TITLE: That Which Is Home
SERIES: Firewall
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belongs to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
FEEDBACK: Loved
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Just a little interlude again while I'm down with a sudden onset of the flu. And can I say sudden? It didn't even have the grace and courtesy to warn me with sniffles and coughs. Darnit.
Series List:
1. High Voltage
2. Live Wire
3. Sometimes the Words are Hidden
4. Seasonal Currents
5. Redeemed
6. Not All the Facts
7. Under Pressure
8. Circuit Breaker
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It took a special kind of person to become a Double-Oh agent. It wasn't just brute force and the mind of a killer, no conscience and all instinct. It was also about intelligence, about a mind that had to be brilliant in its own way, capable of adaptation, quick on the uptake, and even faster in decisions like kill or die. It took nerves, too. And the ability to compartmentalize.
The job was emotionally exhausting, the death and carnage a common friend, and while there was psychological help offered, no one but the Double-Ohs understood what it was like, who and what they were. What was expected of them.
Few agents made it to the point where MI6 considered them viable Double-Oh material. The few who came on the exclusive list were usually unattached. No family of any kind, no close friends, no partners, nothing. Their names had come up because of excellent service for their Queen and Country. They had hit MI6's radar because of their steady nerves, their toughness in their prior fields of operation.
Some because of their preternatural or supernatural abilities, but even today MI6 balked a little when it came to humans with those abilities. They were an asset, but every unnatural ability had its drawbacks. The one and only time, around the founding days of the Double-Oh section, there had been a shapeshifter, a so-called werewolf. He had been 002. His time had been short-lived.
In every sense of the word.
Instincts were hard to control on a good day for a human, for a supernatural it was quite impossible and the good man had ended up with a bullet through the brain in the middle of Mongolia.
James Bond was the only preternatural working for MI6 in the Double-Oh section and no one aside from M, Tanner and Q knew what he truly was. Everyone else just whispered rumors behind his back.
For a Double-Oh, life wasn't normal. Aside from being sent around the world into countries that might not be on the map tomorrow and hadn't been on any map ten years ago, they also couldn't maintain a relationship with anyone outside MI6, and not even within.
They lived life on the edge. They played with danger every day. They sought the thrills when the mission didn't give it to them, and if the job didn't kill them, some of their hobbies might one day.
Danger and the adrenaline rush were their outlet. They needed to work off the energy, the tension, the drug high they felt when on assignment. 001 free-climbed in his spare time. No safety ropes, no partners, just one man hanging by his finger tips on a bloody big mountain.
Office workers called them cold-blooded killers. Or worse. Monsters. Abominations. Without a conscience. A finger on the trigger, nothing but hit men.
Yes, yes, and yes again. They were all that. They made Double-Oh status because of two consecutive kills, premeditated, not in self-defense. Assassinations, no questions asked. Yes, they were killers without a conscience.
Bond would attest to it all and do it proudly. He might be even more of it than his colleagues could ever guess. His primal side was dark, lusting for blood and ferocious. It sated its hunger through violence and death.
He didn't care.
It was what he had been hired for.
Up until Vesper Lynd he hadn't missed a normal life. She had gone through his armor and made him want it. He had been ready to resign for her, leave everything behind, wanting so much to feel what it would be like to spend the rest of his life with her.
Looking back, now that the emotions were nothing but a past memory, Bond knew that it wouldn't have worked.
Never.
It just couldn't.
He was a phoenix and the phoenix would have pushed past the emotions, shredded them, torn them to bleeding pieces. He wouldn't have been able to keep the darkness at bay; the predator was hungry and it needed the rush.
Vesper had taken the decision out of his hands and it had killed him a little at the time.
Double-Ohs could never be normal people. They had no real private lives. They had no chance at families, children, a place to come home to with a loving spouse. Theirs wasn't an office job, nine to five. They weren't home for the holidays; sometimes Bond didn't even know it was Christmas or New Year's.
Sometimes he didn't even know where he was when he woke up in a dank cell, his captors either leaving him there to rot or to be interrogated later. He didn't know how much time had passed on an assignment. He came back, was debriefed by M personally, received new orders, went out again.
No, normalcy was for other people.
Until he had found his balance.
Q was MI6. Q worked insane hours. Q was his handler, his partner, his sanity in times when the preternatural side screeched for release, clawing at his soul and trying to tear him under. He was there, a cool blanket of rationality, a quiet voice in his ear, his equal, his opposite, everything.
