"A loop here, a twist there, and..." Moneypenny's precise fingers smoothed and pressed the silk into position. "Perfect! Not that it's going to be for long if you keep fidgeting like that."
"It's wrong! Can't you see it's all wrong?!" Q reached up to fiddle with his tie, but upon receiving a stern look from Moneypenny, settled for buttoning and unbuttoning his cuffs.
"Should I be taking that as a criticism of my tailoring technique - which would be very, very unwise - or a veiled reference to something deeper going on here?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Moneypenny." Q sighed and and gave her quick a peck on the cheek. "Ignore the not-so-dulcet tones of me descending slowly into madness."
"Come on, then." Her hand encircled his wrist before not-so-gently tugging him toward the couch. "Talk."
"Oh, it's pointless, isn't it?" Q leaned back with another sigh and covered his face with his hands. "I've not only dug my own grave, I've engraved the bloody headstone. Nothing to do now but lie in it."
"Is it really as dramatic as all that?" Moneypenny arched one perfect brow in his direction. "I mean, it is only a Christmas party."
Q opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again just as quickly. He repeated the process two or three times, to Moneypenny's obvious amusement, before settling on a deadly serious pronouncement of: "You can't laugh. Or tell anyone. Especially him."
"All right." Though her expression briefly wavered, it was soon schooled into submission. "I promise."
"Well, Moneypenny, the fact of the matter is...I may have a tiny, miniscule, infinitesimal bit of a...a thing for a certain agent." Wringing his hands, Q looked at her anxiously.
"I'm sorry, I thought you were going to tell me something I didn't know." Perhaps feeling a twinge of guilt at Q groaning and burying his face in the back of the couch, she reached out to take his hand.
"Look - has it occurred to that constantly churning brain of yours that maybe you're overcomplicating a simple situation?" She patted his hand companionably.
"Simple?'" Q demanded. He could think of no moniker less well suited to the series of contradictory thoughts and emotions currently ricocheting around his brain. "Simple? My dear Moneypenny, this situation is many, many things, but let me assure you, simple is not one of them.
"Well, let's make it a little simpler, then? You go to the party with 007 - pro?" Her manner was patient, but firm: a teacher imparting a lesson to a lagging student.
"Not having to explain why I made him put on a penguin suit, then cancelled at the last minute, for one," Q muttered. He snuck a glance at Moneypenny to see if he was due for a reprimand.
"That's the spirit, love." She skimmed her fingers through his hair, righting the strands he'd sent flying in his agitation.
"Not to mention it would finally show Roger Davies who's the real success." The image of dancing the night away in Bond's arms, his old nemesis watching on in envy, did hold an unmistakable allure.
"Nothing quite like sweet revenge, just in time for Christmas." Moneypenny's clever fingers continued to smooth and straighten the bits he had rumpled.
"He can be quite good company, actually, when he leaves off the stoic, man of mystery bit.'" Q's irrational flights of fancy about the sort of company they could be keeping together were surely irrelevant to the discussion, so he neglected to mention them.
"So, to sum up: on the pro side, we have you, at a fancy party, dancing the night away with a gorgeous man you fancy, while you rub it in the noses of every bastard who made your school days a living hell?"
"Put like that, it's rather persuasive, isn't it?" Q sighed. Was he actually considering going through with this?
"Which brings me, I suppose, to one question: what exactly is the problem?" Moneypenny crossed her arms and regarded him expectantly.
"The problem," Q mused, tapping his fingers together, "is that spending a holiday party with him, Cambridge, snow, and that tuxedo is liable to give me a nervous breakdown. You know the sort of thing - manifests in symptoms like kissing the wrong people at the wrong time?" On a snow-covered bridge. Under some convenient mistletoe. In the front seat of his Aston Martin. Temptation was omnipresent.
"From where I'm sitting, it seems like 007 is hauling himself a couple of hours down icy roads on a chilly evening to go and make you look good. Maybe he wouldn't be as wrong a person as you think." Moneypenny's expression was infuriatingly inscrutable. Q wished, not for the first time, that he was half as good with people as he was with computers.
"I suppose it's too late to cancel, anyway." Q took stock of his reflection in the mirror, instinctively reaching to make an adjustment, only to find that Moneypenny's ministrations had left him looking impeccable. Terrified, but impeccable.
He was just weighing the merits of faking his own death when there came a light knocking at the door. His subsequent lunge for the back door was swiftly intercepted by Moneypenny. "Oh no, you don't. That's quite enough nonsense for one night. Now, are you going to open that door and face him like a adult, or will I be dragging you?"
Feeling once again like a petulant child, Q shuffled to the front door, took a deep breath, and opened it. The breath left him all at once, with the force of a punch to the gut. There, standing on his doorstep, gold hair glistening with snow, was an immaculately tailored Bond. In his hand, a single, long-stemmed red rose, also dusted with snow.
In that moment, Q did something he hadn't attempted since the tender age of five: he prayed. Specifically, he prayed for a Christmas miracle. With Bond looking like that, Q feeling like he was, and a whole night of festivities ahead of them, he was bloody well going to need one.
