Tag: 00q

WIP Wednesday

A Skyfall fix-it of sorts that I’ve been silently agonizing over for almost three months now. 

Q looks worlds better already, bandaged as he is, with hair drying into dark curls around a pale face and wrapped in warm sheets as his breathing finally evens out from the stuttering, pained ones he’d been struggling to take not two hours before.

They move him about easily in quick, practiced motions before they wheel him out. Bond trails lazily behind, watching closely for any signs of distress, but not once does Q react to the jostling. He considers, briefly, following them the rest of the way to medical.

It doesn’t feel right to leave him now. Partly because Bond can’t imagine Q wanting to wake up blurry eyed and alone in the hands of strangers and partly because the helicopter ride wasn’t quite long enough to flush out the adrenaline pulsing through him that tells him Q is to be protected. 

He spares one last look before peeling away. 

Q is in capable hands, strangers or no, and Bond has more pressing matters to attend.

He catches up with M at the tunnel’s entrance. She looks immaculately put together — rumpled clothes notwithstanding — eyes hard and mouth drawn into a tight line and once again looking every bit the head of MI6 that she is. 

Tanner, already at her side from the instant they arrived, looks very much the same, grim faced and speaking in hushed tones as he leads them confidently down one winding hallway after another.

“How’s our rat problem?” Bond asks. 

Tanner reaches into his pocket, pulling out a phone and waving it wordlessly in Bond’s direction until he grabs it.

“Taken care of. Q’s program did most of the work for us, really. Two in Q-branch and another in Accounting,” he supplies as Bond flicks his way through names and faces of people who look only vaguely familiar. “Just the three.” 

“Four,” Bond corrects.

Eve Moneypenny stares up at him from the screen.

WIP Wednesday

Bond giving Q a kitten and somehow convincing him to name it Martin because it’s grey, and sleek, and fast, and “it’s wonderful, Q, just adit it. You love it.”

“I’m not naming him Martin.”

He names him Martin.

“How’s our son?” He says casually, leaning up against Q’s desk and politely ignoring the sudden clattering of fallen equipment behind them.

“Collin,” Amara hisses, swatting his arm so hard he actually flinches back. It’s a minion, one Bond isn’t familiar enough with to recognize by name, but who’s face he remembers repeatedly flitting over in his quests for Q.

“Sorry,” he stutters, cheeks flushing and eyes widening behind wide frames as he rushes forward to gather the tools he’s dropped.

Q shakes his head at the commotion, not once looking away from his monitor, but his eyes flicker briefly to Bond before he turns away, reaching out blindly as he types one-handed to grasp at his phone. It’s just out of his reach. Bond leans forward just enough to slide it further so it nudges against Q’s fingers.

He types one last line of code that Bond has no hope of understanding and then the screen goes black.

“Dreadful,“ Q answers, finally, attention now on his phone as he swipes and taps away. “He’s pulled the curtains down on his own head twice already, learned how to get into my drawers, and doesn’t listen to a word I say. He gets that from you,” he adds disdainfully when he looks up and spots Bond’s pleased smile, then shoves his phone in Bond’s direction until he catches the hint and inches closer to make out what he’s supposed to be seeing.

When he finally does, he huffs a laugh. It’s Martin, buried beneath the drapes and caught in the middle of meowing mournfully up at the camera.

“Clever little thing, and absolutely beautiful.” He grins widely, turning to face Q and not making a single move to put respectable distance between them. “He gets those from you.”

Just Ideas June

That one self-indulgent amnesia fic that no one but me asked for.

Bond’s been gone for six long months, off making a new life with Madeleine Swann god knows where doing god knows what, when he stumbles back into Six. He’s bloody, bruised, and looking worse than he did even after the trainwreck that was Skyfall, with no car, no Madeleine, and no memory of the last seven years.

And that’s how they find themselves stuck with a James Bond who’s fresh off the death of Vesper and the dismantling of Quantum, and worryingly fixated on the new Quartermaster who took less than five minutes to figure out he wasn’t quite right.

Effects of Retirement 2

castillon02:

Notes: Bond’s first retirement trip after Spectre. Technically a prequel to Effects of Retirement, showing the first pic from Bond’s POV, but you don’t need to have read it. For the mi6cafe prompt ‘Spirits.’ 

“What do you usually do when you’ve finished a mission?” Madeleine asked while James drove them back to the hotel they’d been staying in. He listened carefully for any breaks in the purr of the Aston’s engine, but she ran as smooth as butter and felt silky and solid beneath his hands. Q had done a fine job of restoring the old girl. 

