The Deadly Tube
The next few days passed painfully slowly.
The death reports from Mozambique kept coming in as more and more bodies were found beneath damaged buildings and inside crashed cars. They had already surpassed sixty-five per cent of the population, although thankfully, that number appeared to be holding. Almost all of those still alive were omegas, along with the occasional beta, but aside from Jake, not a single alpha had survived Ourumov's chemical attack.
Jake himself was still unconscious, but the fact that he'd kept breathing through Arkov's crucial twenty-four-hour window was a good sign, by all accounts, and now, three days later, the doctor was considering bringing him out of his induced coma.
His bruises had since blossomed into truly horrifying colours, and the cast on his leg and the splint on his fingers didn't make him look any better, but it was like Arkov had said - all of these were typical injuries for a double-0 and nothing that they hadn't recovered from before.
Their main concern was how the drugs had affected him. Alec had no lingering side effects after all, but he hadn't been exposed to the chemicals for as long as Jake, and he'd had Q to fast-track it out of his system, too. Jake had been right in the heart of Pemda when Ourumov had attacked the city, and had stayed there, injured and dying, for an entire two days before Charlie and Milli had found him.
They still didn't know how he'd survived.
What they did know, was that there was every chance he hadn't survived unscathed.
The fracture in his left tibia was another glaring problem. Paralysis wasn't out of the question yet, although Arkov had assured him that the infection was healing nicely so amputation was officially off the table. Q had taken to designing a walking cane in his spare time - not that there was much of it.
M, thankfully, was shielding him from the worst of the political backlash MI6 was facing from the British and Mozambican governments both. Monica Davared had also handed in her notice to Parliament and was in the process of relocating to TSS all the while dealing with stupid bloody power play the Head of MI5 had started with the KGB, blaming them for Ourumov's attack and the death of the English Prime Minister. So far, her strategy seemed to mostly compile of calling Clune "a fucking xenophobic moron" in her texts to Q and "concerned for the welfare of the British people" in public.
He really liked Monica.
But even with the added assistance and the lack of political bullshit on his plate, he was still spending every single minute of every single working hour attempting to track down Ourumov. Unfortunately for them all, the man had disappeared just as fast as he'd reappeared, and the omega had precisely zero leads on where he had burrowed underground.
Whenever his eyes started to burn too much to ignore from staring at computer screens, he stumbled his way downstairs to the workshop and collapsed over his bench to work on Jake's cane.
Best case scenario, the man would only need it for a few days or a few weeks or, perhaps, even a few months - just until he got back on his feet, but worst case scenario… well. Q couldn't just sit around doing nothing and feeling helpless, so he might as well do what he's best at and build something.
Charlie and Milli were still in Pemda, helping with the cleanup operations, while Duncan remained glued to Jake's side, refusing to budge for anyone except Doctor Arkov. Alexis, Saif, and Edie were taking shifts, alternating between guarding Jake, guarding Q, and reaching out to their more… unscrupulous contacts to see if anyone knew anything about the missing Russian general. James and Alec had also initially switched between guarding Jake and Q, and interrogating Janssen, but either she really had told them everything she knew, or she would die before betraying Ourumov because she was officially a dead end.
Or, well, semi-officially.
M had decided to withhold the death sentence for the moment since it was obvious that she couldn't go anywhere, but she may still prove helpful in some sort of trade with Ourumov in the future.
Either way, it meant that James and Alec had just that little bit more free time on their hands - the lucky bastards - and so, they had increased their babysitting duty with him, instead. Sure, they called it "bodyguarding" instead of "babysitting" but considering that it was a babysitter's job, and not a bodyguard's, to feed him, make him take naps, and stop him from accidentally electrocuting himself up from time to time, he felt that his own description was more accurate.
To be fair though, despite the fact that the three of them were as physically close as ever, the blond duo had been giving him the emotional space he asked for. In fact, they were currently acting so respectful towards him it almost felt like the past few months had been a fever dream, like they'd never become friends or earned each other's trust or had The Talk and laid everything out plainly.
But then...
Then.
He catches them staring at him when he looks up from his screen unexpectedly, sees the longing looks they give his curls when Saif ruffles them or his hands as they wrap around Alexis, notices the way their eyes drift from his face to his bare skin whenever his shirt rides up as he stretches to reach something and how they unashamedly ogle his ass whenever he bends over and-
-and then he remembers that yes, actually, they did become friends and they did have each others' trust and they did have The Talk and they did lay everything out plainly and they did want him.
They still wanted him, even after he'd asked them to wait, asked them for time, asked them to give him a way out if everything ended up going terribly terribly wrong because-
Q didn't have this kind of life. He didn't have this kind of job or this kind of pack or this kind of healthy relationship - dysfunctional as fuck, yes, but for them, still healthy - and besides, it only made sense that he'd attract someone as deranged as he was, and not only had he done that, but he'd managed to attract two of them!
