AN: This is a one-shot I started months ago and decided to finish up today. It takes place after Skyfall so there are spoilers. I apologize if Bond comes out slightly more humorous than he has any right to be, but it's downtime and I always thought his character could be amusing if he wasn't being shot at, tortured, or stressed out every five seconds. Enjoy.
Bond. James Bond.
"I don't understand why you don't want the mouth device," Moneypenny tilted her head to the side to insert the miniscule earpiece. It fit under the curve of her ear instead of inside the canal.
"Because," James answered as he fit in his own earpiece, "I don't want anything electronic in my mouth."
"The bad guys could just feel around your ear and yank this out," she frowned.
"As opposed to yanking out my teeth," James shook his head. "No, no, nothing in my mouth."
She looked down at the other option on the table, a small device fitted like the top of a tooth to insert on a back molar. "We have to test out one of these so I can sign off on the fact that it works."
"Isn't that more Q's department?"
"Usually, but he had some lackey bring these up three days ago. I had no idea how to even start them, but I've gotten no reply from him."
"Is the kid out of the office?" James picked up the box that held the device and flipped it over, looking for any sign of directions. Most of the time he would just guess his way through new tools and toys, but this new device looked fragile, a dainty little thing he could barely feel in his ear.
"I think he's here, but I can't get a reply out of him. He won't respond to email or calls, and when I knocked on the door, he said he was busy."
"An intelligence agency without any intelligence," James nodded. "Sounds about right."
"I think they're on now," Moneypenny touched her ear. "I'm hearing you through it, and in person of course. They must heat up with our body temperature to come on."
"So they work. Anything else we need to do?"
She smiled as she went to sit at her desk. "I wouldn't have called you in here just to see if Q's gadgets work. He said, by way of the lackey, that these devices will isolate human speech to the listener despite any other noise that is going on. It will filter out engines, machines, even gunfire."
He smiled at her. "You knew I was on the way to firing practice."
She smiled back, her teeth dazzling against her dark skin. "Be a love, and keep it on during practice. Don't shout – just speak normally during shooting and I'll see how well I can hear you."
"You'd think Q would want better data than this. Doesn't he like trial runs without human error?"
She shrugged. "Then he should answer his calls."
James left the room, but Moneypenny continued to talk, her voice even in his ear. "Besides, who cares about earpieces when we're trying to rebuild MI6?"
"Maybe I should ask Mallory about that," James said in a quiet voice as he went down a flight of stairs.
"Very funny," her voice continued smoothly. "You're going to find the head of our little division and ask him if he likes our new earpieces?"
"No, I mean he's here," James lowered his voice. "He's arguing with Tanner. He looks pretty upset. Did we have a meeting I missed?"
"No, you're good. I didn't know anything was wrong, apart from half our division being dead. Get close and let me hear."
James neared, slowing down with a polite nod. He pulled out his mobile, pretending to check email while he tilted his ear towards them.
"Absolutely absurd!" Mallory gestured angrily with one arm, his wounded arm still in a light sling. A few more days and the sling would come off, but he was keeping his arm still though the rest of his body radiated anger. "Get him out of there before I send in the Queen's guards!"
"I'm sorry, sir," Tanner stuttered, "but it's no good. We've all tried to reason with him, but he's been in there for three days now and –"
"I don't care! Drag him out by his – oh, Bond, there you are."
"M, Tanner," James nodded again. "More attacks?"
"Hardly," Mallory snorted. "That wretched tech boy has locked himself in his lab and refuses to come out."
"He says he's working on something important," Tanner said almost apologetically,
"I don't care if he's building a computer to find every villain in England," Mallory seethed. "When I tell you to tell him to go home, he follows orders. I treat insubordination as treason!"
Tanner looked nervously at James.
Rather than mirror his concern, James leaned back against the wall casually. "That's what you get for hiring a kid just out of nursery school."
"He was the best of his class," Tanner protested.
"We all are," James smirked.
"Bond, what are you up to today?" Mallory demanded.
"Well, I was going to the –"
"Good, then you can come with me and sort this out. Dismissed, Tanner."
Tanner looked relieved as he hurried off.
"You and I will sort out young Q," Mallory groused as he headed towards the elevator.
James tried to look serious. "Does the head of MI6 now spend his time admonishing personnel in R&D? We must be much safer as a country now than I had previously thought."
"Don't show me cheek," Mallory slammed his fist on the elevator button and the doors slid shut. "Q's nothing short of a genius. What he did on that computer – the way he tracked and watched and maneuvered – sheer brilliance. But he's high-strung and prone to nerves, a danger combination for a genius."
