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In Portugal, Q snaps a man’s neck with the ease born of a lifetime’s experience.
It happens so quickly. Bond is still breathing hard, his muscles screaming in a way they never would have a year ago; he is only just rounding the corner, the Walther in his hand slippery with sweat, his entire being strained forward with concentration.
The man’s body slumps haphazardly onto the ground. His gun skids, neatly, like an unwrapped present, to Bond’s feet.
Q looks only slightly ruffled – there is a tiny spot of blood on the collar of Q’s shirt.
“You’re late, 007,” Q says.
--
Q’s other hand is still busily typing. “How’s the arm?”
“Still attached to the rest of my body,” Bond says.
Q hums, mild. “How contrary to expectation.”
Bond says nothing. He takes the opportunity to get a good look at Q. Before Portugal, he’d always taken Q at face value: slender, finicky, with a bleached sort of pallor from the endless bank of monitors. You imagine Q’s delicate fingers on the keys of a concert piano. You don’t really expect to see them on a man’s throat; Q does not look anything like the type that could kill.
“In most cultures,” Q says at last, not looking up, “it’s rather impolite to stare.”
“Let me buy you dinner.”
“You could buy yourself a watch first. It’s three am.”
Bond slips a hand into his pocket. “We could always skip dinner and move on to the next thing, then.”
Q glances up sharply at him and then away.
“I’m afraid,” Q tells him, after a clipped pause, “that sleeping with you is only about half as interesting to me right now as finishing this coding log.”
“You could always sleep with me twice,” Bond says. “To make up for the difference.”
Q purses his mouth. It’s a small, eloquent, frustrating mouth; perfect for dry quips across a communication line, or for talking circles around diplomats at an official dinner.
“Do feel free to go away now,” Q says. “Or I will shoot you.”
A month ago Bond would have laughed.
But now he knows better.
--
It is something tightly buried; a little spark smothered underneath the tame layers of Q’s coat. Nobody notices except for Bond. When Q destroys a foreign embassy in Monaco with the tap of a button, there is a flash of unexpected fire in Q’s eyes. There is a baring of his teeth, and his teeth are very sharp.
Bond watches as Q assembles his new rifle on the workbench.
“Telescopic sight, accurate to one thousand eight hundred yards.” Q clicks the bolt into place: a sleek, practiced action. “This is a prototype, so do treat it gently please. If you break it I will have M take it out of your salary, and you will feel that, I promise.”
“Do you know how to use it?” Bond asks.
“Of course I do.”
Bond watches, almost without thinking, the smooth taper of Q’s neck. “Then show me.”
“What, in here? There are cameras, 007.”
“And of course you’ve never dealt with cameras before.”
Q’s dark eyes flare bright for a moment. Bond sees the potential there: the split-second heat of rebellion. Overriding the MI6 camera feed is strictly out-of-bounds.
Then Q’s eyes cut to the side and the moment is gone. “You really are a terrible influence, you know.”
“I know,” Bond says.
At night, Q swallows up every dream that Bond has. There is the thin, breakable wrist; the sharp line of his jaw; that particular twist to his mouth, just before he contemplates doing something terrible. There is the leap of a pulse that Bond wants to taste with his tongue. Those pale, capable hands that have toppled entire governments. After all of these years Bond should really know better, but that’s just the heart of it: James Bond is continually drawn to things that will probably destroy him.
“I’m still waiting for you to accept my invitation to dinner,” he finds himself saying.
“But alas,” Q says, and hands him his passport. “Your flight to Amsterdam is in under an hour.”
--
He’d taken the chance anyway. There was a thrill in that.
At times he wonders how he and Q will end. An IED, perhaps, Q’s voice shrivelling in his ear along with the flames; a bullet, maybe, drilling hot into his heart. There are a million and one ways in which they can go wrong and Bond finds his heartbeat speeding up from the thought, the inside of his mouth going dry, his palms itching with a sharp desperation.
He wants so badly he can barely breathe.
--
Bond can hear the soft whisper of paper – Q flipping through his letters. Q is humming something unrecognizable under his breath. A shadow falls across the doorway, ambling, unsuspicious, followed by the hiss of fabric as Q removes his coat.
Then in the next moment Q has a gun pointed at Bond’s head.
Bond takes a moment to appraise Q’s stance. Nothing amateurish there. Thumbs forward, elbows locked, not a tremble in the barrel.
But the greatest clue is the stillness in Q’s eyes: something clinical and steady.
They stand there for what feels like the longest moment.
“You can put that down now,” Bond says finally.
“Can I?” Q says, and doesn’t. Lamplight falls across half his face. He looks like he comes from another world. “The last Q was terminated by a double-o.”
“That’s because he broke the rules.”
“Oh, is that all,” Q says.
Bond smiles, no real humor in it. “Guilty conscience?”
“Hardly.”
The gun drops back down to Q’s side. Q reaches out – the lights flick on. He looks buttoned up and prim, and Bond wants nothing more right now than to take him apart; to see the self-control in those dark eyes break down, to hear his own name bitten deliciously out of Q’s mouth. To rip and slash and tear. There is a monster hidden in Q; he wants to lure it out.
