Where You Are

by dhampir72

Summary:

An Omega unable to create life is a creature to be pitied, or at least, that is what society says. Q is fine with it, really. He had never wanted children anyway...and settling down with a mate never truly sounded appealing. So he’s fine with it: being alone, bearing no children. It’s fine.

Until it isn’t.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Notes:

Many thanks to emisfritish and rawr-balrog. I would still be keeping this in a draft folder somewhere instead of sharing it if it wasn't for you two!

Could you whisper in my ear
The things you wanna feel
I'd give you anythin'
To feel it comin'

Do you wake up on your own
And wonder where you are?
You live with all your faults

I wanna wake up where you are
I won't say anything at all
So why don't you slide

“Slide” - The Goo Goo Dolls

00Q00Q00Q

If there were MI6 records to be held, the current Quartermaster would hold most of them.

Youngest person to ever hold the position of Quartermaster?
Check (Thirty-four, beating out the previous record holder who had been forty-three.)

Quartermaster with the most number of authorised internal patents in history?
Check (One hundred and thirteen, with five others pending.)

The most formally well-educated Quartermaster (whose degrees in computer science, mathematics, and English literature were unfortunately not permitted to see the light of day for obvious security reasons) to ever be in charge of Q-Branch?
Triple check.

The Quartermaster with the best head of hair?
Obviously.

He also was MI6’s only Quartermaster with the secondary gender “O” next to his (redacted) name.

With careful maintenance, Q had always been able to pass for a Beta, and that had gotten him far in life. Even now, as Quartermaster, he presented that way, and would continue to do so until he left his position, either by route of retirement or death. 

It wasn’t shame so much as the desire for privacy that had Q protecting his Omega status so carefully. After all, there had been strides in the past fifty-odd years for Omegas to rise to such positions without hiring bias or discrimination. Omegas had gotten the right to vote and own property long ago, attend university, live on their own, work even when mated, and make choices about their bodies and unborn children. But it was all rather new (what with some of the old guard not yet having died yet), and there were still fields that were heavily biased towards Alphas and Betas, some administrations believing Omegas too delicate or sensitive to be capable of certain work. 

That was another reason why he chose to present as he did: to ensure that he kept the respect of his agents and those under him. Only a handful of people were privy to his secret: Mallory, of course, and Tanner, the Chief of Staff, as well as some of the high-ranking staff in Medical. Q took care of his natural scent with medication, scent blockers, and other methods of suppression to keep up the illusion that he had no secondary gender. It seemed to be working; no one was none the wiser to his subterfuge, even his most discerning agents with some of the best Alpha senses in the organisation. 

Even Mallory had been fooled, which he admitted to when he called Q into his office after M's passing. Just as M had been, Mallory made it clear that he was fine with Q choosing to conceal this part of himself from those under his command. In fact, after that meeting, Mallory never again brought up the subject of gender, seeming the sort of person who only cared that the job got done, regardless of biology.

In some ways, Mallory was very much like her, the old M. 

Q remembered it like it was yesterday, the day M had called him to her office right after the attacks on Six that had killed old Boothroyd and five other members of Q-Branch. It had been a whirlwind affair signing him on to the suddenly vacant and much-needed position of Quartermaster, but before she handed him the pen, she looked him right in the eyes and said:

“I don’t care what you are: Alpha, Beta, or Omega, but I need to know if you’re serious about staying on with Six for the long haul. You’ll be married to England, your children will be all of her citizens. Can you assure me that you can do this, at least until we’ve recovered from this mess?”

“You don’t have to worry, M,” he’d said, taking the pen without hesitating, “there’s nothing like that for me now, or in the future.”

That had been two years ago, perhaps one of the last sit down conversations he had had with her before she died. And he hadn’t lied. There had been nothing like that for him then, and there would be nothing like that now. There would be no mate, no children, not for him.

Not ever.

00Q00Q00Q

Q’s alarm went off at precisely 5:10 every morning.

That didn’t necessarily mean he got up at 5:10, but he did do his best. The dark and cold winter mornings did not make it any easier to crawl out of a warm and comfortable bed, nor did Q’s hectic work schedule as of late. It seemed the moment he laid down, his alarm was harassing him out of bed, cutting into any meaningful rest he might have been able to get had he been able to sleep until, say, noon.

That particular morning was no exception, and though he would have rather hit the snooze for another two hours, he didn’t have the luxury of lazing about if he wanted to be washed and dressed and out the door to catch the early train before it got too crowded.

Dragging himself up out of bed, Q went to the bathroom to relieve himself, then into the kitchen to make some tea. Gadget and Gizmo, his two overly-fed tabbies, meowed insistently from between his feet as he put the kettle on.

“Okay, okay, I’m getting it. Calm down,” Q told them.

While waiting on the water to boil, Q put food in their respective bowls and checked their automatic water fountain to make sure it was still full. Then he took care of their litter boxes, bagging the waste and putting it by the front door so he didn’t forget to take it out.

The kettle beeped, and Q pulled down a mug and a teabag from the cabinet. While letting it steep, Q poured out his dose of medicine from the seven-day pill keeper he kept on the counter. Vitamins and hormones in various shapes and sizes rested in his palm, gone in a single, well-practised swallow with some tap water. He then chased away the synthetic taste with tea, and returned to the bathroom to shower.

Undressing, Q made the mistake of meeting his own eyes in the mirror, which made him take pause to look at himself more closely: pale skin, dark circles under his eyes, and the jut of his cheeks made him seem gaunt and sickly. He appeared much older than his thirty-four years, and although Q had never considered himself handsome, he felt overwhelmingly melancholy at how tired and grave he looked.

Turning to the side, critical eyes swept over the flat lines of his body. There were no alluring curves to him, none of that tantalising bit of plump that Omegas often had to advertise their fertility. He often wished he had just a little bit of softness, something to make him more desirable, but then hated himself for allowing the whims of his biology and societal pressures to make him feel less worthy of attention.

Still, Q mused, a little bit of softness wouldn’t hurt. He traced a finger over the jut of his hipbone, up along the white surgical scar across his stomach, and then jerked it away. He turned his head from the mirror, not wanting to look at his reflection, at the part of him that was most appalling, and instead hurried to wash and then dress.

He had work to do.

00Q00Q00Q

When he arrived at Six, his division felt hectic with activity. Nothing had gone wrong, but a lot of assignments on at once always made for a busy day. And it seemed that wasn’t the only thing Q had to worry about, if the Double-Oh agent sauntering his way was any indication.

“Double-Oh-Seven,” Q said in greeting, as he accepted files from one minion and signed off on the firewall testing numbers on a tablet presented by another.

Everything was within range, though he did see a number that could be better. They would have to circle back to see what they could do about that.

“Q,” Bond said, following along behind him as Q made way for his office.

“How was Zagreb?” he asked, accepting another file folder handed to him as he passed.

They were the official R&D numbers for his upcoming committee meeting. They had real results to show this time to shut up those pencil pushers in Accounting. Maybe they would actually get the budget they were promised instead of having to trade favours with MI5 for resources.

“Chilly.”

Q hummed, reading the stats at the top as they walked.

“And the mission?” he asked, using his shoulder to nudge open his office door.

“Weren’t you observing?”

“A little bit more on my mind than babysitting you, Double-Oh-Seven. I thought you could handle it on your own.”

“I did,” Bond said, sounding a little grumpy.

Q had to hide a smirk. Alphas always got a little tetchy when they didn’t get enough attention, and Bond was no exception.

“Good. I presume the equipment is back intact, then?”

“Not exactly.”

Q dropped his files and his bag onto his desk with a sigh. Already, he felt a headache forming behind his eyes. He might be young, yes, but he didn’t have the stamina to put up with this kind of bullshit indefinitely.

“If you’re not going to take care of the tech, you’ll not be getting any more from this department,” Q said.

“Thought I’d get you something better,” Bond said.

“Better than my own tech?”

Q turned, and Bond had his hand outstretched. A small zip drive rested in his open palm. Bond’s hands were large, scarred, and had strangled the life out of more people than Q could count on all of his fingers and toes. The thought of it--of Bond’s hands round his own throat--was terrifying, but also a little exhilarating. Perhaps Q needed to get out more.

“What is it?” he asked, not ready to bite yet.

“Nicked it from a locked safe in the boot of Nassar’s car.”

Oh, now that was tempting. Majid Nassar was one of the big players. He had contacts all over the world looking to purchase illegal arms and munitions. Rumour had it that he had cornered the international market when it came to nuclear weapons, specifically uranium and beryllium. Q tried not to seem too interested, but he could tell from Bond’s grin that he didn’t quite manage nonchalance. Two years and Bond already knew too much about his facial expressions. Q would have to do better.

“Need I remind you that this was supposed to be a surveillance mission only?”

“I did. I surveyed him putting his computer in the boot of his car before meeting with his date for the evening,” Bond explained, “and if his driver and personal detail happened to fall asleep on the job, it was all rather convenient.”

Q couldn’t approve of the behaviour, because it did go against mission protocol, but if they did find valuable data on the drive. Well.

“Convenient,” Q agreed, and Bond dropped the drive into his hand obediently. “I’ll take a look to see if there’s anything of value, but don’t think this gives you a pass on returning equipment in the future.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Q,” Bond purred, and then was gone before Q could say anything else.

Oh, and that purr and grin routine of his never seemed to get old. Q didn’t consider himself one to woo easily, but Bond could make his face look rather nice when he tried not being annoying.

00Q00Q00Q

A few days later, Q was up to his ears in projects.

He had two agents out on assignment, a budgeting issue in TSS, and an investigation underway into less-than-ideal numbers from the firewall testing. On top of it, he had been asked to accompany Mallory to a meeting tomorrow with the higher ups from the PM’s office, which meant an uncomfortable two hours sitting in a room with a bunch of top-notch Alpha arseholes who thought their cocks were a gift to mankind and liked to pretend that Omegas were second-class citizens.

With his fingers in every metaphorical pie and over two thousand emails to answer, Q was exhausted by that evening, but had no choice but to carry on. Perhaps he’d look into cloning, just for the hell of it. Or, to save money on the budget, a decent administrative assistant so he could get some much-needed sleep.

He was so preoccupied with work that he didn’t notice the late hour, nor person who had silently snuck into his office.

“Find anything you like on that drive?”

Q nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Bond’s voice. When he looked up, the man was suddenly right there in front of him, sitting in his guest chair like he owned it.

“Christ, you need a bell,” Q grumbled.

“Did I scare you?” Bond asked, looking delighted at the prospect.

“If you’re going to be an arse, get out of my office.”

But Bond came round and leaned his hip against the side of Q’s desk looking carefree-as-you-please.

“You could apologise for nearly giving me a coronary,” Q said.

“Sorry,” Bond said, not at all apologetic.

That much was obvious, as he was still grinning his Cheshire-cat grin. He was also entertaining himself by poking at the takeaway container on Q’s desk, opening up to reveal the full order of noodles that he’d been too busy to touch. At the sight, Q’s stomach gave a weak growl. When he looked at the time, Q shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Late dinner?” Bond asked.

“Something like that.”

Bond sniffed.

“It’s cold.”

“It’s fine. Do you need something?”

“The drive?”

Q pulled himself out of his eighteen other trains of thought and went searching for the appropriate window on his workstation. They had opened the drive in a sandbox and disabled most of the malware before it could corrupt the data. With the decryption programme they ran, they were still attempting matching data points to make it readable for human eyes, so it was a bit of a tedious process.

“The encryption was garbage. Almost like they wanted us to have the intel.”

Bond leaned closer than necessary to see his screen, but Q allowed it. He smelled of musk and heat, overwhelmingly Alpha. Some might think he was out of his mind, letting an Alpha get so close to him, regardless of his gender. Q wouldn’t lie, but there was a little thrill in it, having an Alpha so close to him, to his neck. And he smelled good, so good that it almost put Q in a softer mood, one where he would be more willing to let Bond do as he pleased. But Q quashed his biology. So what if Bond smelled good? All Alphas smelled good. It was just another distracting side-effect of having a secondary gender to begin with, not something unique to Bond. Still, he had to fight the urge to bare his throat; thinking how often he was annoyed with Bond helped him tamper down on that biological reflex.

“And?”

“Still parsing through it now. Financial records, mostly, but not enough to incriminate anyone. At least they were clever enough to be careful in that regard... “ Q said, and then indicated a separate window of some of the recovered data. “We think we might also have an appointment book of some kind. If we’re right, it could be a very roster of associates.”

“Oh, now that’s fun,” Bond purred, his breath warm, stirring Q’s hair.

Q felt an ache of want in the pit of his belly, but he pushed it aside, with everything else.

“I’ll let you know what I find out. Still a lot of data to analyse.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Bond said, but he went to the sofa instead of leaving Q’s office, like he was going to camp out there until there was more intel.

“It’s not going to get done tonight,” Q told him.

“I know,” Bond said, as he he stretched out on the couch.

Q did his very best to not watch him in the space between his monitors as all of his long, Alpha limbs claimed the available space. Q focused back on his screens, so that he didn’t think about what it would be like to be another thing that Bond claimed…

Yes, he definitely needed to get out more. Maybe call one of those numbers in the burner phone he kept at home for this very reason.

“You’re distracted,” Bond said, almost sing-song.

“You’re distracting,” Q grumbled.

“I’m not bothering you. I’m sitting quietly.”

“You’re breathing.”

Bond was up and off the couch in an instant, expression like a cat that cornered a canary.

“You’re annoyed.”

“I’m tired,” Q said, before he could stop himself.

It wasn’t a lie. He was tired, and had been for days now. But he was also restless. He wanted a good shag and a long bath and a few days to sleep it all off, but Q wasn’t about to get any of those things in the near future. Bond’s grin disappeared, turning into a frown. If Q didn’t know better, he would think Bond was actually concerned.

“You should go home, then.”

“Too much to do,” Q replied

“You’ll burn out if you keep this up.”

That was rich, coming from Bond, who had absolutely no regard for his health or personal safety. Or the health and personal safety of others, for that matter.

“Don’t you have something else you should be doing?”

The grin came back in full force.

“Annoying my Quartermaster, of course. I blocked out the time on my calendar and everything.”

Q resisted groaning, not about to give Bond what he so obviously wanted. It was a childish game, one that Q would sometimes engage in just to break up the monotony and aggravation of his stressful days. But he honestly had too much to do and not enough energy to play with MI6’s most dangerous Alpha.

“Well, you’ve done it. Bugger off early won’t you? Some of us have work to do.”

Surprisingly, Bond did as he asked, and Q took a moment to reel from the shock of it. Bond doing what he asked? It had to be a miracle. But he had no sooner gotten back to work when Bond reappeared in the doorway, a steaming mug in his hand.

Without a word, he came and set the mug down on Q’s desk, then disappeared without uttering so much as a farewell. Very strange, Q mused, as he picked up the cup. It was Earl Grey. The first sip told him it was two sugars, just a dash of cream. Just the way he liked it.

Very strange indeed.

00Q00Q00Q

A week later, Q had survived his hellish meeting with the Alpha-cock club, had most of his agents back in the country, the budget fixed for TSS, and the numbers on the firewall testing back within acceptable limits.

He also had a headache that wouldn’t quite leave him, but Q did his best to keep on. After all, there was an endless list of things to get done. And he might actually get them done with Double-Oh-Seven out of his hair.

Bond had left for a mission in Curaçao a few days prior, to do what he did best: honeypotting. Apparently one of the biggest drug cartels in the Netherlands (yes, that was correct, even Q had been shocked to hear of such a thing) had been using the island as a way to smuggle drugs from South America. The CIA had wanted the collar, because allegedly the same drug cartel was moving product into the States through Mexico, but the agency had apparently stepped on Zoetermeer’s toes, and in retaliation, the Netherlands had requested assistance from MI6. It was a rather unusual situation, but Q didn’t pay much mind to it, as it seemed like a routine enough mission that would not need his expertise or interference.

That, and the fact, that he hated when Bond went on honeypot assignments. It was hard enough to resist Bond’s assets on a normal day, but even more so after Q had been listening to him have very satisfying sex for days on end. Q wasn’t prudish, but it had been hard to look Bond in the eyes after his last honeypot, when Q had listened to the Alpha take a very willing Omega through an unexpected heat. On very lonely, cold nights, Q sometimes let himself imagine what it would have been like to be in her place.

“Jealous?” Moneypenny asked, one afternoon, when things were calm enough that Q could step away for a few minutes to have lunch with her in her office.

“Of what?”

She raised her eyebrows at Q. Moneypenny had to be one of the most discerning agents he knew, her Alpha senses even more honed than those of the Double-Ohs that he worked with. She not only had top-notch senses, but could also read people like open books, even when those people strived to be books that were locked and kept on high shelves away from others. Often, Q thought she knew his secret, but Moneypenny, properly British, never brought it up.

“Of Bond’s target.”

Q fought a blush, and stabbed at his salad with more aggression than necessary. He tried not to think of Ms. Velasquez with her sun-kissed skin, long dark hair, and appealing curves. Anyone would struggle to resist her, and Bond would certainly be doing the opposite.

“I am not jealous of anyone, especially Bond’s target. She has to be in the same room with him for more than five minutes. I pity her.”

Moneypenny grinned.

“It’s totally fine to admit. Everyone’s thought about it.”

“About what?”

“Shagging Bond.”

“I haven’t,” Q said.

Eve’s grin turned sharp.

“Liar.”

A bit of heat climbed up along his throat. Of course Eve could catch him in a lie.

“Fine,” Q conceded, “maybe once. Or twice. But I do try to be professional.”

Moneypenny shrugged.

“I shagged him,” she said, “in Macau.”

Q knew this, as did most everyone, but no one brought it up out of courtesy.

“Yes,” Q said, keeping his tone neutral.

Eve leaned across the table. Her eyes were playful, but Q knew that she could find at least fourteen ways to kill him in that moment using only the few items on her desk. Honestly, she was wasted in the office. She’d make some Double-Ohs run for their money, Bond included.

“You want to ask.”

Q did want to ask, because the porn he’d seen of Alpha/Alpha seemed too incredible to be real, but Eve was his friend and Bond was technically his subordinate, which meant that all of it was absolutely none of his business.

“It’s between you two,” Q said.

Moneypenny gave him a smile that was almost sweet. Q had no idea if it was genuine or not, but he liked the way it looked on her all the same. More friendly, less like she could kill him with her stapler.

“You’re the only one who hasn’t ever pried.”

“I’m a big believer in kissing and not telling.”

Eve laughed.

“You’re cute,” she said.

Q blushed, hurriedly looking for something to do with his hands, so he set out to cleaning up the mess from their lunches. His salad, still mostly untouched, he packed away. He’d try to eat it later, maybe, if he remembered. His appetite had been nonexistent as of late.

“You know, this is the first honeypot Bond’s done in a while,” Eve said conversationally.

Q tried to focus on getting their rubbish into the bin without making a mess, but he was watching Moneypenny out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to be focused on her nails--long, red, and sharp enough to draw blood--but then Q realised that she was actually looking at him.

“Sure,” Q replied, just as conversationally.

He honestly wasn’t sure what Eve was getting at.

“Almost like he’s...not been taking them as of late,” Moneypenny continued, “unless he had to.”

“Okay,” Q said, still very lost.

“Almost as if he...has his eyes on someone. You know, someone he might like to have a relationship with?”

“Sounds fake, but okay,” Q laughed.

James Bond, essentially MI6’s playboy, looking to settle into a serious, monogamous relationship? Q thought he’d be dead before he lived to see that day.

“Maybe not as far-fetched as you think,” Eve said, with an air of mystery.

Q blinked. It couldn’t be.

“Wait. You mean...you and Bond? In a serious thing?”

Honestly, Q hadn’t seen it coming, but if there was any power couple to be had, it would have been Moneypenny and Bond. He only felt a little jealous, for a fleeting second, at the prospect of knowing more people who had found happiness and a potential mate. But Eve’s face told a very different story. She looked as if Q had handed her something disgusting on a plate and asked her to eat it.

“What? No! Not me!”

“Oh…?” Q asked, back to where he started, not understanding.

Eve almost looked annoyed.

“For someone so smart, you’re an idiot.”

Q frowned at her obvious aggravation with him, which was very new, as they usually got on rather well. He immediately felt frustrated with the situation, like there were parts of the meta he was missing. Sort of like walking into a class thinking it was maths but discovering, fifteen minutes it, that is was actually advanced Latin.

“I love you too, Moneypants,” he said, just as Mallory came in through the door in a rush.

Excusing himself so that Moneypenny could attend to Mallory’s laundry list of needs (Eve mouthing at him that she would come find him later), Q picked up the remains of his barely-touched lunch and went back to his branch.

It was only later, while working through a particular block of difficult code, that Q wondered if Eve might have been talking about him. But just as quickly as the thought came, he dismissed it. As if someone like Bond--an Alpha like Bond--would ever look at him twice in that sort of way. Maybe once, out of curiosity, as some did, but not twice.

No one ever looked at him twice.

00Q00Q00Q

The more Q told himself he wasn’t about to start thinking about James Bond in anything other than a completely work-related capacity, the more he thought about it.

He’d entertained the thought every now and then, of course, because Bond was terribly good-looking in that traditionally Alpha way. Q wasn’t sure if it was his Omega biology or actual sexual preference, but he was drawn to men who looked like Bond: large hands, broad shoulders, that little bit of distinguished grey. And Bond did have a nice face (when Q didn’t want to punch it, of course). Lined, yes, but handsome in that rugged, experienced way that Q liked much more than he wanted to admit.

And Bond could be sweet, in his own way. Sometimes he left gifts of food and drink, other times broken equipment or bombs. Q much preferred the former, as the latter was just annoying (and sometimes dangerous) though he couldn’t truly be angry with Bond about either. It was sort of like having a cat that would either bring offerings of toys or dead things. He couldn’t berate the bad behaviour, because it might negate the good behaviour and then he’d get nothing at all.

Q sighed.

So he had a little crush. What was the harm in that? It wasn’t like anything would come of a little bit of harmless fantasising, right?

And he didn’t have the luxury of thinking too hard on it, as his work never ceased. It seemed that the moment Q thought the branch had gained some stability, another problem arose. They had suffered a major equipment malfunction mid-week when the cooling racks had failed and their servers overheated, bringing Q branch down for about four hours until they could get emergency replacements installed. They were still investigating to make sure it had truly been an accident and not sabotage (Q was leaning towards accident, what with their inability to keep the rats away from their wiring) and to make sure nothing had been stolen when they’d been offline. The PM was also asking questions about a mission from months ago that Double-Oh-Nine had botched up, and there were whispers that there might be a hearing on it if the answers weren’t to their satisfaction. On top of all of that, Q also had the task of figuring out just how he’d gotten such an insane number of bruises on his right arm and shoulder. It looked like he’d been struck by a bloody car.

At least Bond wasn’t underfoot for all of this, lounging away in some private resort in Willemstad, so Q could carry on without any distractions.

But one night, he took pity on the evening tech who had been listening to Bond shag away for three nights straight, and took over. He figured he’d monitor while catching up on some paperwork, just to make sure that Bond didn’t get shot (as he had been in the past while honeypotting, surprisingly) or do something irreparably stupid.

Long ago, Q had learned to tune out all non-mission-related noise, only focusing on the conversation when he heard things that might be useful. At least, he was that way with most of his agents, whom he didn’t possibly have a very infantismile crush on.

So, of course, Q wasn’t able to entirely miss the way Bond spoke to this woman in rolling Spanish, somehow even more suave than usual with the words all sounding like poetry. It was like being stroked slowly with silk, lulling, intoxicating. Q actually did have to work very hard to focus on the numbers in front of him.

The romantic language became sparse over dinner as they ate and drank, then took a quiet walk on the beach. Bond must have been persuasive in a way that wasn’t with words, because she started telling him all kinds of things that her husband did to her: how he used her, forced heats on her so that he could breed her. How she snuck birth control pills to keep from getting pregnant. How she wanted out but couldn’t find anyone who would help her get away.

It was rather maudlin, which is what Q said when he handed the reins back over to his tech.

“Keep an eye on this. It sounds… almost too good to be true,” Q said.

Even with all of the work he had, Q kept tabs himself, over the next week, in between his meetings and stand-ups and other tasks. It all seemed to be going in the direction they needed, Bond apparently getting closer to the true weaknesses of the cartel, all while engaging in seemingly mind-blowing sex. The woman went wild when Bond fucked her, their coupling frequent, rapid, and wet. She would utter all sorts of prayers in rapid Spanish while Bond said filthy things in her ear, all proud Alpha-things about filling her with so much seed that she would get pregnant, that she would be heavy with his pups, and that had her going wild.

For Q, it just made him...well. He wasn’t exactly sure. Restless, for certain, as Bond’s honeypot missions always made him (there was only so much moaning one could listen to before becoming affected themselves) but also...something else. Jealousy, perhaps. But at what? The coupling itself? Or the promise of children? He honestly couldn’t say.

Whatever it was, listening to Bond have at it day and night wasn’t helping.

So that night, he rewarded himself by going home a little early. Instead of giving in to his exhaustion and sleeping right away, Q washed and dressed, putting on a new scent that was just for going out, for luring someone to bed for the evening. Q wanted something new, not one of the names already in his phone, so he went out smelling of fresh citrus, a fruit ready to be picked: ripe and ready.

There was a bar not far from his flat that he sometimes frequented, and it wasn’t long before a suitable Alpha propositioned him. He was handsome--blond, broad, with big hands that looked like they could break him in half, all which sent a shivery thrill through him--though a little boring, but Q didn’t hold it against him. After all, neither of them were looking for conversation.

