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Published:
2025-03-29
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2025-04-01
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4/?
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creature comforts

Summary:

A collection of ficlets to accompany KittenKin's Cat Dad Bond comics.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: the bump in the night

Chapter Text

He’d been waiting for this moment for years. The thump in the cupboard, the shift in the air: someone had come for him.

For the first time in months, Bond cocked his gun and hoped Spectre hadn’t sent their most steroid-pumped beast for the job. His knee was buggered again. It wouldn’t last in a protracted fight. With any luck, there’d be a sticky-fingered local behind the door, easily scared away.

Bond turned the doorknob.

Nothing. No hitman, just a broom, a mop, an old radio and—

“Mrreow!”

He looked down. On the floor, backed up against a bundle of old rags, was one of the stray cats who liked to steal his fish. She trilled at him and shifted her legs, and that’s when he noticed them: kittens. Five of them, sucking hungrily at her belly.

Bond traded his gun for his phone and dialled a familiar number.

“Hello, yes. It’s 007. No, not—look, just get me Q. Yes, it’s an emergency.”

While he waited for MI6’s most hapless wonder to patch him through, he turned back to the cat.

“What have you got yourself into, hm?”

“Mrrrp.”

She was enormous and evidently exhausted. The runt of the litter was scrambling over her paws, whining. Bond crouched down and pulled a towel around her back. Sweet, she was. Always his favourite along at the dock, and partial to mackerel; he’d never managed to sneak one past her.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve got backup on the way.”

Chapter 2: a friend at hand

Summary:

Set between part two and three of KittenKin's Cat Dad Bond 'verse.

Notes:

Just a note on canon and timelines: this fic diverges from NTTD canon after Matera. Madeleine and Mathilde won't be making an appearance in this universe, even though they're always in my heart.

Thank you to Mads for the beta read. A friend at hand, indeed. ❤️

Chapter Text

It was the great unspoken law of Q’s life: the moment he thought he was alone in his workshop was the moment someone was bound to interrupt him.

“Bill said Bond was having kittens,” said Moneypenny, giving him a fright. He scrambled to minimise the live feed on his screen but she was alarmingly close behind him and the damage had already been done. “I didn’t think he meant it literally.”

“I, erm—”

“Aren’t you and M meeting with the PM in an hour?”

“Yes. In an hour, which is…well, it’s an hour away, isn’t it? Plenty of time.”

“And you’re going dressed like that?”

Q looked down at his suit. It was one of the more expensive suits he owned and perfectly adequate for the occasion. Admittedly, it might have been showing the wear of a long day at work, but surely so was the PM’s. He felt a flicker of frustration.

“There’s nothing wrong with how I’m dressed.”

Moneypenny nodded to his tie. “Apart from that tea you’ve spilled on yourself. Distracted, were we?”

“I’ve got a spare,” huffed Q. “I was going to change.”

He moved to get up, but Moneypenny stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Is your microphone on?”

“No. It’s a video feed, not a call.”

She leaned her famed, Massimo Dutti-clad arse on his desk and he knew he was in for some trouble.

“After Bond left, do you remember what you said to me?”

Q found himself suddenly enthralled with a set of old blueprints on his desk. He’d been planning to shred them — they belonged to version two of the palm-print encoded gun, and the agents were on version four now — but perhaps he could salvage something. It never hurt to have a second look. Or a third. Or a—

Moneypenny barrelled on. “You said, ‘Eve, don’t ever let me do that again.’”

“I’m not doing it again.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re not getting attached?”

“No,” said Q, definitively. “If I’m attached to anything, it’s these kittens. Look.”

He brought up the live feed again. Moneypenny looked on in a rather unimpressed and heartless way. Sometimes, she was still remarkably like an agent.

“He’s bored, Q. Retirement must be killing him. Those kittens are a cry for help, and you told me you were done helping him.”

Q swallowed. The lamp above his desk flickered. It needed a new bulb, and quickly. The old workshop would be too dreary and dark to work in without it.

He retrieved a spare and as he made his way back to his desk, he found himself in the same position he’d been eighteen months ago when Bond, dressed in one of his finer suits, had walked out of that cargo lift and asked Q for his car. That had been a cold morning. Endless and quiet. Q could almost see Bond’s spectre standing there now, his hand in his pocket, a smile on his face and the world ahead of him. But there was no one there now. Just a cavernous garage lined with filing cabinets.

“Do you ever miss him, Eve?”

