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They find each other aboard an airship.
A great, hulking monstrosity, yet undeniably beautiful in it’s ugliness. This is not a ship for photographs and holiday; this is a ship designed for war. Lined with guns along it’s outer edge, and coated in an armour that would take days to break through, this ship is bred for battle and victory.
It is vastly reminiscent of the man standing at the starboard side and gazing out across the sky like it holds the answers to any question he might have ever had. This man looks like he is wearing armour, layers of it. He, too, has broad shoulders and musculature that speaks more of fitness due to necessity, rather than definition for appearance. Q can see him carrying a gun, perhaps two, and he looks tense in the way that one might if they were to have one hand on the trigger at all times.
The man is also beautiful, in the sense that one might find a decimated battlefield beautiful. Beautiful in the way a ruined temple might be honoured. He is all tragedy and no comedy, and he wears it wonderfully well. Q finds himself drawn towards him, like a planet chasing it’s sun.
The windows that line starboard and port are large. They make Q feel dwarfed, and allow light to stream patterns across the marble floors. For a war ship, she has taken many liberties when it comes to art. HMS Arethusa is strong and powerful, and greatly indulgent. The man who stands beside him, however, looks like he fits perfectly against the windows. Perhaps like he could control the oceans with a flick of his finger, commanding the power of an old God.
“Hello,” Q says pleasantly. He tries not to feel inferior; he has earned his place aboard the Arethusa as much as anyone has and he knows as much. Standing next to one of the passengers, wearing his brother’s hand-me-down suit, drives the point home, though.
That’s not to say his suit is poorly made - quite the opposite, in fact. But there is something to be said for wearing clothes that aren’t his and standing next to a man who looks like he was born in a three piece.
The man looks at him. Q can’t discern anything particular about his expression, except for how he straightens up slightly. “Good morning.” He is the epitome of politeness. Q could almost believe it, if it weren’t for the tenacity of his words; it sounds like a script reel rather than a greeting.
“Doctor Quillon Cain,” Q introduces his full name, wondering if it will be recognised. He’s not entirely unknown, as much as it pains him to admit, which is a fact he hates and his brothers utilise often in an attempt to tease him.
“Commander Bond,” the man replies. He does a remarkable job at feigning disinterest, but Q can read the line in his shoulders that shows more than says that this is a man on duty.
“Military?” he asks.
“Navy.”
“You fought in the war?” Q asks. He’s not expecting an answer - at least, not an honest one. Everyone of age fought in the war, and no one likes to talk about it. The answer is an obvious one.
Commander Bond nods. “And you? Bit young to be a doctor, aren’t you?”
“I’m not a medical doctor,” Q says. Bond shows no recognition, which throws Q for a moment. He’s used to talking to people as if they already know at least his name. “Engineering. I didn’t fight on the front lines, but I designed at least half of the guns that we shipped out.”
“Mmh,” is all Bond says. Q glances at him. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of the clouds, and Q wonders what he sees in them. “I find it hard to believe a young man like you wouldn’t have been handed a grenade and sent abroad yourself.”
Q shrugs. In all honesty, he’s surprised he wasn’t forced out either. “I suppose my inventions were too important to the efforts. Besides, I hold my power with a drill and a solder iron.”
“And not on a battlefield?”
“I’d prefer to hole up in a laboratory and let someone else poke the bear, as it were,” Q says.
“In an attempt to absolve yourself from guilt?” Bond asks. He sounds truly confused, as if he can’t understand why one wouldn’t want to fight hand to hand for their country.
“Far from it,” Q says, “I am painfully aware of the blood on my hands. Whether or not I actually pulled the trigger is beside the point when it was my bullets that were fired.”
Bond says, “and yet you still made guns for our soldiers? Greater men would have backed out after the first corpse was shipped home.”
“Could a great man swallow the flames of a fire he himself had stoked?” Q asks.
Bond is silent for a long while. The windows grow evermore oppressive, and Q stares out of them. He begins to see the questions that Bond has been asking. “James,” is what he says eventually. “Commander James Bond.”
