A/N: I know it's quite a bit late, but twice as long to make up for it. This chapter too took on a life of its own. Hopefully you still like it. This is now the second to last chapter with last appearances from Q, Henry and baby Abby. Since the last chapter there have been some follows and favorites, so I'll say thank you and welcome and of course I am thrilled about every hit the story gets. Enjoy!
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Chapter Thirty-Seven – The Tradition Of MI6 Valentine's Days
Q opened his cousin's front door, wondering if there was any way to avoid the humiliation of the night to come. Private family bets that let him spend time with little kids were one thing; having James Bond witness the whole affair was another matter entirely. "Good Evening," he said politely to the man in question and his daughter.
"Q."
"You can't call me that here. Well, come in, won't you," he sighed, ruffling Louella's hair as she skid past, "I'm surprised you would fall victim to Sarah's meddling, but then again we all do have our faults."
"One could say the same about you." James assumed his usual cool demeanor and watched Q on guard.
Stalking off towards the heart of the house Q explained, "I'm not a victim. I'm a willing participant of an old agreement. What your reasons might be, I don't know. The question is only whether I need to care."
"No need to on my behalf."
Q sat down by a board game, which Louella had already happily joined and set all the little figurines back on their starting platforms. Abigail wiggled on her playmat. James made eye contact with the baby, whose hazy gaze was not quite there, but not in another universe either. She squealed shrill noises of baby glee and waved a rattling toy at him and he realised how lost he would've been, if he had received Louella at that age. He sat down on the floor too, slacks wrinkling from the abuse and Louella gravitated towards him.
"You in or you out of the game?" Q asked, tossing a few peanuts into his own mouth.
"In, I think." James stage whispered, "Is this the kind where you have to let them win, or?"
Q shook his head, not buying the attempt at humor. "Game's based entirely on chance, so long as you leave spinning trajectories and probability out of it."
"Would be more your type of issue."
This time Q's expression faded to something friendlier, almost amusement.
"Daddy, youw turn!" Louella shoved at him and James's attention was diverted again.
Once the game was in full swing and Q realised Louella and Henry were too young to get into fights about cheating, let alone cheat on purpose, he excused himself from the game. He lifted Abigail off the floor with him and whispered to James, "Want to play with these two?"
"Cooking and possibly a glass of wine. The latter depends on what I can raid from the cupboards."
He shrugged, passing the dices on. "Might as well. Though wine is not my drink."
Q left a baby monitor next to Henry and Louella, put on some music as a backdrop to their game. In the kitchen James leaned against the counter with a raised eyebrow. As he put the baby monitor onto the counter Q said, "Just because they play goodheartedly now, doesn't mean they'll still do it in five minutes. There will be a point in time when they learn to count and another where they learn to cheat. And you really don't want to get there."
"Personal experience?"
"Oh please, as if I'd get caught."
"True. What's for dinner then?"
"Lasagne." Q opened the fridge and pulled the supplies onto the counter one by one. "Henry's favourite food. And Louella doesn't have food allergies; I checked."
He put Abigail in a high chair and thrust a jar of baby food into James' hands. "Have fun with her. Highly recommend a bib though." Q did his best fake smile as he pointed to the stained cloths hanging on the wall.
James grabbed one, realising he'd fallen into a trap and now he had to deal with the baby. Abigail gurgled in her seat, drool dribbling down her chin. James already regretted wearing slacks and a cashmere jumper.
"She's a baby, not a bomb," Q reminded him without turning away from the vegetables he was chopping into fine pieces.
James would've much rather had a bomb to defuse, but he'd never admit that out loud. So instead he carefully tied the bib around Abigail's neck and cursed Q in his mind. Q, who was dressed in hideous light blue jeans and a worn t-shirt so at odds with the sophisticated voice dropping cutting remarks from his tongue. He couldn't be more than twenty-five and yet he was already a genius, who got along with children and got away looking like he'd been dressed by a blind monkey. James Bond sat down and twisted open the jar of baby food, determined he could feed a baby without panicking and stand his ground. Although only he himself knew how furiously jealous he was about how at ease Q was in every situation he was thrust into, especially the domestic ones.
He held out a spoonful of food for Abigail, who made more excited sounds and wiggled furiously without making any actual attempt at eating. James wondered if he should talk to the baby like he'd seen many mothers do. He glanced at the jar. "Summer vegetables and rice. Very exciting indeed," he said half to the baby half to Q.
"According to babies anything blended into organic looking paste is, Bond. Abby's not exactly the culmination of human intelligence at her very young and uncoordinated age."
At that Abigail opened he r mouth and James managed to get the first spoonful into her. He tried not to think of it as such a big victory. "She might evolve to outsmart you someday."
"I dearly hope so," there was no sarcasm in his voice and James looked up at him, "The world will never come to anything, if there's no one to defend it and I don't want to work for as long as Boothroyd did."
James looked at Abigail, thinking about how long he'd been in service, all the agents and the women and men that had replaced them. He thought of how many times he'd almost died. And James too had once been a little boy, a baby before that and Q was no different from him. Hell, even Major Geoffrey Boothroyd had once been a helpless infant. Abby hummed happily around her food, half of which oozed out of her mouth again. James scooped it away and wondered what might become of the little girl with twinkling eyes one day.
