"Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me when I've got nothing but my aching soul?"

- Lana Del Rey, Young and Beautiful

Youth, Beauty and Firearms

James has a quick shower and a wank before he gets dressed and heads down to Jeunet's lecture. He wouldn't usually have to do this after such a short (and rather one-sided) encounter, but the way Q managed to call him "007" while James had his hand down Q's pants, the way Q had bit his lips and had his fingers curled in James's shirt one moment only to straighten his glasses and give James orders (bloody orders, for god's sake) the next – somehow makes James feel like he's the dishevelled one, instead of Q who stood by the door and tucked his shirt back into his trousers with his slim, shaking hands and stared James down. It's unsettling. It's intriguing.

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When the lecture is over and James has a glass of whiskey in his hand, he manages to pry Jeunet a few steps away from the crowd. Proper decorum would probably be not to mention what Jeunet had witnessed upstairs (James wouldn't know, he's never been caught with a man before) but he wants to know if Jeunet bought it, which would make him less likely to suspect a betrayal from Chabrier – and whether he's homophobic enough that it's made him less predisposed to meet with James tomorrow, which would rather ruin things – so he says:

"I'm sorry about the little ... scene, upstairs. I had a drink or two too many at dinner, I'm afraid."

Jeunet just shrugs.

"'To each his own', is the expression I believe you use, Monsieur McEwan. I admit that I cannot understand why a man like you would pursue that young man – even if I can see he is not ... bad looking – when there are so many beautiful women here!" Jeunet gestures towards the room and James thinks to himself that yes, there are indeed several stunningly beautiful women in the room and he wonders why he hadn't noticed before. "But the desire," Jeunet continues, "the desire I know well enough. It is the same desire, no?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"Youth and beauty," Jeunet muses, clearly studying Chabrier who is talking to an older woman on the other side of the room. "I have worshipped those traits since I possessed them myself. It makes me feel I am still young. It makes me feel I am still ... in my golden age. I suppose for you this is even more true, no? A young man to make you feel like a young man?" Jeunet gives James a look but doesn't wait for an answer. "When I look at a woman of my own age, she can be beautiful, she can be clever – but I see only ... only ..." He waves his hand, searching for the words, and nearly spills his drink. "A house and a dog. You know? And then, I feel the taste of death in my mouth. The young women, they come, they go, but they all save me from a life like that one."

Bond certainly feels the taste of something stale in his mouth. He takes a sip of whiskey and hopes years of training and habit is enough to hide his discomfort, as he remembers a conversation he had years ago – before Vesper, even – while seducing a married woman to get to the man.

"You like married women, don't you, James?" "It keeps things simple." "What is it about bad men? You, my husband – I had so many chances to be happy, so many nice guys. Why can't nice guys be more like you?" "Because then they'd be bad." "Yes. But so much more interesting."

He remembers what her corpse looked like.

He's just like Jeunet, he knows. Except in James' case it's not bodyguards with straying eyes that end up dead – it's the beautiful young women.

"Maybe you're right," he says and has another mouthful of whiskey. "But I like to think of myself as the type that will settle down one day." He's not sure why he says that – he's never thought of himself that way, not before Vesper, and certainly not after – but he feels the need to distance himself from Jeunet even if that is the opposite of what he's meant to be doing.

"Settle down with a man?" Jeunet asks with a raised eyebrow. "And keep your business contacts? You are optimistic."

James shrugs.

"Well," Jeunet says and takes a sip of his drink. "I suppose if you have enough money, no one will care what you do, hm?"

Jeunet is relaxed now, and James can tell that the little act upstairs served a purpose after all. He grins, getting back on track.

"Speaking of money: that little business venture of yours..."

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They agree to another meeting the next day. Eventually Jeunet is dragged off by other investors and James seizes the opportunity to talk to Chabrier. Young and beautiful, he thinks, and downs the last of the whiskey before he smooth-talks her into letting Q hack into her boss' computer tomorrow. "We'll bring down him and his whole league," he tells her. "All you will have to do is keep quiet about what we did for twenty four hours," he tells her. "You'll never have to be afraid of him again," he tells her.

She believes him. They always do.

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He leaves a message for Henri, before he returns to the suite and carefully opens the door to Q's room. The Quartermaster is in already bed. The blinds have not been closed properly, and moonlight – or probably just lamplight, but one likes to be romantic in Paris – hits the mass of dark curls visible above the duvet. James gets a strong impulse to check for a pulse, but when he waits and looks he sees that the duvet rises and falls with Q's breaths, so instead he walks silently over to the window and adjusts the blinds before he goes back to his own room.

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James wakes up early in the morning. While he washes himself off and gets dressed, he runs through the plan once more in his head. He considers all the possible scenarios that could unfold. The best scenario is that Q finds exactly what they are looking for, MI6 relay the necessary information for the French authorities to take down Jeunet's league as the arms deal takes place, and James and Q are out of Paris before Jeunet even realises something went wrong. Counting downwards from there, there are various scenarios of half-success or half-failure. Jeunet could discover that someone's been tampering with his tech and change the time and spot for the deal. They might never get their hands on the information in the first place. Chabrier could get nervous later and tell Jeunet about him and Q, leaving them the prime targets for retaliation. Chabrier could get herself killed. And finally, the worst scenario: Chabrier could tell Jeunet what they're planning, or something could go wrong on Henri's end, allowing Jeunet to either lead them into a trap or catch them red-handed. Bond could bleed out on the carpeted hotel floor watching not only Chabrier's but the MI6 Quartermaster's cooling corpse beside him.