“Commander James Bond,” Q says. The words taste ashy on his tongue. “It’s nice to make your acquaintance.”
“And yours, Doctor,” Bond says. “Excuse me.”
Q watches him leave. He heads to the staircase at the bow of the ship, descending into her depths. Arethusa is a large ship, with several decks available to passengers and even more available to those in possession of a lock pick. Humanity may have figured out how to commercialise space travel, but they have yet to realise the benefits of an electronic locking system.
Not that either of those would stop Q for very long. He entertains the idea of following Bond - he believes the Naval Commander, but he doubts it ends there. Commander James Bond certainly stands with the air of a military man, but everyone does these days. There is still the compelling undercurrent of something else and Q finds himself desperate to know more.
The next morning brings about a spot of turbulence. It’s to be expected - they may have launched ships into the sky but no one has made any successful attempt to actually control the weather yet. It means the windows and doors to the open air decks are sealed shut, and a worried fog settles across the ship.
Q would have thought that, whilst on board a warship, there would have been less fear. However, he supposed there is a different kind of bravery in weathering a storm and facing down the barrel of a gun.
He’s also begun to realise that Arethusa isn’t a fighting vessel. She may be dressed for war, and for winning one at that, but she won’t seek the first shot. It’s something Q can respect in her. He wonders if that’s why Bond had chosen her to board, instead of the other hundred other wartime airships. Wonders if he appreciated the ability to pull a trigger or not pull one.
Q sits alone at one of the dining tables. The main dining room is dripping with an elegance that doesn’t match the ship’s exterior - sitting amongst the golds and bronzes and crystals behind walls of steel and gunfire doesn’t lend itself to a feeling of safety, instead reflecting a feeling of defense and discomfort. Q feels out of place here.
Arethusa is trying to be things she’s not. A party ship, grandiose and magnificent. Q is all too aware of the weaponry the guards carry, and the exoskeleton that could withstand the strength of a hundred nuclear bombs. Sitting behind her walls is both safety and a prison sentence.
He wonders what he’s doing here.
He remembers the wax-sealed invitation he had received, requesting his presence and that of a hundred other war heroes. Q has a distaste for the concept of heroes - survival cannot be considered heroic, after all. It's some sort of memoriam for the soldiers and the doctors and the innovators, he supposes, but there’s something dark lurking around the corner.
Q is still unsure as to why they had to hold this event on a warship, protected to within an inch of her life. He knows something isn’t right about it, and he’s entertained for many long nights, when the moon is neither loud nor quiet and sleep evades him, whether or not he should be investigating it.
Commander Bond sits opposite him. His suit tonight is an ashy grey number, with a very faint checker pattern. He’s wearing a long black trench coat as well, and it does a wonderful job at disguising his figure and hiding any number of weapons that Q assumes he must be carrying. “Evening, Doctor.”
“Commander,” Q replies out of courtesy. He’s not entirely sure why Bond is sitting with him tonight; he had approached him last night with no ulterior motive, but Bond seems to do everything with a myriad of reasons hidden beneath it. It makes Q curious as to what his angle is.
“Have you eaten yet?” Bond asks, ever the gentleman. Q shakes his head, so Bond pulls out one of the menus and flags a waiter down. “Would you mind if I were to order for us?”
Q makes an agreeable noise. He listens as Bond orders several dishes and a bottle of red wine, and then waits until the waiter is out of earshot to ask, “one might wonder what your intentions are, Commander Bond.”
“You approached me first,” is what Bond says.
Q nods and upturns the corners of his lips at his plate. “Quite right. I must say, however, that there is a world of difference between a polite introduction and treating one to dinner.”
“You caught my attention,” Bond says, “an attractive young man such as yourself, sitting alone? It’s a travesty. And I’d have to admit that our conversation last night certainly gave me a lot to think about. You seem to be quite the enigma, Doctor, and I find myself attracted to it.”
“You must be more careful with your words,” Q says. He’s flattered to say the least, if not slightly apprehensive. It’s not every day that a man such as James Bond keeps his continued attention, and returns it no less.