“I was saving that,” Q says, motioning to the glass Bond inevitably has in his hand. “The next time you feel compelled to raid my liquor cabinet, do text me first.”
“Not very much to raid,” Bond says. “I almost get the feeling that someone else has been there before me.”
Q says nothing.
“Does M know about your drinking?”
“No,” Q says, measured. “And if you’re fond of your limbs, it will stay that way. Now excuse me, if you have no better reason to be in my apartment – ”
“Come to bed with me,” Bond says.
An incredulous light enters Q’s eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard me the first time. I’m not repeating it.”
“You broke into my apartment just to ask me to sleep with you?”
Bond takes a sip from his glass. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Q’s eyes narrow at him. Bond watches as Q’s fingers flex, very briefly, on the grip of the gun. It’s like watching a cat preparing to unsheathe its claws; Bond’s skin prickles with anticipation.
“You’re very sure of yourself, 007,” Q says after a moment. “I’m quite certain there’s a rule that quartermasters are not permitted to fraternize with their agents.”
“And of course you’re one for following the rules,” Bond says.
Q’s mouth curls like a blade. The gun falls to the carpet and Q steps forward, intent clear in the clean line of his shoulders, in the flick of a wet tongue over his bottom lip.
“Something we appear to have in common,” Q says.
--
Q’s hand darts out to pin Bond’s wrist.
“I think I’d like to hold you down, 007.”
Bond’s hips stutter. Above him and around him, Q is tight, perfect, impossible to look away from.
“Fuck,” Bond whispers. A shiver of something goes through his entire body. “Fuck, yes.”
--
Bond is in an underground parking lot in Kuala Lumpur. A broken light-bulb flickers in and out on the ceiling. The heat here in the summer is damp; it deadens the senses, adds a dizzying spin to every minute of the day. But Q’s voice is crystal-clear despite the necessarily bad reception through all the levels of concrete that Bond is currently buried under.
Bond has his gun up, is inching carefully around a parked car. “That’s very sporting of her.”
“Apparently she thinks we’re going to end in tears. Figuratively speaking.”
“Well, she’s a clever girl,” Bond mutters into his mouthpiece.
Q hums. It appears to be his habit when he’s contented.
“Of course,” Q says, “your record isn’t entirely reassuring. A trail of dead bodies everywhere you go, hmm? It says in your file that one of your previous conquests was drowned in a vat of oil.”
“Problem?”
“It would be, to any ordinary person.”
“But you’re not any ordinary person,” Bond says. “Are you?”
Q laughs. “Fortunately for you, I’m not.”
--
Bond is in the building when it happens. The explosion screams through Q branch, glass erupting out of each window and scattering onto the footpath below like diamonds. The evacuation alarms turn on; the sprinklers, too, until Bond is drenched to his very skin.
He is unprepared for the first thought he has – for the first name that flashes urgently across his eyes.
Two corridors heading toward Q branch are on fire. The third is so thick with smoke that Bond’s eyes water, even when he drops into a crawl. He can barely make out anything two metres ahead of him. The soot coats his tongue; he is only halfway to Q’s office when someone comes hurtling out of the dark, footsteps fast and regular, trips over him, goes sprawling to the floor.
“Bloody buggering fuck,” comes Q’s voice.
Bond reaches back, snags Q’s familiar ankle. “You alright?”
Q slithers out of his grip. Q’s hair is standing up in spikes and clumps, a large hole seared into one sleeve of his cardigan. A deep slash on his cheek is bleeding sluggishly. There is soot all over him – his pant-leg, his shoes, in stark crescents under his nails.
He looks wild, and Bond has never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.
“You are always reliably where you’re not supposed to be,” Q says. His voice is rough and hoarse from the smoke. “Aren’t you meant to be in Tabriz?”
“You’re burnt,” Bond says.
“It’s nothing. Come on.” Q struggles back to his feet. “The roof is going to cave in soon.”
As they run, Bond imagines it. The screeching rend of the concrete around them; the ear-splitting squeal of timber and stone. The air is hot, friable, and Bond wonders what it would feel like, the fire chasing them down and overtaking them – knows that it would hurt, certainly, but what a way to go out.
“Stop thinking about how we’re going to die,” Q mutters next to him.
“Don’t you ever think about it?”
“Not when there’s a high probability it might actually happen, no.”
Bond laughs. He isn’t really sure why he does it. The adrenaline thumps under his ribs. He looks across – Q’s blood is a bright stripe on his skin – he’s thinking, if the roof caves in, I’m right where I want to be.
--
Bond ducks in to steal a kiss. It doesn’t matter that the whole of Q branch is staring at them.
“You’re my cyanide pill,” he murmurs into Q’s mouth.
“How very romantic,” Q says. “I think your psychologist might have something to say about that.”
“And what do you have to say?”
Q smiles at him. It’s a hard, jagged smile, and the want tightens in his belly when Q draws a fingernail across his Adam’s apple. There is something dangerous in Q and it’s just the way he likes it.
“I think, 007,” Q says, “that you owe me dinner.”