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Q wakes up the next morning to Bond. Just, staring at her.
Like he hasn’t seen her in years.
It’s a painful look, one that she can only half-read through the blur of just waking up and the fact that her glasses are on the bedside table and not on her face.
It’s been so long since she woke with someone beside her…Q takes a selfish moment and just lets her eyes flutter back shut and her body to just…feel.
Bond is so warm, beneath the sheets and heavy blankets, and it feels like Q’s laying next to a living, breathing heater. It is…ridiculously nice.
In the night, her sweater has rucked up around her stomach, her pants low around her hipbones and scrunched around her calves. But she’s still warm, cozy.
She and Bond had been pressed shoulder to hip the night before, but now he’s a bit further away, watching her from where he’s laying on one of the ridiculous hotel pillows. Propped up. Staring. Their legs are tangled, Q’s foot wrapped around his ankle.
Q’s head is resting on his outstretched arm, and it has to at least be falling asleep, but she can’t bring herself to move. (She, honestly, spares only a half-assed thought that she hopes she didn’t drool on the man.)
And, let it be said: Q has seen Bond shirtless before, but she hadn’t really been paying attention last night, and his chest and abs are utterly smooth. It’s actually…rather nice.
Different, but nice.
And lord, the man is built as solidly as a bloody brick wall, is all Q has to say. Corded, thick muscle lines every inch of his body. And if he had garnered any weight around his middle from his temporary retirement, it has all been burned away.
Q is, honestly, a little jealous, as she blinks her eyes open to meet Bond’s gaze.
(Q is fit, but she isn’t that fit. She doesn’t need to be, not anymore. It’s not like she could pass the field-tests, anyway. She tries to ignore the burning indignation that that thought stirs and, absently, wonders if she’ll always battle with the shame, the anger that she can’t be out in the field ever again. That she’s effectively trapped behind a wall of steel and brick and glass, down in her place in Q-Branch.)
Bond’s eyes are a vivid, painful blue. And they lack the distance that Q is used to seeing, like part of Bond’s plate-armor has been stripped away from him, leaving him clad in only the lightest of chainmails.
It rather hurts to look at, and Q wonders if she looks just the same.
She wonders what he sees, when he looks at her from so close up, if he likes what he observes. If he doesn’t.
She hasn’t felt this bare in a long, long time, for all that they are fully dressed and haven’t done anything more intimate than a press of lips, a sharing of breath and guns and wit.
It’s…blindingly painful, just to lay there and let him look. To look back and see a part of him that he so jealously guards.
Painful, and beautiful.
“Q,” Bond rumbles, his voice rough and sleep-deep. His hair is a mess around his face, but Q imagines hers is even worse.
Q feels a smile twitching at her mouth. “Bond,” she says, feeling his chest rise and fall against hers. Her speech is only slightly impeded by her retainer, and as Bond’s eyes widen she is painful glad that they didn’t get any further into anything the night before. Obviously, he hadn’t been able to tell what was in her mouth when he wasn’t, you know, practically on top of her.
“Is that…?” he asks, and he sounds horrified.
Q feels her face heat, all the way up from her chest, and she barely resists clapping her hand over her mouth.
What an asshole, she thinks, glaring.
Bond looks trapped between being sick and laughing uproariously.
“Just how old are you?” he demands, and just as Q thinks about twitching away and running to the bathroom like a wimp, because, God, she had forgotten what it felt like to be looked at like a--Bond pulls a move that Q remembers vaguely from her own repertoire, and tugs while pushing himself up and over and Q lets out a huff of surprised air when he sits firmly on her hips, pinning her and--
Wait.
What?
Bond’s hands have hers in a firm grip out away from their bodies, and his face is incredibly close to hers. Q feels herself go lax, her muscles releasing from where she was about to unintentionally headbutt him and then hip-throw him off of her in a move that would, undoubtedly, have hurt something awful.
(Hurt her, that is. Bond probably would have been fine, the great prat.)
“What?” Q gapes at him. What did he think, that she--?
But he looks utterly grave, leaning down, his weight feeling enormous atop her body, his stomach hot against hers and her legs trapped between his powerful thighs. Lord, he was like a bloody giant.
It was unimaginably hot.
And annoying.
“Q!” Bond growls, his face somehow frantic.
And Q says, without thinking, “I don’t know,” affronted and rather pissy, because she’s bloody stupid and has never really kept track of things like that and Bond just looks furious, doesn’t he.
My, that’s rather frightening, face-to-face and not just over a CCTV feed, isn’t it?
It dawns on Q that he probably thinks she’s pulling his bloody chain or just being plain evasive, and Q, embarrassed as hell, forces herself to ask.
“What year is it?” through gritted teeth.
Bond’s hands tighten around her wrists.