“Why?”
Q doesn’t allow himself to blush. “People will talk, you know.”
“And I shall let them,” Bond says. “People make a habit of talking. Particularly about matters that do not concern them.”
“What matter is that?” Q asks.
“The matter of a man dining with his companion,” Bond says.
“So I’m your companion now?”
“If you’d like to be, Doctor.”
Q swallows. The waiter returns with the wine and two glasses, and pours them. “You ought to call me by my given name, then. If we are to be companions.”
“Quillon?” Bond says.
“Q,” Q corrects. At Bond’s questioning look, he elaborates, “a nickname from childhood. I find it preferable to Quillon.”
“Then you should call me James,” Bond says. “If we are to be companions, of course.”
There’s the hint of a smile in his words, one that Q can’t help smiling back at. “James, then,” he says. He takes a sip of wine, lets it sit on his tongue for a moment. “Perhaps you will indulge my curiosity and allow me to ask you some questions.”
“I’m an open book,” James says. Q would like to refute that - James is closed remarkably tightly - but he doesn’t say anything.
“Why did you accept this invitation?” Q asks, “forgive me, but you don’t seem like a social butterfly, nor the sort to willingly attend an event such as this.”
James exhales in a laugh. “One could say the same about you,” he says, and Q allows it. “To answer your question, you’re quite right. I’d prefer not to attend, if I had my way. But I fear it wasn’t my decision to make.”
“Then whose decision was it?”
“Classified,” James replies, and Q laughs in disbelief.
“Classified by who?” he asks, “you might forgive me for questioning your employment in the Navy.”
“I can assure you that my Naval career is true,” James says. He twists his fingers around the stem of his wine glass.
“But that’s not the full truth, is it?” Q says. It was a guess, but he knows as soon as he says it that it’s right.
“No,” James admits. “Perhaps you’ll trust me when I say that it’s nothing you need to know.”
“Like the guns you carry are nothing important?”
“Wartime paranoia,” is James’s response, and it sounds perfectly natural, which makes it immediately suspicious. Like he’s said it far too many times.
“We can call it that,” Q agrees. James looks at him like he’s not sure what he’s seeing. It’s been a long time since Q has let himself be misunderstood, but he’s rather enjoying it now. James’s confusion isn’t the same as everyone else’s - his confusion is determined, like he knows he’ll understand eventually, and Q has to suppress the urge to run because he knows that James will always catch up.
He goes back to James’s rooms with him. It isn’t something Q had particularly intended to do, just something that happened as the evening wore on. James is as much of an enigma as he claims Q is, and the puzzle he presents is one that Q is determined to unravel.
When he lays in James’s bed and watches as he undresses, removing his suit jacket and revealing a gun holster, Q’s knowing look makes him smile. Wartime paranoia is a sturdy excuse, except for how James seems to be wearing it as a mask.
They don’t do any more than kiss and sleep, and when Q wakes up the next morning, the blinds are open to show James standing at the windows once more.
“Did you sleep?” Q asks. His voice is quiet, weighed down with the sort of pressure that a quiet early morning inspires.
“Did you?” James asks. Q nods, knowing James can’t see it, but assuming he’ll know anyway.
“What are you really doing here?” Q asks. It’s not that he doesn’t believe that James was a soldier in the Navy, but more that he seems to be more than that in more ways than one. Q has never met a Naval officer with as many bullet holes and scars as James has.
“Much the same as you, I imagine,” James says. “Paying my respects to fallen comrades, like every other passenger.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes,” James says. He’s quiet for a minute before continuing. “But perhaps your assessment of me is more astute than I expected. You won’t let this go, will you?”
“Not until I have found an answer that satisfies me,” Q says. “You could tell me yourself, or I’ll conduct my own investigation.”
“It would be entirely inappropriate for me to tell you, you know,” James says.
“Would it?”
“My superiors will be upset with me.”
Q laughs. “You don’t seem like the sort of man to let that stop you.”
James grins, “you’re remarkably observant.”
