Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

'James.' He says, it sounds pathetic even to him and he's the one bloody saying it.

'I want you to know, I'm not pretty.'

He stares back, unblinking blue eyes thinly rimming blown pupils and Q tries to count how many different shades of ice blue he can see.

He gives up after 12.

It's an odd time to be thinking of such things, when he has a bloody Double-Oh agent pressed up against him, hard and firm, a strong presence, a mouth sliding wet heat down his neck, but he needs him to know, to understand before they take this further. James grunts something that says all his attention his focused of divulging Q of his clothes and shagging him against his own apartment wall because they're both too far gone to make it to his bedroom. He thinks about the series of events that led up to this, when he had started to allow the cups of tea and sly kisses, until large, calloused, gun wielding hands begin to roam south, whisking his thoughts away in a torrent of jumbled sensations. An insistent thigh slips between his legs nudging upwards until he gasps and he feels those lips curl up into smile where they are devouring his skin, leaving marks he knows he's going to have a difficult job hiding. He scrabbles frantically at broad shoulders, only paying minor heed to the deep pink wound he knows is lurking under the crisp white shirt he's currently rumpling, desperately trying to remove those devilish lips long enough to impart his message but James pushes back, all muscle and teeth, and Q resorts to pinching him, rather firmly, to get him to even look at him. His pupils are wide and gaping and Q wants to drown in them.

'James,' He begins again, voice wavering unsteadily, and he can see the glimmer of lust die away ever so slightly, a rare occurrence. He grabs his chance. 'I don't know what you're expecting but I don't want to lead you on. I'm telling you right now, I'm not pretty. Or beautiful. Or even handsome.'

And it's true, at least compared to the man pressed up against him. Bond, he reminds himself, James Bond. 007 is just a number, two loops and two lines. James is very real. He's all steepled apexes and plummeting depths, beautiful in his angularity, deadly in his symmetry. He's toned skin, sun browned and weather beaten, hard edges and harder muscles nestling coiled underneath. Rather like a predator, Q muses hazily, a cobra perhaps, or a tiger, gracefully lethal. He's rugged, in the handsome, adventurer, cheats-death-everyday way, the best way. He's got a silhouette so sharp he's sure it can cut steel, and eyes that are hard and hollow and merciless, but Q's seen them thaw and shine and watched the corners crinkle as he laughs. It's almost like the world took every natural disaster, tornadoes and tsunamis, earthquakes and eruptions, fires, floods and the cold barren wastes of glaciers, beautiful and deadly in equal amounts, and squashed it all inside him, every second of perfect havoc. He's chiseled out of marble like some ancient masterpiece, and Q can see their design in the jut of his jaw and the slope of his nose and the tilt of his shoulders and all Q can breathe in is perfection because really that's the only way to describe James fucking Bond.

And really, how can he even hope to compare?

Q is lines, yes, scalpel fine, but underneath his pale skin, almost delicate compared to James' durability, is nothing but thin pale bones that he's half sure Bond could snap in his sleep. The thought is sobering, despite the fact he's has nothing to drink, and he knows those hands have been nothing but gentle with him, tender and caring. There's always something dangerous about 007, James he corrects himself, something that makes the hair on the back of his neck rise warily and his hands to twitch involuntarily. It makes his heart skip and his blood sing and he wonders if this is why people are so attracted to him, to the lurking danger, to the myth, the legend. Q isn't afraid, even though he knows how much blood those hands have spilt, how many shots they have fired and throats they have throttled. He's read the file, heard it enough times on the other end of a comm, watched through the pixellated lens of a CCTV camera as 007 kills, unerringly precise, every step assured. Sometimes he toys with them, lets them think they have the upper hand and Q has to pretend the shiver of delight that runs up his spine doesn't exist. Death hangs over James, a mephitic cloud, ominously looming as it laps at his heels and wraps cold fingers around his heart, and Q doesn't ever think he'll understand how he always manages to outrun it, but he knows he's never looked as good as he does panting and sweating and bleeding, lips quirked as he clutches whatever file needed to be retrieved.

