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Q stopped at the little café that was a couple of blocks away from his flat while walking home from the tube station almost everyday. It was nice. The baristas all knew his usual order, and a few even knew a little about him (all of it half-truths and superficial things, of course). The girl who worked there on Wednesdays always asked about his cats. She had cats as well so they always had a little something to talk about. As far as the baristas knew, or at least the ones who had asked, he had a boring clerical job at a small company in the public sector. No one ever asked for elaboration about jobs like that, so it was easy to only have to mention it the one time and never be bothered about it again.
He greeted the Thursday barista and collected a copy of the paper to read with his tea and pastry in his corner seat before he would have to finish his walk home. Of course, he never gave his name as Q. He didn’t even give his actual name, just in case. Only M knew what his name was, and that was only because he signed the pay cheques, so to speak. As far as the baristas at the café knew, his name was Kevin.
His early evening escape into the mundane world went by uneventfully, as it normally did. It would take him no more than 25 minutes to get home from work if he didn’t stop by, but he felt better if he allowed himself the time to unwind a bit before going home to his cats. It helped him transition from the work world to the home world easier. And he could be more mindful of what he ordered in for dinner as the pastry helped take the edge off his hunger. He really couldn’t be trusted with a takeout menu when he was famished.
He placed his used mug and plate in the designated bin and returned his paper for someone else to read. As a regular who tipped well, the baristas didn’t charge him for the paper unless he did the crossword since he always returned it looking like it had arrived to them that morning. He wouldn’t have taken it with him, even if they did charge him. He had read all that he wanted to, and there was no sense in throwing it away if someone else wanted to keep it.
He took his usual route home. It wasn’t a day that called for alternate routes (there were too many to count, all different combinations of longer routes and random turns or stops in shops along the way.) He didn’t have a tail on him to or from the tube, nor did he see any suspicious strangers at the café. Overall, a pretty unimportant, almost boring day. He didn’t mind that, but it was a bit mind numbing how long it had been since there had last been any excitement at the office. 007 had collected his equipment on Friday and seemed to be keeping out of trouble for the most part, so there wasn’t too much for Q to do outside of quality control for the equipment for 009’s next mission. The man was insufferable and demanded Q go over everything with a fine-toothed comb (sometimes literally, like in the case of the fur coat that had a parachute tucked into it) but at least he wasn’t in the habit of constantly losing or destroying his equipment. So as a show of his appreciation, Q humored the man and double checked every detail.
It was so boring, checking equipment that was always made correctly the first time. But, it was his job as Quartermaster, after all.
Q let himself into the building, checking the mail before going up the flights of stairs that led to his second floor flat.
He knew something was amiss the moment he opened the door to the flat.
Firstly, Westley wasn’t waiting for him on the other side of the door, as he always was. The cat was better at telling the time better than some government agents were. Secondly, Buttercup wasn’t on the counter, where she preferred to wait for her human’s arrival from wherever he spent the day.
There weren’t many things he could count on for consistency in his life, but his cats’ habits were one of them. It was one of the reasons he preferred the company of cats over that of most of the humans in his life.
He slipped his hand into his satchel and grabbed the handle of the stun gun he had hidden in a secret pocket within. It wasn’t like one you could buy in a shop. He had given this one a few...enhancements. It was smaller, and hurt so much more.
He entered his apartment, ready for an attacker, trying hard not to consider what may have happened to his cats. After the Raoul Silva...situation… had been resolved, he and most of the other members of MI6 had relocated, even though their boss had promised that their locations were kept separate from the information that had been compromised. However, he knew that data stored on a server was never going to be totally secure and was always ready for something else to happen. Some called him a little paranoid, but he also knew those agents would be the first to be picked off in the case of another data breach.
“Hello? Westley? Buttercup? I’m home,” he called out, trying to sound casual, like he wasn’t ready to drop someone using enough electricity to take down a large horse. He didn’t crave violence, but he was ready to defend himself and his cats should the need arise.
“You named them Westley and Buttercup?” a voice returned. A familiar voice, but certainly the last one he had ever expected to hear in his flat.
“007.” He sighed as he took his hand off of the stun gun in his satchel and flipped the light switch for the living area. What he saw wasn’t totally unexpected, but was less than ideal. “You are bleeding on my carpet.”
“I couldn’t find any towels.”
“There are several in the washroom. You mustn’t have looked too hard.”
It wasn’t the worst wound that Bond had endured. Q knew this from the files he had read of the senior agent when he returned to service after faking his death. He could probably treat it with what he had on hand in the first aid kit but it might require the sacrifice of some linens. Just not the ones his grandmother had smuggled out of Germany. She’d come back from the dead to smack him if he let anything get on those.
