Chapter Text
The day is hot, too hot, close and humid and sticky. Later, though, it’s one of those rare summer evenings that begs to be luxuriated in and savoured by each and every sense.
Madeleine and James seem to think so too, as Q leaves Six with an invitation.
Madeleine shoos him straight out of the house when he arrives, professing her cocktail recipe a secret beyond his and James’s clearance levels.
He finds James in the garden, head tipped back, legs extended and ankles crossed. He cracks an eye open as Q nears and watches as he stretches out similarly, then more intently so as he rolls his shirtsleeves back and pops the button at his neck.
When Madeleine sets down the tray of three tinkling glasses, James snakes an arm around her waist and draws her into his lap.
“James,” she gasps in laughing protest.
Q knows what’s next. He’s heard this game play out from over his shoulder or glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye, where James ignores the waiting drink and claims a first greedy taste from Madeleine’s mouth.
Q takes a sip. It’s fragrant of orange and thyme and bitter and unctuous on his tongue, heady and slick, and for a split second he feels like James may as well be licking into him instead of Madeleine.
Madeleine gives James’s arm a playful slap, a premature end to their usual antics, and withdraws to her own seat. James finally picks up his own glass, then he pauses and turns a mischievous inquiring look on Q.
Q nearly says yes.
To what, he’s not at all sure, given so far there’s only been innuendo and unspoken offers. Still, the yes bubbles up his throat.
Instead, he averts his eyes and drinks deeply. Q’s sure they’re both watching him.
“I still don’t want to sleep with you, Madeleine,” he murmurs after a long moment.
“And I still don’t want to sleep with you, Q,” she replies evenly.
“Then… what? I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to… share.”
He pulls a face at his own ineloquence because he means sharing James, in a sense, but really he means more, but it feels presumptuous to voice the concern if a slice of this life isn’t what’s on the table.
“Share?” James prompts without a trace of humour, and Q curses him for making him say it, just as he’s grateful that James can see beyond the face value of his doubt.
Q puffs out a breath and shrugs. “I don’t want to be a third wheel, or an afterthought, or- or a bit of excitement when the fancy strikes. I’m quite sure the sex would be lovely, but it’s not all I want.”
“Okay,” Madeleine says easily.
James remains silent, but does allow a small, assured smirk.
“Okay,” Q repeats faintly. “Well. You seem to have a better grasp of this than I do.”
Madeleine leans over to squeeze his hand. “Love isn’t a commodity, Q. It’s not finite, it can’t be diluted. But it is precious.” Then she takes James’s hand and they study one another. “We have, between us, so much grief and anger, but now, for the first time, we have so much love. It feels like – it is – a miracle. How could we choose to not have more of it in our lives?”
James kisses Madeleine’s knuckles, a moment so tender it feels intrusive to watch, even though a part of Q knows that this, this love, is what they want him to see.
Having them both turn their attention back to him winds him, and he sets his glass down with a trembling hand.
He kneads his forehead. “I just- What would it even look like?”
James and Madeleine share a look that would be infuriating if James’s response didn’t completely take him by surprise.
“I imagine,” he says lowly, “it would look much like this.”
Q had expected them to paint a picture of a distant future, and he can’t help but close his eyes as his mind catches up.
He had thought this nameless thing between them had started with him walking in on them, James mercilessly edging Madeleine with his mouth as she was spread in wanton repose.
If he’d thought about it then, he would have considered it started when they gave him a key to their home.
And now, now he has the impetus to give it full consideration, he realises it started before then. It was too intangible to register despite the actions being hardly innocuous. Madeleine offering to stop by to check on his cats during a particularly awful long stretch in work. James waiting outside Six to give him an unasked for lift home. Every time they’ve invited him around to their house and expected nothing from him, not even pleasant company.
And he thinks he’s reciprocated the same care without inspecting the depth of affection that’s made him do so.
He lifts his gaze from the fingers tangled tightly in his lap.
“Okay. Yes.”
