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This.He couldn’t honestly say he’d ever felt like this before. Not even after the death of his father who’d meant more to him than anything.Anger.Confusion.Fear.Worry.Crippling sadness.Loss. They were not new to him, these feelings. Of course he’d experienced them before. Contrary to what was bandied about his branch, he was actually human.Though tonight. For the last several nights. He’d have given anything to not be human.He didn’t want to feel anymore.Not this.The individual emotions he could handle. But not all of them at once. Not swarming about him like a murmuration of sparrows, diving and soaring about his soul.Clouding his mind.Attacking his heart.Grief.He’d cried. Actually mother-fucking cried three times before he’d left the flat that morning. Another two on the way in. He thought he’d managed to hide it from his driver.He’d been wrong.He’d given up on work before noon.Walked to a pub across the river where he’d drank steadily until four. None of it had silenced the feelings.He’d taken a taxi home. The cabbie dropping him off at the corner where he’d picked up a bottle of chilled vodka at the off licence.Moneypenny was stood on the front stoop of his building. Waiting.“You’re not actually that much of a drinker,” she said when he cracked the bottle and poured two fingers into a glass for her.He drank from the bottle.“Even Alec’s not that uncouth,” she pointed out, lifting but not drinking from the glass.“He send you?”“No.”“Bond, then.” He growled the name. Took another lengthy swig.“Careful, love,” she said. “It’s a school night.”“I’m the Quartermaster of MI6. When is it not a fucking school night for me?”“James told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?” She set her full glass on the worktop between them.“I’d think this is a clear enough visual as to what I intend to do tonight.” He gestured with the bottle and took another draught, swallowing quickly to avoid the taste as much as possible.“Q, getting pissed is -““The only fucking way to make it stop !” he snarled. “Now, you have two choices, Moneypants.” He pulled his sidearm from the holster he wore beneath his cardigan, set it on the counter, and pushed it toward her. “You can either drink with me and say nothing whilst we do, or you can leave. But if you leave, know that tomorrow you’ll need to explain to M why he needs to hire a new Quartermaster.”“Those are my choices?”“Those are your choices,” Q said with a nod and a fierce look — one she’d not seen from him before — that was cold, demanding, and brooked no argument. Eve picked up the glass, raised it to her lips, and drank.Q nodded grim approval, drank again, and moved to the window in the sitting room.Eve would watch over him for the rest of the night, but she pointedly said nothing about the tears that streamed silently down his face as he looked out into the darkening street, saying nothing as he made his way through the bottle.