The Fuse Burns
"But why do we have to carry it?"
"Because, 002, this entire bet emerged out of your own stupidity!" Q snapped, glancing over his shoulder to where Charlie and Saif were hauling the chair up the flight of stairs.
It had been two hours since the whole post-prank-puppy-pile incident, and the omega had to rather reluctantly admit that he felt miles better after it all. Not only was everything now out in the open, but he also knew exactly where he stood with each of his grounded double-0s. He had quite firmly ordered them to tell the rest of the pack what had happened and why, because the last thing Q wanted was to go through that entire bloody debacle again.
Although to be fair, there were only four double-0s that currently weren't in England, and one of those was James bloody Bond who Q had already met, and another was Alec, someone he spoke to on a daily basis. The only double-0s that he really had to worry about were 004 and 008. The former, Jacob Williams, was currently on loan to MI5 in Gibraltar, but he was apparently the kind, gentle sort - or at least as kind and gentle as a double-0 could be - as well as being wickedly smart and rather adept at picking locks.
The latter, Milicent Osmund, was standoffish by all accounts, and easily the most independent out of all the agents. She was abrupt and awkward and impulsive and really, if he wasn't for her slightly concerning apathy when it came to violence and bloodshed, she wouldn't have made much of a double-0 at all. But as it were, as terrible as 008 was with people, she was brilliant with politics and she'd prevented more than a few revolutions and uprisings in her time. According to Duncan, who seemed to have a soft spot for the only other grumpy agent of the pack, her mission in Kurdistan was starting to wrap up, so Q expected to receive contact from her any day now.
"I still don't know why we couldn't have simply taken the bloody lift" 005 grumbled, awkwardly walking backwards up the steps and drawing the omega back to the present.
Q placed both hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at them. "You know exactly why! And don't think that you're getting out of this either, 009!"
Edie gave him an innocent look from her place at the top of the stairwell. "Get out of what, sweetheart? I'm helping".
"Holding open a single door for us every five minutes isn't helping". Charlie groaned, blond hair damp with sweat as he lifted the chair up another step. "Especially since breaking into the damn vault was your idea to start with!"
Heaving it up onto the landing, he collapsed on top of it panting, while Saif draped himself over the high back as well. Q rolled his eyes in exasperation at their antics, reminding himself that if they could outrun hitmen and assassins and megalomaniac supervillain wannabe's, then they could bloody well manage a couple of stairs.
"009, swap places with 005".
"What?" Charlie exclaimed, "Why does he get a break but I don't?!"
"Because he wasn't in on it from day one, 002! Now get up, there are only another two flights of stairs to go, and I promised Eve that she'd have it by closing time".
"злой котенок-диктатор".
"I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, shall I?"
Fifteen minutes later, Q pushed open the door to Eve's office and forced a smile. As much as he liked the ex-agent - which was a lot - and as much as he cared for her and wanted her to be comfortable and happy - again, quite a lot - he wasn't too proud to admit that when it came to giving up the chair…
Well.
Quite frankly, he didn't want anyone to have it, badass best friend or not.
"What can I do for you, Quartermaster?"
She was smirking at him, that small barely noticeable infuriating little smirk that meant she knew exactly what he was doing there. In lieu of answering, he stepped to the side and allowed Charlie to hold open the door as Saif and Edie tried to drag the chair in between them. Eve's smirk widened - the backstabbing traitor - and she quickly jumped to her feet and pushed her own chair out of the way.
Her own chair which was now Q's chair, he belatedly realised. It was small and old and made of wood and it was missing a back and it didn't even swivel.
How the hell was he meant to be an efficient Quartermaster if he couldn't even swivel?!
"Easy does it, boys" Eve said as they struggled to fit the chair through the narrow doorway, "And girl".
Edie narrowed her eyes at her and stabbed an accusatory finger in Miss Moneypenny's direction. "I still haven't forgiven you!"
"Good" she replied easily, "Because I haven't forgiven you, either".
"Oh my god would you two just kiss already?!" Saif groaned. "Or at least get out of the way so I get this bloody chair in!"
"I'm trying to help you get this bloody chair in, you idiot!" 009 shot back, "You need to lift it higher!"
"I am lifting it higher! It's an entire foot off the ground, for god's sake! Any higher than that and you could limbo under it!"
"I meant that you need the back of the chair higher or else it's going to get caught on the door handle!"
"Well then why didn't you just say that in the first place then?!"
"Because I had erroneously assumed that you possessed a brain!"