Q is not beautiful like 007 James, or handsome or any other bloody synonym his brain could conjure up, and he knows it. Next to him he's just measly and scrawny, too long body as if he's been stretched out on a rack, and too gangly limbs as if puberty had given up on him half way through. He'd tried, when he was young and vain, to build up muscles like James, like the other Double-Oh's at his command, before realising after a month of gruelling training, he was going nowhere and gave up, resigning himself to the fact his body just wasn't made to look like a male model. He'd settled for thin, slender he liked to think, covering up with giant parkas and huge jumpers, and no one had complained before, no matter how short the relationship (They usually left because he loved his computers more than them and he can't deny that, but Bond is different in a way he can't quite describe, a way that twists in his stomach and coils round his heart). But next to James, Q feels, well, self conscious to say the least, well aware of how scrawny he is compared to the infamous Bond, international man of mystery and really nice abs. Q is his opposite in every way, dark hair to his blonde locks, pale to his tan, gaunt and lanky next to his brawny waves of rippling muscle. He wonders what the hell Bond sees in him, a 110lb introvert who spends his life in front of a computer screen underneath London, rainiest fucking hell hole on the planet home.

Life runs in unfortunate parallels.

He half ponders, stubbornly self destructive, why Bond doesn't fall in love with someone else, like Eve. Moneypenny is perfect for him, seductively curvy, dangerous, clever. She is the obvious match for James, his perfect opposite, and Q had seen them flirt enough outside M’s office, two cobras circling each other warily. She’s bold like Q never can be, immaculately dressed where Q always looks like a mix between a hobo and a dusty professor, sexily alluring compared to his own dull inexperience, beautiful and charming whereas Q is awkward, bumbling anywhere but behind a computer screen. They would, he thinks, be a perfect couple. Q is more suited to a life of cats and algorithms and warm mugs of tea on cold rainy days, not a life of danger and mystery and 007.

Which doesn't fully explain what he’s doing in his flat, knocking over his lamps and kissing him senseless. Because Q isn't beautiful, and he’s seriously starting to wonder whether Bond’s psychological evaluation was a little off.

Then he looks at him with those icy eyes and Q feels his heart flutter and his breath hitch and any insecurities he may have had disappear as a husky whisper is exhaled on to his neck.
'You're bloody perfect, you wanker.' He feels a smile tug at his lips until he's dragged into his bedroom (he's not even going to ask how James knew) and thrown on the bed. Clothes are shedded erratically and the cool air of his flat tingles as it dances over his bare skin. He tries to mumble something about lube but his mouth muscles refuse to cooperate. He squeezes his eyes shut, screwing the lids tight to try and ignore the bloody Double-Oh kissing his way down his slim torso, but the image is burned into his retinas; too blue eyes staring at him as lips curl, pressed into his skin. James' fingers stroke over the visible ridges of his rib cage, porcelain piano keys, and his nose brushes against the squeamishly soft skin in the hollow of one protruding hip and his lips are cold as they trail down the heat of his inner thigh. He tries to rely on his computers, to summon all his knowledge, create an algorithm to explain exactly what Bond's tongue is doing before his teeth get involved and Q loses all of his upper brain functions.

Bond's mouth is a warm, wet heat, engulfing and enveloping, and Q feels his back arch from his sheets, fingers clawing and lungs gasping. He’d heard rumours of James’ conquests in bed, but nothing can compare to the smooth, skillful glide of his tongue and the slick pressure of his cheeks, better than his own hand. Q unravels all to quickly, embarrassingly so, white fire sparking behind his eyes lids, body trembling. And all he can think is James, James, James. Distantly he hears his own voice break, screaming obscenities at the top of his voice, and his vision is filled with that same piercing blue.

He pants and his body aches and the hazily glow is delicious against his tired mind, and he wants nothing more than to melt into his sheets and never get up again but James is here and he’s probably still hard so he pushes himself up and sloppily paws at him, eyelids drooping. Strong hands push him firmly back into the bed and later he’ll deny that he whines when Bond is teasing him, but right now he can’t bring himself to care. He knows what he needs to do, even if it’s messy and haphazard, because he can’t leave him like that after what he did for Q.

‘James, let me-’

‘Shut up and go to sleep.’ He doesn't want to but his body disobeys him, curling into the firm warm heat that lies next to him, the strong arms that wrap around him, tugging him back against his broad chest. He tries to say something, anything, but his mouth is slack and slowly he succumbs to the heavy glow in his mind and the last discernible thought he can make out as he slips into infinite darkness is what M is going to say when he invariably finds out. It brings a lazy smile to lips.

--

In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes.