Work Text:
Glass
When James first meets him in the art gallery, he underestimates him. It’s easy. This new Q is delicate. He’s too skinny to be charitably called slender, and the museum lights flash off his thick-rimmed glasses. He looks entirely harmless, and far too easily breakable, wrapped in jackets and coats like so many layers of brown paper. His hands are soft and his skin, washed out in the artificial gallery lighting, is white as porcelain.
James learns quickly during the mess with Silva, however, that what lies inside Q’s fragile outer shell packs a hell of a punch. (Can you get past them? James asks. I invented them, Q retorts, and James smiles.) He doesn’t underestimate Q again.
Ice
James has been on more missions than he can count, supervised by any number of agents. But after M dies and Mallory takes her place, the silence in place of her dry, keep-buggering-on tones is deafening, and he starts to prefer the ones where Q is the only one supervising. The younger man’s cool, clear voice keeps him grounded even as it points out how spectacularly stupid James is being. James finds himself imagining the long-suffering expression on Q’s face as he ducks into an alcove to reload his newest palm-print Walther and smirks, just a bit.
(If his conquests have all been icy-eyed brunettes recently, it’s nobody’s business but his own.)
Gin
Q talks rather a lot, actually, and spends a great deal of the time he’s not using to design new and interesting weapons (but no exploding pens, still; couldn’t a man wish for a bit of nostalgia?) chatting with Eve. Needless to say, it’s hard for James to get in and out of MI6 without being pulled into a conversation with him. The quality and content of their encounters haven’t really improved since the first time, but James is coming to appreciate the dry, nearly astringent quality of Q’s sarcasm, and the slow burn of something in his chest when Q smirks and catches his eye after a particularly stinging quip.
Shaken
Q is strong, and ruthless, as everyone in MI6 is in their own way. James has watched him topple governments, destroy economies, and ruin lives with a few taps on a keyboard; it’s all in a day’s work. Q is not used to the personal side of killing, though, however much he’s trained with the guns he builds, and James follows the sound of gunshots down into the labs to find Q trembling behind his desk, blood oozing from a wound in his right arm. The erstwhile attacker bleeds out on the bleached brick floor in front of them as James carefully inspects the wound and binds it shut with a piece of Q’s ruined shirt, his hands determinedly steady.
Q is still part of MI6, however, and MI6 breeds them strong. James watches with a warm emotion he stubbornly labels pride as Q stubbornly pulls himself back into his chair, fires up the comm links one-handed, and (after a few deep breaths) calmly informs security that he has taken care of the intruder.
Olive
Sometimes (it happens more often than not), Q will be distracted by his own brilliance mid-presentation. James just leans back against the exposed brick pillar and watches him gesticulate wildly at his screens, his horrible, dull green, too-small cardigan pulling against his button-down as he paces. It rucks the shirt up the slightest bit out of his trousers as Q declaims grandly about interfaces and satellite uplinks and technically private servers. There is a small, finger-sized bruise on the bit of hip that pokes out between cardigan and slacks, and James finds himself wondering with an irrational twinge of irritation who put it there.
Intoxication
It has become a habit for James to hang around Q branch in his spare time. Today it is late, and he and Q are the only ones there; Q tinkering with his latest invention as James wanders around the room, touching things he oughtn’t and asking silly questions to annoy the other man. Finally Q throws down his tools and strides over to him; James finds himself backed into a corner literally and metaphorically as Q fixes him with the most terrifying glare he’s ever received. He is peremptorily informed that he is an arse, that his moodiness is scaring Q’s staff, and that if he wanted to fuck Q he really only had to ask.
“I never thought I’d have to tell you that you think too much, 007, but I suppose you never fail to surprise me,” Q sighs in frustration as James gapes, lost for words, mind reeling like he’s taken too many shots.
Then, in front of God and the security feeds, James grabs him by the paisley tie and pulls him forward into a kiss.