"Go home," James orders Q in the morning. "Now, Q." Firmly, and with a little chiding frown. "Get your arse out of here."
"Hmph."
Q scowls ferociously at the pillow stuffed up his nose and rolls over onto his back, grumbling. His bollixed up circadian clock and the glare assaulting his eyes through the terribly chi-chi window treatments of the suite tell him it's gone very late in the morning, or possibly is already after noon. And here he'd been happily dozing till his lovely new lover stuck a hand through Q's inky curls and tugged on them. Roughly but not too rough—which brings back to Q's sluggish mind some brilliant memories of the night before but does very little for his overall sanguinity.
He peers sideways through the thicket of his dark eyelashes warily, only to be met a gaze of fierce blue.
"Q."
The lips that had dithered down his spine earlier whilst James pounded that 'licensed to shag' cock into him were set with stubborn determination. James exuded stern purpose. Which is both absurdly attractive and also terribly irritating of him.
"Q." The hand in his hair pats down Q's fringe before going away again. Suddenly the conditioned atmosphere of the suite feels all that much cooler.
"Ugh," Q groans, flinging out a hand and fumbling for his specs, eyelids squinched up in a combination of temper and the cringing avoidance of all the nasty daylight filling the bedroom. "Whatimesit?"
"Late."
Breakfast in bed ('Just tea', he'd protested, and James only chuckled at him, and confronted him with a full English spread, Sidney-style, on a huge tray, delivered by room service), and another lengthy shower to add/minus the various sorts of pleasant stickiness had already occurred much earlier. They'd not said much to each other, not in actual English words, spoken aloud, but the exchange of happy sex noises and the sounds of fleshy bits encountering other fleshy bits had been a cut above fantastic. Q had drifted into the land of La-La feeling quite beneficently pleased with the world, satisfied he and James had reached a wonderful new 'understanding'.
'Understanding'? Hah! Clearly they've not, not if Q's suddenly being handed the bum's rush.
"S'not. Tch!" Well, he says this, but Q does realize it is, rather.
"Late enough, Quartermaster." James sounds as though he's still faffing in the territory of fond teasing, but there's a definite hint of steel in his voice. He won't stay there for very much longer. "Past time for you to go."
But Q, though bleary with more shagging than he's had in the last five years and far less REM than even he's accustomed to, is not about to let this insult pass, not a bit of it, this being shooed off like some pesky clinger-on. He's a stickler, Mummy says, a born stickler. And he won't be run off without learning at least something as to the whys and wherefores of it. The two f them have just fornicated like mad rabbits, high on LSD-laced alfalfa, but they have also made love, and actually had said some scraps-and-pieces of words aloud that were very much loving, and have thus essentially let their mutual guards down to the point of utterly brutal honesty about—ugh!—those dreadful things called 'feelings'. And if it was all an act on James's part, Q will eat the hat he is not wearing, ta, with a side order of chips dipped in vinegar.
Accordingly, he presses his person into the bedclothes and mattress as much as possible and curls his long fingers into the duvet, expressing wordlessly and well that he has no intention of leaving the bed—not before he's good and ready. And that'll be a cold day in Hell, at this rate.
"Far too late for little boys to be still abed, Q." James seems all but oblivious to Q's body language. "Now, get your things and start moving. You need to be off. You'll miss your flight."
Q grits his teeth, recalling the moment when they were just newly returned to the bed, when the feast was delivered and spread for consumption and he'd had a brilliant cuppa in hand and a man's mouth nibbling on his collarbone. He'd been feeling lazy, blissed out, loose and very flexible. Not at all concerned with his newly achieved status as another of 007's conquests. He is not at anything approaching that happy state now, despite the additional acts of sexual congress James and he had indulged in after his sumptuous breakfast. He's gone all tense, anticipating.
"Come on, pet." James gropes at Q's hip, squeezing it firmly, likely to encourage him. "Up you get."
"Ngh." Q blinks at the ceiling though his cockeyed lenses, and observes the hotel planner has done a lovely job with his crown mouldings. He frowns at it; all very well and good and he appreciates a job well done as much as the next chap.
Except not about that.
"No."
"Q, go home. Right now. You're not built for field work. I am." His James looks admirably noble lunging back with his arms crossed above his head like that; Q is re-smitten. He also looks horrible smug; Q is miffed. "And duty calls."
