Q sighed as he exited the car that had taken him to Cardiff. He looked at the driver and frowned. The hotel staff rushed forward to start to take his things out of the trunk of the car. Q eyed each of them as he slipped his laptop bag over his shoulder. The driver had not said a single word the entire trip, and Q wondered if that was because his brother had scared him when hiring him.

Shutting the door on the car, Q followed the hotel staff inside. He was pretty sure that he had been upgraded from his simple single occupancy room into a suite.

"Mister Queen, thank you for coming to St. David's Hotel for your vacation," the hotel concierge said as he came up to shake Q's hand. "My staff are here to cater to your every single need."

Q narrowed his eyes at the man, and he knew that there was something wrong with him. part of him needed to understand what was wrong with the concierge, the other part couldn't be bothered to know. Unlike his brother's, Q could ignore things that he didn't need to deal with.

"Thank you. I would just like to go to my room. If you can have my bags sent up."

"I'll escort you."

"No, thank you. I'll take my key and go." Q took the keycard from the concierge and started toward the lift. The room number was written on the card. Q scoffed because he was right and Mycroft had upgraded him to the deluxe master suite. Q ignored the steps, he was on vacation, and he didn't need to worry about getting what little exercise he could during the workday by taking the steps. The lift had horrible music, but Q was able to tune it out as they ascended. At the ones at MI5 that he used on a daily basis, when he actually used one, they had no music playing.. He ignored the attendant as well.

Q let himself into his room and took a moment to look around. There was the central part of the suite as well as a separate lounge, and the bedroom was off on its own with doors. Q liked that. He set his laptop bag down on the couch that he would use as his base of operations. He grabbed the menu in the small kitchen area and frowned as he saw no tea kettle. Probably something that got overlooked when Mycroft moved him from the room he had booked to the new one. Q grabbed the in-room phone and called the desk to have a kettle brought up for him. He would wait for his bags before he would really worry about there not being a kettle in the room.

It was five minutes before the knock came on the door. Q opened it and looked at the two valets. One was holding a water kettle and a basket of what looked like mugs and a tea strainer. Q smiled and let them in.

"Where would you like your bags?"

"Just inside the door. I am very particular about my things. Thank you for being prompt with the kettle."

"It was in your other room. The instructions had been crossed when you upgraded. We are sorry for the oversight on this."

"It's fine. I will be placing a lunch order soon. What time can lunch be ordered?"

"At any time. We have a full staff for all three meals twenty-four hours a day."

"Thank you."

Q pulled a tip from his pocket for each man before he shut and made sure that the door locked. He was glad to be alone. Q plugged in the kettle base after filling it up with filtered water her found in the fridge.. It didn't take long for it to start to make noise.

The bag with his tech was on top like it had been in the truck. Q had stitched the word breakable on the bag years ago. Q picked it up and set it down near the couch where his laptop was. Q had everything unpacked from the bag before the kettle went off signaling the water was ready for his tea. Q smiled at the cup that was inside of the box that had been given to him. He found his bags of tea in the small bag of perishables that he had brought for snacks and things.

Tea in hand, Q sat down on the couch and started to set-up the system that he was going to need for the work that he had planned. A month-long vacation before starting his new job wasn't anything to sneeze at, but Q had a lot of work that he needed to do before he was going to be ready to slip into his new job.

The Quartermaster of MI6 had picked Q out from a list of people available from the joint umbrella of workers that worked for Her Majesty. Of course, the name that Q had been hired under was not his real name, and when a more in-depth background had been done on him by MI6, a few things had popped. Olivia Mansfield herself had visited him in his office at MI5 to try and figure out what was wrong with him.

Q had met the woman once before when Mycroft had first started working for the British Government. Q had stood up for himself at school, and the school bully hadn't liked it and subsequently broke Q's arm. He had been nine years old, and the bully had been twelve. The end result had been that Q had been moved to a different school and the bully had been removed from the school altogether.

In the end, Q was happy because Mycroft had started to help their parents with the money for the new school. Q could go to a school that had actually helped him become what he wanted. He also had been allowed to skip grades there and start university early. For Q that was a double-edged blade because it had got him what he wanted and it had upset Mycroft.

Mansfield, M as she was known around MI6, did not recognise Q at all. Q had sat and listened to her tell him about the job she wanted to offer him, the position that she wanted him to have but that M couldn't because there were too many red flags and that she was going to have to relay those red flags to MI5.

"There are red flags, but as the Home Office bypassed all of them and allowed MI5 to hire me, it should be enough for MI6."

"We don't do well enough in MI6. Well enough is for all other branches of the government and not MI6."

"August Richards, Augie to those who must, does not exist, Mrs Mansfield." Q had felt very pleased with the look on her face. He could also tell that she knew him from somewhere. "You have met me before. When I was nine, and I went to work with my brother for a day. You had commented that my observations of the boobs you answered to were right on."

"You are Quintavius Holmes?" Mansfield had asked.

"Yes, Ma'am. The Home Office, especially my brother, knows who I am. I was hired for my abilities and not my name. If you insist on me becoming a Holmes to join MI6 that is fine but I have gone by the name of Q since childhood. Mycroft and Sherlock use their names, but I hate mine so,,."

"August Richards was never supposed to pass a deep background check was he?" M looked proud.

"No, Ma'am. I can build an airtight one that no one would be able to figure out was fake."

"How will Mycroft take you leaving?"

"I have never allowed him to have an opinion on my job or life after I went to university. He cannot have an opinion. While MI5 is a good place for me, I want to be the second in command of your TSS. I have a list of things that I will want to do as soon as I am put into that position."

"My current staff member that is leaving is not leaving for a month and a half. He will not tolerate teaching someone else to take his position and is rather upset that I am even looking for someone until he is gone." M looked very upset at that.

"I have made Mycroft aware that I would take a position in MI6 if I were offered it and did so years ago so he would be prepared for this.."

"He won't be upset at me?"

"Oh, no. He will be unreasonably upset with you. He will be annoyed with me for actually accepting the position. Even though I have told him many times that I have wanted to be Quartermaster of MI6 since I was a child."

"Well, the job of Quartermaster will be yours if you keep your chin up."

"This chin is always up, M."

Q laughed to himself over the memory and took a sip of his tea as he wandered back to the couch. Q was not sure that Mycroft had been told about him leaving MI5. The position that Q held within TSS inside of MI5 was not exactly a position that the Home Office would be worried about filing. Word would get back to Mycroft at some point that August Richards had left MI5 and whenever that happened, Q expected to be under siege from him.

Along with a two week period to finish up or hand off what he working on for MI5, Q had been given access to the MI6 mainframe before leaving MI5. Q was going to work on upgrading the entire thing while on vacation. He thought better and worked better on stuff like that when he didn't have an audience, and it would get him a jump on it. M was surprisingly okay with everything that Q wanted to do. Before what he considered his job interview had been over, Q had told her that he was going to take the mainframe that MI6 worked on and destroy the entire thing and rebuild it from the ground up.

"This is going to be fun," Q said with a grin on his face as he started up his laptop. Once it was fully booted up and he had his internal security up and running as well as his Wi-Fi, Q plugged in the external hard drive that he had built just for housing the network that he was going to develop for MI6. Q grabbed his phone and set the alarm on it for four hours from then. He would have to get more tea and a snack of some kind.

The call to room service took little time at all and Q had a sandwich as well as veg on their way up to him. He would be able to stop and answer the door as he got the base of the network frame up and ready. Fixing a mistake made on it this early would be easy. Later, it would be harder.

Q lost himself in the work until he heard his cell phone go off. He knew that it was Mycroft because he had a distinctive ringtone set for him texting, just like he had one for when Sherlock texted and another when it was a group text between them. They texted more than talked and it had been three years since the three of them had met and spoke to each other at the same time. Sherlock had not been to Christmas in a while, but Q went every year. His parents asked him about what they could understand of what he did, and Q told them as always as the moment that he had a significant other, Mycroft would surely tell them.

The text just held that Mycroft was upset that Q had left MI5 and didn't tell Mycroft himself. Q ignored it because it would piss off Mycroft. He would deal with his brother when he went out for breakfast the next day. The hotel already had instructions not to forward calls and to just take messages.

Lunch arrived with little fanfare, and Q took the dishes off of the cart and told the busboy that he would call for someone to come and get them later that he didn't want the cart in his way. He knew that the busboy looked at all of his things, but he would take care of anyone coming in for a peek at his things before he left for the first time or he went to be, whichever happened first. Q had a kit to make sure that no one entered his suite without him knowing. He worked in the Government, he knew what kind of shit went on abroad even if Cardiff wasn't precisely abroad.

The sandwich was impeccable. The new restaurant inside of the St. David Hotel was the reason that Q had even come there. He had heard nothing but wonderful things about it. Q liked food, and he wanted to enjoy his food while he was working. Staying at a nice hotel was the best options for vacation, and he was running out of ones to stay at in London.

Q was looking forward to the month off from MI5 and a month spent doing the kinds of things that he wanted. He knew that he would need to head out and get some pictures of local things to show Mummy and Daddy that he had left his hotel room. Just like they didn't get Sherlock, they didn't get Q and his love of technology. He didn't like not doing the things that he did. He lived for hacking and creating things technologically. He loved coding and creating things from letters and numbers. No one understood that this was what he did to relax.

It was hours later before Q realised that it was dark and that he hadn't gone out for dinner. So Q set up the cameras needed to watch his room as well as the secure link to his tablet if anyone accessed the door. He hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and went down for some dinner in the restaurant proper. Q was looking forward to the wonderful food.

Two Weeks Later

Q had enjoyed his dinner in The Admiral, the restaurant in his hotel. The food had been exceptional and the wine choices perfect for each course. He didn't want the night to be over though. He tried to stay down and watch the people. Other than time to do what he wanted as far as computers went without someone telling him that he was going to burn out, Q liked to people watch. He blamed his older brothers for that. It was easy to do it when he was eating dinner. He was alone at the table then, but there was only so long that he could stay and drink wine after his dessert was gone and watch the people without someone getting suspicious.

There was a lot of staff that was suspicious, as Q had found out. Every day when breakfast and lunch were served to him, whoever was doing the delivery tried to get a peek at what was on Q's computers. Q hadn't delved far into the recesses of the data server that served the hotel, but he was sure that he would at some point finish what he was doing and then would do it for the sake of not being bored. There really wasn't a single system that could withstand him for long. It was why Mycroft wanted him under his control. Mycroft had been worried when he had been in university that Q would get up to trouble without him there to watch over, but Q had just never been caught.

Once a year, Q hacked each of the agencies that made up the Home Office and the military. Mycroft was given the fruits of that, but the problem was that not all of the organisations had someone who could actually make it hard for Q to hack into. As a result, Q would try and find someone to replace whoever was currently working there. The problem was that one of the ones that Q would have loved to have stuck into his position in MI5 was never going to leave her current job. Ann was wholly devoted to Mycroft and had been since she had met him when Q had brought her as a fake date to a function that Mycroft had all but forced Q to go to when he was nineteen years old. She had graduated first in class but that was because Q had not wanted to put himself forward enough to be chosen for first or second, he wasn't interested in the prestige.

The laughter of a woman drew Q's gaze to the corner of the bar where a man and woman were close and talking. Q remembered seeing the woman enter the bar but not the man who had Q's interest piqued. He grabbed his wine glass and laid down a cash tip for his waiter. The bill was going to be charged to his account, actually, probably Mycroft's but Q didn't care. He had more than enough in his accounts, but Mycroft had a want to take care of Q whenever he went on a vacation. He was sure that Mycroft knew that Q planned on being in Cardiff for an entire month, so he was glad to let Mycroft shoulder that bill. That would allow Q to buy the new components for his home system.

Q settled at the bar where he could see the man and woman perfectly because out of everyone in the restaurant, they were the most intriguing. Q had seen the woman before but never paid her much attention as she was one of the worker's. However, that night she was dressed to impress with a dress that left little to the imagination. She was beautiful to look at, but nothing awe-inspiring to Q as her eyes were dull. She didn't have much in the way of original thoughts, and it showed. The man though he was very intriguing.

Three minutes and seven seconds after settling in at the bar, Q realised what intrigued him so. The man was an agent. Q couldn't hear the man to be able to tell who he served but the way that he moved and the careful way he spoke told him volumes about the man. The way that his eyes swept the room every thirty to fifty-five seconds told Q he was cautious and a tad paranoid. It was fun watching the agent. Q would try and figure out which country sent an agent to a five-star hotel in Cardiff and what for. He doubted that the agent was there for a holiday. Q signalled the bartender for a refill on his wine.

Q knew his limits well on how much he could drink before he was too drunk to do anything and he wasn't even at half of his limit on wine. He wanted to keep his wits about him for when he got back to his room, but he did want to enjoy himself. So he started to profile the agent. Sherlock called it deducing, his obsession with detectives of old making him choose the more ostentatious word but Q was quite happy using a more up to date name of profiling. Q had attended a lecture that was given by an agent of the American FBI on the subject by hacking the registry and making himself a student for a day. Q had been enraptured and had even tried to bed the man, but he was married and steadfast in his monogamy. Q had left disappointed that he hadn't enticed the man but high on the knowledge that he had gained. Q had downloaded everything on the FBI's profiling unit, past and present to learn more.

The agent was well versed in hiding, Q decided after another ten minutes of watching him. Q would need to get closer to try and learn much else. He spotted a woman that was staring at him that was closer to where the agent and his lady were sitting. Q sat down beside the lady who was staring at him, and he smiled at her before leaning to start some small talk.

"Hello," Q said turning on his most charming smile. The lady smiled back and greeted him as well. "May I get you a drink?"

"Please," the lady responded.

"Please, another drink for the lady," Q said when the bartender came to him after he raised his hand to get the man's attention. The bartender also refilled Q's glass as well.

"So what's your name?"

"You can call me Augie," Q said because he was at least used to that name and it didn't fit with the name that Q had used to check in. He had plenty of names and the IDs to go with them. Some totally unable to be figured out that it was a fake name. Mycroft had a list of them stored on his computer and Q updated it when he felt it necessary. Mycroft had no way of accessing them, but when Q left England with one, which was rare, Mycroft was alerted. It was a failsafe just to be safe. The enemies of the Holmes brothers were many, and there was never a thing as being too careful. "What's your name?"

"Soiron."

"Such a lovely name. Are you here for business or pleasure?" Q asked, lying because he knew that she was there for pleasure as her business was what she did throughout the day. Q kept an eye on his agent in the mirror behind the bar. He watched as the agent used it as well as his own eyes to look around him. His back was to the wall, but the bar was far enough back from the wall to make it a right spot for the agent to be in.

"Pleasure, mine and yours if you want."

"Hmm," Q said as he sipped his wine. He grinned as he stood up and move to the seat on the other side of the woman. That caught the eye of the agent, and the man watched Q as he settled down into the seat, moving as close to the woman as he dared. She started to breathe deeper, and Q knew that she was getting aroused. Q also knew the best way to make sure that she left him alone the rest of the night while not arousing the suspicion of the agent near him. "I do like pleasure. I wonder what kind of pleasure you want."

Q laid his hand on her thigh, squeezing just a little too tight. Soiron closed her legs, sliding one over the other and displacing Q's hand. Q grinned to himself as he took a drink of his wine. Soiron drank her second glass down before she stood up and moved over to another man at the side of the bar that Q had been sitting at. Q played hurt, dropping his head down and grabbing his wine glass by the stem to rotate it back and forth. Q drained his wine and held out the glass, not even looking at the bartender as he came over to take the two empty glasses of Soiron's and to fill Q's.

Watching the agent out of the corner of his eye, Q could just make out the words that he spoke. A British accent that had a layer of something else underneath it that said that it wasn't a native accent, but Q could not hear enough to understand it well enough to piece out what the native accent was. Q memorised the man's face to search for him to see if he had been on British soil before and had caused a problem previously.

After another ten minutes, Q watched as the man paid his and his companion's bill with cash and they left, tangled together. Q watched them make their way to the lifts and smiled as he watched them get on and head up. Q hadn't planned on eating in the restaurant that next day, but now he did. He wanted to see if the agent was there again or if he had already moved on.

Q finished off another two glasses of wine before he went to his room to boot up his computer and trying to find the agent.

Just after two a.m., Q made the decision to get some sleep because no matter how much he searched, there was no image of the man on the Internet or in any of the databases that he had legitimate access to or illegal access to. MI6 kept the photos of their Double-O's on paper locked in the office of M. Q wasn't aware of what the other agencies did, except for the CIA. Q had very illegal but total access to their systems. Britain and the US might be allies but they had their secrets from each other and Q made sure that those secrets were not going to hurt Britain.

The Next Day

The next day dawned way too early, and Q had a lot to do before he left for dinner that night so instead of making tea, Q ordered a carafe of coffee with his breakfast and would drink it through the morning. He had a late appointment to talk to M just after lunch, and he did not want to be late. It was a teleconference so Q would only have to be dressed business casual, instead of a suit and tie.. He was on vacation and M was the one that wanted to talk to him not the other way around. She could live with whatever Q felt like wearing but he would at least wear a tie for her.

Morning and early afternoon passed quickly. Q switched from his laptop to his tablet and made sure that his computer was ready to link to M's office. He had told her that he would contact her on time and she needed to not worry at all about connecting to him first. Q prepared his tea and a backup cup because he had no clue how long the meeting was going to take. He set the first out of sight of the computer and the second just on the edge of the laptop so that he could grab it when needed. Q connected to M's computer five minutes before it was time for him to do so but he made sure that she didn't know that he had. She was writing something out while talking to someone just off of the screen.

"I want everything found out about the terrorist organisation that 007 is chasing and I wanted it yesterday."

"Yes, Ma'am," the man that Q couldn't see said.

"Why was this not given to 007 before he left?"

