Spring's Awakening
Over the next few weeks, things started to settle down, and by the end of April, Q could safely say that he had never been happier.
His own broken wrist aside, the rest of the pack's injuries had all healed up nicely - Duncan completing the physiotherapy for his shoulder, Alec's brace being removed, and the various scrapes and bruises that they all received on mission vanishing almost as soon as Q noticed them.
He'd made good on his promise of injecting them all with the smart-blood nanotechnology he'd invented because, as much as hated to admit it, it was rather inevitable that at least one of his idiots would end up going off-script again - and when that happened, he was not going to let himself be blind.
Q had also made good on his promise of no explosions for their next mission - a punishment he'd installed after a select few had gone off and murdered that Nine Eyes goon who'd shot him. Admittedly, he felt a little bad given that it was only Charlie, Edie, Duncan, and Saif who were affected and technically, Duncan already had gone on an explosion-free mission since, but given that he had also gone very much off-script and had let Q think that he was dead for three days, the omega felt that the punishment should still stand.
He may have been officially part of the pack now, after all, but that did not mean that he was suddenly going to become a pushover.
To be fair, both Charlie and Edie accepted the retribution with minimal fuss, and although Duncan complained and grumbled about it, it was more because he complained and grumbled about everything than it was about him having a problem with this situation specifically. Saif, predictably, took it the hardest, and even withheld hair petting for an entire day before he realised that he was punishing himself as much as he was Q. He had reduced the amount of affection he gave in general, however, despite his promise to make the omega more comfortable with it in public, and instead, he spent a worrying amount of time bothering James. They appeared to be in some sort of riff about something, but the only thing Q could get out of either of them was that they had made some sort of deal after the incident, as the pack had taken to calling it.
How either of the double-0s could find something to negotiate over based on James trying to compel him, Q had no idea.
But either way, life continued - and continued well, for the most part.
Their Friday night dinner at El Nido became a weekly thing - for whoever was country-side at least - because, let's face it, none of them had anything better to do on a Friday night and it was the one day that the rest of the pack could convince their Quartermaster to leave work at an acceptable time.
Q loved it.
Q really really loved it.
Not just because it gave him an excuse to squish himself in between Alec and James, or because getting drunk every now and then did wonders for his stress levels, or even because being surrounded by nine ridiculously attractive and powerful alphas did wonders for his self-esteem.
No.
One of the main reasons Q had come to love their weekly drinking sessions, was because it allowed him to fuck with people's expectations.
El Nido was never full to the brim whenever they arrived, but likewise, it was never empty either, and Q relished in the fond looks that other people gave him whenever one of the double-0s inevitably pulled him onto their laps - the strangers, no doubt, seeing nothing but a loving, traditional relationship between a big strong alpha and their doting submissive omega. But at some other point during the night, he'd be passed over to someone else as "his" alpha stood up to get another round of drinks, and the bigoted onlookers amused glances would quickly turn scandalised.
Q especially loved wearing cardigans and low-cut sweaters to display the lack of a bond mark on his neck, just to fuck with them and their outdated views even further.
The rest of the pack found his little moments of vindictiveness hilarious - and in Alec, Edie, and Saif's case, quite attractive.
Either way, no matter how many dynamicist prats he'd inescapably offend, Q didn't care. He was at his happiest there, in El Nido, sprawled across a different double-0 every night, happy and safe and right in the heart of the pack where he could settle and ground each of his stroppy adrenaline-junky alphas.
Not that it was all smooth sailing, of course.
Since they were all stroppy adrenaline-junky alphas, they each fucked up at one point or another, usually in the form of cutting communications or going off the grid during missions.
Thankfully for the rest of the world - although admittedly a little terrifying for M, R, and Bill - Q managed the double-0s better than anyone else ever had before him and likely ever would again. He stuck to his plan of using positive reinforcement rather than negative - it was a trick that worked on normal misbehaving toddlers, so why not on his misbehaving toddlers?