"Well, you know what they say about assuming!"
From behind him, Q heard movement, and he turned just in time to see M pause with a hand still on his office door. He stared at Q, looked over at the bickering double-0s, glanced at Eve, turned back to Q, gave one last bewildered and almost concerned look at the three agents, before sighing heavily, shaking his head, taking a step back, and shutting the door after him.
The Quartermaster knew exactly how he felt.
After getting the three troublemakers to carry his new chair back down to his office, they left without a word. Q knew that they were upset with him, both for the prank, carrying around chairs, and for refusing to let them hug him before they left. They had gotten more than enough hugs that afternoon and he had a ton of work to catch up with because of it.
Also, he was starting to worry that he'd become rather dependent on that casual affection and he really didn't want to go down that route again.
So now, with three of the double-0s pouty with him, the chair no longer in his possession, and his own minions a mere two seconds away from rioting because an "outsider" had won the bet, he was very firmly in no mood. To make matters worse, due to the hectic events of the last few days, he was more than a little bit behind in his quarterly budget review for accounting and it was most certainly not a task that he was looking forward to.
Technically, the report wasn't due until March, but they were already in the second last week of February and Q knew that once Alec returned and brought his inevitable chaos, he wouldn't have much free time.
At 4.30pm exactly, nearing midday in Cuba, 006 sent him the confirmation message that he'd been waiting for. The man had timed it well, planning to slip into the building undetected while most workers were on lunch break. After he'd set the explosives, he would trigger the fire alarm and then blend in with the crowd as everyone rushed out onto the street. It would be easy for him to hit the detonator while everyone was panicking, and then grab Orumorov while his guards were distracted. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the extraction team, where 006 would sedate the Russian general and contact HQ. All in all, the entire thing should only take half an hour to complete after he arrived at the chemical factory…
Which hopefully explained Q's worry at receiving nothing but radio silence until an entire two hours after first contact.
When his headset beeped, he lunged for it, uncaring of the papers and files he managed to knock to the floor by doing so.
"006?"
"No sir. Commander Carter, E Squadron".
Q felt his heart freeze.
"... Commander. Report".
"Asset missing. Agent obtained. On route to extraction point".
"Status?"
"... Alive".
The omega forced himself to take a slow calming breath.
"Conscious?"
"More or less".
"Let me speak to him".
There was a moment of silence, before the sound of movement and low voices could be heard in the background. Q stared out of his office window at the near-empty branch below. It was long past closing time after all, and almost everyone had already gone home. The double-0s were off doing whatever they did at night, although he highly doubted that it was something as simple as sleeping, and only the skeleton crew remained working the night shift.
Plus himself, of course.
"'ello cub".
He quickly turned back to his desk, a wave of insurmountable relief washing over him at the sound of his agent's voice.
"006. Are you alright?"
"... Define alright".
"Well if you're making quips, 006, then clearly you can't be too badly off".
"Oh, you'd be surprised… Orumorov escaped".
Q grimaced. "So I heard. What the hell happened?"
"I fucked up, cub" 006 admitted, his voice tightly controlled and laced with pain, "Someone saw me pull the alarm. The building evacuated, as planned, but… Orumorov guessed what was happening. He was… waiting for me, in one of the labs".
"Please tell me you got the hell out of there".
He huffed a low, brief laugh. "Well, you see, I was going to, but then I saw that one of the scientists hadn't logged out of their computer before running".
"Alec" Q warned, "What did you do?"
"... I plugged in a USB stick and downloaded all their files".
"Alec!"
"What happened to only code-names on comms, Quartermaster?"
"I'll use your code name, 006, when you start acting like the highly trained agent you supposedly are!"
"Ouch. And to think that I downloaded all of those documents for you".
"You-" He stopped, brain momentarily short-circuiting. "You did what?!"
"I thought you might like them. It isn't too often you get access to a Russian supervillains chemical factory's files, after all. Plus, I didn't have time to grab a souvenir".
Q felt him starting to grin and hated himself for it.
"006, are you telling me that you risked your life just to bring me back a present?!"
"... Yeah, pretty much".
He face-planted his desk. And then immediately winced and sat back up again, rubbing his nose.
"What happened, Alec?"
"Well, the computer said it'd take an entire five minutes to download all the files onto the USB, something which, by the way, I expect you to create a better version of, but Orumorov's men had found me at that point, so I had to… distract them".
"And by distract them, I assume you mean with you".