"Q-Branch did not find the link to the man that 007 is chasing until it was too late. 007 has already cut off all contact with Q-Branch, and we are mainly waiting to see the aftermath of whatever he does to chase the organisation."

"I want to know everything that Q-Branch does and I want to know if before they do it. No matter how small."

"Yes, Ma'am. Your next meeting starts in two minutes. I'll leave you to deal with that."

"Yes, yes, Thank you." M waved the man away, and she started to write faster on the page. Q opened up the small camera on the computer so that M could see him, and it popped up an image of Q himself on his lower right screen. He was dressed better than he thought he was going to. He had dressed while distracted.

Q waited until it was ten seconds after the meeting was supposed to start before he cleared his throat. M jumped and looked around before he looked at the computer.

"You are more like your brother than you would like to admit, Q. The Home Office has gone over the plans that you sent me, and there is a little issue with our downtime. They do not like the day of downtime that will be needed to secure our facility."

"Then we can continue to haemorrhage information. I have been inside of the MI6 computer systems on more than one occasion and have never been caught. Your computers are five years older than they should be. The current operating systems are too easy to hack, they are a major security breach waiting to happen.. You wanted to wait to load the new systems onto new computers instead of possibly blowing out the current operating system and losing half of the systems before we can replace them. If you would like that day to be the day that I get back from vacation, I will gladly go to the Home Office and describe what would be the result of that. My plan is the best considering that MI6 has not had a proper hacker in its employ when others have had them for years."

"I might just take you up on that. How many at Home Office know who you are?"

"By sight? Few. By August Richards, none. You still have not told me you want me to come work for you."

M glared at him shrewdly, but Q ignored her as he reached to grab his cup of tea. He lifted it up and took a long sip as he watched her. M took a deep breath and the skin between her brows wrinkled. She was worried about something. He wondered if it was this 007 that was cut off from MI6, by choice, but still cut off. M was also not blinking a lot. During his job interview, Q had noted that she didn't blink a lot anyway, but this was insane. Q debated hacking into MI6 to look at the mission that 007 was on but chose not to. That might show someone that he was there and then Q-Branch would be focused on him instead of missions.

"Then if you don't mind, your first day, meet me at Home Office. I will have all of your documentation with me, and Tanner will be with me as well. I want to watch their faces as you hand them their asses."

"I'm sure that my brother will be there. What name will be on my documentation?"

"Having a Holmes inside MI6 would be quite a coup for me, and it's not like you are not already a target. You are being brought into Q-Branch with them knowing you're being groomed for Quartermaster. When Major Boothroyd is ready to retire, and you have finished what you need to, the position will pass to you. The position of Quartermaster is already a very targeted position, and it will be no easier to protect you as August Richards than it would as Q Holmes. The only thing that your real name would give you is the ability to make sure that there are some who would not go after you for fear of your brothers. I heard what happened to the bully who broke your arm when he turned eighteen and was released from juvenile detention. No one was ever able to figure out who had attacked him."

"Yes, well I don't know which one paid to have him attacked either. Mycroft just pats me on the head, and Sherlock tries to distract me with tea. It works well when I am thirsty and don't want to make my own."

M snorted, and she looked unapologetic about it.

"A man after my own heart. I'll make the arrangements for a car to pick you up at the airport."

"I'm in Cardiff, M. Mycroft has already chartered a car to take me to and from. I'll just change my destination and then have the driver drop my things at my flat."

"You trust the driver that much?"

"It's Mycroft's personal driver and last time he had me picked up, he sent his second with the driver to keep me entertained on the way home. If he does it again, I'll gladly let her take my things into my place."

"I've tried for years to talk her out of staying with him. I have tried to tempt her with a lot of things, but nothing ever takes."

"She's loyal to him because he is loyal to her. You are never going to get her from him."

"Or her real name from anyone it seems." M gave him a look that said that she was well aware that he was one of the ones hiding her from the world. She asked for new identities but helped build the majority of it on her own. Q just did the deep background. He never knew what she created and was only told when she needed more.

"I will take that to the grave or a prison cell if anyone tries to torture it out of me."

"Well noted, Q. I'll send you the information on who currently sits on the chair for us from Home Office."

"Pfft," Q said as he typed in a sequence on his tablet. It made a feed scroll across his screen before a list popped up that both he and M could see. M frowned but laughed when she read it. "I have access to that at all times. However, Nigel will be gone within the week. Mycroft found out that he has been dipping into monies set aside for quick funds to keep himself entertained in young, nubile men who fuck for a living."

"My word. How did he find that out?"

"I told him when the man tried to talk me into being his bedmate for a week. I was out with friends before my trip, and I knew him right off. He went off with another young man who didn't mind fucking at night to pay the rent, and I hacked the club to see what card he used, and I traced the money in the account back. I, of course, told my brother."

"Serves him right. My God, it's one thing to actually fuck men a fourth of one's age but to use Government funds to do it."

"I was half tempted to go with him and send my brother the pictures, but in the end, I didn't want him to touch me with my clothes on much less let him touch my naked skin."

"I guess that answers my question."

"To answer it all the way, I've never touched a woman with actual sex in mind and I never will. I am not, however, an asexual as much as Mycroft would love to make me out to be."

"I'll mark that on your paperwork and make sure that Tanner is aware for parties that we must attend. Some are friendly to non-hetero, and some are not. There is an up and coming agent that I think you would get along with well that if needs must can become your plus one."

"I've seen you with Tanner at several. I would be glad to take your agent to any of the parties. I don't date."

"I'll make a note of that. The current Quartermaster never goes to them. He's been in his position long enough that no one questions it anymore, but once it's known that he has chosen a replacement, you will be expected to show your face. Especially once the stodgy codgers learn that you are Mycroft's hidden younger brother."

"I am well aware of the indignities I'll face. I've kept my eye on things since I made my decision to become the Quartermaster for MI6 when I was a child."

"I bet your parents were happy about that."

"I never shared that with them. They are loving parents but a little too wrapped up in their own affairs to really pay that close of attention. Hence why Sherlock is like he is. I know that he has raised the attention of MI5 and 6 many times." Q looked at the time as he swapped tea mugs, cringing a little at the coldness of his second cup but adjusting quickly. He was used to room temperature tea as he almost always forgot about it while coding. "Your next meeting is in three minutes. I'll leave you and will see you when I make it to Home Office in two weeks."

"Have a good vacation, Q. I'll contact you if I need you again."

Q closed the connection and frowned. He, like Sherlock, hated politics, but he knew that what he wanted out of life was going to be a political posting. M would handle most, but Q would be needed to perform when called upon. He had made himself aware of every single aspect of a Quartermaster from the time of the first World War all the way to current. Q could handle all aspects of being the Quartermaster, even if he didn't like the building things as much as he did the coding. However, there were places where the two met, and there Q was in heaven. Q already had a few ideas that he wanted to put into place after he had the servers up to where he wanted them.

The chime on his phone told Q that he needed to get changed for dinner so that he could just leave instead of having to stop. Q drained his tea and walked to the kitchen area to start more water to boil as well as prepare his tea to be made. He moved to the bedroom and picked out a suit to wear. The day before he had been in very casual clothes, but today he wanted to dress to impress to see if the agent's head turned toward him at all. If so, Q could see the man being there on vacation and just be trying to pull as many conquests as he could. If not, Q would have to do more to figure out if the man was on vacation or not. The man just might be heterosexual and on vacation. The Double-O's that MI6 employed were mostly bisexual, but a few were just far enough away from zero to be able to fuck who was needed for Queen and Country. Q would not be able to have relations with a woman. The thought of tits or a vagina made his dick want to crawl inside and never come out again.

A brash but straightforward coloured suit was donned, and Q settled in at the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the suite. His laptop was moved there as well. Q settled in with his tea beside him and his legs crossed. He had a timer set so that he would make it down in time to get a seat just about when the agent was going to be showing up. Q had already reserved the table. The dining area of the restaurant was an agent's worst nightmare as there were not a lot of places that one could put his back to a wall. Q knew this, and so he made sure that he was close enough to hear but far enough away to hopefully not pique the interest of the agent.

Before leaving after his computer dinged, Q checked his hair in the mirror and found that for once after styling it, he had not run his fingers through it. It was slicked back and wholly tamed for once.

The attendant in the lift couldn't take his eyes off of Q, but Q ignored him. He wasn't dressed like this to impress because he wanted to be, he was dressed to blend in. There was a bit of theatre being done in a hall close to the hotel, and he had seen that it had been booked well in advance for many of the tables that were available to those off of the street.

Q found the restaurant filled with people that were heading to the play and therefore were in formal dress. Q fit in nicely. He looked around as he was escorted to his table and saw that the agent was back in his corner, of sorts, and was settled in to find someone else for the night or was waiting for his date from the night before to join him.

"Bartender, another martini please," the agent said as Q was seated at his table. Q could still not place the hidden accent under the British accent that the agent had. Q looked at the list of food for the evening and figured out what he wanted right down to his dessert as well as taking the house suggestion on wine for each course.

The appetiser was brought out quickly, a small sampling of all of the ones offered that night. Q enjoyed each one immensely and was glad that he ordered it instead of picking just one. The wine paired well for all four of the tiny appetisers and Q had to think that the sommelier that was on staff was exceptional.

A woman, different than the night before, joined the agent after half an hour. She was lured over from the table where she had been seated alone. Q almost wished that he could have seen the looks that the agent was giving the woman to get her to cross the entirety of the room to sit with the agent at the bar.

Q listened as the agent seduced her with whispered words and touches that Q could see when he turned his head to look. It was interesting to see the man seduce her so well and so easy. Q had to wonder if he was that good or if she was that desperate. The seduction lasted for the entirety of Q's meal which worked perfectly as Q could actually attempt to follow him and his conquest up to his room. Q left a tip after draining his final glass of wine. Two lifts were in the front of the building, but Q didn't go into the other. He watched the floor indicator until he was sure that they were heading up several floors so he had time for not taking the elevator and he raced to the steps. No one paid him any attention, as he ran up the stairs to the third floor before peeking out. It seemed the couple was going to the next to last floor. Q ran back to the stairs and made his way up. Leaning out that door, Q watched the woman open the door of the room and sighed because it seemed that they were going to her room. Still, that would help Q. He could look into both women and see what they had in common, and if they didn't, Q could see if the man was a Casanova or an excellent agent.

The Next Day

Q settled into the lift and realised that there was no attendant. Q reached forward to press the button for the floor that he needed but stopped when he saw the blonde agent heading toward him. He pushed the door open button.

"Thank you," the agent said with a lovely smile on his face. It made him look like a very deadly kitten to Q. Q couldn't not see the danger across every single line of the man's body. The agent was in another bespoke suit. Grey pants with a navy blue jacket and a very light blue shirt with a royal blue tie. It all made the agent's eyes pop. Q was dressed down as he had been out at a bistro with a hacker friend from university who happened to be in the area for his job. He had been Q's go to for sex in university, but had unfortunately settled down into a monogamous relationship, and therefore was not Q's sex hookup on his vacation like he had assumed that he would be. So now Q was frustrated.

The agent looked Q up and down and gave Q a smile. Q wasn't sure if he wanted to believe what that smile was promising or not. Q had met a few Double-O's over the years of working for MI5. If they were the ruler to measure all secret agents, the man flirted as easy as he breathed. The agent pushed the button for the top floor before he turned to Q.

"Floor?"

"Same as you," Q said, adopting his native accent. He had got used to using a fake, lower class one at MI5 but was wanting to get back to his original one for MI6 since he was coming in as Quintavius Holmes. Q shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. He had his laptop and tablet in it from where he and his friend had spent a few hours messing around.

Q felt the agent's eyes on him the entire time that the lift ascended up the chute. Q gave the agent a smile when the man didn't look away from him.

"Would you-" the agent stopped when the lift shuddered to a stop halfway between the third and the fourth floor. The agent leaned over and pressed the door open button. There was no power to it though. "That's troubling."

"The lights are still on, why is the console dead?" Q wondered aloud. He could think of a lot of reasons why the console would be turned off, but everything else was still active.

"Probably some type of computer issue." The agent adjusted his suit jacket a little, and Q realised that he was armed at the moment. Q wondered if the man was coming back from a kill or heading out to it. The agent reached out and picked up the phone, lifting it up to his ear. He frowned. "Well the phone is dead as well so it's probably going to be awhile before they figure out that someone is in the lift."

The agent settled down on the floor and patted the space next to him. Q held in the glare that he wanted to give the agent, but he sat down beside him, settling his bag into his lap and wrapping his arms around it. Q pushed his glasses up his nose before he looked out of the side of his eye at the agent.

"August Richards," Q said holding his hand out. The agent gave Q a heart-stopping smile and returned the handshake. He did not, however, let go of Q's hand.

"That's actually quite funny. My name is Richard Sterling. So Augie, what are you doing in Cardiff during such lovely weather?"

"Holiday," Q said. He looked down at his hand, but the agent didn't get the message as he flipped Q's hand over and was looking at it. Q didn't jerk it away even though he could do that.

"I'm here for work, but I find myself with a few days free for pleasure."

Q kept himself from saying obviously so that he didn't arouse suspicion. The agent was tracing the callouses on Q's hand. It wouldn't be hard for the man to figure out what he did with the callouses that he had but hopefully, the ones from his trips to the gun range would be added to the computer ones and filed away as not dangerous.

"So have you been enjoying your pleasure so far?"

"I've been enjoying relaxing and unwinding, haven't had much of a chance for pleasure yet." Q gave the agent a shy smile. If he kept talking, Q could knock a few more countries off of his list of where the agent was from. He could not tell yet, but the man was either from the United States, France, Canada, or possibly Scotland. He had no clue why Canada would have an agent in Cardiff of all places, but France or the United States made sense. If the agent was from Scotland, he could very well work for MI5, or he could be MI6, and his mission brought him back to home soil. Any of those possibilities were ones that Q didn't need to be too worried about unless the agent was formerly of one of those countries secret agent categories and was rogue. A good look at the man's gun and he should be able to tell but to get that weapon would take a lot of work.

"Really? And what do you do for pleasure?" The agent lifted Q's hand up a little farther and extricated the backpack from Q's lap, handling like it was precious and setting it down just as quickly on the other side of him.

"I do a lot of things for pleasure, but the plans that I had for pleasure for this trip fell through two and a half hours ago."

"That's a shame. I bet you look beautiful when you are in the throws of your pleasure," the agent said.

Q gave him a look that asked him if the agent really thought that a line like that would work. The agent smirked and raised an eyebrow. Q tugged on his hand, finally getting it back. The agent leaned back against the wall and let Q reach over him to his backpack. Q opened the front very padded pocket and pulled out his tablet. There were only a few things that would cause the lift to have an issue like this, and none of them was good for the agent. Q woke the tablet from sleep and connected to his laptop.

"Bored already?"

"No, just checking something really quickly." Q accessed the feed for the cameras and found that no one was at their lift yet, but there was a small group of people massing on the top floor at the opening of the lift. Q hacked the feed and kept it up in the corner of the tablet screen before he hacked the subroutine of the lift. It had been overloaded in the security office and was waiting to be told to start to move again. "If I ask you a very blunt question, will you answer me?"

"I guess it depends on the question."

"I am not asking who you work for but why are you in this hotel?"

The agent reared back and stared at Q.

"I made you as an agent the first night that I saw you in the restaurant.

"I was on a mission when it went sideways, so I tracked the money here. Only to find that the top staff of this hotel are all terrorists."

"Hmm." Q hacked the main computer system and started a download of all of the information to his laptop. The idiots had no firewalls to speak of besides what the hotel had itself. They were hiding in plain sight. Q scoffed. He could alert MI5 what was going on, or he could just let the agent do what he wanted and help MI5 and possibly 6 deal with the aftermath. Q found the information on the two women that the agent had left with the previous two nights and found that they were pretty high up in the hierarchy of the organisation. If it was as big as the files Q was looking at said they were, it was going to take a lot of work on the parts of MI5 and 6 to get it cleaned up. "Can I see your gun? Feel free to pop the magazine if you want. Just be quick."

The agent looked at him but hand over the gun, with magazine still in, and a round chambered. Q clicked the safety on and looked at the gun. MI6. That made Q's life a whole lot better, but he was not going to reveal who he was until such a time that it was needed. If at all. Q wondered if this was 007. He wasn't going to ask because that would make the man not trust him. Even if he revealed that he was MI5, formerly.

"So I figured that if they come in to get you, they are going to get me so I would rather be alive than dead."

"Hacker?" the agent asked.

"Yes."

"British native?"

"Londoner through and through. I don't hack national unless I have to." Q tipped his screen to where the agent could see it as he handed back the gun. "They are readying a party for you on our floor. If you want to escape, I would do it now before they start up the lift again. There is no one on the floors between there and here and when they cut the power to the console, they cut the camera."

Q brought up the feed for the camera that was just snow. The agent nodded and stood up. Q put up his tablet after wiping the evidence on it of what he had just done. His work laptop in his room was still downloading what was needed to get all the info that SIS would need to take them down, but if the security for the hotel searched Q and his laptop, they would see nothing but work for someone who built websites.

"What room are you in?"

"If you really want to find me, you'll have to do some work. Don't worry. I don't shoot first when someone enters my room. I assess and then destroy if need be."

The agent smirked before he used the rail to get up to the ceiling to move the hatch for repair. Q watched him pull himself up and out of the hole only using his arms before the hatch was replaced with the agent not even looking at Q. Q pulled his phone out and settled in with a crossword game that he played with Mycroft. It was one that Q made where it was based on actual time in the game and speed between word fills instead of time spent on the game from start to finish. Q had created it because he hated the games that were on the market. After making sure that he and Mycroft didn't break it, Q had put it on the app market and was making a good bit of money on it. The game cost a pound to download, and hint packs were available for those who wanted it. People could play alone or challenge friends.

