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It is a common misconception that Major Boothroyd died in the attack on the Six headquarters. A list of people who knew the truth: Q, the major, and M.Then M died in Bond’s arms, and the major fairly dropped off the face of the earth—functionally dead, then. In the new MI6, Q is the only one who knows the truth.Well. All right, that’s only half the story. Q is the only person (functionally) alive who knows that the previous quartermaster handpicked him for the job and took advantage of the attack to retire, but Mallory (and by extension Moneypenny), Tanner, and most of the double-ohs know where he was picked from.Emphasis on most.“007,” Q greets on a sigh, shivering in his now-wet white button-down. His sodden cardigan is bundled in his arms, dripping water onto the floor of his office, and it was for this reason he left explicit instructions with R that he wasn’t to be disturbed. Knowing Bond, he blew past her like a bulldozer, and she wouldn’t have had time to warn him of the mood he was in; he dislikes being drenched thus immensely. Bond’s unsubtle ogling only improves his mood a little: mostly he wants to throw something sharp at Bond’s throat for catching him off-guard.“Do you need something, agent?” he says anyway; keeping up appearances is important. And he’s not allowed to explicitly act like what he was, since there’s a betting pool among the department heads as to when Bond will realize that the quartermaster he thinks is a scrawny geek who knows nothing of the dangers of the field has been a double-oh for eleven years.“I had no idea you were hiding all this under those abominable cardigans, Q,” Bond purrs, still not entirely off mission mode and Q sees it twofold: from the memory of the trembling high and from outside, watching the glint in Bond’s eyes and his shark’s smile.He debates throwing a knife at Bond again, this time for treating him like a mark. “A body?” he says shortly.“Please,” Bond says, sidling closer. “Continue. And before you ask, I’ve already checked in my kit with R.”“So you hunted me down? How flattering.” Q says and glances pointedly at the door, thoroughly unimpressed. In answer, Bond crosses his arms and leans his hip on Q’s desk, obviously enjoying the show. “Fine. Hold this.”Bond accepts the dripping wool bundle with both displeasure and smugness battling across his face as Q strips off his wet shirt and passes it to him, rubbing his hair fiercely with a thin towel he’d already set out. “What happened?”“Some idiot triggered the decontamination shower when I was under it,” Q says darkly, shaking out his hair before once again drying it vigorously. “I don’t even have a spare cardigan.”A contemplative hum is the only response, and Q chances a quick look from under the towel at one of the dark monitors in front of him to find that Bond’s eyes are trained on his back. He rolls his shoulders testingly, relishing the stretch, and sees a heat in Bond’s expression that gratifies him. Then Bond raises his eyes to meet Q’s in the monitor, and winks.Without breaking his gaze, Q wads up the damp towel and tosses it behind him. Bond catches it, laughing a little, and Q does not smile at having made a double-oh fresh off a mission laugh.He finds a muffin on his desk and a neatly-folded mustard cardigan on his chair half an hour later, and he very pointedly doesn’t smile then either. He sits down and begins working, trying valiantly not to laugh as he feels Bond creep past him from where he’d been hidden in a corner of his office, still as stone, to the door.Budget meetings are fun, to the extent they can be. Q dresses neatly for what they expect him to be—hair brushed and tamed to a certain extent, his formal spectacles with silver frames and matching silver cufflinks, a black shirt, red tie and a silver waistcoat with lavender pinstripes. But he is a double-oh who is now allowed to make his own weapons, and that means his spectacles have blades hidden in the arms and his cufflinks have explosives. His tie and shirt collar have trackers sewn into them, and his waistcoat is tailored to hide the holster of a gun.Q is expected to defend his budget at such meetings. He would argue he wins because he’s the most equipped to justify the costs of the equipment the field agents use, but that would discount the death glare he’s perfected for use when someone tries to negotiate down expenses that ultimately come down to shoddy equipment and lives at risk.Moneypenny assumes he learned it as a double-oh. Q resolves to never let her know it is a product of engaging in staring matches with his cats.“The Quartermaster is a valuable asset,” Bond protests in M’s office and it is really is cute, how much Bond is trying to protect him. “He can’t be out in the field.”Q schools his expression to keep from cackling and observes M’s calm rebuttal: “I assure you, Q can handle himself.” A pause—Mallory has the date in the bet that’s the farthest out. Q can see him visibly struggling not to say anything, but he also knows that Bond will continue to push back unless his mind is settled. “His background is quite similar to yours.”Good god.Q restricts his exasperation to a slow blink; Bond catches it anyway, looking suspicious. “You were in the Navy?”Q ignores him. “If that’s all, sir.”M nods at both of them. “Dismissed, gentlemen.” Q rises to his feet and makes for the door, already thinking of what he needs to pack and what he can spare from the armoury. “And 007?” Bond half-turns, already following Q out the door, and it fills Q with a kind of possessive pride he’d rather not justify to himself. “Rest assured your quartermaster is in good hands.”Bond’s eyebrows go up, but he nods, looking pleased, and then follows Q.