Work Text
Tanner puts Bond and Q’s files on her desk at the same time. Q’s made another handler cry off and she’s not sure what to do about it. She can’t ground him, and he knows it. He’s one of her younger operatives, but quickly becoming one of her best. He’s got the technical skills that are sorely needed in today’s spy world the way they weren’t twenty or forty years ago. None of that means she feels she can trust him off a leash. He shines too brightly not to set fires or burn himself at least once and she can’t afford that.
Bond has accepted the offer to retire from fieldwork rather than be kicked out of the service entirely. M’s as glad as she can be about Bond’s decision. He’s going to make junior agents’ lives hell, but it will be good for them, and it will certainly be better for him than rotting his liver away in a dark apartment and fucking his way through London. Just because his knee is shot and he leans on a cane now is no reason for him to waste himself or the time she’s spent on him.
Tanner clears his throat like he always does when he’s not sure whether he’s interrupting her incredibly important thought processes. She still finds it amusing after all these years that he thinks interrupting her might cause her to lose track of important plans she’s weaving in her mind.
“Have you made a decision about Q, yet, ma’am? He’s scheduled for another run in Brazil-”
Tanner had put Bond and Q’s files on her desk at the same time. M doesn’t believe in signs, but she believes in her instincts, and she believes those two bloody well deserve a taste of their own medicines.
“Put Bond on him.”
Tanner’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out so she turns away towards her computer and goes back to work.
Their first mission succeeds, but that’s the only pleasant part about their reports.
The day after the paperwork crosses her desk, it’s James in her office. He looks a little ragged around the edges like the favorite tea cozy of her husband’s she hasn’t forced herself to get rid of, but his eyes and attitude are sharper than she’s seen him since his field discharge.
“Since when did you start sending spotty youths into the field, M?”
She knows the fact that Q is actually nearing thirty has absolutely nothing to do with it. Bond isn’t looking for an answer though, he’s looking for someone to be angry at.
“If you have a problem with your assigned agent, I suggest you work it out, or request a transfer. You wouldn’t be the first. Give the paperwork to Tanner when you’ve finished it. Now get out. I’ve got better things to do than listen to you whine.”
Q is, of course, waiting in her apartment when she arrives home that night. The security system is unharmed, meaning he came in through the window, undoubtedly just to make the point that he’s more able bodied than Bond will ever be again. Before he can give her headache a boost with more whining, she cuts him off.
“He didn’t run off, so now you must deal with having a handler like a real agent. Congratulations, you’ve only wasted countless people’s time getting to that point, and you’re wasting mine now.”
He at least looks apologetic, which is more than she could say Bond ever did, but then again, Q’s a different kind of charmer than Bond and still inexperienced enough she can scare him into submission at times like this. A few more words have the young agent exiting through her window, and she’s fairly sure he won’t be back, definitely not any time soon.
After those confrontations, even M’s a little surprised she doesn’t get incident reports about one or both of them landing each other in the infirmary, but it undoubtedly helps that they’re kept hopping on missions. Q’s doubled edged skill set, and Bond’s instinct and experience seem to be the precise combination she’s been trying to create to get things done, for all that they’ve got half of their supporting staff crossing themselves and eyeing transfer forms.
The partnership has been working for nearly a year when Eve is the one paying her a visit.
“007 and the Quartermaster are fucking.”
If M didn’t know Bond so well and that she wasn’t going to be in her office long enough to get to know Q as well, she wouldn’t believe Eve. As it is, when not allowed to use a gun to solve a problem she’s well aware that Bond’s second choice of weapon is his cock. She almost feels like word should have reached her sooner. Eve slips out without waiting for a response and M, in this rare situation, isn’t sure what to do about it. For the moment, she pays a bit closer attention to their work and leaves it be. Their successes are outweighing the potential of their future fall out for the moment.
M waits. The year finishes out, and almost another passes, but neither Eve nor Tanner has passed her a note or slipped into her office and told her 007 and the Quartermaster have finished with each other. It’s perhaps the most surprising thing she’s seen in all her time at MI-6.
Orphans make the best recruits for a reason. By the time they’ve processed agent training on top of their own life experiences, meaningful human connections are essentially myths in their minds. Given Bond’s extensive experience with being betrayed in every possible sense, and Q’s not inconsiderable struggle with alienating anything on two legs outside of mission parameters, knowing they’ve had some sort of personal one year anniversary is astounding.
She’s beginning to see how serious whatever they’re doing might be and it makes her wary. M can admit to herself she hadn’t thought it would last longer than a month after she heard about it. If she had known they’d become such obvious liabilities for each other she would have nipped it in the bud then and dealt with the fallout. Relations between agents and handlers are highly discouraged for obvious reasons, but relationships, real ones, those are the sort of things that take out an entire team even when one of them is safe within MI-6’s walls.
M watches the lines of James’s face tighten through the security cameras the next time Q’s on a mission and feels like a fool.