It was five and a half minutes later when the lift started up again. Q didn't get up until he was done with typing in the word on his phone and he closed the app so that it didn't count down more as he stood up. The doors opened, and Q held up his hands and adopted a scared as hell look as he faced down five guns pointed at him.

"Where is the man who got in with you?" One of the men asked, obviously the leader of the group of guards.

"After the lift shut down he started to rant about not getting caught and went up through the hatch in the roof." Q's whole body started to shake. His bag was still on the floor of the lift, and he shuddered a little as one of the men lowered his gun and took a step toward him. Q backed up until he was in the corner farthest from his bag and the door. The man picked up his bag and looked through it.

"He didn't give you anything?"

"Other than a horrible pass at me as we started up, no."

"He's dangerous so please if you see him, call security. You are in the suite right?" one of the other men asked. Q nodded. The men started to put up their guns, but Q didn't put down his arms until he was waved forward and handed his bag.

"Dinner tonight will be on the hotel, we are sorry for scaring you."

"I'm just glad you guys take security seriously. I shudder to think what he would have done to me if you hadn't tried to catch him."

"He's a thief. Nothing much to worry about besides your computer and things. You do have your room key still right?"

Q pulled it out of his shirt pocket and held it out for the guards to see. Q was waved entirely out of the lift, and he hustled down to his room. Q wasn't sure what was going on, but he remembered that 007 had cut off all contact with MI6 and Q wanted to know why now. He settled in on his work laptop and set the security that he had to maximum. Every single time that someone passed by his room, he would know. The tiny camera outside would show him who it was. Q lost himself in finding out the status of 007.

There was little about the mission online except for the fact that 007 had been ambushed in France by someone that should have been on his side. 007 had only been in contact with Q-Branch on secure channels that even Q could tell were unhacked until he hacked them without Q-Branch knowing. Q accessed the camera on M's desk to see if she was in the office and she was, she was also sitting and reading a file of some kind.

"Ma'am?" Q asked, and he watched her for a reaction, but all she did was pause and look up, not at Q but at the door that he assumed was in front of her. "On your computer, ma'am."

M looked over at Q, and there was a frown on her face. "Yes?"

"I wanted to give you warning that I am hacking into the system to test a few things while I am building up the new mainframe. I wanted to warn you so that you could warn Q-Branch. The Quartermaster told me that it was fine but to give warning."

"Yes. Thank you. You couldn't have sent an email?"

"If you hadn't been at your desk, I would have sent one, yes."

"Cheeky bugger."

"Yes, Ma'am. I will let you go now."

"Hold on. Has anything been happening in Cardiff that you know of?"

"Other than a jaunt out today, Ma'am. I've not left my hotel."

"Pity. Well, keep your ear open." M turned away from the computer, assuming probably that Q would disconnect. Instead, though he left the audio channel of the webcam open and closed down the visual. He wasn't sure what was going to go on, but it seemed that whatever it was, it was going to be a disruptor to Q's vacation.

Q worked on getting what he wanted from the MI6 system before he disconnected. There was little known about 007’s mission except for the possibility that he was in Cardiff. Q wondered if the agent was in fact 007. Q did a search online for Richard Sterling, but all he found was a website for Universal Exports that Q could figure out was a front for MI6. There were no pictures of people on the website at all, but with a few clicks, Q was inside of a website that didn't have a thing to do with MI6. Instead, it seemed that it was a place for the Double-O's to connect with each other. 007 posted that he was going dark and suggested that all other active Double-O's did as well. There was some kind of code on the page that was sure to be something between the Double-O's that was meant for no one else. Q copied it to try and figure out later, but he needed to figure out what was going on with 007 first. Q was very certain that the agent in the building was 007, but Q did not want to go through all of the rigamarole of getting the man to trust him.

Dinner was ordered and sent up to Q's room. He munched on it while he tried to figure out what exactly the terrorists who were running the hotel were up to. Q tried to find 007 on the cameras but he stayed out of sight, and Q wasn't sure that it was a good thing. Q found what he was looking for just at bedtime and the same time that several police cars showed up at the hotel. Q watched as several members of the staff were pulled out and then an SUV full of people with name badges that proclaimed them from the group that managed the hotel had come to take care of everything.

You okay?-MH

Fine. Nothing to do with me.

Q was not shocked that Mycroft was watching everything. He was sure that Mycroft would send someone to make sure that he was all right before end of the next day..

A brother worries-MH

A brother has too many other things to worry about at the moment. Q set his phone down and looked at his computer. He had downloaded enough information to be able to make sure that when MI5 took it over, they would have enough to make sure that no one escaped prosecution.

There is also a small favour that I need.-MH

I have all of the files that I could find downloaded and will hand over the drive as soon as someone comes to pick it up.

Marvelous. Anthea will be there in two hours or less.-MH

Q pulled out a spare external hard drive that he brought just in case he needed it and started to download all of the information over to it that he had grabbed from the hotel's servers. He made sure to have everything that he had got from MI6 servers on his computer. The computer was protected, but the secondary hard drive did not have protections.

Q was still awake when Anthea, as she was calling herself at the moment, arrived, Q handed over the drive. She was in and gone within minutes. Q was left alone with his computer shut down for the night and his phone keeping him entertained while he lounged in bed and tried to fall asleep. There was the sound of someone breaking into Q's room and trying to do it quietly, but Q brought up the cameras to see that it was 007. Q watched him move to the two different laptops, pulling the simple one that had his fake work on it. Q watched him break the password on it before moving onto the actual work laptop. That one 007 could not get into. Q watched him for many long minutes before 007 gave up on the work laptop and moved to the other. Q accessed it from his phone, watching every single move that he made.

007 found nothing on the computer that Q didn't want him to find. 007 found the hidden partition of porn though. Q listened as the sounds of flesh smacking against flesh filled the other room. The door was open, and Q watched on the phone as 007 just sat and listened to it. It was male on male and if the video queued up where Q had left off, at the perfect part where the one man had the other bent over the bed and was fucking him hard and fast. The video shut off after a minute and Q watched as 007 looked around the room before starting toward Q's bed. Q shut off his phone and laid it down. He was under the covers with them totally turned up so that no light entered them. He had a taser under his bed covers, and he gripped it tightly.

"Augie," 007 called out softly. The agent stepped closer to the bed and laughed a little. "So much for catching me breaking in."

Q pressed the button that had the taser make noise as he pulled it out from under the pillow. He heard 007 stop moving. Q tossed the blankets down.

"Cameras record everyone who passed by my room as well records anyone entering my room. I watched you from the moment that you started to pick my locks and I watched as you dug around on my computers. Glad you liked the porn." Q slept in pants, and that was it, so 007 was getting a view of him mostly naked in his bed. 007 looked no worse for the wear for whatever had happened. "And you would have had a hard time sneaking into my bed with this."

"I see you are well defended. If you didn't want me finding porn, you shouldn't have had it on your computer."

"You shouldn't have been on my computer. I'm glad though that my actual work computer was well defended from you in the time that it took for your patience to wear out. Now, what did you need? I need sleep to be able to function."

"And here I came to see about giving you the pleasure that you didn't get before I have to leave."

"Work finish up early?"

007 snorted, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he grabbed the blanket that was thrown over Q's legs and pulled it down.

"You are too late to get pleasure from me, Mister Stirling. I've already retired to bed to sleep and am too worn out to give you the attention that you will demand. So please leave the way that you came in, and I'll forget that you were in my room."

007 actually looked shocked that he was being turned down.

"Go find one of the married women that you like to seduce and go romp with her."

Q rolled to his side and grabbed the comforter that had been thrown off the bed as too warm and draped it over himself. He only needed to stay under it until 007 left. Q was not so stupid as to fuck one of the Double-O's when he had no clue who he was really fucking. Q half expected 007 to put up a fight or to try and seduce Q into giving in but whatever was going through 007's head pushed him out of the room. Q listened for the door to shut before he pulled up the feed on his phone to make sure that 007 was really gone.

After 007 had left, Q got up and rechecked his locks and shoved the comforter off his bed again and grabbed the blanket that 007 had pulled off the bed. He wasn't lying that he needed sleep. Q half expected for 007 to break into his room again but the man didn't.

From his room, Q watched as 007 left the next morning. A secure car from MI6 picking him up. Q was eating on his balcony and watching the world pass by. Soon enough, Q would meet the man and learn his real name, and 007 would understand why Q turned him down. He just hoped the man didn't act like a petulant child.

Two Weeks Later

Q was dressed in a pale grey suit, one that Mycroft had sent with Anthea to pick him up from Cardiff and deliver him to the Home Office. A quick change in a restaurant bathroom just minutes from their final destination and a quick comb through Q's hair made him as presentable as he would deign to be for the stuffy codgers that he was about to meet.

M and Tanner were waiting in the foyer. Q had little with him, he didn’t need anything for the scheduled meeting.. Everything else Anthea was taking to Q's flat

"Q, thank you for arriving. They have upped the meeting four hours. We were supposed to have a chance to talk, but now we are just going to have to wing it."

"I don't wing anything. Mycroft was the one that sent someone for me, so it was only to you it seems that the meeting was moved up without word. Don't worry. I won't fail."

Q followed M to where the meeting was going to take place. There were more people in the room than Q expected. Mycroft was on the side, and Q nodded to him.

"Is this your new Quartermaster?" the oldest man in the room asked.

"No, this is my new second in command for Q-Branch. He will deal with bringing MI6 out of the dark ages of technology."

"Well then boy, get on with it," another man said who looked to be just a few years younger than the older man.

"I would think that you would speak with some respect," Mycroft said. The room chilled a little. "You are the ones that demanded this meeting and then upped it by four hours with only telling M half an hour before the new time. Tactics like that are why we are behind other countries. There are reasons that Geoffrey Boothroyd refuses to speak to you."

"Boothroyd has no respect, this boy at least shows us respect." It was the older man again.

"How long I have that respect correlates to how long you decide to call me boy."

"You have given us no other name."

"You mean you did not read the report that M gave over to you a week ago with my name and my credentials on why I was asked to take over this job from outside of MI6?" Q grinned at the men as two of the younger ones actually picked up the file that M had sent to them via Tanner the week before. Q knew that because Tanner had also brought one to Q and they had a nice lunch.

"I thought that the name of the man you had wanted to hire was August Richards?" One of the younger men on the council asked. "Not Quin-Quinta-"

"Quintavius Holmes," Mycroft supplied. As the last name slipped from Mycroft's lips the men on the council stilled. "My brother entered MI5 with a fake name, but the higher-ups within my office knew why the fake name was used. He rose up high within MI5 and then high within MI6 without the use of our last name giving him a leg up. So please continue with what you were going to say."

"It's highly irregular that you are sitting there. Of course, you are going to give the boy what he wants despite the cost." one of the unheard from men said.

"Actually, I've been trying to get the monies approved for this for years. We can't expect to keep our borders safe if we don't give them the money to match what the villains of the world have. They throw money at technology like it's water at a plant and we hold onto it and shove it into older methods that may work but take twice as long and twice as much money because it's a safe method, it's a known method. We are bleeding money clinging to those old ideals."

"That clinging to the old ways is part of what is making MI6 look like fools to the world," Q said.

"I say."

Q cut the man off with a glare and started to speak. "You can say a lot, the temperature of the room will surely raise several degrees if I let you say what you want to say. 007 was recently running a mission and ended up breaking things off with Q-Branch from what I am to gather by the reports I've been looking at over the past week."

"Yes, a technician from MI5 was tracing another lead to found what we needed to raid the hotel."

"No," Q said.

"No?" several members asked at the same time, and Q even heard Tanner ask. Q turned to where he could look at everyone.

"I'm an expert liar when I want to be. Learned that at the feet of my eldest brother. I was staying in that hotel while I worked on what I wanted to work on during my vacation before taking over as R inside of Q-Branch. I ran into 007 and made him as an agent right off. It took a little while before I was able to figure out that he was MI6. After that, I hacked the hotel and gathered all of the information needed."

"You?"

"Me while on holiday. 007 never knew that I did it."

"You told me you had...oh I see. You told me that you had not been out of the hotel other than that afternoon. Cheeky," M said.

"Cheeky is rather a good term for Q," Mycroft said with a smile. He shifted in his seat seemingly relaxing. Q knew that he was anything but.

"Q-Branch could not give 007 the information that he needed. He chose to cut ties because on the ground they have a better head for what is happening. I want to see that change, but first, we need to have the technology that can actually protect us from invasions through computers. I have hacked into MI6, illegally thirty-seven times that I have kept track of. Each of those times no one realised it. Thankfully, I am a white hat hacker. I could cripple MI6 with a few keystrokes. I do not because I am a patriot. England's enemies are getting stronger, smarter, and more powerful with technology and we have to match them." Q waited because Anthea was sitting in Q's flat with Q's spare laptop. There was a monitor on the wall that Q wasn't sure what was being used for.

Anthea's face popped up on the screen, and one of the men near screamed.

"Not even Home Office is secure from me. Miss Anthea is using the subroutines that I have on my spare laptop that I use for gaming and simple coding. This is not the laptop that I use for work. If she can do that with one that I consider near obsolete, think what someone with my work laptop can do. I am in the top one percent of hackers in the world gentlemen, and Anthea is in the top ten percent. Think what the rest of the ten percent can do if given enough money."

"Why so long on the downtime?" one of the younger men asked. Q looked at him and sighed because it was all laid out in the paperwork that he gave the council, the packet that M had given them.

"Every single computer within MI6 had to be taken down and swapped out for a new one. There are ten members of Q-Branch at the moment that I know can install and prepare the mainframe but none can go live and hooked up to the others until all are ready. Any outdated computer is a hole that a hacker can exploit. There is no reason to do a project half-arsed."

"MI6 is being looked at as obsolete," one of the men said who was roughly between the ages of the other council members..

"And that means that someone has their panties in a twist about something. The Double-O program does need to be brought into the twenty-first century, but if it's not allowed to move forward, of course, it's going to be obsolete. It's like buying a fifty thousand pound car and never changing its oil or going in for routine maintenance and blaming the car for it shitting out."

"I don't think that it's that bad."

"Then you are an idiot. The Double-O program is our best defence against an ever-changing world. I have no way of accessing a lot of systems that are needed to be accessed in terrorist cells. Someone has to be on the ground. I would say that within six months of the Double-O program being shut down we would have an attack on our soil from someone that could have been stopped if we were out there making sure that the world is safe. The Americans have not shut down their CIA and, in fact, it's a vital part of their backbone in the world."

"You have half as many days as your estimate states and seventy-five percent of the money."

"No."

M, Tanner, and Mycroft did not look shocked at Q's word, but the men on the council did.

"I told you that it was all or nothing. Why fix the engine if we don't fix the breaks as well. You will give me what I want, or I won't take any of it. Let's see you go to the Queen and the PM when a major attack happens that could have been stopped if only you pretentious arses were a little lighter on purse strings. The computers within MI6 have only been replaced when broken, and it's only with the same model and the same operating system. My system would be built by me with no one else knowing any flaws in it. I can adapt and fix holes as they are found and not have to patch to keep up with updates to the OS."

"How long before you are able to start the change over?"

"As soon as 003 and 008 are pulled back from the field, and their missions are done, I will gladly start it."

"How long on that?"

"Depends on the missions. Right now I estimate that they will be back within two weeks. That will give me time to teach my techs how to install the software on the computers and actually get it installed. M has already cleared a few rooms in the basement of stored things and allowed me to repurpose them to use to install everything needed."

"No more money will be approved for this venture. You will not have a single shilling more."

"Oh, I am well aware."

"Go away," the oldest man said.

Q bowed his head before turning to leave. However, he stopped when he heard Mycroft and M's phones going off and a second later Tanner's. Q pulled his own phone out and started to search. He did not find anything on the local news.

"I see. Pull all Double-O's in and start a search. Lockdown, no one in or out except for Double-Os, myself, Tanner, and the Quartermaster. Please make sure that his clearance is upped." M hung up and looked at the men. "The Quartermaster was just assassinated inside of MI6 by another member of Q-Branch. The one that we suspect is the mole that tried to have 007 killed. Mister Holmes, I hope you are ready because you are now officially the Quartermaster."

"I'm ready, Ma'am. The rollout time of the new system might be delayed a week with me getting into my role. I will have them up as soon as possible."

"Your first order of business is to delve into the background of the mole and find out how it was missed that she was a mole. Stania Koehler is her name, and so far she is trapped within MI6. I'll start the Double-O's in a search for her as soon as they all arrive. I will be assigning one to the branch as well for protection."

"Yes, Ma'am." Q turned to look at Mycroft, and he nodded. Mycroft nodded back.

Q found himself shuffled into the car waiting along with M and Tanner. Q's work laptop was inside as well, something that Anthea must have done after dropping him off. Q had envisioned being able to go home to settle in and clean a little before starting as R the next day.

"I am cleared for a gun, and I will be making sure that all branchers who can wear one will over the next few days. Other I have tasers for. I won't leave my staff vulnerable."

"Good."

Q booted up his laptop, connecting to the WiFi signal of Home Office and securing it before hacking into MI6 to get a look at the cameras. He could see that the building was indeed locked down, but he was shocked to see that within Q-Branch, there were three men with guns. Q almost opened his mouth to tell M that they had a big problem when he watched as one of them grabbed the hand of the Quartermaster where it had fallen from under the sheet on the gurney and tucked it up in. Then 007 strode into the branch with a look of anger on his face.

"I have four Double-O's in the branch already."

Tanner leaned over to look at his screen.

"One, two, six, and seven," Tanner said.

"Good. Anders can stay in branch. Send Smithe, Trevelyan, and Bond out to hunt. Anders is a good agent, Q. He will listen, and he will not do anything to rock the boat unless he sees you in danger. Your job is to find out why the Quartermaster was targeted and to give my agents what they need to finish the job."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The rest of ride was silent except for the clicking and clacking of Q's fingers on his keyboard. Tanner was on his phone near constantly.

