Old Dog, New Tricks
Second to last prompt I want and need to fill. And slowly and surely running out of time, but I'll do this. My prompt fill for "Secondary Villain/Henchman" and for @meadowcastiel prompt, to be revealed at the end. With the tiniest nod to @thestalwartheart gorgeous poem that didn't leave me alone while finihing this up, please go and read it, it's so so gorgeous!
on ao3
Bond has a sudden influx of ideas for gadgets to take out into the field. Henchmen suffer the consequences.
"007, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. Just wanted to see what R6D is working on these days."
That stopped Q dead in his tracks and pinched the bridge of his nose in a feeble hope that it would delay the headache that was bound to result from this conversation. "How often do I have to tell you that, unless you have a very good reason for it, there will not be an exploding pen for you."
Bond had the audacity to scoff, as if he hadn't asked for exactly that, and then continued his lazy stroll past the benches where currently, a few prototypes and blueprints were scattered. "I wouldn't dare come to you for something as trivial as that. Anymore."
"I'm not sure I like where this is going, but do go on."
"Well, I was thinking about how night goggles were actually rather handy, in general, but also very suspicious looking and bulky. And I know you've been tinkering around with your own glasses. Isn't there something to be done?"
Now, that piqued Q's interest, because: "There is, actually. As you've correctly stated, it can't be that only my glasses get tinkered with. There are a lot of things we're trying to do in that department, the easiest and most obvious one being cameras installed into the frame, or something as simple as a GPS tracker. Night vision has so far proven difficult because - Do you know how night goggles usually work?", he interrupted himself.
Bond shook his head, and Q motioned for him to step closer to his own bench, where he quickly opened a new browser window to pull up some graphics. "All right, so our problem currently lies in this."
_//\\_//\\_
Mission transcript for internal use.
H - Handler - Quartermaster
A - Agent - 007
Transcript written by Quartermaster for potential blackmailing purposes among the women of Q branch and Bond.
Transcript begins:
A: "Q?"
H: "Yes, 007?"
A: "Could you develop a repellent?"
H: "A repellent? Whatever for? I think you're quite capable of getting some nobite from a nearby drugstore or pharmacy."
A: "Not for mosquitoes. For all the women approaching me this evening who aren't my target."
H: "..."
A: "Q?"
H: "..."
A: "I take that as a no."
H: "I'll start a survey among the women who frequent Q-branch on which aftershave or perfume they think to be the most repelling. Otherwise, I will keep it to myself that you just asked me for a spray to repel women, but I will save this bit to bring out and show to R and Moneypenny should I feel the need to blackmail you, are we understood?"
_//\\_//\\_
It was the strangest thing, really, and unfortunately, horribly endearing in the way it reminded Q of his cats, at least distantly.
James was lounging on the sofa in his office, limbs akimbo, half asleep, a cooling pad still held to his face, and quite possibly loopy on pain meds.
Q thought it incredible that James appeared to be able to maintain that position without too much discomfort. His own joints probably wouldn't appreciate this kind of treatment, but that might be due to his own lack of exercise in recent years.
"Run that by me again?", he asked, mortified by the amount of affection that his voice held.
"S'mthing to call 'nimals. Useful ones. Like a swarm of bees."
"And how would calling a swarm of bees to your location be helpful?"
James shrugged to the best of his ability. "Don't know. Not to my location. the other guy."
"So let me get this straight, you want to call the bees so that they go after the bad guy."
The Double Oh agent made a sound that could, unfortunately, best be described as a giggle. That was that settled, at least. Certainly high on pain meds, and possibly not half as comfortable in this situation as the meds might make him believe.
"You said bad guy."
Q buried his face in his hands both in exasperation and to hide the redness he felt blooming in his cheeks.
Hopeless cases, the both of them.
_//\\_//\\_
"How small do you think you can make a taser?"
"About lipstick-sized. Of the larger variety, but about that size."
"So not the size of a ring."
"Not unless all you want to be able to stun is a blowfly. Or knock yourself on your arse because I'm not sure how the hell I'd isolate a metal ring properly."
_//\\_//\\_
"You want what?" James - Bond had caught him just on his way back to Q-branch from a meeting that surely could have been an email or three, at most.
"Come on, Q, you can't deny that it would be helpful."
"I mean, yes, except you'd ultimately always impede yourself as well. Plus, it would require you to get out of dodge in the blink of an eye."
James cocked an eyebrow in amusement. "Because that's never been known to happen."
He couldn't help the snort. "Careful with your knees at your age."
"You had nothing to complain about last-"
"Will you be quiet?", Q interjected snidely, but with a big grin on his face. Gosh, that surely had happened. And would happen again, and again. And a few more times after, for sure.
"Now, about my idea?", Bond teased, and Q sighed.
