Chapter Text
Tuesday, 14 May, 2013
Ever since Q had entered into the surreal, concurrent relationships with James Bond and Alec Trevelyan, he had taken to spending a lot less time in his own flat. He felt rather bad about that, considering he was the proud owner of two rather precocious ferrets that lived there and his work was directly below said flat. But when it came to deciding whether he wanted to spend his downtime in the building-that-never-sleeps or at his hotel-away-from-home with his two boyfriends, he seemed to always choose his chaotic, macabre relationships over anything else.
At least when both were home. That was generally not the case. There was no squeezing three people into his flat, but if either agent was out on assignment, two people fit quite nicely. Even more to the point, when both were gone, Q almost never left the domain of Nova Prospekt, the hackerspace he owned. And why would he? He had enough caffeine to power a small country, enough gadgets to bring down said country, and his own setup – with bed, office, and ferrets – to keep him company whenever he wasn’t tinkering away below. He had a rather nice life.
~~~~
For the past few weeks, Q found himself back at his flat, as both agents were out on assignment. Actually, they were out on assignment together. Most people who knew them would find this cause for alarm, considering the Class 5 hurricane of destruction they left in their wake individually. But when they worked together, Q could always count on the mutual arse-kicking that each would deliver in an attempt to make sure someone always came back to their shared boyfriend. It made for a much greater chance of mission success and two happy if mildly broke agents returning to London, to Q, to home.
It seemed to be around 3:30 a.m. when Q woke up. This was a rough guess, considering his glasses were elsewhere, but his caffeine-deprived brain and foggy-at-best vision could at least tell it was completely in the middle of the night. During the intermission his brain was taking, he tried to figure out what woke him, his phone beeped again, letting him know that someone had entered Nova Prospekt. This always managed to wake him, at least partially, because middle-of-the-night inspiration tended to yield the most creative results. Or at least the most explosive, which really was a lot more fun as long as as it wasn’t Alec doing the exploding. His many indiscretions where explosions and housing were concerned meant that he and James had yet to find a new place to live because no one would insure them. Intrigued at the idea of a little narco-engineering, Q pulled himself out of his foggy reverie and padded to the bathroom to clean up and head downstairs.
First, though, Q needed caffeine. He needed it like people needed water or air, possibly even more so. While he loved midnight tinkering, he hated how sleep-deprived it made him feel. So, first order of business; caffeine. Q headed to the cafe that took up the front of the building and pulled a triple-shot of espresso. While he still had no idea which of his members was here at this hour, the idea of discovering a really great project without the proper stimulant was simply... unpleasant.
Espresso in hand, Q headed up to his true home away from home. Walking in, he realised it wasn’t one person who had shown up, but two. The recognition of both voices made him smile. His boys were home.
Q came around the corner to find James and Alec standing shoulder to shoulder, with their backs to him. They seemed intent upon something, but whatever that something was, it was beyond Q’s scope of vision. They were whispering frantically in the sort of way only impish five-year-olds were known to do. Caffeine or no caffeine, whatever was going on, Q was suddenly on high alert. These two really shouldn’t be left alone together.
“He’ll never let us keep him here,” Alec whispered with what sounded like mild concern.
“It’s a ‘him’ now?” came James’ bemused reply. “Earlier it was an it considering you could barely decipher what the town chief was telling you.”
“I could figure out enough, and so could you. They were going to sacrifice him, James.”
“Because you and I are so very much about right to life. Bloody hell, Alec.”
“It’s not like I had a whole lot of options. It was either this or marry the chief’s daughter.”
That spiked Q’s attention. “I’m sorry, marry whose daughter?”
At the sound of his voice, both agents spun around, hands twitching to their holsters. Q took a step back, feeling slightly abashed. After several months together, he knew better than to startle his two assassins. It didn’t seem to matter, though. At the sight of him, both Alec and James broke into identical fierce grins and started walking to greet him, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder.
James was the first to reach him. “Q!” he exclaimed, spinning Q around to lift him into a hug. Q tightly gripped his caffeinated lifeline, wary of dropping it. “God, I’ve missed you.” With one hand around Q’s waist, James grabbed his hair with the other and twisted, bringing him into a deep kiss.
As James pulled away, Q had barely moments to process the kiss before Alec reached over and lifted him up for their own greeting. “I missed you, too, you know,” Alec breathed as their lips parted. He set Q down to face them. “How was it here without us? Any chaos and destruction we missed? Anyone we may or may not have to kill?” As Alec’s questions rambled on, James inched closer, almost pushing Q back towards the door he had originally come through.