"Mycroft tells me that you live on tea," M said when they pulled into the secure car park of the Vauxhall building. Q looked up at her and tried to figure out why she was asking.

"Yes."

"I'll make sure that a supply is brought down as soon as possible. Favorites?"

"Earl Grey is my favourite, but anything black will work."

"Tanner."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The door of the car was opened, and Q shut the lid on his laptop. Since it was still running, he tucked it close instead of putting it into his bag. He slipped the bag over his shoulder as he got out of the car. There was a row of agents standing there. Q didn't know them yet, but given the placement of them, they were in number order.

"Agents, this is the new Quartermaster. He was going to step in as R as our former R left but now it seems that he's going to be Q. Do not piss him off or you will piss me off. He will make sure that you are kitted out. 001 you are going to be in Q-Branch making sure that nothing happens to our new QUartermaster. The rest of you, find the bitch who killed Boothroyd."

"Ma'am," all of them said in near perfect military unison.

Q looked at each of them, learning their faces. He skipped 007 because that man he would never forget.

"If you'll come with me. I'll get you what weapons I have on hand as well as radios to keep in contact."

"Yes, Sir."

"No sir shite. Q will do. I planned to meet each of you individually, but I guess that is a pipe dream. I've not looked at your files yet, so please tell me what each of your prefers.

"I guess that depends on if you want her alive or dead," Bond said as he fell into step beside Q, his eyes boring into the side of Q's face. The other Double-O's fell in line behind them. The lift wasn't big enough for all of them so 001 and Bond slipped into it with Q and the rest ran to the steps. "Where did you come from?"

"MI5. M courted me away from MI5 two months ago. I spent a month getting my place there in order and the past month on vacation. I will get myself up to speed as soon as I dig out this mole that killed Boothroyd and tried to kill you 007."

"You knew who I was at the hotel." It wasn't a question but a statement, and it made 001 look at both of them in shock.

"I knew that you were 007 only after I confirmed that it was terrorists in the hotel. I did not find out anything more than that. I did hack and steal all of their info and give it to MI5, and a copy was made for MI6."

"The old man did not deserve to die of poison," Bond said.

"No one who works for good deserves to die of poison. Do we know what kind?"

"No. Medical is trying to find out. There was no foam in his mouth, but his throat was burned," Bond said, and he looked down at his hand. Q looked as well and saw that there was a small burn there.

"An acid of some kind then. Did you wash your hands?"

"Yes. I was first on scene in Q-Branch. I settled most of them, but I am sure that you coming in will upset them. Especially R."

"Today is his last day, and then I'll find my own R."

"I didn't think he would actually leave like he said," 001 said with a frown. "Are we sure..." He trailed off as the doors opened.

"No, we are not sure and don't worry I will make sure that I know the answer to that and a lot more before I leave to go home, whenever that is." Q was determined that no one else was going to die in this transition.

The rest of the Double-O's were already in Q-Branch. Q looked around to see what was going on. There was a man at the back of the room shouting directions at someone who looked like they wanted to kill him. Q looked at Bond asking him a silent question. Bond nodded. Q was not looking forward to meeting R.

Q stuck two of his fingers in the sides of his mouth and whistled loud and fast. Every single eye in the place moved to him, including the Double-O's. A few of them looked like they were in love and it kind of creeped Q out. The two female Double-O's drew their eyes away from Q as R started toward them.

"Who the hell are you?"

"The new Quartermaster," Q answered with a grin that would have made even Mycroft step back from him.

"The fuck you are. I am the Quartermaster."

"No, you are R until midnight tonight. I was going to take your place tomorrow, but instead, M made me Quartermaster today."

"Bond take this twink and throw him into the cells until we can make sure that he's not a plant." R started to turn away like he assumed that the Double-O was going to do as he said with no issue.

"No."

"What?" R turned around and looked like he was about to choke on his tongue he was so shocked by what Bond said.

"M gave us orders, and we are following them," 001 said as he stepped up to Q's other shoulder with Bond on the other side.

"This jumped up little shit is not taking a place that is rightfully mine."

Q stared at the man, reading his body language and his eyes. Q started to laugh a little. The Double-O's looked at him like he might be a little bit insane.

"You resigned your position as R, on your own as you stated you had a better offer with less stress. You changed your mind, didn't you? You decided that you didn't want another job. You wanted the job of Quartermaster. So you waited. You waited for the perfect time. You thought that if you had the Quartermaster killed, you would be offered his position but what you didn't know was that I was being groomed to take his position as soon as I was ready and we had found a person to my R."

"No," R stated, but his eyes gave away that he was scared. R was so focused on Q that he didn't watch the other Double-O's surround him. When he backed up though, R ran right into 006. R spun and screamed as he took in the circle that he was in.

"Leave him alive," Q said.

"What about the girlfriend?" Bond asked.

"Her, you can gut."

R started to scream as soon as 006 grabbed his arms to frog march him down into the cells.

"Open the armoury and let the agents have what they want," Q said, and five different people scrambled to make it so. Finding out that it wasn't anything but an internal struggle for power meant that Q had little to do. He was going to still look into the life of R and the woman he had talked into killing the Quartermaster to take his job. "001 please protect my staff just in case she slips by your fellow agents. I'm going to update M and Tanner on what is happening."

"Yes, Q."

"When I get back, I'll discuss whatever you all want to discuss as well as go over my plans for this branch in my time a Quartermaster."

Heads nodded, but no one spoke. It was too much shock to find betrayal at the hands of an ally. Q had to wonder if there were others that were loyal to R and he would make sure that all of them were rooted out.

"I'll escort you," Bond said.

"Not needed."

"We are under a threat level, Q and I won't have your death on our hands. I will escort you to M."

"Fine." Q set down his laptop bag at a desk that appeared empty but carried his laptop up with him as he turned to leave Q-Branch. He took the steps and rushed up to them. M would want to know why she had a member of her staff in the cells. Q did not pity the man at all. He had reaped what he was going to sow, and Q doubted that he would see the light of day ever again.

One Month Later

"You've been ducking me," Bond accused as he slipped into the lift with Q, just late enough to where Q couldn't hit stop before the lift started to move.

"I have not. I just finished upgrading everything that this entire building uses, including printers with a staff that is still reeling from the death of their beloved leader at the hands of a woman who was seduced by a traitor within their own ranks and who still don't trust me that much. I still have Home Office breathing down my neck about the upgrades and wanting to know why it took only six more hours than I had planned. That was London's fault as there was an outage of power that had us working off of backup power, so things were slower, so we didn't blow the damned generators. I have a temporary placement of a second in command who would rather watch me die than actually work for me and my choice in second is being delayed because she is a woman. I don't have time to breathe much less run my day so that I can stay out of the way of an agent under my command, Bond."

Q turned to look at Bond to find him smirking. Q wasn't sure why until the lift shuddered to a stop. Q sighed and grabbed his phone from his pocket. He had no tablet or laptop on him, but the phone was just as intimately connected to the system as either, and it wasn't long before he realised that Bond had bribed one of the staffers in Q-Branch with overriding the lift.

"So you decide to corner me in the lift?"

"This is how we met," Bond said with a grin.

Q realised then that when he had denied Bond what he wanted that night when Bond had not known who he was, Bond had developed a hunger for him. Q knew that no matter what would or wouldn't happen between them, Bond would not treat him any different.

"Yes, it is," Q said with a smile on his face.

"I had plans to ask you to join me for dinner but I was pulled back to London before I wanted to be and I was told that I didn't have a choice."

"Back then I was a stranger in a hotel with no connection to your job. Why still pursue me?"

"You intrigue me."

"I'm sure you can find a married woman to dally with that will remove that."

"See it's that. The fact that you knew that before we had even talked like we do here."

"I learned to observe at the hands of my two older brothers, and it's easy to see the world in a grain of sand if one knows what to look for."

"Like how you knew me by my gun."

"Yes."

"I thought that M liked orphans."

"She does, for agents. I'm not an agent, and I don't think she would ever want to send me into the field. If you want to know more, Bond. I leave at six tonight, and you can pick me up at seven at my flat. I'll text you the address."

"Then I would finally get your mobile number," Bond said with a smile.

"I wasn't aware that you wanted it," Q said. He opened up the messaging program on his phone and found Bond's number in his address book. He typed in his address next.

"I was trying less than honest ways of getting it, but that failed as none of your minions would leave their phones alone if they are unlocked and if they are not, I can't get into them. They used to be so much worse at the spy game."

"If that was a compliment, I'll take it. If it was criticising statement, I'll still take it as a compliment. 006 made a comment much like it the other day. He also called them minions, is that a term of endearment for them?"

"Not really. They loved Boothroyd but have taken to you like a duckling does to the first creature that they see."

"Because I don't treat them like the then R did or like Boothroyd did. I treat them with respect while still pushing them. I didn't try and replace Boothroyd but instead slipped in as my own person. I let them grieve their former leader and didn't push them to get over their grief. Most of Q-Branch has never seen someone die. There are only a few mission handlers that have heard or seen one of the agents kill someone. It was an eye opener for them to see it. They needed time to process it and for a few that was a list of what they wanted to do to R."

"I saw that. Tanner was a little shocked when the list made it up to M, but all she did was smile her little shark smile and forwarded it to the man handling R's debrief."

"Yes, M told me that many were very interesting. The list was not supposed to make it out of the branch. Thankfully, M saw it for what it was and didn't send anyone for extra services with psych."

"We are all spies, just various forms of the same creature."

"A Many-Faced God?" Q asked, but when he looked at Bond's face, he realised that the reference was over his head. "I sent you my address. Now I really can't delay much longer. M is expecting me for a technical analysis of the joint mission with 002 and 3 in a week."

Bond sent a message on his phone, and after about thirty seconds, the lift started up again. Q could have done it himself, but he didn't want to freak out whatever member of his staff had stopped the lift.

"Whatever you promised my staff member for stopping the lift, you had better make good on it."

Bond grinned at Q before waving Q out of the lift first when the doors opened. "I promised her a date with the Double-O of her choice. I think she is leaning toward the svelte 004."

"004 is just Francine's type," Q said.

Bond looked shocked for a few seconds before Tanner arrived and shut the man up from saying another thing.

"Oh, Q there you are. Good."

"There was a minor issue with the lift. I notified maintenance, and they said it was just a fluctuation in the power grid. London is still having issues with the construction near us it seems."

"Oh, that's good." Tanner looked a lot lost, and his eyes kept darting to Bond.

"Thank you for keeping me company, again, in a lift that had stopped working," Q said to Bond before he started toward M's office. Tanner looked back at Bond just a single time before following.

The rest of the day passed with the same speed that it always did. With Q's mind focused on getting things ready for missions and teaching his aide to deal with the paperwork, Q had gone through three different aide's so far in a single month. The last had quit before Q could fire him. Q did not think that it was too much to expect someone to handle a form that was so simple that a thirteen-year-old could do it and handle all of the intake paperwork from the Double-O's and make a decent cup of tea for Q a few times a day. The newest one showed promise, but Q wasn't going to try and remember her name until she had been there for more than three days. Anything other than that and he was filling his head with useless information.

Q left work five minutes early and left threats of loss of beloved gaming systems if he was disturbed by anything less than war. The tube ride home was smooth. Q went over in his head everything that he needed to do. He was well aware of what Bond wanted from Q and that it would happen at a hotel or at Q's because Bond did not take people back to his place. There were enough rumours and facts in Bond's file that told Q that. Q wasn't upset by that though. He was happy with being a notch in 007's bedpost as it were. Q had more than enough notches in his own.

Entering his flat, Q wasn't shocked to see Bond sitting in his living room.

"I said pick me up, not invade my flat." Q looked at where his two cats were. Ozma was sitting on Bond's lap, getting her white hair all over his nice grey suit. Q felt it was justice, but he had a lint roller by the front for the agent to use. Mombi was sitting on the back of the couch and glaring at Bond like he was the worst scum in the world, the human who withheld rubs. Given that Bond was petting Ozma, Mombi was jealous.

"The door was open, and I heard these two lovelies crying for attention."

"My doors have been under lethal measures since I moved in. It's stopped Mycroft and Sherlock from breaking in. However, Tanner and M both warned me that you like to break into homes, so I made sure that you were recognised by the system to allow you in."

"M and Tanner huh?"

"M knows what my flat is like or at least what others think my flat is like and I think that Tanner caught your slight obsession with me and was trying to be nice and warn me."

"Obsession is not the word that I would use," Bond said as Ozma jumped out of his lap.

Q walked to the kitchen to feed his girls. They both wound through his legs as he grabbed the two containers of food and dumped them into a bowl each. He was sure that Bond had already been through all of the flat, making a note of anything that he wanted to make a note of.

"I need to shower and then get dressed. You will stay in the living room," Q threatened as he walked out of the kitchen. He grabbed a book off the shelf that right there and tossed it at Bond. "Don't get attached to any of the characters because if you do, they are going to die."

"I've heard a few staffers talk about this series. You like it?"

"Politics are politics, but this at least has magic and dragons."

Bond settled into the chair a little more and cracked open the book. Q took his time as he walked back to his bedroom. Seeing one of his five garment bags draped over his bed with everything for it picked out told Q that he was right that Bond had been through everything. Q sighed and ignored it before going to his bathroom. The flat was a two bedroom but the second bedroom was a workroom. It held parts of computers scattered in bins everywhere.

Q didn't take long to shower and even less time to take care of his hair. He padded back into his bedroom naked and moved around the things on his bed so that he could see which suit Bond had picked for him to wear. Q tsked and closed the bag up before putting it back into his closet. He grabbed the bag that held his black suit. It wasn't fancy enough to pass going to an elegant function, but it would work for the sex date with Bond. Everything but the cufflinks was swapped to match the new suit. Q kept the cufflinks though so that one thing that he was wearing was what Bond picked.

Bond's eyes raised up as soon as Q exited his bedroom. Q could see that Bond was upset about Q changing what he was wearing. He took it in stride though and stood up.

"Ready?"

"There is a lint brush over there." Q pointed over to where it was, and Bond's eyes followed. Q grabbed his mobile and keys from his bag that was on the floor where he had left it. He had left all of his things at MI6, not wanting Bond to get the smart idea to go over them in the night before he left. Q watched as Bond used the roller on himself before setting it back down. Bond opened the door and ushered Q out.

Bond's seduction game was at its max, and Q enjoyed it. He didn't want Bond to think that he was a sure thing. He wanted to see precisely how good Bond was. Q had only seen it in Cardiff that one night and even then he hadn't really seen any of it, heard part of it and saw the woman go with him.

Q could understand why someone would give in to what he wanted. Bond made him feel like the centre of his world, and for Q it was easy to see that there was no connection being made on Bond's part. He could see why others fell for it though.

Bond got up a single time to go to the bathroom, and as soon as Bond was out of earshot, Q's phone vibrated to tell him that he had a text message. It buzzed three times, so that meant that it was Mycroft.

You always did like your toys to be dangerous. Heaven knows I tried to teach it out of you.-MH

Q smiled and looked around to find the camera. He grinned at it before going back to his phone.

I adore watching him pull out everything when I would have fucked him in Cardiff if I didn't know that he would have been pissed that I knew who he was and he didn't know who I was. Besides, this is an experience that I've never had.

Anthea tells me that if she were there, she'd already have taken him in the bathroom.-MH

Q laughed as he set his phone down with the screen facing down. Mycroft wouldn't text again, but he was sure that his brother was going to observe him carefully until he got back to his flat. Q had ridden with Bond to the restaurant, so Q didn't have to worry about a thing as Bond paid for the food and the bottle of wine that they had drunk.

Bond's hand was like a brand on Q's thigh for the entire but short trip back to Q's flat. When they got out, the hand transferred to Q's lower back, and he allowed Q to open up the flat before the hand left. Keys were plucked from Q's hand and were dropped down to the floor as Bond kissed him for the first time. Q kissed him back with fervour and let himself be stripped. Q gave as good as he got though but was focused on a single thing and that was Bond's cock. Bond's goal was to strip Q naked while all Q cared about was getting Bond's cock out.

"I should have known that you were very goal oriented and very much in the realm of nothing more than what is needed to achieve that goal," Bond stated as he looked down at his cock as it was being pulled out of his trousers by Q's nimble fingers.

"You have watched me execute enough missions over the past month to understand what I am like."

"Yes, well, I don't relish taking another suit covered in spunk to the cleaners, so I am going to strip as soon as we make it into the bedroom, despite your wishes to get my cock in you as quick as possible."

Q said nothing to Bond. He allowed the agent to prod him into his bedroom. Q finished stripping himself as he watched Bond take off his clothes with care. Q snorted to himself because of course Bond would take more care with his suit than the technology that he was sent out with.

"Where are the cats?"

"Probably sitting in a window and watching people moving around. it's their evening ritual."

"As long as they are not in here."

"I doubt it, but I am not crawling on the floor to see if they are underneath anything. You want to that's fine with me." Q crawled into the middle of his bed, a king size that dominated the bedroom. Q liked to have room even though he was the only one that slept in the bed other than his cats. Q flopped onto his back and grabbed a pillow from the far side of the bed, getting ready to put it under his hips. Bond looked at Q a little shocked. "What?"

"I didn't expect you to go right to that."

"What do you expect, a blushing virgin?"

"No, just not so...ready."

Q decided to ignore the statement. He spread his legs and looked at Bond with a look of challenge. Bond laughed. Q grabbed the lube from under his pillow. He had used it the night before to jerk off. The condoms were in the drawer of the stand. Bond smirked as he crawled onto the bed.

"Condoms in the stand." Q used the lube to point. Bond pulled the drawer open and grabbed one. Bond dropped it onto Q's chest before he slicked up his fingers. The first press of one inside of Q was like heaven. It had been too long for Q. "I wouldn't play much, Bond, if you want me to enjoy what follows. It's been too long since I've been fucked."

