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Q has been awake for 42 hours straight. To be fair, it’s not his fault—he had gotten to MI6 early, handled a mission for 005, and been just settling down to get some R&D work done when 003’s mission got cocked up over some faulty equipment. He’s stuck doing long-distance triage on the mission for almost 30 hours, tea appearing at his desk whenever his cup runs empty. He thinks he might eat. He’s not entirely sure.
003 is finally on a plane back to London when Q relaxes, his entire body losing all of its starch and just dropping down into his chair. It’s a comfortable chair, but his entire body aches like he just slept on a concrete floor, tense the entire night. He’s pretty sure he got up a few times in the last 30 hours to pee, but he wouldn’t swear to it.
He gives himself a minute to stay slumped there, and then he straightens out to get into figuring out how the hell Q-Branch managed to provide one of their Double-Ohs with faulty equipment.
A hand closes over his shoulder, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. Normally he has better situational awareness than this, but his brain feels like someone glued the entire thing together wrong, little strands of glue tangled up inside his skull. He turns to look at the body connected to the hand on his shoulder, and he’s not awake enough to be surprised that it’s Bond. “What can I do for you, Mr. Bond?”
“M sent me. Wants me to take you home.”
Q fights the urge to rub his face. “I’m busy.”
“M’s orders, Quartermaster.” Bond spins Q’s chair around so he’s forced to face him, looming over him like some alpha male Neanderthal from a romance novel his mother used to be fond of. “You’re going home if I have to pick you up and carry you there myself.”
Q rolls his eyes. “That’s hardly necessary, 007. I’m fine. Perfectly fit.”
“Not if you think I would believe that lie. A child wouldn’t believe that lie.” Bond grabs Q’s shoulders, levering him upright, and Q doesn’t have enough muscle control to fight him. He barely has enough muscle control to stay upright, which leaves him leaning against Bond, who feels ridiculously warm and solid.
Too warm and solid, and Q can’t lean on him in the middle of Q-Branch like one of Bond’s sycophants, so he pulls away, straightening his sleeves. “I can get myself home, thank you very much.”
“On the Tube? It’s four in the morning. I’ll drive you.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
Bond takes a step back, holding his arms out in a go-right-ahead gesture. “If you can walk in a straight line to the door, I’ll let you go, no questions asked.”
Q glares at Bond, then gathers up his laptop bag from the floor and heads towards the door. The half-dozen Q-Branch denizens still there are pointedly ignoring their interplay, so none of them see him stumble and almost fall over when his depth perception cuts out and he almost misses the floor with his foot.
Bond’s hand is on his elbow before he can drop, stabilizing him and wrapping an arm around his waist to pull him close. Mouth up to Q’s ear, he says, “I’ve got you. Now let’s be good little boys and girls and go home when M orders.”
“Don’t condescend to me, Bond.”
“Then follow orders, like you’re always telling me to do.” While they’re talking, Bond manages to maneuver them out of Q-Branch and down towards the garage. “Relax, Q. I have no designs on your virtue.”
“I should hope not,” Q mumbles. His tongue feels thick, his lips too big. He hates exhaustion. It’s somewhere up there with inebriation in the list of sensations he abhors. “While it would, I suppose, be legal, you’re a bit old for me.”
Bond directs Q into the passenger’s seat of a car Q hadn’t even seen him open the door for. “What do you mean, you suppose it would be legal?” Bond asks, fastening Q’s seatbelt. Q could do it himself, he supposes, but he’s not precisely sure how to get his hands there. They feel stiff and a little achy, and he doesn’t want to lift his arms up.
The door closes next to him, and he leans his head against the window. It’s cool against his face. Bond gets into the car next to him and starts it, and the whole world vibrates around him.
“Q?” Bond prompts.
It takes Q a moment to remember the question. “The age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16,” he tells Bond. “Including for homosexual sex, as of 2003. As I am older than 16, your having sex with me would be legal.”
