Chapter Text
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
Three months later Bond finds himself alone in a graveyard, but the feeling that’s accompanying him isn’t grief; it’s relief.
The grave is Vesper’s. He hasn’t been here before; hasn’t wanted to. Holding on to anger was easier.
Easy is not always best, though.
He doesn’t have flowers, feels it would be redundant. They’ll die, and then they’ll simply be detritus. No one comes here and he’s not planning to return. What he places with her is Venice. It’s the elevator. It’s the hospital. It’s all of the memories he doesn’t want to haunt him anymore.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” he says to her grave. “I’m sorry about what you were forced to do. I’m not angry anymore.”
He doesn’t say ‘I forgive you,’ to her grave, but he says it to M’s, and later Q says it to him, when he wakes up from another nightmare of murdering and pulling triggers.
He leaves the past behind him. He forgives. Then he moves in to Q’s flat, and into his closet and his bathroom. He moves in to Q’s life, too; He settles there, like Q settled in his. He doesn’t buy a ring, but he thinks about it.
He’s happy. He’s almost forgotten what that felt like. But also: He has someone to trust.
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Bond wakes one Saturday morning where he doesn’t have anything on, and Q is awake, but still in the bed. Once he notices Bond’s awakening jolt, he buries his hand in Bond’s hair. Bond moves in closer, so he’s lying next to Q’s hip.
“Morning,” Q mumbles. “I love you.”
It’s the first time he says it. It’s not that Bond doesn’t know; they’re not exactly trying to hide it, but hearing it said out loud still makes a difference. He feels himself smiling against the skin of Q’s hip. When he looks up, Q is smiling widely too.
“Say it again?” Bond requests. Q’s smile gets wider.
“I love you,” he repeats. His voice is dripping with fondness.
“Hm.” Bond kisses the hip he’s lying by. “Thank you.” He hears Q laughing.
“You’re welcome.”
Bond intertwines his legs with Q’s. “I love you, too.”
“I know,” Q says. Bond says it again anyway, and then leans up to kiss him.
“James,” Q says into the kiss. Bond scoffs. It’s not true anymore that James is who he really is; maybe it never was. Bond is who he is when he’s at work, and when he’s with Q. The thing is, those two parts don’t have to be separate anymore.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, and Q laughs. Then he kisses him again.