For the Hurt/Comfort fic meme, can I have a 11 for Bond and Q, pleeeeease ? :)
#11 - Disoriented!Q coming right up!
When Q woke, it was dark.
He lay on his front, his cheek pressed into something so hard that it bordered on painful. But when he tried to lift his head, Q found that he couldn’t. A bloom of agony erupted in his temple, and Q bit on his lip to keep from crying out. He tasted blood. And dust. He moved his fingers over the space in front of him, dragging the digits through rough pieces of debris that cut and stung like glass.
Retracting his fingers, Q tried again to move, this time with his hips, but to no avail. There was something on top of him, pressing hard into the base of his spine and against his ribcage. Once he realised that he was trapped, Q did his very best not to panic, but between the dark and the pain and the fact that he was very much alone, he did not do very well.
A burst of static cut through the quiet, and Q turned his head toward it in the dark.
His earpiece.
Blindly, Q moved his hand round until he secured it. The body had been crushed, but when Q moved his thumb over the earbud, he believed the speaker and microphone to still be in tact. He brought it to his ear, and caught the tail end of someone saying angrily:
“—Quartermaster is still unaccounted for and—”
The communication cut out momentarily and then came back.
“—every available—”
The connection went dead again before coming back to life. Although it wasn’t the best, it was the only lifeline Q had and he desperately clung to it.
“This is Q,” he said, as clearly as he could, hoping that he kept the shakiness from his voice. He had started trembling, suddenly aware of how cold it was around him.
“Q are you—”
“In need of immediate assistance.”
“Hello—?”
“In need of assistance,” Q repeated, a little louder. It strained his lungs and he began coughing. Whatever was on top of him shifted with the movement, pinning him further and with much more force than before. Q couldn’t stifle the sob that made its way past his throat as the weight pressed sharply into his left kidney.
“Q—”
Q cried out again, this time in relief at the sound of the voice on the other end of the comms.
“James…”
“—here, Q—”
He was panting now under the strain of the debris on top of him. He couldn’t get enough air, and his head spun with the lack of oxygen.
“You’ve got to…please help…James, I can’t breathe…” Q gasped, trying to pull himself out from under the object, scraping at the ground until his nails broke and started to bleed; he felt the sting of it as the skin broke with his panicked flailing.
“—coming—you—-see—-where—?”
“I can’t hear you…” Q murmured. It wasn’t long before exhaustion settled in and stopped his struggles. He lay his head down on the ground, trying to calm himself so that he didn’t vomit or pass out. The one thing that could help was Bond and his steady, soothing voice, but Q couldn’t hear him through all the static.
“—-hold—-Q—soon—are—”
Q pressed his cheek into the floor as he pushed away his physical agony and focussed instead on imagining Bond in his mind’s eye. Immediately, he came back to that morning. It had been one of the rare days they had the chance to wake up at a leisurely pace, to have breakfast together. They spent the half hour afterward on the sofa, intertwined, with Bond reading the newspaper over Q’s shoulder as he dozed contently on Bond’s chest. It was a nice, peaceful thing to think about, to remember as the breath was slowly crushed out of him.
James, James I love you, you know. You stupid, wonderful man. I love you more than anything.
Q wasn’t sure if he said these words out loud, or if they were a stream of barely-conscious thought as he lingered on the edge of oblivion.
But just before he could fall into that nothingness, light appeared, bright and blinding. It burned Q’s eyes, even through his closed lids.
Voices followed, then hands, the sound of machinery. He smelt latex, felt the heat of palms maneuvering him along the ground, then awkwardly up onto something stiff and uncomfortable. A softness enveloped his neck and tipped his head back a bit, just as something plastic came down over his nose and mouth. At first, Q panicked, thinking that it would keep him from breathing, but then there was air that didn’t smell like dust and dirt and blood and there was so much of it that Q couldn’t help but greedily gasp it in.
He wasn’t much aware of time, but he did know that sometimes his body felt extraordinarily light and at other times, as if he were breathing from beneath a pile of stones.
When he finally came to, there was no more darkness; rather, there was light all around him and a hand in his hair petting just the way he liked. Above him, someone leant into his line of sight, someone with grey-blond hair and blue, blue eyes.
“James…” Q breathed, as the pain spiked in his lower extremities. It drew a gasp from him, and Q felt tears involuntarily escape his eyes, run down his cheeks.
“You’re alright,” Bond said, leaning close to him to press a kiss to the corner of his right eye, his temple, his dirty hair. “You’re going to be okay.” The pain persisted despite his care, and Q felt the world tipping a bit, but Bond’s hands kept him from slipping away. “Hey, hey, none of that. You stay with me, now. We’ve got you in triage. The doctor’s going to take good care of you.”
There were hands on him that weren’t Bond’s hands, hurting him as they moved his arms and legs, all while Bond spoke quietly in his ear. The building had collapsed. Another terrorist threat against MI6. All of the lower levels caved in. Still looking for survivors.
Q felt the panic rise up in him again, the fear for his hands, his fingers, his legs. Bond pushed back his hair gently. They were close enough that Q could make out the dirt on his lover’s face, even with the odd angle.
“You’re okay,” Bond told him again. “Everything still where it should be, nothing missing.”
Q closed his eyes and breathed in, even though it hurt. He thought of that dark place where he had been, where he had thought he might die without ever seeing Bond again, and Q couldn’t bear being alone.
“Stay with me,” Q said, not asked, and Bond pressed a gentle kiss to his brow.
“I’m not going anywhere, love.”
