He wakes up half-hard with a hand stoutly affixed to each of his Quartermaster's surprisingly lush buttocks. To be fair, said Quartermaster is all-hard and draped over him like a leopard-print blanket, but in Q's case this is human male biology and not to be helped.

Bond closes his eyes and takes a deep, calming breath. Then he gently removes his hands from the soft cotton of the younger man's flimsy pyjama-bottoms and slowly rolls him back onto the bed.

For all his apparent lack of subtlety on the field, he's always been very good at leaving bedrooms quietly to avoid morning-after conversations. He pauses at the door, though, to look back and drink his fill of the sight of Q flopped on his back with his bedsheets twisted around his ankles and his pyjamas askew around his gangly limbs and straining erection.

Forcing himself to breathe before he chokes, Bond leaves the bedroom and pads into the dark and the quiet of the flat's kitchen and puts the kettle on. He isn't used to the warmth that pools in his chest remembering how Q had reached over and laid a hand on his arm before he fell asleep – far more familiar, though, is the flush of heat from the memory of how he had awoken, damp breath pillowing against the side of his neck, his own treacherous hands pulling the lithe techie towards his groin.

He goes back armed with tea, having re-donned the trousers he'd dropped after agreeing to spend the night and hung his shirt over his shoulders, and perches with it on the side of the bed that he'd slept in, watching the younger man's face as he breathes calmly, a thin sheen of sweat showing in the places his pyjamas don't quite cover: the delectable curve of his neck, the little dips between his pelvis and his hipbones.

Whatever dream the Quartermaster is having, it seems to be trundling along nicely; it's a shame to wake him, but he knows the shame of not waking him and being discovered watching him like this would be worse for both of them, so he clears his throat and gives it a try.

"Q," he says softly, wanting to ease the other man into wakefulness rather than jolt him awake, but the word seems to have the opposite effect: upon hearing it, the lanky genius makes a whimpering sound and tries to thrust his hips towards something. Every inch of Bond's body flushes with brilliant heat, and the effort involved in not just jumping on his younger counterpart and throwing his dream into reality that way is almost crippling.

He tries again, trying not to let his voice shake, raising it and keeping it firm in a way that couldn't be misconstrued even in a dream as a sexual invitation. "Quartermaster," he says sternly.

But Q moans, and despite how hard Bond has been trying not to look, he notices the steady slide of a pale hand down a flat stomach and towards –

"Q!" he almost bellows, knowing that the Quartermaster would rather be woken now than wake naturally after having embarrassed himself like that. Of course, Bond doesn't find it embarrassing so much as helplessly arousing, but Q isn't to know that.

The younger man opens his eyes slowly, drawing in and letting out a deep sigh. Then he remembers, or seems to, and jerks into a sitting position, scrambling for the blankets to protect the tiny shreds of his modesty.

Bond smiles in what he hopes is an amiable manner. "Good morning, Q," he says brightly, as though he hadn't been avidly watching the younger man attempt to rut himself to climax a few moments ago. "I made tea, but you'll probably want to have a shower first."

Q stares at him for a moment. "Yes," he says shortly, trying to make his way out of the bed in a dignified manner but failing and walking awkwardly towards the bathroom. Bond shrugs to himself and makes his way back to sitting at the kitchen table with his own cup of tea, trying to ignore the fact that he knows exactly what his Quartermaster is doing in the bathroom.

Ten minutes later the lanky man joins him in the kitchen, dressed in a periwinkle-blue pullover that makes his skin look creamy and edible and studiously adjusting his glasses so that he doesn't have to look him in the eyes. The cup of tea opposite Bond is cooler than he himself would have liked it, but the Quartermaster barely makes a face as he sits down and drinks it. After a moment, Q clears his throat and looks up. "Sorry," he says, his cheeks immediately flushing endearingly scarlet. "About, you know, before."

I'm not, Bond wants to say, but he smiles tightly and shakes his head instead. "I'm a man, too," he says calmly.

Q smiles and opens his mouth to say something undoubtedly sardonic, but the sound of keys in the front-door lock cuts him off and they both look around. The younger man looks at Bond as the door opens, looking horrified. "Oh, he isn't," Bond growls, that hot and ugly feeling flooding his stomach again. The Quartermaster reaches across the table and grabs his hand to stop him from standing up.

That's how Terry finds them, sitting over tea in the kitchen together, Bond's shirt still unbuttoned over his bare chest with their hands linked on the tabletop.

The passage of his eyes is painfully obvious, from Q's face to Bond's torso to their hands. Bond tries to pull away, but Q – perhaps sensing the intention to get up from the table and bodily remove the other man from the flat – holds on tighter.

Terry's upper lip curls disgustingly. "I knew it," he hisses. "I knew it – this is why you got him to get rid of me last night, isn't it, so you could have him instead? I knew it was the right thing to come here before you left, knew I could catch you at it. What makes you think he's any different from me? Now you've had your magnificent victory shag-fest with Mr Secret Agent double-oh-seven what makes you think he'd stay with a filthy slut like –"

Right.

Bond yanks his hand out of the Quartermaster's, his blood roaring in his ears, and before he quite knows what he's doing he has the burly man pinned against the wall, his feet dangling an inch off the floor, one large calloused hand squeezing dangerously against his throat. Bond can hear Q shouting, 007, but it sounds like it's coming from too far away to listen to. His world, such as it is, has been reduced to the sensation of Terry's pulse accelerating under the web between his fingertips and the blind fury coursing through his own bloodstream.

"That was your last warning," he growls. "If either of us ever see you again, it won't be my hand cutting into your jugular."

The man's face is purple and his eyes have started to roll back, and Bond knows he's just moments from passing out, so he steps back, releasing him to slide down the wall and lie helpless on the floor. Q stops yelling at him, but Bond isn't finished. As Terry gasps for breath, Bond nudges his stomach with a bare foot. "Give him your key now," he says, his voice still so low and primal it's almost hurting his throat. "Then get your stuff and get out."

Whimpering, Terry snatches his keys out of his jacket pocket and throws them at Q while desperately scrambling out of the room towards the bedroom. Taking a deep breath, Bond turns back to the young Quartermaster. "Are you all right?" he asks gently.

But Q's face is like thunder. "Am I all right? Christ, 007, what was that?"

Bond blinks, confused. "I… he called you…"

"Do you honestly think that's the first time he's called me a slut?" the younger man retorts, his voice rising back into a shout. "I don't always need you to defend my honour, 007. Believe it or not, sometimes I can handle myself!"

Startled, Bond holds up his hands in surrender, feeling his heart sink. "I was just trying –"

The Quartermaster freezes at the look on his face. "Oh, God," he says, his entire body crumpling into itself as he sinks back into a chair. "He was right, wasn't he? You didn't do any of this for me, you did it because you were jealous. Because you wanted me."

"What?" Bond splutters. "That doesn't make any sense! I did it because –"

Q picks up their empty teacups, standing up with a clatter, and dumps them into the sink. "I trust you can find the rest of your clothes and find your own way out," he says, picking up his laptop and jacket from where he left them the previous night. "I'm going to miss my tube."

"I've still got the car," he argues after him, watching helplessly as he shrugs into his jacket and yanks the door open viciously. "Where are you going?"

"To work!" the Quartermaster yells over his shoulder as he slams the door behind him.

Bond barely pauses to snatch up his socks and shoes and jacket before sprinting out of the door behind him. He's not sure what he wants to say, but there has to be something he can say to counteract whatever Q has in his head – and he's not even sure what that is. Even if he had acted the way he did towards Terry because he was jealous of him – and he can't be entirely sure that that isn't the case – he was still doing it for Q.

However, he's barely started the engine of the car when his mobile phone rings and M's voice is panicking at him, something about an Ambassador's son being kidnapped and an outrageous ransom note and he doesn't make it into the office at all, let alone corner the Quartermaster and force him to see reason. Although, as he thinks about it late that night when the last of the kidnappers is sobbing underneath his shoe, perhaps that wouldn't have been the best approach to it anyway.

So it's not until the next day, at precisely ten-thirty in the morning, that Bond steadfastly wanders into Q's office with two steaming mugs of Earl Grey. The young Quartermaster looks up at him and stiffens visibly, his entire body suddenly on edge. "What are you doing here, 007?" he asks sharply.

Bond tries to wave his handful without slopping it, fails, and sets it down in front of the lanky genius instead. "Tea. It's ten-thirty, I've got to check in with Q-branch."

The Quartermaster sighs. "I can get someone to give you the documentation pertaining to yesterday's job. You're not required to come to me personally."

"I know I'm not," Bond says indignantly. "I came to apologise for yesterday morning. I overreacted when he insulted you. But I'm… not sure I deserved everything you said afterwards."

There's a long pause, and then Q gestures at the seat opposite him. Bond takes it as an invitation to continue, so he does. "I don't… think I can tell you that I didn't do it because I was jealous, or because I wanted you, but I can tell you that that wasn't what I was thinking at the time." The younger man only arches an implacable eyebrow at him. Bond takes a deep breath. "All I was thinking was that you were unhappy. I've got to know you with all this tea and conversation, Q, and since I met Terry," he spits out the name with no small amount of malice, "you've stopped humming to yourself, and you've stopped dancing to The Pink Panther when you thought I wouldn't notice, and you started spending more and more time here like you didn't want to go home and you stopped packing your own lunch like you were trying to leave as soon as you could in the morning and every time you jumped when I accidentally touched you it broke my heart because you weren't you." He pauses, because the look on Q's face is chest-achingly hopeful and maybe, maybe, there's still a chance if he doesn't screw it up. "I missed you," he finishes quietly. "The cheerful you."

