#dark!q

[azure7539arts]

Background Process

Pairing: 00Q (Q/Bond)

Rating: PG

Summary: Bond was beginning to realize a few things.

Genre: Mystery

Warnings: None

Collab prompt table fill: @10kiaoi​ requested “Dark!Q”

Additional notes: I don’t really know if I achieved your prompt, 10ki OTL But I hope you’ll enjoy some of it.

-

The meeting had turned out so badly, even Bond was frustrated by the end of it, what with those stuffy bureaucrats doing whatever they could to tighten the budget noose around Q-Branch’s throat. And he had only been there to act as part of Q’s personal security detail.

“Q?” He turned to look at the boffin, who had cycled through the phases of simmering indignation and frosty, stone cold within the short span of that barely one-hour meeting, and felt just a stark needle of uneasiness weaseling into his veins.

He’d rather deal with both of the phases above rather than the calm banality that Q wore now, impenetrable and entirely unreadable. Even to him.

“Yes?” Q replied, distracted by whatever rapid typing he was doing on his phone.

Bond thought about it and realized he didn’t know what to say.

What was he even going to ask anyway? Are you planning on taking some drastic measures?

Halting in his steps, Q finally stopped to peer at Bond from over the frame of his glasses, eyebrows arching. “What is it, James?” he pressed, head tilting to the side in that perfectly innocent way that he did sometimes.

Bond heard the soft addition of his first name that Q usually reserved more for when they were at home by themselves, and exhaled slowly. 

(Deep down, a thought occurred to him that Q might have done that deliberately—calling him in such a way, invoking an associated sense of tenderness and intimacy—but Bond hurried to dismiss it.)

“Nothing,” he said, reaching for the hazel of those eyes that he had grown ever so familiar with, and shifted on his feet. “I was just wondering what you’d want for dinner later.” He’d be free for the rest of the day after this, considering that it was still technically his downtime in-between missions.

Q’s lips twitched upward a little. “Maybe some cold noodles,” he mused and began moving forward again. “The heat’s been terrible.”

“Buckwheat noodles with kimchi?” Bond offered.

“That’s the one.” Q nodded, smile widening as the stiff lines of his shoulders eased out that slight bit more. “With some boiled eggs, too.”

The knot in the pit of Bond’s stomach started to relax as well.

-

Bond got back from a mission in Bulgaria a couple of weeks later, and Q had arranged it just so his next day off coincided with one of Bond’s own. 

They lay on the couch together with their limbs tangled, having decided to spend a lazy morning in watching television with Q humming whatever new tune that had caught his interest whilst flipping through the channels.

“Breaking news, it’s been announced that Mr Jamie Anderson will be taking over as the new Minister for—”

Bond stilled, a frown creasing his brow. 

“What happened to Clifford?”

“Hm?” Q stirred, sounding half-asleep still as he shrugged, all that chattering from the telly barely registering as background noise. “Who knows. Heart attack or something.”

Q sounded as disinterested as he appeared to be, and Bond could feel a sudden chill creeping up along his spine.

“And anyway, I heard this Anderson bloke isn’t too bad, though,” Q continued, a knowing note in the tone of his voice, the corner of his lips curling up a sliver.

As though Clifford hadn’t been one of those people in that previous meeting who had vocally advocated for cutting down Q-Branch’s budget the most. 

“What is it?” Q turned to him now, smiling in a way that had his eyes crinkling, charming and totally indulgent.

Bond stared, mouth dry.

“Nothing.”

[azure7539arts]

EXECUTIVE DUTY: A CHECK-IN

Pairing: Blofeld/Q

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A visit on the eve of an important day.

Additional notes: Lots of things implied here, but nothing really happens here aside from some talking.

Warning: None.

-

“I trust that everything is in place?” 

Q hummed in response, eyes glued on the screen of the laptop he had in his lap, fingers typing rapidly.

The door closed just as soon as it opened, and the familiar figure of the man wandered inside, each step imbued with the ease of a man strolling in leisure, yet precise and with sharp purpose, not a movement out of place or gone to waste.

“You’re sure you’re up for the task?”

Q scoffed this time, the corner of his lips twitching up humorlessly. “Of course I’m sure,” he murmured, peripheral attention honing in on the man invading his personal space even as it seemed as though he was doing anything but.

With a turn of his body, however, said man was out of the field of his vision, and Q fought down the instinctive urge to crane his neck and turn around, holding himself in place even as he felt a brush of hot breath grazing softly over the shell of his ear. 