“Usually people don’t have to specify that sex with them would be legal.” Bond sounds amused, Q thinks, though he’s never been the best at reading emotions from voices. Or at all. There is a reason he lives behind computers and interacts with people primarily through them.
“They do when they’re seventeen,” Q says, then remembers that that’s a secret and mutters, “Oh, bugger. Maybe don’t tell M I told you that. He’ll get mad at me.” Q’s eyes are having trouble opening. “The old M was scarier when she was mad, but this M looks like Voldemort. You won’t tell M I told you, will you?”
“No, Q, I won’t.” Bond’s hand touches his hair, maybe. “Close your eyes.”
“Then I’ll fall asleep.”
“Close your eyes, Q. I’ll take care of you.”
Q wants to argue, but he falls asleep instead.
--
Q wakes up in bed, which is honestly not where he expected to wake up, mostly because he doesn’t remember falling asleep in bed. The last thing he remembers is being in a car with—
“Bond.”
“Seventeen,” Bond drawls from the chair Q keeps in the corner of his room, usually stacked with books.
Q buries his face in his pillow, not awake enough to deal with this. He notes absently that he’s in his boxers with no shirt, which, considering who put him in bed, is surprisingly chaste. And, honestly, he prefers not having slept in his trousers. “I was precocious.”
“You were fifteen when we met, then.”
Q gives up on the idea of this conversation not happening and sits up, leaning back against his headboard. “Congratulations—you passed maths. What do you want, Bond?”
Bond is still examining him like he’s a curious and unexpected small animal. Which is a look he was hoping to avoid. There’s a reason his age is a secret, because if they don’t respect him then they won’t listen to him, and somebody will get themselves killed.
Finally, Bond asks, “Who knows?”
“M, Eve, Tanner, and R. And now you. Are you going to ask me about my A levels, too, or do you believe I’m competent to do my job?”
“You’ve proved your competency. My bigger concern is that MI6 brought a bloody fifteen-year-old into its midst to have them watch and run ops. Even the military doesn’t recruit that young.”
Q considers not saying anything, but he can’t manage to stop himself from saying, “Fourteen. Technically.” Bond looks like he’s having a conniption, so Q hurries to say, “Only for a few months. Approximately three. And I was emancipated at that point, so it’s okay. I’m essentially an adult, Bond, and there’s no reason for you to treat me any differently from before.”
“No reason—you’re a bloody child. You’ve listened to me seduce marks. You’ve watched me seduce marks. Is that even legal?”
“Yes, it is.” Q climbs out of bed, and Bond actually looks away like seeing his bare chest offends his sensibilities or something absurd like that. Which is pretty hypocritical considering he was the one who stripped Q in the first place. “What are you turning into, some Victorian aunt? I’m showing no more skin than what you see on an average Saturday night.”
“Yes,” Bond says, sounding…twitchy, “but you’re a child.”
Q rolls his eyes, rifling through his drawer for a shirt to wear. “Must we go through this protective act? I’ve been taking care of myself for years, and I’m perfectly capable of defending off any unwanted advances or—if necessary—ruining the person who does those unwanted advances. I don’t need an uncle or a father or an older brother or a guardian angel or whatever you fancy yourself.”
“How about a guardian assassin?”
Q laughs, pulling on his Imperial College London sweatshirt instead of fishing out a cardigan. He’s dehydrated and fuzzy still, his head feeling like it’s the wrong density, and he really doesn’t have the patience to find anything more complicated than this. “I hardly need one of those, either.”
“Too bad.” Bond stands, and Q watches him pass by in the mirror. “You have no food in your flat, and your security is terrible. You need someone to look out for you.”
“My security is fine.”
“You didn’t even deadbolt your door, and you live in the world’s most depressing flat.” Bond shoots him a grin that’s more shark-like than anything else, which isn’t particularly reassuring. “You’ll have new locks within the hour.”
“I don’t need new locks.” Bond just keeps walking into Q’s kitchen. “Bond? I don’t need new locks.”
But Bond only laughs.