“Perhaps you’re easy to read.”
That makes James laugh properly, tilting his head down to look at the floor and then up to look at Q. “That’s funny.”
“Come back to bed,” Q says. He doesn’t get time to properly think about it, because James is sliding back into the bed, and they waste away the remainder of the morning lost in each other’s skin.
“You confuse me,” says Q that evening, after a morning spent curled together in bed, and an afternoon spent alone. Now, the sun is coming down, and it casts long molten gold shadows across the ship decks.
“Do I?”
James has somehow managed to avoid most of the rest of the passengers and procured two chairs from somewhere, setting them up on the highest deck on the ship. Here they sit, together and alone, in silence. James is better company than Q would have expected.
“Yes,” Q says. “You seem utterly harmless to me, but everyone avoids you like the plague. You have several guns, a government job, and a hundred masks to wear. Who are you?”
“I told you, a Naval officer,” James says. It’s a deflection, and Q knows this, but he lets it slide. “Tell me more about you, Q.”
“What do you want to know?”
James taps his fingertips on his knee. “You said that I didn’t seem like the kind to attend social events like these.”
“I did.”
“Forgive me, but you don’t seem the type either,” James says. “Why are you really here?”
“I was invited,” Q says. It’s so not an answer. James gives him one look before he continues. “I was invited. But I heard, through the grapevine, that this event wasn’t going to be all it seemed. At first, I came to show my respect for those who fought, and perhaps to see old friends and colleagues. Then I came to discover what was happening beneath the surface. I much imagine that that’s what you’re here for too, isn’t it?”
James is quiet for several long seconds. Q watches the tiny motions of his face as he processes Q’s honesty. “Why are you so sure you can trust me?” he asks, finally. It’s not what Q would have expected to hear, but he’s not surprised.
“I don’t know,” he says, wondering if he sounds as confused as James does.
“How did you know I worked for the government?” James says.
“Everyone worked for the government in the war,” Q says, “but I saw it. Your badge. You left it on your dresser in your room. For a spy, you’re not particularly careful with your things.”
“And what do you think of it?”
“I think it’s obvious,” Q says. James scoffs a little, looking at his feet and then out to the horizon. “You’re clearly a military type. I suppose MI6 would be a logical jump. And… I think you’ve dealt some blows you regret. A soldier would know about that, but you feel it on a deeper level, don’t you?”
James doesn’t look at him. “Do I?”
“Yes,” Q decides. “When we first met, you told me about great men and guilt. I’d wager you were talking about yourself. So tell me, Commander Bond, which shot do you regret the most?”
Q turns so he can watch as James inhales against the sunset. There are several long moments of silence before James speaks. “Her name was Vesper.”
“A lover?”
“For a while,” James says. His tone burns with age-old heartbreak. “She betrayed me. I left everything for her, did anything for her. She was using me as a means to an end, I think. I never got to ask. I had to watch her die.”
“Did you kill her?” Q asks.
James shakes his head. “I didn’t deal the killing blow, if that’s what you mean. But I might as well have. She drowned. I could have saved her.”
“Do you think she would have wanted saving?”
“...What?”
“I can’t speak for the dead,” Q says slowly, “but if I had to, I’d say she knew what she was doing. She had made her bed, so to speak.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Christ, no. But if you wouldn’t blame her for refusing to be saved, then you can’t blame yourself for failing to save her,” Q says. He hopes it's the answer James is looking for.
The breath James lets out is harsh and heavy and sudden. He says, “you confuse me, too, Q,” and something in his tone sounds delighted.
When it happens, Q feels something fall into place within him, like finding a missing puzzle piece after years of half hearted searching.
James pushes him under a table, hands him a gun. Says, “tell me you know how to shoot,” and Q is so caught up in nodding that he doesn’t realise that James has already run off.
He tightens his palm around the gun with a well-practiced ease - he didn’t get as good as he is at making weapons without ever handling them - and is surprised to find that it feels right at home. Q isn’t sure what to make of that, doesn’t know what it means, so he fits his finger around the trigger and wonders if he still has it in him.