“Every day.” Resigned, she sighed. “You’re going to see him.”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

“What time’s the flight?”

“Six.”

“Nice and early.”

“Rather late, I feel.” Q cleared his throat. “He called me from Matera, you know. Six months ago. Sounded a complete mess.”

“I remember.”

“I passed on his intel. But I think what he really needed was a friend, and I fear I was a poor one.”

“You were an excellent friend.”

“Not that day I wasn’t.”

No. No, that day, he’d been a twat. A twat who’d forgotten his own cardinal rule: that whatever he thought of an agent, retired or otherwise, they deserved all the help they could get.

Q returned to his chair, checking on the kittens again. There they were: all five in a row, small as new potatoes. He smiled, and the odd malaise that had settled on him started to clear. His new office couldn’t be ready fast enough; he was ready to be rid of this one.

“I’d like to be a better friend to him now,” said Q. “And I’d like to see these cats. Do you know he’s named the mother Lizzy?”

“You mean, after—?”

“Exactly. Last night, I heard him calling her Her Majesty.”

He’d slipped into an old terrible impression of Bond. As always, it sent Moneypenny into a fit.

“The name’s Bond, Your Majesty,” she said, repressing a laugh.

“James Bond,” they finished together.

Moneypenny turned her attention to the kittens’ live feed. The runt had broken free again and was creating a racket. It climbed over its siblings, stumbling and irritating each one in turn.

“They are sweet,” she said, straightening up. “Just be careful, won’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’ll be sitting on a lagoon playing with kittens. You’ll be the one in the building every terrorist and their mother wants to blow up.”

“Mm.” He could see he hadn’t fooled her for a moment. “Just remember cats have claws.”

She walked out as silently as she’d arrived and the workshop lost some of its warmth. No matter. He wouldn’t be here much longer. He had a tie to change and an infernal meeting with the PM to get through, but after that, he’d be on his way to greener pastures.

Or bluer waters, as it were.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said to the cats, closing their camera feed. “You’d better not open your eyes without me.”

Chapter 3: the arrival

Summary:

For part three of KittenKin's Cat Dad Bond 'verse.

Chapter Text

This is just about the cats, Q told himself. Don’t go getting any ideas.

Sweat ran down the side of his face and pooled under the arms of his glasses. He was standing beside a vast lagoon, glittering in the morning sun, and it was an effort not to dive in, clothes and all, to find a reprieve from the astonishing heat.

But first, he needed to find—ah. Well. There was no missing that.

It was the sort of house that might have made another man’s seem unimaginative and small, and it revealed itself bit by astonishing bit as Q rounded the dock—though, to call it a house did a great disservice to its private resort splendour. It was, Q suspected, a dream getaway for a man like Bond, who’d been cooped up in that dreary flat in London for years. Finally he had a home that did him justice, which was to say it didn’t contain him at all.

Q would have liked to take in more architectural details: that porthole in the gable, the dramatic sloped roof, the woodwork and the windows. They were worth taking time over, after all. But as he took his last step around the trees, Bond came into view and Q stopped thinking entirely.

Memory wore away the edges of someone’s face, and so Q had forgotten — god knows how — that Bond was something else in the flesh. There was no getting used to him. Ever. Not when he was right there, tanned and broad and real, with his piercing gaze and ability to someone feel like they were the only person in the world worth talking to. If Q had been hoping a video call or two would inoculate him, he’d been sorely mistaken.

It was worse today, too, worse than it ever had been, because apart from Bond’s smile being as casual and creased and warm as his clothes, he was also holding the world’s smallest kitten.

Devastating.

Oh, Q was in terrible, terrible trouble.

“Q! Good to see you!”

Bond stood from the wicker chair on his deck. As he walked forward to say hello, the kitten in his hands let out a tiny cry.

It was likely the twelve hour flight (heaven knows Q had never been any good at being in the air) or the heat or the overwhelming cacophony of Kingston’s airport still ringing in his ears, but Q’s eyes turned mortifyingly wet.

Good god, he thought, vicious at himself. Just get a fucking grip, all right?

“Q?” 

“Hello, Bond.”

Q swept a damp, sweaty curl from his forehead and decided to blame his discombobulation on the weather. He nodded at the kitten. It was unbelievably young, still with its eyes closed. Completely defenceless, and yet it probably had more natural defences than Q at the minute, whose walls had just been obliterated.

“Who’s this, then?” he asked.

Bond huffed. “I haven’t seen you in over a year, and all you can focus on is the cats?”

