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Bond stops the boy three stations away from Vauxhall Cross, and Q never even notices. Never notices that he’s had a tail for three of the last four rail lines he’s been on, never notices his little ginger shadow, the boy glancing between his phone’s bright screen and Q’s distracted profile in the next car over. The boy was gearing up to make his move, Bond could tell, and instead Bond slams him against the creamy pale tiles at St. James’s Park, listening to the dull thud of his head impacting hollowly as he’s pressed into the wall. The train speeds away; Q will be at work soon enough, and he’ll never know what Bond’s protected him from.
“Who are you working for?” Bond hisses in the boy’s ear, but. But something is wrong; the boy’s nearly pissing himself with fear, huge brown eyes terrified and skin waxy around shining red spots. “Why did you follow him?”
“I didn’t—” the boy splutters, and Bond sends him crashing into the wall again. He’s got seconds before the TFL are down here to pull him off the boy, and he wants an answer before then.
“Liar,” he hisses.
“Honest! I never knew he had a boyfriend, I promise!” And it sounds like the boy is telling the truth, but Bond himself knows how to plead an innocent interest, has done so time and time again.
“You followed him across the city because you thought he was attractive?” It’s pithy enough to show how little he regards that answer, and just as he’d hoped, the boy’s face screws up around irritation.
“He’s bloody gorgeous, you twat!” And then—“Oh. Oh, shit. You’re him, aren’t you? With the—? You’re not his boyfriend.”
Bond ignores that for now, ignores the slow, sneaky realization creeping across the boy’s face. “You recognized him. I watched you checking your phone several times; you were clearly comparing.”
The boy’s mouth quirks, and it’s not the response Bond’s expecting. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. You wanna see?” He fiddles with his phone a few seconds, then turns the screen and. And. Bond’s mouth runs dry.
The man in the picture is lovely, long limbs phrased delicately on a low velvet sofa. His legs are snug in nylon stockings, black suspenders cupping his hips lovingly and just the barest tendrils of curls peeking coyly above a carefully positioned thigh. There’s a glimpse of bollock below, the flat expanse of lush white skin pinked with just the right amount of shy lust and interrupted only by the flat brown nipples, the spattering of sun-dark marks, and the clean, dark shadow in the hollow of his throat. There’s the corner of a jaw, masculine and turned away as if speaking to a lover, and the familiar curve of a mouth he’s stared at more times than he can remember. And there, there in the corner of his jaw, on the long line of bared throat, sitting by the wryly curled lip: three dots. He knows them instantly. His knees go weak.
“He calls himself Chromogenic32, and he’s the hottest thing on Tumblr—that’s the website here. Really, he’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” the boy tells him, and his eyes are all too knowing as Bond sinks slowly to the bench on loose legs. Bond has to agree: he is; he really is. “There’s a whole—” The boy lifts the phone away and Bond follows, a sunflower chasing daylight, until it’s pressed back into his hands. “There are, like, thirty or forty pages of back archives. They’re not all nudes; sometimes he just chats. He’s got a thing for cats but his flat won’t let him have one, he works too much but he loves his job, he starts going stir-crazy if he doesn’t have a wank and a curry at least every other Saturday.”
“And he posts—?” Bond says, gesturing helplessly at the screen.
“Wednesdays, when he can. At least every other week, but if he can’t give us a photo he’ll make up for it with something special the week after. He makes this sound when he comes—” The boy trails off, and Bond suddenly remembers they’re in the middle of the platform discussing pornography. Pornography starring his coworker, no less.
“Don’t follow him again,” he tells the boy gruffly, shoving the phone at him again. He freezes, watching the boy tuck it away, and he wants—
“Chromogenic32,” the boy repeats, grinning. “On Tumblr.”
He tells himself he’s not going to look. He’ll respect Q’s privacy, he’ll slip him a quiet, private note to remind him of caution. He tells himself it’s best if he nudges him on the website, though, or else Q might not believe—then he tells himself it’s curiosity, morbid and rude, but. His leg jitters the whole ride home and away from MI:6 and its lovely Quartermaster; his skin thrums with electric trills of cold anticipation. He’s in his flat and kicking out of his shoes, almost leaves the door unlocked in his haste to sit down, to pull up the site, to navigate back to the stark gallery of tantalizing photos and the desire he can almost taste on the back of his tongue like ozone before a lightning strike. It takes him a minute—the website’s not intuitive, and he has to sign up before it lets him in to see—the breath punches from his chest in one long rush of air. There’s a photo on the front page, taken this morning—he can tell by the raindrops still clinging to the glass of the window in the background and the condensation in the panes’ edges—of the tender curl of a hunched shoulder, the arch of spine and sweet pale peach of an arse visible in the fuzzed distance. He’s wearing knickers, something lacy and indistinct and just barely a shade darker than his flesh, and the photo manages to be somehow coy and flirtatious in one, and earnestly sincere. Chromogenic32 has a wide, generous mouth that’s tucked into a sleepy half-smile, and Bond wishes the camera didn’t cut out below the hazel-green eyes he knows are there. There’s a caption: “good morning :)”.