There’s gunfire - unsteady and loud, a spray of bullets that kicks up splinters and screams. The rest of the passengers, wartorn heroes that they are, flee. Q watches their feet stumble past and the captain begins to direct people to the lower rooms.
All too soon, the deck is mostly empty. There are still the guards, each aiming their weapons at something. There is still James, standing with his suit jacket hanging open and his gun held steady.
There is still Q, hidden under a table, hoping against hope that he hasn’t forgotten how to take a man’s life.
The ship seems to inhale, and gets stuck somewhere around the middle. She makes an awful choking noise, one that must surely come from the engines, and drops several hundred feet in midair. It is not a good quality in an airship, and a warship at that. Q spends a moment wondering just how bad the fallout would be if twenty thousand tons of metal and people were to crash into whatever land mass is currently below them.
Then, he’s crawling out from beneath the table and cocking James’s gun. When he peers over to the deck, he sees James locked in a standoff with another man. There are a hundred and one weapons aimed at them, to the point where Q isn’t sure if they’re planning to shoot through James instead of around him.
Q holds the gun in front of him, perfectly still. Ready to shoot; textbook. The airship falls several hundred more feet, rocking the balance enough that Q almost falls himself.
He decides that James can hold his own for a little while. His expertise will be more valuable in the engine room, ensuring that the ship stays airborne long enough for something to end. This much he knows.
He’s still afraid to turn his back on James, afraid to run and leave him. There is a part of him, loud and stern, that tells him James is capable of defending himself. There is another part that wants to squirrel James away and hide him for as long as possible. Q isn’t sure which part he wants to listen to more.
He grits his teeth. As he runs towards the lower decks, there is another gunshot and more screaming. The engines fail faster, and the ship falls slower.
The engine room is beautiful.
At least, it would be, if it wasn’t covered in smoke and fear. Q can barely see past the smog, but when he does, he rests his eyes upon great machines made of bronze and copper and iron, each one churning and groaning. Q finds himself breathing in and out with them, assimilating to the tempo they set like it’s a second nature.
“Sir, you can’t be here,” one of the mechanics, presumably, tries to say. Q eyes her grungy work suit and the sweat beading down her forehead.
“Forgive me, but I dare say I have more experience with these engines than you do,” Q says, doing his best not to sound rude or dismissive. He doubts it works, when the mechanic’s cheeks flush. He sighs, pulling his credentials from his pocket. “I assure you, I’m perfectly capable, if you’d just let me take a look. I’d say you need all the help you can get.”
The mechanic chews the inside of her lip. “Sir, I can’t just let one of the guests in…”
Q puts on his best smile. “Well, I won’t tell if you don’t-” he starts to say, before the ship drops suddenly.
“Oh…” she makes a greatly conflicted face, before stepping aside, “you best come in, sir. I hope you can figure it out.”
“Thank you,” Q says, stepping further into the engine room. He feels at his element in here, surrounded by chugging machinery and the smell of burning hair.
He runs his hand over the outside casing, feeling the machine tremble beneath his fingertips. The rest of the room seems to fall away as he focuses on the engines, barely registering as the ship falls lower and lower. The franticness increases tenfold, but Q lets it glide past him, lets the static energy spark away from him.
“Sir?” the same mechanic from before asks, interrupting his thought-flow. “Do you… do you know how to help, yet?”
Q nods. “I think so, yes. I don’t suppose I could trouble you for some spare parts, could I?”
“Tell us what you need,” the mechanic says, “anything. Anything at all.”
“A three foot copper pipe, two steel drums, a bucket of ice, the thinnest pipe cleaner you can find, an analog clock, five hydraulic pumps,” Q reels off, “and a cup of tea?”
This is precisely where James finds him, just minutes later, surrounded by steam and diesel and rusted cogs.
“Thank God you’re okay,” James says, once he’s scanned the room. “You gave me a heart attack with your little disappearing act. I told you to stay put for a reason, you know.”