"Yes, Sir, Quartermaster Sir."

"Berk," Q said as he pushed at Bond's chest some as the agent pulled his finger free of Q to slip two in. Q closed his eyes to enjoy the pleasure that his hole being stretched gave him. Q loved sex, no matter the form. He loved fucking someone, being fucked by someone, giving oral, getting oral, and even hands jobs whether he was giving one to himself, getting one from someone else or giving one to someone else. Mycroft blamed Q's roommate in university, another genius who was at university long before he should have been. They had done everything together, including sex.

Bond was pressing into Q long before he was ready to be pulled out of his memories of university but Bond's thick cock was worth it. Q grabbed the bed sheets and rocked down onto Bond's cock, making the agent groan as Q squeezed him as he was fully seated inside of Q. Q wasn't a size queen, but Bond was just on the possibly not good side of too long and too thick, but it felt wonderful. Bond pushed Q's legs up to where they were pressed into his sides and took Q's mouth in a kiss. Q was thankful for the yoga that he did to help destress when he remembered to do it.

No words were spoken as Bond fucked Q. It was perfect to Q and something that he would be willing to repeat again at a later time. Bond fucked like it was his job and it robbed Q's breath when Q finally came untouched between them. Bond kept kissing and fucking him for several minutes longer, taking Q almost to the point of too much before he came in the condom. Bond stayed kissing Q long after, calming them both down before he pulled free of Q.

Q let Bond stare down at him for several seconds before Q rose from the bed to get a wash in. Q's water for his flat was modified by him. It was an on-demand system with a few quirks that Q had installed himself. The water started when Q pressed a button on the outside of the tub. It was set for a single temperature and wouldn't change from it. To Q it was a perfect temperature if a little warm for the few people that had used his shower.

"Do you mind company?"

"Not at all." Q pressed a button, and instead of a spray over his body, a rainfall started from above. Q didn't mind showering with people, but he hated fighting for the water.

"Kind of ruins the fun of a shower," Bond pointed out. Q grabbed his shampoo from its spot. He didn't open his eyes at all, going to the location of where he always kept it.

"Not if one doesn't like to fight for water. You can touch as much as you want and don't have to use the excuse of needing under the water." Q started to lather up his hair. It was the point of the shower that Q liked the best, feeling even his own fingers in his hair. Q was almost done when he felt fingers slide into his hair, he startled a little and let his hands drop down as Bond's pressed in deep on his skin. Q moaned as it felt wonderful. Bond pressed into his back.

"Shower's a little warm isn't it?" Bond asked, his voice low in Q's ear.

"I like it at this temperature. You'll adjust. It helps to relieve the stress in my shoulders and upper back from work." Q reached out to grab the flannel hanging over the bar. He brought it up to his chest to get it wet under the fall of the water before running it over his body before putting soap on it. It was nice to feel it over his skin. Q's shower flannels were soft and perfect. He had a scrubber if he needed to really scrub his skin but didn't use it often. The flannel was usually perfect for him.

Bond's hands slipped lower, using the shampoo on his hands to smooth the way as he rubbed at Q's shoulders. Q stepped back, into the fall of the water to rinse the shampoo from his hair. He stepped right into Bond's body. Bond's arms wrapped around Q, taking the rag from his hand. Q wasn't sure what Bond's protocol was for post-shag as Bond never got back on comms until after he was thoroughly done with whatever he was doing with the target. Sometimes that was right after sex, sometimes it was the next morning.

"Give into me," Bond whispered in Q's ear before he nipped at it.

"Never," Q whispered back, keeping his body rigid despite the want to relax into Bond's hands. Bond didn't allow Q to do anything in the shower. Every time that he tried, Bond would take the item from Q's hand. Bond had to have taken care of himself when Q was washing the suds off of his body because when Q was done and stepped to the edge to grab his towel, Bond was stepping to the edge with him. Bond dropped Q's towel on his head and grabbed the towel that was beside it. Q reached up to dry his hair. Usually, the second towel was for that, but he guessed he could allow Bond to use it as there were no other towels in the bathroom. Q had done a load the last time he had been home, and so all of the clean ones were in the stack in the laundry room. Q had moved the washer/dryer to a closet on the far side of the living room and had soundproofed it so that he wouldn't have to hear it while in the kitchen. Q did a lot of his coding in the kitchen and didn't need to hear that all of the time.

Once dry, Q moved to his bedroom to find pants to sleep in. It was warm in his flat at the moment so he wouldn't need more than that to sleep in and if it did get chilly, he had more blankets in a pile beside the bed. Now that the fun part of the night was over, Q wanted to sleep.

"Stay or go, I'm going to bed," Q said loud enough for Bond to hear from the bathroom.

"And if I stay, is there another round in it for me?" Bond asked, his voice closer to Q than he thought it would be. Q turned to see Bond sitting on the edge of his bed.

"Depends on if I wake up in time. I do have to work tomorrow."

"Hmm." Bond laid back in the bed but moved over when Q stepped to the bed and shooed him over to the other side. Bond rolled onto his side and propped his head in his hand, looking at Q. Q looked at him for a few seconds before rolling onto his stomach. It was the position that Q slept in most at home. Bond said nothing as Q settled down even more under the covers.

Six Months Later

"You don't need to chase after the hard drive," Q said from where he was seated in M's office. Bond, Ronson, and a woman named Moneypenny were in Turkey. Ronson had been there to get a hard drive. Ronson had connected it to his computer and Q had set up that computer to automatically encrypt any hard drive connected to it. The firewalls that had been added to the drive were spectacular. There was also another added caveat that the next person that plugged the drive in would infect their system with a worm that was entirely dormant for twelve hours. After that, it was going to light up that system like a wildfire seen from orbit.

"What?" M asked as she and Tanner both turned and looked at him. M had chosen to run Bond's op to go and help Ronson and leave Q-Branch out of it. Q hadn't figured out why until he realised that someone stupid had compiled a list of current undercover NATO operatives onto a single file and it had been stolen. Ronson had recovered it but been ambushed. Q had activated the subroutine on Ronson's computer. Bond and Moneypenny had been en route to Turkey before the hit on Ronson had been uncovered. Q had not arrived in time to hear the fight that seemed like it was going to end in Ronson's death.

"The hard drive was encrypted with my encryption the second that Ronson connected it to his hard drive to make sure that it was the real deal. I activated that subroutine on the computer from here and got confirmation that it had taken."

"I can't take any chances on this," M said, and she turned away from Q to look out the window again.

Q crossed his right leg over his left and leaned back in the chair he had taken over. He settled his tablet into his lap and started to work harder on getting a satellite into the area. Before he had been put off but now he wanted eyes there now. He listened as Bond and the female agent gave chase, Bond giving a better chase than the woman. Q frowned and thought about what he knew of the woman, and that was little if anything at all. Eve Moneypenny was a new agent to MI6. M had been watching her for a while and had been helping her. M must have seen something in her. Q though was less than impressed. Her scores were mediocre at best.

There was an assessment that was listed, and it was said that she might be a good agent, but she would never obtain Double-O status. Q wondered if that was M's goal, to get her there by pushing her.

"Can you get into a better position?" M asked pulling Q out of his thoughts and reading. He tried to play back what was happening in his head but before he could Moneypenny spoke.

"Negative. There is no time."

"Take the shot." There was just silence. "I said take the shot."

"I can't! I may hit Bond."

"Take the bloody shot!" M demanded.

Q heard the shot over the feed, and he waited. He knew what the outcome was going to be. Moneypenny was a new agent with no mission experience and lining up a shot like she was being told to do was hard for a seasoned agent. She didn't even have a sniper rifle on her. Q knew the only gun that she had on her that could even attempt a shot like that. It was an Olympic Arms K23B Tactical. It was an M16 assault rifle and not made for sniper shots.

"Agent down."

Q could hear the rain that he hadn't realised was falling make itself known. He packed up his tablet into its sleeve and slipped it under his arm as he stood up. M had her back to the room. Q said nothing as he left. As Q passed Tanner, the man opened his mouth but shut it instead.

"I'll be in my branch setting up to do a search on the man who took the hard drive. As soon as Moneypenny gets back to London, I want her taken to my branch first thing."

"Why?"

"The only way to get a good description on the man who has the hard drive is to get it from her mind before she starts to forget and putting her into interrogation is just going to mess it up. Whoever hired that man will have left a trail, and we can track that if I can find the man. M will want the hard drive since it's been lost."

Q left before Tanner could answer at all. Q wanted the idiot who had compiled the list of NATO agents hiding in a terrorist organisation and use their guts for garters. M had not shared much only that the order had come from NATO to retrieve it as well as the information contained on it.

It would be days before the hard drive would make it into the hands of the person who sent the man after it. Even then the person might try and wait to plug it into a computer to work on decrypting it. The only way that Q would never know who wanted the list was if they hooked it up to a computer that had the protocols for accessing the Internet removed. Which was nearly impossible to exist and be able to access the drive. Even if the Internet were disabled, Q's virus would silently disable the disabling and connect to any Internet in range.

The news had not raced around the whole of MI6 yet. Still too much shock up on the upper floors for it to trickle down.

"Sir, 006 is in your office."

"Bloody hell," Q said, and it made nearly every single person in the branch jump. Q stormed into his office. He knew why 006 was in his office and he was not keen on dealing with an upset Russian in a pissed off mood because Bond was dead.

"I want a kit," 006 said as soon as Q shut the door. 006 looked calm which meant that he was anything but. When 006 was actually calm, he slouched.

"I will not be responsible for giving you anything from MI6 when there is no mission for you, Agent Trevelyan. However, I am free for dinner tonight. You are welcome to join me at my humble abode for a meal."

"I don't want your fucking-" 006 stopped himself as he took in how Q was standing, with eyebrow quirked and a smirk on his face. "And what kind of meal are you proposing?"

"Whatever you bring with you. I won't have time to cook."

006 gave Q a grin that would not have been out of place on a cartoon shark and nodded before leaving.

Q busied himself with the work that was needed for the day before he could kip off. M would have kept him, but he had already been at work for three days with no sleep. She could not keep him longer with no direct threat to MI6. Q made sure the staff that had been there the whole time with him went home first before he left. The tube ride home was thankfully short as it was after the rush hour.

Unlike Bond, 006 needed no address to get him to Q's. He was standing at the door outside of Q's with a grin on his face and what smelled like Thai food. No words were said as Q unlocked his doors and disabled the security system that he had.

"I am going to change. I've been in the same clothes for three days."

"Take a shower, your kitties will keep me company."

"Hmm," Q hummed as he dropped his things onto the couch and walked to his bedroom.

When he exited the bathroom ten minutes later with his hair still dripping wet and the towel around his shoulders and not his waist, Alec was standing in Q's bedroom with a tie in his hands.

"Bond left that here after his last mission. He forgot he had used it to bind my hands to the headboard."

"Dear God, 0011 is never going to let me live it down. I called him a liar."

"Liar?" Q asked. He looked at 006, the man was truly shocked about him and Bond. Q grabbed a clean pair of pants and slipped them on before walking to his closet to grab a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Q's thoughts were a slight mess. He assumed that Bond had crowed about nailing the Quartermaster to the rest of the Double-O's. Especially since he had been coming back after each mission for another round. Bond liked to surprise Q with it. The last time, Q had woke up as Bond had looped the tie over Q's headboard to keep Q right where the agent wanted him.

"0011 had boasted that he wanted to get the special treatment like Bond. When I asked him what he meant, he told me that he had seen Bond leave your flat twice after missions."

"And?" Q asked, pulling the T-shirt over his head and looking at the agent.

"James doesn't fuck where he works. There are rumours, and there are suppositions but people who actually know James know the truth. he would never fuck someone inside of MI6."

Q didn't know what to say to that. He walked to where the food was laid out on the coffee table. He saw evidence of 006 having looked around.

"Your bloody cats watched me like I was the naughty schoolboy who nicked cookies. Especially the black one."

"Mombi. Ozma is the white one."

"I swear that one sniffed me and found me lacking. No one can tell me that they are not your cats."

"They don't like many humans at all."

"So why am I here?" 006 asked.

"006," Q started.

"Alec. If you're fucking my best mate, Alec, Q."

"Alec, grab your food." Q grabbed a random box and opened it. He grinned at the spicy curry inside. He grabbed another to get some rice but instead found plain noodles. He opened the next two containers and found Pad Thai in one and found a mild curry in the second. Q frowned. Alec set down a plate and grabbed the noodles, putting half out on the plate before he dumped the second half on another plate on the far side.

"I wasn't sure which you liked so I got enough of the mild to share."

"I like the spicy. What's the Pad Thai for?"

"Your snack later. So, I ask again. Why am I here?"

Q picked up noodle from the plate and dunked it into the curry. The taste was different as he chewed but not something he hated.

"I was put off rice a long time ago. Too much of it on a mission," Alec said as a way of explaining what Q had never asked.

Q poured some of the spicy curry over his noodles and picked up the chopsticks to give it a good mix. He wandered toward his guest bedroom. Q opened the room and waved for Alec to follow him. Q pushed back some computer pieces and sat down on his tabletop.

"Interesting set up for a guest room."

"The only overnight guests that I let sleep, or not, are in my bed. Or they are passed out on the couch drunk."

"So which am I?"

"Neither. I don't need another Double-O getting into my place for a good fuck. Now, Alec, since you want business before the pleasure of food. The wall there." Q pointed at the panelled wall. Mycroft had bought the flat for Q as a gift after University, so he had used his money to build how he wanted.

"What about it?"

Q reached behind himself for the half made tablet that was laying on the table in the mess of computer parts. Q woke it up, and it sparked, so he grabbed a screwdriver and tightened the little screw that was loose. Q typed in the command he wanted as soon as the cursor started to blink. The third panel over flipped open. Alec jumped back, expecting something to attack him. Q could see his eyes light up though as he looked at what was inside. There were five guns aligned in a row in the centre.

"What are these?"

"Totally untraceable guns. There are no serial numbers, and no part was made in a factory. Guns of my own making somewhere that you will never visit. The bullets are the same." Q typed three more codes into the system. The panels over those three areas didn't open but went clear enough to see the two assault rifles in the one, the shotgun in the second, and the sniper rifle in the third. "All of the guns are the same."

"You have a stockpile of illegal guns? The quartermaster of MI6 has an illegal stockpile. No wonder James visits you."

"James doesn't know about these. There is one other wall that will interest you, of sorts." Q typed in a code, and a drawer shot open. Inside were blank passport and license blanks.

"You...I think I love you."

"Get me one of each, and I'll have you out of here with what you need to track and find Bond."

"I will find him." Alec grinned again and started to eat quickly after he grabbed and tossed what Q needed to him. Q walked over to the wall on the far side of the room and typed a single command into the tablet before tossing it back to the table. The wall went clear again but this time to become a computer screen and a keyboard popped out of the wall. A slip of metal came out of the wall just big enough for Q's plate.

"Do you like my evil tech lair?" Q asked with a smile as he fed the card into a slot in the wall before slipping the passport into a different spot. A chair came up out of the floor for Q to sit on. He started to work up a background for Alec.

"Your tech lair is awesome. So what are you doing now?"

"Creating a background to get you where you need to go without tripping a single eye in your direction."

"So what is your real name, Q?"

"My real first name is nothing that you need to know. I don't even let my mother call me it even though she is the one that chose the horrid name and I've not told Bond anything relating to it so why would I tell you?" Q hit print, and the machine whirred to life.

"You have an impressive setup, Q. One would worry who you really are."

"Yes, well. Sometimes to get the best, one has to look the other way. Trust that I would rather die than let England fall. You are Alexis Vanderbilt, not of those Vanderbilts. I have a camera setup that will pass for your job as a wildlife photographer who specialises in flora and fauna of Turkey, and it's areas. No matter how deep the background, no one will question your identity. I used to do this for my brother when the occasion called."

"Brother huh?"

"Brothers. Two older and yes, Bond knows that."

"So you and he do pillow talk?"

"No, he came over after I'd had a row with my lesser older brother. Now, if you do something and cock this up, I'll make sure that no one believes you that you got these things from me. I'll burn you to the ground to keep my secrets."

"You know that bloke in your branch who is scared of you? I think that I know why."

"He's scared because after I took over as Quartermaster, there were a few holdouts who wanted the treasonous bastard who killed the former Quartermaster back. So I picked up a gun that had been returned to me after a mission and I fired the remaining magazine at him."

"At him. Not into him."

"No. Five around his head, two at the apex of his underarms. One at each side of his stomach and the final just a scant half an inch under his balls. Had to fill the holes in the wall but no one questioned my competency anymore." Q stopped talking because he remembered that when he had got home Bond was there and fucked him all night. "Bond shagged me all night that night. I suspect he was there in the branch and I didn't know it."

"Lethalness is a turn on to us Double-O's. I will warn you that if the other Double-O's learn about you two, they will stay away. We don't go after each other's claims. No other Double-O will fuck you for fear of pissing him off."

"I don't sleep around. I don't date really either. Most of the time I take care of myself because I am too busy to go out and pull. I've had more sex in the six months I've been quartermaster than I have since Uni. I don't think I have time for more sex."

Alec laughed and looked at Q like he was a strange creature that he had never seen before. However, Q didn't care. He grabbed the passport as it slid out of the printer hole and handed it to the agent. Alec flipped through it. His eyes wide as he took in the stamps from countries with entry and exit dates that looked perfect.

"There is a stamp for Russia."

"Even globetrotters want a vacation somewhere that has nothing to do with work. When you are not on a mission, you tend to cuss in Russian, and I was afraid that you would slip when you aren't thinking of it."

"Thank you. What do you put the odds on that someone from the organisation who stole the drive will be there looking for him?"

"Slim." Q's computer beeped, and he turned back to look at it. "M's pulled back searchers for Bond's body. It was the team that was working on Ronson."

