James Bond came out of the whole affair with M's and Vesper's deaths as a broken man and he needed to be pieced back together. Q came out of M's death, amazingly, with more respect from Q branch, but he blamed himself for her death. In his mind if he had done his job Sylva wouldn't have been able to hack them. In James's mind if he had been completely fit for duty it wouldn't have gone down the same way.
"Here," James said as he slammed the pen on Q's desk making the quartermaster jump a little. It was James's 20th mission with the new Q that something changed. He had finally returned a piece of equipment.
The whole Q branch fell silent when they saw what he had. "007," Q said shaking his head. "This was the one piece of equipment that you didn't have to return."
"I know," James said with a smirk.
"That's the only reason you gave it back isn't it?"
"That, and the fact that it is a God awful pen."
"If it was such a bad pen, why didn't you blow it up?"
"I never got the chance," James replied before waltzing out of the Q branch.
The next thing he returned was a gun. MI6 was stunned. The mission following that one he apologized for not being able to return anything. Q couldn't think of anything to say before James left and was half way to the shooting range. The mission hadn't gone well and he was going to blow off some steam. "Bond," Q shouted down the hallway after him.
"What is it Q?"James kept walking even though he was slightly surprised that Q was even out of Q branch let alone let to talk to him.
"Why have you suddenly started to return things?" Q asked as he caught up to the tall blonde at last.
James shrugged, "I just started to care."
"Okay," Q shrugged as they walked through the double doors to the range. "Do you mind if I join you?" There wasn't a missions or a national emergency going on at the moment and Q fully believed that his minions could handle everything that they were working on.
"You want to shoot things with guns?" James inquired raising his eyebrow.
"James, I made these guns, I should be able to use them," Q retorted. "And anyway, it's a great stress reliever."
"Okay, okay," James said trying not to laugh as he picked up a gun.
"You don't believe that I can use this, do you?" Q smirked as he picked up his own gun.
"I completely believe that you can use that, I just also have the feeling that this is going to be a competition," James laughed as he shot at the target, each of his five bullets pulled slightly to the right.
Q looked at his target for a few seconds before squaring his shoulders and shooting five times, the first three bullets hit right in the center the other two went a bit to the left.
"Your hand started to get tired and under compensate for the pull of the gun," James pointed out.
"And you are over compensating," Q smirked.
James just shook his head and chuckled. The two of them continued this way, shooting and helping each other, do that by the time that an hour had passed they had almost completely perfected their marksmanship.
"Well I have to go," Q said checking his watch.
"Okay, well, do you want to go out for drinks later?" James asked as he put another round into the target.
"Maybe next time, Bond," Q said as he left the range.
As Q reentered the Q branch everyone fell silent but no one dared to mention that he had been gone for a good hour. Q called R over and asked her, "did anything happen while I was gone?" R was a kind person, she was five years older than Q and had been going after the position of Quartermaster before they had found him and brought him in, but R didn't let that come between them. In reality she was rather impressed. Q had been able to hack into MI6 at the age of 20 and then fix all of the holes in security before completely covering his tracks. It took the whole Q branch two weeks to track him down. That alone was a record, Q took the top of the leader board, and yes Q branch has a leader board for that kind of thing.
"Nope," she said handing him a stack of paperwork. "You do have to fill out all of these."
Q sighed, "Unless the world is imploding please don't bother me."
"Have fun," R laughed as Q walked back to his office. Everyone in Q branch knew that Q hated paper work so they enjoyed dumping all of the paperwork on him when they amassed enough to make his life difficult for a few hours. They were evil like that.
This continued for close to a year. James would come back from a mission, return his equipment, then, if Q wasn't busy, the two of them would go out to the shooting range, if Q didn't have time James would wait for him, and after they were done shooting the hell out of the targets James would ask Q out for coffee or to go to some various bar. Q always had a reason to say no.
James one night managed to find his way to Q branch after everyone else had found their way home, "Q what are you doing later?"
"Well Bond," Q said checking his watch. "Seeing as its one in the morning, I'm going home to sleep." He started to pack up his computer and went to grab his coat.
James followed him as Q walked to his office. "Do you want to go get a drink?"
"James, no offence but, I've been up since four in the morning dealing with you and 006 I need to sleep."
"Well… maybe next time then?"
"Maybe next time."
"Hey," James said while walking with Q to the exit. "Why don't I bring you coffee tomorrow morning?"
"Well, I'm more of a tea person."
"Even better," James smiled. "What kind of tea do you like?"
"Earl Grey with milk and two sugars," Q said yawning.
The next two months every time that Q came to MI6 and James was there James would make and bring him a cup of perfect tea and the 00 agent would ask if Q would go out to drinks with him. On the first day of the third month Q cracked and said yes. All of MI6 was impressed that he had lasted that long.
A/N: Well this took longer to type up than I was expecting… but here it is in all of its glory. I read A LOT of fanfiction myself so if you see a head canon that you believe is yours please just message me and I will change it. I read so much that I can't seem to separate my head canon from other people's head canon. DFTBA