And then… nothing happens.
He’s given them the biggest, most unlikely, most terrifying yes of his life and nothing changes.
Madeleine and James ease back with twin contented smiles.
They all finish their drinks with idle chatter.
Madeleine makes a second round and shares that she’s going to sign a lease on a new office, a first step in re-establishing her full-time practice since Safin. They toast that success and tacitly so the bigger healing milestone it represents.
James recounts his latest episode of diplomatic bad behaviour he’s been dragged into, and his efforts to contain it despite the lure of any resulting lurid headlines being just desserts.
Q garners a little more sympathy with a whinge about his latest financial audit, but not much.
As the sky darkens, Mathilde slinks over, scrubbing her eyes, chased from bed as darkness falls by one of the too many nightmares that still snap at her heels. She clambers onto Q’s knee, and she’s like a furnace, but Q gladly weathers it. She flicks through cat photos on his phone while Q tells her tales of their antics.
When she’s slack and heavy with deep slumber, James carries her back to bed, but not before his fingers curl into the hair at the nape of Q’s neck and his smile turns soft. Even that isn’t new.
Only when he’s readying to leave does Q’s yes loom large.
Madeleine gives him her usual hug and kiss farewell.
Q then faces James. He looks just amused enough to convey his temptation, and Q huffs in response, but Q can tell by his gravity as James steps forward that he’s decided to forgo any mischief. He rests a hand on Q’s waist and brushes the faintest of kisses against his cheek.
Even that, even that isn’t new.
Madeleine and James lean into one another, looking relaxed. Q feels it too.
All that’s changed is a discharge of the tension that’s been building and building between them.
Q feels firmly then that whatever their future looks like, their companionship and whatever else follows, James is right in that it’ll look like this, as it’s been this way for some time.
That Madeleine and Mathilde are on one of their nights away isn’t lost on Q. It’s been on his mind all evening, all day, all week.
Now he and James are back at the house after a wonderful meal, and Q has been debating the answer to the inevitable question the whole taxi ride back.
“Tonight,” James begins, eyes roving over Q’s face. “Was it a date?”
It’s worth the hesitation, the moment of reflection, but he finds himself sure. “You know, I think it was.”
If Q had thought James intense before, he’d vastly underestimated what it’s like to be on the receiving end of James’s unfettered, smouldering attention.
Q doesn’t think of the last week or so as a stalemate, but he feels the undercurrent of caution has been purposeful on all sides. Their conversation in the garden had been about Q falling into bed with James, but more so about stepping with purpose more completely into one another’s lives. Q has the biggest leap of all to make and the furthest to fall.
So he knows he’s going to have to be the one who closes the gap, James being acutely aware of allowing Q to move at his own pace for as far as he’s willing to go.
When he does press his lips to James’s, gently, chastely, he feels James smile. It’s all he needs to let instinct take over, to bunch James’s shirt in his fists and press against him tightly.
James cups his face in both hands, a hold capable of such brutality achingly delicate as he thumbs the line of Q’s jaw and the curve of his lips, and he follows his light touches with roaming kisses that rasp against Q’s stubble.
“Upstairs?” James growls against his throat. “Or was it not that kind of date.”
“Mmm, you know, I think it was.”
On the landing, Q shakes his head, the master bedroom a step too far. James just grabs lube and condoms before following Q upstairs to what Q supposes counts as his room now.
If he’s honest, Q has spent an unreasonable amount of time considering what taking James Bond to bed would be like. First in that way that everyone who has met the man toys with the idea, and lately in a cautious exploration of what might come to pass.
Imagination is a distant second, a different class. Q’s fingers dance a path forged by endless fantasies as he unbuttons James’s shirt. The reality of James, sculpted and strong still, chest heaving under Q’s splayed palm, is more wonderful than anything he ever dreamt.
Even better is having James bare, clothes lost and defences crumbled, shuddering under his touch. For the first time, he makes sure James can’t get in a single word, and to find himself capable of it is a heady rush.
