“Was that when MI6 had you declared dead?” asked Moneypenny shrewdly. Q nodded. “I did wonder. Since I’ve seen your papers, ‘William.’”
“Yes. Well. I wasn’t really going to argue with them on that one. Adrienne and Jonathan had their identities changed then, too.” Q shook his head, pushing away the memory of his horror at getting something like that in the post. “…Anyway. James took it badly. He asked me how I could be so stupid for not seeing through them, I insulted Vesper, and it went downhill from there.”
“I still think it’s a bit much for him to be so hard on you about it,” said Moneypenny, and to Q’s never-ending gratitude she sounded pretty pissed off. “You turned the people you loved in to the authorities and saw them sent to jail, I’d call that pretty fucking morally upright.”
“Might wash a bit better if I hadn’t been fucking them both for a year first,” said Q wearily. “But he’s angry I didn’t tell him sooner. Angry I kept it from him till, you know, crazy exes showing up in my decoy flats. And your flat as well, by the way.” He rubbed at his face with the palm of his hand. “I threw him out. I don’t-know what to do.” Q’s voice shook, and he put his face in his hands for a moment. Moneypenny rubbed his shoulder, thumbing gently at the curve of his clavicle.
“Well,” she said after a beat, “for starters, you could come down off the cross, as we could use the wood.”
Q snorted despite himself. “Ah,” he said, “I see why M keeps you around. It’s your brilliant insights.”
“Almost as clever as you, I daresay,” she said dryly. “But for now, you should drink some more water, and let me make you something awful and covered in cheese, if you think you can keep it down.”
Q turned his head, peering at her hopefully. “Something with bacon?” he asked, and Moneypenny smiled and tweaked his nose.
“I’ll make you the whole pack if you like,” she said, and Q hugged her tightly.
“Best secretary in all of London.”
“Watch it, brat, or I’ll drown you in the tub myself.”
* * * * *
Q strongly suspected that Moneypenny put a phone call in to M while he was drowsing on the couch with the last half-hour of Shaun of the Dead, because that was her job, after all. But it didn’t stop her from dragging him to bed when he was finally done, or from crawling in with him despite his weak and flustered protests.
“Don’t flatter yourself, darling,” she said, and Q laughed and curled up against her and surprised himself by dropping off to sleep almost immediately.
Moneypenny stayed through breakfast the next morning, gently delivering the news that 007 had already left the country again (apparently still reeking of whiskey but functional enough to be sent off). She didn’t leave before extracting a promise from Q not to torture himself by spying on Bond the entire time he was gone. “You’ll be able to ambush him soon enough, I’m sure,” she said. “Not that I expect him to be capable of staying away from you for long. He’s all but scent-marked your desk in Q Branch.”
“Excuse you, we were more subtle than that-”
“Were you! News to me.”
“-and while it’s appreciated, blowing smoke up my arse is not actually necessary, Moneypants.”
“Mmmm.” She smiled, and kissed him on the cheek. “Stay out of trouble, darling. And no more of that whiskey, alright?” Q rolled his eyes but saw her to the door anyway, only slumping against the wood once she was well and truly gone. Wouldn’t do to let down the side, after all.
* * * * *
Of the two promises he made to Moneypenny, Q kept one and broke the other. The one he kept was the promise not to drink; he took the whiskey to the kitchen and poured out every last drop. The one he broke was the promise not to listen to 007’s mission to France, but at least he had the foresight to wait till after he’d poured all the whiskey down the sink.
Bereft of the chance to run till his lungs were ready to burst, denied access to the computer programs that let him make art, unable to focus enough on coding to get through any projects, Q took to counting.
In his first three days in France, James Bond slept with five different women. One was a blonde, three were brunette, and the last was raven-haired. Six was the number of people James shot in the same time period: four men, two women. Two of the dead women happened to overlap with the women James had slept with. The algebra gave him no comfort, though on another day it might have.
Three was also the number of pieces of Q Branch equipment James took with him. He broke one within twelve hours, lost another in the first forty-eight, and broke an assailant’s jaw with the last near dawn on day three.
Six was the number of presents James had brought back for Q from his missions. Two perfect Chinese finger-traps, one Japanese puzzle-box, one delicate, golden Rube Goldberg machine that Q had all but melted with delight over, and two maddeningly intricate Rubik’s cubes.
One was the number of Q’s paintings sitting in James’ flat. One was also the number of paintings that Q had done at James’ request, though it was still unfinished. Thirty-six was the number of times they’d fucked, in various locations, not all of them each other’s flats; fourteen was the number of times they’d shagged and interrupted themselves laughing at something dumb (often the cat), once to the point of tears on Q’s part; and twice was the number of times that they had done something Q only thought people did in those insipid romance novels-he wouldn’t call it making love, because he hated that phrase, but there was nothing else to call it, either.
Seventy-six was the number of hours into James Bond’s mission at which Q powered down his computer program and took off his head set. During that time period, Q’s name was mentioned exactly once:
“007, I do ask that you be more careful with your equipment.” Mark was trying for cavalier, but he wasn’t particularly successful. “The quartermaster will be quite cross with you.”
Bond’s voice was cool. Not angry, just completely uninterested. “Not my problem,” he said.
* * * * *