[Author's Note: Sorry this is a bit late. I signed up for a challenge in another fandom, hoping to respark my interest in it, and...just, no. Writing sucks when you are doing it out of obligation rather than interest. I was so excited to get back to this WIP, and I hope the extra-long chapter makes up for the delay. :-D]

Bond sat in his darkened flat, letting his thumbnail crackle slightly over the seal on the bottle of Scotch. He hadn't opened it yet, but it was a matter of time.

He knew he was a cliche, sitting here in the dark, wallowing in his grief and bitterness. It always came down to this, didn't it? The three constants in his life: shadows, Scotch, and loneliness.

He had done what he could to avoid this very situation, practically begging Mallory for an assignment, for some kind of a distraction. The pity in Mallory's eyes had sent a hot flare of anger through his belly.

"Not this week," the bastard had said. "We need you with a level head."

Well, fuck Mallory. Bond was going to drink until he fell down tonight, and see how fucking level his head was in the morning.

Two years. At least last year he had the distraction, his vengeance burning like acid in his belly, driving him forward as he systematically destroyed Quantum. Now he had nothing, just an empty flat and a full bottle. It had a kind of grim poetry to it. He couldn't forget, so instead he would try to drown himself in that amber liquid, just as Vesper had drowned in the murky water of the canal two years ago...

The brisk knock at his door had his head jerking up, his hand at his weapon before he even processed it. He felt a spike of irritation. Some bloody delivery getting the address wrong, no doubt. They'd go away. He leaned his head back against the sofa again, thumb tracing the sharp edge of the seal one more time.

The second knock sent him from aggravation into full-blown rage.

"Bloody fuck," Bond fumed, levering himself off the sofa and banging the Scotch down on the coffee table. He almost hoped it was a fucking team of assassins, given the mood he was in. Let them bloody try, he raged to himself.

He should have moved to a flat with better security long ago, but secure flats were for those who gave a damn. Instead Bond flattened himself to the side of the door, ducking swiftly to look through the peephole.

The quick flash was enough to reveal a shaggy mop of dark hair, a glimmer of vivid green eyes, and the curve of a pale neck. Bond rested his head against the doorframe for a moment, considering.

"I hear you breathing, 007," Q said crisply.

Well, fuck.

Bond cracked the door just enough to shoot a glare at Q.

"Just in the neighborhood?" he asked.

"Something like that." Q's voice was calm and composed, as ever, but his nervousness betrayed itself in little involuntary twitchy movements of his hands at his sides. "Care to invite me in?"

Bond opened the door a touch more. He saw Q take in the sight of his ripped jeans, his threadbare t-shirt, the two days' worth of stubble on his face that he couldn't be arsed to deal with.

"Why are you here, Q?" he said unkindly.

Q's nervous movements ceased suddenly, his body becoming almost unnaturally still, but he lifted his chin defiantly. "I'm your friend. If you don't want to talk, that's fine. I'm rubbish at it anyway. But I thought you might want company."

Bond felt a rush of hot shame wash over him. Of course this wasn't coincidence, Q turning up at his flat for the first time ever. He knew, probably everyone at MI6 knew. James Bond had been deceived and betrayed two years ago, and was still stumbling under the weight of his heartbreak and humiliation.

"No," Bond said bluntly. "I don't." He shut the door swiftly, decisively, not allowing himself to see Q's reaction. He waited for the footsteps to start back down the hall before throwing himself on the sofa, wrenching the top off the Scotch with a savage twist of his wrist.

Bloody hell. Q, showing up. What was he thinking? Everyone knew Bond was an unsociable bastard at the best of times. And today of all days...

I'm your friend, Q had said.

Bond felt a curl of guilt in his belly, slowly spreading icy tendrils up into his chest. Of course it wasn't a coincidence. Q had thought that today of all days, he would need a friend.

Something occurred to Bond, and he checked his watch. It was barely six o'clock. Q must have left work on time for once. The pavement was mobbed this time in the evening. Had Q walked here, or had he braved the Tube at rush hour? Either situation was one that he would normally avoid at all costs. Bond set the bottle carefully down on the coffee table, moving toward the window.

Bond looked down at the busy street below. He saw Q pause on his front steps, as if girding himself, before sliding into the stream of pedestrian traffic. His shoulders were hunched with tension, his hands buried deep in his pockets. As Bond watched, a man walking in the other direction while texting on his mobile jostled Q, making him flinch.

"Fucking hell," Bond said, and before he knew it he was pelting down the stairs.