They went back to the Alpha’s flat and had sex with the lights off. Q preferred it that way, losing himself in the feeling of being fucked hard and fast. It hurt, a little, because there hadn’t been enough foreplay to get Q slick enough, but the pain eased into a pleasurable burn by the end of it.

Q came first, the Alpha almost immediately after, and Q had to bite into the pillow to keep quiet when the growing knot was pulled out of him before it became too engorged to remove. The sudden emptiness had Q wanting to weep, but he managed to cover it up with a forced sound of pleasure. The Alpha removed the condom, stroking himself into another, weaker orgasm that spattered across Q’s backside. In his post-orgasmic haze, Q found himself idly wished they wouldn’t have used a condom, just so he could feel a fleeting bit of warmth inside him instead of the spend cooling on his skin.

When he’d finished, the Alpha lay down on the bed next to him. They hadn’t kissed, and the Alpha did not seem intent on doing so now. There wasn’t even any of the affectionate nuzzling afterward, the bit that both Alphas and Omegas couldn’t resist after a coupling. Q wouldn’t lie and say he wasn’t disappointed. He had at least hoped, after, that he’d receive a brief moment of pure, biological affection.

But his Alpha seemed ready to sleep, his body nowhere near Q’s, telling him that their brief encounter had concluded. Maybe he was like this with every Omega he picked up in a bar, looking lonely and desperate for a good fucking. Or maybe he smelled the scent beneath the fake perfume that Q had put on, the sweetness giving way to something a little sour, acidic.

Rotten.

“That was fun,” Q said, as he got up to dress.

He was still covered in the Alpha’s come. It had turned tacky on his skin, forming damp spots in his clothes as he pulled them on.

“Another time?” the Alpha asked sleepily.

Maybe he meant it, maybe he didn’t, but Q handed his burner phone over anyway.

“Sure,” Q said.

After getting the number, Q showed himself out, walking back to his own flat smelling of a rushed and unsatisfying coupling. Q supposed he felt better, less restless, for certain, but not entirely satiated.

When he arrived home, he locked his cats out of the bedroom for some privacy and went for the toy in the bottom of his dresser: a giant silicone cock with a thick knot at the base. He was already stretched out and slick, so it didn’t take much to work the dildo into him, to rock back into it until it he was at the knot that he couldn’t quite take. It bordered on painful, but he felt full, which is what he wanted.

Q let himself fantasise, despite knowing how inappropriate it was, about Bond. It wasn’t even all of him at once, just pieces: his muscled arms round him, big hands on his hips, fingers splayed out over his ribs, the press of that sharp grin of his against his shoulder, the way he said Q so softly at night when it was just the two of them. The memory of how Bond sounded when he fucked that woman also helped, the way he panted into her ear, said all of those things with his voice hoarse and breathy. What would it be like to have Bond behind him, making those sounds of pleasure in his ear? Letting out that sweet moan when he released?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Q panted, as he came.

He lay there, for just a moment afterward, still clenching around the toy in him, pretending it was Bond, knotted, inside him. What would it be like to have his weight atop him, his heat? That feeling of utter bliss and contentment of being chosen and adored? Would he kiss him, just so, at that place where Alphas claimed their mates?

His bedroom door rattled, followed by plaintive meows, tearing Q from his vulnerable little fantasy. He realised there were tears on his cheeks and he hurriedly wiped them away.

“Oh, hush, you’re not going to die,” Q said to his feline companions on the other side of the door.

With shaking limbs, he cleaned up: took another shower, threw his clothes in the laundry, changed the sheets, put on clean pyjamas. He should have felt better, but didn’t. Instead, he felt even more disappointed. Empty. Lonely.

Q clutched at the scar across his lower belly, the reminder of what had been taken from him. Just twenty years old and in so much pain that they’d been forced to do the full job: uterus, ovaries, every bit of him that would have been able to give life. Everything that marked him as an Omega had been harvested from him, scraped out to leave nothing but hollowness behind. It wasn’t so much that he could never have children, but rather, that no Alpha would ever look at him--choose him--for a mate. And why would they? When there was nothing for Q to offer?

Gadget nudged his leg, purring, until Q leaned down to pick him up.

“You and your brother are the only ones for me,” Q said, petting him.

He went into the kitchen and ate chocolate ice cream from the carton, which helped, just a little bit, with the empty feeling. Then he went to bed and tried to sleep.

He lay there for some time in the dark, his hand outstretched into the expanse of bed beside him. The loneliness was so overwhelming that Q could almost taste it. He considered for a moment, letting his little fantasy continue: imagining Bond lying next to him in bed, soft at the edges with sleep, a smile, just so, at the corners of his mouth. But just as quickly as it came, Q chased it away, gripping at the cold sheets.

Q couldn’t imagine Bond looking at him like that, because then he’d get hopeful the next time Bond came in with his flirtatious little quips and one-liners. The truth was that Bond would never look at him that way, never lie in bed with him, never kiss him. No one would. And the sooner he stopped fantasising about someone coming to him like that--holding him, kissing him, maybe even just once saying they loved him--the sooner he could move on with his life: quietly doing his work, paying his mortgage, being the unassuming, undesirable head of Q-Branch until he died.

There were much worse things, after all, than being unloved.

But Q couldn’t think of any right at that moment, and, allowing himself a moment for self-pity in the privacy of his own home, turned his face into his pillow and cried himself to sleep.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Notes:

Thank you for all of your lovely comments, kudos, and subscriptions. You're all too wonderful.

An advance notice/warning here: as the tag indicates, this story is about infertility. Please see additional notes at the bottom of this chapter for more specifics and medical terminology.

 

Life went on, as it did.

Q woke every morning and showered with his scent blocking shampoos and soaps, took care of his skin and hair the best he could with neutral-smelling lotions and conditioners, and made sure to take of his medicine before he walked out the door. He would then be at work for anywhere from ten to fourteen hours, before returning home to sleep for a handful more, then to rise the next morning to start all over again. Tiring, yes, but rewarding all the same.

Until it became more tiring than anything else.

At first, Q thought it just loneliness, so he found a lover or two who wanted no strings and asked no questions. The sex was neither good nor bad, the goal of it more for the sake of distraction than anything else. But when this didn’t cure the itch under his skin or clear his head, Q wondered what else could be the cause.

He considered, after a particularly frigid night spend shivering in his bed, that it might be the weather. And then Q used that as the scapegoat for the rest of his problems: he blamed the aches in his joints on the damp and the dry, cracking skin around his eyes, nose, and mouth on the cold, and his inability to concentrate on much of anything to the neverending stretch of dreary, grey days.

So Q added more blankets to his bed, turned up the heat in his flat, and tried to take better care of himself, which meant less fourteen hour days (when he could manage) and more attempts to feed himself something throughout the day that wasn’t just Earl Grey. His stomach disagreed with him most of the time, and Q spent far too many nights miserably leaning over his toilet than he wanted to admit.

And when it seemed to be getting worse, Q didn’t want to confront the fact that it might be something more serious. He woke every morning more exhausted and with more bruises on him: deep red and purple marks on his arms and legs and shoulders. The bruises, at least, he could hide beneath his clothes, but then his knuckles and cuticles began cracking and bleeding with no warning, forcing Q to bandage them tightly to keep from being a hazard at the office. And, he ached everywhere, so deep that he felt it in his bones.

A normal person might have been alarmed by these symptoms and gone running to a doctor, but all Q could muster was a bit of aggravation at the inconvenience of the pain. He hated doctors. All they would tell him to do was poke and prod him, only to tell him to go home and rest, which was the one thing he didn’t have time for, not with his schedule.

So he went about his routine as usual, or as much as he could. The aches in his joints kept him in his chair more often than not, which meant long stretches of hours in front of a computer, trying and failing to capture a spark of interest in anything. That and continuously taking unhealthy amounts paracetamol for the headache that never seemed to actually go away...

He sighed, trying, and failing, to get through his massive email log with his aching wrists and fingers one evening when a shadow appeared in the doorway of his office. It was Bond, freshly back from the Caribbean, with a cut through his lip and a limp he couldn’t quite hide. If anyone ought to have learned by now that car chases did not often end well, it should have been Bond, but there was that saying about old dogs and new tricks and Q supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. 

“Q,” he said in greeting.

“Welcome back, Double-Oh-Seven. How was the island life?”

Bond eased himself into Q’s guest chair with the stiffness of someone with broken ribs that they were stubbornly not getting treated. Q had seen Bond like this enough times to not waste his breath telling him to go to Medical.

“I think you know,” Bond said, and though he had the right to be accusatory, he wasn’t.

“Yes, well,” Q adjusted his glasses, “we were just as surprised to discover that Ms. Velasquez was the head of the cartel herself…”

“You knew. You told your tech, who told me.”

“I happened to listen in and thought the dialogue sounded a bit familiar. It was strikingly similar to a telenovela.”

Bond’s brows went up, and he grinned. At first, Q thought it might be because Bond was amused that Q knew anything about Spanish soap operas, but instead, Bond asked:

“What happend to not babysitting me?”

“I happened to have a free moment.”

“And which moment did you happen to hear?”

Their eyes met, Q knew that Bond knew he had been listening to him having sex. It wasn’t like it was the first time it had happened, but they never discussed it afterward. And they certainly weren’t going to start now.

“You know I’m omnipresent, so I heard everything,” Q said.

Bond huffed something like a laugh, then passed over his equipment: Walther, earpiece, video camera tie pin. All in tact. That made Q suspicious immediately, but he was feeling a little lightheaded and didn’t want to get a game of Twenty Questions with Bond as to what his strange behaviour warranted.

“Good work, Double-Oh-Seven,” Q said, and began logging the equipment. “Please actually fill out your paperwork this time. I have enough work on my plate this week to also be doing yours.”

He thought Bond would take that as dismissal--maybe say something snarky or flirty before departing--but the man remained seated.

“Is there anything else you need, Bond?”

“You alright?” he asked, and it was so very out of character that Q stopped typing and turned to look at Bond.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Are you alright?” Bond said again, and his blue eyes were so intent, so piercing, that they almost hurt to look at. “Your hands.”

Q looked down at his bandaged fingers splayed out stiffly over the keys. A few of the plasters were bloody and needed changed. It seemed that no matter what he did or how much lotion he used, the skin kept breaking, but Q wasn’t about to reveal such a personal issue with the man he sometimes had sexual fantasies about. So he threw out a careless:

“You know R&D. Dangerous place.”

Bond didn’t seem convinced.

“You look peaky, too.”

Of course he’d look peaky. Anyone and everyone looked peaky compared to Bond, who had gotten a nice tan while away. Q was going to say all of this, but again, he just didn’t have the energy to muster up his usual brand of snark.

“Perfectly fine, thank you. Just a bit tired.”

He’d said the same thing to Bond a few weeks prior, he realised, in this same office. Honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been tired.

“That time of year, isn’t it?” Bond said

Q felt his cheeks flush despite himself, feeling a rush of anger and embarrassment all at once. What exactly was Bond hinting at? Suggesting that Q was an Omega approaching a heat? Q had the mind to write him up for insubordination just to make it very clear how inappropriate it was. Perhaps sending Bond to a sensitivities training course for three weeks would teach the Alpha to think before he opened his big mouth.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Double-Oh-Seven,” Q said cooly, warningly, daring Bond to go on.

Bond looked at him with a queer expression, as if he hadn’t expected a poor reaction to his tasteless joke.

“Flu season,” Bond clarified.

A very pointed moment of silence passed between them, in which Q felt so mortified that he wished the floor would literally open up and swallow him right there. Talk about open mouth, insert foot. After years of disguising himself as a Beta, all of his efforts to not out himself as an Omega and he’d almost done it after getting riled up over a misunderstanding. Bond hadn’t even been making a joke, Q realised, just conversation.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, my head is elsewhere today,” Q mumbled, doing his best to hide behind his monitor.

“Maybe you ought to take some sick time.”

Q huffed a laugh, still feeling very awkward.

“When I’m dead, maybe.”

Out of the corner of Q's eye, he saw one side of Bond’s mouth tip up in a smile, and it honestly wasn’t fair just how good-looking he was, even with the cut through his lip. Still, Q hoped it wouldn’t scar. Bond had too nice of a mouth for that. Q cleared his throat to chase those thoughts away. Bond was as beautiful as he was unobtainable. Looking was fine, but mooning wasn’t.

“You’d best be off, in case I’m catching.”

Bond took his warning and stood, his motions smooth and posture incredible for someone who had been in a major vehicular accident not even forty-eight hours previous. Then he slipped his hands into his pockets, moving away from Q’s desk with the grace of a man who, even with his injuries, was powerful and knew it. Sensual, Q might have called it, and might have appreciated it more if the throbbing in his temple wouldn’t have been quite so severe.

“Take care of yourself, Q.”

Headache or no, it took all of Q’s willpower not to watch that lovely backside as he left.

00Q00Q00Q

The next morning, Q felt all sorts of awful, almost to the point of taking the day from work, but he had too many meetings and not enough staff, so he soldiered through his morning routine. Added to it now was the care for his skin: applying antiseptic and pain-relieving gel to the cuts and sores on his hands, then clumsily wrapping them in plasters and gauze. By the time he finished, he looked a little like a burn victim--drawing some pointed look-aways on the Tube--but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about bleeding everywhere.

He thought he had managed to hide just how much he felt like he was on Death’s door, but he wasn’t even his branch for a full minute when his second-in-command was by his side with a frown and a line between her brows that told him otherwise.

“What’s on the docket today?” Q asked, ignoring her obvious concern.

R rattled off his appointments, their maintenance schedule, a few other odds and ends from the night shift, and right when he was about to thank her and send her off, she said:

“You don’t look well.”

“Thank you, I am always open to constructive criticism.”

“I mean, you look dead on your feet… maybe you ought to go home?”

“Too much work to do.”

“Then at least see Medical? Make sure you don’t have the flu that’s been going round.”

“It’s not the flu,” Q said, reaching for the folders in her hands.

R held them up and out of his reach. Either she had gotten faster or he had gotten much, much slower. Q had a sinking feeling he knew which was the correct answer.

“Then go to Medical. If you get cleared to come back, then I’ll let you have these,” she said.

Q sighed, far too exhausted to fight. 

“Fine,” Q said, “but that means you’re in my 0900 with Intentions.”

R made a face, obviously realising her mistake too late, but Q was already on his way toward Medical before she could call him back.

He took the lift to the basement floor above Q-Branch and settled in Medical’s empty waiting room, but didn't have to wait long. A nurse called him in and led him back to a private room. Q relaxed somewhat, relieved that he wouldn’t be in a room with others behind screens where their conversation could potentially be overheard. Whether it be due to his high rank as Quartermaster or the particular notation in his file for Medical staff only, at least he would be offered some privacy.

In the room, the nurse took his weight and temperature, then had him sit up on the exam table. Shrugging out of his cardigan, Q let her fit a cuff round his arm to take his blood pressure--the compression so tight against his skin that Q nearly wept--and then measure his pulse. She asked him a few perfunctory questions and swabbed the inside of his mouth to test for the flu before leaving to get the doctor.

She arrived a few moments later. Blonde, blue-eyed, nice smile, even behind the protective mask she wore. She was also an Omega--Q could tell by her particularly pleasant scent--and very pregnant. Q felt and ache in his belly at the sight of her, something bitter on his tongue that might have been envy.

“I’m Doctor Ziegler,” she said, and shook his hand.

He wanted to be polite and introduce himself, or at least say it was nice to meet her, but he felt so hollow inside that he couldn’t make those words come. Instead, what came out of his mouth was:

“Congratulations.”

Her eyes turned warm, her smile apparent behind her mask as she looked down at the swell of her belly.

“Thank you,” she said, as she took a seat next to the examining table.

And then, because Q couldn’t help it for some reason:

“Your first?”

“Yes.”

Q smiled, even though it felt like he wanted nothing more than to scream at that moment. It was always this way when he came upon someone pregnant. He didn’t want children, and yet...his body ached for one. Q hated the feeling of being torn between his wants and his own biology, but there was just no way to control it sometimes. And here was this woman, so happy to have life inside of her, and Q so desperately wanted to be happy for her...but all he felt was bitter and angry at the sight of her belly, hateful of her joy, and it took all he had to clamp down on the ugly thing that writhed inside of him before it could reveal itself.

“We’re very excited.”

He wanted to say something supportive, but he couldn’t make any words come. At least Dr. Ziegler didn’t seem to mind.

“So you’re not feeling well...think it might be the flu that’s going round?” she said conversationally as she opened the file.

Q held his breath, because this was always the moment when the doctors saw that notation in his file next to his classified Omega status, those words in his medical history that made every medical professional go quiet and then look at him with sympathy.

Total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (TAH-BSO) for treatment of intractable Endometriosis and Adenomyosis..

Q didn’t think he could bear her gaze, so he focused instead on a point on the far wall, letting Dr. Ziegler continue on reading his medical history. The air became a little heavy, but she pushed through it with the grace of someone in the medical profession who had seen everything and did not judge.

“Says here you got your yearly vaccination back in October, so hopefully if you do have the flu, it’s a mild case,” she said.

Just then, there was a knock on the door, a nurse peeking in with a paper that she handed to the doctor before departing.

“Well... the good news is that it’s not the flu,” Dr. Ziegler said, reading the results. “Your swab came back clean.”

Q nodded, watching her look very closely at the paper in her hands. 

“Hm but you do have a low grade fever… How long did you say you’ve been feeling off?”

Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, and he was grateful that he didn’t have to be the only one looking away.

“A few weeks,” Q admitted.

“Headache, body ache, fever, fatigue, nausea?”

“The works.”

She stood and came close to feel at his lymph nodes. He hissed at her touch and she withdrew her hands quickly as if she had burned him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, feeling badly for shocking her. “I’ve been… oversensitive as of late.”

At her prompting, he (reluctantly) explained how much his skin had been hurting, along with his unwavering fatigue, the aching in his joints, the headache that wouldn’t cease, and the strange bruising. He let her examine the bruises that had been appearing all over him, then winced his way through the removal of the plasters on his hands. Her eyes were concerned as she looked closely at the cracks between his fingers, his bloody knuckles, the raw cuticles. After a visual review, she put on a pair of latex gloves and treated the wounds with a higher-grade antiseptic than what Q had at home, then bandaged his hands back up more professionally. His skin stung beneath the almost too-tight gauze.

“And you’ve been on hormone therapy for…” she went back to his file, “fourteen years?”

Q clenched his jaw.

“Yes.”

“You’re also taking biphosphonates for bone strength?” she asked, stripping out of her gloves.

“Every week for fourteen years,” Q replied, “and calcium supplements every day.”

“And when was your last adjustment to the hormones?”

God, he hated talking about this. The headache was not helping.

“Before I started in this position. About two years ago.”

“You haven’t been in to see anyone since?”

He shook his head, hating the turn in conversation. Of course it was the hormones. It was always the hormones. Always his bloody biology buggering things up. She continued flipping through his chart.

“And you’re not bonded?”

“Of course not,” Q said, and some of his viciousness came to the surface in those three words, the doctor flinching, just slightly, at his tone.

He wanted to feel badly about it, but he didn’t. What sort of question was that, anyway? To ask someone like him? Just to rub it in his face that she was pregnant and bonded and had a future family to look forward to while he had nothing?

He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to control the bitterness from getting too out of hand. He was vindicated in his response, yes, but not in his hatred of this woman. That was unnecessary.

With kindness he didn’t deserve after snapping at her, she asked:

“I’d like to run a few tests, if I could?”

Q nodded mutely, allowing her and a nurse to do with him as they needed for the next half-hour: looking into his eyes and nose and ears with lighted scopes, taking samples of urine and blood, letting them poke and prod where they wanted despite the pain that it caused.

“I’d like you to rest here while we wait for the results,” Ziegler said.

“I should go back to work,” Q said, but he barely had the energy to get off the table.

Q didn’t like to think he was an emotional person, but having to talk about the worst thing in his life--his defect, his shame--with strangers had been nothing short of draining. The worst thing was that they had been so nice to him through the entire process, obviously concerned for his pain and well being. Even now, Ziegler was being gentle, trying to get him into a more comfortable position on the uncomfortable table.

“It won’t be long,” she assured him, and reclined the table a bit. “Let me get you a blanket.”

She left, and then returned with the blanket as promised, going so far as to drape it over him from shoulder to ankle. It was a motherly gesture, one that made Q feel gratitude and jealousy in equal measure. She would make a good mother. Perhaps Q would have, too, had he gotten the chance.

He tried not to think about it.

Q might have dozed for a while after she left--the room dark, the blanket warm, his body reclined and so very, very tired--because he started when he heard the door open some time later. Ziegler came in, folders under her arm, and Q sat up, expectant, but also heavy with exhaustion.

“So, I want to let you know that I did consult with another doctor. Have you met Dr. Bronson?”

Q nodded. Dr. Bronson had been on many calls with him in the past, helping agents when they were dealing with injuries in the field.

“We went over your file,” she explained, “and talked about your symptoms. The reason I consulted her is because...these symptoms are odd for someone your age...but not impossible with your medical history.”

Then Ziegler gave him a sympathetic look, and Q felt himself beginning to wall off, because nothing good ever came of a look like that.

“We think...it might be Edwin-Dahlers Syndrome,” she said.

Q let the words sink in.

Every Omega knew what that meant. It was the dreaded spectre that hung over all of them, the thing that drove all Omegas to find suitable partners and reproduce before their body began to fail. Lack of mate and pups meant lack of the very thing Omegas biologically needed to survive. It was beyond safety and security. It came down to something as simple as touch; some Omegas could die without it.

It was rare, though, only occurring in a small percentage of unmated Omegas. And even then, there was speculation that it might be genetic in some way, as not all unattached Omegas developed the condition. It seemed, once again, that Q had drawn the short straw, that his body had come up with yet another way to fail him.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“As sure as we can be. As you know, there’s no test for it, but your symptoms all point to it…”

Q didn’t want to think about his symptoms, about how they would get worse, how his body would become something even more grotesque than it already was. His skin would get worse, the cuts turning to sores that wouldn’t close or heal, and he’d probably lose all of his hair and teeth in equal measure. It would be slow, of course, the death long and lingering and painful. There would be no dignity in it, in losing control of his motor functions, his bladder and bowels, his ability to speak, to see, to think. Q would waste away to nothing but a husk of a person, until one major organ or another gave out, and then, only then, would he finally be at rest.

“So how long do I have?”

“It’s not a death sentence,” she said gently. “We understand it now. Many go on to live to their full life expectancy with the right treatment.”

“But not all,” Q said.

She looked so, so sad for him. Pitying. Q couldn’t bear it, but he didn’t have the strength to get up and walk away.

“There are ways to halt the progression of symptoms. Bonding, of course, is the most successful, or the presence of a steady partner mate or child. If that isn’t possible, there are therapists that focus in touch therapy, private services with trained professionals to help with your specific needs, retreats for others with the same diagnosis... all sorts of options. And medication, of course.”

Q nodded, but he wasn’t listening. The fog was back in his head. His skin hurt. He wanted to be somewhere else entirely.

“I think it would be beneficial to start seeing a therapist right away. We have some very good--and very discrete--practitioners that work with MI6 staff,” she said.

He couldn’t make his mouth move, even though he tried, but Q managed another nod. He’d done it before, the mandatory sessions after his surgery: sitting in a room with a person who pretended to feel empathy for him, but who had no idea what it was like to be twenty and with absolutely no future. The thought of doing it all over again, talking to a stranger who was paid to care, was mortifying, but the thought of that same stranger putting their hands on him in the name of medicine was even worse. He swallowed back the bile in his throat.

“And the medication?”

“A few pills a day, with food,” she said, and looked at her clipboard. “We also got some preliminary blood work back on you. Your iron levels are low, pointing to anemia, which is common with EDS. This is probably why you’re bruising so badly. I have a feeling your B12 and other major vitamins are low as well, so I’m going to prescribe some supplements. When your full labs come back, we’ll know what’s going on with everything, including your hormones, and we'll make the necessary adjustments at that time."

With this, she began scribbling things on a pad, and Q felt himself retreating somewhere in the back of his mind. There were no thoughts about future projects or budget meetings or gadgetry. It was just a numbing, white space. Empty and cavernous. He gripped at his belly, at the empty womb, at the body that seemed to continuously betray him.

“Here,” the doctor said, handing him a few sheets of prescription paper, “we’re going to get you started right away on some of the standard medications.”

He could barely make his hand grip the papers. Maybe she saw, because her expression went dewy with sympathy. It felt like being stabbed with broken glass.

“I know that this is a lot right now. You should get some rest.”

“Rest.”

The word felt thick on his tongue.

“Yes. I think you ought to take a few days. The medication should help your fatigue and pain. The therapy will help, too. I’m going to have my colleague call you to make an appointment. Is that alright?”

Q managed a nod, even though he already had emotionally and mentally retreated from everything. But then she touched him, very gently, on the back of the hand, and it took all Q had to not cry.

“Please call if you need anything.”

He managed another nod, because he couldn’t speak round the hard thing in his throat. And then she finally moved her hand and he felt like he could control himself again, enough to take the papers and put them in his pocket, slide down off the exam table and walk to the door.

"You're going to be alright," she told him. 

Q wanted to believe her, as he had wanted to believe those doctors years ago, when they had said the same thing. <i>You'll be alright</i> they said, after the stitches had come out, leaving behind a raw, red line across his belly that would never be home to a pup. <i>Everything will be alright</i> they insisted, shoving pills and papers at him as he left the hospital in a taxi for an empty flat, no mate or family or friends waiting for him. <i>It's alright</i> he told himself, day after day, as he tried to pick himself back up, put his life into a semblance of order. And he'd done it: Quartermaster of MI6, the youngest in history. 