He sits back, leaves the declaration on the table and picks up his tea instead. Q stares at him for a while. "I'm not sure what you're saying," he says finally.

Bond smiles, because it's not a rejection. "I'm just trying to say –"

His phone rings. He catches the swear words before they leave his mouth, because Q is shifting in his seat and looking pointedly at Bond's pockets, so he yanks out the Q-branch phone and tries to answer it with even a touch of his usual aplomb. "I must say, M, you have appalling timing," he says lightly.

The shadow of a smile passes over the Quartermaster's face. "Where are you, 007?" M asks, ignoring his comment.

"Q-branch," Bond answers questioningly. "Am I supposed to be somewhere else?"

There's a pause. "What are you doing in Q-branch at this time of the morning?"

Bond frowns. "I'm checking in with Q," he says, slightly nonplussed. "I'm almost always in Q-branch at this time of morning. At your behest, I had thought."

He looks up at the Quartermaster, but the younger man is looking the other way, staring determinedly into the depths of his teacup with a delightful blush creeping up from his neck to fill out his cheekbones. "I haven't sent you down to Q-branch in months, 007. I had been led to believe that I would be pursuing a lost cause – I admit I've been wondering who you were shagging down there to get your paperwork in on time."

He spares a smile for the statement, but the implication isn't lost on him. "You never told Q to keep an eye on me," he says blankly.

"Certainly not," M responds crisply. "My predecessor trusted you with her life. I was prepared to do the same."

Q lifts the teacup to his lips, and it's obvious even from where Bond is sitting that his hands are shaking. "Was there something you needed, M?" he asks shortly.

"I was going to make what I thought was a hopeless attempt to remind you that the Ambassador wants a written report on yesterday's incident," M says, sounding wryly amused now. "Apparently you don't need the motivation."

Bond hangs up the phone and looks at the Quartermaster expectantly. "All those requests to test new weaponry or look over files," he says softly. "They were straight from you?"

The young genius bites his bottom lip, causing the top one to pooch over even more adorably than usual. "I liked you," he says after a moment, his voice so quiet Bond almost asks him to repeat himself. "And you never talked to anyone. I thought you might be lonely."

He smiles gently. "I was," he says. Q looks up at him and smiles briefly. "I don't have friends," Bond muses, sitting back in his chair. "It's just something I don't get around to doing, and I'd come to like it. That you still managed to somehow worm your way into becoming one is quite remarkable."

The Quartermaster shrugs self-deprecatingly, but there's the tiniest hint of a smile on his face, and so Bond leans forward again for the final push. "Q, when I said I wanted you," he says urgently, "I meant I want you. I want The Wizard of Oz and the celery sticks and the sarky comments about my non-existent personal life, not just your arse or your eyes or your incredible computer-genius brain. I want all of you."

It hangs there for a minute. Then Q jumps up and half-climbs over his desk towards him; Bond catches the merest glimpse of a desperate expression and the tiniest graze of sculpted lips on his own before the Quartermaster knocks over Bond's half-empty, still-hot teacup into his lap and he has to stand up, shouting at the pain.

"Bollocks!"

When he looks back, yanking at the waistband of his expensive slacks until he can hold the fabric away from his skin to stop the burning, the young genius is still there, draped over the table, his chin now resting on one hand and his rump bent over the edge of his desk. His body flushes hot for a reason that has nothing to do with the tea seeping through his undergarments and everything to do with the completely unapologetic expression on the Quartermaster's face. "Q!"

The young man smiles. "Sorry," he says, not looking sorry at all. Then he sobers and scoots backwards off the table, arse wriggling enticingly. "I really am sorry. And about before. I just… I have a fairly specific type when it comes to boyfriends and they're always dangerous. Terry isn't the first one that's turned nasty."

Bond grins, and then Q is standing up and walking towards him, and Bond is stepping backwards just in case he's got his own cup of tea stashed behind his back in order to toss that over him as well. "I think you need to learn the difference between a dangerous man and a bad man," he says.

The Quartermaster laughs. "I think I'm going to be learning that very soon," he quips, his confident tone of voice at odds with the slightly uncertain, hopeful expression on his face.

"First lesson," Bond begins, flapping his ruined trousers at the younger man. "If you pour tea into the lap of a bad man, you get socked in the face. Pour tea into the lap of a dangerous man, and this happens."

Q's body folds neatly into his when Bond pins him against the wall, and the younger man giggles and flushes as Bond takes an earlobe between his teeth and sucks it. His arms wrap tightly around Bond's torso as his mouth is claimed and plundered, and he sighs contentedly as they break apart years later. "I think we should get you out of those pants, 007," he says lazily.

Bond grinds his uncomfortably wet crotch into his Quartermaster's and thinks that that sounds like a marvellous idea indeed.