He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So he kept his days busy trying to track down Ourumov, or at the very least, that stolen bloody helicopter, and then kept his nights busy by designing Jake's cane and trying to fit as many bloody lockpicks into it as possible.
He had come to love these silent evenings when the rest of his team had gone home for the night and the double-0s were off causing chaos elsewhere. It allowed him time to think about James and Alec and what their potential relationship would mean. The necessary HR disclaimer nightmare aside, he knew that he'd face a lot of backlash from other employees, especially since half of them genuinely believed he'd slept his way into the Quartermaster position already.
Then there were the other double-0s to consider - although, admittedly, he didn't think they'd cause too much trouble for him, and any threat that they did pose would undoubtedly be directed at Alec and, even more likely, James. Nothing would change within his own branch - he hoped - but they would have to come up with some workaround for missions because he wasn't sure if he'd be allowed to even run comms for 006 or 007 if they did this and-
He didn't think he'd even been this busy.
Silently cursing the length of his to-do list, Q stepped off the staircase and into the garage, surprised when he saw a lamp switched on at one of the tables.
"Oh" he said, stopping, "Hello".
Silvia glanced up from her tablet and smiled at him, although the bags under her eyes betrayed just how tired she was - how tired they all were, really, given that all of his more capable staff had been pulling double shifts recently.
"Heya boss" she greeted, "How's it going?"
"Oh, you know" he replied dismissively, waving a hand, "The same as usual".
"Everything's gone to hell in a handbasket then?"
"Percisely".
Glancing around, he saw that the workshop was completely empty aside from them. He could see Halim's desk, which was just as organised as the man himself, second, perhaps, only to R's own personal bench. Daniel's was an unmitigated disaster, of course - also like the man himself. It was strewn with tape and thin rubber tubing and small, sharp pieces of metal. Silvia's desk was more like his own; just the right level of chaos while still making perfectly good sense to the owner herself.
Her smile turned into something kinder and almost… sad as he walked over.
"I, uh… I heard about 004" she said quietly, "I'm sorry. I know you two are close, so if there's anything I can do to help then…"
"Thank you" he replied, just as softly, "He's not completely out of the woods yet, but he's getting there. Thank Merlin".
"Do you know how he survived the drug yet?"
Q shook his head. "Haven't the foggiest. Medical's run about three hundred tests but he's come up clean. Nothing strange in his blood, nothing in his lungs… nothing at all".
"No chance of bottling it in case there's another attack, then?"
"Not yet, at least, but we'll figure it out eventually".
"Well, if anyone can do it" she replied, grinning, and he immediately narrowed his eyes at her in suspicion. "Are you trying to butter me up, Ms Johnson?"
"I wouldn't dream of it, sir… Although I did restock that hidden bottle of vanilla extract that you keep in the tea cupboard yesterday".
"If it was hidden, how did you find it?"
"I'm a woman of many talents".
"So it would seem". He didn't bother trying to hide his smirk. "But I thought your shift ended two or three hours ago. What are you doing here so late?"
Silvia immediately flushed a bright red and lowered her gaze.
"It's… stupid".
"I highly doubt that. You're one of my more intelligent minions".
She glanced down at the tablet in front of her, and even though the screen was upside to him, Q could still make out the labelled diagram of-
"Is that… an eye?!"
"What? No! I'm not building an eye! It's… It's meant to be a contact lens. The ones I have keep burning my eyes because of the long hours and the whole staring at a computer twelve hours a day - not that I'm complaining, of course" she quickly added, "I love my job, and- and I love the extra work I'm doing with R and- and all of that! I just really really hate the side effects and wearing my glasses here is just a nightmare!"
Q could empathise. When he'd first started working at MI6 as one of Major Boothroyd's minions - may he rest in peace - he'd tried wearing contacts for the first few weeks. It was simply more practical than wearing his glasses which, despite everything else, made him look even younger than he already was.
Using contact lenses instead gave him more freedom and mobility to work and he didn't have to worry about his glasses sliding off or breaking while he was working with incredibly dangerous explosives. God forbid that he misplaced them, after all, given that he'd had no backup plan at the time, and, really, trying to test a sniper rifle with his glasses pressed against the scope was just irritating as hell.
But, as Silvia said, when you spend your every waking hour surrounded by screens, contact lenses tended not to last as long.
On the other hand…
"Have you considered modifying your glasses instead?"
Silvia frowned, confused.
"But wouldn't that just add to the problem? Or, at least, not detract from it?"
"It depends on what you modify" he replied with a grin, before pulling up a chair and sitting down across from her, "You're not going to get very far with contact lenses. Trust me, I tried to alter them in every way imaginable when I first got here, but nothing ever worked. Now, these glasses, on the other hand…"
He reached up and tapped the side of the thick black frame.
