Chapter 3: What Q Did

"So," said Q, looking at James Bond over the rim of his cup of steaming Earl Grey. "Your new flat."

Online weather reports had been grim, although Japanese meteorologists appeared to be in agreement about the duration of the typhoon. Flights from the closest international airport—in Osaka—would begin operating within one to two days. Having decided to make the best of an awkward situation, Q eyed Bond surreptitiously from behind his lashes and wondered how best to make conversation with him.

It didn't help that most of their previous verbal exchanges had consisted of rather barbed comments on the subject of age, competence, and whether or nor field agents were becoming obsolete—or explanations of whatever piece of tech Q was handing over to him. Or, during various missions, terse and precisely worded instructions, conveyed by Q to Bond via his earpiece. Q glanced at Bond's arm, its makeshift bandage, only faintly discernible through his robe, and then at his face, but 007's ice-blue eyes were focused on the newspaper brought up, along with breakfast, by the Room Service waiter an hour earlier.

It also didn't help that Bond, for all of his casual arrogance, his often infuriating self-confidance, was charismatic enough, or at least bloody attractive enough, to make the people he worked with at MI6 tend to ignore his less appealing qualities. The man was accustomed to being on the receiving end of admiration and awe, tributes that Q had consistently refused to deliver. Q mulled over the probability that many of his colleagues would envy him the time spent in 007's bed (if they ever found out about it), although nothing even vaguely erotic had happened between them. He himself had been making an effort to conceal his embarrassm—er, annoyance about the entire thing, and was grateful for having been too fatigued, the night before, to fantasize about the unusual state of affairs when Bond slid beneath the bedclothes next to him.

Q took a fortifying mouthful of tea, swallowed, and cleared his throat, trying not to think about what 007 had looked like in his swim trunks, on the edge of the rooftop pool, and what it had felt like when Bond kissed him (entirely against his will, of course) in the hallway by the lift. He had been bristly, his lips warm and firm, and it had been a very nice kiss, in spite of the fact that it was only for show.

Q cleared his throat again.

"Hmm?" Bond said, lowering the newspaper and raising his eyes. "Sorry…you were saying?"

"How's your arm?" Q began, and then stopped. "I mean, I was asking about your flat. But. Um. How does the arm feel?"

If Bond looked puzzled, it was because he wasn't accustomed to hearing either hesitation or confusion in his Quartermaster's voice. And because they had never really engaged in a discussion that didn't have something to do with MI6, malfunctioning tech, Bond's latest assignment, parallels between grand old warships and forty-something Double O agents, and Q's (nonexistent) spots.

"It's functional," he finally said, cautiously raising and lowering the appendage in question. "I congratulate you on a job well done. As for my new flat—"

A light tapping on the door interrupted him, and he rose to his feet, casting a wry look at Q as he went to answer it. Two men in dark suits were standing in the hall; they asked, very politely, in English, to be admitted, and Bond responded to their request in Japanese.*

They were plainclothes policemen—detectives, no doubt— and although they were courteous, and spoke quietly, it was apparent that they were tired of running through the same questions with the hotel's numerous guests. Bond spoke to them briefly, at one point indicating Q with a tilt of his head, and both men turned to look at him. Q stood still, adopting the calm, cool hauteur he displayed in the computer lab of Q Branch, and privately thinking that he must look a sight, his eyes reddened from lack of sufficient sleep, his hair in a more frightful disarray than usual.

Evidently satisfied with what Bond had told him, both detectives, or whatever they were, took their leave moments later. As they left the room, one of them, the younger, glanced quickly at the unmade bed, and then at Q, his eyes bright with surmise as they swept over him from head to toe.

Q bit his lower lip, and then silently consigned to perdition the late Mr Midgard, the Italian diplomat's wife, the Kyoto police force, and James Bond, in that order.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me," he finally said, staring at the carpet, "what it was you said to those detectives,"

"No, I don't suppose I am," Bond replied mildly. "Q, have you got a waterproof bandage in that first aid kit of yours? I believe I could use a hot shower."

Q silently fetched the kit and unearthed a bandage of the proper size, while Bond slid his toweling robe off of his shoulders, pulling his arms from the sleeves and letting the robe fall to his waist. He unwound the gauze wrapped around his upper arm, but made no move to take the bandage, so Q stepped close to him and fastened the waterproof, gel-like strip over the stitched-up wound. Bond radiated body heat, like a compact furnace, and Q backed away from him as quickly as he could without being obvious about it.

"Thanks," Bond said as he headed in the direction of the bathroom, unfastening the belt of his robe as he went. "Check the airport status, would you? I'm hoping we can get out of here by tomorrow. And give a shout if somebody else comes knocking."

"Right," muttered Q, turning his head just in time to see 007 drop his hotel robe to the tiled bathroom floor and stride naked to the shower stall without bothering to shut the bathroom door…did the man have no sense of modesty whatsoever?

Q sat down on the edge of the bed, put his head in his hands, and resolutely counted to ten.

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By the time Bond emerged from the steam-filled bathroom, absently toweling his short blond hair, his Quartermaster had recovered both his poise and his temper, and was calmly reviewing data on his laptop. When his eyes weren't glued to the screen, he was looking hopefully at the windows, where the rain was still cascading down the glass like rivers of liquid silver in the odd, greenish light of the storm.

"Tomorrow's flight schedule should be back to normal," he announced, keeping his eyes averted as Bond dressed. "Fortunately, communication lines are open. I've got an encrypted message from HQ. You're to report as soon as our flight lands. Mallory, I mean, M, has an assignment for you."

"What, already?" Bond murmured as he fastened his trousers. "And you?"

"It goes without saying," Q replied dryly, "that I'm also expected at HQ immediately. Although I was promised two days off. It looks as if they'll have to wait."

"What, HQ?"

"No, the two days off," Q snapped, finally turning his head and noting, with a kind of relief, that Bond was fully dressed. He was wearing a casual but obviously expensive sweater, of a blue-green that made his eyes appear even bluer, rather than his usual impeccably pressed shirt, and Q noted that the MI6 Rolex he had labored over a week before was unscathed and clasped neatly round one tanned wrist.

"I haven't really been on this job long enough to merit a proper holiday, but—"

"You poor kid," Bond said unexpectedly, glancing from the laptop to Q. "You're a bit young to have your nose to the grindstone, twenty-four seven."

"I'm perfectly capable of fulfilling my duties," Q said coolly, but Bond only raised his eyebrows.

"I meant, it wreaks havoc with the social life, doesn't it?"

"The…" Q began, and then paused. Social life? There had been a time when he actually had one. At university, academically leagues ahead of his fellow students, he had been able to indulge in the sort of things students usually indulge in, although his keen, restless intelligence often kept him in the library or the computer lab long after most of his peers had fled to the pubs and clubs. Still, there had been friends, evenings out, good times. And now? Since being made Quartermaster for MI6, he had come to realize that the job meant constant work, dealing with constant challenges, constant pressure, long work hours, and a frustrating state of celibacy.

No wonder MI6, in the past, had almost always chosen older men, well into middle age, as Head of Q Branch.

"Get yourself laid," Moneypenny had told him, half in jest, before he left for Japan, and Q had snorted with indignation, even as his brain acknowledged that he might not mind doing just that. There had been relationships in his student days, plus some casual, recreational sex (admitted to university at the age of fifteen, he had lost his virginity a month before his seventeenth birthday), but for a long time now, there had been nothing. Lately, in the aftermath of the Raoul Silva affair, there had been, quite literally, not a minute to spare for the kind of socializing that might lead to intimacy, and Q had never been much for the one-off type of shag that an evening at the pub could conceivably lead to. On the weekends, which Q sometimes had off, he often fell into bed and slept for ten to twelve hours straight, his body's attempt to make up for the too-lengthy sessions in the Q Branch workshop or computer lab.

Realizing that he had been silent for some moments, Q raised his eyes to Bond's with a little shrug of apology, only to find that Bond was studying him with narrowed eyes.

"What?" asked Q, defensively, but Bond only gave a quirk of a half-smile.

"Look, the rain's letting up a bit," he said, cocking his head towards the window. Obediently glancing outside, Q noticed that the wind had also died down, as the trees planted neatly along the edge of the pavement were no longer bent at forty-five degree angles. "It should be alright to go outside tonight, eat something other than hotel food. In the meantime, I imagine you have work to do,"—he pointed at Q's laptop—"and I need to have a word with someone at the Japanese secret service."

Bond was reaching for his jacket as he spoke, sliding the Walther into its holster. "In case I need to contact you, I promise I'll use the secure encrypted line," he said, pocketing his mobile phone. "Well, I shan't be long…and this time, I mean it."

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By seven that evening the wind had died down to the point where it was possible to stand on the pavement without fear of being bowled over, or struck by debris or a staggering pedestrian. The rain had also lessened, and shortly before eight o'clock, Bond collared a reluctant Q and led him along narrow streets, past old wooden houses roofed with clay tiles, to a miniscule eatery only large enough to accommodate about a dozen people at the single counter. The interior was plain, even somewhat shabby, but Bond insisted that the food prepared in this family-run restaurant was truly exceptional.

As Bond ordered their meal and a round of beer, Q mulled over 007's earlier statement about his lack of a social life. To a large degree, it was accurate. Old friends from uni had mostly fallen away, as they and he had moved on into different careers, and although he kept in touch with some, their contact was primarily electronic, through emails and the like. It was only on rare occasions that he got together with somebody from his pre-MI6 days, for a drink or a dinner after work.

