Two Pictures
June 2013

Of all the workstations in Q Branch, Q's own was the least personalised. He surrounded himself with pristine tables and perfectly routed cables. Papers brought to him were promptly filed or signed and returned. Equipment brought in from the field was immediately sent for repair, inventory, or scrap. Even his boyfriends, 006 and 007, didn't dare bring their own brand of chaos past the threshold of Q's office door.

For months, the only personal touch was a single mug, off-white, with a Q10 on one side and a Scrabble scoring chart on the other.

So when a digital photograph frame appeared, naturally everyone was curious. The frame was small, set on the corner of Q's desk where it wouldn't be knocked over by an errant Double O, out of the way of his monitors and the laptop stand he occasionally used.

The digital frame, the techs eventually discovered, switched between only two pictures: A young 007, wearing a bright blue jumper, crouched atop an old stone block, and a contemporary 006, smiling and laughing in a way few people at MI6 had ever seen.

Bricked
February 2013

"My god," Q breathed, staring at the laptop. "Is this older than I am? Don't answer that."

"Can you fix it?" Alec asked.

Primitive technology, degraded by age. Even Q couldn't work miracles. "I can put it out of its —" He cut off as he finally looked up from the relic on his desk.

Alec was frowning, worried, and he never got worried — not unless James had gone dark on a mission or Q was late getting home from the office. He could read Alec's tension in the line of his shoulders, the stiffness of his spine.

"I'll do my best," he promised quietly.

Alec's smile was casual, good enough to fool almost anyone. "It's just got old photos, that sort of thing."

Any other time, Q would have given his standard lecture about cloud-based secure automatic backups. Now, though, he said, "I'll start right away."

"No rush."

Silently, Q watched Alec leave the office. Then he picked up the laptop to search it for stickers or specifications, but there was nothing — not even a nameplate for the brand. It had to be at least seven or eight years old, perhaps older, from a time before any of them had come to MI6, from a time when it had been James and Alec against the world.

What secrets hid beneath the old, cracked case?

Hunting in the Cold
April 1995

Dawn and dusk were the best times to find roe deer on the move, and this path was, according to Kincade, the one most often used by deer on their way to a morning graze. But even with Kincade's knowledge of the land surrounding Skyfall Lodge, there was no guarantee that a deer would present itself for the shot, and as dawn gave way to morning, James climbed down out of the tree where he'd been perched for the last three hours.

"Let's go scout around a bit," he suggested, watching as Alec dropped down from his tree, across the track.

Alec hid a yawn. "You go ahead. Some of us didn't get much sleep last night."

James laughed. "I gave you a perfectly good reason to stay up late last night," he countered as he unzipped his jacket.

"That was then. This is now. Give it here," Alec called, looking around as he held a hand towards James.

"What?"

"Your jacket. You're going wandering about in the woods, so you'll be warm enough. If I'm going to nap, I at least want a bloody pillow."

James rolled his eyes and laughed. He handed his rifle to Alec and shrugged out of his hunting jacket. "Lazy Cossack."

"As if ten years in your bloody Navy would change that." Alec caught the jacket and grinned. "Don't get eaten by midges."

"Don't get trampled by deer." James took back his rifle.

He headed down the deer track, his brisk steps warming him. Much as he loved the sea, it was good to be back home, back in Scotland, back in the woods that had always called to him. And Alec was enjoying himself for more than just the nights they spent in the privacy of Skyfall Lodge. The years stretched out ahead of him, and he grinned at the thought of coming back here when they next took leave.

But he doubted Alec would want to come back for a stalk, if they couldn't find a single bloody deer. After an hour, James found tracks but no sign of where the deer were now. They'd have to call off the stalk for the day and try again at nightfall.

For now, James went back to the spot they'd staked out for their kill. From there, he tracked the footprints to a small clearing, where he found Alec sprawled lazily on top of a boulder, head pillowed on James' jacket and his own. He wore a familiar bright blue jumper — the one Patricia had knitted as a Christmas gift for him a few years ago.

"Find any deer?" Alec asked without opening his eyes.

"Tracks." James leaned against the wall and tipped his head back to look up at the sky. The night's clouds had finally cleared. "We'll try again this evening."

Alec let out a huff. "Convince me."

"Give me my jacket back," James countered. Now that he was sitting down, the morning chill was settling in.

"Thin-blooded Brit." Alec sat up, but instead of surrendering the jacket, he stripped off the jumper; underneath, he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt. He threw the jumper at James and settled back again.

James pulled on the jumper, still warm from Alec's body, and shivered at the intimacy. When he caught himself rubbing his hands over the sleeves and smiling, he pushed away from the wall and went to rifle through his jacket. Alec protested and batted at him, but James finally managed to snatch his cigarettes from the pocket.

"Pain in the arse. You could've just asked," Alec complained as he sat up. He started folding the two jackets together again, though this time he emptied the pockets first.