Blofeld still wore that same brand of cologne that he had always had ever since the day Q first met him all those years ago.

But even then, even as a schoolboy, fresh-faced and partially naïve, Q had always known this man to be dangerous.

Which was why he wasn’t even half-surprised upon feeling two hands smoothing down along the arch of his neck, deceptively gentle and harmless as they hovered just above the bob of his Adam’s apple.

(Sometimes, he thinks about Blofeld strangling him to death to tie up unnecessary loose ends.)

(But most of the time, he knows he’s too valuable an asset to afford that clean of a disposal.

For now, anyway.)

“What’s with all the questions?” Q finally asked, sounding half-bored and mildly ironic, his eyes having never left his on-going project at all. “Are you doubting the successful rate of the plan, or are you doubting me?”

It was now that he allowed his hands to stop, head tilting at the precise angle at which he could leer at Blofeld’s smug expression without looking too much like a kitten baring its fangs and claws.

“Not at all,” Blofeld replied without a hitch, cold thumb gliding past Q’s pulsing jugular. “Just checking in on your progress. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow, after all.” 

The man smiled almost innocently, and Q swallowed down a snort. 

“I’m just setting off a bloody bomb in the middle of MI6, Ernst,” he mumbled with one raised eyebrow. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Blofeld’s smile only widened at that, and in the low lighting of the room, he seemed rather pleased.

As he should be...

(On a dreary Tuesday morning in July, 2012, 

MI6 Headquarters exploded without warning.)

… Q had never failed, after all.

[quartermastersearlgrey]

Different Day, Different Boss || Silva and Q

@silva-the-ex-secret-agent

With Jim gone, Cris had been feeling aimless.  Jim was the reason he worked for MI6 in the first place but with the network effective gone dark, he had nothing to do but his actual job.  For the government.  To say it was less than ideal would be an understatement.  

It was late one night and his eyes were starting to blur from the code he was working on.  Most of the rest of the branch had gone home but he refused to give up until his project was complete.  Just returning from getting a new cup of tea from the small kitchen area, he was puzzled by the message on his screen, one that had not been there a few minutes prior.  As he read, his confusion turned to fascination and interest.

This job just got a lot more fun.

[nagapdragon]

First Glimpse: Zwischenzug

I’m normally shit at writing updates but I’m so damn excited about this one that I had to share. Meant to post it as a Six Sentence Sunday, but I kinda sorta forgot. Oops.

Zwischenzug is the crossover nobody asked for combining Skyfall, Spectre, and Sherlock. 

---

There’s no such thing as a code that can break into any system.

He tells the man in the expensive suit as much, ignoring the red dot pointed unwaveringly at his heart. If they really wanted to kill him, they’d aim for his head instead. Intimidation, and rather obviously done at that. He tells them that much and the light blinks out, the sniper in the eaves no longer bothering to threaten him.

Or maybe there’s just now a dot on his forehead. As he can’t see it, the effect’s the same either way. Quincy picks at a loose thread in his cardigan, bored with the proceedings already.

The man in the suit smiles a shark’s grin and offers his hand.

[bootsnblossoms]

How the fuck had this happened?

Bond wasn’t exactly used to being the one chased. Not that the act of being chased itself was entirely unheard of, of course. There were often people after him, frequently with guns and knives and other tools of murderous intent, but Bond usually found a way to turn it around and make the bad guys afraid of him. 

But this? This was bullshit. 

Bond was supposed to be the scary thing in the shadows, lurking and waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce. Bond was supposed to be the monster that rent and destroyed flesh and bone. He wasn’t supposed to be the prey. 

[pati79]

This is my headcanon dark!Q

[stillnotplayedout-archive]

Tangled Web Called Love::Closed RP

The mission had been trying on the strength of the relationship that Bond and Q had together. The 00 Agent was required to act out a relationship with another operative and make it as realistic as possible. An other issue was that their cover was newlyweds, and honeymooners were known to be very adamant about declaring their love as many times as possible. James had kept trying to talk to Q as his lover but his boyfriend would continuously remind him they were working or that it was not the time. The night before Bond saw his lover again nightmares haunted him, consisting of his partner breaking it off, unable to handle the stress anymore. Yet those seemed to be dreams compared to the nightmare of Q simply killing him in rage. The Agent didn't sleep at all that night.

It was nearly eight at night when he finally stepped through the door into the flat and frowned at the darkness found there. "Ben? Are you home?" The Agent felt his body tense up at the thought of there being intruders in the home, still on edge from the mission. "Ben, please answer me, where are you?"