And for what? To have it all taken away from him, like this, of all ways. Of all the undignified, terrible ways. 

It wasn't alright. It hadn't been since that day he'd lost everything, that day that Q sometimes wished he'd died on the operating table instead of having to endure all of this alone. 

But he couldn't say any of that out loud, not to someone in Medical who would have him sequestered away somewhere in fear that he might hurt himself, so Q tried to smile at her. It came out ugly, he knew, a twisted, horrible parody of a smile, but he couldn't manage much better. 

"Thanks," he said, and then swallowed the hot, hard thing in his throat when he nodded to her belly and tried for kindness: "I'm happy for you." 

And then he turned and left as quickly as he could.

00Q00Q00Q

He did go home right afterwards, knowing he wouldn't be able to concentrate on any work.

R looked relieved, and sent him on his way with assurances that the branch would be in good hands while he was away.

It was strange taking the Tube home in the middle of the day, coming back to a flat filled with grey sunshine. He rarely, if ever, saw his space lit up with natural light, too used to seeing it in the retreating dark of early morning or the deep blackness of late evening. It should have been relaxing, even soothing to see the sunlight, but Q hurriedly went to the window and pulled the curtains closed, casting the room into comfortable darkness. Gadget and Gizmo watched him close off their windows and acted a little standoffish afterwards, but then all at once very happy to see him, insistent on treats and affection once he’d changed out of his work clothes and into something more comfortable for lounging on his sofa.

Q curled up with them on the couch and felt suddenly very guilty being at home instead of at work, but when he pulled up his email on his mobile and tried to minimise some of the mail in his inbox, he found that he still couldn't make sense of much. Blaming his headache and rubbish morning, Q put his phone down and flipped on the telly to try to find something mind-numbing to watch, settling on a cooking show in an attempt to maybe feel hungry enough for some kind of lunch in a few hours.

But he didn’t eat. Instead, he fell into a fitful sleep, waking at odd hours of the afternoon and evening, shivering and feverish, tangled in the blankets on the sofa in front of a muted television. Every time he woke, he thought about rising to get something for his parched throat, maybe crawl down the hallway into his much more comfortable bed, but could never find the energy.

He laid there for two days, dragging himself up only to use the toilet, pop a panadol for his headache, and feed the cats before collapsing back onto the sofa again for a few more hours of unsatisfying sleep. He never quite made it to bed, despite his best intentions, and couldn’t force himself to eat, even knowing it would be good for him. Gadget and Gizmo kept dutiful watch over him on the back of the sofa during this time, not venturing too close, already having been on the unfortunate end of a flailing arm or foot as Q tossed and turned.

His mobile rang a few times during these two days. R twice to check in, Eve a few times more than that to see if he needed anything.

“It’s just the flu,” Q assured Moneypenny on the second day. “Please don’t come by. You might catch it.”

He hoped he sounded miserable enough to keep her away. Q was in no mood to entertain, not when he had bloody tissues shoved up his nose from a nosebleed that wouldn’t quite give up. Not to mention the fact that he hadn't washed in a few days.

“I can at least drop off some food for you?”

The thought of food was enough to make his stomach turn.

“Maybe in a few days. Liquids only right now,” Q lied.

After assuring her he would be fine after a few more days of quarantine, Eve left him alone, allowing Q to return to his poor attempts at rest.

Other calls came during this time--his mobile buzzing insistently--but Q let them go to voicemail: the MI6 pharmacy calling to say that his prescriptions were ready, Dr. Ziegler checking in to see how he was doing, a therapist calling to schedule a new patient appointment. Eventually Q just muted his phone and threw it on the coffee table, hoping it would die so he would have a valid excuse for not answering.

By the third day of this, Q realised that he had at least ninety-nine problems, and one of the most pressing was that he had completely run out of cat food.

“Well, shit,” Q mumbled, looking at the empty container.

Gadget and Gizmo paced around him, then around their empty bowls, and began crying. A rush of pain came right behind his eye as he leaned down to pet them both.

“Oh, hush. You’re both fine. I won’t let you starve,” Q told them.

A splatter of blood appeared on the lino, and Q quickly stood and tipped his head back to avoid bleeding everywhere. The nosebleeds were getting a little ridiculous, he thought, as he moved out of the kitchen and to the end table by the sofa, where he’d left the box of tissues. There was only one left.

“Fuck,” Q grumbled, using the last tissue to control the bleed.

He definitely had to go out now, if he didn’t want to be doing laundry every time he turned his head. Q considered calling a service to do the shopping for him and drop it right at his door, but wondered if going out might do him some good. This wasn’t the first time he had spiraled after bad news. He’d been here before, years ago, shutting himself away from the world for weeks to wallow in his own sadness and self-loathing. Depression could be a nasty thing, and sometimes, Q found the best medicine for him was carrying on, even when he wanted to die. Just like before, it seemed like his world was ending, but it hadn't. Maybe this time would be similar.

“Get it together,” Q told himself.

He shuffled into the bathroom with the intention to shower, but after having not eaten in days (his stomach in fits at the mere thought of it) or had much to drink (having stopped because less intake meant less output, which meant less having to get up off the couch to take a piss every few hours) he just didn't have the energy to both bathe and go out. So a good wash was out of the question, but Q at least had the decency to brush his teeth, put on deodorant, and shrug into some clean clothes in lieu of a shower.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Q grimaced at how unkempt he looked. His eyes were the worst. The membranes had turned red with inflammation, the corners cracked and just on the verge of bleeding. His hands were in a similar state, stiff with blood where the cuts had reopened. There wasn’t much he could do for it, so he wrapped up his hands with the last of his plasters and gauze, put on a hat to cover his dirty hair, and shoved on a pair of oversized sunnies over his glasses to hide his red-rimmed eyes.

Unable to follow his usual routine with his scent blockers, Q settled for a quick-fix and sprayed himself with a mist that some Omegas used to make themselves less tempting to Alphas. It dulled an Omega’s scent--enough that some Omegas, like Q, used it for protection if they happened to be out late at night and didn’t want their scent to attract attention or trouble--though didn’t get rid of it entirely. Q only used it when doing quick runs like this to the corner store. It was enough to fool strangers in a public place with so many other smells, not enough to use all day in a close-quarters building full of spies.

Grabbing his wallet, keys, and reusable bags, Q left his flat for the first time in three days, taking the lift down to the bottom level because he didn’t think he could manage the stairs. Then it was two blocks to the nearest store.

Two blocks usually felt like a convenience, but today it felt like a hundred miles.

By the time Q made it to Waitrose, he was already exhausted, a little dizzy, and desperate to sit down, but there really wasn’t any time or place for it, so he took a basket and went for his few items. Cat food first, then a small bottle of fresh milk to tempt himself into making some tea. He then picked up a box of saltines and two cans of clear broth for food, not only because nothing looked good, but because both would require the least amount of effort.

Finally, after what felt like passing over a hundred aisles, Q made it to the first aid section. It took a moment for him to remember all the things he needed with his head pounding like it was, but he managed a mental checklist. He was out of plasters and tissues, and also needed petroleum jelly or something similar for the cracked skin around his eyes and mouth and fingers. Eye drops too. Something to help with the redness and pain. Q dumped the items into his basket without even glancing at the prices, then went in the direction of the self-service till.

“You look like shit.”

Q stopped. He knew that voice. James <i>Bloody</i> Bond.

Straightening up the best he could with how crappy he felt, Q warned:

“I have the flu, go away.”

For some reason, Bond took this as an invitation to come closer, because suddenly every bit of gorgeous Alpha was standing in front of him. It was one of the few times that Q had actually seen Bond outside of a suit. He looked casually devastating in jeans.

The thoughts were not good ones; Q didn’t have the mental capacity to try to keep himself in check, so he tried warning Bond off again.

“I’ll cough on you if you don’t get out of my way,” Q threatened.

But Bond was leaning over and rifling through his basket instead of listening.

“You don’t have any food. Unless this is for you?”

Bond held up the can of cat food.

“Bugger off,” Q grumbled, taking the can back.

“You won’t get better if you don’t eat something.”

“Why are you even here? Did you follow me?”

“Maybe I happen to live around here?”

Q would have rolled his eyes, but he feared it might make his headache worse. Plus it wasn’t worth it if Bond couldn’t see his disdain when hidden behind his sunglasses. So instead he expressed it verbally:

“I’m sick, not an idiot, Bond. I know you live in a posh apartment in Chelsea and wouldn’t be caught dead in this neighbourhood.”

Bond put his hands into his pockets, almost looking contrite at being called out.

“Eve was worried. She asked me to check on you.”

“And you did as Eve asked?”

“I’m on Medical leave. Not much else to do.”

Must have been a broken rib for Bond to take the leave instead of going off, doing whatever he did when Six told him to stay put.

“So you’re loitering round Waitrose,” Q said doubtfully.

Bond shrugged.

“I saw you leaving your building so I followed you,” Bond said.

“Well, I’m fine. Please go.”

But Bond was putting something into his basket: a sleeve of bread and a carton of eggs. Had he been carrying them around with him the entire time? Q couldn’t recall.

“If you’re going to fill it, you’re going to carry it,” Q grumbled.

His arm was hurting and the wounds on his hands were reopening. Bond immediately took the heavy basket, and then walked off with it. It left Q with no choice but to follow, while Bond filled the basket with oranges and bananas and other produce that Q would have never purchased on a normal day. The eyes of other shoppers were drawn to Bond--both male and female, Omega and non-Omega alike--as Bond moved between the displays. Q couldn't even fault them for it; Bond was too handsome for his own good, especially while doing such a domestic thing as grocery shopping in his casual clothes. In comparison, Q felt like a swamp monster: greasy hair, his skin chapped and flaking, and his clothes even more ill-fitting than usual with all the weight he’d lost of late.

He definitely didn’t look the sort to be associating with someone like Bond, and the wave of inadequacy that washed over him was staggering. But then Q felt angry. Here he was trying to feel better and Bond had gone and ruined it by showing his stupidly handsome face. Q was still uncertain if he wanted to punch it or kiss it when he went up to Bond and held out his hand.

“Please let me have my groceries so I can go home.”

He must have looked as terrible as he felt because Bond immediately put down the item he’d been looking at--enoki mushrooms, as if Q were someone cultured enough to know how to prepare them, let alone eat them--and began ushering Q to the front of the store with a light pressure against his lower back.

The way Bond touched him with such familiarity was enough to catch Q off guard, so much that by the time Q had gotten out his loyalty card, Bond had already paid for his groceries.

“You didn’t have to buy everything,” Q mumbled, as Bond packed all of the items into the reusable bags.

“Let me walk you home.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like a corpse.”

“Thanks,” Q said dryly.

He took up his bags and hurried out of the shop, heading off in the direction of his flat. Lugging the heavy bags hurt his hands and shoulders, but he wasn’t about to admit weakness or defeat, not when Bond was trailing behind, trying to take the bags from him.

“Bond, please go away.”

“You’re bleeding,” Bond said, and when Q looked down at his hands, he saw that Bond was right.

“I’m fine,” Q said again.

“You’re a security risk,” Bond said.

Q couldn’t argue with that. He certainly was asking to be kidnapped, walking around without paying much mind to his surroundings. Someone could have kidnapped him right out of Waitrose and he probably wouldn’t have even noticed until they were halfway outside of London.

“Fine,” Q mumbled, as he handed over the bags, far too tired to try to argue.

The walk back felt longer than the journey to the store, and by the time they made it to the top floor of his building, Q was ready to sleep for a week.

With his hurt fingers, Q flipped through his keys to find the right one to unlock the door.

“Thank you for things. Please tell Eve I’m okay,” Q said, all in a rush, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

“You don’t look okay...” Bond said, as Q took his bags from his lax fingers and dropped them on the foyer floor carelessly.

“Yes, thank you, goodbye,” Q said, trying to close the door on Bond before he fell down.

He made it too: door closed and locked and everything seconds before his knees gave out and he collapsed on the floor. But it had all been for naught, as his graceless fall had apparently been loud enough for Bond to hear, and concerning enough for the man to pick the lock and let himself inside.

Q might not have been in top physical condition, but he at least had enough energy to inject a little bit of angry disbelief into his voice:

“Did you pick my lock?

“Not a very good lock,” was Bond’s reply, and then, his hands were on Q, trying to help him into an upright position.

Big, warm hands trying to be so gentle, not realising fingers were pressing into the tender bruises in Q’s skin. Q grit his teeth, unable to clamp down on the whimper that escaped his throat. His hands stung, the wounds burning from having reopened when he’d involuntarily clenched his fists at the pain. When he was upright, Bond immediately let him go. Q’s body felt both relief and disappointment at the loss of contact.

“You’re a mess,” Bond observed.

“Please leave,” Q said miserably.

His head pounded and he felt a nosebleed coming on. Maybe Bond smelled it, because the man tipped his head back just as Q felt the start of a trickle. To his right, Q heard the rustle of his grocery bags as Bond rifled through them. Then the press of a soft tissue to his nose with gentleness that Q would never have expected from someone like Bond.

“Lean forward now,” Bond instructed, and Q did.

The tissue quickly became saturated. Bond handed him another, and then another, until the blood clotted in his nose. Some of the pressure eased from his head, the headache giving way to a dull throbbing behind his eyes.

“This isn’t the flu, is it?” Bond asked.

“It is the flu. Very contagious. You should go.”

But Bond didn’t seem to be listening, intent on helping Q up. Q definitely hadn’t planned on walking for a while, thinking that sleeping on the foyer floor sounded preferable to using his legs, so he found himself leaning heavily on Bond for support.

It seemed like ages until he was sitting on the edge of his own bed. By then Q could practically taste his own exhaustion. Maybe that’s why he didn’t put up a fight as Bond removed his shoes and helped him out of his jacket. His hat and sunglasses were the last to go, Bond being careful to remove them and not jostle Q’s glasses in the process.

Q didn’t want to think about what sort of picture he painted: gaunt and pale, dried blood on his face, at the corners of his eyes and fingernails. Oh, and his hair. It was so dirty after not washing for two days. He probably smelled awful.

And that’s when Q realised he not only smelled bad, but he smelled like an Omega. The blocker he’d used had only been on his coat, not his clothes or skin...

Which meant Bond knew.

Shit.

“Here,” Bond said.

He held out a cup filled with water. Ice cubes clinked in the glass. The sound made Q’s mouth hurt with indescribable want, but he couldn’t seem to raise his hand to take the cup. Bond helped, lifting his hand, encouraging Q’s bloody fingers to curl around the glass. He managed to get a decent grip, but Bond’s hand lingered over his as he drank gratefully. It was the most delicious thing Q could remember having in his life.

When he finished the water, Q went for the ice cubes, crunching on them, feeling a strange, primal joy when they burst in his mouth, against his teeth. Bond’s hand fell away, allowing him eat all of the ice in peace, only taking the glass away when it was empty. When he brought it back, it had been wiped clean of his blood and filled with more water and ice.

Q drank again, this time a little slower. Bond didn’t touch him this time, just watched him, which Q found unnerving. All he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and never be seen again, but Bond didn’t seem interested in leaving.

“Edwin-Dahlers,” Bond said, not asked, and Q knew there was no point in denying it.

“You already know the answer to that.”

Bond frowned, a line between his brows like he’d come across a puzzle he couldn’t figure out.

“You’re so young,” Bond said.

The words had a faint echo to them, a doctor standing at his bedside when he was barely twenty years old, groggy with anesthesia and pain.

“Dealt a bad hand.”

Bond gave him an indiscernible look that Q couldn’t name, but knew, at least, that it wasn’t pity, so he’d take it.

“Is there someone you want me to call?”

Q wanted to laugh, but couldn’t find the energy.

“There’s no one to call. You know that,” Q said, and regretted it because Bond almost looked sad of all things.

“Anything I can do?”

Q placed his empty glass on the bedside, then pulled his legs up onto the bed and slid the duvet up over him. His hands hurt. The bruises ached. His head pounded. He wished his body would stop sending him pain signals, because Q was quite frankly tired of it.

“Put the milk away,” Q instructed, throwing his glasses carelessly on the bedside, “and feed my cats, would you?”

“Anything else?” Bond asked, and his voice sounded very near, and so very soft.

Q felt weak in that moment, his Omega instincts begging for contact, for touch, for gentleness and affection. Here was an Alpha, offering, maybe, those things. Probably, if Q asked, and sounded very pathetic about it. But he wasn’t about to.

“Lock my shitty door before you leave.”

Bond didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile. Q knew without looking at him. He could feel it in the tension in the room, the way Bond seemed to hesitate leaving his side. But his footsteps did eventually leave. Q heard him in the kitchen, unpacking a few things, putting kibble in the bowl as he’d asked for the cats. Nice, domestic sounds. Maybe something that Q could have enjoyed on Sunday mornings in a different life from this one. A loving mate, preparing breakfast, the pitter-pattering of tiny feet and cheerful laughter.

No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t want children. He had never dreamed of that growing up. A mate, maybe. One who respected him, completed him, loved him. Children, no. He would never have been good at it. Never had the patience for that sort of thing and never would. But still, the tears came, unconscious and unbidden, at a fantastic sort of life that would forever be out of reach for him.

So he did the one thing that made it all bearable.

He slept.

Notes:

Follow me on Tumblr for a Wednesday preview of the next chapter.

Medical notes:
I've used the medical phrase "total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy" to refer to a the formal medical name for removal of a woman's entire reproductive system. Because Omegas have a reproductive system identical to or similar to a person with a uterus and ovaries, I have opted to use this medical terminology to refer to Q's medical procedure.

This medical procedure is performed for a variety of reasons, but as noted in the chapter it was for "intractable Endometriosis and Adenomyosis". Endometriosis is when endometrial cells (the lining of the uterus) are in a location outside of the uterus. Adenomyosis is when these cells exist or grow into the uterine wall. Both of these may cause heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic and back pain, pain during intercourse, chronic fatigue, headache, nausea and vomiting, low-grade fevers, etc. 40% of persons suffering from Endometriosis are infertile.

Very important note:
For all persons with uterus and ovaries, if you suffer from irregular, painful, and/or heavy periods with any of the mentioned symptoms above, please know that this is not normal. If you feel like you are on Death's door every month, that your life is less of a life because of your menstrual cycle, please make an appointment with an OBGYN or other doctor well-versed in reproductive health. If your doctor ignores you or brushes you off find another doctor. Endometriosis can be managed if caught early, and can prevent sufferers from becoming infertile or needing extensive surgery. Listen to your body and advocate for it. Don't let anyone tell you that you are crazy, whining, have a low tolerance for pain, or any other bullshit response. You are valid, your pain is valid, and you deserve to be living your best life.

Much love,
D

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Notes:

I'm so sorry for breaking all of your hearts. Here's some more sad things for you xx

When Q woke, it was raining.

It struck against the windows, the sill, the roof, violent, yet somehow soothing in its repetition. In the distance, thunder rolled, softly, like a purr. Around him the room was dark, either from the storm or with a later evening hour. But Q worried about neither the weather nor the hour, warm and safe in his bed, wrapped in blankets, his cats two comforting weights at his feet. And behind him, someone: a warm length of a strong body moulded against him, an arm over his waist, the even rise and fall breath against his shoulder.

He felt overwhelmingly loved in that moment. Cared for. Protected. Happy. If there was such thing as heaven, this would have been it for him: listening to the sound of an oncoming storm while cocooned in the embrace of another living being.

And that is how Q knew it was all a dream.

After all, why would anyone be in his bed when he wasn’t someone worth sharing it? Holding him as if they loved him when he could give them nothing in return? He ached everywhere, feeling overwhelmingly empty, desperate to be filled but knowing he never would. No mate to hold him, no children to grow inside of him.

Nothing, not ever.

All of his happiness bled out of him, his sadness giving way to tears. And, cruelest of all, the person behind him stirred at the first sound of his crying and held him ever closer. They kissed him, very softly, just behind his ear--at that place where no Alpha would ever claim him--and began smoothing back his hair, trying to soothe him with touch and the sweetly whispered words shh, you’re alright, I’m here on gentle repeat.

Q wished he could believe it--that everything would be alright, that this sweet, loving person would be there when he woke--but knew it wasn't in the cards for him. Perhaps it never had been, ever since he had hit puberty, when there had been nothing but blood and sweat and tears. Pain had been his only constant: before, when his body had been tearing itself apart week in and week out; and now, the agony of loneliness that he couldn’t soothe with work or drugs or sex.

A sound clawed its way out of his throat, strangled and terrible even to his own ears, but Q couldn’t stop it, just as he couldn’t stop it from happening again and again and again.

Fingers twined in his, holding fast, and the sudden heat and weight of that touch anchored him. All of his spiraling thoughts dissolved into vapors, vestiges; the sobs halted, contained in the cage of his diaphragm, silenced. There were no other sounds except the storm, the intake and exhale of breath, and that warm voice sounding like waves against a beach.

Shh, I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.

Q leaned into it, the voice, the body, seeking all of it hungrily, starved for it. And the person gave the affection, enveloping him in arms and blankets and heat and all of the wordless assurance he imagined a lover would offer. And then that kiss again, in that promised place, the gentle squeeze of the fingers still entertwined with his, and Q felt himself drifting somewhere far away to the sound of rain.

00Q00Q00Q

When he woke, Q knew he was no longer dreaming because he felt pain.

It flared behind his right eye, reminiscent of a migraine, the intensity severe enough to have his stomach twisting with nausea. A cold sweat broke out on his skin. Q felt like he might be sick.

Hands touched him, gently turning him onto his side, holding him there with one big, warm palm splayed on the back of his neck. The touch helped center him and calm that impulse to vomit, for which Q was grateful. Then something pressed against his nose, soft and papery at first before dampening against the skin just above his lip. The pressure in his head lessened, the piercing agony giving way to a dull ache that was much more manageable.

With some difficulty, Q managed to open his eyes. The lashes felt as if they had been glued shut, sticky with sleep. There was a light--close, gold, his bedside lamp--so bright that Q tried to move his head away, but the hand held him still. A click and the light was gone, the room fading into shades of grey and black. Above him, a blurry form that Q couldn’t discern without his glasses. He almost panicked--the Quartermaster of MI6 very alone, very defenceless, with a stranger--but then the form leaned closer and he found himself looking into pair of familiar blue eyes.

At first, Q felt relief, because he knew the person leaning over him. Then he felt panicked all over again, because he knew the person leaning over him.

What, he tried, but his mouth was too dry.

“It’s about time you woke up,” Bond said.

There was no malice in his voice, just softness, and something that might have been sweetness, but Q was uncertain. All he knew is that he’d never heard Bond speak that way before, not even to his myriad of lovers. Q swallowed painfully, trying to parse out what it all meant, but his brain remained stubbornly sluggish and unhelpful. At least he managed to get his voice to work:

“How long…?”

Whatever had been pressed against his nose moved away, replaced by a warm flannel. Q caught a whiff of copper before the warm cloth came to his nostrils. He must have gotten another nosebleed.

“About seventeen hours.”

The thought of sleeping seventeen hours in the past would have nearly had Q suffering a heart attack, but now all he could manage was a very tired groan.

“Are you thirsty?” Bond asked, as he removed the cloth from Q’s nose.

Q could only nod, and then Bond’s blurred form left for a moment. The only thing keeping him from falling asleep again was the promise of something to drink, his mouth so dry that Q swore his tongue would crack in half.

When Bond returned, Q heard the sound of a glass being set down on the bedside, the clink of ice cubes, and then the feeling of hands moving him, propping pillows up behind him so that he could sit up against the headboard. The room tilted, and Q closed his eyes. Bond’s hands steadied him--strong and warm on his upper arms--until the dizziness passed.

“Alright?”

“Mhm.”

“Here,” Bond said, and then his hands were around Q’s, guiding a cup into his palms.

It was like before, Bond’s fingers lingering over his, just in case Q couldn’t keep a decent grip on the cup with his hands wrapped up in thick gauze. Q might have overthought it another time, but was too tired to even begin considering what it all meant. All he wanted was the water.

Q didn’t think he’d ever been happier than the moment he took that first sip. His hand shook a little, but he managed not to drop the cup, though if he spilled a little down his front in his urgency, Q honestly couldn’t be arsed to care.

“Are you hungry?” Bond asked, after Q had finished drinking and had started crunching on the ice.

Q frowned as he chewed, still a little nauseated. Food did not sound good. Nothing but sleeping for the rest of eternity sounded appealing.

“No,” he mumbled.

“You need to eat,” Bond said.

Q scratched at the back of his neck. His hair felt terrible. And his skin was so dry he could scream.

“I need...to shower.”

“What about a bath?” Bond suggested.

Q hummed. A bath sounded almost as nice as sleeping for eternity. It had been a while since he indulged in such a thing, and the thought of warm, steamy water was quite tempting.

Bond didn’t say anything, but his weight shifted from the mattress and Q heard him padding into the bathroom. The taps turned on. Q let his head tip back against the headboard, an ice cube melting in his mouth as he listened to the water filling the tub. His eyelids felt far too heavy. Maybe he would wait to have a bath. He worried he might fall asleep.

“Q,” Bond said, waking him with a gentle touch to his elbow.

“Hm?”

“Bath,” Bond reminded him.

Bond took the empty glass from his hands and set it down on the bedside. Q thought Bond might offer him an arm to help him out of bed, and reached blindly for him, but then suddenly found himself being lifted up into the air and pressed against a warm chest. Had he been in a more feisty state, Q might have fought Bond, insisting that he could walk (even if he didn’t believe he could actually walk, but that was beside the point), but he couldn’t muster up even the slightest protest with Bond’s comforting heat and smell so very close.

