#this one is fairly mild in comparison 😬

[patrice-bergerons]

“you can’t save everyone” and “don’t make me do this” for the angsty prompts? ☺️

send me prompts!

this one veered right into very self-indulgent 00Q angst and h/c, for 'you can't save everyone.' Thank you for the prompt!

~*~

Q watches in abject disbelief as Bond’s signal slows down and then stops moving altogether on his screen.

“007, what the hell are you doing?” he all but hisses into the headset. 

To say that they don’t have time is a massive understatement:  Bond is bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound, the few operatives he hasn’t killed off are hot on his trail, and he needs to dispatch them and make it to the secure meet-up point before he loses consciousness.  Even for him, it’s a tall order.

A car door opens and shuts on the other end of the call, followed by footsteps and laboured breathing.  And yet, despite the pain that cuts through it, Bond’s voice is infuriatingly nonchalant when he speaks.

“I’m appreciating the sunset.”

Q almost lets out the most incredulous, high-pitched laugh, gripping the edge of his desk tighter in his despair.  He is appreciating the bloody sunset.

“Have you lost your mind?  Get back in the car, now.”

What lies ahead is an operation with a razor thin margin and near-impossible odds, and just because he cheated death half a dozen times before doesn't mean he will get away with it now.  His heart rate is already elevated, blood pressure inching down; Q’s own heart had been beating in his throat ever since he got shot.  God, the raw, muffled sound he’d made-

A soft thud follows a groan.  Q is going to yell tell me you did not just sit down when Bond beats him to it. 

“It’s beautiful,” Bond says breathlessly, a far away quality to his voice, and Q closes his eyes, this time gripping his desk for support. “Like something out of a painting.”

No.

M rolls into the conversation with all the grace of a WW2 era tank.  You have no idea, do you, Q thinks blood rushing in his ears and furious enough that he could punch the twat, as he says, with the the audacity to sound impatient and even a tad annoyed, “007, we hardly have the time to be prattling on about paintings-”

“Kick Mallory off the line.”

Q has never been happier to oblige.  

“Is he pissed off?”

Bond is so badly hurt that he has to pause after every other word so that the question becomes, is he- pissed- off-?

Q inhales and somehow finds his voice.  M is glaring at him with the appalled disbelief of a man who is not used to being denied what he wants, is saying “you are going to regret this.”  Q has no doubt.

“Very.”

Bond makes a noise that could be a laugh if not for how mangled it sounds—”good” he adds—and even now a smile tugs at Q’s lips for a split second, manic and wildly out of place. 

“Now please get back in the car.  There are hostile operatives headed your way.”

It can’t end like this.  He won’t let it.

But there is no shuffling on the other end of the line, no sounds of an injured, dogged man dragging himself to his feet.  Only a soft “it’s alright, Q”.

Q tries to summon the power to be upset with him, to cling onto his early outrage, the visions of himself in Muğla with Bond strangling him with his bare hands.

So you are giving up, is that it?  And I’m meant to do what—stand here and listen to you die?

“You are giving up,” he says quietly.

For a man who is always trying to retire, you are surprisingly bad at having any actual plans for your retirement, Q said, laughed, once, smiling at him over the rim of a pint glass, summer breeze playing in his hair.  He had just been ribbing Bond about the long term effects of his martinis on his liver.  Bond had shrugged, and even though no words left his mouth, they had still echoed through the still too warm night:  I will not die in bed.

“You can’t save everyone, you know that.  I had a good run.”

His voice is kind.  He wants to absolve Q as if absolution is what Q is after.  And this is the most at peace Q has heard Bond sound which makes him want to hurl his mug at the monitors mounted on the wall and scream, perhaps, for good measure until he has no voice left.  

“Is that what you think you are to me?” he replies.  Ordinarily, he goes to great pains to divorce his voice of any internal turmoil when he runs command; panic spreads like wildfire and affection can become the deadliest weapon of them all in the right hands.  None of that now.  His voice trembles.  He leans into it; lets tears cloud his vision.  If Bond is going down, if he wants to go down, he needs to know.  “Just anyone?”

Bond inhales sharply.

“Q–”

“Please.”

Hell, he isn’t even above begging.  

For a moment all he can hear is Bond’s laboured breathing, exhale after inhale after exhale, and he thinks that maybe all is lost after all, that maybe it is kinder to let him die here on his own terms rather than get mowed down on the road, to sit here and enjoy one last sunset together.  

Then he hears fabric shuffling and the sounds of Bond pulling himself to his feet.  Q exhales—a wet, giddy sound almost like laughter.  

Oh there will be no end to the insane favours Bond asks of him now.  Destroyed cars, schemes aplenty, paperwork probably ripped to shreds.  Q could not care less.  He will love it all. 

“I’ll make you an exploding pen for your next mission, how does that sound?” he asks as he hears the car door open and then shut closed, fingers already flying over the keyboard again to get Bond to safety.  

*

The first thing James becomes aware of is the clacking of a keyboard.  He smiles, even in the cold dark—there is only one person he knows who can type that fast.  When he through great difficulty cracks an eye open, there he finds him, perched on an uncomfortable looking chair, his face and curls washed in the blue-white glow.  It takes him a moment to find his voice and even then he sounds like a tortured dying beast.  Seems par for the course given how shit the rest of him feels.  And yet—he is alive.

“Thought you didn’t like flying.”

Q startles and James takes some small gleeful pride in being able to sneak up on him even now.  Laptop set aside, Q smiles at him warmly. Then he takes James' hand into his own and James thinks maybe it is worth it after all, all this pain.

“I certainly don’t do it for just anyone, 007.”