"Did he..." Alec didn't finish it.

"He's still in critical condition as of the last update. Bond giving what little aide he was able helped stabilise the blood loss enough for the medics to get there. I upped the security, and I don't think that M or Tanner realised it. I can see them going after Ronson because he saw who attacked him."

"I heard you demanded that bird to come to you before she was debriefed."

"She saw the man who Bond was fighting, and I have a lady who used to help the Met on sketches of suspects. She's damned good, and the Met hates that someone else stole her. She did that for fun, but her love is in viruses that make Ebola look like a cold."

"You like dangerous things don't you?" Alec asked.

"I like dangerous things that I can control. Why do you think I do so well as Quartermaster?"

"The death and injury rate for all agents in this job has gone down. Medical sent out that report just days ago. I saw it on M's desk. Medical doesn't know what to attribute that to. Whether MI6 is recruiting less reckless people or what. Agents know what it is and there is a reason that you were not allowed to run today's mission."

"M didn't care what happened as long as the drive was brought back. I'm well aware." Q didn't say anything about the report he had filed when Mycroft had sent for it. Even MI5 had heard about what happened just hours later. Q knew that there were many wanting to replace M because while she had been a good leader when the world was entirely in shadows, the new shadows were beyond her. Q was the first step in pulling MI6 into the New Age. Q also knew from Mycroft that there was the talk of a merger of divisions of SIS. Q did not like it, and he would fight it. He didn't have time to worry about domestic things so if it went through, he would demand another equal to him to run domestic things. "Good luck, Alec and please do bring back the equipment in one piece."

"You know sometimes I think you say that just to make sure that we do break things." Alec looked totally unapologetic, and Q knew that he was. None of the Double-O's apologised for breaking the tech that they were sent out with.

"Sometimes breaking things is the only way you escape. When you get back, if you don't cause an international incident, I might show you the pocket flamethrower that I have in development here at home."

"Pocket flamethrower?"

"Bond says that you like fire."

"You might become my favourite person ever."

"Yes well..." Q grabbed a small box from the pile on the desk it was the next design of comms that he wanted agents to use in the field. "These are a prototype. I'll be able to trace you with them, and you can talk to me through it. It'll translate all verbal speech of yours to a text that will arrive at my phone and vice versa. I've already factored in your speech. I made sure that it worked for all agents by playing back comm recordings. If you do have to ditch them, please make sure that the item can't be recovered."

"Yes, Sir." Alec gave Q a cheeky smile.

"Finish your meal. I'll wash up and put the rest up."

"How do you like the curry with noodles?"

"It's different and not horrible. I'll try it with the mild later and see if I like it." Q grabbed his plate again to finish eating. The food wasn't anywhere near warm, but Q ate food at whatever temperature it was. He was used to it, getting distracted in Uni meant that it was sometimes hours later when he remembered he had been eating before getting some inspiration.

Alec left after he finished his last bit of food with Q's promise that a ticket would be waiting on him at the airport under his assumed name. Q even had what the man needed to keep his cover as a photographer. Alec went to his flat to get what he needed as far as clothes.

Q hacked satellites to try and figure out if he could see what was going on in the area where Bond had gone down. There were none in the area. There hadn't been as after Bond had been shot every eye had been pulled back. Even the ones that Q had tasked to to get him eyes there. Q had no way of tracing the man. M had not allowed Q to put a new tracker in the man after the last had been removed for a mission. Q had several that would never need to be removed.

The food was put away, but Q couldn't sleep. He looked at the bed still messed up from his sleep the night before and frowned at it before going to the living room and finding something on the TV that wouldn't piss him off and let it play while he worked on a new project of his that he wanted to see put into every single agent. He didn't realise when he fell asleep.

XxXxXxX

It was the talk of MI6 when Q went in two hours later than average, that Alec had dropped off the map. It couldn't be helped, and Q had made Tanner aware that Q had been called to Home Office to discuss the hard drive. In fact, Mycroft had been waiting in the limo when Q had woke up. Q had thrown on a nice suit and climbed into the limo with barely a glance at the man that was seated beside Mycroft.

"This is MI6's Quartermaster?" the man asked, and it was then that Q remembered who the man was.

"Yes, Mister Mallory, I am the Quartermaster for MI6. You are the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wonder why you want to meet with me."

"All of the reports on yesterday's incident were sent in before the close of the day, and I spent the evening looking at them. The PM is very upset about several things. One, three reports differed from everyone else's, other than your own. M's own report glossed over the fact that you said that you had a way of tracking the hard drive. Tanner's had it listed there as did two others in the room, the rest left it out. I want you to tell me what you did to the hard drive to make sure that no one could access it even though you had never touched it."

Q detailed what exactly he had done and when what he said went over the man's head, Mycroft stepped in to explain it. Q kept his cool because while this was a meeting that it seemed was going to be off the books, Mycroft had a recording device out, one of Q's construction.

"And what of the other agent?"

"Which other agent?"

"006, Alec Trevelyan."

"007's best friend. He's either in a bar passed out drunk after the death of his best mate, or he's holed up in a safe house. All of the Double-O's have a residence that can't be found, I don't look too hard. 006 has a tendency to start fires but as far as I can tell he only does it to the ones that MI6 has provided them."

"Yes, I read that. So you don't find it worrisome?"

"If I remember the last time that Bond was believed dead, 006 came out of a three day bender where he was thrown out of seven different pubs inside of London alone before passing out in the holding cell inside of MI6."

"So that's a no."

"No, I am not worried about 006."

"Thank you for the report that you filed. Mycroft made me swear that no one will ever know where I got my information from." Mallory shifted in the seat and Q could still see his military background in his movements. He missed being out there and doing the things that he now only read about. Q felt sorry for him. He would have to look him up and see what caused him to move to politics instead of staying with the military.

"I cannot condone sending out an agent and not give them everything that we can give them. Moneypenny should never have been asked to make that shot." Q still seethed over that. There were reasons that agents were rated for specific firearms and shots. If not, they could be forced to do what Moneypenny had done. Moneypenny could have refused to take that shot. Nothing would have been done to her but now she was going to face being pressured into making a bad judgement call, and if Q had anything to do with it, she was going to be pulled from active field duty and not go back until she got an ethics class.

"That is agreed. She is not a sniper, and her sniper skills are subpar according to the report of her training. Do we know the location of where Bond was shot?" Mallory looked at Mycroft first before looking at Q next.

"Not until a body is recovered or Moneypenny makes it back to London," Q said. He looked at his brother who was silent for once, and Q wondered why. Mycroft had a stake in this as well.

"So how is this going to proceed?" Mallory

"Until the hard drive is hooked up to a computer I can't track it. I will know within half an hour of it being plugged in. I've had two other Double-O agents already request to be sent as a team instead of getting a random agent."

"I think it's best," Mallory agreed.

"You have always been an excellent liar, Q but I've always been able to tell when you are lying. Today, however I can't tell if you have lied about anything," Mycroft finally said. He looked almost proud. Mycroft was a very strange older brother, but then Q was a very strange younger brother. None of the Holmes brothers could claim to be normal.

"Good, then you have plausible deniability."

"What?" Mallory asked.

"Gareth Mallory may I introduce you to my youngest brother, Quintavius Holmes, and please never call him Quintavius. Q is perfectly fine. He's only answered to it since he was six months old. Set poor Mummy into a fluster but we all adapted.

"Dear God above, there is another one of you?" Mallory asked, and he did look a little frightened.

"Yes, three of us but don't worry, Mallory, I am the most normal of the three of us or at least the best at appearing normal. I don't attack unless provoked."

"Can you do that thing that Sherlock does?"

"We all do," Mycroft and Q answered at the same time.

"And you became the Quartermaster?"

"Mycroft was unfortunate to let me overhear many things that I never should have when I was young and impressionable. I was already trying to figure out how to make a living off of the computer work that I was already doing and well, when I heard about the Quartermaster of MI6, I was entranced, and there was nothing else that swayed me from it. I obtained rank in MI5 under an assumed name because I did not want my last name to get me things that I hadn't earned. It took longer than I wanted but M finally saw me and recruited me just over nine months ago. I was supposed to be R until such a time that Boothroyd retired, and I had brought the computer systems of MI6 kicking and screaming into the modern age. Then the traitor killed Boothroyd to get his job. Now I oversee a bunch of agents who never know what to think of me and my R is the one updating the systems."

"Yes, I was briefed on her. She's a right terror. I received no less than six emails from her about leaks in the mainframes that are connected, however small, to MI6."

"She does her job right. Those leaks can allow someone from your systems to back-hack into mine with little pause. I'll be submitting a report to the Home Office within the month that shows every single weak point."

"How can you know about a weak point from a system that you had no access to?" Mallory asked. He jumped a little when Q grinned at him.

"I hack them. I spent years in and out of all of the SIS systems without a single person ever knowing. Thankfully I plugged most of the leaks from the outside. It's why M hired me. I found a link attached to a former employees file that was unnoticeable just a few months before I was courted by M. I removed its ability to do anything of consequence but I'll know if someone tries to access it."

"Who?"

"Tiago Rodriguez. I never did find what it was supposed to do as it was incomplete. He's supposedly dead. Given to the Chinese after he started to hack them. We got six agents back, and they were pleased. We never received a body, so it's unsure if he's dead. His file lists him like that, but I don't trust without a body, and even then I'm not sure I do."

"You fit right in as Quartermaster, Mister Holmes. I'll look into the man and see what I can find. I have contacts in the Chinese government that might be able to help me with it. If he had a link to this file with no apparent cause, there is a reason to believe that he thinks he can do something with it."

"Yes. I think so as well. His skills in his file put him up near me in skill, so I have to wonder what he was going to do with it. If he's alive, he's going to come after M because she is the one that gave him over."

"I'll make those inquiries as soon as possible. Here we are." Mallory prepared to leave the limo, but he looked at Q for a few seconds before nodding. The door was opened just as Mallory started to get out of his seat. Mycroft watched the man leave but didn't get up. The door was shut again, and the driver did not get back inside.

"There will be a deep look into what's happening. For now, keep everything very close to the vest and only give what you have to give. Your deck of aces in the hole might just be what saved MI6."

"The idiots who think that technology can replace what our agents out there in the world are doing are stupid. I believe in technology but it can be tricked, and if all one relies on is what a speaker can hear, one can never see the lips of the man moving."

"You and I agree on that, Q. I've done what I can, but there are those who don't like the money spent to keep MI6 going."

"Yet the Americans keep the CIA going and have never tried to get rid of it. And they have few neighbours as close as we do."

"My compatriots say that we should be above thinking the worst of everyone like our American cousins."

"Thinking the worst is what got us through World War II."

"I have a meeting with a few people who are very interested in getting rid of MI6. Anthea is away from me today, how do you feel about sitting and acting like my secretary for about an hour?"

"Why?"

"Because they have some interesting things to say about MI6 and I'd rather you listen in than to have to listen later. I'm recording the meeting so no worries about actually taking notes. Just play on your tablet and act like you are taking notes."

Q still bristled when Mycroft told him to play on his computers. It was a holdover from when Q was a child. The meeting had been an eyeopener, and Q wanted to find out who was campaigning for this.

Q-Branch was a flurry of activity and Q was happy to see that Moneypenny was seated with the sketch artist with everyone giving them a wide berth. Q went to his office to go over everything that had been found out in the hours since he had left. A single email turned Q from a calm man to a seething ball of rage. There was already a team cleaning out Bond's flat. Q made a note on a pad in his own version of binary to have a few friends of his break into the storage unit and move the things to somewhere safe. The flat was going to be sold and set into an account with all of Bond's money in it. There was also the matter of Bond's property in Scotland. Q looked into that and found that it was the manor house that he grew up in. Q deleted those files. There wasn't a body, and until there was a body, Bond's will would not be read. Q found the newest will that Bond had filled in and it had a codicil that until he was missing for three years without proof of a body, his will was not to be executed. There was little that Q could do about the flat but he could stop Bond from losing his home.

"Q?" a voice asked, and it took a few seconds for Q to realise that it was Moneypenny as he had only heard her voice over the comms before.

"Yes?"

"M wanted me to get kitted for another gun."

"You were involved in a friendly fire incident, and psych has not cleared you. Q-Branch cannot give you a new weapon until you are cleared by psych. As soon as you are, I will gladly give you a new handgun."

"M wants me back out as soon as possible to look for information on where the hard drive is."

"I cannot give you a weapon until you are cleared."

Moneypenny stood and stared at Q as he actually did work for what was coming up in the day as far as looking for Bond went. Q had facial recognition going on all pictures posted on social media that was open for public viewing. Q also had discreet eyes on every server that housed medical information that he could access in the Middle East to search for someone with Bond's description. It was a long shot that Bond would take himself to a medical person but if someone else found him and took him.

One Week Later

Q heard his phone vibrate and he frowned. It was three a.m., and everyone else should be asleep. He grabbed the phone from where it was beside him on the worktop of the table, and he frowned.

Found something you might be interested in. Come to 221B Baker Street.-SH

Sherlock had not contacted Q in months. Sherlock tried to act like Mycroft and Q didn't exist unless he needed them. Q set down the tweezers he was using to solder in wires on the new gun interface that he was working on. Q turned off the soldering iron and laid it out of the way to cool down. He pushed his chair back from the table before walking out of the room and going for the gun safe that was on a table in the living room. Q had spent months getting approved to be allowed to carry a gun. With the death of the former Quartermaster, it was stupid to not allow him to protect himself. Of course, MI6 had given him a specific gun that was his and Q was going to carry it, but he was also going to carry backups.

Q's preferred back holster was hanging on the wall above the safe and Q put it on, looping it through the loops on his jeans. He had worn his thick jeans as he was planning on soldering most of the night and it was just better. When he was done, he opened the safe and checked the gun over before putting the safety back on and slipping it into the holster. Q was wearing a T-shirt, but it was chilly outside, so he grabbed his leather jacket from the coat hanger that one of his Branchers had made for him. It was made out of railroad spikes. That had been fun to get, and Q did adore it.

The walk to find a cab was extended and Q didn't relish walking to his brother's. Getting into the cab, Q thought about the case his brother had worked with the man who convinced people to take poison. He mused on that and the doctor that he had allied himself with. Q had not met him officially, but he had looked him up. John Watson was a very nice man who had a lot of issues that strangely being around Sherlock was curing him of.

Q looked up at 221b Baker Street and grinned as he saw Sherlock in the window looking down at him. Sherlock waved him up. Q found the front door unlocked, Sherlock's arrogance that no one would walk in with him living there. The stairs up the B flat were silent, something that was strange in a building as old as it was.

John Watson was standing at the doorway to the flat with blood on his glove covered hands.

"Sherlock tells me that you are his brother. I wasn't aware that he had a second one."

"Yes, I'm the youngest and to Sherlock, the black sheep as I followed Mycroft into serving the Queen and Country instead of helping him solve murders." Q tried to look past the man and into the flat, but Watson was staying right there.

"Sherlock might be an idiot and doesn't care about the drunk homeless man that he brought in here, but I want to warn you that he's not himself. He's been shot twice just over a week ago, and the issue was that one of them had splintered into his shoulder. He's in pain, and he tried to drink that pain away. I can't give him anything until I know how drunk he is."

"I'll be careful. Where was the second shot?"

"Just barely missed anything vital on his side."

Q pushed passed the man and executed a move that would have made his Double-O's proud to escape the man trying to grab him.

"He's one of your right?" Sherlock asked pointing at the man on the sofa.

Q looked down at Bond who was shirtless, and Q could see the wounds on him.

"His?" Watson asked.

"One of his spies that runs herd over. Mycroft told me to keep my homeless on the lookout for someone masquerading as a homeless man and to call him. Since it came up when we were talking about Q, I thought maybe Q should know first."

"Yes, he's one of mine. He's not homeless, but as any good agent knows, no one looks at the homeless." Q looked at Sherlock with a smile. "Or cabbies."

"His wounds were too well cared for. I knew he wasn't homeless from that alone."

"Q," Bond uttered, his voice hoarse. He raised his good arm up, and grimaced. Q looked at Sherlock and knew that no matter what Q did his brother would know that they were intimate, so Q sat down beside him on the couch, making sure not to hit the man's injured side. He caught Bond's questing hand. Bond though still moved, and Q didn't fight it. Bond's hand touched Q's jaw. "Real."

"Infection?" Q asked.

"Just bad enough and coupled with the alcohol, he's a little out of it."

"I doubt he's as drunk as you think. Just give him the strongest antibiotic that you have."

"I can get something in an IV and that would be better but without his medical history I don’t want to take chances."

Q pulled his phone from his pocket and typed in the command to give him the file that he had downloaded before he handed it over to Watson. "Sanitized for the name but it's got everything he's ever been given and when and why and his reactions."

Watson looked over the list for a good twenty minutes while Q watched as it seemed Bond fell asleep holding Q's hand. Watson handed the phone back before he looked at Sherlock.

"You can come with me to get everything that he'll need."

"I can get medical supplies in the morning. I just need something for tonight. Just write it all out what he needs to have done. Dressing changes and such. I have someone who will be back within ten hours to take care of him."

"His file was updated with these injuries but not totally."

"He was shot in Turkey a week ago, and I assume made his way back here."

"I asked Sherlock what Q was short for and he told me that he didn't know."

Q laughed but stopped when it woke Bond up. He shook his head but ignored the doctor for a moment while he texted Alec that the stray cat had come to his place again. Q hoped it meant what he thought that it did. The agent had texted it to him just days before and told him to keep an eye out at his flat for a stray cat. Q had assumed that it meant that he had not found Bond's body.

When did the bugger show up?

I don't know. I caught him on camera today. I took him back to mine until you get home.

There were no more replies, so Q slipped his phone back into his pocket before looking down at Bond again.

"How did you get him up here?"

"He came with us easily enough. He can walk, he's just a little unsteady."