It was only a few steps anyway, and before Q could truly enjoy it, Bond had already set him down on his feet, employing the gentleness people often showed to eggs and small, breakable things.

“I’m going to help you out of your clothes,” Bond told him.

Q thought it was very nice of him to say this before doing it, allowing him the chance to say no if he wanted to. But Q really wasn’t in any position to say anything, feeling like he’d been through the literal ringer. Maybe he did need food. Or more sleep. Or something else. It was hard to tell. His body wasn’t exactly being clear. All he knew was that all of the things he wanted (bath) and needed (everything else) were things that he couldn’t do by himself right now.

So he let Bond undress him and remove the gauze from his hands, then leaned on him for support as he sunk into the warm bath. His hands stung when they touched the water, but the burn eventually gave way to a bearable, minute pain that Q could easily ignore.

What he couldn’t ignore was the smell of the bath. It had been scented with something soothing and sweet, but Q couldn’t think of the names of the ingredients. It took him a moment to identify oatmeal as the sweet component, but the soothing element eluded him. He sniffed, trying to recall why it was familiar, but it eluded him.

“Lavender,” said Bond, as if reading his mind.

Q turned his head. Bond was there, sitting just outside of the tub, but too far away for Q to see his face clearly. The smell of the lavender made his eyes feel heavy, which reminded Q why he never bought the stuff. His Omega nose just couldn’t handle it.

“I don’t… have anything lavender…” Q said sleepily.

“I ordered some,” Bond said. “It should help you sleep.”

Q tried to laugh, but he didn’t have enough strength, and tried for a smile:

“I managed a seventeen hour coma. I think I can sleep just fine.”

Bond didn’t laugh, though. If anything, the quiet in the bathroom became something deeper than contemplative. Not uncomfortable, but more serious than Q anticipated.

“You were having nightmares,” Bond said.

The steam from the bath made Q’s head feel heavy, but in a nice way, as if he’d been ensconced in thick clouds. Something moved in the bath next to him, displacing some of the water. Q frowned, trying to remember what they were talking about.

“I don’t have nightmares,” he mumbled.

The water came over him, a gentle cascade onto his hair and shoulders.

“You were crying.”

The words were so soft that Q barely heard them, maybe even imagined them. Again, that dream came back to him: being held so sweetly, cared for, adored.

Loved.

Tears escaped him, hot under his aching lids, but they washed away with the next rush of scented water. Bond didn’t say anything else, working the bath water for a few minutes more before coming at Q gently with a flannel and some soap, mindful of the bruises that covered him. Q knew he should be embarrassed at Bond touching him so intimately, having full view of his unattractive body, but the only words that came out of his mouth were:

“You’re still in my flat.”

“Yes.”

Q wished he could open his eyes, maybe fix a glare in Bond’s direction, but he was in no condition to do so.

“Why?” Q asked.

“I didn’t want to leave you alone,” Bond said.

He sounded honest, and Q could find no reason to be suspicious or distrustful of him, despite how suspicious and distrustful Double-Ohs were by nature.

“Oh,” is all Q could think to say.

And then all thoughts fell out of his head entirely when he felt Bond’s hands in his hair. Oh Q turned weak when someone touched him there. If ever anyone wanted information out of him, they wouldn’t even have to torture him, just pet his hair and he’d tell them all they wanted to know. The MI6 interrogators would have a field day if they knew he could be turned so easily.

“Alright?” Bond asked.

Q could only hum, not trusting his voice. Even oversensitive, the feeling of fingers moving over his scalp was nothing short of incredible. He nearly melted when Bond lathered up his hair with shampoo, scrubbing away the grunge of so many days gone without a wash.

Bond did it twice, and thoroughly, enough that Q felt his toes curl with pleasure. Had it been another situation and he been in better condition, Q might have been aroused. Thankfully, his cock remained soft throughout Bond’s ministrations with the shampoo, and did not attempt to rise even when he went back in with conditioner.

Then, just as soon as it started, it was over. Bond helped him out of the bath, bundling him up in a towel before he could even shiver. The lavender had wrecked his sense of smell, so Q couldn’t enjoy Bond’s comforting Alpha sent for a second time, but did find himself sighing in pleasure as Bond carried him out of the bathroom and back to bed. Never could Q claim to be unaffected by physical prowess of a very capable Alpha with such great arms.

That’s when Q remembered their conversation in Waitrose the previous day, when Bond had said he’d been forced on Medical leave.

“You shouldn’t... with your ribs,” Q mumbled, as Bond set him down gently on the mattress, sitting him up against the pillows.

“You’re not even remotely heavy,” Bond said. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“Dunno.”

Bond didn’t push it, letting the towel drop to Q’s hips, before he helped him into a soft button down. Q couldn’t see well without his glasses, but he could tell that these were his favourite sleeping clothes by feel alone.

“Are these the infamous pyjamas?” Bond asked.

At first, Q didn’t know what Bond meant, too focused on the hands politely helping him into a pair of matching bottoms. But then he recalled their first meeting in the National Gallery, and that had him smiling, just a bit, that Bond would remember a snippet of a conversation from almost two years ago.

“The very same,” Q said.

“Much sexier than I thought,” Bond said, all teasing.

“Had no idea tartan was your thing.”

With Q dressed, Bond moved the towel to his hair and began drying it with gentle ministrations. Q’s eyes slipped shut at Bond’s touch.

“Not usually,” Bond said conversationally, “but you wearing tartan could very much change my mind.”

It took Q a moment to understand the words, to realise that Bond was flirting with him. But, no, that wasn’t right. Bond flirted with everyone, not just him. Q wasn’t special, he had to remember this.

“Don’t get any ideas, Double-Oh Seven,” Q said, in the tone he used for wayward agents.

The towel fell away, but Q kept his eyes closed and leaned back on the pillows. He knew he didn’t paint a very authoritative figure, but he did try.

“But I always have the best ideas,” Bond said.

“Spare me,” Q mumbled.

Bond laughed, and then was gone, just for a moment. When he reappeared, it was with a gentle weight on the bed beside Q. Then, his hand was on Q’s, burning hot, the tips of his fingers slick and a little cold. They rubbed the cool wetness over his palms, in between his fingers, over the backs of his knuckles. Q caught a whiff of antiseptic.

“How bad are my hands?” Q asked.

Even if he had been wearing his glasses, Q doubted he’d be able to open his eyes more than halfway to see the damage. He wondered if he wanted to.

“How do they feel?” Bond asked, in lieu of answering.

Q flexed his fingers in Bond’s grasp, the tips of his index and middle finger brushing Bond’s palm. The joints were stiff, like they had been filled with sand, and ached as if he’d been working for ten hours straight. He felt the sting of a cut or ten along his knuckles and stopped moving.

“They’ve been better,” Q said.

Bond went back to his gentle caress, smoothing the medicine onto his skin. Q normally felt very uncomfortable letting people touch his hands, but here he was, letting someone like Bond--who could break every single bone in his hands and fingers with very little effort--touch him without any hesitation or fear. Q wondered what that said about him.

“This should take care of it,” Bond assured him, “you’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“Thanks,” Q murmured.

Gauze wove around his hands and fingers, Bond’s touch sure as it was tender. And then, when he finished, the gentle sweep of his thumb over the inside of his wrist, and Q felt his heart skip nearly three beats at its sweetness.

“If I make you something, will you eat?” Bond asked.

Q sighed, leaning back into the pillows, the tips of his fingers lingering against Bond’s. He shouldn’t, he knew, but it felt nice to touch, just for the sake of touching.

“Tired,” Q managed to say.

“I know, and I’ll let you sleep,” Bond promised, voice as soft as the touch against the pulse point in Q’s wrist, “but would you try to have a bite of something?”

He sounded concerned, of all things, which wasn’t right at all. It was James Bond, who never concerned himself with much of anything, let alone other people. Q might have called him out on it another time, or maybe, in this current headspace of contentment, tried to reassure him that he was fine.

But words were just out of his reach when he felt warm and clean and comforted by a soothing Alpha presence.

And, unable to fight his exhaustion any longer, Q slept.

00Q00Q00Q

Q did not know how long he was asleep--only recalled being woken a few times to drink something, to swallow down pills he forgot to count, and to fall into a repeat of that dream where someone held him very gently, as if he were something precious to be protected--but when he did again wake of his own volition, it was because he desperately had to piss.

He fumbled for his glasses on the bedside, finding them next to a cup of perspiring water. His glasses went on first, then he pulled himself up into a sitting position to drink all of the water, bladder be damned.

Around him, the room was quiet and still. The curtains had been pulled to keep it dark, but the lightness at the edges of the room told Q that it was daytime. He picked up the alarm clock on the bedside and brought it closer to his face--his eyes so gritty that he couldn’t see well, even with his glasses--to read the time.

10:35

Groaning, Q forced himself up out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom where he did his business with a relieved sigh. While washing his hands--little cuts he couldn’t see anymore smarting at the hot water--Q couldn’t help but take in his reflection. He looked like absolute shite. Judging from the bit of stubble on his cheeks, he had been asleep for at least a few days.

Immediately, Q’s mind went to the probable state of his inbox.

“Shit…”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, overwhelmed suddenly with the knowledge of so much work waiting for him. But first thing before all other things: he had to tackle the horrible taste in his mouth. Not brushing for days had made his mouth an actual nightmare, but he managed to get it under control after a good five minutes of care. Then he washed his face, going after the gunk in the corners of his eyes and the crusted blood in his nose. He felt almost human afterwards and hoped he smelled a least a fraction better than a corpse.

As clean as he could manage without expending all of his energy on a shower, Q went back into the bedroom to hunt for his phone. He needed to know the date as much as he needed to start checking his emails. What would Mallory think with all this extended leave? And all of Q-Branch? Would he even have a job after essentially going missing for this long?

Q overturned the pillows and looked in the bedside drawers and even checked the messy wardrobe. He found everything of his except for his phone, plus an additional item that most certainly wasn’t his: a black duffel bag sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed on the far side. It was a nice piece, too, made of leather, and much finer than anything Q would ever pretend to own.

He opened it up, getting the mixed scent of fresh laundry and musky Alpha, and found clothes inside: soft white tees, an even softer hoodie, a pair of joggers, some dark coloured pants, socks, and a shaving kit with a...straight razor?

And then Q remembered some story Moneypenny had told ages ago after her stint in Macau, something about her and Bond and extended foreplay that involved her shaving Bond with a straight razor. Weird(ly hot) stuff that Q hadn’t thought too hard on at the time because he was a professional, after all, but now he had a straight razor in his hand and a bag that smelled very much like the man he could have sworn burst into his apartment a few days ago, which meant…

Buggering hell Q thought, as he put all of the items back into the duffel as he had found them.

Yes, he definitely didn’t dream that he’d run into James Bond at Waitrose--Waitrose of all places, as if Bond was peasant enough to do his own grocery shopping--but everything after that was a bit hazy. All he knew was that Bond had been in his house and apparently--if the overnight bag was any indicator--stayed the night while he’d been unconscious and now was nowhere to be found.

Beyond his closed bedroom door, Q heard nothing to indicate that there was another person in his flat. Q knew he couldn’t hope that Bond had left and would not be coming back, because obviously he would be back for his things, which meant that they might have to have some sort of awkward conversation. It was something Q would rather avoid by having something unpleasant done to him, like water torture or elective dental surgery, but he had a feeling that he had no choice in the matter.

Whatever had happened, Q hoped he hadn’t been too embarrassing to ruin their working relationship, but he supposed that would be the bridge he burned when he came to it. The first order of business was to find his mobile, then put the kettle on for some some much-needed tea.

Pulling on his dressing gown, Q opened his bedroom door and found Gadget and Gizmo patiently waiting at the threshold. Usually the door remained open, allowing them to roam freely, but Bond must have closed it.

“Oh hello, lovelies,” Q murmured to them,

He couldn’t lean over too long--still feeling a bit dizzy--so pet them both in quick, equal measure, so neither became jealous of the other, and then stood back up. Q leaned on the wall for support, following it to the kitchen with the intention of checking on the cats’ food and water. Both bowls were full, which Q found surprising.

He was just trying to make sense of all of this--because certainly Bond hadn’t remembered to feed his cats before leaving when the man couldn’t even remember to take care of himself or his own equipment on a regular basis--when the front door opened, and Bond appeared carrying at least six grocery bags filled to the brim. It was an odd sight, seeing a Double-Oh leaden with baguettes and vegetables and cartons of milk and cream. Q thought he might be hallucinating.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” he said to the possible Bond-hallucination.

“Why are you out of bed?” Bond asked, closing the door with his foot before coming into the kitchen with his spoils.

He set the bags down carefully, more carefully than Q had ever seen Bond treat anything before. One of the bags tipped to the side, and some apples fell out onto the counter (green ones, which Q preferred), but Bond was no longer focused on them, his hands coming up to touch Q’s face gently.

“Q.”

Q should have been shocked at Bond’s touch, his tenderness, but he was still very focused on the bags of shopping on his counter.

“Did you go to the grocery?”

“You have to eat,” Bond explained, very matter-of-factly, “and you had no food.”

“Oh,” Q said, still feeling too sluggish to put things together with any sort of quickness.

“Why are you out of bed?” Bond asked, and the hands had moved from Q’s cheeks to his shoulders, gently encouraging him back in the direction of the bedroom.

“I had to pee,” Q said, and then, remembering what he had been looking for, “and I can’t find my phone. What day is it?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Saturday,” Q repeated, as Bond made him sit on the edge of the bed.

“You’ve been sleeping for three days.”

He seemed very worried, which was not at all what Q expected.

“Oh,” Q said again, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Bond smoothed his hands up and down Q’s arms. It felt nice. Grounding, somehow. Q felt his thoughts coming with a bit more normalcy. He’d been sleeping for three days. That meant he hadn’t been taking his medications, or washing with his particular brand of shampoo, which meant that Bond could smell it without a doubt now: his gender, his affliction, everything. And yet, Bond was still touching him, gentle and patient, like a lover might.

“Did you...stay here…?” Q asked.

“I wasn’t going to leave you alone. You were barely coherent.”

Q flushed, embarrassed. He hoped that, in his barely coherent state, that he hadn’t uttered anything incriminating, like how he sometimes got off to the thought of Bond fucking him, or anything dangerous, like the protocol for overriding nuclear launch codes. Both would be bad, of course, but one could actually get him thrown in prison for the rest of his life for treason. The other would just be the second worst thing that could possibly happen to him.

“Thanks for…” Q couldn’t find the right word, making a vague gesture with his hand instead.

“Making sure you didn’t die?” Bond supplied.

“Yes. And making sure my cats didn’t eat me.”

Bond smiled an actual smile. Not a grin or a playful smirk. An actual smile that made his eyes somehow lighter blue. Q felt a little lightheaded just looking at him. Maybe there was something in his expression that gave this away, because Bond suddenly became very concerned with easing Q into a reclined position against the soft pillows.

“Rest for a little while. I’ll make you something to eat,” Bond said. “How do you like your eggs?”

“Cooked,” is all Q could think to say, and Bond laughed before he left.

Q would have laughed, too, if he hadn’t been so confused by the entire situation. James Bond making him breakfast? Maybe he was hallucinating this entire thing. Perhaps he did have the flu and this was a strange fever dream? Was there any other way it would make logical sense for Bond to be in his house now? Having the man cook him breakfast?

Q entertained himself with these thoughts for a while, dozing on and off, only raising his head when, an indeterminable amount of time later, Bond came back into the room. He had a cup in one hand and a plate balanced on top of a book in another. The smell from the plate was enough to make Q’s mouth water; he hadn’t realised how hungry he felt until that moment, when the dish was put down on his lap atop an oversized book from Q’s coffee table.

The eggs were beautiful on the plate, yellow and glistening and topped with some appealing looking garnish. And the bread shone with butter, the colour a perfect golden brown. Bond had even cut up the egg into bite sized pieces, so Q didn’t have to struggle to coordinate on his own. His ears reddened, and Q felt somewhere between mortified at his child-like helplessness and very happy that someone had taken the extra time for care for him.

“It looks really good,” Q said, trying for a compliment, because he supposed that’s what people did when other people made them breakfast, but it was all very new territory for him.

“Try having some,” Bond suggested, when Q didn’t go for it right away.

Taking that as permission, Q did so, spearing the egg with his fork and having it with a nibble of bread. He felt Bond watching him, perched on the edge of the bed next to him, which made Q nervous.

“Do you want some?” Q asked, feeling suddenly, terribly, like a bad host.

“It’s for you.”

“I can’t eat it all.”

“It’s one egg and one piece of bread,” Bond said, and then, somehow gentler, “just try to have a little more.”

So Q did, because Bond never sounded that patient, and he managed almost all of the egg, but not too much of the bread. At least Bond spared it the bin and finished the rest off, then handed Q a warm cup of tea. It could have been hotter, but it was just the way he liked it, and Q took it in like air.

“Easy,” Bond said, but he sounded like he was close to laughing. “I’ll bring you more.”

“Please.”

And Bond did, taking the plate away and the empty cup, returning with a full cup much hotter than the first. Bond let him drink it in quiet, not saying anything, for which Q was grateful. He almost felt like himself again, though he honestly could use a shower. He said as much to Bond, who shook his head.

“Bath instead. The last thing you need is to fall down.”

Q frowned, but had to admit that Bond had a point, and a bath did sound nice. But then he vaguely remembered the scent of lavender, a bath that had been days ago. Or at least, he thought he remembered. Had that been a dream as well?

“Did you… buy lavender bath oil?”

“Yes,” Bond said, with honesty that Q did not expect, but very much appreciated, “you weren’t sleeping. I thought it would help.”

“Well, it did the trick,” Q said, trying for humour.

It must have worked, because Bond cracked a bit of a smile. God, he was incredibly handsome, even with that healing cut through his lip. Q rubbed at the back of his neck, hoping his thoughts were not an open book for Bond to read.

“Can we not use it this time? I can’t afford to sleep for another three days.”

“I won’t,” Bond said, and went in the direction of the bathroom, “but you could afford it if you wanted to. You’re on leave for another two weeks--”

“Two weeks?”

Bond turned on the taps, which meant that he likely did not hear Q’s string of very creative curses. When he reappeared in the bedroom, Q tried for his worst glare, which he was absolutely sure fell flat. Still, Q wasn’t going to take it lying down.

“What do you mean two weeks?”

“Not my decision,” Bond said, holding up his hands in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger gesture, “though I agree.”

“Who made the decision?”

“Medical. Said the results of your blood tests came back and your numbers are in the toilet. They want you on strict bed rest for at least another week.”

“Fuck bed rest,” Q grumbled, but with very little bite.

Already exhaustion had begun to creep over him.

“Think of it as overdue holiday,” Bond suggested, as he helped Q up out of bed.

Q remembered that Bond had picked him up in his not-dream, but Bond didn’t carry Q this time--for which he was grateful but also a little disappointed--offering his arm to Q to hold for balance and support. It was still just as nice, what with Bond having unfairly nice arms--but Q did experience a bit more embarrassment at how weak he felt, after just a small walk round the house.

The bathroom had filled with steam when they arrived, towels and various other products waiting on the closed toilet lid. A cursory glance told Q that these items were not from his linen cupboard, as the bottles appeared much fancier than his customary store-brand purchases.

“How many times have you been shopping?” Q asked.

He watched Bond in the mirror and was surprised to see that the Alpha wouldn’t look at him, very focused on everything else in the room but Q.

“Several times,” Bond admitted. “I did some reading.”

Q leaned against the sink, watching him. Bond turned his back to fiddle with the taps and test the water. He seemed nervous, which was unusual, as Q thought that functionality had been disabled in all Double-Ohs. But here Bond was, pointedly not looking at him.

“Reading on what?” Q asked, leaning over to pick up one of the enticing new bottles.

“Edwin-Dahlers.”

Now it was Q’s turn to look everywhere but at Bond. If there was anything he didn’t want to talk about with James Bond, it was this.

“Oh,” Q said, trying for nonchalance, as if they had been discussing the weather.

He popped open the lid of the bottle in his hand and sniffed. The scent was appealing. Rather musky, almost like an Alpha. Q wondered if it was supposed to help with loneliness, something to rub all over their skin to make affected Omegas feel like they had been scented by a mate. He snapped the lid shut, suddenly irritated.

“Thank you for the bath,” Q said, and then, because he needed to be alone, “could I have some privacy?”

Bond stood up and went to the door. Q did not watch him in the mirror, but he could feel Bond’s eyes on him.

“I’ll be outside,” Bond said, and closed the door.

Q breathed and put the bottle down on the sink. His skin felt like it had been stretched too thin. The warmth of the bath called him, promising relief, so Q quickly undressed. He didn’t look in the mirror, but caught sight of himself out of the corner of his eye: skeletal thin and covered in yellowed bruises. Definitely not how he’d like to have been seen by anyone, especially James Bond.

He tried not to think about it, focusing instead on the bath water that smelled of oats and chamomile. Q relaxed into it, his glasses fogging with the steam. He wiped them off with a dry flannel, and stared at the bottles on the closed toilet lid. Lotions, bath salts, conditioners, moisturisers, all with their ingredients written in a fancy, slanted script. Q would never have treated himself to such nice things. He wondered what it meant that Bond hadn’t thought twice.

Q leaned back again, trying not to think about it for too long. He had enough on his plate to be worrying about Bond’s motives.

Bond, who had been in his house for days without supervision.

That meant he’d snooped through all of Q’s things, his (literal and metaphorical) dirty laundry. Obviously, Bond was a spy and it was what he did, but that didn’t make Q feel any better about his privacy being violated (or the fact that someone now knew how poor he was at keeping house).

It was bad enough that Bond had to now know that he was an Omega, but the thought of him looking through all of Q’s medications, reading the labels and finding out what they were for… It was almost too much. Then Q realised that Bond probably also found his collection of sex toys: anal plugs in various sizes and silicone cocks with inflated Alpha knots, and his mortification only grew.

Setting his glasses on the edge of the tub, Q sunk down into the water and submerged himself. Maybe he could drown and never have to face Bond ever again. But the thought of Bond having to be the one to find him naked and bloated in the bath was just as unappealing as having to face the man who now knew that Q owned a collection of fake cocks because he couldn’t get anyone to fuck him on a regular basis.

He sat up from the water, now anxious as he was exhausted. The last thing he wanted to do was maybe have a conversation with Bond about all of this, but he had a feeling that was what was waiting for him on the other side of the door. At least Q could be clean for it, he supposed, and drained the bath.

Bond be damned, he was going to shower, which he did quickly: scrubbing himself down under the spray, washing and rinsing out his hair.

When he was through, Q felt a little shaky from having to stand so long, but also a lot more human than he had previously. He used the towel bar to help him out of the bath, then leaned against the sink to dry off. After his hair was mostly dry, Q pulled on his glasses and quickly shaved, then applied some of the nice-smelling lotions Bond had left him. There was one for his face, which felt incredible, and another for his body, which his skin greedily drank up, desperate for moisture. Both smelled incredible, definitely an Alpha-esque formula of some kind that offered some sort of calming property, because he felt relaxed, even knowing what awaited him in the next room.

Slipping into his dressing gown, Q took a breath, and went out into the bedroom.

Bond was there, sitting on the edge of the bed. It had been made, and Q could tell that the sheets had been changed. The room smelled much cleaner. Q felt even more embarrassed than before, knowing that Bond had been forced to endure his body odor for days. Christ, talk about wanting to crawl into a hole and never be seen again.

“Better?” Bond asked.

“Mm,” Q replied, not trusting his voice yet.

Of course Bond would look so good sitting there.

On his bed.

With a plate of grapes.

Q blinked.

Yes, Bond was on his bed, holding a plate of grapes, like one of those exalted Greek myths in the Renaissance pieces that hung in the National Gallery.

“Why are you on my bed with a plate of grapes?” Q had to ask.

“You need to get your strength up,” Bond explained.

“Doesn’t answer why you’re on my bed with a plate of grapes,” Q pointed out.

Bond stood up and came to him, put the plate of grapes in his hands.

“You haven’t eaten anything substantial in days aside from this morning’s breakfast,” Bond explained. “And you’re probably dehydrated. Grapes will help.”

Q looked at the grapes--plump, gorgeous purple--instead of Bond.

“That’s… very thoughtful,” Q said, because it was, uncharacteristically so, for someone like Bond. “Thank you.”

Q had a feeling they were both not looking at each other, because the room felt suddenly very awkward.

“Get into bed,” Bond said, as he went for the bedroom door, “and eat your grapes.”

And then he was gone.

Another day, Q might have fought this pseudo-order, but he couldn’t come up with a reason to fight Bond at this juncture. He was tired and a little hungry so bed and grapes sounded fine to him.

He put the plate down on the bedside, next to his mobile phone that Bond had placed on the charger for his convenience. Q heard Bond banging around in the kitchen, and figured he was safe enough to drop his dressing gown and walk, nude to his wardrobe, to find a new set of pyjamas to wear.

Dressed in warm clothes, Q went back to his bed and got under the duvet. His toes touched two lumps beneath the blankets: Gadget and Gizmo already purring away under the clean sheets. He picked a few grapes to munch on, then turned onto his side to lie down, pulling the blanket up over his head and propping his phone up on the pillow so he could read through his emails.

Thousands upon thousands waited for him, all with little red exclamation points indicating their urgency. It looked like R was running interference for him, but it wouldn’t be long before he had to make decisions on a lot of these. Already he felt a headache building behind his eyes.

“You’d better not be working,” came Bond’s voice from the doorway.

Q paused in his scrolling, knowing he’d been caught: a bump under the duvet, a power cord snaking out from beneath his pillow.

“I’m reading the news,” Q lied.

“You’re on leave,” Bond reminded him.