James grabbed his lighter and lit a cigarette. He eyed Alec's wallet and camera, but Alec was deceptively fast. And as fun as a chase through the woods would be, it would inevitably end with them wrestling at the edge of a bog or something, and Skyfall Lodge was sorely lacking in laundry facilities.

Instead, he went back to scanning the woods, trying to figure out where they should go this afternoon. They could go to the edge of the loch, but it was bloody windy out there, and while Alec seemed immune to the cold, James liked being warm. He rubbed a hand over the jumper again and hopped up onto a limestone block at the edge of the landrover track. The foothills? Kincade hadn't mentioned them, but James remembered finding deer there before. Roe or red deer, though? He couldn't recall.

He crouched down, grinning. There were sheltered spots in the foothills, places out of the wind, where a small campfire would be enough to keep a person warm — or two people. And nice as it would've been to get a deer, he wouldn't mind taking advantage of the privacy that they didn't have in the Navy.

A click caught his attention. Surprised, he looked over to see Alec fussing with the camera.

Feeling self-conscious, crouched like a troll, wearing a too-large jumper, he asked, "Something wrong?"

"Just making sure it works. Are we done? Can we go back now?"

James laughed and stepped down from the rock. "We're done."

As he reached down to take off the jumper, Alec stopped him and handed over James' jacket. "Leave the jumper. You'll probably catch cold without it."

Camping
April 2013

Q glared around the guest room that he'd converted into a home office. With three MI6 employees living in one flat, they needed somewhere secure to work from home — and, more importantly, Q needed a refuge where he could lose himself in gaming when his two agents were in the field and the rest of the flat was empty. Like now.

"Camping?" Since James wasn't actually present, except as a voice in Q's earpiece, he felt it necessary to repeat, "Camping?" one more time to make bloody well certain that his wayward agent knew precisely how he felt about the idea.

"I waited until Spring to suggest it," James said reasonably. "I need to survey the property. I'll have two weeks' leave after this mission — and with Alec wrapping his mission at the same time, all three of us can go."

"Or you two could go, and just Skype me in," Q countered petulantly, though he knew it wouldn't happen. Not the Skype part — they'd certainly figured that out quickly enough, though they still hadn't convinced him to take off his clothes anywhere near a webcam. No, he knew he'd never pass up two weeks with both his boyfriends, even if it meant spending two bloody weeks in the wilderness.

And that bastard James knew it. "It's camping under canvas, not —"

"All right, I know," Q muttered before James could bring up Siberia or Afghanistan or Mongolia or any other remote location where he'd put his wilderness survival skills to the test. "I'll find us appropriate equipment."

"There's some in the chest at the back of the wardrobe. Order the rest online." James dropped his voice, low and full of heat, saying, "I promise, you'll enjoy yourself."

"Not if we get killed and eaten by bears."

James laughed. "There are no bears in Scotland."

"No, but there are bears in zoos, and knowing you and Alec as well as I do, we'd encounter the one escaped feral bear on the whole bloody island."

"Q —"

"Camping gear. I'm on it. Goodbye, James." He tapped his earpiece as he sat down, thinking he could probably wrap this up in a half hour. Google for a checklist, order everything with overnight, and go back to lounging on the couch, catching up on his favourite shows.

Not that anything in his life was ever so simple.

He didn't find one basic checklist, but thousands, and not one was specifically designed to keep three campers from dying in the wilds of Scotland — and only a dismally few included any sort of suggestion of how to recharge devices without proper access to electricity.

He finally decided to order one of everything and three of anything that looked critically important. Let Alec and James laugh at him. They wouldn't be laughing once they realised he'd brought spare loo rolls.

In fact, he went back and ordered more, just in case some of their gear was caught out in the rain.

Before he made it out to the couch, though, he remembered James saying something about having some gear already. Q went to catalogue the inventory of the chest so he could cancel any duplicate purchases before they shipped.

The chest was an old cedar trunk, the type of thing usually used to store spare bedding. James wasn't the type to fill his house with quilts or antique doilies, so when Q pushed the lid open, he wasn't surprised to find the tray was full of folding knives, assorted bullets and shotgun shells, and what Q hoped was a dummy grenade, though with James and Alec, one never knew.

Q set the tray aside with care, making a note to deactivate the grenade later, when he hadn't had a glass of wine with dinner. He pulled out a few olive drab blankets, made of itchy wool, and eyed them sceptically. The far more modern sleeping bags he'd ordered had water-resistant down stuffing inside ripstop polyester — and they could be zipped together, at least in pairs, which might well be the only thing that made this trip worth enduring.

Still, the blankets could be useful as padding, so Q looked back into the chest. Instead of finding more blankets, though, he found a small, neatly folded wool jumper dyed a brilliant blue. There was no evidence of a manufacturer's label, and Q suspected it had been handmade. It was absolutely gorgeous. James had probably forgotten it was there at all.