“I know,” Q says, and he doesn’t say anything more. He focuses once more on his wires and pipes, feeding the pipe cleaner through one of the pipes in the engines. He pulls it out coated in black gunk, and grimaces. He reaches out for the mug he had been given, tipping the dregs of tea onto the floor and scraping the gunk into the mug instead.
“Is that all you have to say?” James says. His gun cocks, but Q doesn’t think about it until the tip of it is cold and heavy against his forehead.
This is when he looks up. There is gunmetal against his skin, and the sword of Damocles hanging above his head, but he doesn’t feel afraid. “What the hell are you doing?”
“One might question what you’re doing in the engine room, after the ship has been so carefully sabotaged,” James says, “it’s dreadfully suspicious, don’t you think?”
Q scoffs. He puts his pipe cleaner down slower. “You think I did this? Put the gun down before you hurt yourself, Bond. You must have trust issues that run deeper than the Mariana Trench.”
“We call it survival instincts,” James says. The gun metal begins to warm against Q’s skin.
“And you don’t trust me?” Q asks.
James swallows. The gun wobbles, the faintest crack in his composure, and Q latches onto it. “How could I trust you? You’re sitting on the floor with engine parts around you. There’s no part of this that doesn’t incriminate you.”
Q reaches up to grasp the gun and James lets him. His words have all been for appearances sake, Q knows, and he forgives immediately. He pulls it away gently, cautiously aware of its volatile nature, until he can replace the safety and slide it away across the deck. “Do you really think I would sabotage the ship? Is that who you take me for?”
“I…”
“Sit down,” Q says, “James. You’ve done your job now. Let me do mine, and then we’ll talk.”
James sinks to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. “You’ll answer my questions?”
“If you answer mine,” Q says. He turns back to the engines, fitting gears and pipes into place with well practiced ease.
“You seem to know a lot of the answers already,” says James, somewhat faintly, like he isn’t quite sure of what he’s saying.
“I suppose I do,” Q allows. “Quiet now, James. Let me focus, please.”
There’s something comforting about the solidity of James’s presence just to the right of him. The engineers and the mechanics have stayed out of Q’s way while he works, but James stays perfectly close.
He manages to balance the engines, fixing them somewhat until the ship can dock somewhere. Then, Q steps away to let the engine staff pick up their positions, collecting his mug of gunk and the pipe cleaner with a grimace.
“I suppose I underestimated you,” James murmurs, when Q reaches out to take his hand.
“Did you?” he says. James curls his fingers around Q’s, pressing into his palm. “Let’s go back to my room,” Q decides. It’ll be the first time they go to his rooms, but James seems perfectly agreeable, and Q thinks he could lead James anywhere, if he wanted. It fills him with unbridled terror to see James’s unfailing loyalty, and he wonders just how he can get away without breaking any hearts.
Walking down the corridors and across the ship decks is more anticlimactic than Q expected. He clutches his mug in one hand and James’s fingers in the other, and tries not to look too hard at the disaster strewn through the ship.
There’s several broken wall panels, and a few blood smears that he’s not sure where they’ve come from. When he focuses, he can hear tears and crying, and they set his heart on edge.
“Did you kill them?” Q asks. He figures that James won’t appreciate him sugarcoating anything.
James looks at him. “Yes. Does that bother you?”
Q takes a long moment to think about it. By the time he’s made up his mind, he’s opening the door to his room with the keycard and letting them both in. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Good,” James says. He toes his shoes off at the door and sinks into Q’s bed like he belongs there.
Q lines their shoes up and decides that he can think more about it tomorrow, when the sun has risen again and his heart has stopped jack-rabbiting against his ribs.
No one closed the blinds last night, so when Q wakes up, he sits and stares at James for a while. This early, the sunrise makes his hair look like a halo. Q thinks about what it would be like to wake up to James in his bed every day.
James blinks one eye open. Fresh from sleep, his lashes stick together and his eyes are bright and watery. “Good morning.”
He looks nothing like a man who could kill someone in cold blood.