He gave warm smiles and exciting gadgets and allowed them to touch, pet, and hug him whenever they did good, listened, and returned at least some of their equipment in one piece. Whenever they chose to fuck up or went out of their way to cause even more chaos than what was strictly necessary, they were spoken to politely but cooly and most definitely were not allowed to come within three feet of him.
Whenever they were especially pratish, he got out his spray bottle.
It was, admittedly, a somewhat childish approach to take to the education of the nine deadliest assassins in the world, but it worked, and soon, mission success was at an all-time high and casualty rates were nearly non-existent.
Post-mission double-0s were treated much in the same way he'd treated Saif all those months before - cautiously and quietly but with unlimited cuddles. As much as his sense of self-worth and affection levels had risen since meeting the double-0s, Q still startled at raised voices and sudden loud noises, but in this case, he was able to use that to his advantage.
Just one whimper from him had all of his agents standing down, the perpetrators in question instantly rushing over to hug him for as long as possible while profusely apologising. In the very few instances that Q couldn't de-escalate a particularly volatile post-op agent before they ran into other members of the pack or, god help them, started yelling at one of Q's own minions, he switched on the waterworks immediately.
A pitiful look here and a low whine there went a long way in making them calm down, and before long, it became clearly apparent to absolutely everyone that Q was, perhaps, the only person in the world that the double-0s actually listened to.
I mean, sure, they heard their superiors most of the time, but there was a rather massive difference between hearing someone and actually listening to them and somehow, Q had cracked the code.
An unassuming young omega had somehow, over the span of six months, managed to collar the most dangerous nine creatures on the planet.
As a result, whenever there was a double-0 that needed to seriously be calmed down, Q was dragged to the office or holding cell by a not-very-apologetic M and shoved inside with the strict order "fix this".
He would then speak slowly and calmly and avoid their gaze and bare his neck and whine, and then spend the next two hours getting hushed and petted by a particularly needy alpha.
It could be worse.
Especially since it calmed down his inner omega's biological need for attention, and although the double-0s didn't love him in the way that he wanted to be loved, they did love him in the only way that double-0's could love. His previous - and only - alpha was an abusive son of a bitch, but it at least taught him how to function entirely without one, so any extra hugging or smiles or pats on the head that the double-0's gave him, was only a bonus.
And besides, the pack all needed at least some looking after, and it was the Quartermaster's job to do that. So who cared if he did it with his dynamic?
He was their first stop after every mission, or even just whenever they needed a calming presence. He never betrayed their location to medical, and in return, they brought him back little trinkets and fancy teas from all over the world. Sure, occasionally, he was growled at until the double-0 in question could pick him up or tug him over to the nearest couch, but he was used to being manhandled by now and they were at least considerate enough to let him bring his laptop so that he could continue to work.
After Gregson's little macho moron attack, they refused to let him eat lunch alone, and soon, Q found himself joining the pack in the canteen every day where he was promptly tugged down into the nearest lap. He couldn't help but preen at the attention, the pure joy radiating from him infected everyone else in the room too.
The pack would all budge over so he could sit down in the middle of the bench, his back to the wall and the remaining three sides protected by double-0s. On his right, Jake would press against his side, and on his left, Alec would pass his fork to the opposite hand so he could throw an arm around Q's shoulder instead.
On the blond's other side, would sit James, as usual, and he'd always offer a small yet genuine smile or a surprisingly amusing remark that would leave the omega smiling too.
Their silent truce was holding up under the pressure of work, M, and the rest of the pack - to such an extent that R no longer glared at him whenever he entered the branch, and Q's own minions no longer scuttled away in fear whenever he happened to look at them.
But still, the man kept his distance.
It wasn't out of annoyance or anger or even bigotry, as far as Q could tell. James always acted perfectly pleasant whenever they were in a room together, and almost more so during those rare instances when they were alone together. The blond was simply being respectful.
Maddingly so.
It hadn't escaped the omega's notice that James had yet to touch him. It wasn't entirely a conscious move on the agent's part - or, at least, it wasn't mostly intentional. They still brushed against each other when walking past or their knees would bump together in El Nido whenever Q was feeling particularly brave and especially drunk - and each of these tiny little connections would always send a thrill straight through him, an electric shock that fizzled from head to toe and made his very being feel distinctly fuzzy.