What Q hadn’t imagined at all, somehow, was James’s attention towards himself, how hungry and intoxicated James might be. James is not a man of restraint, and he’s greedy in his exploration and effusive in his praise.
It’s not like any first he’s had before. There’s no fumbling, no awkwardness in the way they learn one another, for he’s had years on years of knowing James already. He knows James’s body, its power and grace, he knows his mind, his need to be challenged and challenging in turns.
Still, new delights aren’t hard to come by. The ticklish spot behind James’s knee and the squirm it elicits, the sound of Q’s name in James’s drawl roughened with pleasure, the dead weight of James as he pins Q to the bed after and presses his face into Q’s neck.
As Q cools and the world comes back into focus, James swings his feet to the floor and sits up.
“Christ. I need a drink after that.”
This is it, Q thinks once he’s alone, this is where the line is drawn. It’s an odd sort of resigned disappointment that he sits with as he listens to the faint sounds of the shower running downstairs.
He’s still not moved when James returns, a pair of pyjama bottoms slung indecently low on his hips, with two large glasses of water.
“Don’t tell me you’re so ruined you can’t make it to the shower,” James comments as he sets a glass on Q’s side table.
The crack of melting ice is loud in the silence as Q stares at the glass, then at James as he rounds to the other side of the bed and sets his own glass down.
“You would love for me to tell you that.”
“Hmm, maybe,” James says as he sits on the bed, then he rolls so he’s flush against Q, cocooning him in the sheets. He gives Q’s side a teasing pinch. “So, are you?
Q sighs dramatically. “Too ruined to move or too ruined for other men?”
“Both, preferably.”
There’s not much to say to that, so Q gives him a withering look and wriggles free.
When Q emerges from the en suite, shower-flushed and donned in his gifted dark red silk pyjamas, James is lying down, under the covers now, arms tucked up behind his head.
“Come here,” James says softly, evidently catching Q’s surprise.
“Oh, we cuddle, do we?” Q mutters, but he’s already clambering in.
James flicks off the lamp and settles with an arm around Q, holding him close.
And this, he’d certainly never imagined this, tucked up against the bafflingly firm chest of one James Bond, fingers that have proved themselves nimble and sure now carding absent patterns through his hair.
“I don’t… always sleep well,” Q murmurs against James’s skin. “If I get up, it’s… not personal.”
The fingers still briefly.
“Likewise.”
“You better not snore.”
He feels James’s stomach jump with a silent laugh.
“Likewise.”
They laze about the next morning, both beyond meaningful sleep but happy to doze and enjoy the liminal space of a warm bed and no responsibilities.
Even the sounds of movement downstairs don’t rouse them, or when two raps on the door announce imminent company.
“Only me,” Madeleine says.
“We’re decent,” James calls back.
“You, decent?” Madeleine says doubtfully as she slips inside.
She leans back against the closed door to study them, and Q wonders if being confronted by the sight of him and James tangled in the sheets will cause any regret or jealousy.
Instead, she smiles. “Good morning, boys. Sleep well?”
James hums, and it’s so filthy that Q wants to dive under the bed from mortification.
“God. Morning, Madeleine,” Q manages. “Good trip?”
Madeleine shakes her head fondly as if finding them both ridiculous.
“Yes. You have five minutes before Mathilde comes to find you and tell you all about it. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Despite the warning, when she’s gone, James burrows up against Q’s side and props himself on an elbow to get a good look at him.
Q’s not sure what kind of first-morning platitudes James has doled out over the years, but he’s not expecting it when James says, “You hog the covers.”
Q’s jaw drops in outrage. “You hog the covers.”
James leans in, ignoring Q’s protests, and gives Q a lazy kiss.
That’s as far as he goes, though, for Mathilde’s apparently not one to leave them lounging.
When Q joins the others downstairs, Mathilde gives Q an interrogative look, then her interest in why he’s in their kitchen in his pyjamas vanishes in favour of launching into a long list of all the things they’re going to do that day.
