Title: 007/Q 'But, before the bulldog was the…'
Author: tigersilver
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Bond/Q
Warnings/Summary: This is utter tooth-rotting fluff, and so just shoot me, but I'd like to imagine this was really the way it went, after Skyfall.
Bond and the gameskeeper have been evac'd from the ruins of Bond's old family manse in Scotland. M's body has been dealt with, and arrangements are already underway. The new M casually mentions to Q that Bond was due out of Medical in short order and should be stopping by M's office for a debriefing.
It's just data, and only so Q is made officially aware of what he already knows; it's strictly for protocol, as he's upper-echelon staff and Mallory is a polite man.
Q spends a long moment looking at his own hands after M goes on his way, as they are shaking. Trembling just the smallest amount, right down to his fingertips, until it feels as though his very knucklebones are jumbling together inside his skin, scraping. He retaliates by pressing the pads of his fingers hard into the keyboard and setting his back teeth together firmly.
He sways where he stands, but that's not important. It's late in the day and he should be knocking off; in fact, should have left the building hours ago. There's nothing going on except the inevitable clean up of the mess Silva left behind him and Q really can't justify spending yet more hours at HQ. That's what his staff is for, and he trusts them—mostly. But he can't bring himself to go, either.
In a curious way, the last he'd seen of Bond was a wall of flame, literally, as Skyfall exploded. And that wasn't even Bond himself, it was only a building, but one connected to him, and Q had been certain Bond had finally been done in. But the radio transmitter had never quite blipped off his screen, even though the signal went a bit wobbly for a terribly long while, and Q had had to accept that somewhere out there in the darkness of the moors, Bond was still breathing.
Bond was still breathing. In, out, and stubbornly.
Q wasn't going anywhere until he could see it for himself: Bond breathing. It had been all he could do not to tear off to Medical when the helicopter bearing Bond had landed on the secure pad and the men had been instantly ferried into care. He'd satisfied himself with observing by way of the CCTV but it really wasn't sufficient, a half-arsed glimpse at an occupied cot behind a thin curtain. Nothing would ever be sufficient except full-body contact and Q didn't fool himself for an instant into believing Bond was receptive. No matter that Q had essentially laid himself and all his poor silly heart out like a roadmap for Bond to see, had practically written it across the sky of Scotland in huge flaming letters, visible for miles; how it was with him, what it was that Q felt for Bond, and what he would do for the sake of 007—and that was, in a single succinct word, 'anything'.
Devotion. 'Anything you want, 007, I will do for you.' He'd not needed to say it; it was all over his actions, leaving Bond's desired breadcrumbs for Silva, flouting authority, clearing the way up to Skyfall of traffic, alerting the backup personnel posted to nearby Edinburgh to be ready to descend upon the mansion grounds in mere moments, and then standing back from his keyboard with a small flourish and letting Bond have at it. No voice in 007's ear, no further well-meant interference.
Blind trust. 'There goes my late lamented career in espionage.' Or words to that effect, but it only equated to Q's gut instinct. This was a man he could believe in, and did, and would, till death and after.
Love. 'Oh, there you are,' Q had said once early on in their acquaintance, during an intense period which felt like it had occurred many years before this excruciatingly endless waiting moment, and indeed, there had been Bond, the newly discovered keeper of Q's heart, large as life and shooting door locks up with his gun, leaping about the Tube. Q had not lost sight of it once he'd sorted it, what great insanity had befallen him—or his affections. His tidy, logical life, tossed straight out the window. Become centred on a blinking signal steadily moving away from him and a voice in his ear, asking the impossible, and expecting it, too.
He'd delivered. At cost, but there it was, unavoidable.
Love, that many splendoured thing, and Q throbbed with it, and kept his feet planted firmly on the floor of his own area, his toes curling madly in their socks. He kept his knees locked and his elbows bent and didn't budge an inch toward Medical nor M's office, either, after Bond appeared again from behind the cot's curtain, a little worse for wear but utterly gorgeous nonetheless as viewed across a slightly grainy CCTV transmission. Bond was up and moving again, drat him, and indubitably off to the the meeting with Mallory. Q, however, didn't even contemplate moving, though every inch of him longed for action.
He could intercept Bond in the junction between Medical suite and the service lifts, he could corner him at the entrance to Moneypenny's office. But Q didn't, he didn't.
Because sacrifice. Q's heart in exchange for his job, his peace of mind given over for the array of opportunities afforded a youthful but terrible competent Quartermaster who serviced the needs of the agents, in particular one special agent; all Q's brilliant burning youth for the chance to adore beyond all reason a bull-headed old git who cared not a whit for his own skin if it only got the job done, the mission accomplished.
And no, Q wouldn't get what he wanted, what he craved to the core of him. He was no fool, and Bond had merely tolerated him and made good use of him and that was all right, even that little bit all right, if it meant Q detected a smile in 007's voice over the comm every now and again, and the hint of a passing warmth sent in his direction. Approval, however fleeting. Bond's mind was clearly focussed elsewhere—on old M's death, on the trailing ends of Silva's organization, on the debrief with Mallory—and he would have no need to drop into the Quartermaster's lab like a bad pence and offer up a 'Hullo' to the spotted pup who'd made sheep's eyes at a moving blip on his radar screen as it had travelled toward what had seemed almost certain destruction. He wouldn't know that Q's heart had ceased pumping useful blood for duration of the explosion at Skyfall or that Q's brain had derailed, jumping its tracks into madness, when confronted by the real possibility that Bond was no more.
Bond wouldn't notice that pieces of Q were still dying, literally dying, with every second he was forced to wait until he saw Bond in the flesh with his own two eyes. That Q has been Bond's to take; had been owned by him lock, stock and barrel from the moment of a charming smile and a handshake exchanged before a bloody old melancholy painting.
"Sir?"
But, as it was, it was Q who hardly noticed the view from the constant bank of screens had altered in one specific. His lowered lashes were oddly damp and his vision was blurry behind his meticulously unsmudged spectacle lenses but the code scrolled on and he was still standing, just like Bond. Same as Bond, yes.
"Sir. It's," one of his staff piped up, the one closest to the glassed-in entrance. "I mean, I think he's looking for you, sir."
With an almost inaudible swooshing sound the transparent panel closed shut tight behind a man decked out in casual jogging togs and a clean scrub shirt. The blue of the scrubs did magnificent things for Bond's eyes. Q drank that in even with his brain shattered into a million tiny particles, all zinging.
Bond should ought to be in Mallory's office. He should rightfully be in midst of his debriefing, even as Q held himself to his post and resisted the mad urge to chase through the intervening passageways and bang down M's door for a chance to simply breathe the air Bond was breathing.
"Q? Do you have a moment?" That familiar drawl was weary; Bond's entire person was exuding exhaustion, but the cock of an eyebrow was the same old Bond. "In private, please."
Q stood, frozen, his toes in his socks and loafers the only things left on him clinging to reality, anchoring him to the floor. This was shocking, completely unheralded, and his heart felt like it had shot up to his mouth, choking him. Nothing made any sort of sense, nothing computed cleanly.
A casual jerk of Bond's newly shaven chin had Q abruptly moving, leading the way to the one place in his labs where existed an actual enclosed area, with imperviously solid walls and a door that actually could be locked behind them: his office-cum-survival suite. He paused in the entry, glancing back over his shoulder, half afraid that this was only some sort of mass hallucination he and his staff were experiencing, this apparition of Bond. Because why on earth would James Bond come to Q before M? Unheard of—impossible. Statistically highly unlikely.
"Please," he replied, possibly about a whole eon later, his voice remarkably level despite the constriction in his throat. He swallowed hard, but the action did nothing to ease it. "Follow me. Through here."
"Thank you." Bond shut the door behind him, ever so quietly, turning so he always faced Q, never glancing away for so much as an instant.
"Of course," Q replied, reduced to rapid blinking. Damn his eyelashes and his curling toes and his stiff fingers, cramping up with yearning. Damn his hopes, which were faint to non-existent, and his cock, which was stupidly swelling against the pressure of his boring old y-fronts, and his flaring nostrils, inhaling antiseptic and Bond's recycled oxygen as if the combination comprised the finest aroma in the universe. "Yes? And how may I be of service, 007?"
"Q," Bond said, and stepped into Q's personal bubble as if he owned it, which of course he did do. "I want."
He said nothing else, only placed the lightest of touches, just a glancing grip, upon the V-neck of Q's woolen jumper. One fingertip stroked the tightly woven fabric, just so.
"Yes, please," Q croaked, stumbling forward as his dreadfully unsteady knees went straight out from beneath him. "Me, too."
Before there was ever a sentimental old china bulldog presented to Bond by Moneypenny, before the funeral services for the old M were attended by all personnel, before 007 ever reported in to active duty, but only very shortly after the sky truly fell upon Q's sheltered heart, there occurred a brilliantly desperate kiss, shared between two men, deep in the labyrinthine heart of a secure building and witnessed by no others. A snog to set dreams alight and fire up ragged fancies with rocket fuel and surpass the heat of even the newly risen sun. And it turned the whole world end over end, to stand upon its head, and was perfect beyond compare, in Q's not-so-humble opinion.
Fin