Summary: Q likes to bake, and Q-Branch loves a good mystery. A birthday-themed short fic for my birthday. May be read as a stand-alone or as part of my Bright Star 'verse.

My birthday is on Monday, but I post on Fridays, so this story is a little early.

I used to post a story every day for every year in the days leading up to my birthday (September 13th), but this became more difficult as I grew older, so I've decided that one birthday story will have to do this year. Enjoy!

Cupcakes

Apparently, Q liked to bake.

It was a bit odd, considering his slender underfed frame, but evidently, he liked to let off steam by indulging in a bit of baking during what little down time he had. Every once in a while, he would bring in a pie, a tray of cupcakes, or a tin of biscuits for his branch to share (and fight over).

Eventually, they noticed something of a pattern. Q's baking days often (not always) fell on the birthday of a Q-Branch staff member. Sometimes, it would be off by a day or so due to the weekend, or maybe by a week if it got really busy (everyone understood that national and international security came first), but Q never missed bringing in a little treat for the birthday minion.

Needless to say, there were a couple of people here and there who didn't want others to know or make a big fuss about their birthdays. Those people often found a small tin of their favorite biscuits hidden in their desk drawer instead to nibble on in secret.

Of course, everyone soon realized that no one knew when Q's birthday was.

Then, of course, in true Q-Branch fashion, they tried digging a bit and got scolded by their Overlord - not for nosing about, of course, but for getting caught. And of course that only made them more determined to find out, leading to a rather interesting betting pool on the topic.

There were intense calculations in place to try to find the right statistics to pinpoint the correct day. (For example, it had to be one day out of the year, or 1/365 or 1/366 in a leap year, but was Q born during a leap year? How old was he? Or since babies were statistically more often born in July through September in the western world, rather than the rest of the year, then wouldn't it make sense for the odds to be better for those months? Also, what days did Q actually go home on time or take off altogether? Wouldn't those days be more likely to fall on his birthday? Ah, and then the older generation of minions who had been around in old Boothroyd's time and thus when Q's father had been a double-oh, conferred amongst themselves and remembered that it was possible that the date might coincide with the man's retirement. [This was a good guess, actually, but off by about a week.])

Q, of course, knew what was going on, and shook his head over it with an amused smile. If trying to guess his birthday made his staff happy and increased their overall productivity, then so be it. As long as they got their work done, he was happy, and his superiors were happy, and the world was spared another apocalypse caused by well-meaning overcaffeinated bored geniuses.

He did, however, raise an eyebrow when Bill Tanner quietly placed a large bet for a random day in March after spending a long while waffling between equally random days in July, November, and December.

What the rest of Q-Branch, as high as their combined IQs were, had forgotten, was that as Chief of Staff, Tanner definitely knew when Q's birthday was, having taken care of the paperwork when he was hired.

Tanner only smiled placidly at Q and offered to split the winnings with him.

Q snorted and accepted, all the while shaking his head.

He loved his staff, he really did, but sometimes, they could use a bit of shaking up.

If they hadn't realized what Tanner had done, then they deserved to be fleeced.

There were spies, and then there were spies.

If his people wanted to be the best, then they had to learn from their mistakes - and from the best.

. . . . .

Note:

FYI: Q's birthday is Pi Day (March 14th). I actually wrote a fic about Pi Day with scenes from Q's first birthday, but I ultimately decided that it's a bit weird posting Pi Day fic in September so I wrote this little thing for my own birthday. I'll post the Pi Day fic in March.