He caught up with Q within a two streets.

"Q," he said, so close now and yet unable to reach out and touch Q to get his attention. "Q!"

Q turned around, his face set and pale, his eyes scanning over Bond. Bond felt ridiculously foolish, standing on the pavement like some character in a horrid romantic comedy, disheveled, barefoot, and panting slightly. Q's expression softened but he waited, cautiously, for Bond to say something more.

"There's an Indian takeaway on the corner," Bond finally said. "Do you like lamb vindaloo?"

Q's mouth quirked in that reluctant little smile of his. "It's my favorite."

Q approached his glass of Scotch as if he'd never encountered such a thing before, his tongue sticking out to lap at it like a cat tasting cream. Bond, perplexingly, found it both endearing and erotic, in a way he was absolutely sure he should be ashamed of.

"Not much of a drinker, then?" Bond said dryly, watching that delicate pink tongue dart out again.

"Not as such." Q graduated to taking a tentative sip. "I prefer to keep my wits about me."

Bond's mouth twisted bitterly at that. He took a gulp big enough to make Q wince. "That's Q-speak for never letting your guard down, isn't it?"

"Pot. Kettle." Q seemed to be fascinated by the movement of the ice cubes in the glass.

"Seriously, Q, did M find you in a monastery?"

Q shot Bond a sharp, unreadable glance, before snorting. "Hardly," he said. "Besides, don't monks make brandy, or brew beer, or that sort of thing?"

"I suppose some do." He lifted his glass in an ironic toast. "Congratulations, Q, you are godlier than a monk."

The words had barely left his mouth before Bond wished them back. Christ, that had been cruel, his tone openly mocking, and of course Q had picked up on it. He sat steadfast on the sofa but he looked smaller, diminished somehow, an unhappy downturn lurking at the corners of his mouth.

Bond felt like a complete shit. It wasn't as if Q had chosen to be...chaste. It was Bond's own weakness — his frustrated and dishonorable lust for the young man — that had him lashing out at Q.

"Fuck," Bond said feelingly. "I'm sorry, Q. I'm not fit company for anyone tonight."

Q stood up, and Bond tried to suppress the stab of disappointment he felt. It was for the best — of course Q should go, before Bond pulled him down into his pit of depression as well.

Instead Q removed his jacket, carefully folding it before draping it over a nearby chair. He settled back on the sofa, propping his feet up on the coffee table and taking a healthy swig of his Scotch, before staring Bond down.

"I was promised lamb vindaloo, and I'm getting lamb vindaloo," he said primly. "I should also mention that I've brought my taser, and I'm not above shocking you into next week if you get stroppy with me again."

Bond gaped at Q in stunned silence for a moment before the first chuckle welled up, rusty and reluctant, rolling through him. Q's deadpan expression only made it worse, until Bond was shaking with uncontrollable laughter. Finally he subsided in a wheezy, teary-eyed heap.

Q was looking at him as if he were some interesting new piece of technology he had yet to puzzle out.

"Thank you, Q," Bond said weakly, still chuckling from time to time. "For coming." He knocked back the last of his drink. "I'll fetch the lamb."

Q's pale skin grew flushed when he was tipsy, Bond was learning. His movements became more fluid as well, some of that stiff alertness seeping out of his posture, the small, efficient gestures of his hands becoming more expansive.

Bond knew that he had expected to be blind drunk by this point in the evening, but between the food and Q's company he had somehow managed to check his drinking without too much effort. The last time he had been drunk in Q's presence was all-too vivid in his memory, and he'd cut off his own hands before he would forcibly put them on Q again.

Surprisingly, instead of pulling him rapidly down into his usual well of depression and self-loathing, the more moderate levels of alcohol were buzzing in his bloodstream, making him feel strangely unconcerned about the whole situation. Combined with Q's steady, unquestioning company he found himself becoming unusually talkative.

Even more to his surprise, he had begun talking about Vesper. Thinking about it now he didn't even know if he had broached the subject or if Q had. Either way it felt like lancing a boil, letting out poison that had been festering for too long. Even just saying her name aloud after all this time, instead of "that bitch," was both painful and yet somehow healing.

"The thing is..." he mused aloud to Q. "The thing is, she wasn't even who she was. She was who she was so that she could fool me. And she was doing it for Yusef, who was who he was so that he could fool her. Lies upon lies, and for what?" He spat the words bitterly. "Money. Information. Power."