Q giggled, wrapping his arms around Alec, “No. No one you need to ki–” He didn’t get any further, as the next noise he heard – which was decidedly not from either agent – sounded suspiciously like a bleat.
A bleat?
Q looked up just in time to see an extremely guilty look pass between James and Alec. Q wriggled out of Alec’s arms and tried to peer around him, only to have James continue to steer him – no, shepherd him – back towards the door again. Still holding his espresso, Q put up a hand to stop James.
“What was that?” Q asked firmly, looking suspiciously between the two agents. As his brain started coming back online, he heard movement coming from behind the two men in front of him.
“What was what?” James asked innocently, eyes wide.
“Something behind you just bleated. Last time I checked, the only creatures that took up space in this entire building made no such noise. So, please tell me, what exactly are you two trying to hide?”
James and Alec exchanged a glance, clearly having one of their telepathic conversations. On a normal day, Q found this rather irritating. It wasn’t that he minded being left out of the discussion, but the end result usually involved him learning something he would rather have gone without. Tonight was absolutely no exception.
Q took advantage of their momentary distraction to slip past James. What he saw, though, made him stop dead in his tracks. Standing in the middle of Nova Prospekt – in the middle of his hackerspace – was what appeared to be a baby goat.
“What?” Q shook his head. “How? That’s not possible...” Q closed his eyes and sipped his espresso. There was no way he was seeing a goat in Nova Prospekt. It simply wasn’t possible. It had to be the sleep deprivation and his need caffeine. When Q opened his eyes again, the fuzzy apparition was still there, staring back at him. He took another drink and turned slowly to face James and Alec. “Is that a baby goat? Am I looking at a goat right now?”
“No, it’s not,” Alec answered, not meeting Q’s eyes.
“‘No, it’s not a baby goat’, or ‘no, it’s not a goat at all’?” Q challenged.
“It’s not a baby goat.”
“But I am, in fact, seeing a goat in the middle of my space?” Q asked, still hoping this was either a dream or a fantastic hallucination. He drained the rest of the espresso in one scalding gulp. Eyes watering and coughing from the heat, he continued, “Is that what I’m being led to believe here?”
The look on Alec’s face said it all. There really was a goat in the middle of Nova Prospekt. Giving Q his best pleading look, Alec reached out to him. “We didn’t have anywhere else to take him. They wanted to sacrifice him, and we —”
“Yes, I gathered that,” Q cut in, backing up so Alec couldn’t envelop him. Knowing Q’s love for human contact, it was a trick Alec used regularly. “What I want to know is why it’s here.”
Rebuffed, Alec stepped back. “Well, it’s like I said, we didn’t have anywhere else to take him. We rescued him after the town chief expressed interest in thanking us for-”
“Alec,” James interjected, looking pointedly again at the other agent. This was another of those security clearance issues, he knew — as if he wasn’t fully capable of hacking MI6 to find out the details himself?
“Christ, James, I wasn’t going to tell him anything. Do you think you two could stop bloody interrupting me long enough so I can get this out?” Alec exclaimed. He turned to Q. “The guy was going to sacrifice the goat for us. When I tried to stop him, he tried to get me to marry his daughter instead. Since I assumed my bringing home a wife wouldn’t really sit all that well with you, I asked to keep the goat. Excuse me for not thinking ten steps ahead and knowing what to do with him once we got here.”
“I thought you were the strategist.” James smirked. “How did you not see this coming?”
“No sleep for three and a half days, James. Three. And a half. Days.”
As Alec and James bickered, Q couldn’t tear his eyes away from the goat. It was – and Q refused to call it a him – standing on a blanket Alec or James must have laid out, staring right back at Q. It was mostly white with a few black spots on its back and black fur running halfway up its legs, giving the impression it was wearing socks. It didn’t have horns, but that didn’t mean anything; not all goats did. It was small, though, about the size of a smaller-breed dog, actually. Probably no more than two or three stone. As he watched, the goat stretched out before lying down on its makeshift bed. Baby goat or not, it was cute. Even Q couldn’t deny that animals bred to look like their junior counterparts were cute. That wasn’t what was occupying Q’s mind, though. He wasn’t that familiar with this particular type, but he did know that goats tended to eat everything. Literally everything. As he looked at all the loose components lying around, a hysterical giggle escaped him. At the sound, both agents stopped and looked at him.