But outside of that, outside of the natural, unavoidable touch that happened from time to time, James bloody Bond made it a point to not get too close.
Q could understand it, he supposed. James was being… cautious. Careful. Unnecessarily so, but that was beside the point. He was most likely waiting for Q to make the first move - not that he would, of course, because as far as the omega was concerned, this was very much a you problem rather than a me problem.
Since their first pack dinner, 007 had only been sent on one mission and Q secretly thought that M had simply run out of all the shitty ones to give him. Their mighty and benevolent leader didn't give a single damn that he and James were okay now, and still glared at the agent during the rare times their paths crossed.
But even that single terrible mission hadn't been enough to push the man into seeking out comfort with Q. It had only lasted three days, but it had been a disaster right from the beginning - although none of the fuck ups had been orchestrated by Bond himself. It was simply a bad mission with bad intel and a bad outcome, through no fault of anyone at MI6, yet still-
Still.
The awkward idiotic knothead absolutely refused to touch Q without his explicit permission.
But how the bloody hell was Q meant to give him his extremely explicit permission unless the man asked for it?!
He knew that the others knew, knew that they noticed the distinct absence of touch as much as he did himself, but as Q had decided long before their truce had even occurred - James bloody Bond had dug himself into this hole, so he could bloody well dig himself back out.
It would, eventually, all come to a head, he knew that. Tension and strain in their line of work never lasted for long, and the results were usually rather explosive. Q was adamant not to give in first - because what sort of precedence would that set? - but he also knew that the chances of James bloody Bond going out of his way for someone whose very existence he very recently hated, was next to zero.
Someone had to give him a little push, but Q would be damned if it was him.
In retrospect, it probably should have been rather obvious that the someone in question would end up being Alec.
It was yet another Friday night pub crawl - although, it was, technically, still Thursday and it wasn't so much as a pub crawl as it was a pub sit - when the blond made his move.
Heading over to their usual table, Q had expected to slide in right after Alec, as normal, which he did. What he had not expected, however, was for Alec to throw himself against Saif and swing his legs up on the bench so that they rested in Q's corner.
"Sorry cub, but my ankle's still sore from our sparring match last night and the doc says I need to keep it raised. You don't mind giving up some of your space, do you?"
Q immediately narrowed his eyes at the man.
It was true that he'd managed to deliver a particularly vicious kick to the blond's shin the day before, and the omega knew that it had resulted in more than a few painful bruises, but Alec had suffered far worse than this without following doctor's orders and based on the exasperated look that Saif was giving him, the other man was in on whatever-the-heck-this-was too.
Also, Q had very little space to give up in the first place, because the corner was tiny and squishy and safe, which was why he'd always been not-so-subtly placed there. It wasn't as if Alec was able to even stretch out his legs on the bench like he could have done underneath the table, so clearly, this was some sort of plot that he'd concocted to do… what?
"Come on, sweetheart, get moving" Edie said, gently pushing him towards the booth, "I've got to fly out in a few hours and I want to be pleasantly tipsy when I do so".
Q cautiously slid along inside the bench, ending up on the right side of the table more so than in the corner, which meant that the person next to him had less room again so-
Oh.
James silently slid into his usual seat - a seat that was now half taken up by Q, which meant that for Alexis and Edie to sit in their usual seats as well, they had to get… close.
Pressed from shoulder to hip to knee, Q felt a little thrill race through him despite the tenseness of the body next to him. James was warm, his suit jacket surprisingly soft, and his scent-
Oh, his scent.
Q could happily bask in that earthy aroma for the rest of his life and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself leaning even closer to the man.
Wait. No. Quick. He needed a distraction.
Turning back to Alec, he found that the blond had simply decided to stretch out completely, and was now lying flat across the others', his head on Charlie's lap as the pair quietly discussed something. He wouldn't get any relief from Saif, either, as the man was twisted away from him, his head bowed as he spoke to Milli, leaning as close to her as he could with two hundred pounds of Russian sprawled across his lap. Alexis and Edie were also talking, while Duncan and Jake had both left to get the first round of drinks.
