Title: Looking Into the Tigers' Den
Description: A revision to the ending of Spectre, a deposition on 00Q's dynamic, a collection of tableaus from their life together. Pure drabbling.
AN: For my lovely Dicksquad who sat by me as I caused a scene watching Spectre in theaters with that disgraceful, bullshit, heteronormative, and sexist ending.
Warm, tingling waves rolled down his body. When he closed his eyes James saw bubbles of color and static in front of his eyelids.
Fuck, he had needed that.
He felt Q drawing closer and easily accommodated him so he could sleep with his head on Bond's chest, right over the bullet wounds and scars. One afternoon after smoking some grass (drinking was hardly their only vice) with Bond, Q had cuddled up real close to him and whispered with lips touching his ear that on top of him was his favorite way to fall asleep.
"Then come here," Bond had replied, his own mind pleasantly blurred at the edges. "Come here." He took off Q's thick glasses and pulled at his jumper. They had been sitting on the couch in James' flat, and would later wake in a few hours a bit confused (though hardly upset) as to how they'd managed to fall off the couch and maintain their embrace and position.
Next to him Q hummed his approval, a low vibration in his throat that tapered off as sleep took the younger man.
Sated and exhausted himself, Bond let himself follow Q into drifting off.
Usually, Agent 007 couldn't even force himself to sleep, but now it came naturally. He managed it with Q's arms around him.
His thin lips spread into a smile that stayed on his face long after he'd slipped into dreaming.
That night he dreamt of Q, appropriately.
He dreamt they were walking in the Quartermaster branch, but it looked nothing like the real building. There were gaps in the walls and it blended with a dance hall Bond once visited in Germany. Dreams are apt to confuse such things and only let the dreamer realize it upon waking. Tigers prowled around them, but they weren't vicious. Some wore pencil skirts and glasses. It was just who they were. Maybe he and Q were tigers, too.
Bond certainly had to be one. But what of their squirrelly Quartermaster? On the outside he was wildly unassuming. Even 007 wouldn't give him a second thought in the field–he'd just gloss over him looking for the real target and ignore the dangerous man right under his nose. That was another lesson Q taught him, to never underestimate the power of a nerd in a baggy sweater.
And who says old dogs can't be taught new tricks?
"More often than not," Q had murmured as he hovered over the older man. His lips were swollen from kisses and his body marked with bites and suction bruises as they slid seamlessly into round two. "The ones hiding behind the computers are the kinkiest ones. What else do I have to think about when I'm running data? If only you could see inside my mind then."
Bond vowed to check in on Q branch sometime he was off-duty to get a peek. What made the randy little man was squirm in his seat during the workday? Finally, a chance to put espionage skills to a more peaceful and worthy cause.
But Q also had to be a tiger to live with all Bond did and still want to kiss him silly.
From his screen Q saw everything. Every murder, every interrogation, every woman he slept with to get information out of or turn her to trust him. Q saw it all and only ever commented in the form of playful, deadpan jokes about it.
Q was exceptional in that way. He never balked at Bond's behavior, no matter how gratuitous or misguided. Even after he'd heard Bond over the communication devices groaning to the feel of his cock sheathed in another woman, Q would make Bond's homecoming unforgettable with no mention of who he'd been with previously.
James Bond counted himself lucky. He's the luckiest man alive to have someone like Q, someone who understands him and his profession so clearly.
With more guilt than he'd care to admit, Bond's dreams turn solemnly to the woman he'd almost run away with.
She stood in front of him, hair spilling out golden and rich. Among her locks coins glittered and jewelry tangled and glowed radiant and warm wealth.
Her words had been so enticing, her promises of a normal life at first seeming heavenly.
Only weeks into their little charade had Bond caught a glimpse of a terrorist attack on Milan on the television, and their Garden of Eden fell to ruin. His whole body tensed upon seeing the news and he instinctively reached for the work phone he had turned in.
Espionage was who Bond was. Not knowing who set off those bombs, knowing that if he was on the case he could have been able to prevent it, it was too much for him.
Dr. Swann cried when he left but she wasn't mourning for him. She couldn't truly be mourning for him–she had no idea who he was. They'd spent weeks in each other's company before foolishly speeding off into the sunset riding on the greatest whim of passion James had ever felt. That passion was real, yes (who didn't occasionally dream of being normal?), but it wasn't lasting. Not when all of the good Doctor's little habits or quirks started getting under his skin or when he itched to have a gun on his hip once again.
