After checking out of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Bond had taken an extra hour to muddy their trail.
He drove their rental car to the airport, returning it and entering the terminal. In a restroom he had disabled a security camera and changed clothing, putting on a hat and sunglasses and waiting until a large tour group passed by to blend in, using them as cover as he left the terminal building. He hired a taxi back into central Stockholm, where he had rented a new car with his backup passport and credit card.
Now he was finally in Uppsala, looking foward to a stiff drink and a long shower.
"Kan jag hjålpa dig?" asked the lovely young blonde woman behind the registration desk at the Radisson.
Christ, they all looked alike, he thought as heleaned forward, reading her nametag.
"Maja." He smiled winningly at her. "I'm meeting a colleague here. Quillan Wickham, he must have checked in a short time ago. Could you ring up to the room for me?"
He casually stayed leaning forward, so he could watch for the room number as she dialed.
Instead, a look of confusion crossed her face. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm the only one at the desk this evening and I don't recall..."
She tapped a few keys on the computer. "No one by that name has checked in this evening. Perhaps he was delayed?"
Bond kept his expression carefully relaxed. "That must be it. I'll wait at the bar."
Bloody, bloody, fuck.
Trains from Stockholm to Uppsala left every twenty minutes at the least. Q should have arrived more than an hour ago, at the very latest. Something had gone wrong, and Bond had no bloody idea what.
Bond sat at the bar, drinking Scotch and scanning the lobby, the knot in his stomach growing tighter and tighter with every passing minute. Had Q been detained by the police? Even worse, could MacMillan have had confederates, who might have captured him?
Bond thought of Q as he had last seen him — dazed and probably traumatized, but resolute. He hadn't wanted to split up, but Bond had insisted. What had he been thinking? Instead of keeping Q close, where he could protect him, he had sent him out alone. Unguarded.
Bond signaled for another drink. He pulled out his mobile, checking it for probably the twentieth time. He could try calling Q, but if Q had been taken into custody the call would be noticed. Right now there was nothing to directly tie Q to the shootings. It was Bond who was armed with the murder weapon, and it was Bond who had been seen by the tourists outside. Contacting Q had the potential to compromise them both. He would wait. He gave himself an hour before he tried to contact either Q or MI6.
Fifty more minutes passed, with Bond's nerves winding tighter every passing second. He hardly noticed when the bartender replaced his drinks, fear swirling in his gut as his traitorous mind conjured up images of Q in a variety of nightmarish scenarios. Q, captured by 003's associates, being tortured for information. Q, in some foreign detention cell, wondering why Bond had abandoned him. Q...
...walking in the door of the hotel, looking exhausted but otherwise unscathed. Relief washed over Bond in a wave, making him almost giddy. Christ, he had let his imagination run away with him.
Quick on the heels of the relief came a sudden, irrational anger. Who was Q to make him feel this way — to have Bond so wound up in knots he could barely think straight? What in the hell was it about the quartermaster that made Bond feel so raw and vulnerable, in a way he hadn't felt since Vesper, had sworn never to feel again...
Bond watched as the desk clerk gestured in his direction. Q looked over, his eyes scanning Bond, and he had the gall to look...disapproving.
Bloody hell, Bond thought pugnaciously, all this time being nearly frantic about Q, and apparently Q hadn't even been a jot concerned about my safety.
He mutinously knocked back the last drink in one gulp, leaving an exorbitant amount of kronor on the bar and picking up their suitcases. He got to the elevator just as Q stepped in, both of them riding up in strained silence.
Q put the keycard in the door, pushing it open when the light turned green. Bond followed him into the room, throwing the suitcases in the corner before finally letting his ire have free rein.
"What took you so bloody long?" he snapped.
Q dropped his messenger bag and the electronics case on the bed and wheeled around, equal venom in his voice. "It may come as a surprise to you, 007, but I don't actually control the trains. There was a mechanical problem."
Bond was spoiling for a fight, and would not be deflected so easily. "You could have troubled yourself to call me."
Q's eyes were flashing green fire behind his thick glasses. "Oh, I do apologize. I was just a tad distracted by wiping all the evidence of your high noon shootout!"
Bond clenched his hands into fists. "Perhaps I should have just let MacMillan shoot you in the head. Is that what you would have preferred?"
Q took a step forward, anger in every line of his slender body. "I would have preferred if you would have let me do my job! I could have hacked the killcodes and we would have the data right now instead of being at another dead end. I could have had it — I was moments away!"
Bond strode closer, forcing Q to take an unconscious step back. "You were moments away from being blown to pieces, because you were too bloody stubborn to admit that you were outsmarted. Again," Bond said acidly.
Q's mouth set into a pale, stiff line. "I'm not talking about this with you anymore. You're drunk," he said contemptuously.
The bloody cheek of the man, Bond thought wildly. "I'm not the one who isn't thinking straight here. You just can't admit that someone got the better of you."
"You should have trusted me!" Q hissed, and Bond felt something in him snap. He should have trusted Q?! He did nothing but trust Q! Trusted him completely, in a way that left Bond raw and exposed, and what did he get in return? Nothing.
Q was as distant and unflappable as the day they met. A cold bloody fish was what he was, yanking on Bond's emotions, making him dance like a goddamned puppet, and feeling nothing in return. Bloody taunting him, with his pale slender fingers and that mobile red mouth, but never coming close enough to touch...
Bond felt the sudden, irresistible impulse, to break through Q's detachment. There was a spark of something between them, there bloody was, whether Q would admit it or not, and Bond felt an overwhelming, irrational urge to set that spark ablaze.
He lunged forward, pressing Q back against the wall with his body, smashing his lips into that incredible mouth, inhaling Q's startled gasp. Q made a muffled noise and Bond pressed forward, licking into his mouth, his tongue devouring.
God, he felt like his blood was burning in his veins as he finally got to taste Q, to feel his body slender and yet whipcord strong underneath his hands. He growled his pleasure into Q's mouth before smearing lips across his stubbled jaw, sucking bites down that tender neck he had admired for so long.
"James," Q was saying urgently, straining against him, but Bond ignored him, pressing closer, pushing his whole body into that sweetness, breathing in the delicious scent of Q's sweat-damp skin. Christ, he wanted Q so badly, wanted to take him apart and make him sob with pleasure...
"007! Stand down!"
Q's sharp words crashed over Bond like a bucket of ice water. He jerked back, blinking away the haze of lust that was thickening his veins and muddling his thoughts.
Q was pressed against the wall by Bond's body, stretched in a long line from where Bond held his wrists pinned above his head — bloody hell, when had he done that? — and he was shaking.
Bond pulled his hands off Q as if he had been burned, taking a stumbling step back. The room seemed to tilt around him for a moment as cold, nauseating shock bloomed in his gut. What had he done?
"Q?" he began uncertainly. "I..."
Like quicksilver Q slid out from between Bond's body and the wall. Bond instinctively made a grab for him before aborting the movement equally suddenly, pulling his hand back, clenching it into a fist so tight that even his short nails cut into his palm.
He struggled for something to say, something to do, but all he could think of was the ghastly magnitude of his misjudgment. Instead he stood, frozen in stupor, as Q silently slipped out the door of the hotel room, closing it behind him with a soft click.
[Author's Note: Please review! :-D This is actually the key chapter that the whole fic has been working toward and I'm very nervous as to how it will be received, so let me hear it — good or bad!]