Merry Holiday
Some of MI6's finest are receiving mysterious, and rather useless, gifts during the holiday season. Preslash QBond.
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For the prompt by my fellow Totally-Out-Of-It author, Reb: James Bond is a terrible Christmas Gift Giver.
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The first gift showed up on Q's workstation. The head of Q-Branch had regarded it cautiously, scanning it for explosives and biochemical agents and any other threat he could think of. It was a simple blue box, only a few inches long and wide, with nothing written on it but a large letter "Q" in white.
Q darted glances around, checking if anyone was watching him with more care than usual. No one was even in this part of the building yet. Taking a deep breath, Q faced the package and slowly lifted the lid.
Inside were ten luxury microfiber cleaning cloths for eyeglasses in a rich brown color. Q only knew they were luxury because the packaging proclaimed it in large letters. He hadn't been aware you could own a luxury eyeglass cloth.
Almost subconsciously, Q reached up to touch his frames. Why had someone given him cleaning cloths? He picked the pack of ten cloths up carefully, still worried that there was some hidden wire or microchip that would blow the building up even though his tests had all come back negative. A small piece of paper, almost like a business card, was underneath the cloths.
To keep your all-seeing eyes clear.
"Well that clears up just about nothing," Q muttered to himself.
The cloths were left on the workstation counter all day, all night, and for another day. Just before Q was readying to leave for the evening, Bond strolled into Q's semi-private work area as if he owned it.
"A secret admirer, Q?" he asked smoothly, lifting a corner of the lid.
Q smacked his hand down on the box, knocking it fully shut again. "Yes, in fact. So secret that I can't trust it's not a trick of some sort."
Bond gave an amused smirk. "I hardly think cleaning cloths could be used to take down Q-Branch."
"But I didn't ask for them," Q refuted. "I don't even need them, since I have some of my own already." He pulled the one he used most often from his satchel and showed it to Bond. It was black and smaller than the ones in the box, certainly not luxury, but it worked fine.
Now Bond nodded to the box and then locked eyes with Q again. "Perhaps someone simply wanted to do something nice for you. An agent who appreciates all the hard work you do down here in the pit."
That earned an eye roll from Q. "Well then we can rule you out then," he noted, putting his cloth away. At Bond's curious frown, he explained, "I think someone who appreciates all my hard work would be more inclined to returning said work and not stealing things from Q-Branch whenever the fancy strikes him."
Amazingly, Bond looked contrite. Q felt any irritation at remembered wrongs fade away at the sight of Bond's downtrodden expression.
"007?" Q asked, hesitatingly.
"I'll do better in the future," Bond said before turning on his heel and leaving the area once more.
It was only once the Double Oh agent was beyond Q's line of vision and Q had finished gathering his things to leave that he realized…He had no idea why Bond had come to see him. There was no mission, he'd taken out no equipment, Q hadn't scheduled a meeting about new tech. So why had he come?
Q's eyes landed on the blue box and he sighed. Bond was right. What harm could microfiber cleaning cloths do, really? Snatching the box off the desktop, Q headed up to street level and back home to his cats.
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The second gift showed up in Tanner's office. Q was headed up to see M about 002's latest mission results in relation to the new version of the Walther from Q-Branch when he heard about it.
"-you've always wanted to take up golfing," Moneypenny was saying.
Tanner let out an aggravated huff. "But it wasn't a set of golf clubs or golf clothing or something useful. It was the bag to hold the golf clubs."
"That is useful," Moneypenny argued blithely.
"Not when you don't own any golf clubs, it's not."
Q stopped at Moneypenny's desk, next to Tanner. "I'm sorry, what's happened? Someone stole your golf clubs?"
Moneypenny grinned to herself as Tanner rolled his eyes. "No. Someone left a big box in my office with nothing but my name on it. I had it scanned eight different ways and it came back clean, so I opened it and it was a golf bag. Just the bag. No clubs."
That sounded a lot like Q's gift the other day. A blue box with nothing but a name on it and something inside that could be useful but actually wasn't. Q flipped his left wrist over while Moneypenny continued to rib Tanner about his oh-so-lovely gift and how "thoughtful" it was. The watch resting on his left wrist showed the time, but a quick press to the top and it flipped over to a calendar.
"Huh." He shook his arm to recover the watch with his jacket and took half a step to catch the attention of his coworkers. "I think I understand."
Tanner frowned. If Q had to guess, he was more upset that Moneypenny teasingly refused to admit the uselessness of the gift rather than the uselessness of the gift itself. "Figured what out?"
