I haven't done a WIP Wednesday in *forever*, and so today I want to share an excerpt from a 5+1 fic I've been fiddling with for a while. It focuses on a moment from Skyfall that lives rent-free in my head: the bit where Moneypenny says that Q is afraid of flying, and Bond says, "Of course he is."
I have...a lot of thoughts...about this moment, more of which I may share later on. I've also seen lots of fics tackle this piece of canon well, from leaning into reasons Q may be afraid of air travel, to explaining why this was all a pretext in the first place. So for now, suffice it to say that I was ready to dive in with a fic of my own, featuring five times Q lied to Bond about why he didn't fly to Macau--and one time he told him the truth.
Q sighed, taking his hands out of the bathrobe pockets and crossing his arms across his chest.
“Well, as you know, I’m an ethical vegetarian.”
“Naturally.” Bond knew no such thing; in fact, he was fairly certain he’d seen Q eating a cheeseburger at his desk just the week before. But then, he supposed you could never tell these days, what with all the plant-based meat substitutes on the market.
“Then it should come as no surprise to you that I’m also a member of the Royal Society for the Preservation of Canadian Geese. Or at least,” Q said, turning to look wistfully out the hotel window, “I was.”
Bond cleared his throat. “I see.”
“And as you know, when an airplane runs into a flock of geese, it’s extremely dangerous—”
“Yes, I—”
“For the geese.”
Bond opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He’d seen a movie about this, recently. While on a plane, in fact. Tom Hanks had been in it.
“I don’t think—”
“At any rate,” Q said, raising his voice to speak over Bond, “I decided enough was enough. I staged a small one-person protest on a flight to Vancouver. Stood up as soon as the fasten seatbelt sign was off and took off my jumper so everyone could see my “think of the geese” t-shirt. Gave a quite moving little speech, if I do say so myself. But the air marshal on board didn’t like it. And so I was banned from all major airlines.”
Bond blinked at him. Maybe this was all a dream. Worse still, maybe he’d never made it out of the henchman’s lair. Maybe this was all the result of the latest hallucinogenic drugs to debut on the henchman market, and for which Bond was the unwilling, and unconscious, test subject. “But you flew here.”
“I said I was banned from all the major airlines,” Q said. “I’m not banned from RyanAir. They’ve got no standards.”