He had no close friendships within MI6, and had made it a point not to get particularly chummy with colleagues from any of the departments. However, he got on quite well with Moneypenny and Tanner, and his own Q Branch staff liked him enough to keep his Scrabble mug filled with hot Earl Grey at all hours, and address him conscientiously as "Sir," even while teasing him about the state of his hair. Moneypenny had a tendency to mother him a bit, though they were close in age, and in the stoic, poker-faced Tanner he had discovered a fellow Shakespeare addict. When Q made his periodic reports to M, and was inevitably kept waiting in the anteroom while Mallory played politics with some visiting official, he and Tanner would run through lines from their favorite plays, or argue over the merits of various actors. Once, when M's meeting with a minion from the PM dragged on for twenty-five minutes beyond schedule, they enacted the entire deposition scene from Richard II, to the bemusement of Moneypenny, and the eventual astonishment of M, who opened his office door to find his right hand man and the Head of Q Branch having a kind of tug-of-war with his secretary's elastic hairband. ("It's meant to be a crown," Q attempted to explain, only to be met with a chilly stare and the words, "A pity, Miss Moneypenny, that I can't send them both to the Tower.")**

As for the Double O agents, Q had, by this time, worked with all of them in one way or another, either conveying instructions to them by electronic or verbal means, or arranging for extraction teams to retrieve them from whatever difficult or dangerous situation they happened to be in. They seemed to have gotten over their surprise at his youth and their doubts about his abilities, and all now addressed him with respect and varying degrees of friendly courtesy. All of them, that is, except for 007, who continued to snipe at him on a regular basis.

And now, he and 007 were sitting at a counter in a tiny restaurant, on a tiny Kyoto sidestreet, eating fresh tempura, made right before their eyes by the solitary chef on the other side of the counter, and drinking Japanese beer. They were surrounded by local salarymen, all of whom were chatting away cheerfully, with each other or on their mobile phones.

"I never did answer you about my flat, did I?" Bond was saying as he poured his Kirin into a tall glass. "I can't exactly complain; it's large enough. But most of my things are still unpacked. Lying about in cardboard boxes."

"Still? Haven't you had the place for months?"

"Three," replied Bond calmly, capturing a crisp morsel of asperagus in his chopsticks. "But I can't say I spend much time there."

Q, whose jet lag had not quite dissipated, realized that maintaining a genuine, non-work related conversation with Bond in the flesh was much more difficult than talking to him via a comm link. Bugger.

"Moneypenny thinks you should hire someone to fix up your flat for you. You know, unpack, organize, decorate, and all that. What do you suppose she would say if she could see you now?"

"She would say, 'Fancy your spending a night out at a humble neighborhood tempura bar rather than a four-star restaurant, stone sober, and in the company of our Quartermaster.'"

Yes, fancy your spending a night out without having to shoot or shag somebody," Q retorted.

"I actually do have a modicum of personal life, Q," Bond retorted good naturedly. "Even if it's only between missions. At least I don't live underground, glued to a computer console, with only technicians and mugs of tea for company, like some people I could name."

"Hanson says your missions are your personal life," Q said desperately, because he felt himself to be running out of witty repartees. "And that she can't understand why you haven't been slapped with at least a dozen paternity suits."

Hedwig Hanson, a statuesque blonde who was secretary to the Head of Medical, was famous for her inability to govern, or censor, the rapid fire prattle that came out of her mouth. She patently adored the field agents, but had little time even to speak to the technology crowd—including skinny Quartermasters—unless forced to take down information about them for the Medical files. For all that, she was a popular girl, and Q had once caught Michaels, one of his star programmers, depositing a bouquet of flowers on her desk.

Bond was chuckling under his breath. "I'm bloody well short on cash; lend me some of your yen, would you? Paternity suits? What rubbish. Apparently Hanson knows nothing about the efficacy of modern day birth control."

"That's because Hanson has about three molecules of brain," replied Q, fishing in his wallet for yen. "You Double Os like her because she has generous subcutaneous deposits of adipose tissue in her frontal region."

"Showoff," Bond said, so gently that Q's eyes widened a little. "Just say she has big tits and have done with it, like everybody else. And yes, she does, and no, that isn't why all the Double Os like her. She happens to bake the most incredible chocolate biscuits, and is very nice about sharing."

"Sharing what, her tits or the biscuits?"

"She insists we deserve extra special treatment," Bond responded, without answering the question. "Because any of us could, er, disappear during any given mission."

"Laying it on a bit thick, isn't she?" Q muttered, watching as Bond paid the bill. "It's obvious to everyone what she's after."

