Background to a Spy
Q clearly remembered the day Mortner attacked him in that stairwell.
Obvious reasons aside, one of the main things that stood out in his memory was the aftermath - Duncan stitching him up and spiking his tea with vodka, Charlie and Edie petting his hair and shushing him whenever he whined, Alexis and Saif sitting on his office couch and plotting the nurse's demise while Alec sprawled out next to them, having only left medical earlier that day.
And although the edges of that memory were a little blurry - the vodka and a mild concussion ensuring that much at least - he distinctly remembered one particular thought coming to mind.
If the double-0s were this efficient and this chaotic at working together when there were just six of them, then what the hell was it going to be like with all nine?
The answer, evidently, was even more chaos.
"You take that back!" Saif snarled, slamming his hand down on the table so hard that it rattled.
Duncan growled back, just as aggressively. "Fucking make me!"
"Boys-" Alexis started, only to be interrupted by Edie who slapped her hand over the redhead's mouth to silence her. "Wait, I wanna see what happens".
Across from them, Jake narrowed his eyes at her and, based on her resulting wince, also kicked her none-too-gently underneath the table. That, of course, led to Charlie snapping his teeth at him in retaliation, while Milli quickly leaned back to remove herself from being stuck between them.
Next to him, Alec grinned at the scene in front of them while James expertly lifted his martini off of the table just in time for one of Alexis's own empty glasses to roll along the dented wood from where she'd knocked it over elbowing Edie in the ribs.
Q found it all utterly fascinating.
Of course, that could have something to do with the three empty cocktails in front of him. Despite being sweet and colourful, Rainbow Paradise packed a serious punch, and he distantly wondered if he had, perhaps, drank just that little bit too much.
Not that the rest of the pack were any better, of course, given the detritus of glasses and jugs in front of them - it looked like an alcoholic's graveyard.
Some of the alcohol he knew from his previous adventure in El Nido, because apparently, the double-0s not only had assigned seats but they also had assigned drinks.
Charlie had two raspberry vodka shot glasses in front of him while Duncan had just as many empties as Q did - although he was holding his liquor far far better than the omega. Saif had four empty pint glasses of that weird tequila-flavoured beer that he liked, and Edie had five empty Purple Rain cocktails in front of her.
Alec, rather obviously, drank vodka neat, although the number of empty shot glasses that he had in his part of the graveyard was more than a little bit worrying. James bloody Bond, of course, had his fancy vodka martini shaken not stirred with a thin slice of lemon peel on the side - a lemon peel that he actually ate, much to Q's amusement, after finishing every single glass. It was probably deemed too "uncouth" to do so on missions, but the man felt at home in El Nido more than anywhere else the omega had seen, so he didn't dare to ask him about it.
The three remaining double-0s were less straightforward.
Alexis had been handed a tall glass of amber-coloured liquid at the start of the night and had polished off two more glasses since. It was a strange looking drink, with ice cubes and a lime wedge and a somewhat familiar scent that Q just couldn't place. After a few minutes of staring, the alpha had finally caught his eye, smiled warmly with those perfect cupid-bow lips, declared it to be "vodka and redbull" and promptly downed it like a pro.
Q's respect - and fear - of the woman had grown exponentially.
At the other side of the table sat Jake, handsome young boyish Jake with his ridiculous kindness and warm-hearted words, sipping slowly from what looked like a normal glass of coca cola but smelled far too sweet. If he had to guess, he'd probably label it as a rum and coke - something gentle and soft and young, just like its drinker.
And then there was Milli.
Q stared at the single glass in front of the alpha, the same glass she'd been given at the very start of the evening. In the beginning, the clear liquid had obviously been cold, with condensation trickling down the outside, but as the night went on, the drink had adjusted to room temperature, and now the glass was completely dry as she intermittently sipped from it.
It couldn't be vodka - the unlikelihood of 008 drinking an entire glass of the stuff aside, Q didn't even think it was legal for Tom to sell her that much at once - but he also couldn't think of any other kind of alcohol that matched its description.
It was odd that there were no ice cubes in it or even a lemon garnish, but then again, Milli struck him as a very simple and straightforward type of drinker who wouldn't see the "necessity" of having "frivolous" additions in her glass.
But Q still had no idea what the clear bloody drink could be.
"Gin and tonic?" he finally guessed, taking a sip from cocktail number four.
She turned to him and blinked, once.
"Water".
He choked.
Alec patted his back with a grin. "Yeah, our Milli's a strange one. Apparently, alcohol impairs her motor functions".
"It is not wise to become compromised when surrounded by strangers" she said, very seriously, "One of us needs to remain completely sober, and I prefer to never be compromised. It is therefore only logical that I become the… designated driver, if you will".
"We walked here!"
She gave a dainty shrug. "Nevertheless".