"Secret Santa."
Both of his coworkers parroted the words back to him in question.
"Christmas is in two weeks," Q stated. "Two days ago, I was left a gift in a blue box with only my name on it. I also scanned it in every way possible for threats before opening it. Inside were cleaning cloths for my glasses, equally as useless to me as the empty golf club bag is to Bill. What I posit is that we have a Secret Santa in the building, but one who is very bad at choosing gifts."
M called for Q in his office just then, ending Q's part in the conversation. However, when he left the office ten minutes later, Moneypenny informed him that she was curious about the Secret Santa.
"If someone else gets a blue box in a few days, I suppose I'll have to think you're on to something," she said with a smile.
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That 'someone else' turned out to be Moneypenny herself. This time, Q didn't need to happen upon a conversation. Moneypenny came to him.
He was wrists deep in building an EMP that could fit into a mobile phone when she came out of the lift, her heels clacking loudly on the concrete floor. "If you could give me just a minute, Ms. Moneypenny, I will be right with you," he said without looking up.
An open envelope was delicately set on the table next to him and Q's attention was successfully diverted from his work. On top of the envelope, and most probably the previous contents of said envelope, were two tickets to an opera and a letter which read, Take him to something nice.
"Is that referring to me?" he asked, curious, setting down his precision tools and removing his safety goggles – worn just in case it blew up like the last time.
Moneypenny stood with her arms crossed and an extremely displeased expression on her face. "I certainly hope not. I found it folded up in a blue box in my apartment, actually lying on my bed, when I got home last night."
Now Q was interested. "In your apartment? In your bed?"
She sighed and dropped her arms. "If we continue with the thought that this Secret Santa is giving us gifts that are actually useless…then I suppose this would be something for a boyfriend of mine."
"You have a boyfriend?" Q asked. He didn't usually listen to office gossip, and Eve hadn't said anything to him herself.
"Did. We broke up last month," Moneypenny explained. "But no one knew about him. I kept it very secret."
Q looked between Moneypenny's concerned eyebrows, pursed lips, and worried eyes and the envelope. Take him to something nice.
"At least one person was aware," Q noted. "Are you certain you never told someone at the office about him?"
Moneypenny shook her head. "Never." Then suddenly she froze, eyes going wide, and let out an 'oh.'
"Oh?" Q prompted. If this Secret Santa could get into their homes while they weren't there, he wanted to know who it was. Bad gifts were one thing. Security breaches were another.
"Bond." At Q's confused look, she continued, "He was on that mission against Oberhauser. He called me and Roger was over. Bond heard Roger speak over the phone and teased me about it."
That would make sense. Someone who knew Q, Tanner, and Moneypenny well enough to want to get them Christmas gifts, but who perhaps wasn't around enough to know what to actually get them. Someone who could break into buildings without setting off the alarms and slip back out just as quietly. Someone who had come down to Q-Branch but left with only a note to Q's strange gift and no equipment.
"Good heavens, you may be right," Q let out. "James Bond is the poor gift giver."
All of Moneypenny's worry and irritation turned to mirth. "But he's so charismatic and charming in person," she laughed.
Q picked up the tickets. "Everyone has their faults, I suppose." He handed Moneypenny her gift. "Find someone to go with you. Someone that enjoys opera," he preempted when it seemed she would ask him. Moneypenny pouted but said nothing. Turning back to his equipment, Q noted, "This actually makes me feel better, knowing 007 isn't as perfect as he plays at."
Moneypenny came forward and leaned her hands on the worktop even as Q put his goggles back on and continued working on his EMP.
"You know, Q, Bond and I are…we're close," she began. "We understand each other. Even if we don't really know each other," she allowed with a nod to the tickets. "Tanner is close to Bond's age. They've even gone for lunch once or twice. Unlike myself, Tanner could probably call Bond a dear friend."
With a sigh, Q stopped working again. It was hard to focus when Moneypenny was busy talking about James Bond not two feet to his left. Besides, if it blew up again, she'd get the worst of it.
"My point is…You should feel special," she said. "You've defied orders for him. You joined him in the field, even though you aren't a field agent. That meant something to him."
Q frowned. "Bond and I are not friends."
Moneypenny sighed like Q was being purposefully difficult. "I didn't say you were. I'm saying that Double Oh agents don't trust easily, but you've earned yourself a spot on his Christmas list. That means something."
The way she was looking at him said she knew what it meant but she wasn't going to tell him. The idea that secrets were a game, a power play, even among your allies, was perhaps one of the only things Q disliked about working for MI6. Not that he wasn't good at playing the game.