"Good lord," James watched the numbers count down to the bottom floor, "did any of us pass the psych eval? You've filled the madhouse with explosives and given us all matches."
Mallory made a low growl. "He'll be alright. M's death hit him harder than he let on, and I thought he was doing better, but the last time I saw him . . . I should have said something, but it's hard when the prime minister is in front of you, the queen is in the next room, and the American president's on the phone."
"My apologies," James bowed his head, mainly to cover his smirk. "I was not implying that you do not run a tight ship."
The doors began to open, and James couldn't help add under his breath, "Oh captain, my captain."
"Don't aggravate him," Moneypenny said softly in his ear. Apparently, she was still listening.
Mallory glared daggers at him and then stormed forward right to the closed door of Q's personal lab. "Q!" he banged on the door. "Open up!"
Silence for a moment, and then a shuffling sound on the other side. The lock clicked, the door opened, and Q leaned out.
James blinked at the boy's haggard appearance. Q's dark hair had always been longish and unruly, but it was so disheveled that it stood up in tangles in some places and hung limply in others. He was stark white, even his lips, except for the dark bags under his red-rimmed eyes that his glasses couldn't hide. If James hadn't known otherwise, he would have thought the young man spent the last three days under mark-free torture, maybe water-boarding.
"What?" Q looked down at the ground.
"What?" Mallory repeated. "I have called you, emailed, even sent messengers. Why are you still here?"
"Got work to do," Q still looked down.
"I told you to go home. You disobeyed a direct order."
The young man made no reply, so James spoke up,
"I know you have projects, but you'll feel better with some food and a good night's sleep."
"You should talk," Q muttered.
James kept his tone calm. "Yes, I've spent missions hungry and sleepless, but we're not on a mission now. When we don't have missions, we clean ourselves up so we can go on another mission. See?" he gestured to his suit. "I've eaten, slept . . . showered . . ."
"Can't," Q pulled back and closed the door.
James's eyes widened the slightest bit as he watched Mallory. Yes, he himself, the great James Bond, had often ignored orders in the field out of necessity (and maybe a little bit of enjoyment to flaunt that stuffy authority that wanted to control his every move). But that was in the middle of gunfire and bombs and death and destruction. He couldn't imagine closing the door in M's face in the middle of her own building with such disregard. She would have torn him apart, reamed him out in that way only a stern British matron could.
Mallory was no British matron, but he looked like a furious schoolmaster and James felt he should intervene before the man ripped the stitches out of his arm in sheer rage.
He tried the door. It was unlocked and he opened it.
On the other side, what had once been a lab to create and research technology (the best definition James could conjure) was now a mixture of mad scientist lab and the Batcave with a touch of hoarding thrown in just for fun. Wires and equipment were everywhere, scattered over papers and gadgets. Dozens of screens were blinking so fast James thought he might have an epileptic seizure if he looked at them for too long. Q was putting a device together, something between a robot and a torture device judging by the protruding spikes.
"You dare close a door in my face?" Mallory scolded. "I'll have you court-martialed. I'll lock you away with a judgment of treason and a sentence of life without any of these toys you love so much."
Q looked at him in agony. "Don't interrupt me. I have to finish this. I'll get it up and running and then I'm going to set up this new system," he dropped the device and ran over to one of the blinking screens. "It's a new firewall – no one can break in. I'll put all of our computers behind it and we'll be off of the grid forever, and I'll find a way to hack every other system in the world, even NASA's and Russia's."
"Are you trying to restart the Cold War?" James asked.
Q didn't answer, but he looked nearly manic in the flashing light of the screens.
Mallory looked at the various screens, and for a brief second he looked worried, almost fatherly. "It wasn't your fault. You did the best you could, considering the intel we had."
"I let them in," Q hammered on the keys of one computer so hard the plastic nearly snapped. "It wasn't enough that they used our own systems to blow up the building, but I let them in once Silva was here."
Mallory let out a sigh. Apparently, international diplomacy was easier than the hysterics of a 25-year-old tech genius. Besides men of Mallory's generation did not have feelings. That old guard was fond of a stiff upper lip and duty to one's country and queen; they preferred to see the world in an old-fashioned, black and white objective and action, not in postmodern, gray-shaded self-doubt and inner turmoil.
James himself felt he existed partway between the old world and new world. His age was closer to Mallory's, but after M's death, he had sympathy for this new generation. All their gadgets and toys, all their attitude and cheek, all their self-loathing and relentless apathy. In the old days, one could stake himself wholly on core beliefs, to trust that those in charge knew what they were doing. Ah, the ability to follow a leader blindly into battle. Those days were over.