Next to him, Alec leaned in, a theatrically conspiratory look on his face.
"Don't even bother, cub. We've been trying to convince her to drink for almost a decade now. It never works".
"Yeah". Duncan snorted. "Milli drinking would be just as fucking shocking as her swearing".
"I do not need to use vulgar words to make my point". She looked almost… disdainful. "Unlike others, who are also seated at this table".
He immediately opened his mouth to protest, no doubt through the use of numerous vulgar words, but before he could, Q leaned closer to the woman with wide eyes, beyond bewildered.
"Wait, wait, wait" he started, putting a hand on Alec's chest to balance himself, "You don't drink. You don't swear. And I'm pretty sure you don't smoke… But you're still a double-0?!"
"I told you she was strange".
"You're all strange" he retorted, turning to the blond, "You're all double-0s!"
"Yeah, and you're the double-0 handler" Alec replied, an amused smirk tugging at his lips, "So just how strange does that make you?"
Q sat back in his seat with a huff.
At some point during the night, he'd lost his tie, and he wasn't entirely sure where it had gone. He'd lost his shoes too, but those were still on the ground, put there by Alec who'd been the one to yank them off as he pulled Q's legs onto his lap.
006 was a surprisingly tactile drunk - although, now that Q thought about it, it probably shouldn't have been so surprising given how cuddly he'd been while high on morphine, but still!
And now, seeing his pout, Alec immediately cooed and pulled him even closer, until he was actually sitting fully on his lap, his Rainbow Paradise carefully but expertly taken out of his hands and discarded in the shot graveyard in front of them.
"It's okay, cub, we like that you're strange!" he reassured, more than a little bit drunk, "You're our favourite non-double-0 strange person!"
Q simply huffed again, snaking his arms around the alpha's neck and burying his face against his chest. "'m not that strange!"
He heard a scoff from somewhere behind him.
"Brat, you tried to fight me when we first fucking met. And you had a bullet wound in your shoulder".
Q immediately pulled back and glared at the man.
"It was only a graze! And you were being a dick!"
"You're tiny" Duncan replied flatly, "And you wanted to fucking fight me while injured".
"... You gotta admit, hun, that's kind of weird".
"Traitor!"
"I think it sounds more suicidal than weird" Jake countered, a mildly disturbed look on his face, "But then again, you literally did fight me the first time we met".
"You broke into my house! I'm not the weird one here!"
"... Well, I mean, technically it was Duncan who actually broke in, mukundwa, and I just… followed".
"And tried to break my hand!"
"You tried to shoot me!"
"Because you broke into my house!"
"Enough!" Edie snapped, "Oh my gosh, you're both as weird as each other alright?!"
"Said the pot to the kettle" Q replied mulishly, even as Alec started rubbing his hand up and down his back in a rather nice, soothing manner.
"Excuse me? Sweetheart, I wasn't the weird one when we met".
"Oh, no, of course not! Because it's perfectly normal for any killing machine to terrorise my minions and then challenge my very existence with subtle threats about murder!"
"And remind me again, sweetheart, just what exactly did you do in response to that?"
Q continued to glare at her for all of three-point-five seconds before flushing a bright pink and burying his face back in Alec's neck.
"Спаси меня! She's being mean to me!"
"Well, sometimes the truth hurts, cub. It's not as if you were any less strange during our first meeting".
"You could have died!"
"And so could you!" he shot back, before cutting himself with a sigh, "Look. There's no point in getting back into all of that now. Point is, we're all strange, agreed?"
"... But nobody's as strange as our Quartermaster".
"Saif!"
"What?" he protested, with a smug and annoyingly attractive grin, "I distinctly remember the day I returned from the Netherlands, you little minx! The way you sidled up to me made sure of that. I could have killed you!"
"But then you'd have no one to make you explosions" he replied, rather obviously, "It was a calculated risk".
"Calculated risk, my shapely ass! What about the night you met Blair, huh? You had absolutely no reason to taunt him like that but you did so anyway because you couldn't care less about the consequences!"
He narrowed his eyes at the man. "Given that the consequences were me being given the best damn cup of tea I've ever had in my life, I'd say it was more than worth it!"
"Oh yeah? And what's your excuse for challenging James in that bloody art gallery? Or meeting Milli in-" 005 paused, frowned, and then turned to face the woman. "Hang on, you never actually told us how you met Q".
The omega mentally groaned. If Milli told Saif of all people just where, in fact, she'd met Q then-
"That information is not important-"
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"-but since it is applicable in this situation, I shall tell you" she finished, "It was March ninth, approximately twenty-hundred hours, in the men's locker room".
Silence.
"... I'm sorry, what?!"
"It was March ninth, approximately twenty-"
"No, no, no" Saif interrupted, "I heard you. I just… refuse to process this information. What were you doing in the men's locker room?!"