"Anti-slip grip at the temples, anti-fog on the lenses, and I've even got a detachable clip-on lens that acts as a magnifying glass".
Her eyes were wide in awe - and now that she was looking at him again, he could see that they were rimmed in red from eye strain too, and he mentally winced.
Been there, done that, and built the glasses.
"Could you-" Silvia abruptly cut herself off but then tried again. "I mean… obviously, you're super busy at the moment and this is the last thing on any priority list, but… could you, would you, maybe consider showing me those designs sometime?"
Q gestured at the tablet in front of her, and she eagerly spun it around to face him. Half a dozen server passwords later, he had pulled up the specs from his own database and downloaded them to her files.
"Have at it" he said, pushing it back towards her, "Of course, some of these things are a bit overkill, given your position".
"Overkill?" she asked absentmindedly, already scanning his blueprints with so much unbridled curiosity that he simply had to smile.
"Being the Quartermaster of MI6 puts me in a, uh… delicate position" he explained, "There's quite a number of people out for my blood, and so, I've protected myself accordingly".
He reached out and tapped layer three of the design before pointing out the newly highlighted sections.
"There's a built-in GPS in the bridge, and a camera too. They might be worth considering for you, actually… But it's this part that I strongly advise you to ignore".
She zoomed into his scrawled writing for the left arm of his glasses, and more specifically, zoomed in to read the somewhat illegal modification he had made to it.
"... Boss".
"I did say it was overkill".
"Boss". Silvia pinned him in place with a look. "You coated your glasses with conotoxins?!"
"Only half of them! And even then, the venom's contained!"
"You extracted the world's most lethal paralytic venom from a cone snail and inserted it into your glasses!"
"I also said to ignore that part!"
She stared at him for another moment before snorting and shaking her head.
"Overkill doesn't even begin to cover this, sir! You do know that there is no known cure for cone snail venom right?"
"Why do you think I use it?"
"... I mean this in the kindest way possible, Quartermaster... You are insane".
He couldn't fight back his grin as he stood back up and returned the chair to its rightful place.
"I'm disappointed in you, Ms Johnson" he replied cheerfully, heading over to his own bench, "You've been working here for almost six months and you're only realising that now?"
Q managed to finalise the blueprints for Jake's cane before calling it a night.
Or, more accurately, before Silvia called it a night for him, glaring at him for not going home at a reasonable hour, her lips pursed in the exact same way as R's whenever he was being particularly obstinate towards her.
It would seem that not only was his second-in-command's work ethic brushing off on Silvia, but her mother-henning of him was too.
She busiest herself tidying up the workshop a notch while he saved, double-saved, and then triple-saved his new designs, determined not to lose even a single second of work when it was Jake's future on the line. They walked out together, saying goodbye at the door before Silvia turned right and he turned left, heading over to the shed to unlock his bike.
It was only a ten-minute cycle home, give or take, but the late hour meant that he'd missed the typical rush of traffic, and so he was able to let his mind drift a bit, thinking about James and Alec and if he really was going to do this and if this time, maybe, there wasn't another shoe to drop and-
Had this street always been so difficult to pedal on?!
Frowning, he glanced down, and then promptly let out a stream of curses as he realised that his front tyre was slowly, but surely, deflating.
"Fuck!" Q said again, for good measure, before reluctantly coming to a stop.
He wheeled it off the road and onto the footpath next to him - not that there was much point, given that there was quite literally nobody else around to inconvenience, but he figured it'd be better to be safe than sorry.
Leaning his bike against the side of a building, he crouched down and examined the tyre. He couldn't see any obvious puncture - no nail or piece of scrap metal - and the air valve was tightened enough to not be causing the problem too.
He frowned, confused.
The bike had been fine this morning… hadn't it? He'd been so busy lately, and so much inside his own head, that he wasn't entirely sure if he'd have noticed. It clearly hadn't been a sudden puncture or he'd have gone flying, but what on earth would cause such a slow, constant deflation?
He was still a five-minute cycle from home, which meant a ten-minute walk at least, but it was dry and relatively warm and as long as he stayed underneath the streetlights, it would be bright enough too. He certainly wasn't going to just leave his bike here, either, so taking the Tube was out of the question. He'd just have to awkwardly wheel it back with him with only one working tyre.
Resigning himself to his fate, he stood back up and then-
Froze.
There was someone… watching him.
… Were they approaching him, too?
He couldn't hear anything, and he was still facing the blank wall of the building in front of him, but every single instinct inside of him was suddenly screaming danger danger danGER DANGER DANGER-
He let his body take over and ducked just in time for the fist that was aimed at his head to go crashing into the brick wall instead.