"Why do you always come to me with those things anyway? You very well know by now that R heads R&D, not me. I don't have time for those things anymore because I have meetings now that take a day and an age but could have been done in a fraction of the time, and she-"
James suddenly pulled him around a corner, pressed him up against a wall, and snogged him silly. It wasn't a good kiss, he was smiling way too much for that, but damn if it didn't make him feel good. He was so giddy with it it made him look stupid.
"You're very distracting," Bond murmured, lips only centimetres from his own. "Did I ever tell you that you're incredibly hot when you get worked up and commanding?"
Q bit his tongue not to giggle. "That explains so much, actually." He closed the gap between them and stole another kiss. "Where would you even stash them away?"
It visibly took James a few seconds to catch on to Q's drifting thoughts. "Depends on how small you can make them, but I was thinking about fastening them to the inside of my belt."
"Won't that be uncomfortable?"
James left featherlight kisses on the high point of his cheek, pushing his glasses up with his nose, the hinge of his jaw, corner of his lips, before he answered: "I've been through worse. Plus, I'm sure you'll come up with something."
Another kiss. He felt like a teenager again. It was embarrassing. It was glorious.
"I probably will. Don't think it'll be like that now just because you give decent head."
The indignant sound was almost as sweet as the kisses.
_//\\_//\\_
Mission monitoring was not going any worse than it had been before, and Q was a bit relieved about it.
No matter what he'd told James before, no matter what he'd told himself, deep down he had been worried that separating the mission from his personal feelings would in fact get more difficult now that he had something to lose that went beyond his feelings, but included a person almost sharing his flat and life and feeding his cats. But it was fine. Or at least not any worse than he was used to. Which was to say, it wasn't going great.
He was monitoring Bond, but couldn't communicate with him anymore, which at least was not Bond's fault. 007 was being led down a corridor, henchmen guarding him, Q and R watching him via the security cameras. Their journey ended in a windowless room, and Q and R exchanged a worried glance. They'd seen too many rooms of that variety in their time, though fortunately never from up close.
The henchmen kept their guns trained at Bond while he sat down on the singular chair in the room.
There was no audio, but his lips were moving.
The next thing they saw was the camera whitening out for a brief second, and when the feed returned to normal, black smoke filled the room and was already being filtered out. He could make out the feet of one of the guards, clearly sprawled on the floor, and the other one had probably suffered a similar fate, though Q was already going through the cameras to find Bond again.
"I can't believe it worked," mumbled Riley next to him, and only then did the reality of what had happened set in.
He groaned pitifully. "We will never hear the end of this."
_//\\_//\\_
They did never hear the end of this.
_//\\_//\\_
After this very first success, Riley was actually more open to working with Bond on several of her projects, and the litany of minions of various evil operations who'd fallen victim to increasingly ridiculous contraptions was growing by the week.
It also had the nice side effect that James was... Q didn't have any other words to describe it, but he felt that Bond was doing better. The time he spent in R&D shortened the time he spent on the bench, at least in his perception, and he wasn't as keen to go out in the field anymore between missions. As much as he'd like to think that it was in part his own doing, Q knew that James' work with R played just as big a role.
It was good, all in all. It was very good.
_//\\_//\\_
Q was standing at his desk in his office, double checking a mixup with an order of materials to find the error, when a heavy blanket of Double Oh draped itself over his back.
"What have you come up with this time? Or is it time to leave already?" It usually was one thing or another, these days.
"An EMP."
As much as he tried - not very hard at all, this bit of chasing tails had already robbed him of his last nerve - this one really caught his interest.
_//\\_//\\_
They never managed to figure out a way to make it work. It was fine, too.
_//\\_//\\_
When Q came home that day, exhausted beyond comprehension, James was already home, sitting in his favourite armchair, reading glasses on his nose while he was reading something on his tablet, the Admiral snuggled into his side.
"What do you think of freeze grenades?", he asked in lieu of a greeting.
"Freeze grenades?", Q asked incredulously, still getting out of his shoes. "What are they even supposed to do?" He wandered into the kitchen and scoured it for something left to eat. There was a sandwich sitting out, carefully protected from the cats, and Q picked up the plate with a grateful smile and joined James in the living room.
"Well, they're supposed to emit intense cold upon activation."
"To what end?"
"Depends. Freeze something over to make it brittle. Freeze water over to cross it, though I can imagine that might be difficult. Freeze burns are a bitch, too."
"As opposed to normal grenades, who don#t hurt much at all. What even are you reading there?" He leaned over to catcha glimpse at the screen, and James didn't try to hide it. Q tilted his head. "Is that a batman comic?"
James nodded. "I never read them when I was a kid, but I watched one of the movies on my way back from... I don't even know anymore. It was utterly ridiculous. I wanted to know more."
"Is that where you get all those ridiculous ideas from?"
"You say that as if they haven't worked."
Q's eyes widened in childish wonder. "You have. This is amazing. You're such a closet nerd." He leaned in and pressed an ill-aimed kiss to James' cheek.
James tried his best to appear annoyed at Q's antics, but there was the smile in his eyes that everybody else said was missing when they met him.
"So, what about batarangs?"
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