"I was searching for the Quartermaster".
Q groaned and begged the ground to swallow him whole. Alec, the absolute bastard, was shaking with barely repressed laughter beneath him.
"And what was the Quartermaster doing in the men's locker room?"
"The Quartermaster is right here you know!"
They both ignored him.
"I assume you are referring to his specific actions, rather than the general reason as to why he, a man, would be in the men's locker room?"
"... Yes".
"He was getting dressed".
"What".
"He had just emerged from the shower".
"What".
"He was… quite flustered".
"What?!" Saif all but yelled, "You saw Q naked?!"
It was hard to determine if he was annoyed because of the breach of privacy, or because he, himself, was not there to also witness a very naked Q.
"He was wearing a towel, but underneath that… Yes. He was naked".
Only 00-bloody-8 could sit there and say that with such a straight face while the rest of the double-0s looked just about ready to combust.
"You saw Q almost naked?!"
"Oh, please!" the omega snapped, reluctantly raising his head once more, "You say that as if you yourself didn't walk into the shower room specifically in search of me!"
"What?" Alexis growled, voice dangerously low, and then, surprisingly, James saying, "You have ten seconds".
Ten seconds to what? To explain? To run? To take cover before he pulled out his totally illegal Walther PPK/S that Q was suspiciously sure that the man had stolen from his branch at one point in time?
"It wasn't like that!" Saif immediately protested, "And I kept my eyes closed the entire time!"
Which-
Yeah.
To be fair, he had.
"And besides, I'm not the only one who's ever been alone in a locker room with him!" he finished, glaring rather obviously at Duncan, who downed the last of his rainbow-coloured cocktail before slamming the glass on the table.
"You watch your fucking mouth, Fitzroy! I'm not our leading man for honeypots!"
"And I wonder why?"
"You little-"
"Stop it!" Q snapped, "All of you, just- just fucking stop, alright?! Yes, three people at this table have seen me almost naked but that's not a fact that I want to spend too much time thinking about! I'm not some- some bloody damsel in distress or a- a blushing virgin! You one-hundred-per-cent do not have to fight over my nonexistent virtue! So just… just stop it with all this bloody ridiculous alpha posturing, alright? You're not jealous rabid beasts, so stop acting like one!"
Panting, chest heaving from the exertion, he glared at each and every single one of them in turn before collapsing against Alec's chest, manoeuvring his legs so that he could straddle the man's lap and very pointedly turn his back on the lot of them.
"And you say that you're not strange" Alexis eventually said with an amused snort, "Look at us. A bunch of psychopaths having drinks with each other".
"... We're not all psychopaths, you know" Charlie muttered, somewhat petulantly.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Here we are, a bunch of psychopaths and sociopaths having drinks with each other. Is that better?"
"It is, yes. Thank you".
Q lasted all of five seconds before snorting, and once he started he found that he couldn't stop. He could feel Alec's shoulders shaking beneath him as he, too, failed to stop his laughter, and before long, Saif had joined in, and then Alexis, and Edie and Charlie and Jake, while James covered his face with his hands and Duncan badly hid his smile behind an empty glass and Milli simply raised an eyebrow at the entire lot of them, as if wondering where on earth she'd gone so wrong for this to be her life now.
Q could empathise with that.
Truly.
Within three minutes, the entire table was laughing, empty shots rolling along the old wood with only double-0 quick reflexes keeping them from falling off, but even that just made them laugh harder, and by the time Q managed to catch his breath, there were tears in his eyes and his cheeks hurt from grinning so wide.
Yes, he decided, there certainly were worse places that he could be tonight.
Of course, the morning-after hangover from hell, very quickly made him rethink that decision.
The morphine Doctor Arkov had given him had well and truly worn off, as had the rather delightful buzz that five forty-per-cent proof cocktails had given him. So not only did his broken wrist hurt, but his head did too - as well as his stomach, eyes, mouth (and Q didn't even know that that was possible before now) and pretty much the entirety of his entire existence.
The only saving grace of the complete disaster was that it was the weekend, and the omega decided to actually use the day for its intended purpose rather than cycle into '6 to work on his pet projects as usual.
He was even able to lounge around in bed for an extra hour before Yana jumped on his chest with a plaintive yowl, because, clearly, he was starving her.
Reluctantly standing up - and then proceeding to grip the edge of his night table for a solid two minutes as the world spun around him - Q pulled on his warmest sweater and a pair of fluffy socks before trudging out into the cold kitchen, grabbing a packet of Purina Gourmet, and squeezing the pouch out into the cats' designated food bowl.
Downing a glass of water and two painkillers, he picked up his phone before returning to bed, incredibly grateful that his past drunk self had had enough foresight to plug it in to charge overnight.