He took another sip of his Scotch. The humiliation and heartbreak of Vesper's betrayal seemed oddly distant right now, with Q's warm presence beside him. Looking back, what struck Bond most was the utter waste of it all. For someone who snuffed out life on an almost daily basis, the loss of Vesper's vibrant existence still seemed like an affront.

Maybe this was the first step toward forgiveness. Remembering Vesper with simple grief for her loss and with pity for her misguided motives, instead of with blinding anger for her deception and betrayal.

Q held out his glass, and Bond poured him just a little more. Bond sighed, searching for the words to explain to Q his somewhat drunken epiphany. "No matter what mistakes she made, she was...brilliant, and beautiful, and full of life. And she died for nothing. For numbers in an account somewhere."

"You loved each other, though," Q said, his grey-green eyes serious. "Even if she was pretending at first, even if it didn't last. She wouldn't have drowned if she didn't love you, and you loved her. That's...that's got to be worth something, hasn't it? To love someone who loves you back, even if just for a few weeks?"

Bond drained the last of his glass, grimacing. "I don't know," he said. "It doesn't feel worth a bloody thing right now."

Bond poured more into both their glasses, squinting against the slight fuzzy edge to his vision. They both lapsed into silence for awhile, lost in their own thoughts.

Finally Bond felt himself growing impatient with his morose line of thought. He wanted distraction. "Tell me something about you," he said to Q.

Q's head lolled on the couch, turning to face Bond, his eyes blinking slowly. "Like what?"

Christ, there was a lot that Bond wanted to know, but Q obviously was holding back for a reason. Even hazy as he was, Bond knew he would be a complete shit to press him on any of it. He cast about for something relatively innocuous to ask.

"Tell me...how you learned computers."

Q laughed bitterly, closing his eyes. "You would ask that."

Bond felt irritation flare in his gut. "It's a simple question, Q. I've bared enough of my bloody soul tonight, I'd think you'd at least answer that."

Q sighed, before taking a swig of his drink. "I learned computers in prison," he said casually.

Bond felt a sudden rage cloud his vision. Here he had told Q bloody everything, and Q was brushing off the simplest question with a flippant answer? He clenched his jaw, trying to control his anger, when something about Q's tense, watchful gaze stopped him cold.

"You're serious," he rasped.

Q nodded. "Or close enough, at least. I was in a YOI, if you want to get technical. I was the youngest and smallest kid in all of Huntercombe." He raised his glass in an ironic salute to Bond. "Or at least I think so, it's not any of us sought out bragging rights on that point."

Huntercombe. It took Bond a moment to place the name, being more familiar with foreign prisons than domestic ones. A former WWII internment camp, Huntercombe was an adult prison now, but over a decade ago it had been one of the most notorious Youth Offenders Institutions. Bond remembered a series of scandals before the place was finally decommissioned — overcrowding, safety concerns, imprisonment of juveniles with serious mental health conditions...

Bond's alcohol-muddled mind tried to wrap itself around the thought of Q — even younger and more vulnerable than he was now — in a place like that. It was...unimaginable.

"How..." A flood of questions came to mind, and Bond was hard-pressed to pick just one. "How old were you?"

Q did that little one-shouldered shrug of his. "Sixteen when I was sentenced, twenty-two when I was released."

Six years. His whole adolescence. Bond tried to imagine it. Imprisonment in a YOI was reserved for adolescents who committed the most serious crimes or the most recalcitrant of serial youth offenders. Bond couldn't imagine Q in either of those categories.

"Why..." he began.

"Because I was a little shit," Q responded, with a bleak smile, although his eyes were focused on a distant point. "My counsel tried to get me a supervision order instead, and I obstructed her at every turn. Told everyone who would listen — including the Crown Court judge and jury — that I wasn't sorry, that I meant to do it, that it was entirely premeditated..."

"You know that's not what I mean," Bond said curtly.

"I know." Q avoided Bond's eyes. "But you only get the answer to one question tonight. You asked about computers, and that's where I learned them. I've always had a knack for languages, patterns. Coding is more or less an extension of that, and I had a caseworker who was bright enough to realize that. Huntercombe required twenty-five hours of education per week, and I soon learned that the computer laboratory was among the...safest places for someone like me to be."

"Christ, Q." Bond couldn't dismiss the images — Q as an adolescent, small and pale and skinny, taking refuge in his code to escape his grim surroundings. No wonder he was so skittish about being touched. He must have been the target of every punk in that facility. Bond felt the competing and entirely futile desire to hold Q in his arms protectively and to hunt down and murder anyone who had ever laid an unwanted hand on him.