“Unwillingly.”

Bond sat down on the bed and pulled the blankets back. Q squinted at the light. The next thing he knew, his phone was gone.

“No work until you’re better,” Bond said.

Q thought he might fight this, but then Bond’s hand was on his: that big, warm, slightly rough hand, and Q forgot why he wanted to be so angry. Bond turned his hand and tipped something into it. A handful of pills. Q felt the sudden urge to hide his face in the pillow out of shame.

“Take your meds,” Bond instructed.

Sitting up, Q looked at the medicine in his hand. The sizes were wrong. And there were too many.

“These are not my meds,” Q said.

“Dr. Ziegler told me to give you this,” Bond said, handing him some papers.

They were folded in half, not in a sealed envelope, which meant Bond had read the contents.

So much for doctor-patient confidentiality… Q thought.

When Q opened them, he saw that they were the results of his blood tests. Bond had been right. His numbers were awful. Not only was he deficient in every possible vitamin, but he was apparently not producing any of the hormones he needed to be a halfway-healthy Omega, even with his hormone therapy. The note on the last page informed him that, in addition to supplements, they were upping the dosage on his hormones to see if it helped with his symptoms.

“You’ve been taking these for three days now,” Bond said, nodding at the capsules in his hand.

Q remembered brief, groggy moments taking pills, but he didn’t know that anything had changed. He looked at the name of the drug on the paper, but didn’t recognise it. Usually he’d research before he took anything, but it looked like he didn’t really have a choice. So long as he didn’t lose his hair or cry for days on end, Q figured he’d be fine.

“Thanks,” Q said, and before he even had to ask, Bond was there with a cup of water.

He took the medicine and finished off the water, feeling Bond’s eyes on him the entire time. Q could tell that he had questions, lots of them, but Bond was nothing if a good spy. He could wait. Q, however, didn’t want to play the game. Bond already knew everything, he just might not have put the pieces together yet. And the sooner he did, the sooner he would run out the door and leave Q alone.

“You want to ask,” Q said.

Bond put the plate of grapes on Q’s lap, a silent entreaty, but Q had no appetite going into a discussion like this. Maybe Bond knew--could smell his unease--because it seemed like it was a long while of Bond thinking of how to approach the topic.

“You’re an Omega.”

“Brilliant deduction,” Q said, but with no bite.

“But you take hormones.”

“Is that a statement or a question?”

Bond’s gaze felt as if it were piercing through his skin. Q knew that Bond had seen the scar. Certainly he had to know what it meant.

“What happened?”

“Rotten luck,” Q said, picking at the grapes for something to do, but not eating them. “The doctors said it was the worst case of Endometriosis they’d ever seen in a male Omega. They had to perform an emergency hysterectomy or I would have died. I was told it was a miracle I even made it to the hospital.”

Q could still clearly remember that day, the urgency of the medical staff as they loaded him into an ambulance and rushed him to the nearest A&E.

“How old were you?”

“Twenty. Just defended my thesis in mathematics,” Q said, and actually felt a ghost of a smile creep at the corners of his mouth. “Bleeding internally and I still managed to give one of the best defences the university had ever seen.”

“Sounds like you,” Bond said.

Unable to help himself, Q looked up to see that he was smiling, too, just a bit. Q quickly averted his gaze.

“Anyway, to answer your question. Hormones because the doctors wanted me to have somewhat of a normal life, though they’re apparently not doing the job.”

“Why pretend to be a Beta?”

“I’m actually closer to being a Beta than anything else. Might as well present that way.”

“You smell like an Omega,” Bond said, but his brow was furrowed, just slightly, as if he was uncertain.

“It’s not quite right, as you can tell. The smell of infertility,” Q replied, the word tasting bitter on his tongue. “It’s to advertise my defect, that I’m not a suitable mate. Wouldn’t want an Alpha to get the wrong idea.”

When Bond didn’t say anything, Q cleared his throat.

“Anyway, I smell enough like an Omega to warrant the scent blockers. I have to keep everyone’s noses fooled at work.”

“You can still be Quartermaster as an Omega. There are no laws against it.”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have the same effect, would I?” Q replied.

MI6 was an Alpha’s world, as the government and military sectors always had been. Q couldn’t imagine going into a room with all of those section heads smelling like an Omega, or meeting with all of the high ups from the PM’s office without bathing in scent blockers. They barely respected him now, considering him too young, thinking him not strong enough as a Beta to be the head of a department. It would only be worse if they discovered the truth. As an Omega, Q would get nothing done, and would be chased out of his own department in less than a year’s time.

“I wouldn’t think of you differently,” Bond said.

“Then you’d be in the minority,” Q told him, and scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling exhausted.

Bond frowned.

“What’s wrong with being an Omega?”

“That question reeks of Alpha privilege.”

Bond’s frown deepened. It looked like he was going to say something, but Q put up a hand.

“We’ll have that exceedingly educational conversation another time,” Q said, “I’m tired.”

At least Bond respected that, taking away the plate of barely-touched grapes, the empty cup, and the papers on the bed. The moment he was gone, Q slid down under the duvet, pulling it up over his head. Therapists always said it would make him feel better to talk about it, but he certainly did not feel anything other than ashamed. In fact, he sort of felt like crying. So much for life ever going back to normal. Despite what Bond said, Q knew he would never look at him the same now.

Q closed his eyes, curling his feet between Gadget and Gizmo for comfort. He hoped that Bond would leave, maybe sneak away quietly so they could pretend none of this had ever happened. But just as he was thinking this, he heard Bond’s light tread returning to the bedroom, the dip of the mattress behind him as Bond got into bed with him.

Got into bed.

With him.

Granted, Bond was not up in his business, but Q could feel his heat, the weight of him. Smell him. Bond’s pheromones soothed him, his distress melting away at the light flutter of the pages of a book turning just near his ear, but Q did have to ask what the hell Bond thought he was doing.

“What,” is all Q managed to get out.

“Sleep,” was Bond’s reply.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Q grumbled, shoving his face into his pillow, anything to block out Bond’s scent. “Why are you in my bed?”

“Dr. Ziegler asked me to keep a close watch on you,” Bond said.

“So you think that gives you open invitation into my bed?” Q asked.

“Your virtue is safe,” Bond assured him.

Q snorted. He’d lost his virtue long ago, but the sentiment was there all the same. Bond respected him, at least a little, and that was something.

“Do you want me to leave?” Bond asked, and then, softer: “I will, if you want me to.”

Q felt his eyelids getting heavy. He had to admit, it was nice, feeling the weight and warmth of another person beside him, but it was strange, too, because it was Bond, of all people, who he sometimes had very inappropriate fantasies about. Just what was the end game here?

“S’fine,” Q mumbled, “so long as you don’t snore.”

Bond made a sound, a huff of laughter that somehow caught Q in the throat with how much he liked it, this side of Bond that perhaps no one else had ever seen. And then that little catch turned into an ache, a pain just behind his Adam’s apple, a clawing desperation to weep, because Bond wasn’t his and never would be. Maybe Bond was here out of kindness, or out of instinct, or out of pity, but Q knew for certain that he wouldn’t stay.

No one ever stayed.

“Q,” Bond said.

Q realised he was crying--that Bond could probably smell the tears--and hated himself for how easily he’d been breaking down as of late.

“Are you in pain?”

Bond sounded so sweet, so concerned, and that just made the tears worse.

“M’fine,” Q mumbled.

The bed shifted, just slightly, and Q heard the sound of the book on the bedside, the feeling of the duvet moving, and then: Bond, pressed against his back, a line of heat from his shoulders to ankles. His hand rested at Q’s hip, a gentle pressure, nothing that would be uncomfortable against Q’s sensitive skin.

Q wanted to ask what Bond thought he was doing, because this was crossing the line, certainly, from what they were at work. This was something too intimate to be anything but affection, and Q honestly did not know what to think. Was it Bond acting on instinct: smelling a stressed Omega and comforting, as his biology dictated? Or was it something more than that: the culmination of years of half-smiles and innuendo and those brief, sometimes lingering touches that Q always had thought had been on accident?

But just as quickly as Q thought this, he quashed it, buried it away before he could even pretend it was real. Why would someone like Bond have any sort of desire for him? He had beautiful women and men falling at his feet on the daily--Alpha, Omega, and Beta alike--and could have the pick of them.

Yes, this was most likely a chemical reaction: Alpha senses picking up on the distress of an unbound Omega, and offering to soothe, as they were programmed to do. This was nothing more. And once Bond realised that, he’d be off, pursuing the next pretty thing that caught his eye and attention.

But in the meantime, Q supposed, he could be selfish, and enjoy it, just a bit. He leaned back into Bond, pretending, just for a moment that they were lovers, that Bond held onto him out of true affection instead of biological programming. And Bond nuzzled him, just so, at his ear, in his hair, and, oh this is what it was like? To be loved, if only for a moment?

“Sleep,” Bond told him.

And again, Q slept.

Notes:

More sweetness in the next chapter, I promise. Also, a hint that the rating might go up, and you all know what that means ;) see you next Sunday.

Chapter 4: Chapter 4 (Part 1)

Notes:

Many thanks to my BETAs and cheerleaders emisfritish and roseforthorns. Without you two I probably would have had a mental breakdown.

To my readers, thanks for staying on with me so far. As you know, I missed my usual Sunday update. This chapter was monstrous...50+ pages. Because of this, the edits are taking longer than normal. Rather than have you wait longer, I'm splitting the chapter into two, so here is the first part. I'm not happy with it, but I'm never happy with anything so... here we go!

Q thought Bond would have run at the first opportunity, but every time he woke over the course of the next few days, Bond was, for reasons unknown, still in his flat.

Every morning, Bond would give him some privacy in the toilet, but the moment Q returned to bed, he’d be there with his medicine and a hot cuppa. If Q managed to stay awake long enough, Bond then brought an offering of something small and brightly coloured to tempt his appetite: plump purple grapes, aromatic oranges, crisp green apples. Q wanted to eat, if only because he thought it nice that Bond made such a nice plate for him, but couldn’t manage very much without feeling sick to his stomach. It obviously upset Bond to see the barely touched food, but he didn’t push.

Instead, Bond--ever adaptable--tried a different tactic.

“What’s this?” Q asked, the third morning, when Bond handed him a glass filled with frothy green liquid instead of a plate of fruit.

“It’s a green smoothie.”

Q made a face at it. True to the name, it was very green.

“It has an entire day’s worth of fruits and vegetables,” Bond explained, “and it’s liquid. Shouldn’t hurt your stomach.”

It was terribly nice of Bond to go through all the trouble, but Q didn’t think he could stomach something liquid in that colour. Gadget walked up the length of Q’s leg to have a sniff, then shook his head, as if offended, and jumped down off the bed. Taking his turn, Q took a whiff. It smelled like strawberries, despite the colour.

“Try it,” Bond said, looking too handsome in his shirtsleeves for Q to do otherwise.

Q did, begrudgingly, because he’d heard Bond going toe to toe with the blender for at least twenty minutes and didn’t want it to be for naught. Surprisingly, he liked it. Sweet, but not overwhelmingly so.

“Okay, it’s not terrible,” Q mumbled.

“Good,” was all Bond said.

Q watched his retreating back and wondered just who this person was and what he had done with James Bond.

And the surprises kept coming. Bond not only hadn’t gone running for the door, but he seemed very content staying in Q’s little flat, doing mundane little tasks like making soft foods and smoothies for Q at every meal time. And in between, when Q could do nothing more than doze in bed to let his body rest and recover, Bond never seemed to be far from him, some part of them always touching: back to chest, knee to knee, sometimes just even the press of their feet together. It was nice, even if Q didn’t entirely understand it. And Bond wasn’t forthcoming, either, liberal with his touch but not his words.

It perplexed Q that they didn’t talk about much of anything--Bond neither pressing for conversion nor offering an overabundance of it--but especially the fact that Bond seemed to have made one half of Q’s bed his own. The sheets were heavy with his scent, musky and rather cozy. Q liked it as much as he didn’t, because Bond’s pheromones were so soothing to him that he felt perfectly content sleeping all day instead of doing something useful, like answering his work emails.

“Just a few,” Q mumbled sleepily one afternoon, as Bond bundled the blankets up around him.

“You need to rest,” Bond told him, plucking his mobile from his lax fingers.

Q, on the very cusp of sleep, thought about trying to defy him, but then Bond’s hand was in his hair and Q forgot all about resistance.

By the end of the week, Q could almost resist Bond’s scent--its effect on him weakening so that he wasn’t sleepy all the time, but still very relaxed and content--to stay awake for more than a few hours. And when Q felt well enough to get up out of bed on his own, bathe, make tea, and take care of his cats, he wondered if Bond would leave. It wasn’t that he necessarily wanted him to, it was just that Q was unsure why Bond had stayed.

Q wanted to ask, he really did, but there were more pressing questions to be asked, like why Bond was wrestling the hoover out of his closet.

“Are you cleaning my flat?”

“It’s messy,” Bond replied.

Q felt a flush of embarrassment because Bond had him there. There was a mountain of unwashed laundry, piles of dusty books everywhere, and cat hair on every available surface. At least he kept the bathroom tidy, but Q supposed he ought to clean elsewhere more often. He couldn’t remember the last time he hoovered.

Wasn’t it supposed to be that Omegas were the tidy ones by nature?

“I don’t really have the time,” Q said lamely.

“Working 14 hour days will do that.”

It wasn’t accusatory. Instead, something else. Understanding, perhaps a bit of concern, but more for Q himself than his flat. Very strange, this new side of Bond. Q still wondered if he might be hallucinating.

“I should at least help. Put the laundry in,” Q said, but Bond pointed to the sofa.

“You’re not doing anything until you’re well. Sit.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Q mumbled, pulling his dressing gown tighter around him for warmth.

“Just sit and drink your tea,” Bond told him.

“I don’t have any tea,” Q replied.

The kettle chose that moment to click off, and almost immediately Bond had a hot cup of tea in his hands--made perfectly, damn him--and was ushering him in the direction of the couch.

“Now sit,” Bond said

And Q did as he was told, if only because he knew he was about to see something so spectacular that no one at Six would believe him. True to this, it was quite a sight to see James Bond, Double-Oh-Seven himself, tackling the dust and cat hair in his living room, moving about with the grace of someone who Q could not believe had a healing broken rib. He looked good, too, doing something so domestic, that Q couldn’t tear his eyes away.

As if knowing he had a captive audience, Bond made a show of it, giving off his good angles. Q couldn’t help but laugh as Bond did a little sashay. He honestly regretted not having his mobile on him to take a video. Moneypenny would have loved it.

“Be careful,” Q warned him, “you might throw out a hip.”

Bond playfully nudged his slippered foot with the hoover in retaliation.

Q lifted his feet, allowing Bond to get by the coffee table and do round the living room without interfering. It was only after he left to do the hallway and bedroom that Q put his feet back down on the floor. His heel bumped against something under the sofa and Q frowned, because it felt heavier than one of Gadget and Gizmo’s toys. He slid his hand beneath, reaching for the item, and discovered that it was the thick spine of a book. Q frowned, wondering if it was one of his overdue library items, and pulled it out to look at it. The receipt from a local bookshop poking out the top told him that it was not his. That, and it’s title: What To Do When Someone You Love Has Edwin-Dahlers

Q felt a mortified blush heat his cheeks.

He leaned over and looked under the sofa, finding two other books: Surviving Edwin-Dahlers: A Memoir and The Idiot’s Guide to Edwin-Dahlers Syndrome. They all had little brightly-coloured sticky notes on the pages. Q flipped through one idly, browsing the pages with tips and tricks, recipes, recommendations for over the counter medications, stress relief, and all kinds of other resources. And there, in the margins, a scribble here and there, of what Q knew to be Bond’s nearly illegible penmanship. Q had always thought he did it on purpose as an obstinate gesture towards his reports, but Q supposed Bond just had bad handwriting.

Still, two years of reading his reports, and Q could make sense of the scrawl. Little notes and lists, questions here and there jumped out at him as he fanned through the pages:

gluten an agitator?
paraben-free products only
rich antioxidants: 1) strawberries 2) blackberries 3) spinach 4) oranges 5) grapes

“I told you, I’d been doing some reading.”

Bond’s voice made Q jump, and close the book with perhaps more force than necessary. He hadn’t even heard the hoover turn off, or Bond approach. Q felt overheated, as if he’d been caught doing something inappropriate, and Bond’s gaze on the back of his neck truly wasn’t helping the matter.

“Why?” Q asked.

Q felt the weight of Bond’s gaze leave him, and then suddenly Bond seemed very preoccupied with wrapping up the vacuum cord neatly with his back to Q.

“I didn’t know what to do for you,” Bond said as he worked. “You were in so much pain.”

Q put the books down, feeling suddenly miserable as he realised what was happening here. Bond’s actions made perfect sense. The books, the cooking, the cleaning… it was all dictated by biology, an Alpha instinct to protect and provide for an Omega in need, nothing more. Q berated himself for momentarily believing it could be something else, that Bond’s surprising softness behind closed doors had been genuine affection.

“I’m sorry that you...felt responsible to look after me,” Q admitted, pulling his knees to his chest. “I didn’t want anyone to see me like that.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t let Eve come by?”

“Yes.”

“And why you slammed the door in my face.”

“Obviously.”

Bond picked up the vacuum, almost angrily, and took it to put away in the closet. Q watched him warily from the sofa, not knowing what had set off Bond’s agitation. It seemed that Bond was chewing at words, but couldn’t get them out, leaving him to pace the length of the flat once, twice, before moving into the kitchen to aggressively wash the dishes. Ten minutes passed, listening to Bond bang around, and then, just barely over the rush of the taps, Bond's voice:

“So you would have rather been all alone?”

Q didn’t necessarily want to be alone, but after enduring a solitary life for so long, he’d gotten used to it and never imagined an alternative.

“I’m...used to being alone,” Q said.

He thought perhaps Bond hadn’t heard him over the water, but then Bond shut it off, let the last bits of it drip from the faucet into the sink before silence took over.

“It’ll kill you,” Bond said, something queer in his voice, “being alone.”

Gizmo came to him on the sofa, jumped onto his lap and curled up there, as if knowing Q needed the comfort. Bond was right, after all. Without help--consistent help--Q would die. Slowly, painfully.

Alone.

“I know,” Q said.

Something shattered in the sink and Q flinched. Gizmo went flying from his lap and dashed for the safety of the bedroom at the deliberate smashing of china.

“Stop sounding like you’re okay with it,” Bond said.

His voice was tight and angry. Q bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying what had been on the tip of his tongue: that he had to be okay with it because there was no other way to be. Outside of finding a mate and creating a fulfilling bond, there would be no cure for him. Sure, they could extend his life with pills, with parodies of comfort and affection, but it was inevitable: Q’s life would inevitably and prematurely end.

But Q couldn’t say these things out loud, because they were all the things he knew he would have to deal with on his own, after Bond left, when he could cry if he wanted to. So instead, Q said, very quietly:

“Please don’t break my things.”

Bond pushed away from the sink and went to the door, where he took up his coat and abruptly left. He didn’t slam it shut behind him, but Q thought he might have felt better if he had. The quiet departure had left him shaken, more than he wanted to admit.

It took him a long time to get up, to go into the kitchen to look and see what Bond had broken. It was one of his mugs. A cheap one he’d picked up at a shop on a whim a few years back: grey and with little cat pawprints on it. It had been silly, but Q had liked it, and with a bit of sadness he wrapped up the pieces carefully before depositing them in the bin.

Gadget and Gizmo watched from the doorway, hesitant, looking about with caution in case there were more loud sounds.

“It’s okay,” Q told them, bending down to pet their heads, “I think it’s just you and me now.”

He had no idea if Bond would be back, and tried to ignore the twist of anxiety that sent through him. Ever since Bond had run into him at Waitrose, Q had been perplexed by his motives and his own conflicting emotions on the matter. While he enjoyed Bond’s attention and gentle care, Q at the same time loathed himself for his vulnerability, for his need for someone to take care of him. And now with Bond gone--possibly for good--Q should have experienced some modicum of relief. No more wondering what Bond’s reasons were for sticking around, no more feeling like he had to make himself look halfway decent in his own home, no more having to share his pillows and blanket with a man who smelt terribly, wonderfully good…

Q scratched at his skin, which suddenly felt stretched too tight.

No, it was a fluke thing, having Bond here the past few days. Bond had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, gotten his Alpha senses aggravated by Q’s illness, and felt compelled to stay and help. Now that he’d stepped away from the flat and gotten a breath of fresh air, Bond would undoubtedly realise what had happened and stay far, far away. He had his own baggage to deal with and didn’t need a sick, needy Omega weighing him further down.

All of this would pass, and they would both return to work and be the good, upstanding British citizens that they were and never talk about it again.

Q didn’t want to admit, but his heart felt a little heavy at the prospect. Returning to his life of solitude did not seem as welcome as having someone in his home. Q had liked the feeling of another weight beside him in bed, the sound of pages turning until he fell asleep, soft breath against his shoulder.

He ached, just a little, thinking about it. He’d experienced what he’d always wanted, if only for a few days, and knowing he would never have that again left him bereft.

“I’m not sad,” he said to Gadget and Gizmo, who wove between his ankles, as if they were concerned. “I’m fine.”

On his way to the sofa, he saw Bond’s hoodie, draped over the back of his chair. He stared at it for a moment, before touching it with the tips of his fingers. Still just as soft as it had been the day Q had discovered it in Bond’s duffel. He picked it up and brought it to his nose, breathing in Bond’s scent, that blend of musk and heat and a little bit of sweat that made Q feel happy even when seconds before he’d wanted to weep.

Q shrugged it on, feeling his agitation slip away as he ensconced himself inside, zipping up the front all the way to his chin. He went so far as to pull the hood over his head, wanting to feel as if he were completely wrapped up in Bond’s calming scent. And even though he knew that it was a problem--that he had let his little workplace crush get out of hand--Q couldn’t be arsed to care. He was sad and lonely and a little hungry and the only thing he could do to comfort himself was to wrap himself in the hoodie belonging to the man that would never be his.

“I’m an idiot,” Q mumbled, as he lay down on the sofa.

After a time, he slept, a little, only waking when he heard the sound of the front door opening. By that time, the daylight had faded into twilight, the room grey and purple at the edges. Q blinked sleepily, hiking up his glasses to rub at his eyes. Footsteps came closer to him, then the sound of something solid being set on the coffee table in front of him.

When Q returned his glasses to their proper position, he saw a pink mug sitting at eye level. It had a cat face, with one winking eye, and cat ears.

“What…?”

Bond touched his ankle with uncharacteristic tenderness, and Q moved his feet so that Bond could sit next to him on the sofa. They sat like that for some time, Q on one end of the couch, Bond on the other, the only point between them touching the place where Bond’s palm rested on his ankle.

“I’m sorry for breaking your mug.”

Q watched him carefully. He had a feeling there was more Bond wanted to say, but it didn’t seem that the words were coming easily. It made Q wonder what had changed, because Bond never lacked for words, always suave and articulate with quip or joke at the tip of his tongue. It seemed that something held Bond back, making him more cautious, more thoughtful. Eventually, Bond said:

“I was angry.”

He wondered if there was more to that, because Q had heard Bond angry before on the comms, and it was nothing like how Bond had sounded earlier. But Q didn’t push for more than what Bond offered, asking only:

“Why?”

Bond went quiet, thinking about his answer again for a long while.

“I’m angry that you don’t seem to care if you die.”

Q didn’t know why, but that made him laugh, and then he laughed harder when Bond looked at him, almost scandalised.

“That is so rich coming from you. I’ve never seen anyone with more of a death wish.”

Bond looked at him with such intensity that Q sobered immediately.

“This is different.”

“How?”

“It just is.”

Q fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Hypocrite,” Q said.

Bond gripped at his socked foot, not enough to hurt, but just enough that Q could feel it, the heat and weight of him, the way his hand trembled slightly. It worried Q. Bond still seemed rattled, agitated, even, but his touch felt desperate, as if he were grasping at something he feared letting go.

For a moment, Q let himself believe it might be him, but then quashed it before he could let his heart flutter. That was the crush talking, his Omega biology presuming a nearby Alpha meant something romantic. Q’s head became a jumble of questions and doubts. He wished he could make sense of it all.

“What is all of this, anyway?” Q asked.

“All of what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

All of a sudden, it was like Bond couldn’t look at him, and Q felt inexplicably angry.

“If you’re doing this all out of pity, get out,” Q growled, trying to pull his foot from Bond’s grasp.

“It’s not pity, Q,” Bond said, holding on to him.

“Then what is it?”

Bond’s eyes met his again, so intensely blue that they hurt to look at. But Q didn’t avert his gaze, even it felt like staring into the sun, because the answers were all there, if only he could understand what Bond was trying to tell him. But perhaps Bond wasn’t ready, because he looked away once more, and was quiet for a long time as he considered his words.

“You’re always there for me,” Bond said, quietly. “You never give up on me. Even when you ought to.”

In those few words, Q heard everything that Bond didn’t say. Bond trusted him, which Q knew wasn’t something that came easily, not after everything that had happened to him in the past, or in the life that he currently led. Maybe it meant that Bond even considered him a friend, someone more than just his superior whose job it was to dress him down and write him up for his reckless disregard for self and government property. That realisation made something hard settle in Q’s throat, and he didn’t know if it was happiness at being accepted by Bond, or disappointment that it wasn’t something more.

“I never leave an agent behind,” Q managed to say.

And it was the truth. Even the few times he had lost someone, Q had always brought the body home. No agent would be left on foreign soil, alive or dead. They would always come back to England, so long as he was Quartermaster.

