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dhampir72 · 2 years

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How about dream for 00q!

Thank you for the ask @mr-iskender! This is the only ask I received for this prompt list, so I was able to make it a little longer than expected. Written very quickly so please excuse any grammar/spelling errors! I hope you like it <3

The light peeking in from the high, slanted windows is early morning grey. There is tea on the corner of the desk, his usual Earl Grey with a touch of cream. It’s still hot. The steam curls at the rim, then whisps away. On the desk cluttered with miscellaneous equipment, files, and plans, his laptop sits open. There are applications running and news scrolling and emails accumulating in his inbox at an incredible rate, but everything is gibberish except for the phrase disaster on Westminster Bridge and explosion at SIS Building again and again and again. If he thinks about it, he can still taste the smoke, feel the heat of the flames, see the shape of James Bond as he turns away from him to walk towards her.

No, Q thinks.

He looks beyond the screen, beyond the tea, searching for a focal point that is far away from the news outlets that are already feral with their headlines before the morning news circuit even airs. He focuses his attention on the light, and how it washes out the harshness of the concrete floors, softens the bricks that make up the columns and ceiling. He is in the equipment lab that borders the mechanic bay. It’s too early for anyone else to be down here yet, which is why he’d come. He couldn’t bear to have the weight of the night staff’s gaze, after everything that had happened.

Q doesn’t think he could bear anyone looking at him ever again. If they do, and look at him softly, he might just fall apart. This is for two reasons: because he knows what happened, and he knows what will happen. The only thing he doesn’t know is when.

In the corner of his screen, the time changes. It’s just after five in the morning. He’ll have peace for another hour, maybe two, before the staff starts to come down. He can work quietly here, and forget, until that time comes.

Don’t look, he tells himself.

He’s alone. He doesn’t have to look. He can go back to work, get lost in something while the light shifts, his tea cools. He doesn’t have to fall apart.

But he looks.

Looks past all the other projects in their various stages, past the workbenches piled with parts and tools, past the hydraulic lifts supporting sandblasted chassis.

Looks at the Aston Martin.

It’s pristine, a summation of hours of dedicated labour and more than a little passion. Q had even had it restored to its original colour, that particular blue-grey that reminds him of the way the London sky can look in autumn, the shade of the Thames in winter. In the lab, though, under the morning light, it’s more grey than blue, and it looks like steel. It makes him, inevitably–they always had been, have been, inevitable, haven’t they?--think of Bond. The way he looked that night, and how he’d walked away without looking back, in the end.

That memory is an ache, but the certain future is a wound.

He knows it’s coming, can feel it pulling, like a current, like a tide. Q wishes he can stay here forever, hurt, but unchanging. The change will hurt the most, when it comes. And it will come.

Then he hears it: the sound of the cargo lift. It rattles as it descends.

Don’t look, he tells himself again.

But he can’t turn his eyes away, can’t go back to the comforting solace of his work and his tea. Not when the doors are opening, and Bond is there, stepping out of the lift and coming towards him. His eyes are so incredibly blue that Q is dizzy. He wishes he could look somewhere else.

Don’t say his name, he thinks. If you do, it will be the last time.

He feels the edges of the single syllable in his mouth. It feels like they will cut him, but he holds the name against his tongue all the same. Perhaps this is his last act of defiance, clinging to the taste of Bond’s name, one final time.

Bond stops in front of Q’s desk, like he’s done hundreds of times before, and like Q knows he will never do again.

Q hears his own voice.

“I thought you’d gone.”

No, he thinks to himself. You fool, you should have said, welcome back like you always do. If you did, maybe he would stay.

Bond puts his hands into his pockets.

“There’s just one more thing,” Bond says.

And then he does what Q has always known he will do. Instead of looking at him, he looks at the car. He feels the wound more than ever now, gaping, ragged, bleeding. It will ache when it closes. If it ever does.

Don’t say anything else, Q begs. You can leave and not look back, but don’t say anything else.

“I’m leaving,” he says, “with Madeline.”

Of course, Q thinks. You wouldn’t come back for me.

“I love her.”

I shouldn’t be surprised. To you, I was not someone to love, I was someone to use.

The keys to the Aston are suddenly in Q’s hand. He's not sure when they got there, when he reached for them, but here they are. They feel heavy. He knows that once Bond has them, he will never see him again. Q wants to run and hide, scream and yell, maybe even beg, just a little, for Bond to stay. But he can’t do anything except hold the keys out to Bond with what he hopes is a smile.

I love you. I love you, so I’ll set you free.

Bond takes the keys, and is gone.

Q jerks awake.

