#argh my hearttttt

[thestalwartheart]

I am so tempted to ramble about M and Bond and their complicated and often contradictory relationships with societal norms and how that forms the basis of my christmas headcanons here but to spare your inbox from an essay let me not do that lmao

Anyway, my hc is that M does not like Christmas. She doesn't come from a family where it was big and she just does not see the point. Her husband and his extended family do though, and it is something she does for his sake every year - where they agree she will only skip going to whoevers house they are staying at (maybe one of his siblings hosts a big get together?) if there is an international crisis.

Bond cottons onto this and creates a minor crisis one year and he even gets a rare if curt thank you from her afterwards and it's one he treasures forever.

I also want them to run into one another at mi6 one Xmas after her husband dies, these two people who never felt a part of the merriness and togetherness and whatever else the day is meant to stand for, and they just drink together at Ms office - not even talking much but content in the company - and naturally never mention it again. And just to add more angst maybe it's the last Christmas before Turkey, too.

I knew if you weighed into this you would have a headcanon that broke my heart, but you went above and beyond even my own expectations. I'm shattered! THANKS!

This???? This!!!!!!

Bond cottons onto this and creates a minor crisis one year and he even gets a rare if curt thank you from her afterwards and it's one he treasures forever.

If you're in the mood to write Bond fic again at any point, I would LOVE to see you write this. God, it's so them.

I think you're spot-on about all of this, btw. Both Bond and M. I can completely visualise Dench!M gritting her teeth and bearing her late husband's family Christmases. That is such a real and vivid headcanon.

Not to hijack your last point with 00Q, but in one of my FFF fics, I had Bond and Q sharing a drink in Q's office on Christmas Eve. Though it was from Q's POV, in the back of my head I was thinking about Bond doing similar with M before she died, and how he'd been planning to show up the next Christmas too, but they both ended up at Skyfall before it could come around. In that fic, before he wandered the corridors and saw his Quartermaster's light on, he'd passed by her office - now Mallory's - to see it locked and dark. I think he spared a rare, genuine, sad little smile at the memory of sitting with her in contented silence.

Apologies for the takeover, but your ask made my brain fizzy with possibilities, as your headcanons always do!

[howterrifying]

Wow I’d forgotten how utterly depressing series 4 of Sherlock was and I’m not even at the most painful episodes yet how did I endure this when it first came out oh right I didn’t manage to my heart broke and broke and broke and askjskdjejjdjdjd