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Q, who had morphed into 'Felix' for just the one night, chopped vegetables with the same efficiency he put a computer to pieces. Only this time it wasn't his task to reassemble it. "Darlings, time to make a pasta cake!" he shouted to the children in the living room.
Henry and Louella ditched their board game in an instant and came running. Both of them blabbered in synchronised frenzy about 'pasta cake', which Q had decided years ago was a better and easier expression for lasagna. The two toddlers both talked up at him as he put little aprons over their head before swooping down to tie them.
Q pulled Abby to the other end in her high chair, which elicited a high-pitched sound from the baby and began delegating tasks, "Bond, set all the vegetable tubs on the table and then clean up the baby; you really have made a frightful mess of her. Henry and Lou, both of you go wash your hands and I shall butter up the oven pan."
He couldn't deny the satisfaction of clusters of people bursting apart at his instructions. Controlled chaos was his personal favourite form of art. Though admittedly it had a larger effect on dozens of minions than one double-oh and three children under the age of four. Still, there was a certain kind of magic of scattering and regrouping even such a small amount of people. Q set the buttered pan on the table and pressed a layer of pasta dough into the bottom.
The table filled with bright coloured veggie tubs. Louella and Henry took their places opposite one another and Q simply told them to let loose and turn their 'pasta cake' into a work of art. Naturally that meant awfully clumsy attempts at making paprika hearts and carrot-zuchini-aubergine rainbows. As Q watched it transpire he noted that James managed to get most of the baby food off of both Abby and himself. Satisfied, Q leaned back against the kitchen counter, nibbling on a carrot.
Occasionally he lifted a layer of pasta dough onto the veggie sections, filling one with minced beef and leaving the last one a clean slate. "Alright," he said and turned the entire pan to face him, "I'll make the last masterpiece and then we'll put it in the oven. What do you want on it?"
"A dragon!" Henry yelled.
Louella nodded and added, "And a howsie and withard, please, but not an evil one."
Q nodded in agreement and began shaping a minced beef dragon with a centaur wizard at its side. He framed it with leftover vegetables, Louella and Henry marvelling at it. Bond huffed as Q took a picture of the whole thing at which he said, "Bond, don't be a twat. Hep me with the dough; the last layer has to be smooth."
"Perhaps it would be smoother without the gigantic dragon," James said even as he helped carefully lift and smooth the pasta.
"Jealous at my artistic skills?" And now Q was just pushing buttons, as he liked to do. James huffed again even though Q had already turned his attention back to the children. "Thank you Louella and thank you Henry. I couldn't have done it without you. Now, wash your hands again and then you can go back to playing."
"And remember Lou was blue and Henry yellow," he yelled after them. James vanished into thin air along with them. Q put the lasagna in the oven and stared at the only remaining person in kitchen: Abby. He scooped her up too and murmured to her about the importance of sleep in the softest voice he possessed as he carried her off to bed.
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Louella rolled the dice to a five and counted the numbers up slowly as she went round the board for the fourth time. Her and Henry had forgotten that there was an end point to the game. That one was supposed to go 'round once and then head towards the middle. But the two of them were happy to race each other on the board till exhaustion would eventually set in.
"Youws," she handed the dice over in fair sport and Henry tossed it, moving along three spaces.
Q appeared from the back of the house with a baby monitor and crouched down between the two of them, "Who's the big player, the winner and gambler?"
"Wha's that?" they asked in unison.
"Never mind. Remember," he said pointing to the board, "next time when you get back to base turn to the middle. Whoever gets there first wins."
He observed the game for a while, calculating probabilities of either one's chances of winning. Then he spotted the faint orange glow of a cigarette out on the terrace and realised where James Bond had buggered off to. Q got up and right up to the door. He tapped on the glass before he slid the door open and slipped outside into cold, smoke filled night air.
"Don't let them see you smoke out here."
"The glass reflects everything at this time of day."
"Not the glow," Q said. He held out his hand for the cigarette and James stared back, wondering whether Q wanted a drag himself or would stub it out. He handed it over anyway.
James blew his last lungful of toxic smoke out. "They are too caught up in that game anyway. Ever wish such simple things could be exciting again?"
Q took a long drag from the cigarette, then another and a third before he trod it into the ground. "We play those same game, Bond. Ours are just large scale with high stakes. It's a merely a game when you chase another assassin or agent, when the two of you then try to strangle each other before you finally smash their head into a sink. I do the same hacking, except I usually leave whoever is on the losing side alive. Their lives just become that much more complicating."
James left out a non-committal hum and looked up at the cloudy sky. Q wasn't wrong, but in his opinion Q wasn't right either. From behind them there was a little knock on the glass door and they both whipped around. Henry had his face pressed up against the window and Louella waved.
"I'll go. You smell terrible," Q said and slipped back in as quickly as he'd slipped out. James watched Louella chat him up with full-fledged enthusiasm. He really needed to stop moping around and make the effort for one night. People like him were too deep in the business to let its impact slip away in their private lives. But people like M, who were old enough to know better, and people like Q, who were young enough to not be burdened by the constant disguise, could slip back and forth as if they hadn't sold their souls for their country. And James hadn't been bothered by any of it until Louella came along and he began to wish he wasn't addicted to his lifestyle.
Now he stood in a garden, avoiding the implications of Valentine's Day as he had for years.
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A/N: Next chapter will be the last, featuring an appearance of M, but mostly Lou and James centric. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter :) I'd love to know.