But the hierarchy of MI6 still stood.
"Despite whatever you feel," James said, "you do not disobey your commanding officer in a time of peace. He has every right to ban you from this lab, from the building if he chooses. So pack your stuff up and go home."
Q sneered, distorting his young face into contempt. "Get stuffed, Bond. You were the one who brought Silva in here. And then you got her killed, you washed-up, useless, old –"
"That's it," Mallory reached for the intercom. "You're banned from MI6 indefinitely."
Q snarled something vicious and he picked up his coffee mug and flung it at Mallory.
Mallory stepped back instinctively and the mug crashed to the floor, splattering cold coffee and broken shards all over the floor.
Drops of coffee had landed on the edges of Mallory's tailored trousers, but before he could comment, James went into action.
Vaulting over the table between him and the irate Q, James snatched up a handful of plastic ties, used to bind electrical wires together to keep them from knotting up. With his free hand, he grabbed Q and spun him around, face down onto another table.
Q might have been a tech genius, but he had never spent a moment out in the field and he didn't have the instinct to even resist where James put him. By the time Q tried to scramble off the table, James had the boy's arms behind his back.
"Let me go!"
"I think we've heard enough out of you," James looped the plastic ties around the boy's thin wrists and pulled them closed. This was one of the things he had learned years ago in his early days at Interpol – how to effectively overpower and bind an opponent. "You don't throw things at your commanding officer. I understand the rage, the fury, the need to lash out, but that's why you join a gymnasium or take up boxing."
"Fuck you!" Q writhed against the ties, trying to kick James. "I'm not listening to you, you – you trigger!"
Mallory looked slightly confused at the name – obviously Q hadn't shared with Mallory his opinion that all agents were just in the field to pull triggers when tech ops couldn't manage it from their computers. But Mallory hadn't moved, just stood there frowning and stern.
"Do you want a go at him," James pulled the struggling quartermaster to his feet, "or shall I continue?"
Mallory self-consciously touched his hurt arm. "Don't break his fingers. And mind his glasses."
James scoffed as he dragged Q towards a lower, less cluttered table. "Wouldn't want to damage our best asset. I'll just borrow this," he grabbed a foot-long, flat instrument off the table. "I presume it's a ruler, like the ones we had in our schooldays, M."
Q was spitting and swearing, still struggling like mad, but he shrieked, "It's not a ruler, you Neanderthal! It's a sonar recorder to measure pressure radio frequencies at two hundred feet under water."
"Looks like a ruler," James twirled it around in his fingers. "Feels like a ruler."
He hoisted Q up on the table, holding the boy still with one hand around the back of his trousers. Q's bound hands were inches from his own hand, and Q tried to push James off with his thin fingers. James hid a smile as he pulled the trousers up slightly, making the fabric tighten over Q's slim hips and slight bottom. There were dozens of ways to escape the hold, even with wrists bound. Twisting off the shoulder to gain leverage, kicking up to an opponent's groin, rearing the head back to break an opponent's nose. But Q obviously had not been taught any of them, and he seemed to think that trying to scratch James' wrist was the best way to get him off.
"If I break this, I'll buy you a new one," James promised. Q was off swearing again, calling James every name in the book and implying several times that James was having an inappropriate relationship with someone's mother.
He glanced at Mallory who still wore a disapproving look, but the glare was directed at the thrashing boy on the table so James went ahead.
With precision, he raised the sonar-ruler thing and brought it down with a sharp whap.
Q sucked in his breath. The room went silent. James smacked him again.
"No!" Q cried out. "Ow! Don't beat me. I'm going to get out of here and – and – and I'll kill you."
"Don't threaten a field agent," James spanked him again. "You want to act like a spoiled child, then you'll be treated accordingly. But to insult your officer – it is not on, you sulky puppy!"
"Agh!" Q shouted his discomfort. "I'm going to – to blow this place up too."
Mallory sighed heavily. He took a clean, folded handkerchief out of his pocket and approached Q. "Open up," he folded the handkerchief again and held it level with Q's mouth. "You're going to bite down on this until Bond finishes."
Q looked up in confused dismay.
"You can't keep threatening us," Mallory was quiet but resolved. "So you're going to bite down on this and take your punishment. When we're done, you're going to go home and I won't close your lab permanently. Do we have an understanding?"
Q breathed in hard, his thin body heaving as he considered.
James decided to hurry him along. He delivered another terrific smack.
"Ooow!" tears sprung into Q's eyes. "All right, all right."
