Come Christmas dinner, James makes his appearance. In Mummy's drawing room, with a tumbler of a very handsome whisky pressed into hand, neat. There's the car they came in, he and James, still standing before the porte-cochère and Q half wishes to flee back to it and pound steel to the floor (or have James do it, as he's the one who appreciates that sort of thing: the pedals, the knobs-and-dials, the shifter, all that rot) and yet also there's more than half of Q who only wants to observe what develops. Possibly from behind the safety of the walls of Papa's built-in subterranean bunker. Well, he calls it a 'priest hole', but…
Really, an acid test, is Christmas.
Or, a really corking, truly brilliant, completely sideways-approaching super special gift for the man Q loves beyond all reason. Could be either/or.
Q winces at his own not-quite-knowing, dragging his heels just a little as they enter the expanse of Mummy's drawing room, but fortunately James doesn't catch it. If he does do, though, he doesn't comment. Small blessing then; it is Christmas.
Perhaps James will mark his hesitance down to Q's reluctance to visit home, or at least for these more formal holiday occasions. He's nowhere near the level of Sherly but Q's not exactly one for forced joviality.
Papa is the one who ushers them in, speaking of jovial, daftly wreathed in kind coming-and-going smiles as per his usual, and plying them with drinks before dinner as he goes. Q feels no small amount of dread, once again, a toothsome dollop of sherry clutched in a slippery white-knuckled fist. He's been feeling pangs of gut-twisting dread since they left London and his stomach is bloody well inchoate with it. The thought of actual food ingested, even a proper supper as prepared by his illustrious Mummy or his deceptively slapdash Papa, is positively sick-making.
"Bugger." He breathes this, walking into the study, James at his elbow. "Bugger, bugger, fuckity-fuck. Look who's here before us. Damn."
No need to say this aloud but then again—yes. His elder brothers are already in attendance along with their assorted whatnot. Q huffs a weary sigh. He'd stupidly hoped he and his delightfully dangerous beau would be the first ones to arrive, but the states of the driveway gravel, the foyer carpeting and the hall-tree have already informed him differently. Bother and flustration; here went nothing, flat nothing.
"What?" James bumps up against him in an elegant slouch, lips glancing fondly by the curve of Q's ear. "Nervous, pet?"
Q sees James has already scanned the exits and entries automatically but has yet to really concentrate upon the other occupants.
"Right, I suppose I'll forced to introduce you." Papa having bustled away again, making some vague humming noises about helping Mummy.
Polite even under pressure, Q huffs and turns to gesture to one of the other guests first. The shortest one, of course, as Q really does like to attack things with certain degree of neatness, however odd his bent might appear to others.
"James Bond, this is—"
"Oh, no need, mate," Dr Watson, the amiable but excellent marksman, replies mildly, extending a hand to meet James's as he strolls forward. "How are you, Bond? Well met, yeah? Been a damnably long time, hasn't it?"
"Hah!"
James is—startlingly— clearly absurdly delighted by this unexpected happenstance; the handshake the two men share morphs into a groping arm grip and then James and the doctor are engaging in that very silly man-hug motion normal blokes seem to do at sport matches. Q gapes. This is not sort of 'James' he's ever seen before, that's for sodding certain.
"Three Continents!" James carries on, all verve and bonhomie, making much of the doctor. "Good to clap eyes on you again, old man. You're well, then? Recovered?"
"Never been better, cheers," Dr Watson replies amiably, and Q, though his eyes have gone wide and dry behind the dubiously shifty safety of his lenses, notes that silly arse Sherly has snapped ramrod straight, has clenched his back teeth together with a pronounced audible grind and has abruptly materialized across the minor distance of carpet and is stationed right at the compromised doctor's side with an amazingly eye-boggling rapidity. Sherly's one bent arm thrusts out deliberately to knock James's manly limb straight off the short doctor's shoulders and he really actually growls at James, the barmy bugger; an eerie rumble, dark and darker, straight from the heaving chest buttoned precariously under his bespoke white dress shirt.
"You, there! Ger'off!"
It's very odd and a distinct alteration to the ambience. Every articulation of Q's next eldest sibling, that normally coolly demeanoured Master Misanthrope, is wound tight as fuck, is gone all snarly and is quite pronounced in cutthroat focus. Really, the misguided idiot looks like nothing other than a bloody tiger eyeing down a rival.
Q tenses and opens his mouth, deciding he should really intervene before there's any actual bloodshed, but it's already in process of being dealt with. In a way, that is.
"Oh, oi, Sherlock!" Watson scowls up, twisting about to glare at his personal Holmes edition. "Nearly caused me a spill, you great git." He twirls the ice in his tumbler irritably, shoving it under Sherly's flaring nostrils. "What are you even about?" he hisses at him, elbowing vengefully, tit-for-tat for Sherly's obnoxious crowding. "Of course I know Bond. Why, we're practically old pals, he and I. We, er…we, ah, served. Together. A'hem."
Sherlock emits a strange whistling sound but is forestalled from protesting.
"You don't say, John," Mycroft—that twat—simply has to slip in, speaking from the shadows. "Did you now?"
"Oh, absolutely," James chimes in urbanely, and he and John Watson share a long and rather horribly meaningful stare around the ireful jut of Sherly's black-suited shoulders. "One of my fondest memories, that. Ah, Afghanistan."
John hums in comfortable agreement and bats his sandy lashes, cocking his chin at James like some pint-sized coquette.
"John," Sherly barks, snatching at his companion's wrist, and Q only barely manages to stuff back the rather mad laughter bubbling up his throat against all reason. As this is all intensely farcical, even for a Holmes family reunion. "John."
It's an insane giggle, highly inappropriate, and it really is all due to Holmes genetics, thanks to Papa. Q spares a grimace for a few of those other rather annoying traits he's inherited even as he subsides to a watchful quietude.
"John, look at me."
"What, Sherlock? What, now?"
"John. Come here, this instant."
"What? Why? No, Sherlock! For chrissake!"
James, bless him, just nods off the two men retreating—the stupidly jealous one doing the dragging and the slightly irked one being dragged, both. And ever so bland James is, his lips just quirking wryly as if this were just some rather unfortunate social by-play at, say, the Brazilian embassy, exactly as had occurred during the mission last month with that silly finance minister's daughter, and not the very first thing that happens to him when he strolls all unawares into his own boyfriend's parent's parlour.
"Do you have absolutely no manners instilled in you, Sherlock? Let me go, damn it!"
Indeed, Q is certain James is terribly well aware of the precarious social dynamic—and what's just been done to it—or more like, what he's gone and done to it, bleeding catalyst he is. James is like a ticking time bomb and Q had already anticipated some degree of excitement out of the evening, but this? This is really too much, and too soon. But then, Sherly in a strop is flat out amusing, providing Q gains sufficient distance from the guaranteed explosions and fireworks; certainly even Mycroft is smiling discreetly from behind the cover of his drinks glass, as is his dinner date, the dapper DI.
"Oh, now—oh, stop it." Poor John is shouting, but quietly. "Mummy's going to have my head for this, do you know that? Sherlock, you utter dickweed."
Sherly is nowhere near as hushed. "No!"
The protesting doctor has been hauled forthwith over to a convenient dimly lit alcove; a series of furious but much less strident whispers ensue.
Q's eyes rest upon them for an instant longer, musing. He's never before witnessed his older brother being quite this violently animated and it is very entertaining, admittedly. Less entertaining, however, is the dawning and undeniable inference that Q's own James and Sherly's little John are known to each other and have been for some time now. Very well indeed, apparently. Extremely well—er, intimately.
Too blasted well!