"No!" Q grits his teeth, quite hard, the very last bitter edge of his coitus-induced laziness fleeing. "Look, I'm not through here—"
"Q, love," James breathes, nestling against Q all the sudden, an unfair assault on the senses and the intellect both, his jaw pressing into Q's messy hair, his mouth parted over Q's throat, just so. Unfair and sublimely mental-making of James; Q trembles, diverted. "You are, really. Go—now."
Q pouts for an instant; reflects he is actually the taller of the two. James is more compact. But Q is starting to appreciate the rewards of having a shorter lover. So must've his stupid snarky brothers before him, damn their all-knowing eyes and amused attitudes.
"Q." Like a terrier with a bone, James doesn't shut it, doesn't cease. "Go back to HQ and let me be about my work. I'll be with you again before you know it, I promise."
"You?" Q has to scoff. "You promise? James Bond? Is promising me?" Really, Q's eyebrows can't go any higher than they are. He shoves his specs up his nose to get a better look at this phenomenon before him. "To—to be with me?"
"I promise. I swear. On my honour."
"Hah! In my eye! The fuck, James!"
Q stops. Stops everything, even the annoying breathing bit, and simply stares. Looks at James, laying in bed beside him like a great big bad lion, lounging about next to the carcasse of his latest antelope.
Q has bloody eyes on him; excellent ones, too, despite the correction. He can see if someone's lying, or yanking at his chain, or just putting him off. It happens so casually, doesn't it? All the time, in Q's experience, and then too James has had so many lovers in his life, ever so many he's probably called 'love' in just that same faux affectionate tone, in just that teasing, maddening manner. Oh, so many blasted lovers and Q's not even certain he even counts as one of those sort. There's something so terribly demeaning about being rushed out of bed, about being pushed out the door, and sent off far away to be probably forgotten. No, definitely forgotten, at least tills it's time for James to call upon Q's expertise again.
He is Quartermaster, and that's the bottom line, isn't it?
James lips are twisting up at the corners, just slightly, and his brows lowering down. "Now, Q—"
"Fine, then," Q cuts in, and 'bitter' isn't even the proper word for it, the acid in his gut. But anything to stop the strop that's coming his way, from a whomping great arse bent on a mission, bull-headed cunt he is. Of all people, Q is perfectly aware of what 007 can and will do, and without the slightest compunction. "Bloody lie to me if you want, fucking fib all you like, James, but don't for a moment think I believe you."
He'd told himself he'd be immune, if he should be discarded after. That exactly that prospect was the most statistically likely. That any resulting pain he felt would be very fleeting and it was better to know than not. But it doesn't stop it from hurting, does it? Being shoved off back home, and so awfully gently. As if Q were all entirely that spotty pup James had taken him for in the first place—but he's not.
Q is so very much not that pup.
"There is no room for honour, James, not amongst operatives." Thus, Q's sharp to reply, snappish. The frames of his specs dig into the arch of his nose where he presses them down with taut fingers. It's a small pain but nothing what's blooming through his chest and filling up the spare corners of his consciousness. Which he puts aside; he's a professional, right? "Expediency is key."
"Q."
"I'm glad you're remembering that, 007."
He'd wanted to be counted.
"It's about time, really, you came to your senses, aged and blunted s they are. Liabilities and all that. I am one, aren't I?"
It's why Q had come: to be counted. Perhaps not be memorable in any real way, because there's this whole track record of Agent 007's to contend with, and Q's not a fool, not a fool at all. Naïveté was a very long time ago; it ceased but a few years after the last reading of Alice, really—or maybe back in uni. Perhaps he's just another in a long line of others, and James won't be the one to finally take home to Mummy's Christmas dinner, and the earbuds will just stay stubbornly in forever more and the trees of his brother's off-and-on teasing will fall unheard upon his blind ears. He's meant to remain alone, then, and Q rather sadly supposes that's no different from before. Sometimes he really hates his brothers, what with their partners and their funny old un-lonely lives, shared over with the most unlikely of characters. And sometimes he really hates Mummy and Papa, what with their having succeeded in balancing it all and fucking gracefully.
"There's a job of work to do, left."
"Oh, really. You don't say, Q" James sets his lips in a thin line and tightens his shoulders. The ripple across them is almost—but not quite—enough to divert Q from his snit. He gulps hard and belts up, his fingers curling down upon themselves. Touching James now will serve no earthly purpose.
"Let's get at it, 007. Right, then, first off?"