He opened up and when Mallory moved the handkerchief closer, Q closed his mouth over it, biting down hard.
Mallory nodded, and James started paddling in earnest.
He kept the blows even and spacious, aiming for more of the ruler to slap down and keeping the tip from wrapping around too much. The main intent was to redden, not bruise. Careful training had taught James how to inflict maximum pain on an opponent, but here he concentrated on irritating the skin and not tearing it apart.
But by the sounds Q was making, the boy didn't appreciate the care that James was applying to his discipline. Rather, Q was making his displeasure quite loud, wailing and screeching through the handkerchief. To his credit, he didn't spit it out, but his complaints kept coming, loud if garbled.
"Ow! 'Top! 'Top! 'Ond, 'top it!"
James kept going, spreading out the smacks until he reached around the fifty mark. It was a little harsh, granted, but he felt justified in going slightly overboard to make a point: respect for authority above all other matters.
"Bond, Bond!" Moneypenny's voice came through the earpiece. "It sounds like you're killing him. Surely he's been smacked long enough."
"We're almost done," Bond said in a clear voice. "And once we're done, you're going to straighten up, apologize to your senior employer, and leave directly."
Q nodded, whining as James delivered two last, hard blows. James dropped the ruler on the table and pulled Q up by the shoulders, turning the young man to face Mallory.
"Apologize," James instructed.
"Crickey," Moneypenny sighed. "You sound like a drill sergeant. Though I bet the new M looks like a lordship with a poker up his bum, overseeing an execution."
James' expression faltered for a second as that was exactly what Mallory looked like though the older man's expression was more disappointed than self-righteous.
Q made a whiny noise around the handkerchief as he tried to blink away tears and sweat. He tried to rub his cheek against his shoulder, but he knocked his glasses crooked.
"Release his hands," Mallory took the handkerchief from Q's mouth while James sliced through the ties with a wire cutter.
Q removed his glasses and scrubbed at his face. "You – you assaulted me."
"Did you want to be arrested?"
"No, I didn't want . . ." Q trailed off as more tears slipped down his cheeks. He hiccupped softly as he fought against a catch in his throat and panicked breathing.
"You bastard," Moneypenny said, though her voice was low enough for just Bond to hear. "Step up before he swoons away and we have to call medical."
James wished he could snap at her to shut up, but he took Q by the upper arm, feeling the boy shudder and shake, and prompted, "Tell M you're sorry."
"I'm sorry," Q stared at the floor as the tears kept coming.
"I hope this is a lesson to you," Mallory said sternly. But then his expression softened. "No one blames you for the destruction. If anything, we would have lost more if you hadn't been here. But such a temper! If you ever act out like that again, I will take a slipper to you myself. Retched, thoughtless, disgraceful – now, now, stop those tears. We're British and men of the Queen's order. We don't cry."
James said nothing at the nearly bipolar reaction, but he steered Q towards the door. "I'm taking him home. Should I ask a crew to tidy up?"
"No," Q tried to turn back before Mallory could answer, "don't touch my lab. You'll mess everything up."
"You're lucky I let you back in this building. I should gut this lab and sell every piece of equipment to – there, boy, stop crying. No one's going to touch your things."
James quickly steered Q down the hall and into the parking garage. It was cold and damp outside, but he didn't go back to grab coats. He got Q into the passenger side and got into the driver's seat and started the engine.
Q didn't look at him as James drove the car out into the street.
"Oh, for goodness sake," Moneypenny groused. "Talk to him."
"Where are we going?" James asked, resisting the urge to toss the earpiece into the street.
"Wandsworth," Q gulped as the last of his tears faded away.
"More than that," Moneypenny went on. "Have a conversation with him."
"About what?" James growled.
"Sorry?" Q looked at him.
"Ah, Wandsworth," James forced his voice into carefree nonchalance. "A district situated between the trendiness of Richmond upon Thames and the poverty of Merton. What side are you on?"
"The south."
"Ah, the unfashionable side," James teased. "I thought there was something."
Q blinked at him.
"Oscar Wilde? The Importance of Being Earnest?"
"I hate Victorian prose."
"It's a play revered by – oh, forget it. M is right about you young people."
Q twisted in his seat suddenly. "I hate that! I can't stand that we call him M. He isn't M. She was!"
"It's just a code name. You're Q."
"That stands for Quartermaster!" the boy was so loud that James winced.
"Quiet down."
"I will not! I will be as loud as –"
James reached over and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, keeping his other hand on the wheel as he navigated the streets of London. He meant to shake the boy into submission, but Q lowered his head and sniffed hard. James ended up patting the back of his neck, firmly but comfortingly.
