"Tell me, between us, who would you refer to as heartless?" 007 had inquired once, watching the Quartermaster with imperturbable steely blue eyes from his perch on the diagnostic table even as his synthetic skin had been peeled away to reveal a metallic cavity throwing up a rainbow of cables, some of them braided together and others unceremoniously plugged into their outlets, left to their own devices to tangle with themselves in a series of senseless knots.
At that question, Gabriel - known as Quartermaster in the quivering entrails of MI6, his name blackened out from every single scrap of paper in the building until he had difficulties remembering it himself, had answered "You" with the arrogant certainty of a scientist: of course, he had meant to say that, in a purely anatomical sense, the android actually didn't have a heart.
But 007's words had had a more ethical and somewhat romantic connotation; the fact that his inventor, a true human being - a real person, as they liked to define themselves - hadn't been able to read that shade in his inquiry, it was the answer he had been waiting for: between the two of them, certainly the Quartermaster was the one lacking a heart.
Still, 007 couldn't help being fascinated by him. Thanks to his observational skills, enhanced so that he would do his job with an accuracy that humans couldn't even hope to achieve, he knew the most intimate and endearing details about the man who had created him - the riddle of MI6, one that everyone fruitlessly tried to crack.
And, because of that, 007 realised that the Quartermaster needed a confidante, an occasion for all those little features of his character that he kept under wraps, shrouded in thick veils of mystery, to be brought up in the light. Leaning in sensually, slightly displaying the sharp line of his jaw which he knew his creator was particularly fond of, 007 brushed his mouth against the shell of Q's ear - just enough to send a shiver down the Quartermaster's spine, but not so much that the approach would make him uncomfortable and put some space between them "Tell me your darkest secret"