“You know the protocol,” Bond said, “you should have left me more times than I can count.”

Q shook his head. He knew Bond was talking about Algiers and La Paz and Phnom Penh and at least a dozen other assignments when he’d been declared dead or missing after abruptly going off the grid. Bond had been beaten and poisoned and kidnapped and tortured and Six had protocol when that sort of thing happened in combative enemy territory. There were political repercussions in some cases and strained resources in others and all sorts of other excuses in between that Q always ignored. Because Q always brought them home.

Always brought Bond home.

“You don’t get to die on my watch,” Q said.

“And you don’t get to die on mine.”

For some reason, the admission made Q’s heart beat a little faster.

“It’s not your job to worry about me,” Q reminded him.

“But if you die, then who’s going to worry about me?” Bond asked.

Q felt the corner of his mouth twitch. When he looked up, he saw Bond doing the same. Then, all at once, Q found he couldn’t look at Bond, because he wanted him so desperately that it hurt. He had been treading in dangerous waters, letting Bond into his life, into his bed. What would it be like when Bond eventually left him? Either of his own volition or an untimely death in the field?

What then?

Maybe Bond felt his shift in mood, because his hand moved from Q’s ankle up his leg, his big, warm palm coming to rest on Q’s knee in a gesture of comfort. It filled Q with happiness, and then sadness, being touched so kindly.

“I couldn’t find the same mug.”

“Hm?”

Bond nodded at the cup on the table. Q focused on it to keep from crying. It was rather adorable, with the ears on one side and the tail acting as the handle.

“It was old, don’t worry about it,” Q said, and picked up his new mug. “This one’s really cute.”

And it made Q smile to think of Bond purchasing it: a big, scary Double-Oh walking about with such an adorable item. He might have paid money to see it.

“You can smile.”

Q looked at Bond, and then abruptly away, because Bond looked far, far too handsome in the soft evening twilight.

“I smile,” Q insisted.

“Not enough,” Bond said, and then, softer, “not like that.”

Q didn’t know what to say. Something had shifted between them, something big, but Q wasn’t quite sure what it meant or where they went from here. It felt more intense than friendship, but couldn’t be romantic, because that was preposterous. Bond had so much to offer as an Alpha--physically desirable, but also surprisingly gentle and affectionate--that he could have his pick of lovers, and often did. Conversely, Q had very little to bring to any sort of relationship. Unable to have heats or children and now with a diagnosis of a disease that would eventually kill him, he wasn’t the most desirable Omega.

So not love, Q reasoned, with a twist in his gut. Friendship, perhaps. Friends he could do, even if a very small and fragile thing inside of him wanted something more.

“Q.”

“Hm?”

Before Q could turn his head to look at him, Bond had leaned over and kissed him on the temple. It was quick, perfunctory, but long enough that Q felt the heat of Bond’s lips against his skin, the brush of a bit of stubble against his cheekbone. The shock of it rooted Q to his seat. Yes, Bond had nuzzled him once or twice when they were in bed, but Bond had never kissed him before. And it was so casual and familiar, as if they had been exchanging such gestures of affection for a long while. It had Q blushing despite himself, all the way from his neck to his forehead. Meanwhile, Bond didn’t seem affected at all, acting as if everything were perfectly normal as got up off the sofa.

“You kissed me,” Q said to his back, berating himself for making it sound breathy instead of accusatory.

“I did,” Bond replied.

Q hadn’t expected Bond to admit it with such nonchalance. His blush burned hotter in his cheeks, but Q did not hide his face like he wanted to. Instead, he tried for the rather sensible question:

“Why?”

“I would have thought it was obvious,” Bond said.

Neither of them were looking at each other. The room suddenly felt very small and warm.

“It’s,” Q’s voice broke, and he had to clear his throat before continuing, “understandable. A biological response.”

“Oh?” Bond asked, sounding amused, of all things.

“You’re an Alpha in close proximity to a distressed and unbound Omega. It’s...natural that you might…” Q struggled to find the correct words, “...experience a chemical reaction that feels like affection.”

“It’s not that,” Bond said.

Q didn’t understand. Perhaps Bond took pity on him, because he said:

“We’ll talk about it another time. When you’re feeling better. Tea?”

“Please,” Q said automatically

When he reached out for the mug in Q’s hands, their fingers brushed, as they often did over guns and radios, and lingered, just for a moment. It had started from the moment they met in the National Gallery and then on every subsequent assignment afterwards: the briefest contact of skin on skin, warm and electrifying. Q had always assumed it to be accidental, his own natural clumsiness, or Bond’s attempt at being distracting and seductive, as both came naturally to him as breathing. But maybe it had been something more, all this time? Something much more deliberate. Intimate, even.

Something leading up to a kiss that Bond claimed was not the result of biology, but something else.

The corner of Bond’s mouth picked up, as if he could hear Q trying to work through all of the data in his own head, and the sight of it had Q’s heartbeat quickening.

Oh no he thought, watching as Bond went to the kitchen to fill the kettle.

This suddenly had become very complicated.

00Q00Q00Q

The next morning--after a night of fitful sleep, due to a persistent erection Q could do nothing to satisfy with Bond sleeping beside him--Bond suggested they enjoy the weak bit of winter sunshine and go out for breakfast.

For the first time in days, Q showered--taking care of some of his tension from the night prior with quick work of his hand, biting down on his fist to keep quiet so that Bond did not overhear--instead of taking a bath, dressed in real clothes, put shoes on, and then let Bond lead him out into the grey morning sunshine. The day was cold, but they were bundled up and decided to walk the few blocks to a nearby place that did a good fry up.

They were seated at a booth in the window, the table just at the right angle so that Bond could see all the entrances and exits, and Q let him assess the minimal danger of a suburban neighbourhood on a slow Thursday morning without comment. Their server, a young, peppy thing with a nice smile, took their orders and brought drinks: coffee for Bond, tea for Q. After she was gone, they lulled into a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable, but wasn’t exactly natural either. Q realised then how he and Bond had never done small talk before. It was always mission parameters, quips and threats, or empty flirting.

“We don’t ever talk, do we,” Q said, not asked, as he tended to his tea.

“We talk all the time,” Bond said.

“I mean like normal people.”

Bond gave him a rather sweet smile that absolutely did not have Q’s heart beating a little faster.

“We’re not normal people.”

Q had almost forgotten. The last few days spent at home with Bond had been leisurely and unhurried, the two of them under no obligations to Queen and Country while on mandatory leave. That meant no schedules or phone calls to divert their attention, and all the time in the world to nap and watch telly and relax in general. Q never realised how much he’d needed the break until now; he felt more energised than he had in ages.

But Bond’s words served as a reminder that this was a fleeting, temporary state. Even Bond’s presence was not a guaranteed constant after they returned to their lives at Six. The thought of all of this ending, going back to his solitary routine, made Q feel suddenly melancholy.

“You’re right,” Q sighed.

Bond must have heard his sadness in his voice or seen it in the slump of his shoulders, because he slid his hand across the table. The movement was slow and deliberate, so that Q could see his intentions, pull away if he wanted to. But Q let Bond touch his wrist, let him linger there against his skin.

Just as it had been with the kiss the previous night, the touch was casual and familiar, something that Q had always craved. He should have pulled his hand away, because friends didn’t do this and Bond wasn’t anything more than that. But instead Q turned his hand, letting Bond’s fingers brush the inside of his wrist. It sent a shiver through him, one he knew Bond could feel, because he did it again, his eyes never leaving Q’s.

“Tell me something about yourself,” Bond said, skipping his fingers sensually over Q’s skin, “something not in your file.”

“As if you could read my file.”

Bond gave him an enigmatic smile, which made Q momentarily doubt his own security measures. But he quickly dismissed that thought. If there was one thing he was good at, it was building walls, and definitely in more ways than one. Again, he told himself he ought to pull his hand away.

Again, he didn’t.

“If I could, something that wouldn’t be there.”

Q looked away, because he didn’t know how to reply. There was nothing more to him than a list of educational accomplishments, a few creative endeavours for Her Eyes Only, and what Bond had discovered after basically living in his flat for the past week.

“Nothing interesting,” Q answered.

“I doubt that. You’re the most interesting person I know.”

Bond’s thumb moved over the pulse in his wrist. Q felt some of his willpower fading under the gentle ministrations. How could something as simple as touch undo him in such a way?

“Really,” Q assured him.

“Tell me something you like, then,” Bond said, still doing that daming thing with his finger, “what’s your favourite thing to eat?”

“Ice cream,” Q said, before he could think twice, and then felt his cheeks get red, because once the words were out, he realised how juvenile they sounded.

Bond even laughed at that, but with no maliciousness, only genuine amusement.

“What flavour?”

Still blushing, Q looked down at the table.

“I’m sure you’ve looked in my freezer…”

“Chocolate,” Bond said, and Q knew then that Bond had seen his stash. “It’s funny, I thought you were more a double chocolate chip sort of person.”

Q wrinkled his nose.

“Too sweet.”

Bond laughed again, and Q chanced to look up, to see him in the act, and overwhelmingly wanted Bond more than he had ever wanted someone before.

Q had to put a stop to it before it got out of hand, before he became too invested, too attached. He reminded himself of how temporary it all was, that Bond wasn’t the type to settle or stay, and that this was merely a stopover until he was released back into the field again. And then what would become of Q and his little crush? Where Bond could get up and walk away looking less worse for wear, Q doubted he’d be able to say the same for himself.

He’d already rebuilt his life once. Q didn’t think he could do it again.

“You know, I think you’re the only person I know who could look so sad talking about ice cream.”

Q internally cursed Bond’s perceptiveness.

“I’m not sad,” Q said quickly.

“Maybe not about the ice cream,” Bond said, “but you are sad. Why?”

Q somehow made himself smile.

“I’m not sad,” he said again, as if saying it would be true.

Bond’s thumb moved over his pulse and then stilled, a single point of heat pressed tenderly against Q’s skin. It looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t quite sure of the words, and before Bond could say anything, their server arrived with their food. Q jerked his hand from Bond’s grip, embarrassed at the little smile the girl gave them as she set their plates down.

Then she was gone, leaving Bond and Q alone again in a pocket of silence. Q tried to focus on his plate, on his tea, anything that wasn’t Bond observing him from across the table.

“You know,” Bond began, and Q braced himself for their previous conversation to continue, but the other man continued with: “every time I come back, this is the first meal I always have.”

“A fry up,” Q said, and Bond nodded in affirmation.

That was something Q actually did not know. After logging off the comms with his agents, he made sure that they had their privacy, which meant not tracking them when they were back on British soil. Most of them were private people off the clock, including Bond, so this confession of one of his rituals seemed rather intimate. Q, unsure what to do with this information, defaulted to his usual with Bond.

“You’ll clog your arteries.”

Bond responded by shoving far too much bacon in his mouth. The childishness of it, the lack of sophistication and suave, made Q laugh. Apparently the reaction was just what Bond wanted, because his blue eyes lit up with something that wasn’t mischief for once.

“What about you?” Bond asked.

“My arteries are just fine, thank you for asking.”

“I mean, your favourite meal,” Bond said.

“Hmm…”

“You have to have a favourite. Aside from ice cream.”

“Hmm… curry, I guess,” Q eventually said.

That prompted Bond to tell him a particularly interesting history of curry, which he had learned from an old restaurateur he had visited every day during his excessive amount of downtime during an assignment in India. It was before Q’s time, and one of the missions that did not result in major destruction to property, so Q barely remembered it from Bond’s files. Even then, the stories Bond told wouldn’t have been contained therein, and Q found himself drawn into the way Bond spoke fondly of the restaurant, the man and his family, and the taste of their curry. In fact, he was just drawn to the way Bond spoke in general. He rarely did so at such length outside of a mission, and Q had never seen him light up in such a way and was enthralled.

The conversation that followed was something Q would only realise later as being the most normal exchange they had ever had. Bond told some more personal stories from out in the field--the conversations he’d had with strangers, the amusing things he had seen in airports, all the things that would never make it into the official files--and Q told his own from what he’d read recently or things that had happened around the office that Bond had missed while away. At the end of the conversation, both of their plates had been cleaned and they ordered a piece of coffee cake to share for dessert. Q did not miss that Bond looked immensely pleased to see him eat.

After they had paid--well, after Bond had paid, he had insisted--they wrapped up in their coats and headed back in the direction of Q’s flat. It was then that Q noticed the sign in the window, which boasted that the restaurant had the best Full English in London.

“What did you think?” Q asked, pointing at the advert. “You’re the fry up expert.”

“Good, but the beans could have been done a little more,” Bond said. “What did you think?”

Before his brain could catch up to his mouth, Q said:

“Your eggs are better.”

That had Bond beaming, and Q had to force himself to look away before he said or did something even more embarrassing. But Bond didn’t tease him or say anything at all, simply sliding Q’s arm through his, the two of them huddling against the cold on the way back to the flat.

They spent the rest of the day watching a series of documentaries on famous painters, Bond on one end of the sofa, Q on the other. Q had his laptop on his knees to check a few emails, his feet tucked under Bond’s thigh for warmth. Bond didn’t seem to mind, but even if he wanted to move, he couldn’t with Gizmo curled up on his lap.

When R cut his VPN access after an hour or so--with a strongly worded message right beforehand threatening bodily harm if he did not rest--Q gave up, turned his laptop off and set it on the coffee table before settling down to get more comfortable.

“R cut you off?” Bond asked

“Yes,” Q said moodily.

“Good,” Bond said.

Q thought about giving Bond a playful kick, but he was very comfortable with his feet where they were, and just huffed to express his annoyance. Bond didn’t say anything else, but he did pull down the blanket from over the back of the couch to cover Q up. Then he moved his hand to rest at Q’s ankle again, like he had the night previous. His touch was warm and grounding, and Q pushed all of his complicated emotions away to just let himself feel it, enjoy the simple pleasure of being next to another person.

On the telly, the documentary moved on to Romantic period and J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire suddenly filled the screen. It brought Q back to the day they met, the both of them stiff-backed on that wooden seat in front of one of the great masterpieces of the Painter of Light. And now, two years later, here they were, together again in front of that same painting, relaxed in each other’s presence. Friends.

Q turned to look at Bond, only to find that Bond had already focused his attention on him. Their eyes met and neither of them looked away. And then Bond smiled, just so, and Q knew he was in love.

It was, after all, the inevitability of time.

00Q00Q00Q

A few days later, when Q could stay awake for the entirety of the day without a rest, he went back to Medical to get cleared to go back to work. Doctor Ziegler--her pregnant belly somehow larger since the last time Q had seen her, he noticed, with great and terrible envy--seemed happy with his progress. His bruises had gone, both hands were healed, and he had (mostly) overcome his fatigue. She still seemed concerned at his weight loss and insistent to draw more blood from him.

“We’re going to run labs on you every week until we get you sorted,” she explained, after her nurse siphoned tubes of blood out of him. “How have you been feeling with the new adjustment?”

“Fine, I suppose,” Q answered.

“No headaches or nausea?” she asked.

“No, I’ve been...actually, I’ve been feeling rather well,” Q replied.

She looked relieved.

“That’s good news. We’ll see what these tests tell us. Hopefully you’re on the road to recovery,” Dr. Ziegler said, and closed the file. “Now, I know you’ve been focused on a lot the past few weeks, but I wanted to ask if you’d given any thought to what we discussed the last time you were here?”

Q felt a weight creeping up on his shoulders. The one thing he had been doing a very good job not thinking about was suddenly front and center again.

“Yes, well, I’ve...gotten some books,” Q said, because it wasn’t necessarily a lie when the books did exist in his house, even if he didn’t happen to be the one reading them. “I’m...I’d like to take some more time on my own.”

Dr. Ziegler nodded.

“I’ll check in with you next time, then,” she said, and released him.

Q picked up his coat and satchel, took the medical paperwork from the nurse on his way out, and stepped into the waiting room. Bond was there, in one of the uncomfortable chairs, and stood up when Q appeared. Q had thought he might have run off to avoid Medical--who probably should have had a look at his ribs--but there he was, looking nervous of all things. At first, Q thought Bond was worried one of the nurses might sequester him for an X-Ray, but what came out of his mouth instead was:

“What did the doctor say?”

It was rather sweet, Q conceded, that Bond was so worried.

“I live to see another day,” Q said, “thanks to you.”

“Me?” Bond asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

“I would have starved to death. Or the cats would have eaten me,” Q reminded him

The corner of Bond’s mouth picked up.

“All clear to go back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Dinner to celebrate?” he asked, holding out his arm.

Without thinking twice, Q slid his arm in Bond’s.

“Let’s.”

They went for curry that night at an Indian restaurant Q had never been to, but a place that Bond insisted had some of the best in the city. It was a hole in the wall establishment with tasteless decor, but phenomenal food.

“I wouldn’t have expected you to eat somewhere like this,” Q said.

“Oh? Why not?” Bond asked, in good humour.

“Not posh enough,” Q said, spooning some rice onto his plate.

“Contrary to what you might think, I don’t just eat at Michelin star restaurants.”

“Mhmm.”

“I'll have you know, I ate out of a rubbish bin once.”

Q wrinkled his nose.

“No you didn’t!”

“I did,” Bond said, and proceeded to tell him a story about a time when he’d been a regular agent--long before his Double-Oh status--when he’d been desperate enough to resort to such low-level dining after being on the lam for two straight weeks in the Ukraine.

“Makes the uni days of only pot noodles sound much more preferable,” Q said and Bond laughed.

They spent the evening eating and drinking their fill. It was the best night out Q had had in a long while; he didn’t even look at his phone or his watch, caught up in the ease of good conversation over good food. He even caught sight of his reflection once or twice, smiling and laughing in ways that he never imagined he ever would. Q almost didn’t recognise himself, looking young and carefree instead of drawn and exhausted.

And he wasn’t the only one who had undergone a transformation. Across from him, Bond’s usual close-off facade had opened up, and Q drank in the image of him laughing, his eyes so very blue. Not intense or piercing or sharp, just blue, almost shimmering, like a warm sea. Q felt his heart in his throat at the sight, because he had been the one to make Bond laugh, and Q wondered if he would get the opportunity to do it again.

After they settled the bill, on their way to the car, Bond held his hand as if they were lovers on a date or out on a stroll, and for the first time that night, Q worried.

He worried at how much he never wanted to let go.

He thought about not letting go when they got back to his flat, about pulling Bond up against him, kissing him, having Bond take him right there in the foyer. But he lost his nerve at the door, then again when they brushed against one another in the narrow corridor with a touch that might have not been accidental. There was something there, that was for certain, something more than just friendship, something more if only Q would ask for it. And it would have been so easy to give into the temptation, but Q pulled away. He needed space as much as he wanted closeness, needed to think about his options just as much as he felt the desire to jump headfirst into whatever this thing was without thinking of the consequences.

Instead, he settled on taking a shower.

“I’m going to shower,” Q announced.

Bond looked at him, as if he were searching for some other meaning in the words, as if he knew that Q was considering leaving the bathroom door open in invitation to have Bond join him. But the moment he undressed in front of the mirror, Q lost his confidence again. The sight of his skin stretched over his bones, the hollow of his stomach, the jagged white scar that split him from hip to hip made him turn away.

The past few days had been a fantasy. Tomorrow everything would go back to the way it had always been. No more thoughtful breakfasts in bed or the feeling of Bond’s warm body pressed against his at night. No more pseudo-dates and laughter and coming home to curl up on the sofa with his feet tucked under Bond’s thigh while they watched telly.

Q closed the door and locked it, the sound seeming to echo. He wondered if Bond heard it from his place in the living room, if he knew what it meant.

When Q finished his shower, he didn’t go back out into the living room to join Bond. Instead, he putzed around the bedroom, getting his clothes ready for the next day, straightening a few things that didn’t need the attention. Then he got into bed and pulled up his work inbox on his mobile with the intention organising his tasks for tomorrow morning, but found he just wasn’t in the right headspace.

As if on cue, Bond appeared in the doorway, so soft-footed in his socks that Q hadn’t heard him approach.

“Hey,” he said.

His face was unreadable.

“Hi,” Q replied, pushing down the ache of want he felt for Bond in that moment, dressed down in his sleeping clothes, hair slightly mussed, giving him an approachable, soft look.

“Are you okay?”

Q didn’t know how to answer, because he most certainly wasn’t okay. All he wanted to do was hold onto Bond and not let him go, to stay inside this little pocket of normalcy for just a little longer, where he wasn’t Quartermaster of MI6 and Bond wasn’t Double-Oh-Seven. They were just two people who got on incredibly well, who could possibly be something wonderful if they had the chance, but tomorrow that would all change. So what could he do now except pull away? To prepare himself for the inevitable shift back to their working relationship, where Bond would go galavanting off across the globe, sleeping with beautiful men and women, and Q would be back here in London, in this flat, all alone again.

“I’m fine,” Q said, looking back down at his mobile, “just a lot to think about.”

“You look sad.”

“I’m not sad.”

Bond made a doubtful sound.

“I’m not,” Q insisted, staring hard at the screen of his mobile.

Bond lingered silently in the doorway for a moment, before he left. Q watched his retreating back with his heart in his throat, thinking maybe Bond would leave, go back to his own apartment instead of staying here for one more night.

But Bond returned. He had a spoon and a carton of chocolate ice cream in his hands, both of which he handed over without comment. Q felt the overwhelming desire to cry, but he shoved it down with a spoonful of ice cream.

Bond didn’t say anything until later that night, when the room was dark and they were lying next to one another in bed.

“You’re still sad,” Bond said against his shoulder.

“Hush, I’m trying to sleep.”

Bond slid closer, and Q couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him at the pleasure of being so close to another human being.

“You ate an entire carton of ice cream,” Bond pointed out.

“First of all, it was half a carton of ice cream,” Q began.

“Mhmm.”

“Secondly, I’m an adult and can do what I want.”

Bond huffed out a laugh, his breath warm against the back of Q’s neck.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Bond said, as his hand came to rest gently at Q’s hip, “but is there anything I can do?

Q wanted to throw all caution to the wind, wanted to put his hand atop Bond’s and slide it beneath the waistband of his pyjamas, to have Bond kiss--really kiss--and make love to him. But he only got as far as placing his hand atop Bond’s, letting his palm rest against the heat of his skin.

“Tell me something,” Q said quietly.

“Anything,” Bond said.

That had a hard lump form in Q’s throat. He swallowed round it, nearly choking on it when he asked:

“Will you be gone in the morning?”

Bond slid his fingers between Q’s.

“If you want me gone.”

Q could hear his own heart beating in his ears. He wondered if Bond could feel it in his ribcage, pressed against his chest.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then ask me to stay.”

Q stared into the dark, trying to find some shred of courage, but he couldn’t make his mouth move, couldn’t utter the single syllable aloud. He felt so afraid to want someone so badly, someone who could have anyone they wanted, someone who deserved so much better. But Bond was in his bed and no one else’s, and looked at him like he looked at no one else, and that had to mean something.

Right?

So while he couldn’t utter the words aloud, he could move his thumb against the back of Bond’s hand, a series of short and long strokes against his skin, an old and outdated form of communication, but still one that would get the job done in a pinch. And it must have gotten the job done, because Q felt Bond let out a breath he hadn’t known the other man had been holding, felt the curve of a smile on the lips that pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

Q smiled too, and fell asleep shortly afterward, warm and content knowing he would not wake up tomorrow alone.

00Q00Q-S-T-A-Y-00Q00Q

The next morning, Q woke to the smell of pancakes.

When he stumbled in the kitchen, he found Bond in nothing but his joggers, bare from the waist up as he flipped pancakes. Gadget and Gizmo watched from the floor, their golden eyes wide as saucers. Had Q been in more possession of his faculties, he might have joined them in the ogling (though more at the man and less at the pancakes) and been aroused at the sight of Bond’s very nice body on display. As it stood at that moment, though, anything standing between him and his first cup of tea would perish.

Bond, as if sensing this, already had a cup of tea for him, and put the mug in his hands before going back to his frying pan.

“You’re making pancakes,” Q said.

“I am,” Bond said.

“With no shirt on.”

“You noticed.”

Bond gave him a cheeky grin and Q groaned into his tea. It was far too early for Bond to be this flirtatious and good looking.

“If you burn yourself it’s your own fault,” Q told him, taking a seat.

He had a good view from the table of Bond’s back, watching the muscles move as he worked over the stove. As far as mornings went, this was as good as it got. Now if Q could just stop looking at Bond’s arse…

“Breakfast is served,” Bond said.

He laid down a plate with a towering stack of pancakes, then a bowl with fruit, and another, smaller plate laden with eggs. Q blinked at the offering, then at Bond’s abs, and was very glad that the table hid his lower half.

“This is too much food for this early in the morning,” Q said.

“It’s just on five,” Bond said.

“It’s early.”

Bond removed two of the pancakes from the huge stack as if it would truly make a difference in the overall amount.

“Eat. You’re going to need it.”

And Bond was right.

Q was only allowed back into his department after a debrief with Tanner that lasted almost an hour. After that, Q was forced into signing actual written demands put forth by Mallory, Medical, and his branch, that essentially made him promise that he would take it easy.

“These have carbon copies,” Q groused to Moneypenny, who kept handing them over. “I didn’t know we did carbon copies anymore.”

“One for every file.”

“We have paper files? What happened while I was away? Did we roll back to the stone age?”

Moneypenny gave him a look that tried for stern but only came across as fond. He knew, despite his quip, that he was still in her good graces, because once he had finished with the paperwork, she shoved a tin of biscuits at him.

“Eat all of those today,” she said, “you look a stone’s throw away from starving.”

Q did not want to admit that he had a beautifully packed lunch that Bond had prepared with surprising care that morning, and nodded obediently.