Good morning. Good morning, and Bond presses the heels of his hands into his eyes because he’s already fucked, already, yes. Already fucked, and scrolling down the page past rants about the wait for the queues for self-checkout at Tesco and complaints about neighbors who fuck loudly at three in the morning. There’s another photo, cherry red lips glossed with gleaming lippy and a considerate review—“...not as slick as I’d hoped, but more than enough to enhance a blowjob. I tested it with my hand, and let me remind you that some things are not lube…”—and the arch of a foot imitating sky-high heels, though Q speculates that he’d probably topple over and describes the look of horror on Tanner’s face when being told that he’d damaged himself being a sexual deviant so clearly that Bond laughs at the thought. The boy in the blog is sweet, self-effacing, charming, and sexy. Yes. He’s already fucked.
He unearths another photo, then a set of more taken at the same time, of Q on his knees on his bed, thighs spread around a pair of knickers that looks ready to give up the ghost. They’re thin, delicate scraps of lace that manage to cover his straining cock demurely; Bond picks through photos of Q’s hands, those capable hands that have passed him guns and radios and life-saving tools, watches in still shots as they skim over the obscenity of his cock to touch, to press, to tease. There’s one that moves, the image a clip of Q touching himself that leaves Bond aching, throbbing in time with the squirm of Q’s hips as he fondles his cock. He scrolls down and almost forgets how to breathe.
On the screen, Q’s cock is a flushed, ruddy red, dark with blood and eager in its nest of curls. The knickers are stretched around his thighs, knees raised and parted like Gibraltar, and one hand clutches the camera awkwardly as the other—as it dips behind a thigh, knuckles raised and obvious. They’re stills from inexpertly shot video, smeared blurry a bit because the subject can’t sit still, and then he’s moved the camera to the bedside table, bent himself forward, and.
Bond can’t take it anymore, the sight of those slim, sturdy fingers pressing, and when he slides his palm along his belly to dip into his trousers, his stomach jumps beneath his hand. There’s no room to work, but he doesn’t need it, just cups his hard cock in his hand and curls his fingertips around the head, rubs the tip of his cock to the sight of just the tips of Q’s fingers inside his own arse as the camera’s automatic timer snapped shot after shot of Q fucking himself eagerly. There’s lube on his skin, on his fingers, on his calf in gleaming stripes where he’s wiped them after preparing himself, and Bond can see exactly where in the photoshoot Q finds his prostate and forgets the camera, dropping to his elbows with his open red mouth only barely visible. He comes in his trousers at the first action shot, Q’s cock throbbing wet against his own thigh and toes curled tight by the camera. He’s still shaking long minutes later when the recrimination hits.
He can’t tell Q he’s seen this. How could he? He’d damage what good standing he has in the man’s eyes, because he knows his body would betray him, knows it still may very well do the next time he sees him. He curls his fingers by the keyboard, wishes desperately he weren’t a coward. He wants more than anything to tell Q how lovely he is, but when he clicks the pictures, the post’s notes are full of praise. He looks for a place to put his own comments, but all he can think when he finds a text box to type in is, “You’re very beautiful. You take good photos, too. What kind of camera do you use?” He sends it away and closes the window. He’s done for now.
It takes him a day or two to work up the courage to load the site again; this time, there’s a small red box over the letter icon and he clicks. Q’s written back: “Thanks for the reblog. Have you checked out my FAQ? I talk about my camera there.” It would almost be humiliating, except as he flicks back to Q’s blog another red box pops up. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Is it obvious?” Bond sends back, and Q’s response is quicker.
“Only a little, I promise :)”
Honesty. “I found your pictures and I had to join,” he types.
“You’re cute,” Q’s next note says. “Do you know how to follow someone?” He lets Q walk him through it, more patient than he ever is at work, and when he’s done, there’s a red box over the house now. He clicks it, and there is Q, or a photo of his mouth anyway, smiling broadly. The caption is for Bond and Bond alone: “hi :)”
He presses the button that brings up the text box again and types, “I like to see you smile.”
It’s hard not to smile at Q the next day; he can see in a thousand ways the boy he’s never noticed before, in his smile and the curl of his back and the eloquent arch of his brow. “You’re in a good mood, Double-oh seven,” Q says dryly, and Bond nods. “Dare I ask why? Did you blow up an embassy on your way in or something?”
Bond shakes his head. “Am I not allowed to be in a good mood today, Q?”
“It’s only that it makes me suspicious. Do carry on innocently grinning like an axe murderer, though.” But for his tart words, Bond spies the corner of a grin on Q’s mouth and counts it a victory.
He’s away on Wednesday, in the midst of a tense case in Berlin, and even though he’s been on the comms with Q for eighteen of the last twenty-four hours, when he finally sinks into bed with his phone, he’s disappointed that there’s no new photoset. There’s an apologetic note—“Rough day at work; I’ll make it up soon, my darlings.”—and a personal note in his mailbox—“Don’t be too disappointed. I’ll be back soon ;)”—but he still grumbles as he turns on the hard hotel bed to sleep.