He spun around as the man - alpha, mid-30s, no mask - howled in pain and fell to his knees, only for two others - beta, beta? alpha? no, beta, older, younger, no mask, no mask - to take his place, both with matching vicious smirks on their faces.
Oh, how could he have been so fucking stupid?!
Here he was, a single, lone omega, cycling home after hours in the dark without a care in the world! These bloody prats had probably laid down a puncture strip to get him to dismount his bike and then, while he was distracted like the idiot that he was, they attacked, expecting a terrified, vulnerable, defenceless omega.
His hand immediately flew to his trouser pocket and closed, tightly, around his taser.
Well, if they wanted to make a fool out of him, then he was just going to have to return the favour.
He whipped out the taser and lunged for the nearest beta, who was so shocked by him going on the offence that he froze in place. Q pressed the prongs against his chest, dialled it up to full power, and pulled the trigger.
The beta immediately convulsed and dropped to the ground and- okay, really, that seemed just a little bit overdramatic, did this guy have some sort of underlying heart condition he didn't know about because Q might have amped up his taser a bit but he certainly didn't amp it up enough to kill a guy and-
Oh look.
Beta number two.
The man grabbed him by the wrist, his grip so tight that Q swore he could feel his bones grinding against each other, painful enough to make him drop his weapon.
He swung wildly in response, landing a punch to the bastard's jaw, but he returned the favour just as quick and Q was sent staggering under the force of the blow.
All of his training meant nothing if it was one against three, and it meant even less when his attackers were three times his size.
You're tiny, brat, the only chance you have is to get in close so that the other guy's arm span is used against them. Tackle them, and then use a choke hold so that they don't use your scrawny fucking frame against you.
He ducked his head and charged, his entire frame rattling as his shoulder hit the beta's stomach with a jarring thud, sending them both to the ground. Q quickly seized the opportunity to wrap an arm around the man's neck, squeezing as tight as he could as the man struggled beneath him, his hands flailing out, panicked fingers skittering along the ground until-
Q remembered too late that he'd dropped his taser, and he watched in horror as his attacker grabbed hold of it, pulling the trigger and swinging it back towards him.
He really needed to add a fingerprint recognition sensor to that someday.
The omega released the bastard and leapt back just in time. The taser crackled in the empty air where he'd been mere seconds before. Rolling away, he came up into a crouch, his heart pounding and his palms sweating and his entire brain screaming at him to run run ruN RUN RUN!
The beta staggered to his feet, his face contorted in rage and, really, it was never a good sign when the guys attacking you didn't obscure their features because nine times out of ten, that meant they didn't plan on letting you live long enough to identify them.
Q's mind raced, searching for an opening, searching for some way to end this. He was closer to his house than he was to MI6, but he knew that he'd have no problems whatsoever in covering that extra distance on foot if it meant getting himself somewhere safe.
The man lunged at him again, but this time, he was ready.
Q dodged his outstretched arms and used the bastard's own momentum against him to send him sprawling to the ground. He deftly jumped over him, fully intending on running faster than a gold medal fucking Olympic sprinter, when-
The alpha with the broken hand managed to grab his ankle, pulling him down.
He hit the footpath, hard, pain shooting throughout his body even as he rolled over and kicked blindly at the too-tight grip on his leg, even as the beta stumbled back to his feet and spun on him, even as he started to wonder if this was it, if this was how he died, if this was-
There was a sickening crack of a bone, and then suddenly, the hand on his ankle was gone.
Q immediately scrambled back, only distantly aware that there was a fourth person now - alpha, older, no mask, familiar - who had just kicked his attacker in the fucking face and was now squaring off against the final remaining beta.
There was a swift, brutal exchange of fists that Q tried desperately to keep track of even as he pressed himself back against the wall to try and get back on his feet all the while trying to ignore the fact that yes, he'd just killed a guy and yes, he'd just almost died himself, and also tell his omegian hindbrain to shut the fuck up because it was screaming at him right now, screaming to look, to pay attention, to recognise-
Q recognised the ruthless, efficient fighting style before he recognised the man himself, but by that stage, his final attacker was on the ground, sprawled across the dead bodies of his criminal cohorts but-
Yep.
Still breathing.
Perhaps James really did listen to him on occasion because he distinctly remembered lecturing the blond prat about leaving at least one person alive for questioning during moments like these and-
"Pup? Pup, are you okay?"
-and Q was more than okay because James was here, his murder kitten had defended him, his alpha had protected him and now he was being picked up with a warm arm under his knees and around his shoulders and that scent, ohhh that scent, like spice and gunpowder and rich earth and fresh blood-
"Pup? Q?"
"'m fine" he mumbled, burrowing even closer to that wonderful scent, "Completely fine… but 'm also gonna pass out now. See you later".
He felt the warm, safe arms around him tighten and heard a brief, low huff of laughter from the alpha, his alpha, before he let the swirling darkness claim him.