Pleased with the discovery, Q put it aside. He'd send it out to be cleaned — it smelled a bit aged, despite the cedar — and then pack it. Scotland in springtime was hardly balmy, and James would surely be glad to have a warm jumper that wasn't bespoke or designer.

The Christmas Gift
December 1993

The whole ghillies cottage could have fit into the great room at Skyfall Lodge, but Alec liked the cosy, crowded feel. The Lodge was grand but empty, all echoing halls and dusty corridors. In contrast, the gamekeeper's house was warm and welcoming. And after months of mess dinners, Patricia's simple, hearty fare had Alec debating a third helping.

"Alex, come here, lad," she called from the sitting room, where a huge Christmas tree, glittering with tinsel and glass ornaments, dominated one corner.

"It's 'Alec'," Patricia's husband, Kincade, corrected.

"Nitcho." Catching himself, Alec smiled at Kincade and muttered, "It's all right."

"I'm sorry, Alec," Patricia said, beckoning him over. Beaming, she pressed a lumpy package, wrapped in gaudy red and gold paper, into his hands. "This one's yours, lad."

Shit, Alec thought. The only 'gift' he'd brought was a bottle of vodka, and he and James had finished it last night, back at the Lodge. "I can't — I didn't —"

"It's all right," she assured him, holding up a hand when he would've offered the package back to her. "You two can make it up to me by shovelling the snow from the front walk tomorrow morning."

"Anything you like," Alec promised, still embarrassed at his lapse. He sat down on the couch but didn't open the gift. He had no idea if there were traditions he should be following.

James joined him a minute later, juggling a plate of biscuits, a mug of mulled cider, and a package of his own, wrapped in green and gold. He balanced the biscuits on one knee and nudged Alec with his elbow. "You first."

Patricia and Kincade took the armchairs beside the hearth. "Go on, then," Kincade said gruffly, bearded face creased in a grin.

Even more embarrassed now, Alec worked his fingers under the edge of the wrapping paper, refusing to just tear into the unexpected present. He lifted out a wool jumper in brilliant cobalt blue, the exact colour of James' eyes at night, when he was relaxed and happy.

"Try it on," Patricia urged over the sound of James opening his own gift. "I had to estimate the size."

"Patricia," Kincade said, exasperated.

No force on earth would have made Alec disappoint her. He pulled on the jumper and smoothed it down over his shirt. "Thank you. It's perfect."

Freezing to Death
April 2013

"There is no reason for humans to subject themselves to this," Q said, blowing on his hands and glaring around as if Nature herself had personally offended him.

Struggling not to laugh, Alec said, "It's a gorgeous day, Q. Be glad it's not raining."

Q turned the death-glare on him. "If it rains..."

"It's entirely his fault," James said agreeably.

Grinning, Alec picked up a small rock and threw it at him. "Bugger off."

"How can you not be freezing?" Q demanded of both of them.

James rolled his eyes and reached for the zipper of his jacket. "Here, put this on."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll swim in that."

"Patience," James said, unzipping the jacket.

Underneath, Alec was startled to see bright blue — the jumper Patricia had knitted... what, twenty years ago? He'd thought it long since lost. He smiled, thinking that it looked as good on James now as it had so long ago, when they'd both been young and stupid and thought they were immortal.

And it looked just as good on Q. Not better, but equally good. On James, the jumper was stylish and hot; on Q, it was adorable. It was even bigger on him than James' jacket would have been, but the wool bunched up at his wrists and draped over his body and brought out the blue in his hazel eyes.

Q turned and shot a suspicious look at Alec. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing." Alec grinned even more, thinking how very lucky he was.

"You're —" Q cut off at the sound of a quiet, artificial click. James had his mobile in hand and was looking at the screen. "Are you taking pictures of me like this?"

"I wouldn't dream of it," James said with false innocence. "Come on. We should go examine the ruins."

Q hastily pulled on his jacket. "James, give me that mobile."

"Q —"

"Now."

James shot Alec a quick look, one he couldn't quite decipher, before allowing Q to snatch the mobile away. "You're always suspicious, Q. As if Alec and I —"

"Don't," Q interrupted, swiping his finger over the mobile. Then, curiously, his expression softened, mouth quirking up in a faint smile. He pushed the mobile back into James' hands and said, "You can live. For now."

"In case anyone cares, as the only other assassin here, I wouldn't have actually killed you, James," Alec said with a laugh.

Q arched a brow at him. "Not even if I asked nicely?"

"There are non-fatal ways to get the point across."

"If we can finish before we get to the matter of my life insurance policy," James interrupted, tucking the mobile away, "we're here for the same reason. Let's go see if there's anything of the Lodge worth salvaging. If not, Q, it's all yours. Build us something new — something for all of us."