All of this is news to Madeleine and James, and the negotiations play out while they all make a joint effort at fixing their late breakfast and setting the table.
Q’s agreeing to bug hunting at the park, amongst other things, when a familiar tone rings out repeatedly in an insistent string from over by the kettle. As much as he might want to ignore it, Madeleine clearly recognises the significance of the notifications and passes Q his phone.
“Ah, shi-ugar.”
Q reads the messages with growing gloom. Two of his agents, on different missions on opposite ends of the world, no less, are trying their best to send the Foreign Office into conniptions, and that’s just on the back of what intel has filtered out of Six’s halls so far.
“I- I’m sorry. I need to go.” He looks mournfully at the spread laid out on the table and the company he was looking forward to sharing it with. “Start as one means to go on,” he mutters, lips twitching up in an attempt at a smile.
“It’s fine, Q,” James says.
“If you say so,” Q says doubtfully.
“I do. I can drop you off at work,” James adds with a glint to his eye.
“No you bloody won’t,” Q mutters.
Turning up well shagged in yesterday’s clothes is one thing, being dropped off well shagged in yesterday’s clothes by James is another. Thank God he has a fresh suit in his office, at least.
“I can drop you off at work,” Madeleine says.
They both ignore James’s pout.
Once Q’s dressed and done bargaining another outing another day with a briefly sulking Mathilde, James walks Q to the door.
“Sorry,” Q says again, fingers flexing around the Tupperware in his hand that Madeleine has packed up for him.
“Unless you engineered an international disaster to get out of a morning after, it’s not your fault,” James says.
“You’d know, I’m sure you’ve done that before.”
“Hardly enough times to count.” He draws Q in and murmurs “It’s fine” once more against his lips.
Madeleine bustles into the hallway as she digs her car keys out of her bag, and Q regretfully lets himself be herded out the door.
As they reach her car, only making the barest effort to restrain her amused interest, Madeleine asks, “So, did you have a good night?”
As if on cue, his phone starts to ring, one of his staff with an update on the developing crises, no doubt. Q stares at it despairingly, wondering how on earth the situation might have worsened in barely ten minutes, also aware of Madeleine’s waiting gaze.
There’s no point in being coy with her of all people. He darts her a look, reddening slightly, but he allows a smile. “Yes.”
“Good,” she says brightly, then adds cheekily, pointing at his phone with her keys, “You should get that, it might be important.”
Q can’t help but voice the question that’s been plaguing him all evening.
“Do you take Madeleine there?”
It stalls James’s efforts to crowd Q backwards across the hallway, intentions for the rest of the evening more than clear, and he pulls back from mouthing Q’s neck and quirks an eyebrow. “No. Why, Q?”
“Because the waiter kept giving us funny looks all night.”
“Maybe because I was more interested in you than anything on my plate all evening.”
Q makes sure his eye roll is obvious.
Regardless, James continues to study Q, clearly waiting for Q to process what’s concerning him.
They’ve had a few of these evenings, sharing a meal then heading back to Q’s to share his bed. Only tonight it made no sense to divert there given how close they were to James’s house.
“Madeleine’s home,” Q says eventually, eyes darting to the stairs.
“Yes, she is,” James says levelly.
Q exhales gustily. “This is… so new. There’s a lot we haven’t figured out yet.”
It’s likely exacerbated by the waiter’s glances and Q’s assumptions, baseless or not, but the uncertainty has him rooted.
He looks once more to the stairs, thoughts on what lies beyond, then drops his gaze. “I’ve no interest in waking to an empty bed.”
“And I’ve no interest in leaving you alone in it.” James pulls Q closer and curls his fingers around the nape of Q’s neck. “You’re right, there’s a lot we haven’t figured out yet, but if there’s one thing you can be sure of it’s that you’re no… bit on the side, Q. Do you believe that?”
“I- Yes. I do.”
“You don’t sound entirely convinced.”
Q finally looks up and smiles crookedly.