Q is livid when he gets back. Absolutely furious, at least as much because he is still bleeding sluggishly from the slash to his arm as because he’s lost his pistol again, and he makes Bond show him the wound, piecing it together with butterfly sutures and gauze until he’s satisfied that Bond’s not going to bleed out before chasing him out with dire threats of paperwork. Mallory puts him on mandatory leave—he’s not to come back until the bruise that covers his left eye and half of his cheekbone beneath it has faded until he no longer looks like he’s been bludgeoned—and for once he doesn’t fight, just heads home for a kebab and a beer and a night with his favourite porn blogger.
He’s still thinking up a response to Q’s flirting when Q posts his update. He’s surprised; Mallory and Tanner must have chased him out not long after he’d gone. The first update is a plastic box of curry, and the post immediately fills with excited notes. Bond swills half of his beer before he notices, then sets it out of reach, no longer pulled by his greasy dinner.
The next post is teasing: “Been thinking about this all day.” There’s a shot of dark fabric, a familiar button, and Bond’s stomach catches, clenches. There’s no bloodstain, not showing in the carefully framed photo, but—
“It’s his,” Q confirms to a sly anonymous question if the jacket belongs to someone else.
“How did you get it off him?” asks another.
“Just asked ;)” Q replies.
“Tricky tricky,” teases another. “Does he know you’re going to wank in it?”
“Who says that’s what I’ll do?” Q asks back. Bond’s fingers are cramping with the urge to comment, but. Well. He wants to see, doesn’t he? He wants to—the red box appears again, and.
Bond remembers selecting the lining for this particular suit. It’s an elegant dark blue, lovely with the pearl blue of the wool though that’s nothing to what it does to Q’s skin, the way it lights him up from within until he glows against the silk. The maker’s mark is visible under the crook of one arm, and the comments are already swearing over the fact that Q’s bare-arsed on a bespoke suit jacket. One comment about being unable to decide which is sexier startles a laugh from Bond’s lips because there’s no doubt, really none at all—he’s never liked the suit more than now, with Q’s hard cock dripping into it.
Q doesn’t bother to start slow, doesn’t play with coyness. The next set is clear: Q’s knuckles as he wraps his hand around his cock, the camera displaying the length of his body and his wiggling toes at the end. Stills as he plays with his cock and a haphazard shot of his tongue lapping precome from his fingers that reveals the bottom edge of his glasses. Bond whines at the sight of him teasing a nipple with a fingertip. Then radio silence, and an anonymous note: “You dirty tart. You came when the camera was off, didn’t you?!”
“Guilty,” is Q’s confession, the shot of his abdomen streaked with come more than Bond can take. He brings up the text box and types:
“Q.”
The effect is instantaneous. Within seconds of posting, his computer acts without his direction, logging him off and closing files and programs with brutal efficiency. Bond watches in horror as his browser wipes its own history, uninstalls itself, folds up so fast it’s as if it was never there. It’s on its way rapidly toward uninstalling his operating system when he types in the black dos field: “wait. please.”
The cursor blinks. Bond slides the trackpad over, opens a notepad document.
“I’m sorry,” Bond types.
There’s no response, then, “How did you find it?” Bond frowns, begins to type. “You don’t have to type,” his computer continues. “I’ll hear you if you speak. James Bond.”
And yes, the web camera’s light is on now; Bond winces and considers covering his bare chest, but really, he’s seen so much more of Q. “I—you were being followed. About a week ago,” he tells the screen, and it feels silly to confess this way. “I followed him; I thought you were being stalked. Turns out he was just a fan.”
Q’s cursor is silent, blinking.
“I meant to tell you, to say something, but—”
On the screen, the words form themselves. “But it was funny.”
“It wasn’t,” Bond protests. “It was...I don’t know words for what it was, but funny isn’t one of them. Surprising, I think. Revealing. Erotic.” He pauses for a shuddering breath. “Yes. It was erotic.”
He’s surprised when the video appears, small in the corner of his screen. Q’s chest is bare, too, and streaked with the fading blush of arousal. He’s cleaned the come from his skin but he still looks like he’s been wanking, hair curled and sweaty at the nape of his neck. Bond swallows hard and pulls his eyes back up to Q’s. He looks amused.
“You stole my jacket,” Bond says faintly.
“You left it in my office.”
“You wanked in my jacket.”
“You watched.”
He doesn’t know what to say, and the wry smile on Q’s face drifts. “I did,” Bond agrees finally.
“And got off on it,” Q adds.
“And got off on it.” They’re quiet a moment. “They boy who was following you thought I was your boyfriend,” Bond tells him.
“I may have fantasized about you to a few thousand of my closest friends,” Q admits, and that’s what cracks the ice, both of them laughing because honestly, the whole situation is ridiculous.
“Well, you’re going to have to return it,” Bond tells him sternly when Q’s giggles subside.
“No! Why?”
“What else will I wear when I take you out?”
::
Next Wednesday, the update is a little unusual: legs, entwined; a hand clenched in dark hair. Cherry-glossed lips, wrapped around a cock.