Just a baby update because you guys deserve it. The next chapter will be much longer and have actual plot, I promise! It just didn't seem to fit with the little bit I've got here, so I went ahead and gave this part it's own chapter. Enjoy the fluff!
Almost three full months went by in this fashion. In that time, James was gone eight weeks for three different missions. He killed eleven men in hand to hand combat and forty-three more with guns or explosives. He returned drunk twice. Q developed one and a half new automatic weapons and updated software for two major corporations. He hacked fourteen computer systems and took down three minor criminal organizations remotely. He made one list.
On that list was a running tally. To date it had a neat count of the number of times James had kissed his forehead (nineteen), the days tea had appeared in his cup (thirty-seven), the moments he caught James watching him (fifteen), and the number of shirts ripped when a drunk Bond grabbed him for balance coming up the stairs(one).
Life had taken on a neat and comforting pattern for the two men.
Bond was sometimes in London and most times not. The change was in the fact that he slept in the same bed with the same body on the same side when he was. There was always good scotch in the cupboard next to a package of tea and his suits were always hung neatly next to ironed cardigans. He didn't have to think about where he had left his shoes the night before. A chair he had come to think of as his stood undisturbed until he returned and his half-read books stayed on the table next to it. No longer did he have to hunt through someone else's shower for shampoo that didn't smell like fruit.
When he was home days were a smooth cocktail of skinny hands holding his coffee and a slender mouth he had to tell himself not to kiss.
When he was away his atmosphere had that consistent wrongness of hotel room beds and baths that smelled of other people's shaving cream. The difference was in the fact that little notes always ended up tucked among his ties in his suitcase. Bond would smirk at the admonishments to return with all of his equipment and think of the spectacled boffin he had left at home.
Home was a very comforting word to a man that could have been called homeless three months prior.
Q was pleased by the way life now went along with mathematical consistency. Like a well-worn keyboard it had familiar patterns. When his adopted killer was in London, they flowed around each other with ease of long use. Q brewed coffee and tea in the mornings while James had the shower and the spy cooked dinner in the evenings. If Q had to stay into the night for a project or another double-oh, James never failed to appear with take-away Chinese and a novel to settle in a corner with. Both took two cabs and a meandering subway route to work, arriving twenty minutes apart. At night they slept side by side in the master bedroom, sometimes with Bond's chest flush to Q's back and sometimes with the technician's errant curls pressed into James's shoulder blades.
When the spy was home days were a neat mix of chaste kisses and a hand resting on his back on the way out the door.
But more often than not Bond was away. This was just as familiar: a favorite mug warm with tea. He woke by himself and wondered if Bond had found his note yet. The coffee brewer didn't have to run and he could shower as long as he liked. His trip to work was still ridiculous and time-consuming as he doubled back and changed cabs to lose whatever tails he might have. Days were still tiring but no one brought nourishment at the end of them. It was hard not to care.
Then Bond would return, often drunk. Q would listen as he talked or launch into a meandering monologue of nothing, depending on what James needed that week. He sewed up a few cuts and once sent him straight back to MI6 for medical attention. Then they would crawl into their shared queen and Q would tuck James against him until they could both sleep.
Things were organized and Q was mostly happy. He tucked his feelings away and was content with what he had, for a time.
But time marches on and wants hardly ever stay buried for long.