“Good morning,” Q returns. He reaches out to drag a fingertip down James’s chest, over his muscles and scars and feeling his breath. “Will you tell me what happened yesterday, after I left?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?” James asks. Q is adamant in his nod, and James shuffles slightly until he’s sitting up against the pillows. Q crawls over to rest in his arms, wondering what it means that he can feel so safe in his arms. “I boarded this airship because MI6 heard rumours that one of the men we had been tracking for an international sex trafficking ring was going to crash it.”
“Was that the man you killed, then?” Q asks.
James nods. “Yes. He was the one who sabotaged the engines - probably in an attempt to stall the ship, kill everyone but the people who would get the highest profit, and then escape. It’s a good thing you were here to fix it.”
“Yes, well.”
James walks a finger down Q’s arm until he reaches his palm. “I’m sorry for assuming you were involved in it.”
“It was a logical conclusion,” Q says, “I forgive you.”
James nods like he doesn’t have much experience with being forgiven. “After I confronted him, he pulled a gun and I shot first. No one else got caught in the crossfire, thankfully. It was a clean mission.”
“That’s good,” Q says. “So you were only here on orders from MI6?”
“Yes. Although I did lose people in the war, and it wasn’t a lie when I said I was remembering them either,” James says.
“I didn’t think it was,” Q says, “I was here for this man, too. If you hadn’t been here, I probably would have killed him myself.”
“Your first kill?”
Q shakes his head. If James is surprised, he doesn’t turn to look at it. “The war made monsters of us all,” he says. “I told you when we first met; you asked if I was trying to absolve myself.”
“You blamed the guns you had built,” James says.
“Fired using my gunpowder, and my bullets, and my ingenuity,” Q says. His smile is tight and utterly fake. “Would it really have made such a difference if I had been the one pulling the trigger after all?”
There’s a biting silence for a minute. James says, “you’re a great man, Q.”
Q scoffs. “Did you listen to a word I said when we were first introduced?”
“Then tell me, are you pushing the blame away from yourself?” James asks, “are you refusing your involvement in the war and the deaths of hundreds of men?”
“James…”
“Are you?”
“… No.”
“Do you regret it?”
Q sighs. It sounds more like a stifled sob, stuck somewhere in the middle of his diaphragm, and he’s afraid to hear if his voice will break. “Yes.”
“Then I reiterate,” James says, “you are a great man.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Q tells him. He sinks back into James’s embrace.
“Quite the contrary, I know better than most,” James says, “I’m a man drowning in blood that I’ve spilled with my own hands, and yet you still lie with me without fear. As I said before, greater men would have run with their tails between their legs. Who is to say you’re not greater?”
“Forgive me if I refuse to trust your judgement on that,” Q says. “Broken glass only becomes smaller with every tragedy.”
“What is with this talk of tragedy?” James asks, “not everything is so bleak, Q. Light still shines from the horizon.”
“And the moon sets every morning.”
“Tell me, is your cynicism learned or natural?”
It makes Q laugh despite himself, watery and quiet but there regardless. “Perhaps both.”
“Then it can be unlearned,” James says. There is a moment of further silence, where the only sound is the chug of the engines and the creaking of the ship. James asks, “will you tell me about yourself? Your true self?”
“My true self? Implying everything I’ve told you already is false?”
James laughs against the shell of Q’s ear. “You might forgive me this time, but you’ve hardly told me anything yet. I want to know about you. Do you have siblings? Where do you work? What is your favourite colour? It seems you already know these answers about me.”
“I only know where you work,” Q says, “I must leave some questions available.”
“Will you answer mine?”
Q breathes. “My favourite colour is orange.”
“And your family?”
“I have two older brothers. My parents are dead. I work freelance, designing and developing vehicles and devices for anyone who pays me enough,” Q answers.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” James offers.
“And I’m sorry about yours.”
It makes James start. “I thought you said you only knew about MI6.”
“Like I said,” Q says, “you’re remarkably easy to read.”
“You’d best not tell my boss that,” James grumbles. He tightens his grip around Q, pressing closer. “I’ll lose my job, and you’ll get arrested as a threat to England’s national security.”