"Hey, I've been here a few months now, cub. I've picked up quite the impressive collection of Cubano insults".
"Alec".
"I got in a fight" he admitted, "Both of the fist and gun variety, but on the plus side, I killed a few baddies!"
"At the expense of your health!" Q snapped, "And a- a bloody stupid USB stick!"
"I thought you'd be happy with the USB stick".
"That's besides the point!" He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to calm down. "So. You got in multiple fights, putting yourself in completely unnecessary danger, got a copy of all of Orumorov's files, but the man himself escaped, and then I can only assume that you stumbled from the building looking like an extra in a horror film, and then blew it up sky high before reaching the extraction team. Am I missing anything?"
"... Kind of".
"What?"
"It's only a small thing. Really small. It's not even worth mentioning-"
"006".
"It's nothing to worry about either, because it's not like you can change the past, so-"
"Alec!"
"... I got in a gun fight".
"I know. And? Wait, no, don't tell me you got shot!"
"I mean... yeah, but that's not the problem".
"You and I have two very different definitions of what constitutes as a problem!"
"Q!"
This man was going to be the death of him. He pitied R, he really did, she had at least twice the experience he had as well as three times the years when it came to dealing with these idiots. How she'd manage to survive this long, he'd never know.
"Yes, 006?" he bit out, approximately twenty seconds away from having a nervous breakdown of his own.
"I was in a gun fight. In one of the labs".
"And?"
"And more than one vial possibly maybe kind of might have gotten a little bit… broken?"
Q froze, his mind screeching to a halt as his heart rate suddenly skyrocketed.
"I thought the drug was injection only" Alec continued, far too fucking clam, "Or maybe even some sort of tablet? Or- Or pill? But, uh… apparently, it also works when it's sort of… airborne".
This couldn't be happening. This could not, at all, ever, in any universe, be happening!
"I didn't get a chance to read all the files I downloaded, but based on what I did read... I've got less than an hour before it kicks it".
The alpha's voice was quieter now, no longer playful and teasing but instead serious and almost… accepting. And- fuck, the alpha, he was an alpha, an alpha who had just been exposed to a hormone that would induce a full-on rage in less than an hour and-
And he was also a double-0.
A highly trained killing machine who was one of the most dangerous people on this planet before he was drugged with testosterone and adrenaline so if he managed to escape while he was drugged then-
"Carter's going to sedate me" 006 said, as if reading his mind, "It's not contagious, the drug, hence the extraction team, so… so I might make it back in one piece. But if I don't… well, at least you won't have to track down my body-"
"Don't".
"... Cub-"
"No! Don't! Just- Just shut the hell up!" Q snapped, hands gripping the edge of his desk tight enough for his knuckles to turn white, "You are not going to die, do you hear me?! Not over a- a bloody USB stick!"
"... I asked the Commander to upload it and send the files to you, so you'll get the information either way-"
"Fuck the information!" he yelled, "Alec Trevelyan, you are not, and I repeat not, allowed to die just- just ever! I expressly forbid it!"
The alpha laughed, but it was more pained and less steady than before. "I'm not sure that's possible, cub".
"I'll make it possible! 006 you are going to take that anesthetic and you are going to fly back to England and you are going to go to medical and so help me god if you check out before the doctors allow you to then I will drag you back down there by the ear and sit on you!"
"... You know cub, that's not a half bad incentive".
Q snorted despite the severity of the moment.
"You're not allowed to die, alright? Drugs or no drugs, I am ordering you to survive long enough to meet me back in London so I can give you the proper dressing down that you deserve about ignoring procedure and- and your Quartermaster and taking unnecessary risks and- and all of the stupid stunts that you just pulled, and you bloody well better be alive to hear it and apologise!"
"I look forward to it, cub".
Q could hear the smile in his voice, but he could also hear the tightly controlled pain. Less than an hour, he'd said. Less than an hour before the drugs kicked in, but they'd already been talking for half of that.
"... I'll see you when you land, okay?"
"... Okay" Alec replied, despite both of them knowing that he was lying through his teeth, "Until then, Quartermaster. 006 signing off".
Q kept the headset on long after the call ended, too in shock and worried and quite frankly bloody terrified to move. The flight from Cuba back to London would take at least ten hours, along with a short layover in Paris, but once they were in the air, he'd lose all contact with the extraction team.
Which meant that the only thing he could do now was wait, and pray to whatever deity that was out there that Alec's last message hadn't been a permanent goodbye.