"That's why I didn't want to tell you," Q said sharply. "I didn't want that...that pity that's written all over your face. I'm stronger than you think, Bond. Even back then — I fought back with everything I had. I was small, but I was brilliant and sneaky and fucking determined, and most of them learned it was easier to let me be."

"It's not..." Bond stopped, stumbling over his words. "Goddammit, Q, I don't pity you, or think any less of you. I just...wish that hadn't happened to you. And I want to hurt everyone who hurt you. If that's the wrong reaction then I'm sorry. I'm a double-oh. My first instinct is to kill everyone who ever gave you a hard time."

Q snorted. "I do appreciate your...chivalry, misplaced as it might be." He took another contemplative sip of his drink. "It's probably not as bad as you're imagining. There was a fair amount of supervision, and we were all in single cells. There were other types of... sexual coercion, but I wasn't raped. And the beatings were mostly...posturing. Half the kids in there were like me — had never been in prison before. It was often some newly-admitted git, even more scared than I was, just trying to prove himself on what he thought would be an easy target. And then once I started hacking, I was able to leverage that for protection."

Bond suddenly thought of the glance Tanner and Mallory had exchanged when Bond had expressed doubt about Q's ability to cope with the Stockholm mission, and Mallory's careful words. I think you'll find that Q is more resilient than you might think.

Resilient indeed. Even now, whether for his own sake or for Bond's, Q was trying to minimize the impact of what must have been hell on earth for a young, frightened adolescent.

"It sounds like it was bad enough," Bond simply said.

Q shrugged again. "Honestly, one of the worst part was when one little bastard figured out to take my glasses. That's what..." He stopped, taking another sip of his drink, and Bond gave him time to work out his thoughts. "I don't dream of it often, but when I do, that's what I dream. Being blind. Everything just a blur of color and noise, not being able to see where the next touch ws coming from. Not being able to defend myself against it. That...defenselessness. I never want to feel that again."

Bond could understand that feeling all too well. In his situation he was usually bound, immobilized, helpless to do anything but experience the pain his captor chose to inflict on him. Once you had experienced it that feeling — that vulnerability — never really left you. Bond reacted to it with aggression and distraction, numbing it with alcohol and meaningless sex in his downtime. Q had responded differently, cutting himself off from everyone, creating walls of routine and technology to keep himself protected from the world.

"I don't know which of us is more fucked up," Bond admitted wryly.

Q snickered into his Scotch. "Call it a tie."

Bond let his eyes wander over Q. His eyes were closed now, long dark lashes stark against his pale cheeks. His body was still languid with alcohol, the faintest pink flush on his neck. Christ, Bond wanted him.

"You're safe with me," Bond found himself saying before he even realized he intended to speak. Christ, which of them was he trying to convince?

Q's eyes opened sleepily. "I know," he said in that serious way of his. "I wouldn't be here with anyone else."

His mouth quirked in the barest smile. He put his glass down on the coffee table and carefully slid the few inches until he was next to Bond on the couch, their bodies pressed together from knee to shoulder.

"This okay?" Q said drowsily.

"Yeah." The simple heat of Q's body was making Bond feel a little breathless. Slowly he lifted his arm until it was wrapped around Q's slim shoulders. "Is this?"

Q hummed a pleased response, his eyes shut, his face now pressed to Bond's shoulder. It was amazing how perfectly he fit there. Bond closed his eyes as well, resting his cheek on Q's tumultuous hair. It was just as soft and thick as he had always imagined it to be.

On some level Bond wondered what in the hell he and Q were doing, but for the most part he didn't give a damn. He was too busy marveling in the strange intimacy — the ability to be close to someone like this, taking comfort in the warmth and affection, with complete trust and without agenda. It was...surprisingly nice.

Bond let his thoughts drift. Thinking of Vesper a bit, but more often thinking of the man resting so trustingly against his chest. Such a contradiction Q was — so fragile-looking, but with such a core of steely strength underneath. There was such a vulnerability to him, and yet such ferocity as well — from his fierce protectiveness of "his operatives" to his calm and even ruthless competence in support of a mission.

Bond fell asleep to muddled dreams of Vesper and Q, poker chips and palmprint-encoded Walthers. Vesper's cold, wet hand on his cheek and Q's soft warm voice in his ear.

He woke alone on the sofa, covered with the duvet from his bed, the near-empty bottle of Scotch on the coffee table replaced with a bottle of water and two paracetamol. His head ached but his heart felt lighter than it had in ages, and he had his Quartermaster to thank for that.

[Please review! :-D]