“I suppose you’d better convince me, then.”
They’d intended to go out to celebrate Madeleine’s new office and her reopened practice. Instead, they’re all in various stages of a cold that’s been going around and all at the tail end of what’s been for each of them a very long week.
They forgo the fancy dinner for a pyjama party, the four of them bundled under a duvet watching the latest superhero blockbusters, even after Mathilde has reluctantly gone to bed.
“You could have had a more peaceful evening,” Madeleine says to Q from the other side of James when he stretches with a groan, working out the kinks of being wedged in with a wriggling child on his knee.
“Maybe,” he says, “but I’m glad I came.”
“Me too.”
“Next weekend,” James promises. “I’ll make another reservation. But for now…”
He grabs the big bag of M&Ms that Q’s allegedly been hogging all night from Q’s hand and makes a show of throwing one in the air to catch.
“Oi,” Q protests, and it devolves into an elbowing match as Q tries to get the sweets back.
“Boys,” Madeleine sighs and rolls her eyes.
Then, taking advantage of his distraction, she snatches the bag from James’s hand and tips the last few sweets, not even enough to be worth fighting for, really, into her palm.
It’s childish, and the spoils have already been won and Madeleine is certainly the victor, but the tussling continues until they’re all breathless and giddy, hushing each other to not wake Mathilde up in turns with barely suppressed laughter.
Q doesn’t think they’ve really missed out on a perfect evening, and he suspects the others would agree.
“You should probably know,” Q hears James call as he’s hanging up his coat in the hallway, “that we’ve run foul of my poor timekeeping again.”
He hears Madeleine laugh, a throaty noise that makes it clear just how they’re occupied.
Q enters the living room and immediately sighs in exasperation.
“Good Lord, people sit on that sofa, you know,” he complains. “Is this what you do when Mathilde’s at a sleepover, order takeaway and have sex all over the house?”
It’s a rhetorical question, the answer is self-evident, but James still gives Q a smug affirmative look in response.
“James,” Madeleine says entreatingly, her own complaint.
It has little effect. The tell-tale noise is obscene in the quiet, remaining a slow, slick, maddening rhythm.
“He’s a horrible man, Q,” Madeleine says breathily. “I hope he treats you better.”
The comment draws Q into an alliance, and he is one to take his allegiances seriously.
Q had intended to breeze through to the kitchen with the takeaway in question, but he finds himself depositing their dinner on the side table and crossing to stand closer.
James is kneeling on the floor between Madeleine’s legs, his trousers and boxers pulled down, her skirt rucked up, affording Q a view of James’s long, studied strokes.
They’re both watching him, drinking in his attention. An unexpected heat creeps up Q’s cheeks.
He dithers only a moment more, then he sits beside James on the floor and leans against the sofa at Madeleine’s knee.
“I suppose,” Q begins slowly, locking eyes with James, “that it would be interesting to see how long you could take it before you started begging.” Curiosity has always been Q’s guiding force, and from this new vantage point of intimacy he catalogues cause and effect. He pauses for James’s inevitable expression of sceptical amusement. Then, equally assured that he can wipe it from James’s face, Q cocks his head back. “I think I could, you know.”
James’s jaw clenches, a sign of his determination to maintain his composure.
Madeleine twists her hips, encouraging in a way that briefly makes James’s rhythm stutter. Q glances at her, hoping he’s not missed the mark, but she looks delighted by the turn the evening has taken.
“Yes. I’d have you laid out,” Q goes on, enunciating every delicious syllable, as James’s pace finally increases. “Have you messy and begging.”
James grunts, in itself a half plea as his fingers dig into Madeleine’s sides as she matches his thrusts.
“You know,” Q says thoughtfully, “I’ve been told I can rim for England.”
“Fucking- Christ, Q,” James gasps, and the punch of the orgasm folds him in two over Madeleine.
Madeleine herself actually guffaws, the most inelegant thing Q’s heard or seen her do by far in all the time he’s known her, and Q’s never liked her more. She throws an arm over her eyes as her laughter only builds.