He and Madeleine had needed their few weeks of recovery in the hotel, as much as he hated to admit it. Time for the cuts and bruises to heal, time for the bloody brain damage to be assessed, time for Madeleine to stop waking in the night with memories of violence, time for Bond to stop drinking himself to sleep in order to prevent the same thing. 

They did a lot of walking around London. Madeleine caught up on her professional journals. Bond made a lot of scrambled eggs and read a lot of suspense novels. Reading gave him a headache now, and he was much slower at it, but the brain was plastic, Madeleine had said after assessing Bond’s neurological functions. Her professional opinion was that all Bond needed was some retraining. 

Bond had had lots of injuries. He knew about retraining. If he sometimes threw a book at a wall because the words were too slow to make sense, he always picked it back up again and managed to stare the thing into submission. 

Now they were hale and healthy, ready for adventures beyond a book’s pages. As much as he wanted to take his new-old Aston for a spin around the country, he also wanted…well, the usual. “I tend to go somewhere tropical,” Bond said. “Swim, drink, have sex. Relax.” 

“Let’s do that, then,” Madeleine said. “A transition. You still have time to decide where you want that transition to lead to.” She eyed him. 

Bond ran a hand down his whiskery jaw. “I always need mission specs after the tropics,” he confessed. “But they don’t need to be Six’s mission specs. I just need to learn how to set my own parameters.” He’d never been good at being his own boss. 

Madeleine nodded. “We can work on that,” she said. 

*** 

The first thing he and Madeleine did in Freeport was make their way to the beach and order the fruitiest rum drinks they could find. The second thing they did was people watch. 

“She’s cute,” Madeleine said, nodding at a dark-haired tourist with a perky little arse that she obviously didn’t mind showing off. 

The sex last night had felt like goodbye, but even so, James stared at her in disbelief. “Did you just skip the breakup and go straight to wingmanning me?”

Madeleine shrugged. “If you don’t want her, I’ll try my luck,” she said. “Maybe you’re looking for something else?” She glanced at the bare-chested bartender; he had a swimmer’s muscles and a pouty pair of lips. Not bad at all. 

“Maybe,” James admitted. “Here, take a picture.” He handed his mobile to Madeleine. “To James Bond, retired.” He held his fruity glass in the air as if in a toast and heard the ‘click’ of the photo being taken. “I’ll have to send it to Tanner; he’s running the book on when I’ll be back, and he says he wants proof that I’m doing things that aren’t killing people.” 

“Hmm,” Madeleine said. “Sounds like a man of little faith.” 

“Or a man who knows me too well,” James said, trying not to sound bitter. He’d been in this place before. Every time after a mission, there came the thought: why go back? Why do it all over again? And every time, he returned to Six like a homing pigeon, because he needed a purpose and he was shite at coming up with one himself. 

Madeleine smiled. “Have you bet on yourself yet?” she asked. 

“What?” 

“You’re a man who doesn’t like to lose,” Madeleine said. “Especially when you gamble. I think that if you bet on yourself, you’d figure out a way to keep from losing.”  

“That’s not a bad idea,” James admitted. He could probably talk Tanner into it. He raised his fruity glass again. “To mind-tricks, then.” 

Madeleine tapped her pineapple ring against his. “To new beginnings,” she corrected. “Full of possibility.” She glanced again at the perky tourist, at the bartender. 

James let his eyes linger on the square line of the bartender’s jaw, the smooth curves of his pronounced pectorals, the flirtatious glances of his dark eyes—all very beautiful, but also very different from what he’d have fancied if he were home. (Tall, dark, nerdy, witty; he had a type.) He would never go for this if he were in London; times were better now, but he’d been raised not to take a big gay shit where he ate. 

Of course, he wasn’t in London, and he wasn’t exactly employed any longer. What was anyone going to do? Fire him? Try to blackmail him at the job he no longer had? Call him a slur so that Bond had an excuse to ‘accidentally’ trip them into a wall a few times? 

“I think I’ll get another drink,” James said, knocking the rest of his glass back in a long, sweet swallow. He walked towards the bartender with purpose. 

It was time to start living life for himself instead of his country. 

***

For the writing meme: number six and 00q

azure7539arts:

Thanks for the ask, anon! I had fun with this one, and I hope you enjoy it, too. 

Tags: Omega!verse, fluff.

Rating: PG-13

Send me more prompts from this list!

The damning thing about being an Omega was that, even on suppressants and blockers, there were still some aspects of his biology that would resurface from time to time, whether he wanted them to or not. Sometimes, in the more reckless and violent bouts, one good, rough shag would be more than enough to sate the tingles that flared up from the base of his spine like glowing embers waiting for a chance to spark. This, he could actually handle pretty well. Most of the time, however, the urges, if you could call them that, manifested in subtler means—like a demanding cat that would persistently wound at your feet to get your attention, even if it meant tripping you flat on your face in the process. Urges, such as the need to simply… cuddle, to be held, to bask in a comforting scent. To feel safe.