“That’s not—I mean—” Q shifted on his feet. “Well. How are you? How’s retirement going?”

“Quiet.” The kitten squalled. Q sympathised; Bond had that effect. “Or it was.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, being born. You probably didn’t think so at four days old.”

“Nor you.” Bond gave him an overly fond smile, and Q’s stomach took a long dive off a short pier.

He’d never known what to do when Bond talked like that. Smiled like that. It beggared belief that Bond liked him at all, that they got on the way they did despite everything. The differences and the arguments and the disappointments. Despite the way Q liked him back just a little too much. 

The boat back at the end of the dock creaked with the bob of the water. Q waved a hand at it.

“I’ve brought supplies. Food, litter, furniture. Some books about rearing kittens, should you find yourself short of reading material. I’ll start unpacking. The sooner begun and all that.”

“Forget the supplies.” Bond turned for the house.

“What? But the—”

Of course, Q followed nonetheless. Didn’t he always? Silly, but there it was.

“It really is good to see you,” said Bond, when they were safely ensconced in two armchairs. “I’ve missed you.”

The kitten was rubbing its little chin against the tip of Bond’s thumb. That tiny thing in those enormous, deadly hands. Q ducked his head, smiling.

Silly, he thought, again. But there it was.

Chapter 4: what's in a name

Summary:

For part four.

Chapter Text

It was a warm and balmy night in a string of warm and balmy nights when Bond realised what Q’d done.

“Potatoes.”

“Hm?”

“You want to name them after potatoes.”

Reluctantly, Q looked away from feeding Bonnotte. “I have named them, and they’re perfectly lovely names, thank you very much.”

Bond muttered something that sounded suspiciously like there’s something wrong with you. Q chose to ignore that, as he’d chosen to ignore plenty of Bond’s nonsense in the past.

No, he’d been right in naming them. God knows what Bond would have dreamed up. He’d have named them after guns, probably, which might have been fine except that Q would have had to stomach calling one of them Beretta and that didn’t bear thinking about.

“I could have done worse,” insisted Q. “I have a friend whose cat just had kittens. She named them after members of ABBA.” With his free hand, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “She included Cher.”

Not a whit of recognition came over Bond’s face. Typical, and strangely envy-inducing, the things Bond managed to ignore with no effort whatsoever.

“Rename them,” said Bond.

He was in a bit of a strop. New parenthood was terrible, Q supposed, but he fancied it wasn’t just the sleepless nights full of yowling kittens affecting Bond. Stroppiness was in his nature, and along with forgetting quite how fetching Bond could be in an unbuttoned shirt over the years, Q had also forgotten how relentlessly stubborn he could be.

How delightful to be reminded.

“No.”

“I suppose you think you’re funny.”

“I do.” Q turned to Lizzy, who was sniffing at his feet. “You like the names, though, don’t you, darling?” She whacked her great, overfed head against his ankle. “Ah! There, see? I’ve got the royal stamp of approval.”

“Oh you do not!”

But Bond’s mouth was twitching ever so slightly. Blink and you’d miss it. Luckily, Q rarely missed anything.

He felt his own mouth getting away from him.

“I don’t suppose you want to hold Maris Piper for a moment? She’s getting a bit restless.”

There was a beat of silence, only broken by the glug of the languid water outside, then Bond ran a hand over his face and laughed. It drowned out a new song starting on the radio, infectious and charming. In all their years of knowing each other, Q hadn’t heard it once. Not really. Not properly; certainly not like this.

“Christ,” groaned Bond. “She sounds like someone’s grandmother.”

“You might be right, actually,” laughed Q. “Now I’ve said it out loud.”

Bond reached for her anyway. She wriggled her spotted little arse right into his palm and he stopped laughing.

“They like you,” said Q.

Bond shrugged. “Lizzy likes fresh fish.”

“It’s more than that. You’re warm. And you talk to them. You kept Bonnotte’s screeching little arse alive. They like you.”

Bonnotte’s head tilted up, and Q knew it wasn’t a sixth sense so much as noise and the need for food that did it, but it felt like tacit agreement. Incredible, the way a man could find himself talking to creatures beyond his furthest understanding.

Bond cleared his throat. He wasn’t looking back Q; his eyes were fixed on Maris Piper in his lap, any arguments forgotten. He seemed bewildered, still, after days of this. Q could have teased him — it was a day for teasing — but the idea didn’t tempt him like it might have a minute ago.

Occasionally, it was enough to watch Bond be a better man than he gave himself credit for.

Notes:

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