“Psh. I’m not that dangerous.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not unless there’s good reason to be,” Q says. He bites his lip, chews the inside of his cheek. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?” James asks.
“What do we do? You’ve taken out the threat, we’ve attended the event. Our jobs here are done. We’ll be docking soon, and then we’ll go back to never seeing one another,” Q says, “what do we do about us? Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I find myself quite attached to you.”
“I’m sure we can find a way to keep in contact,” James says. He sounds like he’s laughing. “I must say, I find myself quite attached to you as well.”
“I’ve known you for less than a week,” Q says, “one might accuse us of falling fast and recklessly.”
James just shrugs. “So they might.”
“And what would you say to that?”
“I’d say that you’re worth falling for,” James says. “No matter how far.”
They get up soon enough. James lounges about his rooms in underwear and nothing else, whilst Q commandeers James’s shirt to begin analysis on the black grunge he retrieved from the engines yesterday.
“Are you poking at hazardous materials in my clothes?” James asks. He’s figured out the coffee press and poured several cups already, and Q finds it hard to tear his eyes away from the way James’s fingers curl around the cup handle.
“I couldn’t very well wear my own, could I?” Q says in response, turning away from James’s hands and back to his mug of gunk.
“You didn’t have to wear mine,” he hears James grumble, and chuckles under his breath.
“You know, you might want to take me back to MI6,” Q says a few minutes later. He feels more than sees James perk up slightly, asking silently. “I think I ought to alert them about this substance.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“The engines,” Q muses, taking a lump on the end of a pencil and holding it up to his eye. “It’s remarkable. Deadly, but remarkable.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Q puts the pencil down carefully. “It’s engineered to look like diesel, but acts like anything but.”
“So if anyone saw it in the engine, or on the ship, they wouldn’t be suspicious until it was too late,” James says.
“Quite right. I can only assume that it reacts to temperature; that would be the most logical conclusion,” Q says, “given how it reacted in the engines. I couldn’t be sure without further testing. Perhaps if I had more extensive equipment with me, I could reverse engineer it and discover something, but I doubt that would go over well here.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” James agrees. “We can get you a laboratory when we dock and report back to Six.”
Q smiles over at him. “That sounds wonderful.”
“You might even get a job offer out of it,” James says. That makes Q push away from the gunk and slink over to the sofa, until he can slide on top of James’s thighs.
“You think so?”
“A brilliant scientist like yourself? MI6 would be fools to give you up,” James says, leaning in slightly to nose at the hollow of Q’s throat. “ I’d be a fool to give you up.”
Q breathes out his laugh, quiet and airy. “You’re biased.”
“Mhm,” James hums, moving so he can kiss at Q’s throat. “I won’t deny that. I also won’t deny your brilliance.”
Q hooks his hands around the back of James’s neck. “And what if I disappoint you?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“An attractive man like you, you could have anyone you wanted,” Q says, almost defensive. “Is it really so outside the realm of possibility that I would question your motives? For all intents and purposes, this relationship could be nothing more than a holiday fling for you.”
He feels James move to look at him, and fights the urge to close his eyes and turn his head away. “You really think you could be nothing more than a fling for me?”
Q shrugs. “I suppose so.”
“Then I apologise for not making my intentions clearer,” James says. “I was under the impression that buying you dinner and kissing you goodnight were appropriate flirtations. I don’t give my guns to just anyone, you know.”
“I should tell you now then, I’m vastly unpleasant in most aspects of life,” Q says.
“As am I,” James says. “That doesn’t deter me.”
“I’ve killed hundreds of men. You might think yourself a monster, but the blood following me greatly outweighs your own.”
James shakes his head just enough that Q can feel it. “I don’t care. You may have blood under your nails, but you have guilt and fear there too. I don’t see you as anything monstrous.”
Q sighs. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure about what?”
“About all of this.”
“Q.” is all James has to say. Q hears a million other things in it, hears a promise and a reprimand and a confession, and that’s enough. Q kisses him, folds his hands at the back of James’s neck, allows himself to fall even further.