“Yes’m,” he said.

She came closer and straightened his collar.

“It’s good to have you back,” Eve said, “I’ve missed you around here.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Q replied, “the paperwork, not so much.”

“Perhaps don’t look at your desk right away, then,” Eve suggested.

“Thanks for the warning,” Q said, letting her kiss his cheek in farewell before he left her office.

Bond was loitering outside, still wearing his casual clothes from that morning’s commute in, Bond insisting that they drive instead of letting Q take the Tube. Q had thought he would have changed into one of the suits he kept in his locker, but Bond seemed content to be slumming it in his joggers and trainers. Q had to pointedly think about everything that was not what Bond looked like without a shirt on.

“Lurking?” Q asked.

“Waiting,” Bond answered, then nodded at the tin in Q’s hand with a look of suspicion, as if he were holding a potential bomb. “What’s that?”

“Moneypenny gave me biscuits,” Q said, wiggling the top off to reveal the sweets inside.

The heavenly scents of lemon, blueberry, and cinnamon wafted into the corridor. Bond observed the biscuits, then turned away, as if uninterested. Q returned the lid and sped up to catch up with him.

“Have they finished with you up here then?” Bond asked.

“Hopefully so,” Q said, shaking his wrist. “I forgot how tiring it is to write with a pen.”

The corner of Bond’s mouth twitched, as if he were trying not to smile.

“Kids these days,” Bond said, as he pressed the down button on the lift, “now writing with a pen is hard.”

“You didn’t see it. It was like ten thousand pages of paperwork,” Q grumbled, as they stepped into the lift.

Bond laughed, just as the doors closed. Q wondered if the security feed caught it, and sort of hoped that it did, so he could have record of it, if only for himself. Q cleared his throat.

“What mischief are you getting into today?” Q asked.

“Gym,” Bond said, “then Medical for my release papers.”

Q felt his heart hammering in his ribs for some reason. Release papers meant that Bond would be back on active duty, ready to be shipped off at a moment’s notice.

“Ah, yes, good,” Q fumbled.

He could see Bond looking at him from the corner of his eye, but Q stubbornly kept his gaze focused on the screen as they descended floors.

“I’ll come by after,” Bond said, “and take you home.”

Q felt a heated blush climb up the back of his neck and into his cheeks. The lift stopped, one floor above Q-Branch, where both Medical and the gym training rooms were located. Q thought that would be all--that they would go back to their usual brand of professionalism at work--but then Bond leaned over and kissed him on the side of the neck. Before Q could berate him for his inappropriate behaviour, Bond was gone with a smirk and a wink.

“Damn that man…” Q said to himself, after the doors closed and he descended another level to his floor.

He waited a moment for his flush to calm down, then straightened the front of his cardigan and walked into his branch for the first time in three weeks.

Immediately, it seemed the room went quiet, over a dozen concerned eyes upon him. R shooed them all back to work with a wave of her hand.

“I knew I’d left this place in capable hands,” Q said, and R smiled, albeit a little tearfully.

“We were so worried,” R said.

She guided him towards his office, seemingly very insistent to get him to sit down right away, as if at any moment, he might collapse.

“They’ve been saying on the news that it’s been the worst flu season on record,” R continued.

Q almost corrected her, but caught himself just in time. Of course it wouldn’t be common knowledge why he was out. Just as he always had, Q had bathed in scent blockers before coming to work, smelling like a perfectly neutral Beta. His Branch had no idea of the truth, and while Q did feel a little badly for lying to them, he wasn’t about to out himself to all of Six.

“I hope no one else got sick,” Q said, as he swiped his ID card at the door of his office.

“No one has even had a sniffle.”

“Well that’s some good news…”

And Q needed it, because the sight of his desk nearly gave him a heart attack.

“Yes, well, while you were away…”

R got him up to speed over the course of the next hour. She had done all she could while he had been out, but there were still so many things that only the Quartermaster could do and authorise. R pointed at each pile and what needed to happen with each one. By the end of it, Q had a bit of a headache, but one that he could work through with a bit of panadol. And he did this for the rest of the day, smiling at all of his techs that were in a clamour to bring him tea and biscuits and other offerings of nourishment or well wishes a few times an hour.

By the time Bond arrived that evening--gorgeous dressed in one of his suits, wearing no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt undone--Q was so exhausted that Bond had to practically carry him to the car.

“I might have to start drinking coffee at this rate,” Q said.

“You don’t own a coffee maker,” Bond pointed out.

Q hummed, then realised something.

“Wait, how have you been drinking coffee every morning…?” he asked, because he had definitely smelled it in Bond’s mug on more than one occasion, including that morning over their pancake breakfast.

“I walk down to the Costa on the corner.”

“Every morning?” Q asked, frowning.

“Every morning,” Bond said, helping him into the car.

Q wondered how he had missed it--Bond’s comings and goings from his flat--but chalked it up to the fact that Bond was one of those insane people who liked to get up before the sun, and made a mental note to himself to do further research.

That night, Q thought he might fret again about whether or not Bond would stay, but the other man seemed quite content in his kitchen as he made pasta for dinner, then later as he brought a book into bed. Q, exhausted from the day and content knowing Bond was by his side, fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

The next few days followed a similar pattern: waking to a wonderful breakfast (that Bond prepared far, far too early in the morning), going to work for eight hours (with his mandatory breaks as per his signed agreements) and then coming home at a reasonable time to eat dinner. Bond would either pick up carry away on the way home or prepare the food himself, which Q ate dutifully every night before falling fast asleep.

Between his work schedule and his exhaustion, Q had very little time to think about their strange relationship, but Bond seemed fine with the current arrangement. He started being even more affectionate than before, giving Q little kisses whenever he got the chance. Bond never kissed him on the lips, always against his forehead, in his hair, against his cheek, at the back of his neck when Q waited for the kettle to boil. Once, Bond kissed him very close to his mouth, so close that Q could have turned his head, just so, and that would have been that.

They were going to have to figure it out eventually, but Q didn’t know when that would be, and was liking it far too much to possibly ruin it.

But the perfect opportunity arrived one night when they came home to find a box on the doorstep. Immediately, Bond went on guard, going so far as to place himself between Q and the box, as if it could attack him at any moment.

“What’s that?” Bond asked.

“It’s a box, you nut,” Q said, moving around him with the keys in his hand.

“Did you order something?” Bond asked.

“Yes, so pick it up and bring it inside, would you?”

“What is it?” Bond asked.

“Barrel full of monkeys,” Q said, rolling his eyes as he put his key in the lock. “If you read the label you’ll see it’s for you.”

Bond picked it up and carried it inside, setting it down on the coffee table in the living room. He looked at it, as if not knowing what to do with it, until Q pulled out a pair of kitchen scissors from the block and handed them over.

“What is it?” Bond asked

“Open it and find out,” Q said, going into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes.

He was far too embarrassed to stay and watch Bond open the gift.

A few minutes later, when he emerged in his pyjamas and Bond’s hoodie--which had become Q’s hoodie, what with him immediately shrugging into it the moment they got home every night--he found Bond sitting on the sofa, looking at the opened box. He turned when he heard Q approach.

“You bought a coffee maker,” Bond said, not asked.

“Yes,” Q said.

“You don’t drink coffee,” Bond said carefully.

Q fought back a blush.

“But you do,” Q replied.

Bond smiled and Q did too. The words were there, right on the tip of Q’s tongue, but he couldn’t make them come in that moment, or later, when Bond kissed him, very sweetly, in his hair as they watched telly that night. He could have turned, pressed his lips to Bond’s, told him exactly how he felt without words, but fear held him back. He still couldn’t believe that there was anything between them at all, still waiting for that other shoe to drop, for Bond to up and leave. Q worried about putting his heart out there only to have it broken again.

This limbo, although undefined, was good enough.

But that night, as they lay beside one another in bed, Q felt the ache in him, that desire for Bond, and knew.

It would never be enough until Bond was his.

Notes:

Second part to be posted Thursday/Friday. Advance warning that the rating will change :) See you soon. D xx

Chapter 5: Chapter 4 (part 2)

Notes:

My infinite gratitude to @roseforthorns for keeping me sane and helping with a super quick BETA on this chapter.
Also my love to everyone who has left comments and kudos on this fic. I'm so happy you are liking it.

Please note the RATING CHANGE for this chapter. There be porn ahead.

That first week back was hellishly hard, and Q was more exhausted than he wasn’t, but with support, the second week went much more smoothly than the first. Q almost felt like his normal self, enough to snap at the idiots in the branch head meetings and dress down Double-Oh-Nine for being stupid enough to break his goddamn leg in a needless stunt while on assignment.

Everything felt like it was getting back to the way it had been, except for one very important difference.

James Bond had made himself at home in Q’s flat.

He hadn’t moved in necessarily, but hadn’t gone home, either. Q was as delighted as he was frustrated by all of this, but he thought maybe he’d started to understand exactly what was happening. Unbelievable as it seemed, Bond liked him--for reasons still unknown--and Q liked him back. But Bond had done most of the work so far, settling himself into Q’s life and his bed, kissing him at all the right (and sometimes wrong) times, all little reminders that he was there and waiting and wanting patiently.

So the ball was in Q’s court. And he tried, he really did, but every time he opened his mouth to say what he felt, Bond would look at him with those blue, blue eyes and Q would lose his nerve.

With words failing him, Q tried for his own gestures of affection, like the purchase of the coffee maker so Bond didn’t have to walk in the cold every morning, and Q’s pointed clearing out part of the wardrobe for Bond to hang a suit or three so he didn’t have to live out of a suitcase. He even found himself once, twice, perhaps a few more times, reaching for Bond’s hand when they walked to the car in the morning. It felt nice to have Bond give his fingers a gentle squeeze, to feel the warmth of his palm against his, and Q found he looked forward to these moments, when he reached for touch and received it without hesitation.

So everything had returned to normal, except for the fact that Q fell asleep with a Double-Oh curled round him like a third cat, and woke to the smell of that same agent making him breakfast every morning. By the second week, when their lingering touches and looks had become too heated, Q found himself striving for conversation in the morning, lest something very rushed and stupid come out of his mouth. They usually talked about the weather or the news or--as of late-- what trouble Bond was getting into at Six everyday as he waited for his next assignment.

That particular Thursday morning, as Bond worked on beautiful omelettes, Q found himself deviating from their usual topics, instead asking a question that he had been wondering for a while now:

“Where did you learn to cook?”

Bond did a fancy flipping motion with his wrist, folding the egg intricately in the pan.

“When Aunt Charmain took me in, I spent half a year out of school and with nothing to do. Spent a lot of time being a nuisance--”

“So nothing has really changed?” 

Bond huffed a laugh

“The house staff didn’t mind, really. I think they were happy to have a young person in the house,” Bond said, “but to keep me out of mischief, they sent me to the kitchen at every mealtime to help the chef. He’d trained at Leith’s and was a genius in the kitchen. He taught me everything I know.”

“I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d be someone who enjoyed cooking,” Q said.

Bond gave a one shouldered shrug.

“Cooking kept my mind off other things,” he said, “it still does, sometimes.”

Bond did not have to say anything more. Q cleared his throat.

“So, a house staff, hm?”

“My Aunt wants for nothing,” Bond replied.

Q made a noncommittal sound, sipping his tea. Bond turned, tea towel over his shoulder, and raised an eyebrow.

“Go ahead and say it,” Bond said.

Q twisted his mouth, trying for polite, but the early hour had made his filter non-existent.

“Rich people," Q scoffed playfully.

Bond shook his head with a laugh.

“What about you?” Bond asked.

“I’m not rich,” Q said.

“You know what I mean.”

Q knew what Bond was asking. While Bond’s life had been catalogued in meticulous detail in his files, Q’s remained a mystery to him.

“I can cook a little bit without setting a fire,” Q offered.

Bond went back to his cooking, obviously a little disappointed by the answer. Q could tell by the way he held his shoulders, slightly stiff, as he did when given an assignment he didn’t quite like but couldn’t turn down. Q swallowed, tapping at the rim of his mug. Rarely, if ever, did Q talk about his private life with anyone. Keeping his secondary gender secret for so long had made him cautious about getting too personal. Besides, he liked who he was now; everything that had happened in the past was in the past, and Q didn’t like dredging things up if he didn’t have to.

But he supposed that talking about these sorts of things was what people did with people they liked, as a form of intimacy, so Q thought it might be a good idea to at least try. He might not be able to articulate his feeling effectively, but he could dip his toe in the water, share a small part of himself with Bond and see how it went.

“I grew up in a group home,” Q said, the words coming easier than he imagined; the next ones, not so much: “My mother... died giving birth to me. My father wasn’t in the picture, so with no next of kin, I went into the system."

Bond turned to look at him, something soft in his expression. Q wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps that he had been lucky his family had been in a better station in life, that he’d had a living relative to take care of him lest he might have been in a similar situation. The situation hadn’t been bad, but most people jumped to conclusions when the topic of foster care came up.

“It wasn’t awful,” Q assured him, before Bond could let his mind wander, “just...different, I suppose. Loud, for one. And crowded. Never a moment alone, which you know is difficult at thirteen.”

Q knew that Bond would understand that, at least, having gone to boarding school and probably slept several boys to a room. And true to this, Bond laughed.

“As if we thought of anything else,” Bond said.

“Tell me about it. I would have given anything for fifteen minutes to wank in peace.”

Bond smiled in good humour, and a natural quiet fell in their conversation. Q thought that might be it, and was actually quite proud of himself that he had been able to share--hoping he might be able to do more, in time--when Bond asked:

“Were you ever with a family?”

Q couldn’t look at Bond--couldn’t bear to be looked at by him--and focused on his tea instead.

It had always been a sore subject for him, that he’d bounced from home to home during his youth, trying so hard to please nameless, faceless couples into adopting him. No one had been abusive or neglectful, but no one had kept him, which somehow left a deeper scar.

The only place he could remember with true clarity was a house that had a red door and a little garden. There had been two other children to play with and a dog that had always licked his face and Q had been happy there. But then one day the people from the state came and took him away. He remembered crying as they put him in the car and drove away, the red door closed to him forever.

Q blinked back the tears that had started stinging at the corner of his eyes, hoping Bond hadn’t noticed.

“On and off,” Q admitted, trying for nonchalance. “I was young. Don’t remember it much. Just that it didn’t work out. I moved a lot and changed schools so many times that I ended up doing correspondence to keep up. When I hit puberty they put me in a youth home out in Bromley for Omegas and stopped trying to adopt me out. Lots of potential for abuse, I suppose, so…I got to stay put, at least.”

Another lull in conversation, this one shorter than the previous.

“Do you have any friends?” Bond asked. “From the home?”

“Um, not really. We all sort of fell out…I keep tabs on them from time to time, but we don’t talk much anymore.”

It had been a while since he looked into anyone. The last time he’d checked, his old roommate had gotten married, had two pups, and was in the middle of a nasty DeCoupling, the medication-induced un-bonding that occurred during an Alpha/Omega divorce. He thought he ought to call her, but Q honestly didn’t know what he would say. He wasn’t very good at talking about things like that.

“And after?” Bond asked.

“After what?”

“You got out.”

Q took a sip of his tea. He remembered the day with clarity, because it had been his eighteenth birthday, a day that should have been a celebration. Instead, Q had been given his papers and a bag for his things and told to move out.

“Bounced around a little,” Q said vaguely, not wanting to get into the details of how he’d slept on couches and in cold basements of friends of friends while trying to scrape up enough money for his own housing, “but was fortunate to not have to live rough. Got into uni with scholarships and a stipend for housing about eight months after I got out. It was easier after that.”

It was true. He’d gotten a sad little bedsit just outside of Finsbury Park that had only one window facing an alley, but it had been his, and that had been more than enough.

“You were sick, though,” Bond said.

To avoid looking at him, Q leaned over to pet Gadget. He wanted to talk about a lot of things with Bond, but not that. And what to even tell? How could anyone--especially an Alpha--understand what it was like, living with that kind of pain? The mood swings, the migraines, the sheer number of clothes he ruined constantly bleeding? It had been a miracle he managed to get up out of bed everyday, let alone graduate with multiple degrees.

“It’s in the past,” was all Q could say.

Bond went back to his pan and Q felt it was safe to sit up again.

“And you didn’t have anyone?” Bond asked.

Q knew what Bond was asking, but how could he explain that he had only let people into his life a few days a month? Sure, there had been a few repeat partners, but stretched out over months, Q only choosing to see them on his good days when he didn’t feel like collapsing from pain. And the one or two who did find out about his condition were sympathetic, but then disappeared from his life entirely. No one at that age wanted the burden of an Omega who rarely had sex and had a medical condition that almost guaranteed an unsuccessful pregnancy. Not fun, not someone for the long term, so what was the point?

“No one serious,” Q said.

Bond seemed very preoccupied getting the eggs onto their plates, so much that Q did not expect him to speak again.

“And now?” he asked.

Q flushed, a little, knowing Bond had probably found the phone--it wasn’t like he was hiding it, what with it living in the top drawer of his bedside--with the numbers of Alphas 1-8, the text messages asking him to come over, the intentions clear. Maybe Bond felt insecure about it, or wondered if Q was actually interested, which meant it was the perfect time to say exactly how he felt. But again, his fear got in the way, and Q offered a clumsy answer:

“I’m far too busy.”

“Oh?”

Bond didn’t even try to hide his disappointment and Q felt something hard get stuck in his throat. Here was this wonderful man making him breakfast, just hoping for a hint at affection, at mutual attraction, and Q was acting as if he weren’t interested. Even as skittish as he was about all of this, Q wanted nothing more than to assuage Bond’s fears. It took him a moment, but then he remembered their conversation from the cafe two weeks ago.

“Well, far too busy for normal people, anyway,” Q said pointedly

That had Bond smiling, and Q’s heart beating a little faster. In that moment, Q wanted to lean across the table and kiss him, to tell Bond exactly how he felt. But he took pause, their conversation about the past suddenly at the forefront of his mind.

He remembered that glimpse of happiness behind a red door and the poignant disappointment of being rejected. Even now, all these years later, he could taste that anguish on his tongue. Just seven years old and he’d understood what it meant: that he had been unwanted and unloved. He had opened himself--young and unguarded--to the hope that he would have a home, and again and again as he grew older to people who he thought might come to care for him, but everyone eventually chose to leave him for a more attractive option.

Q thought he had made peace with it long ago, but faced again with someone who seemed to care made him hesitate. He didn’t know if he could do it again, to let someone in and then watch them walk away.

He couldn’t let Bond become another red door in his life.

So he didn’t lean across the table and kiss Bond and tell him how he felt. Instead, Q picked up his fork and took a bite of the omelette Bond had made him and tried to pretend he didn’t notice how disappointed Bond looked at words that never came.

00Q00Q00Q

That Friday, after a trip to Medical for his blood work in the morning--fighting off Dr. Ziegler’s third attempt to get him to commit to a therapist--and an exceedingly long briefing with R&D in the early afternoon, Q stepped away from his branch for lunch. He had been looking for Bond, maybe to tuck away with him somewhere quiet for a half-hour or so to enjoy his meal, but Eve had found him first and dragged him to her office instead.

“So,” Eve began, when he was seated across from her.

“So what?” Q asked, before taking a bite of his lunch.

Today’s meal was salmon and asparagus with a hefty portion of potato, everything cooked in butter and garlic with a bit of citrus. Q couldn’t remember anything tasting so good, even his lunch from the previous day, which he had declared had been the best thing he’d ever eaten (chicken piccata with extra capers and a healthy portion of linguine in lemon butter sauce). At this rate, Bond's cooking was going to make him fat.

“That’s a nice meal you have there,” Eve said conversationally.

“Yes,” Q replied, not falling for her trap.

She narrowed her eyes.

“You don’t cook.”

“How do you know?”

“Please, I’ve seen what you usually bring to lunch. Those prepackaged things from Tesco that sometimes look a little dicey because you probably forgot them in your fridge for a week.”

“You know, I came out to have a good time and I’m sort of feeling attacked right now.”

Eve pointed her finger accusingly at him.

“You’ve got someone making you lunches,” she said.

“No,” Q lied.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Eve told him.

Q shoved salmon into his mouth so he didn’t have to reply. It gave Moneypenny the time to muse aloud:

“Let’s see, never previously made any lunches...then you were on your deathbed for like a month--”

“It was two and a half weeks, everyone needs to calm down--”

“So there’s no way you’re feeling one hundred percent yet. And even if you were, that you would be cooking like that,” Eve continued.

Q tried to think up an excuse but couldn’t quickly enough. Eve grinned wickedly.

“It’s Bond, isn’t it?”

“No,” Q lied.

Her grin grew triumphant.

“I knew I was right in sending him over to check on you!”

“Actually, you were so wrong in sending him over. Do you know how bad I looked?” Q grumbled.

“Apparently not bad enough to drive him away, since he’s making you these little lunches. He’s like a housewife! Oh, that’s so cute I could die.”

“Eve…”

“So does he also make you breakfast?”

“No,” Q lied.

Moneypenny looked ecstatic.

“He is making you breakfast!”

“Calm down, Eve…”

“And you get here at 0700,” she continued, as if he hadn't spoken, “which means that he would have to get to your house really early…”

Her grin turned sharp.

“Oh, does that mean he’s been staying over?”

Q nearly choked.

“What! No. He just brings the food. I swear!”

“You’re such a liar,” she said, and then laughed when he went red.

“Fine, yes, he’s staying over. Please let’s not talk about it,” Q mumbled.

“Thought I smelled him on you,” Eve said, and then teasingly added: “You slut. Good for you.”

He felt like his face would burn off.

“It’s not like that,” Q assured her.

“Sure.”

“It really isn’t.”

Maybe some of his disappointment came through, because Eve sobered immediately.

“Wait, really?”

Q nodded. Suddenly his lunch didn’t taste as appetising.

“So it’s just…? You mean you’re literally sleeping in the same bed together and doing nothing else?”

He nodded again, not daring to say anything aloud. It felt a little strange airing out his private life, especially what he did with someone else who worked at Six, but he was confused and in need of answers. Perhaps another Alpha would have some insight.

Surprisingly, Eve smiled. She got up from her desk and went to her office door, which she closed. Q frowned. The door was never closed. That was the whole reason for the open door policy.

“Mallory won’t be back for another half hour,” she explained, and then came round to sit down again, “so we can talk privately here.”

“Okay…” Q said.

Eve folded her hand hands together.

“I know you’re an Omega,” she told him.

Q put down his fork, preparing himself for whatever this uncomfortable conversation would bring.

“Should I ask how?” he asked, not bothering to deny it.

“I’ve got a good nose. And you know, sometimes when you work so many hours, your blockers fade. They’re good enough to fool most people, but not me. And not Bond.”

Q frowned again.

“Wait, so you both knew all this time?”

“Most of the agents know, actually. You don’t smell like a Beta.”

Q scrubbed his hands over his face.

“When did you…?”

“Right around the time Mallory took over,” she said.

“So...since the beginning…” Q said morosely.

“Almost,” she said, giving him a rather kind smile.

“And Bond…?”

Eve looked thoughtful.

“About a year ago? It was after Double-Oh-Six ran into trouble in South Africa.”

Q remembered it vividly. It had been three days of almost non-stop adrenaline. When they managed to recover Double-Oh-Six and Medevac him out safely, Q had barely made it to his office before collapsing in relative privacy. He slept like the dead for about ten hours, waking to R bringing him a much-needed cup of tea and a stern warning to get the morning Tube home for a proper rest. Someone had removed his shoes and glasses, and put a blanket over him while he’d been sleeping. Q had always thought it had been R, or even Eve, but now Q wondered if he might have been mistaken.

“Okay, great,” Q said. 

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.

There was, but Q wasn’t about to go down that road with Moneypenny. Not today.

“Okay, so secret’s out. What does any of this have to do with Bond?”

“Well, remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned that Bond had stopped taking honeypot assignments as of late?” Eve asked.

“Yes…?” Q replied, not understanding.

“Remember how I said that maybe Bond had started requesting other assignments because he possibly he had his eye on someone he might want to be in a relationship with...?”

Q blinked.

“Wait, so you’re telling me...Bond’s been interested in me for--” Q paused, trying to remember when Bond’s last honeypot had been prior to the recent one in Curaçao.

“At least ten months,” Eve supplied.

It took Q a moment to comprehend. Bond had been interested in him for ten months, which meant that Bond had been telling the absolute truth: his biology had nothing to do with his actions over the past few weeks.

And Q had somehow missed it.

For ten months.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

Eve shook her head.

“Even if you didn’t catch the change in his type of assignment, surely you had to notice he’s been different?” Eve asked.

Q tried to think back before Bond had made himself at home in his flat. It took him a moment, but he remembered the little gifts Bond had started bringing back from his travels: exotic chocolates and teas from around the world, left in innocuous packages on his desk. And he recalled how, when faced with difficult deadlines or projects, Bond would always seem to be in his office on that uncomfortable sofa, out of Q’s way but very much in the room, which Q had always thought was his way of being annoying, though now he wondered if it was the Alpha’s attempt at comfort and support. And then there had been the recent incident with the tea, the return of his equipment in pristine condition, Bond leaning in closer and closer each time they happened to be in the same room…

“I’m an absolute idiot,” Q realised.

“You are,” Eve conceded.

Q dragged his hands through his hair.

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Using your eyes?”

“Eve,” he pleaded.

“What? He’s been mooning over you for months now. I’m just surprised it took him this long to act. And you this long to notice.”

Q felt like banging his head on the table.

“I just thought he was flirting like he does with everyone,” Q mumbled miserably. "I mean, he doesn’t seem the type to…"

“To what? Be monogamous? Like boffins?”