“Were you really in the Navy?”“Shut up, Bond.”“I don’t think you were. I wouldn’t have forgotten your face if I’d seen you, and I met pretty much all the people there who were capable of catching Six’s eye.”“Bond. Shut up. Go to sleep.”“So were you in the Navy?”“Stop trying to get me to contradict Mallory.”“So you admit there’s something to—all right, all right, I’ll leave you be.”“. . .”“. . .”“. . .”“Were you in the Navy, though?”“BOND!”Of course it had to rain. Of course they had to be caught in it on the way back. It doesn’t matter if the mission was successful on paper; Q was caught in the rain and it was, ultimately, an emotional failure.“Stop sulking, Q,” Bond chides from behind him, rubbing his hair with a fluffy towel, and Q must admit this is one of the few upsides: they’re both in their pants by the fireplace, Q leaning back between Bond’s spread legs and letting him dry his hair, since Bond refused to let Q do it with pulled muscles. The muscles in question are in his back, but Q isn't complaining. “You aren’t going to melt in the rain.”“Implying I’m the wicked witch,” Q grumbled, but leant back on Bond’s chest, appreciating the warmth.Bond sighed and gave his hair a few more passes before setting the towel aside. “There, look, it’s basically dry. Go lie down.”Q doesn’t move, enjoying the heat and closeness and the pretext to enjoy them. “If I catch a cold sleeping with wet hair and it eventually develops into pneumonia, it’ll be your fault.”There’s a low laugh. “I didn’t take you to be one for dramatics, 005.”For a split-second, Q want to tense, to run away. It’s been so long since he’s been perceived correctly by anyone who matters that it’s like a brand-new bespoke jacket: too honest, too revealing of things hidden by everyday armour. He exhales evenly, leaning back to rest his head on Bond’s shoulder and meeting his gaze, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a quite a statement coming from you, 007,” he says through a laugh and yes, it’s only uncomfortable for a moment. The jacket fits, and it feels better than anything.“Touché,” Bond says, smiling at him, and Q feels himself melt at the sight of that rare, unguarded smile even before Bond leans down to kiss him. He presses back without thinking, twisting in Bond’s grip to lean forward and meet the kiss with the pent-up hunger of the years he’s known this brave, selfless, wonderful idiot. He loops his arms around Bond’s neck, falling into the slide of lips and tongue and mouth before he pulls back abruptly as an unpleasant thought occurs to him.“Wait,” he says, panting slightly. “Is this—because I’m a double-oh, or—““Q,” Bond says very dryly, eyes bright and mouth wet, “don’t be daft. I wanted you before I knew you could kill a man with your bare hands because I knew you could kill a man across the world with a single keystroke.”Q glances away, hating the sudden insecurity that springs up in him. But Bond needs to know. “I don’t know what you’ve heard from the other double-ohs, but I’m not going to stop being the Quartermaster,” he breathes, admitting what he couldn’t do so to himself in the privacy of his mind. “It’s a part of me, now.”“I address you by your call-sign once,” Bond grumbles, then tugs him close. The impact forces him to catch himself on Bond’s shoulders, making them face each other. Bond’s expression is solemn. “Q. I’ve known you’re a double-oh for months now. Have you noticed me acting any different?”Months—then— “In M’s office, for this mission, you knew—?” At Bond’s nod, Q says dangerously, “Then why on earth were you asking me about the Navy in the dead of night?”Bond grins, audacious. Shameless. Q is going to strangle him. “I wanted your attention. I figured I could needle you into trying to strangle me and use that to get us to share a bed.”Q’s hands twitch on his shoulders involuntarily; he’s so indignant he can’t even begin to think. “Then what was the point of all this?”Bond leans forward so their foreheads touch. Up close, Q can see the striations of colour in his irises. “To prove that no matter what, you’re my Quartermaster first and foremost, and I’ll let you go over my dead body. I know you’re a double-oh, and I don’t care. There’s eight more of us. But there’s only one you, and if you try to step back down to being just a double-oh again, I will make life hell for Mallory until he reinstates you just to get some peace of mind.”Bond doesn’t want him to go, either. Bond wants to keep him. Q can’t help smiling. “You’re a menace.”Bond hums, eyes alight now that the mood is lighter, and Q jolts at the hands creeping lower than he was expecting. “Your menace,” he says simply, leaning forward to nibble at the underside of his jaw. Q sighs and relaxes into the sensation, then jerks back again to glare at Bond.“What?” Bond says innocently, an act that might believable if his hands weren’t now kneading Q’s arse.Q rolls his eyes. Double-oh or not, Bond’s capacity for needling is in a whole other league of its own. “007,” he says severely, then sucks in a breath when Bond uses his grip to pull their far closer together. “Fuck,” he says eloquently.Amusement and smugness line Bond’s face. “Don’t you want to know how I figured it out?”Q groans and leans forward to shut him up, and there’s no more talking for quite a while.“Mallory’s not going to be happy.”“What for? Are you undercover? It didn’t seem that way in the brief, what with Mallory’s heavy implications as to your identity. Honestly, even a trainee could have figured it out the way he was going on . . .”
[Muted chuckles that eventually grow to deranged cackling.]
“Q? Q, why are you laughing? What did I say?”