“I should have known,” James says into Madeleine’s stomach, still bowed. “One of you is bad enough. Together you’ll be the death of me.”
When he’s recovered enough to sit back on his haunches, James looks between them and shakes his head, lips parted and brow lined, seemingly perplexed and wholly thrilled.
“Smug bastard,” James accuses, and Q won’t be repentant for it.
James then focuses on Madeleine, his returned touch drawing out a gasp. “And you…”
Q watches with distant interest as James’s fingers twist and curl. Despite his tendency for protracted torment, James clearly knows Madeleine’s body and how to expertly bring it pleasure. Q always has appreciated mastery, whatever the skill.
She scrunches her eyes closed and rocks her hips, concentrating, chasing.
When she blindly reaches out, her request clear, Q takes her hand. He traces his fingers over hers, up the inside of her wrist. It’s not sexual, what they share, but it is sensual, and he keeps up his featherlight, roving touch while James works her closer to the edge.
There’s no performance in the way she shudders, no show in the small moan that escapes her, when she comes, just her own reaction to her own pleasure. Q’s never found her more beautiful.
Q expects it, so he’s not surprised when James places an exploring palm on Q’s thigh.
He’s aching uncomfortably, but he shakes his head.
“One, I haven’t eaten all day,” he explains. “And two, not on the bloody sofa.”
Later, James pins Q against the kitchen counter as soon as he’s done washing up, uncaring that Q’s leaving sudsy wet patches all over while James devours his mouth.
Madeleine’s gaze follows them as James backs Q through the kitchen, and Q can just spare enough thought that he sees the question in the raise of her brow and, after only a moment of hesitation, beckons her to follow.
Upstairs, James seems intent on retribution. He bats Q’s hands away so his focus can only remain on James’s methodical undressing and exploration, until Q’s sprawled on the bed, naked and unbearably hard.
As she’d done to him earlier, Q lifts a hand to Madeleine over at her spot leaning against the door frame. She sheds her skirt, freeing her blouse, and the silk whispers against Q’s skin as she slides in behind him against the headboard.
She rests Q’s head on her thigh and snares a hand in his hair, the best position to offer Q her gentle touch, and the best to experience James in this new and vicarious way.
James actually freezes, seemingly struck by the picture they make, and lets out a low growl.
“The absolute death of me,” he mutters.
Any clever rebuke is lost when James’s own clever mouth takes Q in its heat.
Cradled by Madeleine and undone by James, anchored by her roaming touch and unravelled by his, he feels at once secure and completely atomised, and finally carried away on a turbulent wind to all corners of the earth.
After, they hold him through the comedown, a tangle of limbs, as his constituent parts slot back together again. He’s not one for romanticism, but with Madeleine and James either side of him, he can’t help the notion that the pieces fit a little better than before.
The others are in the kitchen when he later heads downstairs and into the living room. He’s drawn by the flowers in the beautiful blue vase, and he runs a finger along the underside of a bright orange petal.
They’re lovely, he thinks, but the lilies would have to go.
It’s an inconsequential thought that rockets him from his idle musings.
Where did that come from, he wonders, a thought so abstractly connected by a knotted string of logic that he can hardly unravel it himself. The lilies would be bad for the cats, yes, but the concern hinges on them being here, on Q having a place here that makes their presence, temporary or otherwise, a possibility.
There’s so much to figure out. What to label this, what to tell a curious and commonly unkind world, even the logistics of who and where and when.
Madeleine joins Q and rests her chin on his shoulder while James comes to his other side. He passes Q one of the tumblers he’s carrying and follows it by placing his free hand at the base of Q’s back.
“You’re worrying,” Madeleine observes, a question layered beneath her teasing tone.
He considers her point, but for once it doesn’t ring true. He knows he’s one to find security in certainty. However, the unknown ground spread before him feels like a landscape to be explored.
“No,” he says softly, looking from James to Madeleine, “I’m not worried at all.”