“So you thought the best option was to bring the thing here,” Q started, rounding on them with a maniacal glint in his eyes. “An animal that is known for eating everything it can get in its mouth. And you thought would do well in a room full of loose wire and components and extremely expensive equipment? You – two of the smartest, deadliest people I have ever known – thought it would be a good idea to rescue this beast and bring it back here?!” At this point, Q was openly laughing. “I was right. The two of you really should not be left alone together.”
Both agents just stared, looking more at a loss for words than Q had ever seen either of them. He normally shut down when faced with a problem he didn’t have an answer to. It was rare for him to actually get worked up like this. Q took a deep breath and said, “Take it to a farm in Hertfordshire. Take it back to the bloody hotel. I don’t care. But it is NOT staying here.”
With that he turned and headed upstairs. He had enough caffeine in him now, ensuring he wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon, but he knew that if he didn’t leave immediately, the adorable creatures staring back at him would convince him to let the goat stay. And he wasn’t referring simply to the agents.
~~~~
“Well, shit.” Bond ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
“What do we do with him now?”
“Honestly, Alec, do you really know if it’s a him?”
“I did some research on the way back”
“Seriously? When? Never mind. What exactly did you learn?”
Alec turned back and stared at the goat. He’d only turned on a couple of lights when they arrived, and the subtle light gave the goat a somewhat angelic glow. Given Q’s propensity to not actually be awake for a good thirty minutes after he woke up, Alec could understand why he hadn’t immediately believed the goat was there. On their way back from Africa, he really had researched the creature. He didn’t know what to do with it when they got back, but James was right; Alec was the strategist. He may not have known all the answers for when they got home, but he made damn sure he knew enough about goats to know where to start.
Alec said, turning back to James. “He’s male because, well, I learned what to look for and I checked.” At this James started laughing, which Alec resolutely ignored. “And despite Q’s assumption that it eats everything, these guys really don’t, just greens and shit. James, for god’s sake, people keep them as pets.”
“And was that your master plan?” James mused. “Bring it here and get it to make friends with Q’s ferrets?”
“Actually, now that you mention it...”
Bond threw up his hands, “Bloody hell, Alec! All right, you chose to bring this thing back, so you figure out what to do with it. In the meantime, I’m going to go spend time with our boyfriend whom we haven’t seen in weeks.” With that, Bond turned and strode off in the same direction Q had left.
~~~~
Q sat down at his desk and shifted his mouse to wake up the computer. As his programs came back online, one of his ferrets, Chell, scurried over to curl up in his lap. He petted her absently while waiting for the camera feed from downstairs to load. He wanted to make damn sure Bond and Alec removed the walking shop-vac from the hackerspace.
“I don’t know what they were thinking,” Q mused to Chell. “It’s a goat. A sodding goat! It’s not like they brought a cat or even, god forbid, a dog.” He shuddered at the thought. He’d had dogs growing up and had never been a big fan of them. “Granted, the thing is mildly adorable, but we spend enough time tearing things apart down there ourselves. We don’t need extra help.”
“As much as the sight of you sitting there petting Chell is adorable in its own right, I think I would much prefer you petting me.”
Q jumped at the sound of James’ voice, banging his knee violently into the underside of his desk. He dislodged Chell in the process, who took off with an indignant shriek.
Q cursed as he rubbed his knee; it was definitely going to bruise. “Fucking hell, James! Are you actually sure you aren’t part ninja?”
James just smirked, leaning against the doorframe. “I’d say I feel bad, but if you’d actually learn to lock up properly when you came in, you might have had fair warning.”
“Piss off.”
Infuriatingly, James started laughing as he walked over. He pulled Q’s chair back a little bit before stepping between the desk and Q’s legs. He sat on the edge of the desk, leaned over to cup Q’s face in his hands, and, pulling his best ‘innocent-assassin’ face, purred at Q, “I’m sorry you hurt yourself. Want me to kiss it and make it better?”
Q really wanted to tell him that he could definitely piss off again, but having James this close after so long was making his brain go fuzzy. So the best he could come up with was to remove his glasses, setting them on the desk, and close the last few millimeters to give James another proper hello. Q wrapped his arms around James’ shoulders before he stood up to lean between James’ legs. James wound his hands down around Q’s waist, holding him close.
They broke apart after several long moments. Q rested his forehead against James’ and smiled. “I really missed you, too.”
Smiling back, James picked Q up and carried him to the bedroom. It didn’t take much before all thoughts of furry creatures were long gone from Q’s mind.