[kryptaria]

Anonymous asked you:

Dark Q Bunny!

This one's co-written with Boots!

Q was right — Bond was a lot more intelligent than most of MI6 actually knew. He was just exceptionally adept at hiding it so he could keep his adrenaline-addicted arse in the field and not tied to a desk in Intentions. Without Alec’s impatient ‘help’, Bond was certain he could break into Q Branch — and Q’s office — in less than ten minutes.

It only took eight.

Bond stood with satisfaction in Q’s office, looking around, vaguely cataloguing the computers in the office in order of least likely to be used to most likely. Bond walked to the standing-height computer next to Q’s soldering desk and woke it up, smirking faintly.  Q had apparently been in a hurry — he’d locked the computer with his login, but hadn’t shut it down or enabled the biometric security protocols. After four minutes of ‘Access Denied,’ Bond grew frustrated and decided to hell with trying to decode Q’s psyche; he didn’t need to when he had Mallory’s override.

Once he was logged into the computer, he accessed the command-prompt keystroke logger that all Q Branch computers ran by default, pleased to see that Q hadn’t disabled it. The log showed that Q had been mucking around with CCTV. London CCTV.

That was just asking for it, Bond thought with a frown as he identified the cameras. London, and all of Great Britain, was strictly off-limits to MI6 personnel; if they had a problem with anyone within home borders, they were to bring it directly to MI5’s attention.

There were occasional exceptions, of course; if a terrorist that MI6 had been diligently tracking made his or her way into England, MI5 would cede control, though usually with the sort of restrictions that meant they were babysat every step of the way by a Home Office agent. But if such a case were on the tables now, even if Bond didn’t know about it (which seemed unlikely), Q certainly wouldn’t be the one to go after them.

A few methodical keystrokes later, and Bond had the disabled cameras back online. He turned the feeds back on, but didn’t start them recording. Whatever was going on, Bond wasn’t certain it necessarily needed to be made official record. For all he knew, Q was trolling for a prostitute.

The cameras showed a posh residential district some distance from MI6. The CCTV feeds were tapped from traffic cameras, security cameras, a cashpoint at a bank on the corner, and several private residences. Bond leaned back in the drafting chair, regarding the monitors, thinking about Q leaving MI6 on foot. If he were taking the Tube, he wouldn’t be there for another fifteen or twenty minutes; if he’d found a taxi, he could be there already. So he left those camera feeds up, kept one eye on them for any sign of Q’s arrival, and absently scanned through the mire of CCTV feeds along Q’s most logical route of approach. Then it occurred to him that facial recognition could automate a great deal of the process, so he switched his focus to locating a local copy of the appropriate software, rather than the enterprise edition used by most of MI6. There was no reason to leave a data-trail of this particular search.

He’d just found the program when motion caught his eye. He looked up to see two people — male and female, white, late twenties or early thirties — walking into view. Bond looked away, turning his attention to the facial rec software, only to look back again when the slow pattern of their walk became a flurry of movement.

For a moment, the poor camera resolution made it difficult to determine exactly what was going on. Then he realised there was a third person present, and suddenly the woman was down, convulsing violently, as the man was grappling with a much smaller, more slender figure. The smaller assailant moved — three quick, sharp jabs that made the larger man stagger and collapse to his knees. He would have fallen if the smaller figure hadn’t caught him by the hair.

Then the smaller one leaned over as though speaking to the victim, and Bond sat forward, recognising Q’s distinct profile. He’d got rid of his parka and wore what looked like a hoodie, but Bond knew the shape of his jaw and nose. Bond reached for the mouse and then stopped himself; he wanted to zoom in closer, but he didn’t dare risk losing focus on the scene before him.

Not that he needed to zoom in, he realised, as Q — and it had to be Q — drew his free hand back, and Bond saw he was holding a sword.

Accustomed as Bond was to violence, he flinched all the same as Q thrust the sword into the kneeling man’s chest. As it hit, he released the man’s hair and neatly sidestepped the blood spray as he wrenched the sword free. Bond hit the keyboard quickly, grabbing a screen capture. The screen flashed and went still for a moment, and by the time the live feed resumed, the rain had turned to snow — light flakes that went from sporadic to heavy in unnaturally fast seconds. Q walked away, ducking his head against the snow, steps hurried just enough that he would blend in with any crowd of Londoners trapped out in the cold weather.

There was no sign of the sword.

Bond sat back, staring in disbelief at the monitor. What the bloody buggering fuck had just happened?