"You're worn out, operating at this high level of stress and you're a nervous, high-strung bloke before all the pressure. You're not taking care of yourself and I should take you to medical instead of home."
"You beat me with that ruler and you're surprised I'm upset?"
"I spanked you, and you said it wasn't a ruler. It was that hi-tech sonic measuring –"
"Of course it was a ruler," Q's lower lip stuck out. "I couldn't get it to work. Nothing works."
"But does R&D mean Research and Development, yes? If everything worked the first time, wouldn't you be out of a job? Part of being a loyal subject to the crown and working for MI6 involves milking them for every quid you can. Otherwise you're on the street."
A small smile brightened Q's face.
"Now," James patted him one last time and removed his hand, "give me the address before we end up in Southwark. I do not want to get mugged."
Q's apartment was a jumble of tea perkers, computer parts, screens, and a weird thing that looked like all three. He made excuses for the disarray but James just nodded towards the bedroom.
"Time for bed. I'll leave when you're asleep."
"I'm not tired."
"I wasn't asking. Whatever you want to sleep in is fine, but you're going to bed, Peter Pan."
Q had unbuttoned his shirt, but he stopped in confusion. "What does any of this have to do with Peter Pan?"
"He was young, annoying, and in need of a swat or a nap," James leaned against the doorframe of the bedroom.
"That makes you Captain Hook," Q left his undershirt on and unbuckled his belt.
"I doubt it. He had dark hair and I'm blond. Besides, that man had no instinct to deal with cranky children, and I got you to apologize and get ready for bed."
Q muttered something that sounded like insufferable bastard, but James made no comment.
Stripped to his shorts and undershirt, Q tossed his clothes on a chair piled with more clothes and half the items tumbled to the floor.
"I'm hiring you a maid," James glanced around at the clutter. "Where did you buy all this nonsense? Are those comic books? They better not be about American superheroes. That's near treason for a MI6 employee."
Smiling at his small joke (really, no one appreciated his humor properly), he turned to leave.
"Bond," Q called from the bed. "Will you – can you just – don't leave yet."
James paused in the doorway, and of course, Moneypenny had to chime in.
"Don't you dare leave. Stay for a bit."
James sighed.
"Stay and I'll write a memo to fudge accounts and get you a better car for your new lease," she tempted.
"Well," he turned back to the bedroom, "I could stay for a few minutes."
He lifted up the chair to empty it and moved it between the door and the bed. Sitting down he picked up an old comic that was wrapped in plastic, a paradox with all the junk strewn about the room. "Union Jack? He looks like a spry fellow with our colors on his chest."
"He's a Brit but it'swritten by Americans."
"Ugh," James tossed the comics aside.
Q lay in bed with a light comforter over him, staying on his side to face James. "I wasn't completely sorry," he blurted out.
"Come again?"
"You made me apologize but I wasn't sorry. I was sorry that you spanked me, but just for that. Mallory's horrible. M was a right old dragon but she reminded me of – of –"
"Your mum?" James smiled at the description of the fiercest woman he had ever known.
"My grandmum."
"Mmm. Thankfully, she's not here to hear that. Did you ever read the transcripts on how she brought me on to MI6?"
"No."
"Well, it was several years after I graduated. My parents had been dead for a decade, but I refused to go back to my family home. I took up residence in London and I was looking for a job while I kept up hobbies of running, shooting, and boxing. I never dreamed I could merge all three in one job until the day I got a call to go to a meeting with a very strong-spoken woman."
He talked about the early days and the nostalgia swept over him as he remembered the first faces he had met during his training. Q's eyes fluttered closed and his breathing evened out, but James kept talking in a low voice.
Pain of memories edged up, but he pushed them down like he had with all painful experiences. The best agents acted and responded like machines, incapable of feeling.
At one point he paused, surprised by the tightness in his throat. He had been recounting the first time he had disobeyed M's direct order and how she had nearly skinned him alive when he reported back to her.
"Don't stop," Moneypenny's voice sounded tight with tears. "I knew her, too. Keep talking."
"The boy's asleep."
"Then I'll come over," he heard the rustle of papers. "We'll have the end of your story and a strong cuppa."
"This place isn't fit for a woman."
"Really, James," Moneypenny replied, "you are terrible with women. You treat us as either sex objects or mother replacements."
"And which would you rather be?"
"Behave, or I'll bring that broken ruler thing with me and put it to good use across your backside."
"That, my dear, could go either way."
The End