The first time Bond flirted with Q, it was purely out of self-defense.
Sitting on a hard bench in the National Gallery, his red-rimmed eyes staring at the blurry outline of a decrepit old warship being hauled off for scrap, Bond felt every bit as old and broken and useless as the Temeraire.
He was so caught up in his own exhaustion and self-pity that he completely dismissed the young man who sat down next to him. A fleeting impression of the man's eccentric clothing, the posh voice and pretentious conversation, and Bond curtly dismissed him, preparing to move on.
And so, when the man responded to Bond's brush-off with a calm, "007," Bond had been completely taken aback. Even worse, he knew that his surprise had been evident on his face. Years of training and experience in both maintaining a poker face and reading others, and apparently it had all been shot to hell by three months of Turkish sun and black market pain pills and shots of scotch taken with a side of scorpion-fueled adrenaline.
Mallory's words echoed in Bond's ears as humiliation curled in his gut. There's no shame in saying you've lost a step. The only shame would be not admitting it until it's too late.
More than the aggravation of the psych tests, more than the indignity of the physical fitness and marksmanship tests — that moment more than any other revealed to Bond exactly how close he truly was to being unfit for service. Bond had exposed himself, completely and embarrassingly, in front of this insolent pup of a Quartermaster.
And so he compensated in the best way he knew how, covering his discomfiture with cheekiness. Needling the young man almost instinctively, pulling his pigtails with a wink and a smirk. And the man responded beautifully. Every one of Bond's attempts to rile him made him calmer instead — his voice more controlled, slow and deliberate blinks obscuring the grey-green vividness of his eyes. He rose to Bond's every challenge with one of his own, and Bond didn't miss the appreciative flicker of those eyes over Bond's body before the young man deliberately took his leave, stiff-backed and composed to the end.
Bond smiled to himself. "Brave new world."
The second time Bond flirted with Q was largely manipulation. Something was wrong with the Silva mission, Bond could feel it. Silva was in a prison jumpsuit, in a secure holding cell in the bowels of the new MI6 headquarters, and yet — despite the struggle, despite the death of Severine — it had all been a little too...easy. Silva had the world at his feet, riches untold, and yet Bond had managed to capture him with five minutes of hand-to-hand combat and a radio?
No, the oily suspicion that something was still wrong slithered under Bond's skin, and his allies in MI6 were few and far between. So Bond brought Silva's laptop to Q like an offering. As his suspicions crystallized into certainty and he pursued Silva through London, he bantered with Q over comms. Somehow, magically, it paid off.
Against all logic, against all common sense and self-preservation, when Bond asked Q to help him, laying an electronic trail for Silva to follow, the young man had simply sighed, "So much for my promising career in espionage," and complied.