"James…"
The rising sun pouring unhindered through the window of Bond's penthouse bedroom was warming Q's bare back just as the caress of Bond's lips began to drag him back under the sheets, when Q's phone sounded loud and rude in his ear. He groaned as he broke away to grab the offending object and frowned at the source of the interruption. Tanner. Not M. At least he could be annoyed at Tanner. Blasted man was more effective than a cold shower in an Arctic winter.
He hit green as Bond watched on, sleepily amused. "This had better be good man, or so help me..."
Q listened. Then he was out of a bed that may as well have been on fire if the speed of his movements were anything to go by.
Bond sat up against the headboard, hands laced together at the back of his head, to watch the show: Q at his laptop, typing furiously, barking orders down the phone at Tanner. He could just picture the controlled chaos in Division at that moment, admiring the fact that Q didn't have to be in the room to wield his presence like an iron fist.
The show came to a conclusion in less time than it took to boil an egg. By which point, Bond was close to boiling over.
Q rubbed his face, heaved a sigh and shut his laptop, turning back towards the bed. He stopped short.
Buggering hellfire. Does he even know how he looks lying there like that?
A scar-tissued torso on full display, legs tangled in dark blue sheets, various portions of sunkist skin overlying muscled flesh peering out from the mess of cotton and quilt. Of course he bloody knows.
Q wasn't going to immediately succumb to the pull of the man however, and trained the expression on his face to reflect something borderline casually bored-looking. "Has there been a death in the Royal Family?" Q enquired innocently, looking down the length of Bond's body, gaze lingering on the growing interest Bond was displaying beneath the sheets.
"There might well be, you know, if either of your cats ever decides to use my lower leg as a scratching post," Bond retorted smoothly.
"Now. What the blue blazes are you doing standing over there in nothing but glasses and socks looking like God's gift to The British Empire?" Bond drawled. "Get your backside back in this bed. Post haste, Quartermaster," he demanded heatedly, while tossing the covers back.
So Q did just that, and proceeded to ensure Bond rapidly developed a fresh appreciation of the benefits of taking orders from one's superior.
The things one must do for one's country in the name of duty.
"And if I catch even a whiff of impropriety within these walls, the only bed you'll be sharing is the one at the bottom of the Thames with less than a footnote in the MI6 archives to remind anyone you even existed!"
"Yes, Ma'am," came the unified response.
"Dismissed!"
Villiers was sitting at his post outside M's office, looking very much as though he was doing his level best not to grin like a Cheshire Cat.
"Something on your mind there, Villiers?" asked Bond, sporting the expression of a viper waiting for that one wrong move that would justify a strike.
"No, Sirs," he replied, smile withering as quickly as it had appeared. The sudden realisation that one was being scrutinised by two of the most dangerous men in the employ of MI6 can be quite sobering. "Nothing at all."
"Marvellous," came Bond's taut response as he and Q headed towards the lift.
As the doors closed, Q allowed himself a breath.
"Well that could have gone better…"
Bond chuckled. "Are you joking? That was practically an endorsement, Q."
"It was?"
"Trust me. I've known M a lot longer than you. So yes."
"Oh."
Bond turned towards him and crowded him bodily into a corner of the space, security cameras be damned. A brief but hungry kiss, warm with the promise of things to come, was exchanged as the lift pinged and Bond exited.
"Have a good day, Quartermaster," he said without turning around.
"You too, 007," replied Q as the door slid shut.
And as the lift continued on its downward path towards the bowels of MI6, Q realised that while life was far from perfect it was, by British standards at least, jolly bloody good.
END.
007 AND HIS QUARTERMASTER WILL RETURN IN
BOUND