These were the ones that he really, really despised. Probably because they made him feel needy in ways that were even more vulnerable than actually calling up someone for sex.

“Is there a reason you’re naked in my bed?”

Bond’s eyelashes were sticky with sleep when he flickered his eyes open to peer at Q, who was arching a curious eyebrow at him, hands high on his hips. He looked more disapproving than he sounded, and Bond shifted just so his head was propped up on one hand now. He hadn’t thought he would have come close to dozing just lying there, but the cozy bed, soft linens, and warm blanket had truly calmed him more than he had expected.

“I’ve missed you?” He tried for a smile, which came out better and more genuine than it had in the past couple of hours, since he had had the time to recharge himself for a bit here… nestled in the comforting, fresh scent between these sheets that was familiar and entirely Q’s.

He had just gotten back from a three-month mission. Not that it was high-stressed (not until toward the end), but the long periods of isolated waiting and tracking his targets had not been pleasant on the part of his brain where his Omega instincts resided. By the time he had gotten back to Six to submit his reports, the cold, impersonal halls that were usually neutral to him had become almost suffocating, unbearable against the itch that had wedged itself under his skin for the past couple of weeks. He had been trying to ignore it best as he could, but apparently, his resolve hadn’t been enough because when his action had finally registered back into his mind, he had already been unlocking the door to Q’s flat using the spare key that had been given to him, and had let himself in.

Looking at the haphazardly pile of discarded clothes on the floor just a few paces away from Q’s feet, he supposed the rest of what had happened was clear.

Q scoffed and rolled his eyes at Bond’s answer, and for a moment, Bond wondered if he had done the wrong thing by stopping by uninvited like this. After all, he and Q had only been having casual sex so far, and it wasn’t as if he was about to offer any of that right then in this state anyway. Whenever he was like this, sex was actually the last resort for Bond, and was only there because it came with a side-serving of physical closeness.

(He had tried having sex to ease these primal needs for loneliness avoidance before, and it had always backfired on him by increasingly aggravating the issue.)

“If you—” Bond began, his stomach sinking a little, not least because he didn’t want to leave this pleasant bed to go back to his own stale and cold one.

Selfishly, he hadn’t thought about this, about him probably crossing the line by appearing in Q’s flat out of the blue, when he had been taking off his clothes and settling his achy body between these sheets. And now, he sort of regretted it—because being with Q was easy, and losing it would mean losing a sort of safety he had grown rather used to, and appreciative of, in the past year.

Not to mention they still had to work together.

“Honestly, you couldn’t have fed the cats before you barricaded yourself in? They were positively miffed when I came home just now.” Q shook his head with an exasperated sigh and turned toward the closet. He rummaged through his clothes with Bond’s blinking eyes following his back, and emerged clutching a pair of pyjamas bottoms that had planetary prints on them.

Q was not in the habit of sleeping completely in the nude, and Bond suspected this had something to do with the fact that the young man had poor blood circulation.

“Have you eaten anything yet?” Q asked, changing right there in front of Bond without a hint of hesitation.

“Uh… no,” Bond said slowly, watching Q, the pyjama bottoms riding a little low on his hips, get into bed next to him.

“Figured.” Q leant against the headboard and opened the laptop he had brought with him on his lap. “Rest for now, we can eat later. I bought takeaways.”

Bond looked at Q for longer than what was necessary, trying to process what was going on and what it all meant to him and to their relationship. But other than the fact that his sleep-deprived, addled mind wasn’t working at optimal speed, there was a purring Omega in the back of his skull as well, and since this was undoubtedly a very good bed to be in, with the owner of said bed right beside him now even, Bond supposed there was no reason why he should waste this chance with complicated thoughts.

And so, Bond allowed himself to lie down, one arm reaching to drape across Q’s middle, and pressed his forehead against a patch of soft, warm skin of the younger man’s bare torso, a small sigh tumbling out from his lungs.

For the first time in a long time, he was contented and safe.

doncasterlyrock:

I live for jealous bond/Q before they admit their feelings to one another

  • James trying to wind up Q by flirting with Moneypenny in front of him just because he kinda lives for seeing Q type that little bit harder on his keyboard
  • Q ignoring Bond all day during one of his visits to Q branch and talking with Tanner, laughing a little too hard at his jokes just to see James roll his eyes and walk out the room
  • Q watching James on a mission and gritting his teeth whilst James buys a pretty girl a drink just to hear the irritated snort from Q in his ear
  • James physically threatening to shoot a man in a bar because he comes up and asks Q to dance
  • Just
  • Give
  • Me
  • Jealous
  • Soon-to-be
  • Boyfriends

Recruitment attempt #1

castillon02:

Notes: Canon divergence AU–Q and Bond’s first meeting goes very differently. For the mi6cafe prompt ‘Eff.’ 

