"I've had enough of Bond," Q tells himself while pouring the first mug of Earl Grey. On the open laptop, there's another request — just over all the other work correspondence.
"No, mister Bond, I'm not going to check anything for you. You are on leave, after all!" Q frowns while reading the data mechanically. It's a half an hour's work. "It's quick," he tells himself.
It is hard to fall asleep at night because of the rain that pelts some hardware too loud. Two times so far Q has been about to stand up and look out of the half-open window to find it and tear the hell it off, but the warm coziness of the bed offers insistingly to undertake another attempt without getting his head wet first. Smartphone signal sounds, notifying that the quartermaster got a message.
"Bond, are you aware of what hour it is?" Q makes a wry face, pointedly ignoring the message for the next ten seconds. Then he sighs and opens the laptop lid. The work gets done so wonderfully well to the sounds of rain. "It is London," Q sniffs while his fingers are flying violently over the keyboard.
When the agent double-oh-seven walks into the Q-branch — if his confident long stride can be described as "walks in" — he leans on the table with both hands, making the quartermaster lift a questioning gaze on him.
"Q, I need you," he says instead of hello, and Q raises an eyebrow, not used to such a formulation.
He gives Bond a new gun, specifying everything it can do and how to use it, supplies him with yet another microphone and an explosible pen with a built-in video camera. He hints at the fact that it can explode as well quite casually, catching with pleasure sight of almost perceptible grin on the face of double-oh-seven.
"Q, I need you," Bond says abruptly as the lift opens its doors. There are several blood stains on his face and the tuxedo is rumply enough to throw it on the scrapheap.
Q presses silently the control button that opens the shed and demonstrates him yet another car that, like all the other masterworks of the individual design, is doomed to turn into the smoking pile of scrap metal quite soon.
When Bond is gone missing for several months, no one seems to be surprised. It happens to agents. London starts being overwhelmed by the snow, so there's no way to put the insomnia down to the rain anymore. Utterly clear, it is because Q works too much and his brain just hasn't enough time to retune.
"I need to take a day off," Q thinks while feeling being finally falling into the alluring darkness. Just the moment the smartphone signal pulls him out of the blissful semiconsciousness. "I was almost sleeping," he thinks while opening the laptop lid, maybe a bit faster than needed.
"Q, I need you," Bond says, approaching the work desk of the quartermaster with the even stride and shifting his gaze to the white mug with a black Scrabble letter.
"Yes. Of course," Q answers and turns away to find the necessary papers and a couple of new devices that he was instructed to pass to the agent double-oh-seven when he shows up.
Bond listens silently and nods while the quartermaster gives him all the required instructions. When he leaves, Q finds a pack of gingerbread cookies in the drawer of his desk.
"So naive of you to think that I haven't noticed your actions, mister Bond," Q snorts and smiles with the edges of his lips, forwarding the gingerbread man to his mouth. "Merry Christmas you too."
"This isn't how I was planning the morning to start," Q rubs his eyes after having slept three hours only in his only day off in the last two weeks. Another urgent request that he is not going to fulfill is flashing on the screen. "Mister Bond, can I live without you at least a bit?" he keeps silence crossly, checking all the databases known to him before sending the answer. Q knows that he won't manage to sleep more today.
When Bond drags him into one of the many storerooms and slams the door behind them, pressing the quartermaster against it, Q is still unsure, is it because of the new weapon type he was almost rash to offer for a try or something else. His palms are just slightly smaller that Bond's, but double-oh-seven holds his hands either sides of the head with ease, like if Q had no training experience at all. Wrists are becoming numb softly.
"What are you in need of, double-oh-seven?" Q asks to drive somehow the situation from the dead-lock.
"The same as always," Bond answers, and Q thinks that he acts like a program that got out of pause. "You."
His lips touch the lips of the quartermaster, the glasses slide somewhere up and to the side, and Q realizes that the causes of his insomnia are hardly related to work or rain.
"I need you, Bond," he whispers silently in his head and answers the kiss.