“Well, the princess and the farmboy did threaten me. So I felt it best to wait for you to call them off.”
“You watched that movie?”
“Long before you were born, I’d wager.”
“I was 7 when the film came out, 007. I told you that you need to quit underestimating my age.”
Bond grunted something that sounded like “spots”. Q decided to let it go. This was an old argument and he didn’t care to keep having it.
“So, do you want to tell me what you’ve gotten into this time, or shall I try to guess?” Q asked as he came into the living area with towels, rags, and the first aid kit from the bathroom.
“Mmmm. Depends on who you ask, I suppose.” Bond very much enjoyed being enigmatic. While that might work well for getting the attention of the female agents and marks, it didn’t really do anything for Q. He merely rolled his eyes and set to work assessing the wound on the agent’s side.
He peeled the tattered fabric of the agent’s shirt away from the wound and got a pair of tweezers to pluck out a few stray bits that had gotten into the wound. Satisfied that the wound was clear of debris, he cleaned it with antiseptic which caused 007 to hiss briefly at the sharp pain. Q held his tongue. There would be time to tease 007 after he made sure there wouldn’t be any more blood leaking out of the man this evening.
“No quippy comments?” Bond asked through his teeth as Q cleaned the wound a second time just for good measure.
“None come to mind at the moment. Just curious though, why come here? You could have gone to Medical. They do have more equipment there,” Q pointed out.
“Yes, but your place was so much easier to get into without the others noticing.” Q made a mental note that it was time to find a new flat. And install better security measures.
They were both quiet for a bit while Q fitted a bandage onto the wound. “On a serious note though, why did you come here, of all places?”
Bond sighed. “You are the only one that I can trust. I used to almost trust M, my M. But she’s not here anymore. I barely passed my physical evaluations when I came back, you know that already. I don’t want to give the new guard a reason to kick me out of field duty. If they don’t know I’m injured, I can keep going.”
It was unlike Bond to be so forthcoming with the truth, but Q understood his reasons. In their line of work, the truth could so easily get you, or others, killed. Or worse. He knew the files for the double-0 agents well enough to know there are quite a few fates worse than death. So if living your life shrouded in mystery and lies kept others alive…
As for Bond’s reasons for keeping things quiet from the men upstairs, he also understood that. The old M had once confided in him with utmost secrecy that Bond didn’t narrowly pass any of his evaluations. He boldly failed all of them. But she had her way, and her way made certain that their best agent could continue to do his job.
“You’re quiet all of the sudden,” Bond commented.
“Just trying to concentrate here. Don’t want to send you back out there if you are just going to bleed to death because I did a shite job patching you up. The cats would never let me forget it,” Q replied. Bond didn’t need to know what he had been musing about in his silence. They got along well enough, and Q didn’t need to ruin that by letting Bond know any of the things M had confided in him during her last days.
“Well, then. We can’t have the cats be upset with you. They are murderous little creatures as it is. Mustn’t add vindictiveness to their personalities as well.” Bond smiled a bit.
The cats, who had been in the room through all of this, just blinked sleepily from their respective perches. It was quite unlike them to be out with a stranger in the room. Not that Q was in the habit of having, well, anyone over. But it made all the less sense that they would stay, given their lack of socialization. It made Q wonder if they knew something about Bond that he didn’t. Perhaps he was secretly a cat person as well.
“Now what are you smirking about?”
“I’m not smirking. I am admiring my handiwork. You are all patched up now, but I have to warn you against strenuous activity for at least a few days to give the wound a chance to heal up a bit.” Q stood and gathered the soiled rags and gauze and went to the washroom to clean up and change, since he ended up with some blood on his clothes in spite of his best efforts to avoid it.
He fully expected to find Bond gone when he came back to the living room, or to find him fussing with the bandages just because he was told to leave them be. He did not, however, expect to find that the agent had fallen asleep on the couch, almost as Q had left him. While he was surprised, he still had his wits about him enough to grab one of the spare blankets and drape it over the sleeping agent. He jotted a quick note and pinned it to the blanket for Bond to find when he woke up. Just letting him know where the mugs were if he wanted to make himself tea whenever he woke up.
Q had a slight suspicion that Bond already knew where things (except towels, obviously) were kept in the flat, and started to wonder just how many times he had snuck into the Quartermaster’s home before. After all, the cats, who had been mostly keeping a respectable distance before, didn’t cuddle up to the side of just anyone like they were with 007 now.
Q smiled and turned off the lights in the room and in the hallway, making a note to call the security company in the morning to yell at them about their many failures in keeping people out of his space. He could come up with something much more effective. Perhaps he could line the windows with an electrical charge…