James courteously told her it was all his fault, and left her as gently as he could. He didn't want to hurt her. She'd lost her father, lost everything so quickly. It made sense for her to cling to the first friendly face she saw after such trauma, but Bond was not just a friendly face to those in need. He was a tiger, his brutal efficiency against his enemies not easily forgotten or shed. In fact, they were more than closely related to his passions.
Such violence was a part of him now. A part that Q kissed and touched and knew inside-out. Q was not an innocent man. He couldn't be in his line of work, and he couldn't be naive.
Q saw James exactly as he was and expected nothing more–but also expected nothing less. He held the man to a standard just as Bond held him to a standard. That kept their trust in the field strong. If Q never doubted that 007 could take down whatever was in front of him and 007 never doubted that Q could hack his way into any system to dig up dirt or shut it down, their confidence in one another would never wane.
Thus far they had always met those standards and celebrated victories appropriately.
Bond wasn't fooling himself about Q either. He knew there were other boys. He heard Moneypenny's voice clearly in his head: "It's called having a life. You should try it sometime."
And how well had that gone for him, Eve?
It wasn't as if Q could have a normal life, though. Sure, he had dalliances when Bond was off in Russia for months at a time, went on coffee dates when the other man being shot at in Nairobi. Bond couldn't expect him to sit at home sweetly and chastely awaiting his uncertain return. It would just make them both miserable.
So Q lived as he pleased. On his time off he was drinking, relaxing, smoking, chasing men, and staying up too late like every young, hot-blooded homosexual should.
He never stuck with a long-term partner, though. That would require some explaining about classified information that M could easily have his head for or at least a tangled mess of lies as to why Q had to slip out of the apartment at all kinds of strange hours the second his boss called. There was all that nonsense and really, Q didn't really want that sort of partner. He had fun as James was away as James had fun, but nothing ever came of it.
How would one explain their twice-their-age spy lover to a new boyfriend and inform him that so long as this man doesn't die on his next mission he'll be constantly competing for Q's affections? It was easier to remain solitary.
Q enjoyed being solitary as well. He entered a sort of trance state surrounded by his computers whether it was for doing work or playing whatever video game he'd splurged on that week and Bond knew he belonged there as much as Bond belonged in the field. Strong Wi-Fi, a hot cup of tea, and a cat to warm each foot was all Q really needed some nights.
Even when Q went out drinking or to a club he preferred to sit back and watch the crowd dance rather than joining it.
Sometimes he would drive around the city alone with no destination in particular and soak up solitude through some kind of loner photosynthesis. It wasn't that he disliked people, but his default mode was peacefully alone amidst his screens and his own thoughts.
He took pride in his work and devoted everything to it, as dirty and below the noses of the British people as it was, and only James could understand that.
Their lack of formal commitment was, of course, no indication of lack of love between them.
Bond's policy of remaining entirely engrossed in the person he was with at the time didn't need to be enforced strictly with Q. Bond's mind simply never wandered when he was with him.
Bond's mind certainly wandered when he was with others, wandered right to thoughts of Q–knee-high socks rubbing against cotton sheets and a laugh that could wake the dead–and that probably meant something that Bond was wholly unwilling to analyze. But Bond would guide his thoughts back to the person in front of him who was decidedly not Q and enjoy them and their unique traits, and saw nothing wrong with that.
In his understanding it meant that Q was in a place of importance others couldn't match. That didn't demean the others or exalt Q, it just was a fact.
When it came to rough fucking or to sitting peacefully in one another's company he just would pick Q to do it with first. They never spoke about it that way but Bond knew Q felt the same.
Bond knew Q as Q knew him. That was why Q hadn't even batted an eye when James had run off with Dr. Swann–Q knew he would be back. It had only been a matter of time.
When Bond rejoined the 00 program he'd set aside a night just for Q, an unspoken apology. Q never required an apology or so much as hinted that he wanted one, which was Bond's strongest reason for doing it.
He took him out somewhere nice, expensive, and Italian. He rolled his eyes when Q joked about having only eaten Spaghetti-O's, cookie dough, and chips over the past week. He brought a shimmering bottle of champagne back to Q's flat and they finished it off while they soaked in the tub, James rubbing his back.
"Careful, 007. This level of spoiling makes me suspect what other things you want to make up to me. Did you get someone pregnant? I've always wanted to be an uncle."
James splashed water in his face after that remark. That beautiful laugh came out of Q and he splashed him right back.
They both knew that Bond had taken care of that occupational hazard early on in his career and gotten a vasectomy. Q, filthy man he was, commented on how he couldn't taste the difference.
"Uncle Q, hm?" he drawled. "When will your sister get on that?"
"Ugh, let's not talk about my sister and her disastrous husband. It'll ruin the moment. And she'd make the kid call me something ridiculous, like my real name."