"It's obvious you're in a foul mood," Bond said. He was smiling, and Q could see him rolling his eyes. "For shame, Q. There are moments when you sound like a schoolboy. Here's your change; one doesn't leave tips in Japanese restaurants, remember?"

"Of course I remember," Q said stiffly, pocketing the crumpled bills. "And I'm not in a foul mood," he added mutinously. "I just…I'm just…"

"Sleep-deprived," Bond continued for him. "A usual state of affairs for you, I should think. Just finish your beer, there's a good fellow, and we'll be on our way. Hanson says you don't even remember to eat, and that's why you look so malnourished. She says one of the girls in Q Branch should take you in hand and force-feed you."

"She's masses of idiocy," grumbled Q into his beer.

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Back in Bond's hotel room, 007 opened a new bottle of Scotch as Q packed his things into his luggage, and checked messages on his computer. He accepted a glass of Scotch with a splash of soda and ice—Bond was drinking his without either—and absently surfed online. He discovered an old obituary of the former M, saved to his hard drive, and brought up the accompanying photograph onscreen.

Bond looked at the image for a moment, his face unreadable, and then looked away as he offered Q another dollop of Scotch.

"Trying to get me drunk, are you?" Q joked, and was surprised to see the skin suddenly tighten along Bond's cheekbones, as though he had just clenched his teeth together.

"You get on well with Mall—with our new M, don't you?" Bond finally said in a noncommittal voice. "I know you were picked by…by his predecessor, but he seems to quite approve of your work."

"I can't help but think of him as Mallory," Q said, his speech a little blurry with drink and the remains of his jet lag. "I may have to address him as M, but he'll always be Mallory to me. And M will always be—" he waved his arm in the direction of the laptop screen, and promptly knocked over his glass.

The glass rolled slowly to the edge of the table and then over the edge. The thick hotel carpeting saved it from breakage, and it simply rolled a bit farther, the remains of the ice cubes tinkling cheerfully. Bond and Q made a simultaneous and ill-timed dive in its direction, and their skulls came together with a resounding clunk.

Bond reacted with a muffled grunt and sat down on the carpet very hard, but Q, who was seeing stars, yelled "Ow!" and then "Fuck!" as he went sprawling, the back of his head making solid contact with the leg of a chair.

"Ow," he said again, a little sullenly, as he sat back up, hands feeling for his ringing head. Feeling like an idiot wasn't something he was accustomed to, and it didn't help that Bond was grinning ruefully even as he rubbed his own brow. He realized that this was probably the first time 007 had heard him swear, and it was definitely the first time he had seen him even partially drunk.

They both stood up, Q gingerly feeling first his temple and then the back of his head. A moment later, Bond had him by the shoulder, and was carefully searching through his hair with his other hand.

"Stand still," Bond said a little impatiently, as Q tried to shrug him off. "You're going to be sprouting a lump the size of an egg in a minute."

"You needn't bother with that," Q mumbled, but Bond simply snorted.

"I can't possibly appear at HQ with a damaged Quartermaster in tow. They'll say it's my fault."

"It is your fault," Q said thickly, trying to squirm away from 007's grip. "Your fault. The whisky. All that, um, beer. Whatever. Ow, bloody fuck!"

"Such language," said Bond, who was chuckling audibly. "Not the sort of thing I'm accustomed to hearing from you, Quartermaster. Stop wriggling, I can't possibly be hurting you." (His fingers, on Q's scalp, were now very gentle, and it wasn't pain that was making Q fidget and try to edge away.) "Fortunately for both of us, your cranium seems to be intact, although I imagine you'll have quite a bump there, come morning. Speaking of which, we should get some sleep. We'll need to be ready for our flight early; the lines will be terrible, given the storm."

"Right," Q replied, attempting not to sound sulky. He pulled away from Bond and went in search of his toothbrush, thanking the weather gods that this was the last night he would have to spend in 007's bed. Because the touch of those hands had set his senses quivering. It had been a long time, such a long time, since anybody had put so much as a finger on him, and 007… Well, everybody knew Bond was a man for women. Beautiful women, glamorous women. And if he occasionally entertained the notion of rolling about in bed with a male person, it was hardly likely that he would chose his spindly, un-glamorous Quartermaster to do such a thing with.

Notes:

* In the film version of "You Only Live Twice," Bond revealed that he had taken a First (First Class Honors) in Oriental Languages at Cambridge.

** In the 2012 filmed version of Shakespeare's Richard II, King Richard was played by Ben Whishaw, Bolingbroke by Rory Kinnear. The entire deposition scene, in which Richard loses his crown to Bolingbroke, can be found on youtube, and is worth a watch. I am grateful to apiphile's superb Q/Tanner fic, "The Long Haul," archiveofourown dot org slash works slash 733810?view_adult=true for reminding me of this.