“To settle.”

Q said it with self-deprecation, but Eve shut him down right away.

“He’s not settling. Honestly, you’re far too good for him. He’d be lucky to have you,” Eve said.

Q loved her very much in that moment, even if he didn’t quite believe her.

“But everything aside, it all comes down to what you want.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. What do you want?”

Q took a moment, thought about lying in bed with Bond, listening to him turn pages as he read; thought about resting his head in Bond’s lap while they watched telly, having him run his fingers through his hair; thought about the way Bond flipped pancakes with a self-satisfied little smile that made him look so young and carefree. Bond was so much softer and sweeter than Q had ever imagined. It was as if James Bond left his Double-Oh demeanor at the door, hung it up like an old coat, and revealed this quiet, gentle thing underneath.

But at the same time, Q knew Bond’s track record, knew he had a restless energy that could never be sated. The field would always come first, retirement not an option, and Bond would eventually get distracted by another pretty thing that caught his interest, if he wasn’t blown up and killed first.

Either way, it would end in heartbreak, and Q would be left to pick up the pieces of himself again, if anything remained.

“It’s complicated,” he sighed.

“You like him,” she said.

I love him Q thought, but didn’t say it aloud.

Couldn’t, not yet.

“Yes,” he conceded, “but I... I’d rather go back to how things were than--”

“Just stop,” Eve said, and Q shut his mouth. “I know you’re thinking about all the things that could go wrong, but have you ever thought about how things could go right?”

“The probability of things going wrong is much more likely than things going right,” Q replied, “as much I might wish otherwise, numbers don’t lie.”

Eve narrowed her eyes.

“So you’re afraid,” she said, not asked.

“I’m not afraid,” Q said hurriedly, “just cautious.”

“If you never let anyone in, you’ll never get the opportunity to be happy.”

Q’s heart agreed, but his head filled with doubt.

“I don’t know,” Q eventually said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Eve gave him an encouraging smile.

“I think you do,” she said.

It was only later, when Bond came to collect him that night--helping him into his coat, fussing with his muffler, of all things, as if he were afraid Q would catch cold--that Q realised she was right.

Q absolutely did know what to do.

00Q00Q00Q

“I had lunch with Eve today,” Q began conversationally, as Bond prepared dinner that night.

“Oh?” Bond asked, just as conversationally.

Q picked up Gizmo, letting the tabby drape over his shoulder as he liked. He looked at Bond’s back, so broad in his too-small kitchen. The man had become a fixture in his home, in such a short time. Q couldn’t remember what the space looked like before he had occupied it, and found he didn’t want to imagine it without him.

“She knows. About me. Maybe not all of it, but, she knows I’m not a Beta.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Bond said.

“Why?”

Bond gave a one-shouldered shrug, not looking up from his pots and pans.

“You should have people who know. Who you can talk to.”

Q felt his heartbeat pick up. He wondered if Bond heard it.

“Like you?” Q asked.

Bond turned his head at that, and smiled. Q wanted to kiss him, right then and there, but held himself back. And he did so again, at dinner, when Bond passed the salt shaker and their fingers touched. And again, when they were doing the dishes: Bond washing, Q drying. It would have been so easy to lean over, press his lips there, but.

Again his courage failed him. The conversation with Eve came back to him, and he knew, without a doubt, that he wanted this, more than he ever wanted anything before. Even if it wasn’t meant to last, even if it ended in heartbreak, Q wanted Bond more than he ever thought possible. Now it was just getting the words out; simple, in his head, but complicated on his tongue.

“You’re thinking so loudly I can hear it,” Bond said, after dinner, when they were on the sofa.

Q had his head in Bond’s lap, looking at the television but not actually seeing it. It had become a favourite position of his in the past week or so, because Bond was so warm, the rhythmic movement of his fingers soothing after a long day. It calmed him, helped focus some of this thoughts, and before Q knew it, the question he’d been wanting to ask came past his lips:

“What are we doing?”

Bond kept petting at his hair.

“Watching telly.”

“You know what I mean,” Q said.

The hand in his hair stopped, and Q sat up. He moved away from Bond’s warmth, choosing to sit on the hard edge of the coffee table facing the other man instead of beside him on the sofa. Under the weight of that steady gaze, Q had some trouble dredging up the words, but he knew he had to get them out.

He wanted to.

“I don’t know what this is,” Q admitted, gesturing with his hand between them, “what we are, right now.”

“What do you want us to be?” Bond asked.

It was a sensible question and Q hated him for it, just a little, that Bond’s head could be so clear when his was so muddled. He’d gone into this knowing what he wanted to do, the words he wanted to say, but face-to-face with Bond and he felt his thoughts scattering, all of his insecurity coming back to him in a rush. But somehow Q managed to press on.

“I...I don’t really know how to answer...or to deal with any of this,” Q said helplessly, shoulders slumping, feeling all at once that this confession was going all wrong. “I’ve never...no one has ever…”

Q didn’t know how to finish, unable to think of word that didn’t make him sound pathetic. But Bond was looking at him, expectant, almost nervous, of all things, and Q thought it only fair that he say exactly what had been on his mind since Bond had barged into his life.

“No one has ever looked at me like you do.”

At first, Q thought the words might have been too much, because Bond didn’t say anything, but then, Bond’s hands were on his, and the warmth and weight of them gave him the courage to keep going.

“I like it,” Q said, and then, “I like you. A lot. Well, more than a lot. And it terrifies me.”

Bond’s brows creased.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because,” Q said, taking a breath, looking at their hands instead of into Bond’s eyes, “I’ve always been a self-reliant person. I’ve never had...anyone, really. Not like this. Nothing at all close to this…”

Bond squeezed his hands, silent encouragement, and it gave Q enough courage to continue.

“I’m scared because…the thought of suddenly not having this--having you here--is…” Q struggled, and let out a shaky breath. “I...I don’t want to even imagine it..."

But he did, for the briefest moment, coming home to an empty flat, without Bond’s frame filling up the space in his tiny kitchen. He remembered how it had been, going to bed alone, waking alone, having no one to kiss the back of his neck for attention, no one to hold him at night. Q didn’t think he could ever go back to a life of solitude again, not after finally--finally--experiencing what companionship felt like.

Q wiped at the corner of his eye roughly and sniffed, before letting Bond take his hand back in his.

“So you’d better not just be doing all of this because you want to get a leg over,” Q warned Bond.

He looked up to see Bond smiling one of those insufferably handsome smiles.

“Well, not just to get a leg over.”

“Bond,” Q said seriously, far too nervous to have Bond joking like that.

“Call me James," Bond said, his expression more soft and open than Q had ever seen before. 

“James,” Q said, and then softer, “if you’d have come to me a few months ago and wanted a tumble or two, that would have been just fine...but now I’m…I-I can’t just--”

“Q.”

At the sound of Bond’s voice, Q quieted.

“I’m here for more than just a shag,” Bond reassured him. “I’ve wanted you for more than that for a long time.”

Q felt some heat in his cheeks.

“Even before you knew I was an Omega?”

He didn’t know why it was important, but he wanted to know. Had Bond only considered him a potential lover only after he had discovered his secondary gender?

“Before I even really knew you. You had me the moment you told me to put my back into it,” Bond said.

Q laughed, a little tearfully, and Bond squeezed his hands gently.

“Beta, Omega, it doesn’t matter to me,” Bond said. “I want you.”

Q’s heart was beating so hard that it almost hurt.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Q asked.

“I thought my interest was obvious,” Bond replied.

“I thought you were just trying to annoy me…”

The corner of Bond’s mouth picked up.

“Maybe a little of that, too.”

“Why?”

“It’s cute when you get riled.”

“I don’t get riled!”

Bond laughed, and Q did too, a little bit. He looked down at their joined hands.

“So you’re not here because you feel obligated?”

“No,” Bond said, and sounded almost angry, as if Q had offended him.

“And you’re not doing it out of pity?”

Bond’s palm cupped his cheek.

“Not even close.”

Q leaned into his hand. It felt nice. So nice. Wonderful, in fact. Something came to Bond’s expression. Thoughtful, maybe. Something soft and contemplative that made him look younger than his years.

“Could I kiss you?” Bond asked.

“You’ve been kissing me for weeks now,” Q reminded him, cheeks burning.

“But could I kiss you?” Bond asked again.

Q felt an ache so acutely in his chest at the request. Years of being passed over for more eligible Omegas, his few romantic entanglements ending before they started when partners realised his defect, random partners who took him from behind so they didn’t have to see his scars. There had been no kissing for Q, no matter how much he had wanted it. There had been a rare occasion or two, a passing lover having kissed him by mistake, and Q wondered why it was so horrible, kissing him, that they made a face as if they’d tasted something bitter.

“I’m sorry,” Bond said, withdrawing his hand. “If you don’t want to--”

“No, it’s me, I’m sorry. I. No one has really…”

Q fumbled with the explanation, not knowing how to articulate just how badly he wanted it. Rushing in for a kiss was all well and good, but what if his taste repulsed Bond enough to drive him away?

“I think...maybe, like my smell...my taste is--”

“Shh,” Bond murmured, pressing a finger to Q’s lips to hush him.

And then his lips were against Q’s.

Kissing.

James Bond was kissing him.

It was chaste at first, as all of the kisses leading up to this had been, but then turned a bit more heated, more passionate, as Bond’s tongue pressed into his mouth. The slick heat of it had Q’s toes curling. He wondered if this is what people meant when they spoke of fireworks. Q's body had always been a betrayal to him; never before had he imagined he could feel so alive.

“You taste delicious to me,” Bond said, and there was no artifice in it, Q knew, because Bond’s blue eyes had gone dark with desire, “like anise.”

Q wrinkled his nose.

“I hate anise,” Q mumbled, just before Bond captured his lips again.

“I love it,” Bond said, in between pressing smaller kisses against Q’s mouth that left his limbs shaky.

“A man of strange tastes.”

Bond laughed, sliding his fingers through Q’s hair. It was almost as good as the kissing. Almost but not quite.

“It’s an evolutionary response to dislike anise,” Bond explained, continuing to card his fingers through Q’s hair. “It can cause heart failure in large doses. DNA doesn’t forget.”

“Then why do you like it?”

“It reminds me of a biscuit my mother used to make. Once a year, only at Christmas, these anise cookies in the shape of snowflakes.”

Q didn’t know what to say, trembling when Bond kissed him again, very softly.

“You taste like home.”

The words were so honest, so loving, that Q felt like crying. Instead, he shifted until he was over Bond’s lap, knees on either side of his hips, so that he could have easier access to his mouth. Why they had not done this sooner, Q could not say, because kissing Bond felt as natural and necessary as breathing.

And Bond wasn’t just kissing him, but touching, too, his palms sliding up along Q’s cheeks, into his hair. The sweetness of it, the gentle tugs at the strands, had Q shivering, his own hands useless against Bond’s shoulders. He wanted more--needed more--of Bond’s mouth and hands, had to know what it felt like to have nothing between them but skin.

Q started to shrug out of Bond’s oversized hoodie, but the other man held him in place. They were both panting and definitely aroused, but still, Bond had stopped, sliding their fingers together.

“We can go slow,” he said, kissing at the corner of Q’s lips. “We can just do this tonight, nothing more.”

“I don’t want to,” Q said, angling his hips down, pressing hard against Bond’s front so he could feel just how much he wanted him.

“You’re still recovering--” Bond began weakly, obviously affected.

“Then be gentle with me,” Q said.

Bond’s palms came and cupped his cheeks, those strong hands that could kill a man, holding him so tenderly.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

Q nodded, leaning into him,

“More than sure,” Q said, and then kissed Bond softly, almost apologetically. “I can’t believe I made us wait this long…I don't want to wait another minute.”

Bond kissed him, hard, needy, and the desperation in it went right to Q’s cock.

“Bed,” Q groaned, “now.”

Bond lifted him from the sofa, seemingly effortless, and made the short journey to the bedroom. They tumbled into bed, Q beneath Bond, who resumed kissing him like the world was about to end. Bond took Q’s lip between his teeth, carefully biting, just enough for it to be a thrill of pleasure instead of pain. Then Bond lapped at it, and Q felt himself chasing Bond’s tongue with his own.

It felt incredible to kiss and be kissed, to be wanted, to have hot, eager fingers untucking his shirt, smoothing over his skin. Bond’s palm moved along Q’s ribs, and then lower, to his hips and belly, and Q almost forgot about being self-conscious. But then Bond began unbuttoning Q’s shirt, his mouth following the path of his hand, and Q blindly reached out to turn off the bedside light.

Bond stopped him with gentle fingers against his wrist.

“Leave it on,” Bond said, breath hot against Q’s stomach. “I want to see you.”

Q swallowed, wanting to give in to Bond’s request, but at the same time feeling far too embarrassed. But then he looked down at Bond, saw how arousal had darkened his eyes, faint crescents of blue the only remnant of his irises, and knew that Bond couldn’t fake that kind of desire. How, Q did not know, with Bond’s mouth so close to the scar on his belly, that ugly reminder of how he was incomplete.

And then Bond broke eye contact with him for just a moment, to press his lips against the white line on his skin. It was so sweet, so loving, that Q felt a sob catch in his throat.

“Please," Bond said. 

At that single word, Q gave up all forms of resistance, allowing Bond to ease him out of his hoodie and shirt. Bond kissed his mouth, then down the column of this throat to his collarbone, leaving small love bites in his wake that sent pleasure signals straight to Q’s cock. Q couldn’t stop the breathy moan that escaped him as Bond worried at a particular spot with his teeth, and Bond laughed softly when he released him, nosing at his clavicle briefly before moving down his chest. He placed open mouthed kisses to Q’s nipples, alternating between the two, lapping and sucking. The sensations were almost too much, Q unable to articulate just how good it felt outside of the sounds that escaped his throat and the desperate grip his fingers had in Bond’s hair.

Perhaps Bond knew it was getting a bit overwhelming, because he paused in his stimulation, coming back up to rest beside Q for a slow, but meaningful kiss. His hands, however, still wandered, fingers gliding over Q’s skin, drawing full-body trembles from him. No one had ever touched him this way before, with such reverence. Q’s body had always been something used, never worshipped, and he loved Bond for it more than words could say.

“Are you crying?” Bond asked softly, his lips brushing over Q’s.

“No,” Q lied.

Bond slid his fingers into Q’s hair, moving through the strands soothingly as he kissed Q’s tears away.

“Do you want to stop?” Bond asked.

"Never."

Q turned, seeking Bond’s lips. They were wet, slightly salty, but Q chased away the taste with his tongue. Bond made a sound akin to a whimper in Q’s mouth, and that had Q trembling all over again.

They were just getting back into a more heated exchange, when Q felt the mattress dip slightly by his head.

“We have an audience,” Bond said, against the hollow of Q’s throat.

It took Q a minute to regain his bearings. When he opened his eyes, he found a furry face looking right back at him, golden eyes ever curious. It was Gadget, coming to investigate what was happening in the bedroom where Q never entertained guests.

“I’ll put him out,” Q said, but Bond gently pushed him back down on the bed.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

One more kiss, and then Bond was gone from the bed, Gadget tucked under his arm. The moment he deposited the cat outside the bedroom with his brother, Bond closed the door and came back to him. Q watched, appreciative of how tousled Bond looked from their brief bout of snogging, mouth going a little dry at the ridge in his trousers.

“Like what you see?”

Bond didn’t need the ego boost, but Q wasn’t about to lie.

“Yes. Even more so if you weren’t wearing as many clothes.”

Bond gave him a playful smirk as he rejoined him on the bed, their mouths drawn together immediately. Somehow, Q was able to be kissed by James Bond and still make his fingers work, which was the only way he got all of Bond’s shirt buttons undone. Then finally, Q touched all of that skin he’d dreamed about, been teased with every time Bond walked around his flat shirtless over the past few weeks. There were craters and gouges in Bond’s skin, heated dips in his flesh that Q explored lightly with his fingertips. He knew the story of each one, whether that be from reading Bond’s files or having been on the line with him when he received them, and Bond trembled under his touch.

“Does that hurt?” Q asked, worried that he’d aggravated the old wounds.

“Quite the opposite,” Bond said, which encouraged Q to continue his exploration.

When Q’s hand moved lower, towards the waistband of Bond’s trousers, he wasn’t stopped. Bond let him unbutton, unzip, and slide his hand inside. He wore no pants, his hot, heavy cock pressed hard against the right inseam of his trousers. Q groaned, palming Bond through the fabric until he felt it turn damp with Bond’s arousal.

“Oh, fuck,” Bond breathed.

The swear had Q arching up under him, his own trousers too tight at the front, and very damp at the back. Normal Omegas could get wet at the slightest stimulation, but after his surgery, Q had always had trouble getting sufficiently lubricated. He had no such problem tonight, if the wetness in his pants was any indication.

Maybe Bond could smell it, because suddenly he became very concerned with getting Q’s trousers and pants off. Once they were down from his hips and past his ankles, thrown to some corner of the room, two of Bond’s fingers were immediately in his slicked entrance. Q threw his head back and keened, needing more, but not knowing if he could take it all at once. His cock was hard, flush against his stomach and drooling precome.

Bond leaned over, just slightly, and lapped the tip of Q's prick with his tongue.

Q gripped at Bond’s arm, digging his nails into the flesh hard in an attempt to stave off finishing before they even started. Bond stilled his fingers, but did not remove them, kissing and sucking along the inside of Q’s thigh. And then that hot, clever tongue moved to Q’s plugged entrance to taste the slick that had escaped. An Alpha had never done that to him before, and the groan of pleasure that issued from Bond at his taste made Q dizzy. At this rate, he wouldn’t last.

“James,” he gasped, gripping harder at whatever part of Bond he could reach.

Another groan from Bond before he removed himself and his fingers from Q’s entrance, and Q whined at the loss of contact. But then Bond was leaning over him, pushing Q’s thighs wide to accommodate his hips, and Q trembled at the feel of Bond’s clothed cock pressing against his bare arse. Bond leaned forward, bending Q with him until they were close enough to kiss.

“Do you want want to use a condom?” Bond asked.

Bond’s hips were moving against his, little involuntary thrusts that relayed just how desperately he wanted this, and Q had a hard time focusing on anything else but his desire to be penetrated.

“I’m clean, if you don’t want to,” Q told him.

“I am too, but if you want me to, I will.”

Q thought it was very sweet of him to offer, and slid his arms around Bond’s neck, pulling him closer for a kiss.

“No,” Q said, and then arched as far as he could so that Bond could feel his hardness, the wet drag of his cock against his skin, “I want to feel you come in me.”

Bond’s shoulders trembled under him.

“How are you even real?” Bond groaned.

They made quick work of the rest of their clothes, throwing them carelessly over the edge of the bed, but Bond was much more gentle with Q’s glasses, which he set aside with surprising care on the bedside. And then they were bare, Bond’s thick thighs bracing Q’s, his heavy cock in the crease of Q’s hip. Q wanted to touch it, wanted to put it in his mouth, and said so, rough and low in Bond’s ear, but Bond held onto his wrists and wouldn’t let him touch.

“Another time,” Bond said, and then, before Q could protest, explained, “I won’t last. If you do. And I want…”

Bond pulled Q’s hips closer to his, then adjusted his cock so it nestled against Q’s slick entrance, but not pushing inside, not yet.

“Please…” Q begged.

Bond scraped his teeth against the column of Q’s throat and then in one swift motion, pushed inside him. Q’s vision went dark at the edges with the pleasure of it, and he didn’t realise how close he was to completion until Bond moved, just so. Q’s breath stuttered, and just like that, he had come on his own chest. Bond’s fingers dug into his hips, and it was only when Q could open his eyes again that he could see Bond looking at him with an arousal so potent that Q felt his cock already trying to get hard again.

“Fuck,” Q breathed, looking down at the mess.

“I’m flattered,” Bond said, as he slid his fingers into the spend on Q’s chest, then put them in his own mouth.

Q groaned and clenched around Bond’s cock.

“Fuck me,” Q whined.

Bond bent him practically in half and did just that, his thrusts fast, but measured. Every push in was impossibly deep, Bond’s knot breaching him, giving way to a sweet, pain-pleasure stretch. Every time he pulled out, the knot caught, just slightly, and had Q making noises he didn’t even know he was capable of.

Bond slid his arms up under Q’s shoulders, bringing him closer as the motions of his hips became more erratic. Two thrusts later and Bond was gripping him hard as he came. Q’s body clenched around his cock and wouldn’t let him go, milking Bond through not one, but two orgasms.

“Fuck…” Bond said shakily.

He laid himself on top of Q as he came down, but with only enough of his weight to make Q feel nothing but pure bliss at their closeness. Bond’s knot didn’t last long, about a minute or so, and Q couldn’t help the disappointed mewl that escaped him when Bond pulled out of and away from him. He had always enjoyed that bit of intimacy after, of being joined and unable to let go. Sometimes it even encouraged another orgasm, which Q had been hoping for after being premature. His cock, almost fully hard again, trembled against his thigh.

“Don’t make that sound,” Bond said sweetly, and kissed him.

Then Bond’s mouth went lower, his lips and tongue on Q’s sensitive prick, kissing and teasing before finally taking him inside. No one had ever gone down on him before--most Alphas expressing a displeasure for it, in his experience--and the pleasure of being inside such a warm, wet heat had his toes curling. And then there were fingers--three of them, plus the teasing flick of a thumb--pressed inside of him, filling that empty space, and Q was awash in euphoria. The dual stimulation of being fucked and sucked had him off in minutes. Bond swallowed his spend, looking up at Q as he did so, and the sight of him--blue eyes all black, dark, deep--had Q clenching around his fingers so hard that it ripped a third smaller, but still powerful, orgasm from him.

“Christ, you're gorgeous," Bond groaned, his fingers curling inside of Q as he rode the aftershocks of pleasure. "You'll make me want to go again."

Q couldn’t make words, still trying to catch his breath as he recovered, only managing a low whine when Bond removed his fingers. Bond’s seed was still warm inside of him, and Q clenched to hold onto it, even if nothing would come of it.

They kissed lazily for a while before Bond regained enough strength to walk the few feet to the ensuite. He cleaned them both up with a flannel, but the duvet was a right mess, covered in slick and come. Most of it, Q realised with some embarrassment, was his own slick. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been aroused enough to produce so much. Bond, however, seemed unconcerned by the mess. 

“We’ll wash it in the morning,” Bond said, turning it off the bed and onto the floor with a yawn.

It wasn’t like all of Q’s other encounters, when one party ran for the door. Bond came to him immediately, sliding under the sheets so he could be close to Q again. His pheromones were incredible in Q’s post-orgasmic state, soothing him with that musky heat that Q had come to associate with comfort. Bond nosed at his hair, kissing the back of his neck, the wing of his shoulder, and the sweetness of it chased away any doubts in Q’s mind that Bond would not be there when he woke up.

And he fell asleep, feeling loved, for the first time in forever.

00Q00Q00Q

When Q woke, it was to a room lit at the edges with grey sunshine and the bedsheets nested around him like a cocoon smelling strongly of heat and sex. His soft cock gave a twitch when Q buried his nose further into the sheets and inhaled the scents there: him, Bond, and a mixture of slick and come.

Q groaned softly, recalling the previous night, how it had felt to have Bond inside of him. It made him want more, right at that moment, but when he reached behind him, the spot where Bond usually lay was empty.

He put on his glasses, sat up, and looked at the space beside him with a frown. That wasn’t right. He had been sure Bond would have been next to him when he woke, which is why he had slept so well the night prior. Q swallowed, touched Bond’s pillow. Still warm.

“James?”

The name had no sooner left Q’s lips when Bond appeared, completely nude. He carried two mugs with their respective morning beverage in his hands. Normally, Q would have been focused solely on that familiar scent of Earl Grey and getting his caffeine fix, but this morning, he had something much more important on his mind, which was how grateful he was that Bond was still there... and how gorgeous Bond looked unclothed.

Now, Q could look without feeling ashamed, admiring those muscled arms, the dusting of freckles on Bond’s shoulders, the few marks that Q had left upon his skin during their lovemaking the night prior. The sight of those little marks and bruises had Q’s baser instincts taking over, his eyes traveling down Bond’s lean stomach, hungrily following the fine blond hair below his navel, until they landed on the heavy prick between Bond’s legs.

Q suddenly wanted him in his mouth, wanted to suck him to hardness, blow him until Bond couldn’t hold back and came all over his face. And then he blushed at his little fantasy, hoping Bond hadn’t noticed.

“Good morning to you too,” Bond said, grinning as he looked pointedly at Q’s lap, where his erection had tented the sheets.

Q went red and dropped a pillow over his lap to hide the evidence of his arousal, then took his tea with an embarrassed mumble of thanks. Bond joined him in bed, only moving closer with pointed touches and kisses when Q had finished his tea.

“You know,” Bond said, as he nosed at Q’s throat, leaving him a little breathless with every brush of his lips, “it’s Saturday.”

“Mhmm.”

“And you’re not on rotation today.”

Q moved his hand beneath the duvet, sliding his palm from Bond’s knee up along his thigh.

“Mhmm.’

“That means we can stay in bed all day,” Bond said, breath hitching when Q’s fingers brushed over the head of his very hard cock.

“All day?” Q asked, and then, completely teasing: “Do you think you have that kind of stamina?”

Bond bit him playfully on the shoulder, which had Q gasping, then moaning as Bond turned the both of them onto their side so he could slot his cock between Q’s wet thighs.

“Would you like to find out?” Bond challenged.

Q grinned.

“I most definitely would.”

Notes:

Finally, a bit of happiness for these two losers. But for how long?
(To be updated next week sometime. Hopefully Wednesday. D xx)