"The children would get suspicious as to what 'Q' stands for," Bond nodded.
Q snorted and took a long sip of his champagne. "It stands for 'Queer' and that's all they'll be getting out of me."
Bond knew Q's birth name and knew of his sister, his parents, and other such clips about his family life. Q and his family had been painfully close when he grew up as a child prodigy, which explained why escaped at the first available opportunity to live on his own.
He told his family he got a job with the government. Serving the Queen through paperwork regarding the court system and all that. The truth wasn't terribly far off, it just involved far more explosions.
In a way, Bond was grateful he didn't have a family he needed to lie to. He had been lying to himself and Dr. Swann when he said he would leave the game.
Bond woke up thinking about puns involving him and Q lying next to each other rather than to each other that he blamed entirely on Q. Q could make a pun out of anything, and unfortunately for everyone involved, he did so constantly.
"I guess you could say I'm into Bond-age. Ha, get it?"
Bond had spanked him for that one. It was hardly a punishment, though.
Q had so eagerly wriggled out of his pants and over Bond's knee.
"What are you going to do about it, James?" He oozed out Bond's name as a challenge.
Bond practically never used Q's birth name. It was long and tripped up the tongue, and Q had told more than a few stories of how when he was young he'd been shoved in lockers for it.
"You're still young, Q," Bond always pointed out.
"I skipped four grades so I've always been the youngest around, hearing you old-timers tell me I should enjoy whatever youth I have at the time, but you should know this–" Q motioned to himself in a sweeping manner "–is a far cry from my high school days. So, not as young and beleaguered by schoolyard bullies as I once was. In ten more years maybe they'll stop carding me at bars like I'm some primary school kid who snuck in on a dare."
Q wasn't wrong, Bond supposed. He was lean and pale, and the first time Bond had seen him he was in disbelief that his life was in this young man's hands.
But there was a litheness about him, a certain grace that came as he became more comfortable in his own body. Whatever knobby-kneed adolescence he'd grown out of had treated him well.
"Maybe you should show me your yearbook sometime," James teased.
"God, no. I promise whatever fantasy image you've conjured up is infinitely preferable to what I actually looked like back then. You'll just have to wonder, you dirty old man."
The dirty young man beside him was the first thing James woke up to that morning. He smelled him first—stark soap, chai, the lavender he washed his sheets with. Then he felt his breathing, heard the small and quiet noises he made as he twitched and dreamed.
James blinked into further consciousness in the present moment, quietly observing the mess they'd made of Q's bedroom the previous evening.
Perched atop the pile of clothes on the floor was Cheshire. Even as he curled up and made himself at home on one of Bond's best suit jackets he afforded a glare at Bond. He was a jealous boy, and hated how Q kicked him out of the bed whenever James was over. His tail flicked in annoyance that this human was still in his spot.
James made sure to look extra comfortable just to piss him off.
His sister Octavia was probably looking out the window in the living room, green eyes glazed over as if she was remembering some treacherous time before she was a pampered housecat. Q had adopted her and Cheshire as kittens from a friend so there was hardly some traumatic past they could recall.
Still, the way Octavia stared out the window into grey, dreary London with a forlorn look about her reminded Bond of how veterans looked when they returned from war. How could something that small and who had suffered so little in its life still manage to look that tortured.
Of course, should Q shake the bag of treats she would snap right out of it and go back to being a normal cat, but Q liked to leave her to ponder.
"She's drafting her memoirs. Let her be," Q joked, shooing Bond away from his precious girl.
"Day three-thousand and five," Bond recited like a captain's log. "The humans are plotting something nefarious. Could it be a... Bath?"
Upon hearing that word Octavia sprinted into the other room, not looking back.
"Great. Now you've tipped her off. Some spy."
James was going to crane his head to see if Octavia was at her old haunt by the windowsill when the phone on the nightstand buzzed. Q's work phone.
He answered it.
"I believe he has the day off," Bond said into the receiver. Beside him Q stirred, so he smoothed back his hair soothingly, quietly reassuring him it was still okay to rest. "So what's the national emergency?"
"007?" M asked and then sighed knowingly. "I'm going to beg you spare me the gory details and ask if you know how to best contact Q. We need you both–there's a situation with our favorite Duchess." The 'favorite' add-on was purely sarcastic. "I'll brief you once you arrive."
Bond looked at Q and the way his nose crinkled as he slowly came to. For such a cerebral boy—so focused at times, so consumed in thought, teeth biting down on his lower lip—he was a light sleeper. "Oh, joy. We'll be there in ten." James hung up and pressed a palm flat on Q's shoulder.
"Get up, love. We have work to do."