The room is dark, but the shape of things are familiar: the edge of the bedside table, the ridged outline of the radiator, the tatty chair in the corner draped with his worn-but-not-yet-dirty clothes. He’s in his bedroom at home. There’s a weight on his feet, one of the cats. He squints at the clock. It’s just a little after four in the morning. His cheeks are stiff with drying tears. The dream, as always, leaves him rattled, feeling fragile. He doesn’t think he’ll manage to go back to sleep, and shifts the sheets slightly to get up.

An arm moves round his waist and draws him back beneath the blankets. He feels grounded immediately at this touch, even though there are still tears on his cheeks.

“Alright?” a voice, rough with sleep, murmurs against his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Q says quietly, hoping he can soothe the man back to his own dreams, “go back to sleep.”

But the arm tightens, pulling him closer. It feels protective, like he is loved. Q feels fresh, hot tears threaten behind his eyes.

“Did you have that dream again?”

“No,” Q says.

“Liar.”

The tears fall. He does not wipe them away.

“I’m alright.”

“You’re crying.”

“I’m not.”

The arm moves, the body shifts, and then the bedside light is on. Q squints against the glare of it. He doesn’t want to be seen like this, fully, in the light, and buries his damp face into his pillow. A pair of warm lips presses against the wing of his shoulder.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t have that dream anymore?”

Q considers this for a moment. The dream has haunted him for almost two years now. Bond looking, but not looking at him, as he leaves. He can still see the tea, the light, Bond’s eyes. Feels the weight of the keys in his hand, the even heavier weight of the smile on his lips.

To love someone is to set them free, isn’t it?

“Q?"

The voice is so soft, supportive, wanting to understand, to help. Q reaches for the hand resting at his hip and pulls the arm round him again. The body comes close, envelopes him in warmth. The dream is fading, but an uncertainty remains. He wonders if it will ever go away.

“I was dreaming about that day in the lab…after Nine Eyes. That morning. It’s all so clear,” Q admits, and then, quietly, asks what his heart fears most: “Do you ever wonder…if you made the wrong choice?”

Behind him, James Bond does not hesitate.

“No.”

Q threads their fingers together and clutches Bond like he might disappear.

“But…you could have left. You could have run away with Dr. Swann, be living out your life quietly on some beautiful beach somewhere with her. And instead you’re–”

The words get caught in Q’s throat.

“What?” Bond asks, and then, softer now: “What am I, Q?”

“I don’t know…” Q breathes. “Stuck here? In this job, this life. With me.”

To Q’s surprise, Bond laughs.

“I’m not stuck,” Bond tells him, with such certainty that Q wants to believe it. “I want to be here. I like my job, and my life. And I like being here with you.”

Bond has told him this many times in the past two years, but this lingering doubt never leaves Q. It’s not like Bond to stay, not for long.

“You could change your mind,” Q says.

He knows that this is unfair. Things change. People can change their minds at any time. But with Bond, he’s selfish. Q wants to keep him forever.

“I could,” Bond agrees, “but I’m happy, and I don’t think that will change.”

The dream is fading, and some of the doubt, too, at Bond’s touch, his words. The dream has always been the manifestation of his worst fear: it isn’t necessarily that Bond will leave him for someone more beautiful and interesting; it is the fear that Bond will leave him having never loved him to begin with.

But maybe it means something that the dream is only a dream, because the day that Bond came to him in the lab was the day that Bond chose to stay.

“Are you happy?” Bond asks. "With me?"

He sounds a bit uncertain, now, which is more painful than anything else. Q turns in Bond’s arms, uncaring if his cheeks are red and hair a mess. He needs to look at Bond, hold onto him with both hands, when he tells him:

“Yes. I’m happy. So, so happy. And it scares me, sometimes…That it will go away.”

That you will go away.

Bond’s thumb brushes the tears from his cheeks, and then his lips follow in their wake.

“I know. I’m scared too, sometimes,” Bond admits, but then he looks at Q, and his eyes, even in the dark, are the most beautiful blue Q has ever seen: “But I hope you know: I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else more than I’ve wanted to be here, with you. I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay as long as you'll have me.”

Bond presses his lips to Q’s, and the tears come again, but they are happy ones. It’s just like that day nearly two years ago, when Bond had come to him and said there’s just one more thing and taken him into his arms and kissed him. The day that he had walked into Q’s life instead of out of it.

Maybe some part of him will always be afraid. Maybe he��ll continue to dream this dream for a long time. But as long as he wakes up, and these arms are around him, these lips are against his, Q thinks it will all be okay.

#00Q #prompt fill #thanks again for the ask this was a nice break from other projects #my fic #alternate ending to spectre because i hated it :)

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