Which meant that the only person Q could talk to, was the one person that he was trying to avoid.
"You know… this feels suspiciously like a set up" he commented quietly, and next to him, James snorted. "For a bunch of spies, they're certainly not very subtle".
They fell into an awkward silence, and the omega desperately recited the Fibonacci sequence in his head to distract himself from the pure heat that was the man he was currently pressed against.
When Duncan and Jake returned with the drinks, Q downed half of his in one go, getting near-identical looks with raised eyebrows from the pair. He wondered, distantly, if they'd wisened up to the fact they both fancied each other, yet, before dismissing the thought.
Jake was far too quiet, too kind even, to make the first move in case he was wrong, and as much as Duncan liked to pretend that he was all tough and macho and bravado, the omega knew that he secretly feared rejection too - so chances were, neither of the idiots had realised that they liked the other.
He'd have to do something about that.
Next to him, James took a careful, controlled sip of his vodka martini, and Q's gaze immediately latched on to those warm calloused fingers that had sent so many men to their death, holding the fragile glass so delicately.
He quickly cleared his throat and looked away again.
He wasn't going to give in first, he reminded himself, he was not going to give in first!
Fortunately - or, unfortunately, perhaps - it was James who eventually spoke next, a good, long, incredibly awkward fifteen minutes later.
"I wanted to… apologise".
Q froze.
"The way I… treated you, what I did, I… I shouldn't have" he continued haltingly.
"No, you very much shouldn't" Q agreed quietly, staring resolutely at the two empty glasses in front of him.
"... I don't have any excuse" he continued a few minutes later, "At first, I tried to justify it, to myself, to the others… I don't know how much Alec told you, but… well, let's just say, that the only omega I ever truly cared for fucked me over completely and instead of accepting that, instead of… instead of admitting that it was her who betrayed me, I found it… easier, as such, to blame her dynamic… I could distance her from it, and by doing that, I could distance myself from her betrayal".
Q had guessed as much, but for James to actually admit it, out loud, was… gratifying - not in the least because it meant that the idiot was finally accepting what had happened to him.
"I know all omegas aren't like her, and she was most definitely nothing like you, at least in this regard, but I still… I couldn't just change my opinions overnight. I spent almost a decade trying to convince myself that omegas only led to betrayal, and it took me… a while to snap out of it".
"I understand" he replied softly, admittedly feeling a little sorry for the man, "... But you were still an absolute ass".
That startled a laugh out of him. "Yeah, I was, wasn't I? I'm pretty good at holding grudges… But even if I couldn't have changed my opinions, couldn't have- have fixed my beliefs… you still deserved far better than a- a bloody pissing contest! I should have remained professional, no matter what I thought of you… I mean, statistically speaking, you've probably had about half a million more run-ins with asshole alphas than I've had with lying omegas, and yet you refuse to let it affect your work at '6, where the majority of those you come into contact with are alphas. If it doesn't affect you, then… then it shouldn't have affected me".
Which was just-
"Bullshit!"
James blinked, startled, and turned to him with wide eyes. "What?"
"I said that's bullshit!" Q snapped, "Not the- the should-have-stayed-professional part because, uh, yeah, you very much fucking should have! But it's absolute idiocy to- to compare my situation to yours! I mean- okay, just- just let me put it this way. How long can you keep going after you've gotten shot?"
"What?!"
"How long can you keep going, keep- keep working and walking and talking after you've gotten shot?"
James was staring at him like he was crazy, but that was an entirely different debate.
"... That depends on where I've gotten shot".
"Alright, well, what about- what about Turkey? When Eve shot you off that train, you should have died. Quite frankly, I'm still not sure how you survived. First, you got shot, and then you fell off of a moving train going one hundred miles an hour and down into a river that was, what? Seventy metres? Eighty metres below?"
"Well… yes. Give or take".