He checks the Walther, loads it and puts it in his shoulder holster. When he has adjusted his suit jacket, it's invisible.

He walks over to the other bedroom. Q doesn't make a sound, even in his sleep. James opens the blinds and walks up to the bed. Q stirs when the light hits him. He must move a lot in his sleep, because the duvet has slipped down to his waist and tangled itself around his legs. Q's skin is slightly darker than James', a tone that suggest he might actually be able to achieve quite a tan if he spent any time in the sun instead of an office and lab in a London basement. There's not much muscle on Q's torso, but James is not able to count his ribs like he would have guessed.

Q's eyes open and fix on him. James smiles.

"No trouble sleeping tonight?" he asks innocently.

"Fuck you, Bond," Q grumbles. "Leave me alone."

"Maybe later," James replies, ignoring the vulgar language and leaving it up to Q to decide exactly what it is he's referring to. "We have an operation to complete first."

Q stares at him a while longer, (Obviously not a morning person, James thinks) then he reaches out. For a second James thinks he'll touch his face, and maybe he's about to, but then the hand changes course slightly and paws at the bedside table until it closes around Q's glasses. Q sits up and puts them on.

"What time is it?" he asks. He picks up his watch, looks at it and nods slightly. The tone of his voice and the look on his face are transformed back from the sleep-addled young man to the cool, collected Quartermaster. James is impressed by how quickly he recovers. "Let's go then," Q says.

Q shuffles out of bed with no apparent shyness about his half naked state (simple white cotton pants – James is not surprised), picks up a few items of clothing from the bag on the floor and heads for the bathroom. James' eyes follow him. Q only looks around as he reaches out to close the door. He pauses for a moment to look at Bond, but when neither man reacts, Q pulls the door closed behind him. James, still standing in Q's room, takes a look around.

The person responsible for the interior design of the hotel has bought into the idea of Paris as the city of romance. It's done in a classy way – no big English roses on the wallpapers, no crocheted doilies – it's in the little details, and in the overall feeling. This room that Q chose for himself is only about twice as big as the queen-sized bed in its centre, if that. The walls are painted egg-shell white, and the morning sun has just begun to shine in through the French windows – so called for a reason, apparently.

There's a wardrobe in a corner where Q has hung his suits and shirts. His shoes stand by the door. The rest of his belongings appear to have been left in the open bag. For someone who's well into the second half of a vacation, Q has kept his luggage extraordinarily tidy; everything is divided into neat piles, taking advantage of the space that has been freed up in the bag by the removal of suits and shoes to make the remaining items easier to survey. The lid of the bag has a pocket on the inside where the zipper is open a few inches. James opens it. At first he thinks the content is a second, smaller laptop (Q's main one is on the bedside table) but at a second glance he realises it's a slim box. He picks it up and sits down on the bed to study it. There's a code lock and a small button on the side. James pushes the button and the lid snaps open. He's not surprised to see a gun inside. It's a little bit shorter than the Walther, a little bit slimmer, and matte black – nothing to catch the light and attract the attention of one's opponent at the wrong moment. James' looks for the little control light that would suggest the gun is coded to Q's palm print, but finds none. That doesn't mean it's not "a personal statement" though; James can tell that Q must have played around with this gun more than it lets on, because James can no longer recognise the make. He tries to remember if this was the piece Q used in Reading, but draws a blank despite his usually brilliant memory for weapons. He hears Q come back out of the bathroom, but doesn't look up from his examination.

"You shouldn't leave your weapon out in the open," he says as Q opens the wardrobe. The hangers knock against each other as Q picks out his clothes.

"It was hardly 'in the open'", Q points out. "I leave the box unlocked when I go to sleep so that I can get to it more quickly if something should happen. I thought you'd approve."

James turns around to look at him. A white shirt now hangs on the wardrobe door. Q is buckling the belt on a pair of well fitted black trousers. For a brief moment James mind is overtaken by the impulse to pull Q over to the bed and into his lap by that belt, but he pushes it aside for more important matters.

"If you keep your weapon that far away from you it is just as likely to end up in your attacker's hands as in yours. You should keep it under your pillow."

Q gives him a look as he pulls on the shirt.

"People actually do that?" he asks.

James puts the gun back in the box and closes it.

"It's a safety precaution, Q. I can show you the statistics if you like, for civilians as well as in the service."

"No, I believe you."

"If you don't have your weapon on you, it's not your weapon," James says, and throws the box at Q who catches it with unexpected deftness.

"Can you fire that today, if it becomes necessary?"

"I've already used it once in the field," Q reminds him.

"And you killed a man. Which is why I'm asking you if you're really ready to do it again."

Q looks at the box in his hands for the briefest of seconds before he meets James' eyes.

"Yes."

James remembers Q's words yesterday about the importance of bringing Jeunet down, and figures Q means it; or at least he believes he means it, which will hopefully be good enough. James nods and gets up to leave. Q hunches down by the bag and pulls out his holster from another discreet pocket. James watches from the doorway as he puts it on and slides the gun in place. Q's hair has been slicked back again, his back is straight and his movements practiced. He could pass for a professional. James takes the suit jacket off its hanger and holds it out to Q.

"Breakfast?"

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A/N: So, my attempts at writing a Frenchman with a good English vocabulary but slightly more lacking English grammar ... might have failed completely. I tried though. And I have studied both languages, so I'm fairly sure it's not miles off the mark. But if there are any French people reading this, please don't think I'm trying to make fun of you or anything. I'm just not very good at French.