Q huffs and heaves himself up against the bank of pillows, straightening his spine and staring eyes-front at the large mirror set opposite the bed. He sees a frowsy-haired young man with nostrils flared and fire burning bright in his eyes, and assorted fingerprint-sized bruises and the imprints of tooth marks on his throat, and a tell-tale flush from the rage consuming him, tinting all his long white nudity with a species of pretty pink.
But it's not a snit, but a bloody statement; Q is different again from his brothers, from his parents—from everyone else in the world. He is unique, even when plopped in the midst of a whole sea of fucking insularity and brilliant oddness. And that's all possible; everything's fucking possible for a Holmes lad. Q lives his life amidst what's possible, what's barely imaginable, what's cutting edge doable and what's not, really, and then makes it all so despite that—'Basingstoke', isn't it. Is it not? Mummy has said it, innumerable times; terribly fond of Gilbert and Sullivan is Mummy. 'Make it so, Q', this new M says to him, this military bloke with kind eyes and a directing hand of smithied steel, and Q does, and sometimes also the highly improbable, too, and the questionably legal, and all that before his morning cuppa.
Like bloody aeroplanes, Q does not take his own self lightly. He is a force to be reckoned with, and that is a fact.
"Seems old dogs don't forget all their tricks, do they? Or battleships their maneuvers, no matter how outdated. I just need to say it's not necessary, James. To lie to me. You're perfectly correct; it's late and I'm going. I'll only be in the way here."
"Q!"
Except not this, and even after his best shot. Oh god, but this—this is damned hurtful, is what, but Q's made of such stern stuff, fuck it all. He bites back invective, and futile name-calling, and all that rot, as none of it makes a fuckload of difference, not in the end. There's only one end, isn't there? And he's barely a blip on the radar, on the road James Bond insists on taking. He's been useful and cooperative and supportive, all requirements for a valuable agent in the field. Any analyst could accomplish the same.
"No, shut it! Now listen to me, 007, before I'm cast out your door. I have something to tell you—"
Two hands set themselves grimly on Q's shoulders and he's rudely wrestled down to his back, a heavy warm weight clambering over him. Q can't help but notice James has a knee placed so as to immobilize him and that the fingers clamping at his bony joints are quite terribly near his windpipe. His eyes widen and his lips fall open—this is an outrage. Another, in a series of them.
"No, fuck that. And sod you, you posh little cretin. You've got it all wrong. Expediency, Q, isn't everything."
"Oh, no? I beg to differ."
He cannot breathe, whether it is that he has chosen to stop his own respiration, the better to hear James's words, or no. Blue eyes bore into his, and are just slightly terrifying. Q gulps and scrambles for his centre, at least mentally. Physically it's clear he's not going anywhere, not at least till 007 lets him.
"Results, though." Which doesn't prevent him from taking up his mental rapier and swinging it, valiantly. "Those are expected, 007. What counts, really."
Q cannot breathe. Only time will tell, and the times before now (he's calculated them) tell Q he's not got much to go on, not here. Not with this man. Not with this bloody not-his James Bond. He's being sent away. He's not important—he never was.
He…never was.
"I am now nearly too late to make my scheduled flight," Q announces abruptly. "And you're quite correct. I'm very much in the way here. Not my milieu. Let me up."
Bond is correct, youth is no guarantee of innovation, but that's hardly what Q was seeking from this encounter, is it? And it's a dead loss, clearly. Oh god, so clearly. 007 eats up 'youth' by the bucket-load and spits it all out for brekkers. Q's idiot naïf self had offered no intrigue whatsoever; he's been trumped already by people named 'Pussy' and there's nothing to do but cut losses. And run, run, run for his life—and his sanity. Just as 007 wants him to do. Fine, then—he's going, all right? He's going, and good riddance.
There spaketh poor Moneypenny, by her subsequent post-Bond actions alone, and it's galling, truly galling, to be relegated to being just like her.
Q grits his teeth, so hard the grind is audible, and bites it out, what he's officially boarded an aeroplane for. Yes, he'd come to stave of James's tedium, he'd come to offer himself up like so much raw filet to a prowling lion, and he'd come to try his luck out on the brass ring shaped hole that was James's finer emotions. But he'd also come because M had sent him. With strict instructions to return unscathed, natch.
"But I have yet to impart something to you. Business related, 007. Naturally. Per M."
"Oh." 007 has not shifted an inch to let Q up and out but his gaze narrows to twin beams of piercing bright. "Really?"