part of a 00Q Skyfall snippet I'm toying with

[foolish_m0rtal]

Because it's become weirdly fanon that Q doesn't know how to drive. I learned British English via the Indian school system, but now I live in America, so the Indian English I'm using to write in the Skyfall fandom is probably horrendously tainted. Any corrections are wholly welcome.

Also, if anyone has any glib suggestions for a fic title involving cars, I'm all ears. At the moment, I only have lyrics from the odd car song:

1. "I'll take you anywhere you want me to" (Little Honda by the Beach Boys)
2. "systematic, hydromatic" (Greased Lightning from Grease)
3. "baby you can drive my car" (Drive My Car by the Beatles)
4. "all i hear is your gear" (I'm in Love With My Car by Queen

Q is somewhat of a fixture in the Q-branch lab at odd hours of the night. He isn't a workaholic, contrary to everyone's assumptions, but his body is used to being awake during the prime coding hours from midnight to 5AM. MI6 isn't embroiled in the middle of an international crisis at the moment, so the only other people in the lab are Boothroyd and an engineer on loan from Naicho who hasn't adjusted to the time difference yet. She's working on some kind of micro-explosive, and her workbench is all over with black scorch marks. Their department certainly attracts a type.

Q's own workbench is littered with empty crisp packets and sandwich crumbs, and it's a godsend that he has such a quicksilver metabolism or he would need an anti-gravity belt like that man from Dune. He's been trying to cut down on the crisps anyway, not at all because Bond mentioned his spots. Not that he has spots.

Q startles as his phone rings, and his fingers smash an unintelligible string of letters across the screen. Boothroyd laughs but not unkindly, and Q scowls at him.

Speak of the devil. The caller id on the screen says 007, and Q wonders what Bond has destroyed this time. He puts the phone to his ear and resumes typing. "This is Q."

"How soon can you be in Upminster?"

Q settles back into his chair. Ever since the incident with Silva, Bond has been on suspension till he can legitimately pass his examinations, and he's been puttering around London making a nuisance of himself. No one has the courage to tell Bond that domestic affairs are not his milieu.

"I would hazard not at all since the Tube is closed." It's amazing that Bond doesn't know these tiny mundane details, but he's probably never been on the Tube unless he's ridden on top of it. To be fair, Q didn't know Bond would take 'get on the train' quite so literally.

Bond makes an impatient noise. "Take a company car—"

"I don't know how to drive."

Silence on the other end.

"Hello?" Q clutches the phone closer to his ear. "Hello, Bond? Have you fainted?"

Now Bond's voice is chiding. "Still got your L-plate, have you?"

And of course Bond has seized the opportunity to mock him. Q wonders if Bond will ever stop with the age jokes. "It's London," he says shortly. "Why on earth would I learn to drive?"

"To get to Upminster."

Q rolls his eyes. "I can work remotely. I'll just go through the camera in your mobile if I need visuals."

"I would really rather you came in person."

He can tell Bond isn't pleased, but he can't bring himself to care. It isn't his job to cater to Bond's every whim. "Is it that important?"

Bond's voice is curiously light as it does when he's staring down the barrel of a gun. "It seems our friend Mr. Silva decided to stash away a few hundred pounds of explosives to avenge himself if we managed to eliminate him. I believe I've just triggered the timer."

"Oh, is that it?" Q says with forced relief. "I thought we were all about to die or something."

"Nothing so drastic," Bond replies, and he sounds like he's smiling.

Q doesn't dwell on that. He can only deal with one impossibility at a time before breakfast. "Get out your bomb kit and your camera phone. I'll help you disarm it."

"Yes, Q," Bond says obediently, and Q can tell when he's being laughed at. He wonders if 007 is capable of taking anything seriously.

He begins rattling off bomb diffusion protocols because Bond is not an accurate measuring stick for the proper reaction to weapons of mass destruction. Bond, who walks around regularly with five weapons on his person and who took the event of his own death with indifferent grace. Bond with his steady hands as he's preparing to defuse a bomb that could destroy an entire London borough.

The Naicho engineer disappears in a cloud of ash and gunpowder at three in the morning. At five-thirty, Boothroyd hangs up whatever gun he's designing to catch the first train home. Urban legend has it that Boothroyd was hired after he called in to report the inferior quality of MI6's firearms, and it turned out he had been speaking from an earpiece he'd lifted off a field agent that he had incapacitated with a well-placed flowerpot to the head. Boothroyd is a very special brand of old school ex-military.

He nods at Q on the way out and drops what turns out to be a partially crushed Toffee Crisp on top of Q's keyboard. He's a good man, Boothroyd. Old as Methuselah and knows more about weapons than Q is strictly comfortable with, but Q has become accustomed to living in fear of his subordinates. He suspects they only let him think he's in charge because he pretends he doesn't know what they get up to when he's away. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement.

He takes a bite of the candy bar and watches the numbers on the bomb wind perilously close to single digits. The wrapper crinkles near his microphone, and he sees Bond's magnified fingers pause on the delicate wires inside the bomb casing.

"You're eating at a time like this?" Bond's voice is carefully neutral, but a bead of sweat falls from his forehead to the back of a hand that is currently holding apart a very crucial triggering mechanism.

"Almost done. Blue wire," Q says indistinctly around another mouthful of chocolate and nougat. "No, the other—not that one. The wire you were just touchi—yes."

The bomb winks off with a beep. Very anti-climatic. Q thinks they would have a considerably worse time of it if their enemies stopped adding countdown clocks and beeping sounds to their detonation systems, and there's a joke in there somewhere, but he's too tired to suss it out so he just snorts.

"What are you laughing about?" Bond asks.

"Nothing. Bombs," Q croaks. His voice has gone hoarse from talking, and his mug is empty and stained with the remnants of a thousand teas, each thinner and fouler than the last. He tips it back for the last drop, and it tastes like death on his tongue. He wonders if the lingering taste of terrible commissary tea has been permanently branded into his mouth, and if this is why he has been single since he was hired.

"Bombs?" Bond says doubtfully.

"Boom," Q supplies and then lets out a peal of hysterical laugh, because it dawns on him that he's been working in MI6 for the last three years without the proprietary touch of another human being. He knows no one outside of his colleagues, and office romances are not advised in MI6. For one thing, they end up being short-lived. Quite literally short-lived.

"Q, go home. Sleep. In that order," Bond says. He sounds almost fond.

"Mm hm," Q replies and puts his head down for just a moment to rest his eyes.

It's almost eleven in the morning when he opens his eyes next, and someone has draped his mustard yellow cardigan around his shoulders like a blanket.

Comments

[mee-eep.livejournal.com]

I'm british and haven't noticed any 'accent', remember reading this snippet previously and hoping you'd write more :)

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

oh, hahaha, I didn't even realise I'd posted this before! Since I'm writing this for the fest, I'm not sure how much of my current rough draft I'm allowed to put on my journal, but I can email you the next part if you're interested.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

[mee-eep.livejournal.com]

LOL you definitely have!

I'd love to see the next part :)