“Are…you serious?” he asks slowly, something like revelation slipping across his face.
Q makes a noise in the back of her throat, trying not to be annoyed. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, now, would I?” she asks rhetorically.
“You really don’t know how old you bloody are?” Bond is incredulous. “How does any one not know that?”
“I assumed you wanted a specific age, 007, do forgive me for not giving you the rough estimate,” Q drawls, in the face of Bond seeming to be purposefully obtuse.
“Estimate me, then,” Bond demands.
Q does a quick spot of mental math. “Mid-to-late twenties, then. Perhaps.” She scoffs, quick to add, “I’m not a bloody child, Bond.”
“You have a retainer, Q,” Bond grits out. Like it’s some kind of crime.
Q widens her eyes obnoxiously. “Why, is that what that is? I had been wondering,” scathingly.
Bond snorts, but then goes quiet for a moment, some of the battle-hardened edge leaving the planes of his shoulders, his hold on her legs relaxing.
“I…am much too old for you,” he says softly.
Q feels a spike of rage. How dare he--“Don’t you dare think to make that kind of decision for me, Bond,” she snarls, hissing from between her teeth. Infuriated.
“Ah,” Bond sounds awkward in the face of her anger. “Just pointing it out, Q, don’t get your jumper in a twist,” he adds lightly.
It effectively breaks the heavy air, and Q rolls her eyes, giving a pointed glance down to where her shirt and said jumper have been pushed up to her ribs, revealing a pale expanse of skin down to her hips where her panties are just beginning to peek from her pajama bottoms.
“Too late,” she says drolly, her heart beginning to slow from the racy tempo it had flown to in the face of Bond’s misassumption and subsequent anger.
Bond makes no attempt to hide the hot glide of his eyes down. “So I see,” he says, his voice low and teasing.
Q groans and smacks her head back against her pillow, half-laughing.
Bond huffs his own amusement, dipping down to place a searing kiss against the corner of her mouth, pressing his lips there so that they can both feel the edge of her retainer through it.
Q can feel him smile.
*
It’s dark in the room, the night barely beginning to lighten around the edges of the curtains, and Q wonders if they’re going to have sex now.
She’s game, and she can feel Bond interested against her stomach, where he’s dropped down to lay atop her, his head pillowed by her collar. He’s heavy, but it’s a nice, comfortable weight, and Q has no trouble breathing.
His morning stubble scratches along her skin as he breathes, but not hard enough to give her a burn, for which she is grateful, and he has elegantly filled up the entirety of her awareness.
She scritches her nails up his back slowly, gently, feeling the planes of muscles and bone and the odd scar here or there as the burning, low in her stomach, starts to creep up her torso and down her legs, everywhere that Bond is touching coming awake moment by moment.
She thinks about how he would look at her, if he would be disgusted by the twisting expanses left behind by her last life. If he would find them ugly. If he would find her somehow…wanting.
It makes her throat tight and her fingers tap out a quick, nervous tempo against his spine.
Q may risk sounding naïve, even in her own head, but she rather…dislikes the idea of being just another fuck to Bond, another notch on his extensive list.
She’s thought about sex with him at the odd moment here or there, about how she would feel about it.
(It would probably be mind blowing.)
But could Bond deal with his lover not dying soon after? Of seeing Q in the halls of headquarters and being forced to look at her?
She, honestly, doesn’t know how he would deal with that.
“Stop thinking, Q,” Bond mumbles, rubbing his nose along her neck, his breath hot and damp against the curve of her shoulder.
“That is a rather improbable request, Mr. Bond,” she teases him airily.
He nips at the delicate skin of her collarbone in retaliation.
Q feels a shot of pure heat run right up her spine, and she must have made a noise, because Bond is perfectly still now. Intent. The whole of his focus narrowing in on her.
Slowly, he laves his tongue over the mark, and Q feels her breath shudder out of her chest. Bond props himself up on his elbow, looming over her, his lips not leaving her skin as he traces his mouth up her neck, along her chin, his hand creeping up the bottom of her shirt, palming her side, his fingers huge and rough--
The alarm Q set on her phone blares out.
Startled, Bond and Q knock chins, Bond jerking towards the noise and Q grabbing Bond, preparing to roll and cover him.
They both freeze, and a trembling laugh forces its way out of Q’s mouth as nothing explodes and no armed-gunmen force their way into the room.
After a tense moment, Bond joins her, and they laugh as the alarm goes off.
It was time to start the day.
*
Q is insanely grateful she took the chance the night before to lay out her clothing for the day, hanging it in the wardrobe in its protective white bag. She snags it, laying it out on the bed and smoothing it, making sure it isn’t wrinkled or otherwise marred.
It’s not.