"Get me things to clean him up a little before I take him back to mine?" Q questioned, looking at Watson because Sherlock was going to be useless and he would rather have the doctor out and about instead of sitting there and watching Sherlock question him.

"How does he not know what your nickname stands for?" Watson asked.

"He deleted that information from his mind long ago. I don't like my first name, and so he respected my wishes to only call me Q when I was a toddler. Then he probably realised that he didn't need to know why I was only called Q and deleted that as well."

"Only you Sherlock would forget your brother's name on purpose."

"Sometimes I feel like I should delete the whole of my brother's from my mind." Sherlock wasn't looking at either of them. He was back to looking out the window.

Watson left the room with nothing else said. Q waited and after it was sure that the man wasn't in earshot Sherlock finally spoke to him.

"Does Mycroft know that you are sleeping with one of MI6's Double-O's?"

"No, and he doesn't need to. I've not let him make a decision about who is in my bed since I started to think about my sexuality. And it's sex, Sherlock. He still sleeps with anything that moved, but after a mission, he comes to me. It's better than him possibly injuring a normal person who doesn't understand what he went through."

"You mean used to."

"What?"

"He's not slept with a single, married woman in months. He asked for you and thought that I was you at first until he told me that I couldn't be. He doesn't have a good hold on his mouth at the moment. I'd make sure that whoever comes to watch over him knows about the two of you."

Q looked away from his brother and looked down at Bond. He knew that Sherlock believed what he saw in Bond's behaviour, but there was no way that it was true.

Three hours later, Q was watching Bond sleep in Q's bed. Q had cleaned up Bond at Sherlock's at least enough to where he didn't smell anymore. Watson had then helped Q get Bond to Q's flat and the IV hooked up. There were detailed instructions on paper in Q's bathroom on what to do with the man over the next few days. Watson would come back then to check on him and see if it was okay to give Bond oral medications.

Bond was asleep and had been since getting a blood alcohol level on him, and Watson had given him something to help with the pain. Q had those in pill form for after the injection wore off. Those Q had in his safe in his bedroom just to make sure that Bond couldn't get to them.

Q tried not to think about the way that Bond had cuddled in the cab on the way from Sherlock's flat to Q's. It was very different from the man that Q knew him to be. Q didn't know what to think about it. Q wanted to forget it, but he didn't have the capability like Sherlock did.

Bond shifted on the bed, and Q stood up to leave, not wanting Bond to see him watching him sleep. Bond didn't wake up though. He just shifted to try and turn onto his side. The pain stopped him, and he laid back down on his back. Mombi ran into the room and jumped up onto the bed. She sniffed at the bandage on Bond's shoulder before she licked it a few times. She climbed up onto him and curled on his chest where the blanket had slipped down. Bond's good arm lifted up, and for a few seconds, Q was worried about his cat until Bond's fingers tangled in Mombi's fur not to hurt but to pet. A few pets later and the hand relaxed, staying on Mombi's body though.

Q made himself leave then because while he didn't have work the next day, he did have things that he needed to get done for a mission. Q had worked the past week, and with all of the stress of what had happened, Psych had sent around nicely worded reminders that giving no time meant that people were more likely to burn out. So staffers that had been there for days were sent home for a single day. Q had made sure that his people had not worked like that but his own days off had to be approved by M and she had not approved anything. The witch hunt over the drive had been putting a lot of pressure on her, but Q wondered how the idiot who had created the drive felt at this moment.

Morning dawned with Q shut away in his workroom with one camera set up in his bedroom that he could use to monitor Bond. There was another turned on outside of his flat to watch for Alec arriving. He was shocked that the agent hadn't arrived yet. He knew that Alec had arrived back in London. He had tracked him through the airport and into a cab. Q hadn't watched him close enough in the cab and didn't feel like getting into his terminal and getting the info on where he was at the moment. Alec would arrive when he wanted.

The sound of someone moving around had Q looking up. Bond wasn't in bed anymore. Q dropped the wires he was cutting to the length he needed and turned around to see Bond standing there. The bag of antibiotics slung over his shoulder and Mombi in his arms. The cat was thrilled where she was and was purring.

"So I did find you last night? I wasn't sure. You didn't sound right."

"Actually it was my older brother. Not my eldest but still an older brother. He is currently living with a doctor. Formerly an army doctor. He finished patching you up and helped me get you here."

"I went to my flat. It was empty."

"Your things are in storage but not where M left them. I moved them and made sure that nothing happened to anything else. She had already set up the sale of it before I could stop her."

"I'm not shocked. So how bad am I off?"

"You should have stopped for care in Turkey, but really you aren't that bad off. Watson got the bullet out of your shoulder. I have the fragments and when I get back to work, I'll have them analysed to see if it will help. Moneypenny didn't remember enough of the man's face to help track him down. Do you think that you could help with that?"

"Give me paper and a pencil, and I'll sketch it."

"Over there," Q said as he pointed to where his paper supplies were. Sometimes it was best to sketch things out by hand instead of a tablet and clean them up digitally. "Are you hungry?"

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

"M kept me there the past week, and so I was given a day off, so I don't do something stupid. You have me until tomorrow morning. Alec's back in London, and he'll be here at some point. The berk has gone a little of the script."

"Where has he been?"

"Looking for your body and then when it wasn't where it was supposed to be, he started to look for you."

"M let him do that?"

"No. He's technically AWOL, but as the last time you died, he went on a bender no one really realises that he's gone. I kitted him out to look for you. No one was going to access that drive, Bond. I told M that. I had made sure of that from the moment that Ronson had connected it to his laptop to check it over. Ronson made it. Barely but he did. What help you did give saved his life. He'll be down for a while with therapy to make sure that he's up to snuff."

"Who is Moneypenny?" Bond asked.

"The woman who shot you."

"Oh, that's her name?"

Q wanted to snort, but he knew that Bond rarely ever talked to regular agents. Instead, on the way to a mission, he learned everything that he would need about what he was doing. For Turkey, it was learning the layout of the building that he was going into as well as everything that they had on Ronson's mission.

"Are you hungry?" Q asked. He knew that he had the makings of some things that would do well on Bond's stomach with the medicines that he was on. There was toast plenty, and he had oatmeal.

"I actually am. I can cook though."

"Mombi would hate to be displaced. I don't know if I trust coffee on your stomach, but I have some teas that would do fine."

"I'll be fine with whatever tea you are drinking."

"I have cold tea from before I went out to get your ass out of my brother's flat. You keep Mombi happy, and I'll make some tea."

"Do you have eggs?"

"Probably not. I don't remember when I last bought them and if I have them, they have gone bad by now."

"Hmm. So I lost all of my tech. What I had on me was lost in the river I fell into, but I can write out the report if you want it."

"And now you are just trying to make me bicker with you."

"Well, that's what we do. We bicker. I bring back nothing, and you yell at me for it. I say more things that piss you off, and we keep doing it until both of us are worked up, and the only way to get rid of the tension is to fall into bed."

"And you are not in any condition to do that."

"My heart's fine. I have one good hand, and last I looked when I took a piss a few minute ago, my cock was in perfect working order."

"Alec..." Q swallowed as Bond shifted to set Mombi down on the table that was just inside the door. Mombi jumped down from there and stalked off upset that she had lost her human. "Alec will be here at any time."

"And I'm sure that if he was here, he saw enough to not be shocked by finding us in bed together."

"You almost died."

"Over a week ago and I want to feel alive."

Q blinked, and it was when he opened his eyes that he realised how close Bond had got to him. Bond had him trapped inside his workroom, and there was no escape. He wondered if Bond had played it that way on purpose.

"I don't want to hurt you," Q said, and that was what it boiled down to. He didn't want to hurt him. The looking for Bond had stopped, and Q could process what he was feeling now. He didn't want to though. Bond must have seen something in Q's eyes as he darted forward faster than he should have move. "Don't hurt yourself!"

"I won't and you won't either, Quin." Bond framed Q's face and kissed him softly. Like Q was the one that was going to break. "Come on."

Q followed the hands as they pulled him backwards toward the bedroom.

"Alec will let himself in if he can. Can he?"

"I don't have the doors locked now. He can get in. Just in case I was dealing with you. I texted him and told him to let himself in. James."

"That's the first time you've said my first name when you've not introduced me to someone." Bond smiled at Q as he sat down on the bed and let go of Q. His hand reached for the IV line that was taped to the bend of his arm. Q watched him close the line and pull the line free, leaving the needle in his arm. He grabbed the medical tape on the nightstand and taped the end of the needle down to where it wouldn't snag.

"You need that," Q pointed out.

"And it'll only be out for a little while. Watson left instructions for me to shower as soon as possible and I won't shower with the line on. He did clothless dressings under the bandages just to be safe, so I could shower. I've already looked at myself. I know my body."

Bond was only in pants to make it easier to get to his wounds and if he started to sweat from the fever from the infection. Q was in sleep pants. He'd put his other clothes in the hamper after he had got home. Bond set the IV bag down onto the nightstand beside the tape and turned to look at Q again.

"I think that this is the first time that you have ever looked scared in front of me, Q. Even when facing down the thought of terrorists or mobsters or whatever you thought those men were in the lift you didn't look scared. If I didn't know you as well as I did, I would think that it truly does have to do with hurting me, but that's not what it is."

"Don't," Q whispered. He knew that he could leave. He could leave the room, leave the building and it would take Bond time to follow him. To find him. It was too close to people leaving for work for Bond to even think that going out in his pants was a good idea.

Bond held out his hand and Q couldn't stop himself from holding out his as well. Instead of linking them though, Bond looped his fingers around Q's wrist and tugged him forward. Bond scooted back on the bed as he pulled Q toward him. They didn't stop moving until Q was straddling Bond's waist as Bond relaxed on the nest of pillows that Q had on the bed. Q could feel Bond's erection even despite the pain medication, the antibiotics, and the fever that Q could feel on his skin. He knew why Bond wanted what he wanted and there wasn't going to be a way to dissuade him.

"I broke through the armour didn't I?" Bond asked.

Q wanted to shake his head no but he couldn't. He didn't think that anyone would ever do that. Mycroft had taught him how to not feel that. To feel love. To feel affection. Yet Bond had broken through that. When Q had a mission, something to do he hadn't realised what was going on but now...now he knew. He didn't like the feeling at all. He didn't like having a weak point.

"You and I need to talk about this, but that can come later." Bond leaned in and kissed Q, his good hand snaking down Q's body and slipping into his pyjama pants. Q gasped as his warm hand brushed his flaccid cock. Q wanted to reach out and grab Bond, but there was no safe place to do that, so he grabbed the headboard, tipping them back to where Bond's head thumped onto the wood. Bond only stroked Q's rapidly hardening cock tighter.

"Slick," Q gasped, ripping his lips away from Bond. Q leaned away to get the slick from his drawer before he snapped it open and waited until Bond helped him get his pyjamas off before he drizzled it on his cock, it was cold on his heated flesh and made him hiss. Bond shifted to get his cock out of his pants before wrapping his hand around both of their cocks.

"You are what I want, Quin." Bond whispered to Q, their foreheads touching. Q's eyes were on where Bond was stroking the both of them. Q wanted more, but anything more would hurt James, no matter how careful they were. This was still going to hurt him but hurt him less than anything else.

"Why me?"

"You accept me for who I am, and you've never once asked me to change a thing about how I operate, even if you berate me for what I do to your tech. You watch over all of us Double-O's like we are wayward children but wayward children that you adore. Why wouldn't I love you?"

"Don't."

"Me not saying it isn't going to make it less real. I heard your brother there. He knew it from whatever he saw on me when I reacting to you in a delirious state. Will admitting it make you feel any more than you already do?"

Q couldn't answer, and he was glad that Bond didn't push him. Q tilted his head to the side and kissed Bond. Q let himself feel Bond under him, the feel of his cock pressed against the agent's and Bond's hand stroking them both. The feel of James's mostly useless arm because of his shoulder gripping his thigh hard enough to bruise but Q didn't care. Q kissed Bond like he was dying and he wanted everything from the man. Bond gave him everything in that kiss and Q didn't realise how close he was until he felt his balls tighten. He couldn't' have stopped his orgasm if he wanted to but Bond just kept stroking him through orgasm and just a little past until he came as well.

Bond wrapped his sticky hand around Q, holding him tight.

"I love you, too," Q whispered into the skin of Bond's neck. He hoped the man didn't hear, but when the arm around him tightened, Q knew that he had.

Three Months Later

Q was working on upgrading M's software on her computer when his tablet went off. Q picked it up. M was out of the office at a meeting about the hard drive, and she wouldn't be back for a while. It's why it was perfect to update the system.

A frown stretching across his face, Q realised what was going on. Someone had slipped into the backdoor that Q had left in the system that accessed the Tiago Rodriguez file and was trying to hack the environmental controls. Q watched as the person played with a system that made them think that they were doing what they thought they were when in fact they were not.

The next notification came over Q's phone. Someone had finally accessed the hard drive and was trying to decrypt it. R was tracking them, and Q closed out what he was doing on M's computer and started to track the person who thought they were it seemed going to blow up MI6. Q wondered if there were eyes on the ground to watch. He picked up M's phone and called security.

"I have an attempt to blow up MI6 going on right now with its organisation in M's office. I want pictures of everyone who is standing around in all the areas surrounding the building. Use the cameras and send them all to my branch." Q hung up before the person on the other end confirmed it. He started to think up what cover story he wanted to happen to cover why MI6 didn't blow up just in case he wasn't able to. Q smiled as he found where the source of the hack came from.

Q ran from M's office and through the halls to the stairway that would take him closest to his branch. He ran down the steps and didn't stop until he was skidding into his desk, pressing his already bruised hip into the metal of the desk and reminding Q of the man who was at their flat and doing who knew what.

It was twenty minutes later that Q had back hacked the person and then shut them down. He fried their entire system after getting confirmation from R that her hack was coming from the same place. The only good thing was that the hard drive was fried as well.

"R, I want three kits for three Double-O's. 006, 008, and 009 will be leaving as soon as possible to the location. I want eyes over that island, and I want someone tracking everyone who leaves."

"Sir," several members called out.

"I've been on with Tanner. M knows about the attack, and she's already bitching about having her computer fake hacked."

"And it's all on the old system that I wanted to go. At least I can go to the upper codgers and tell them what could have happened if I hadn't updated all of the systems."

"Sir, security has the footage for you and will continue to look, making sure to get all faces," Maryann said. She was the almost secretary of the branch she took all calls and only transferred if it was needed.

"I want the faces. After we found and killed Patrice before he could lead us to his employer, we lost any way of tracking him."

"Well, that's what happens when a newbie is sent out," 004 said as she entered the branch. It was no secret that the Double-O's hated Moneypenny who had been passed on her Psych evaluation by M. If a Double-O was sent out with her, they mostly ignored her or gave her basic scut work as they called it. Either M hadn't picked up on it, or she didn't care that her precious Moneypenny had been relegated to the bottom of the pile. Q filed his reports as needed with the Home Office when he was asked.

Q ignored every one of his branch members as he worked on what he had to work on. He thought about messaging James but decided not to. It could wait until Q took a break to breathe on the roof. There no one would hear him.

"Sir," R's voice called from behind Q. Q was working at the helm of the room, his back to pretty much all of it.

"Yes?"

"Sir," R said again, her voice carrying a tone that told Q that she needed him to turn around. So he saved what he had up and turned around. Tanner was standing there, but it was Bond behind Tanner that drew Q's gaze.

"Look who resurrected," was all that Tanner said.

"Bond, welcome back," Q said.

James's eyes crinkled in humour.

"One would think that getting into M's office would be hard, given what happened today," James said.

"Yes, well. Security it seems has gotten lazy without you around."

"Too true. I'm here for a weapon to use for my testing to come back to duty. It seems that I am needed."

"Hmm." Q moved over to where all of the guns from the armoury were stored. After the attack on Boothroyd and the woman who killed him getting into the empty armoury for the range, all guns had been pulled back into Q-Branch for safe keeping. Q opened the drawer that held the handguns and pulled out James's preferred weapon. He checked it over himself before signing it out and handing it over with three extra magazines. "It's good to have you back, Bond."

"It's nice to know I've been missed."

"My budget has not."

James and Tanner left with no other words. It would be hours before the three Double-O's were to arrive in the area near Macau and find the island that the man who tried to blow up MI6 had been hiding. Instead of waiting, Q dropped himself into coding for a flash drive for the Double-O's to use to hack a computer without the help of Q-Branch for missions that constant contact was impossible or too risky.

"Quartermaster?" another voice called out hours later.

"Yes?"

"M wants you in her office."

Q looked at the time and realised that James would just be done with his recertification and would probably be getting the results. Q closed down his workstation and changed it all over to his tablet before grabbing it and making his way to M's office at a slow pace.

Mallory was in M's office, and a dour look was on M's face while Mallory looked almost content.

"Yes, Ma'am," Q said as he sat down in front of M.

"I want Bond sent out to meet with the other three Double-O's sent out."

"That would be a waste of time. They are already more than halfway there and to wait that long would mean more time for the people to escape. So far no one has left the island, but that can change. I have eyes on the whole of that island."

"I agree with the Quartermaster," Mallory said.

"He's the best we have."

"Yes, he is and let's keep him here until we know who we are chasing. I gave you the report on today's hack. You've admitted yourself in that email that it could be Rodriguez and China has never given us an answer on whether they still have him or buried him. While whoever did the hack was there near Macau, it might have been someone else. I have security's recordings of every face near the building in the hour before the attempted attack and for two hours after. I am running them through facial recognition and waiting to see if anything pops."

"I did not tell you to do that," M said.

"No, Ma'am you did not but explosions like that, someone was going to be here to see it, and when nothing happened, they would step up and see if they can find out why. We didn't scramble to arms. We stayed as we were which is going to piss this person off. I fried their systems so they are either trying to bring them back online thinking that it was a fluke that I overloaded them or they don't think we can trace them at all. If we delay, we could lose them."

