"How's mummy?" Q asked with a wry smile as the three walked out of the art museum, to wherever he might be taking them.
"Fine I suppose. We haven't talked much." Sherlock said casually.
"I might have known it would be something like that." John saw Q roll his eyes. The more time John spent around Q, the more he liked him. It was weird to see a Holmes who didn't seem overly concerned with a power play, or trying to be the smartest man in the room. Although John was pretty sure he didn't know what a quartermaster was.
"Who's your friend?" Q asked. He'd noticed John prior to leaving the gallery, but hadn't said anything. Probably thought he might have been a random observer.
"This is Dr. John Watson. He assists me with my work." Sherlock said.
"Pleasure to meet you. I'll shake your hand later. You're a doctor?"
"Army doctor." John said.
"Useful occupation. I can see why you like him." Q weaved quickly though the crowds, leading them down through what looked to be a set of stairs leading to a tube station.
"I'll take that as a compliment." John said, mostly to himself, voice echoing in the empty tunnel.
It wasn't a tube station. There was only a door, and a scanner. Q took the MI6 card from his pocket and swiped it in front of the scanner, and the door swung open of it's own accord.
John hadn't been sure what to expect, but the light still blinded him. Behind the door were men and women sitting in front of laptops, testing weaponry, experimenting with chemicals... it was a lot to take in. The glare of all the screens and the fluorescent lighting made John want to cover his eyes.
"Welcome to the quartermaster division of MI6." Q didn't stop, but led them on to his corner of space. It was a bit bigger than everybody else's. He immediately keyed in the password on his laptop and did away with some quick coding.
"Can I just assume that your entire family is made up of genuises?" John looked on in amazement as Q's fingers flew across the keys.
"Yes." Sherlock answered before the last syllable of John's sentence made it out.
"Okay, it seems as though I'm going to brief you two. Mycroft has personalized this whole thing I see." Q said, scrolling through what looked to be an e-mail from Mycroft.
"Is he pushing for a family reunion this year?" Sherlock muttered bitterly.
"He tries." Q replied.
Sherlock said nothing.
But John noticed. While Sherlock and Mycroft were at obvious odds with each other, Sherlock seemed to have a soft spot for Q. It was actually kind of...sweet. Well, for Sherlock anyway.
"This way, if you please?" Q took them to one of the many doorways lining the room, and scanned his card again. The room was small, and dominated largely by a desk with a grumpy looking, short, older woman behind it.
"Ah, I see you've brought in Holmes and Watson." She said, standing up.
"Sherlock, John, this is M, my employer and the head of MI6."