And it also doesn’t seem to have suffered much, the past few years, as it languished in the back of her closet with its sisters, pretty and elegant and utterly worthless.
(Not really, Q’s old wardrobe probably cost more than all of Bond’s fancy suits put together, accounting for coats and hose and under-things and shoes, lord, the shoes.)
Q runs her fingers over the slinky, silky fabric of the dress, and sets out the box containing her shoes and the package of hose beside it, along with her shower-bag and her small case of makeup.
She stands there, at the foot of the bed, sipping her coffee, and runs a harried hand over her head.
Lord, and here she had thought she had left it all behind her.
But, needs must, Q figured. And if she only had to dress for Queen and Country once in a decade, well, what did she really have to complain about?
At least she didn’t have to dress like Moneypenny, after all. That would be a really pain.
Q zips up the bag, and Bond steps from the bath, freshly shaved and styled, fully dressed in a new suit, tying his tie as he walks.
He’s utterly fashionable and utterly sexy, and Q wants to strip him of his clothing piece by piece, sucking on each piece of skin that’s revealed until her mouth knows him as well as her hands might, one day.
She swallows, and watches him go to the desk to grab his cufflinks.
“Do you mind?” he asks, holding them out, and Q goes, setting her coffee down, and holds each of his wrists in her hands as she fastens the links out of memory.
(This is not her first rodeo.)
She runs her fingers once over his knuckles, then lets him go, moving to take a step back.
He catches her hand as it leaves his, and pulls her back close. He’s only an inch or two taller than she is, but she feels dwarfed by his sheer weight. Their eyes meet, and he gives her plenty of time to pull away as he shifts the slightest bit down, and kisses her.
He smells ridiculously good, and Q presses in, opening to suck his lower lip into her mouth. She keeps her eyes on his, and when he leans in for more, she pulls away, smiling softly.
“Ta, Mr. Bond,” she says, and steps back, scooping up her stuff and heading to the restroom to get ready.
*
Face washed, teeth brushed, hair spritzed to get the curl back and then moussed to keep it neat, Q settles on a light foundation and powder and does a simple, dark line around her eyes.
Her lashes are already dark, and the eyeliner is enough to make them seem even darker.
Still, perfunctory, she adds the slightest bit of mascara, then calls it done, tossing the brushes, compacts, and tubes back into their little bag, and smoothes her hands down her sides.
The dress and slip feel like old friends, like a second skin, and Q closes her eyes to breathe in the feeling.
She had forgotten how it felt to feel powerful, this powerful.
Blinking her eyes open, she slips back on her glasses, and looks herself over in the large bathroom mirror.
She looks like a stranger, she thinks. Not Q, but--
Q sucks a breath in through her teeth, gently reaching up to wipe away a small smudge of mascara on her cheek.
She looks good, she settles on. Professional.
The dress is a high-necked, chinked waist look, with a closely fitted skirt that ended around the tops of her knees. In a moment of weakness, Q had packed a pair of her favorite lace hose and her most comfortable garter belt, and the flowing pattern was very black against the pale skin of her legs, trailing down to the posh ankle boots her sister had posted to her for Beltane, the year before.
Minimum makeup, a fast-drying clear-coat on her nails, a dot of old perfume at her pulse points and behind her knees, and a pair of small, gray pearl studs in her ears, and she was ready to go.
Q took a breath, her fingers twitching with her skirt, before she made herself grab her things and open the door, flipping off the lights as she went.
Bond was sitting on the couch, a bottle of water at his side, and his eyes flicked to look at her.
Once.
A blink.
Twice.
Longer this time.
Q couldn’t make herself just stand there for it, so she went to her suitcase, packing her things away, folding her jim-jams back inside and pulling out the small purse she had packed to carry her wallet, phone, and weapons.
She slipped her Ashworth turtle onto her finger, holding out the hand next to her skirt to see how it matched. Shrugged to herself.
(Good enough.)
The Beretta went into the purse (safety on) followed by her wallet and her phone. Her Russell Sting, she propped her leg up on the nightstand and adjusted the holster, strapping it to her thigh.
She tried the draw. It went smoothly, and she knew from experience that it wouldn’t been seen.
Bond’s eyes still burned across her back as she reacquainted herself with the feeling of balancing in heels, with the pressure along the bottoms of her feet and the stiffness of her ankles.
It was just like riding a bike, Q mused, walking over to pack up her computer, checking the straps and pockets to see if she had everything.
She did.
And she couldn’t avoid it anymore.
“Problem, Bond?” she asked stiffly, with her back to him, hiding her face as she filled up a foam-cup with hot coffee to take with her.
She heard a rustle as he stood and then he was at her back, ghosting his fingers over her shoulders, down her arms. A solid presence around her.
“The jumpers were beginning to grow on me,” he murmured into her ear.
And Q smiled.