M looked at Q like he was betraying her. Q wondered if she was so used to being obeyed that disobeying was like a betrayal. Q's tablet went off, and he looked down at it. It was another hack through the same old system. Q watched as the person breached the system looking around. Q turned out M. He was sure that he was going to get it for it, but when the door opened, and Q smelled James's cologne, Q gave a few seconds to the others and realised that no one was talking to him, so he went back to watch where the person was looking around.

Q was lost in watching, and he didn't realise that James had touched him until his fingers dug into Q's shoulder. Q looked up to see Mallory, Mycroft, and M staring at him.

"Hullo," Q said, looking at Mycroft. "When did you get here?"

"I came in with Bond. What has your attention so rapt?" Mycroft looked very intrigued at the hand that James had not removed from Q's shoulder. Q spared a quick glance up at James to see him smirking at Mycroft. Q wondered precisely what James was thinking.

"The same hacker trying to see how his plan failed and seeing what else he can do. I haven't shut it down because I wanted to see if they came back and knowing that someone is still looking means that they got something back up."

"In the same location?" Mallory asked.

"Unknown but R is finding out. I only have my tablet, and it's not good enough to back-hack without being caught. M's computer isn't either given the security that has to be on that computer." Q sat back as the person left the system, not closing the hole that was behind.

"And the hard drive?" Mycroft asked.

"I fried that. 006 will confirm when he lands, but if anything is pulled off of it, it'll be letters with no way of being able to form enough of a name to match it to anyone. I'm not even sure I could find anything on it. That might be what is taking them so long to flee the island, waiting to see if they can salvage the hard drive."

"If this is Rodriguez, what's his goal?" Mallory asked.

"Unsure at this point. With me blocking him from actually getting access that he wants, I can't tell what his goals are. I also will not give him actual access to the system. Whoever is doing the hacking has enough skill to cripple us." Q couldn't mind read from code, but he wasn't going to take his turning foul mood out on Mallory.

"Let's not give him access," Mallory said.

"You are not the one to decide that," M said.

"No he's not, but if you order me to, I will quit," Q said.

"Mister Holmes, I think that this might be a good time for me to take your brother back to his branch," James said looking right at Mycroft.

"You are not dismissed, 007."

"No, Ma'am but I don't need to be here for this part. Neither does Q. I'll escort him to his branch and then come back up and wait outside." James's grip on Q's shoulder tightened and tugged him up. Q followed the tug and tried to hold his mouth until they were out of the room.

"You just outed us to Mallory, M, and Mycroft."

"Neither you or he denied the brother thing. I knew there was something slightly familiar about you. So you are the Holmes brother that I've never heard the name of."

"Yes."

"It's good that I am not scared of your brother. There is just three of you right?"

"Yes, after the third son, Mummy gave up on trying to get a daughter." Q didn't protest James putting them into a lift. He did, however, make a noise of protest when James hit the stop button, and the lift stopped. James crowded him into a corner, nosing in at his neck and taking a deep breath. Q was ridged against the wall until he realised that James wasn't going to do anything more than what he was doing.

"I was out on my run and not only did Moneypenny see me when she was out to a lunch with Mallory and Tanner, but they both saw me as well. So I came in from the cold. I had to list an address, and it's not going to take long to figure out that it's yours."

"I won't lie, not about that."

"No, I didn't think so. There is nothing in the rules about fraternisation. Unless you were my direct boss then I would be moved but we both answer to M and we both know that I'll follow your orders when I am in the field about as much as I did before. Since I don't follow M's orders that much either, I don't think that anyone is going to have a problem with it."

"I would have liked some warning though, James."

"Oh, yes because I was going to tell them that I needed to call my boyfriend. Q I wasn't going to tell them anything and getting on my phone would have looked weird."

"I know." Q sighed, taking in the feel of James pressed against him. James's recovery from his wounds had taken time, not the amount of time that he had been gone but that was mainly to deal with the emotional trauma that neither of them mentioned that he had. Bond had trusted M to trust that he would get his job done and she had broke that trust when she had Moneypenny take that shot. Q didn't talk about MI6 much when he was home with James. A lot of the beginning was helping James with his recovery and trying to make sure that Alec didn't burn the flat down. Q had been looking into basement flats for the agent to move into that might not burn if they were all stone but so far had found nothing that was safe enough for him to live in. Alec had moved into the flat with Q to help James and thankfully had moved out the same night that he had caught James fucking Q over the counter in the kitchen after a cooking lesson had turned into a makeout session which had turned into sex. Alec hadn't really been that shocked by it he was more more shocked that James felt good enough for sex. Alec wasn't needed to make sure that he didn't do anything stupid when Alec wasn't on a mission.

Q had learned a great deal about James, and by extension, the rest of the Double-O's, spending as much time with James and Alec as he did. Q had become a better person at helping them with their missions because of it. Q didn't see the agents under his care as expendable. He never had. MI6 was only as good as the agents that went out and did the work the rest of them couldn't do.

The lift started up again while James was still pressed into Q.

"James, if that lift door opens and someone sees us, you are on the couch for the next seven nights that you are home," Q threatened.

James started to laugh, but he didn't pull away until after the doors were open and the gasp of Moneypenny was heard. Q groaned to himself while James pulled back, smirking. James pressed a kiss into Q's head before leading him out of the lift and towards that doors that led to Q-Branch. James dropped him off with a promise of dinner brought to the branch for him and R. Every single eye in the branch was looking at them and tried not to stare at Q for too long after James left.

Q wandered into his office and grabbed the drive with the designs he had for the new layout of the entirety TSS when it came under his purview over the next few months. It was the first step in getting MI6 up to snuff with the rest of the world. Tanner and Q were both working on that very closely.

"You knew that he was alive!" Moneypenny demanded as she entered Q's office before he could exit it. Q looked up at her shocked.

"Shut the door," Q demanded as he backed up and sat down at his desk. Moneypenny shut the door, and she tried to stand and glare at Q, but Q just glared back at her until she sat down in the chair across from him.

"My life outside of MI6 has no bearing on my life inside of MI6. When I was hired, I signed paperwork that stated that my personal life as long as it did not impact MI6 had no bearing on my work life."

"Bond is your work life!"

"M declared Bond dead within hours of him being shot and falling off of the train. No rescue or recovery effort had been completed. She had his flat cleaned out and started the process to have his will read and completed. The oath to MI6 does not go past death."

"You should have told M that he was alive."

"No, you think I should have told you. I understand that you hold guilt for supposedly causing his death but Moneypenny,you've got to learn to trust those you work with. M was not there that day. You were. There is a reason that the Double-O's refuse to work with you."

"The Double-O's don't work with anyone!" Moneypenny declared, standing up and leaning over the desk to try and get into Q's face. Q just glared at her more.

"No, they do. 002 went out with five agents and worked with all five of them because they listened. The Double-O's become Double-O's because they trust themselves to get things done. They have worked their way up to where their gut is usually never wrong. They know the feel of a room when they enter it. You trusted a woman who was half a world away, and it nearly killed one of their own, before today they thought that it had. You jumped ahead of what three other agents that were not Double-O's said and ended up killing Patrice before we could figure out who his employer was. You were the most junior agent on the team at that time."

"M told me that I would never become a good agent if I rode the coattails of others and didn't do what needed to be done. I need to step up and make a name."

"Yes, well, you have made a name for yourself. The name of someone who does what she thinks is best instead of listening to their teammates. If it was just men you weren't listening to, I could see it. Women against men and all of that shite. But you don't listen to either of the female Double-O's either. You think you know what is best when you are barely out of diapers training wise. You are trying to be a strong female agent, Miss Moneypenny but to first become one, you have to actually be an agent. You are a one-woman wrecking ball at the current."

"Bond does worse."

"And he's been an agent and a soldier before that. He has experience, and while proven wrong, he has a better track record than you. I'd trust him when he was drunk than you on your best day."

"Is that why you won't send a Q-Branch member with me on missions?"

"Yes."

"You don't trust me?"

"No. I haven't since you took that shot when you knew that you shouldn't have. M is protecting you, but right now she's more focused on herself. You need to find out what kind of agent you want to be."

"What do you mean protecting me?"

Q looked at her shocked. Q turned his to computer and found the file that was sent from Psych to the Home Office. He turned his computer around and settled back in his chair. Moneypenny's face drained of colour, and she looked at Q with a little bit of horror.

"Why do you have this?"

"I'm the handler for most missions until more can be trained to deal with the Double-O's in a fashion that they will actually allow. I have to know everything. I get every single Psych report. They recommend a desk job for a while and then go from there."

"What can they really want me to do?"

"Tanner made the comment that you have been handling Mallory well and he thought you would do good as a bodyguard/assistant as he works on the transition, being another set of eyes and ears in all of the meetings would be nice."

"M's being forced out isn't she?"

"Yes. She sees that MI6 needs a change, but she's not getting that part of that is changing her. I think you can be a good support agent and an asset here. The problem with having most of the Double-O's out on assignment is that we don't always have a lot of agents here. It would be good to have someone on hand that no one would think was an agent. I could make it look as if you had always been an assistant to someone here."

"You really can, can't you?"

"I can. It also makes it easier than bugging Mallory every time he goes to a meeting."

"You are serious," Moneypenny stated.

"Deadly. Think about it, Moneypenny. It would be hard to lose you."

Moneypenny said nothing else as she stood up and left Q's office. Q-Branchers were hanging around like they expected to see something. Where they afraid that Moneypenny was going to kill him or that they would find evidence of them having sex?

"Do you have anything better to do?" Q asked and everyone scattered. Q left his office door open and used his computer to try and hack into the connection on the other end of the person hacking. They had up their firewalls, but that didn't mean that they could keep him out.

An hour and a half later, Q was brought out of his work by his phone vibrating. He picked it up. It was James telling him that he was going to go home and get some rest and that they could talk about what happened the next time they saw each other. Q accessed the security feed for the building and found that James was outside of MI6 and hailing a cab. Q wanted to be shocked when he saw a town car pull up to the side of the road and Anthea getting out.

James looked at the woman for a few seconds before turning and looking at the closest MI6 camera. Which was the one that Q was using. Q overrode the controls for the camera as his phone went off from when James was texting him. The camera was made to make a sweep, but Q kept it still. Q sent back a single letter to James to tell him that he could go with her. Anthea grinned as James got into the car and she nodded at Q before getting in. Q felt like he should text Mycroft and tell him that he's an idiot but Q would rather wait and see what happens for himself.

The video feed to the floor of the warehouse that Mycroft had used to talk to John was still hooked up to Q's flat feed as it was near his flat and the only place that Mycroft could have Q hook up in time.

Mycroft was sitting in a chair with Sherlock standing behind him. Lights shone as the car with James and Anthea pulled up. Anthea was the first to get out, and she took a seat in the chair beside Mycroft.

"Seeing the both of you together, I can see Quin in both of you."

"Good, you know who we are," Sherlock said. He eyed James up and down before snorting.

"I know who you are yes, Sherlock. Mycroft has never scared me, as an agent or as a human. I don't know what you think this is going to do."

"Q might think that we don't love him. The three of us don't exactly know how to love, but we care for him deeply and just want you to be sure that if you ever hurt a hair on his head, things will not be pleasant for you personally or professionally."

"You'd have to get in line," James said slipping his hands into his pocket. He looked at Anthea, and she actually looked up from her phone.

"Get in line?" Sherlock asked.

"I'm fairly certain the other twelve Double-O's would skin me alive and make sure that whatever dark hole they put me in I could never get out of and even if I did Q-Branch would make sure that I had nothing left to my name that was good. I'm sure that my thighs would be donated to charities for puppies and kitties and maybe even otters. I also think that Miss Anthea there would actually attempt to break a nail harming me. I recognise you from the single photo that Q has of you. It just has an A listed as your name. That also does not include the rest of MI6 that Q has charmed or threatened to worship him."

Q snorted as Sherlock looked mildly shocked. Mycroft shifted his umbrella from one side of his crossed legs to the other. Anthea was actually smiling at James. Q picked up his phone and texted her that if she ever approached James for sex, even without his brother watching, she would never be found. Anthea actually chuckled when she got the message and looked up at the location of the camera and nodded.

"Now, Q is going to be at work until the agents he sent after this Rodriguez come home. I was going to go home and clean and make sure that when he does make it home, he won't have anything to worry about. I was also going to make sure that food is delivered for the whole of the branch but I think that you can do that Mycroft since you have delayed me. On nights like this Q likes Pad Thai. I'm sure that Anthea can get what the rest of the branch likes. Have a good evening, Messrs Holmes, Ma'am." James nodded his head and spun on his heel to leave. No one called him back, and Q started to type out what the branch wanted for dinner, and he tacked on seven Thai coffees and two Thai teas. The two teas were for him. He'd put the second in the fridge for night before the agents made landfall.

Q grinned as he screenshot the moment where Anthea was smiling at James and sent that to James telling him that no one had got a smile like that out of her since Uni. James was silent, but Q wasn't worried.

It was four days before it was all said and done. Tiago Rodriguez was awaiting execution for treason with only a few people understanding what he was guilty of. Raoul Silva was a ghost in the system that disappeared at the hands, digitally, of Q. Q had never changed his hacker handle, and while some had tried to steal the name. They never lived up to the reputation, and others took care of the fakers before Q could even do anything to the fakers.

M retired after finding out the full scope of what Rodriguez had planned for her and her most faithful bulldog agent. James wasn't sure what to feel about her retiring, and Q hadn't been able to get him to tell him much of anything. The breadth of the organisation that Rodriguez had was astounding and much more expensive than he could create in the time that he was out of the Chinese hands who after finally being confronted with images of the man in an MI6 cell, admitted to when he escaped.

Mallory was being put in place as the new M with Moneypenny as his personal assistant/bodyguard. Life was settling back to normal, at least as usual as it could be for MI6.

Q sighed as he settled down into an overstuffed armchair. James was probably out on his morning run. While James had passed the tests and was reinstated as 007, Mallory wanted him on hand to help with the transition from M to him. James didn't like M leaving, but Q could tell that he was a little more relaxed around Mallory than he had been before. Q wanted to sleep for three days, but Q knew that James wouldn't let him. James would make sure that he ate at least two significant meals each day and ply him with water.

There had been no casualties on MI6's side when going after Rodriguez and the only injury had been Alec getting shot in the meat of his thigh. It had been a near-perfect mission with the agents actually listening to Q and his staff for once. Q felt like maybe for once he could get the week off that he had been promised by Mallory before going back in and seeing about making sure that MI6 was going to stand for years to come.

"Q?" James called out as the door opened. He turned and set the alarm again and locked the door. Q hadn't engaged the security when he had come in. He was sitting with his gun still strapped to his body and his eyes on the door. Anyone trying to sneak in would get shot before Q asked a single question.

"Here," Q called out. James looked right at him. James looked well rested and Q kind of wanted to slap him. Q didn't though when James came over and dropped down at his feet. James was sweaty, and Q really wanted to take advantage of that, but he knew that he wouldn't have the energy to give James what Q really wanted to give him. Instead, Q leaned forward to rest his forehead on James's and sighed.

"Worn out?" James asked as he hands slid up Q's legs before parting them. Q hummed, but that hum turned into a gasp as James pulled him forward and coaxed him to wrap his legs around James's waist.

"Utterly," Q finally whispered as James stood up, taking Q with him. Q wrapped his arms around James's neck and laid his head down on his own arm. He could feel that James had really pushed himself. Q got his nose as close as he could to James's skin, the musk from James's run should have been a turn-off, but it wasn't. Instead, Q could feel himself start to get aroused, despite how tired he was. He wanted to just get into bed and not get out.

James dropped Q onto the bed, making him scream out a little in shock. James was in a pair of tight-fitting running shorts that Q had bought him as a joke, but the man wore nearly every time he ran when he expected Q at home or Q was already home and a T-shirt. James ripped the T-shirt off and tossed it aside.

"What did you say to me? Lie there and try to think of England?" James asked as he knelt on the end of the bed to look at Q. Q swallowed hard, thinking that James had a wicked glint in his eyes.

"James," Q said holding his hands up to try and ward off his lover. James grabbed his hands and pressed them down into the mattress.

"Don't worry, I'm going to do all of the work. You just lie there and take what I give you."

"James."

"You sleep better once shagged, Quin. You'll lie there and think about work or about what you will need to do when you go back and make lists. After a good shag, you'll fall asleep probably before I can clean you up."

"At least get me naked before." Q put on a pout that he knew would just make James even more wicked.

"I was going to."

James worked Q's trousers and pants off before making him lean up to get his tops off. James did little more than slip a finger inside before he pulled it out, rolling Q onto his side. Q looked up at James with a weird look on his face, James just grinned before slipping in behind him. Q felt the man press against him, the shorts still on him. Q realised as James pressed inside of him that the man had just lowered the shorts down to where he could free his cock.

"See, Q," James said as he was pressed all the way inside of Q. "You don't have to do anything but take it."

"James," Q moaned as James rocked his cock in and out of Q. The feel of James wrapped around him with the shorts rubbing on his skin had Q feeling like he was already so close. James wrapped one around Q's stomach, holding him right where he wanted him while the other was under his neck and wrapped to be a brand across his chest. Q clutched at that arm and surrendered to what James was doing to him.

"God, Q," James panted in Q's ear. Q closed his eyes in pleasure because James knew his body so well. After over nine months of being intimate, James knew him better sexually than anyone ever had before. James knew him better in every way than anyone ever even tried to.

Everyone else only ever saw Quintavius Holmes. Or the Quartermaster. No one tried to understand Q or even Quin. James saw Q, he saw Quin, and he saw the man that Q tried to hide from the world. James saw the man that he was and he saw the man that James was. There was never a more perfect symmetry than Q and his James.

The End