Yes, he came home to him. When they had a moment together, in Q's flat, when Bond wasn't yet cleared for the field or put on leave. When Q was done running countless projects and testing new weapons. When there was a nothing but the calmness Bond associated with the other man, the peace the phoenix succumbed to when the technopath was around.
Those were the moments few Double-Ohs experienced.
It hit home with Bond for real when he walked into the flat he shared with Q about six months into this… for lack of a better word… relationship. Partnership? No, that didn't fit. At work, yes, but they were so much more than work. And Q was so much more than a mere partner.
He was imprinted on the preternatural's mind. He knew the man instinctively, whatever his name or designation. For Bond he was Q, pure and simple. But the one letter had a deeper meaning when he said it. The instinctual knowledge, the presence of the man, his feel, his sound, maybe even his smell.
James felt something inside of him curl with desire and longing.
Q was everything he needed and in every way he needed it. He didn't flirt with him to gain something. He didn't sleep with him because Bond had seduced him. He didn't use or abuse the trust between them.
And it was a trust that had been there almost from the start; that rocky, slightly uneven start when he had tested the new quartermaster. Unknowingly, the phoenix had tested even more. It had found the strength appealing. A lot was appealing about Q.
Six months and almost seven days and only now did James Bond realize that he had achieved something his Double-Oh colleagues might never have, unless they retired or quit.
He shared his life.
His private life, his work life, all of him. He shared it with someone who knew about the responsibilities, the importance of secrets, about his preternatural nature.
Q knew.
They weren't attached by the hip. Sometimes they didn't see each other for weeks. Sometimes Bond didn't have the familiar voice in his ear for days… or a week. Maybe even more when he was completely under.
But it worked.
He came back, Q was there, there was banter and snark and aggravation. He loved annoying his quartermaster just as much as Q liked annoying him by demanding detailed debriefings and equipment returned in good shape.
It all boiled down to the most unusual relationship for the two men, but it worked.
It worked.
It had Bond stand in the empty living room, the lights from outside dancing across the dark walls, lighting them up at intervals. He listened to the muted sounds from outside, the silence in the flat, the soft whisper of his breath with every exhalation.
Six months in a stable relationship that had been born out of hunger, need and necessity, that had been so much more right from the start, overwhelming him like not even Vesper had managed.
Q was part of his life.
He had a life.
It was like a revelation.
He spent more time here than at his own place. Even when Q wasn't here, Bond came to this address. Q had added him to the security protocol. That had been like a declaration all on its own. Bond knew how to take it. It had been in Q's eyes, his whole posture, but he had never said it.
He closed his eyes, his whole body relaxed, the tension gone the moment he was here, in familiar surroundings, completely safe. It was the same feeling he had when he drifted to Q's workplace. When he was between assignments, itching to try a new weapon R&D was testing at the moment. When not even the shooting range or physical exercise kept the predator in check.
He went to Q, casual, bored out of his mind, just leaning against the wall or sitting on the couch, watching.
Bond knew he made the other scientists nervous. He knew they were trying to figure out what he and Q were playing, what kind of game it was, if it was an agent harassing their boss.
Q either ignored him or shot him those annoyed looks.
That he sent him short text messages on his phone was another matter no one saw.
'You scare the minions.'
'The need a good shock to the system sometimes.'
'I'm in the middle of a project. I can't have them keel over in a dead faint from fear or arousal.'
'Arousal, Q?'
'Two of my interns have the hots for you, 007. Probably several more.'
Bond had grinned at that, a twist to his lips that had a lab tech quickly dart away. And then he had proceeded to give one of the interns his best flirty looks. The poor girl had looked flushed and confused.
'Please, 007. Behave.'
'Or what, Q?'
There was no way to put flirty tones to a text message, but Bond managed it, he was sure of that. Q never stopped his work, but he caught a little glance in his direction.
'My realm, my rules. Flirt with her when she isn't handling explosives.'
'Spoilsport.'
Yes, it was fun down there. Especially with a technopath who communicated easily with his mind and wasn't seen typing. Bond, in turn, looked like he was texting with someone else.
A lot of fun.
Bond slipped out of his suit jacket and draped it over the couch, then went over to the cabinet that held a good selection of liquor. He chose an old single malt and poured himself two fingers, then sat down on an armchair and inhaled the aroma.
Q was still at work, in a meeting, and Bond had yet to report back in. He would do that on his own time, maybe tomorrow, since he hadn't been expected back yet. If his quartermaster had kept track of his agent's location, Q knew he had been en route. He probably knew he was home.
Sipping at the whiskey, Bond smiled a little.
Home.
Not England. Not London. Not MI6.
Home wasn't even this flat, though it came very close.
Home was Q.