"Then why don't you trace the signal you received yesterday?" Bond was all but growling at M, his eyes stony and his face an icy mask. His back still ached from the gash he had received on the mission leading up to his encounter with Q.
"It's not that simple, double-oh seven," M replied. He was seated behind the desk that the old M had been stationed, rubbing his temples in frustration.
Bond, on the other hand, was standing in a mercenary's stance; arms folded and feet shoulder-width apart.
"Q is a very clever man," M paused, contemplating, "If he wanted to disappear, there would be nothing we could do to stop him."
"He wouldn't," Bond said, "Q would never run away without giving a reason. If he had a problem he would make sure the whole world knew about it." A little white lie couldn't hurt.
"As far as you know, agent," M said, without looking up, "Nobody knows what goes on in that genius head of his. He could have all sorts of problems that we don't know about."
Bond remained silent, because he did know. Bond knew Q's passions, his habits, and even the little pet peeves that drove him to wit's end. Q said that he would be back, and by God, he would. He had to.
"Has Q been acting any, differently, lately?" M said, his brows furrowing, "Any change in behavior?"
And suddenly Bond couldn't breathe. He wasn't blind, and he definitely wasn't stupid. He saw the dark circles under Q's eyes, his sudden silence over the earpiece. How he didn't banter back in forth like he used to, how he would drift off into a world completely unknown to anybody but Q himself. No doubt the others in Q branch noticed these things too, but Bond saw more. Bond saw what lay under the too-large sweaters and Bond saw past the excuses and reasons Q had for his sudden weight loss and the like.
Bond saw the ribs jutting out of his chest, and felt the sharp hipbones that protruded from his body. Bond was there for those sleepless nights when Q got lost in the world of numbers, and Bond was there for the nights he slept so solidly it would take a hurricane to wake him up. So fragile, and Bond was cradling his life while also destroying it.
"Maybe we should ask the rest of Q branch, surely they should have noticed if something was amiss." Avoiding the question. Bond would tell them the truth when it came down to it, but if he could push things away for a few moments longer, then he would do just that.
"By doing that we'd send all of those pesky assistants of his into an all-out panic," M said, "We could try Ms. Moneypenny, though. She speaks with him regularly.
"Right," Bond said, his posture weighing down, making him feel a hundred years old.
By the time Eve had been debriefed by M, with absolutely no help from Bond, she was sitting in the chair opposite M with tears in her eyes. She was worried about Q, someone she had grown quite fond of and liked.
"I noticed things, about Q, that were small," she said, "I thought it was just his work ethic, his inability to leave a task unfinished."
"What do you mean?" M asked. Bond wandered over to the window, lips pursed. Every word she said was a battle. He knew it was happening, but when it was said out loud it seemed so very real, and unchanging. He had ruined his precious Q. He had grown to care for the young man, a true and genuine attraction that had nothing to do with sex. And he had broken him, beat him, and savagely hold him close and accept every ounce of forgiveness that he did not deserve.
"Sometimes," Eve continued, "I'd leave work, and Q would be sitting in the lab or at his computer. I'd return later the next day, and sometimes even two days would pass, and there he'd be. The same position I left him in, and most of the time wearing the same clothes."
"So he was overworking himself," M said, pressing Eve further, "nothing new in that." But he didn't get it. Bond looked at Eve's reflection, suddenly violently jealous of her constant presence around Q.
"I saw him have a black eye a few times. Sometimes two, but I could never tell the difference from a hit and a couple days without rest. I'd make him go home weekly, to rest." She finished, sadly. Bond had no right to be protective of him. Bond didn't deserve Q's constant presence, didn't deserve his loving glances or his playful words.
"Oh, one more thing," she added, "I only saw this once and I wasn't really sure about it, but I think I once saw bruises. On his neck, of all places."
Sighing, Bond strolled over to the chair to the right of Eve, and collapsed into it, saying, "We didn't exactly hide it, you've no one to blame but yourselves, really." But nobody forced his hand to strike Q. The fault was his, and his alone.
He could practically hear the gears turning in M's mind.
"Well then, I suppose you know a bit more than you were letting on, Bond," M stated with an air of surprise.
"I don't understand," Eve said, "What were you hiding?"
"Q and I," Bond said, "we were in," he struggled for words, "a relationship, of sorts. Intimate. Difficult." Abusive, too.
Ms. Moneypenny was shocked, but after the initial statement had sunk in, she put together the information she had, "Oh, God," remembered the bruises, no doubt, "Oh God!"
• • •
The first thing that Q notice when he came to was that the nice, silver wristwatch that Bond had bought him was missing. Damn, he thought, I had a tracker in that watch, how the hell am I supposed to tell time?
His hands were bound behind him, and his ankles were bound as well. His coat was missing, and to Q's misfortune, so were his boots. A thick bag made of some scratchy material was around his head, and his hair was plastered to his forehead by the sweat that had accumulated because of the humid, stale air he was breathing. His mouth was gagged with some sort of fabric, and the edges of his mouth were being rubbed raw by the material.
He lay on a cold floor, the freezing stone wrenching the heat out of his sore limbs. His head ached, and his legs were covered in gooseflesh, the only thing separating them from the floor being a pair of Bond's sweatpants, the waist rolled to fit better.
And with a sharp slap to his brain, memories flooded into his mind. His fight with Bond, the swollen eye, the burn mark on his arm. It still stung, and being pressed awkwardly to his side really didn't help.
He lolled his head, a muffled groan escaping his gagged mouth at the sensation of a violent head-rush. To top it all off, he had a concussion!
Suddenly, he heard a soft clicking sound –the sound of a gun being loaded- and he froze where he was lying.
"Relax," came a smooth and masculine voice, low, with a hint of an edge, like a fine knife on paper," I probably won't shoot you."
There was humor in his voice, a hint of arrogance. Q was yanked into a sitting position, his head jerking forward painfully, and his breath catching in his throat.
"Such a shame, isn't it?" said the voice, circling around Q, "That such a clever little doll like you," a hand was placed on his head, "would be with a bloodthirsty," a pat, "monster like that James Bond."