Collapsing back down on his lovely warm blankets with an oof, he blearily squinted at the screen to make sure that there were no life-or-death emergencies that he should be aware of before he went back to sleep.
There weren't, but there was a strange unknown icon on his home screen, however.
Frowning, Q stared at the blue and white app and tried to remember just when on earth he'd downloaded that. He vaguely recalled hearing one of his minions mention it at one point - apparently, it was the most secure messaging system that existed today and one of the very few apps that didn't collect your data to auction off to the highest bidder.
But TSS had its own MI6-developed group chat that they used internally, and everyone that wasn't on it, he had the phone numbers off, so just why on earth had he-
Unbidden, the image of familiar hazel eyes came to mind, as well as the sight of large hands carefully prying his phone from Q's grasp. That had been… Charlie, right? Just before they'd left El Nido for the night, the blond had taken his phone and said… something - something that Q, for the life of him, couldn't remember, but something that he definitely did remember the other double-0s nodding enthusiastically to.
What had he…?
Mentally shrugging - because the thought of physical movement right now made his stomach turn - he clicked on the app and waited for it to load.
Enter your pin.
Q automatically went to type in one of his more usual passwords before pausing. He hadn't set the messaging app up, after all, so he hadn't set the pin either. And no matter how drunk Charlie may have appeared to be, he would never be drunk enough to use a password that he wouldn't be able to remember.
But since it was Charlie who had downloaded the app…
Q typed in 002 and pressed confirm.
After another split-second loading screen, the interface came up - along with a single solitary chat labelled "pack".
Holding his breath, Q clicked on it.
CB added you to the group.
CB: done 2:06am
EK: home. think he'll remember? 2:21am
AP: I don't think I'm even going to remember 2.24am
AP: home, btw 2.24am
JW: Home. He'll see the app on his phone tomorrow, and then he'll know :) 2.29am
DF: yeah if he hasnt fucking drank himself to death 2:31am
DF: home 2:32am
CB: like the rest of us were any better. Home 2:35am
SF: he's just so tiny tho! how can some1 so smol fit that much alcohol into him?! o_O 2.39am
JB: You do realise that he'll be able to read these messages tomorrow, right? Home 2:42am
AT: And he's gonna kill u for that small comment. Also home. Obv 2:42am
EK: does someone have my purse? 2:43am
AT: i have a tie, if that helps 2:44am
EK: it very obviously doesn't, but thanks anyway 2:44am
CB: i've got it - will drop it over tomorrow. And our котеночек is used to us calling him small, so what's one more time going to do? 2:48am
JB: Now he's got written proof. What have we taught you about leaving evidence behind? 2:50am
EK: Oh fuck off! As if you're any better mr-leave-my-gear-behind-me-everywhere-i-go 2:52am
JB: Hey! I wasn't the one who left that paperclip behind in Korea! 2:53am
EK: Don't you dare bring up Korea! 2:54am
DF: both of you shut the fuck up before i throw my phone out of the fucking window its three in the fucking morning 2:55am
SF: well some1s grouchy. home 3:01am
AP: boys, don't start 3:02am
SF: (ง'̀-'́)ง 3:03am
JW: Has anyone heard from Milli yet? 3:07am
AT: last i saw she was walking Q home since she was the only one "sober enough" to do so 3:09am
CB: yeah, she said she'd text when they got there 3:10am
JW: okay, thanks! :) 3:10am
MO: Q arrived home safely. I shall message once more when I return home also. MO. 3:14am
SF: k! don't forget 3:16am
MO: Given that I am not suffering from transient global amnesia, that is unlikely. MO. 3:18am
MO: I have reached my apartment. MO. 3:24am
Q felt himself flush as his heart pounded loudly in his ears and his palms became sweaty enough to fog the screen of his phone.
The double-0s, the pack, his pack, had actually added him to their group chat.
Their group chat, the group chat that the omega still wasn't convinced wasn't telepathically run or the foundation of some weird-mind-linking-always-in-contact-telepathic-connection thing that the entire lot of them always seemed to have open.
But now, it was his weird-mind-linking-always-in-contact-telepathic-connection thing too.
Q buried his face in his pillow, feeling oddly embarrassed and flustered despite the fact that nobody was there to witness it.
From what he knew of the app, new members weren't able to scroll up and read previous messages - yet another safety and/or security feature, so he knew that he wouldn't be able to see just what else they'd been saying about him before he joined the group. But from this moment on, he would be a part of every other message, no matter how crucial or mundane.
Theoretically, Q knew that was part of the pack, part of whatever weird strange friendship-type thing that the double-0s had going on with each other.
But now, now, he had actual physical proof, a solid piece of evidence that he could look at and read and be a part of-
Just like how he was officially a part of this pack.