32 with lestapiastri? :>)
32. a kiss whilst someone watches
I rewatched skyfall the other night and this au wouldnt leave me alone,, so. James bond au lestapstri
"Q, 001 wants to see you. Um, again.”
Oscar runs the program once more, frowning. The error message is still popping up. He’s triple-checked his spelling, retyped the entirety of the source code, sent it to R so a fresh pair of eyes can look it over, all to no avail.
Not to mention the five deadlines Oscar has to meet today. At the moment, none of them are anywhere close to completion.
“Q?”
“Ah, Q is a little busy, I think,” a new voice intercepts smoothly. “I will tell him, okay? You may fetch… 001.”
“Oh! Um—alright. 016, sir.”
“No, no,” Leclerc waves off, “There is no need for sir, mademoiselle…?”
“016,” Oscar says crispy. “Please stop flirting with my interns. You’re dismissed.”
The intern makes a wobbly, mortified noise, and flees the scene.
“Q,” Leclerc drags out. Oscar doesn’t need to look over to know he’s pouting. “Always, you are spoiling my fun. I cannot flirt with you, I cannot flirt with the interns—who is left to flirt with then?”
This code—it’s stuff Oscar was doing before he could walk. But it’s actively fighting him every step of the way, things shuffling around when he’s not looking, more red exclamation marks popping up—breeding like fucking rabbits. Oscar has no idea what he’s looking at anymore.
“Jenson’s been looking sad lately,” he says, distracted. Jenson is Oscar’s weirdly emotional Roomba who developed some bizarre hatred for Oscar and an undying love for Oscar’s second in command, R. He has indeed been moping around Q-branch lately. “I’m sure he’d appreciate your… affections, 016. I’m trying to work here.”
“All the time I am here, you’re working,” Leclerc sighs. Out of the corner of Oscar’s eye, he catches Leclerc stretching, the pale column of his throat ever so delicate beneath Oscar's fluorescent lights. “And I know what you will say, Q. That I will have to wait until you’re finished, and I am finished, and we are both finished with—” Leclerc wrinkles his nose, “—work, but that is so long! And never you are finished with work. I try to take you to dinner and you’re doing work even then.”
Oscar’s fingers falter over the keyboard.
Recently, he helped Leclerc out of a—situation. R usually handles coms for agents 10-19, Oscar taking 1-9, but the situation had spiralled beyond what R was trained to handle. So Oscar stepped in.
016 has always been fond of pestering Oscar. For new upgrades, mission reports—though Oscar isn’t his handler—tech ideas. Sometimes, Oscar will freely admit, his insight has been invaluable. The other 95% of the time, the only thing Leclerc has accomplished in Q-branch is tanking work effectiveness rates by 231%.
That mission, however—he was lucky to have survived it. Lucky that Oscar didn’t decide to work from home that day. In the heat of it, bleeding out from a close-range shot to the ribs, Leclerc coughed out a dinner invitation, and Oscar was stupid (optimistic) enough to presume 016 wouldn’t make it, and therefore agreed, for the sake of comforting a dying man.
Then, nine o’clock on the dot on Monday morning, Leclerc came whistling through the doors of Q-branch, looking like the cat who got the cream, telling anyone who would listen that he had snagged the elusive Quartermaster. By the time Oscar heard of it, it was too late. The rumour had spread.
Since then, he’s clung to Oscar like fungus. Unkillable, stubborn, vaguely charming fungus.
“Well,” Oscar says, “If you want your head blown off by your own earpiece when you’re cleared for active duty, we can go for dinner if you want.”
Leclerc slumps over Oscar’s workbench. “You are no fun,” he mutters, throwing his arm dramatically over his face.
Which is when the door opens again.
“Q, the latest handgun is shit. The AI was asking me for my fucking—voice activation in the middle of a—You.”
Leclerc also makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Ugh. You.”
“What is he doing here?” Verstappen asks, indignant. “Q, how am I supposed to give you the debrief if he is snooping? Surely this is a breach of protocol?”
Oscar digs his fingers into his temple, where a headache is raining down on him, vicious. He accepted this job because of the unlimited freedom no other opportunity came close to providing. He may have declined if he knew a good chunk of the job would be babysitting.
“001,” he says, admirably even. “If you’re going to tell me you chucked your gun in the Atlantic again, save it for another day.”
Verstappen grumbles, ducking his head. He fishes a small armoury out of his pockets and dumps it on Oscar’s desk. Broken and waterlogged, but—well. It’s sort of better than nothing.
“I of course brought them back for you,” 001 mutters. His ears are pink. “I am not Charles.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Leclerc pipes up. “I bring my equipment back! Do I not, Q?”
Oscar isn’t solving this mess today. He gives the wall of code a scathing once over, then minimizes the tab. He has a minimum of seven hours before R hauls him out the building. That’s enough to smash a few deadlines.
“You are like a child running to his mother, Charles,” Verstappen is saying, pitching his voice high and mocking, “Q, do you like my hair? Oh, I’m so stupid, Q. Please tell me to pick a lock! Teach me how to defuse a bomb, Q, I’m so clumsy and delicate! Help me wipe my arse, Q—”
Oscar digs a knuckle into his eye, sighing. “Out.”
Both Leclerc and Verstappen stop in their tracks.
“What?” Leclerc says, “But, chéri—”
“Chéri?” Verstappen repeats loudly, face scrunching up. “Q, you should have told me this—this harlot was harassing you. I would of course have dealt with him—”
Leclerc pushes himself upright in one fluid motion, eyes narrowed. “You are the one calling me a harlot after what you did in Shanghai?”
“That was three years ago,” Verstappen hisses. “Spielberg, however—”
“Oh, yes, Spielberg,” Leclerc speaks over him, “Where you got shot and cried like a baby in my arms—”
“I did not—!”
“—and Carlos had to come get us because you exploded the car from trying to act like we were in one of your little video games—”
“The tyres were shot out, you fucking idiot—”
“And Vienna!” Leclerc near shouts, “Let’s talk about Vienna, shall we?”
“I have told you this so many times! Vienna was not—!”
“You are so fucking stupid,” Leclerc is gritting out, fisting Verstappen’s tie. “You are a fucking—”
Dead-eyed, Oscar glances up just in time to see Verstappen lunge forward and crush their mouths together.
“Again?” Oscar says, exhausted. “Really?”
The way Leclerc is clawing at him, the iron grip Verstappen has on his waist, you’d think they were trying to maul each other. Oscar has no idea why they’ve both decided his office is the perfect place for hate-groping. Lando’s—R’s—is literally right next door. God, what Oscar would pay to see R’s face when 001 and 016 start going at it in front of him.
Luckily, this time Verstappen comes to his senses. He shoves Leclerc back, wiping at his mouth. His gaze flits to Oscar, who stares flatly back at him.
“Er,” he starts, hesitantly.
“Out,” Oscar says, with a sigh that probably drains half his lifeforce. “Don’t come back until next Monday. For the love of god.”