"I'm sure it does," he quipped back. "But if you'll excuse me. I don't have time to figure out the inner workings of Bond's mind right now."
When he restarted work on his EMP again, Moneypenny rolled her eyes and gave a half shrug. Then she slid her opera tickets into her coat pocket and click clacked away back toward the lift. As soon as he knew the lift was completely out of sight, Q turned to look at the empty space where Moneypenny had been standing.
Bond's Christmas list, hm?
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As soon as Bond was back on British soil and had exited the queue into the main lobby of the airport, his phone chimed with an incoming text message. It was from a hidden number and contained an attachment. The preview text read: For future use.
Curious but cautious, Bond moved to stand by the nearest wall before opening the message. It immediately downloaded the attached pdf and then opened it for his viewing pleasure. For a moment, Bond considered how irksome that was. What if someone sent you a file but you didn't want to download it? Perhaps he could get Q to disable that feature. Q could do pretty much anything, after all. All you had to do was ask. Or not ask, depending on the situation.
When the pdf was fully loaded, Bond stared at it curiously. He had to zoom in and then scroll side to side to see the whole thing, but that didn't abate the curiosity. Some of the text in the file was printed in bland font but most of it was handwritten in concise, controlled letters.
Santa's Wishlist Questionaire
My favorite drinks are: Earl Grey Tea, Stella Artois
My favorite snacks are: Cured meats, American chocolate
Allergies/Dislikes: Strawberries and seafood
I collect: Jumpers and animals magnets
My hobbies are: Programming, engineering, miniature architecture, and playing with my cats
Something else Santa should know?: Cat care items are always appreciated and 'Santa' is terrible at buying gifts without assistance.
Almost immediately after Bond had registered what it was he'd just read, a voice said, "If you ever plan on buying more gifts, at least you have some idea of what's appropriate now."
Lowering his phone, Bond turned to find Q standing behind him wearing the same oversized jacket he'd been in when they first met. It made him look younger than his typical office attire, but not as delectable as that getup he'd worn in the mountains in Austria. Still, after four days camping out in a barely hospitable snow lodge waiting for an incompetent to finally prove he was working with a band of insurgents, Q looked like all the best parts of the world wrapped up in an incredibly warm package.
Instead of asking how Q knew he'd given the gifts, Bond focused on something much more important. "Stella Artois?" he asked.
Q huffed. "I'm hardly the only Englishman to enjoy it. Besides, you don't get to disparage my drink of choice when the only alcoholic beverage you've been seen to order in the past eight years is a vodka martini," he said with a half scowl of disapproval.
Giving a laugh, Bond moved until he was within arm's reach of the quartermaster. "Perhaps I simply need someone to introduce me to a more interesting drink."
There were a few moments where Q simply stared at Bond. It was the same stare he gave to walls of computer data in Q-branch – reading everything in an instant and comprehending more than Bond could if given ten years to study it. As usual, Bond wondered what Q saw when looking at him.
"What are you thinking?" he asked in a low voice.
Q blinked once and met his eyes. "That you should let me buy you a drink." Just as Bond's lips began to curl up, Q continued, "And that you need an equally bad gift in exchange for all those you left at 6."
From his pocket, he pulled a small package wrapped in plain red paper. Bond accepted it. On top was written one word, James, and Bond grinned at the mirror to his own gifts. He carefully but speedily opened the package and found a small baggie filled with faintly orange liquid.
"They warm your hands when it's cold," Q noted. "Such as when you hide in a snow bank for four hours watching a man cook eggs and read the paper."
He was referencing Bond's last mission and it made Bond want to laugh, but Q's previous words tempered it. "Bad gifts?"
Q rolled his eyes. "I'll explain over drinks. Now collect your things. I'm not fond of airports."
"You flew in a plane to get to Austria."
Q frowned. "What?"
Bond nodded at Q's person. "You're afraid of flying, but you came to Austria for me. In a plane. Alone."
For a few moments, Q simply looked perplexed. His eyebrows drew together and his lips pulled down and to the side in contemplation, while his whole body tilted slightly to the side. Then he righted himself, eyes bright. It appeared that he'd had an epiphany.
"You needed me. I'd do it again," he revealed. Then he held up a warning finger. "Don't you dare take advantage of that, Bond."
Bond lifted his hand and manipulated Q's anger finger until their hands were entwined instead. Q's face turned an interesting and bewitching shade of pink.
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said in a voice full of promise, which only made the pink begin to crawl down Q's neck. Fascinating. "Now about that drink."
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fin