you take the dark and carve me out a home

When an accident leaves the Quartermaster blinded - possibly permanently - all of MI6 is understandably shaken up. It doesn't help that this happened in the middle of MI6 because someone who was supposed to be an ally turned out to be an enemy. It also doesn't help that said enemy made it past 007, proving that even 00-agents can slip up...and even hardened assassins can feel guilt.

The man who nearly killed Q also stole valuable information, though, and even blinded, Q isn't going to just let that happen. Woe-betide any head of MI6 or 00-agent who feels the need to get in his way...

Q has no idea if living with James Bond, reformed womanizer, heartbreaker, libertine… lover, in domestic bliss is actually bliss or not.

In hindsight, Bond knew that he'd made some bad decisions, but it was all his Quartermaster's fault for being so fascinating.

James Bond wants to know his Quartermaster's name. So, he asks a second time, in a roundabout spy way.

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James takes Willoughby out for dinner with Alec and Eve and things don't go as well as they could.

Tumblr post: https://www.tumblr.com/silverdragonreads/725939816725905408/

This all started with a conversation with my Queen of Plotbunnies and Paladin of Writer's-Block Slaying, MinMu: So many fics include Bond breaking into Q's flat. What if it was the other way around?

Summary: After the death of M, everything is in shambles. MI6 is trying to stay afloat and not let its enemies scent blood in the water; the new Quartermaster is orchestrating a flurry of activity to keep his branch at pique efficiency and therefore his agents alive; 007, the agent hit hardest by the death of the old M, is going through the motions and throwing himself into his work.

Everyone is a little bit broken, and a lot exhausted.

So when Bond and Q end up together in unexpected circumstances, perhaps the outcome should not be so unexpected...

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Bond rolls forward, although his usual liquidly graceful movements are stiff from his injuries. Q doesn’t startle, too used to Bond’s antics over months of travelling together, although his breath does hitch when Bond sweeps his fingers under Q's glasses, brushing lightly against the dark bruises Q knows are still there.

"Think of this as a vacation,” Bond says. “You haven't stopped at all since we left London."

"A vacation," Q says incredulously. "With the scorching sun and questionable water and unreliable food supplies and a heightened chance of tropical water-borne diseases, and all my equipment sunk in the ocean."

“With the briny air and an abundance of wild and sea life and limitless possibilities," Bond counters, "without alerts or surveillance or the need to stare at a glowing screen for hours on end.”

(Post-Spectre mission fic, where the mission is to survive being stranded on a desert island, and shutting down Spectre's operations is a critical but secondary objective reserved for after they get off the island.

But when did MI6's missions ever run according to plan?)

James Bond didn’t need anything or anyone. He had already lost the war that circumstance had waged against him. When his affection for Q flared, he got the love he never had, and the home he never knew he was missing.

Original post: https://www.tumblr.com/silverdragonreads/725749435698675712/

Q examined the half-smoked cigarettes littering the ground beneath him, his eyes tracing the orange paper wrapped around perfectly round filters. Bond’s custom cigarettes had small wrinkles at the ends, giving them the expensive feel of a unique creation. He missed them, but corner store tobacco would just have to do.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Q dragged his gaze up to look at the face of the man speaking to him. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking, but it was a cold evening.

“You started smoking again?”

“I don’t know, James. What do you think?”

“I think you have bad taste in cigarettes."

Nine hundred miles away from where the man who will be Q sits grieving his sister, James Bond hears the story of a young woman who would have done anything to keep her little brother safe, even if it meant betraying the man she loved.

Even if it meant sacrificing her own life for his.

****

a Q origin story masquerading as another "Vesper is Q's sister" fic.

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