Q woke up with a gun in his face. It was being held by a hard-eyed man who was hiding what looked like a lot of muscles underneath his Tom Ford suit. 

Well. Q had always known someone would come for him one day. He gripped the blankets in order to keep his hands out of trouble, stop them from doing something silly like trying to fight back. His mobile was…somewhere. Great; very helpful. “Can I help you?” he asked, squinting to look at the man beyond the barrel of the gun. Blue eyes, blond hair, grim expression, slightly blurry. When Q had time, he was going to engineer a pair of glasses he could wear to bed. 

“You can,” the man confirmed. “You’re going to come with me. There’s an important woman who wants a word with you, something about needing some IT help with our servers. Can’t imagine why.” His mouth quirked in a fake smile. He stepped back, his eyes never leaving Q, and jerked the gun in a ‘get up’ gesture. 

Q extricated himself from the blankets with care, not wanting to aggravate the man with the gun with any sudden movements. Whose servers, exactly…? He had been in so many of them. 

As he shifted, his knee knocked against his mobile under the sheets. 

“What?” the man asked immediately. Shit; apparently he was the type of goon who could actually use his eyes, and Q was far too used to being able to hide his face behind a screen.  

“My phone,” Q said, because he couldn’t lie worth a damn. He could, however, trick himself into feeling a very specific fear. What if the man destroyed it? It had taken ages to make that mobile! He looked up at the man with wide eyes.  

“Throw it on the floor next to my feet,” the man directed. 

Q let his relief show. Not destroyed just yet. He focused on that thought—he was relieved the man wasn’t destroying his hard work—even as his clever fingers gripped the phone under the blankets and executed their triple-tapping trick on the power button before drawing it out and tossing it at the man’s feet. 

Q started a mental countdown. 30, 29, 28… 

“Up,” the man repeated. “And I’ll take this, since it seems so important.” He picked the phone up and slipped it into his jacket pocket, his gun never wavering.  

Don’t throw me in the briar patch, Brer Fox.

“Please don’t,” Q said, still honestly concerned in his brain’s own tricky way. After all, what if the man had a pacemaker? 

“Now,” the man repeated, snapping his gloved fingers. “We have somewhere to be.” 18, 17, 16… 

“That’s a Beretta, isn’t it?” Q asked. 

The man stepped forward, apparently impatient, and Q flinched away, hands held high, not a threat, definitely not a threat. He couldn’t have the man touching him.  

“Only,” Q said, “it’s a great gun, but it’s got an external hammer, right? It tends to snag?” 

The man stared at him. “What?” 

8…7…6…

“You should use something like a Walther PPK,” Q said. “Still small, still automatic, better draw time.” 

The man drew in a quick breath, eyes narrowing. “Yes, please keep lecturing one of Her Majesty’s top agents about his own gun, you little—” At that point the man’s mouth dropped open, his eyes flicking down to his chest where the needle-like probes from Q’s mobile-cum-taser prototype had just stabbed him, probably in multiple locations. “F—” 

The ‘uck’ was lost in a shout as electricity crackled through the air and the man’s body convulsed, fifteen million volts of electricity coursing through him. A few moments later, he was twitching on the ground, his gun thrown clear by his trembling fingers. Thank fuck it hadn’t gone off.  

Q jerked open his bedside drawer, withdrew a medical syringe full of ketamine, double-checked that it was free of air bubbles, and then stabbed the man in the shoulder. He kept his finger on the plunger until it was empty. It was difficult to fatally overdose someone on ketamine. If they were lucky, the man would stay in a happy, unmoving daze for a few hours, and he wouldn’t even remember Q when he woke up; ketamine often had amnesiac effects. 

(If they were unlucky, or if the man already had alcohol in his bloodstream…well, the man would still be mostly paralyzed, but it might be a bad trip.)

Q grabbed his glasses, his laptop, and his go bag. After waiting a few interminable minutes to make sure the man was really out, he dragged him into the recovery position so he wouldn’t drown in his own vomit. 

Sorry not sorry, he wrote, scribbling a note to leave under the man’s gun. I don’t do well in captivity. 

He had his fake papers and his disguise in his bag. A few hours would be plenty of time to get out of England and into a safer sort of country. It wasn’t like the man would chase him across the globe, right?