"And then you dug the bullet out of your own shoulder, which- I mean, blood loss aside, you also ran the risk of irreparable nerve and muscle damage. And still, you just… kept going".
"What's the point of all this?"
"The point, you absolute muppet, is that you survived all of that and came out the other side relatively unscathed… Do you think that I, too, would have lived?"
James swallowed thickly and Q just knew that the man was trying to come up with a polite way of saying "uh, no" because chances were, with his scrawnier and far less sturdy physique, he would have broken his neck the second he hit the water - provided, of course, that the gunshot hadn't killed him first.
"So you see? Pain is relative. What one person can survive could kill someone else, but that doesn't mean that the second person is any weaker or more fragile - it just means that their situation is different" he finished firmly, "So just because I'm on the receiving end of far more dynamicist abuse than you, doesn't mean that you can't be equally or even more so affected by it! Got it?! Good!"
James was… looking at him.
Looking at him with impossibly blue eyes and an unfairly attractive smile on that ridiculously handsome face, Q wanted to punch him and kiss him in equal measure.
"You were an absolute ass" he said, quickly turning back to his empty glass, "But you had your reasons. And even though those reasons were incredibly shallow and more than a little bit your own bloody fault, they were… there. Existing. Causing trouble for you… So no, Bond, there really is no excuse you can use to try and explain why you compelled me, and never in a million years will I ever even consider your actions justifiable… But I understand why you did it. I don't agree with it, but I… understand".
"... That's far more than I was expecting, so, thank you" James replied, his voice hoarse, "And for what it's worth? I'm… I'm sorry, pup".
Q found himself turning to face the man before he even realised what he was doing, part of him feeling warm and squishy at that stupid nickname, but the rest of him was in complete shock that James bloody Bond actually said the words I'm sorry.
The alpha was already looking at him, of course, his blue eyes as piercing as ever and something almost mournful in his expression.
"I mean it, Q" he said quietly, "I'm… I truly am sorry for how I treated you, and I'll do anything you can think of to make it right again… I don't just want to be another name on a list of the people who've wronged you. I meant what I said when I wanted you to come to El Nido with us. You're… pack. I see the way you act around the others, how you treat them, how… how freely you give your attention to them, with no strings attached, and I… I can't help but want that too".
Q held his breath, his heart beating furiously in his chest.
"... Is that big bad alpha speak for I want to cuddle?"
"Yes".
The sincerity shocked him, shocked them both, Q realised, based on the slight widening of Bond's eyes and the way his brow furrowed in confusion.
It was nice to know that at least he wasn't the only one affected by whatever the hell was going on between them.
But James was... reaching out. Offering the olive branch, so to speak. He was making the first move - the move that Q swore he wouldn't make himself, and now, he didn't have to.
He slowly slid one hand off the table and rested it on top of Bond's, which was currently resting on his knee. The man stiffened up for one tense moment, before slowly relaxing, and after another minute or two, he even cautiously turned over his hand so that they could lock their fingers together.
It wasn't much, but considering that the last, purposeful, physical contact they had was when the omega had punched him, it was a massive improvement.
Although, speaking of the incident...
Q leaned in close, close enough that the rest of the pack - all of whom were doing a terrible job of pretending not to listen in - couldn't hear him threaten the man with the highest confirmed kill count in Britain.
"I accept your apology" he started, voice barely above a mere whisper, "But just so you know… if you ever, ever, pull a stunt like that on me again? I will emasculate you with a blunt letter knife and make you watch".
James gulped and quickly nodded, and Q smiled and leaned back, confident that he'd gotten the message across.
They were still holding hands, still pressed together almost indecently, feet and ankles intertwined. Above the table, it looked like nothing had changed, but based on the way that Alec was now grinning at them, the bastard knew exactly what had happened, and had no doubt set the entire thing up like the interfering knothead that he was.
Still though.
Q couldn't be too mad at him.
James looked like home, after all, and his hands were large and warm, and just for a moment, just for a split second, as he glanced up at sky blue eyes, clear like a sunny day, he caught a glimpse of what their future could be.
Needless to say, it was going to be epic.