#HELL YEA!!!#I love the idea of Q talking to his cats cuz I too am a talker and hes just like me forreal#and also there IS something so. intimate and private about being there to overhear a private moment like this...#(theres this one fic where Bond was/is drowsing while Q is babytalking his cats. and he says sth like. who is this strange man hm? and#sth like. do you think he'll stay? I think I'd like it if he stayed. and it's just suuuch a moment and like such a bit of like#a casual intimate close look.)#yeah.. Bond like. owo?#lol Im imagining Q threatening Bond to never tell anyone abt this#but Bond is like *offended* I would NEVER. this moment was just for ME (...it was never for you Bond it was for the cats...) (pft same diff) (@halfbaked00q)

Ahhh, I know which fic you're talking about, but the name escapes me!! Shoot. Now I want to reread that fic. Does anyone remember which one it was? I seem to remember that Q called the cat 'babe' and it was super cute.

But yes, it was SUCH a moment. And it WOULD be Such A Moment for Bond, overhearing the Silly Cat Song about Q's bad day! A precious treasure! Of COURSE he is not going to tell anyone about this! He's offended Q would suggest such a thing! This moment was HIS special prize and reward for breaking into Q's flat and catching him off guard!! 😠

I also think he is now extremely determined to find a way to overhear more Silly Cat Songs (and songs from Q in general). Once is not enough! He NEEDS more opportunities to see Q with his guard down, doting on the cats!

The intimacy and sense of privacy and the chance to really see what Q is like when he's ~alone~ and off the clock would be deeply intoxicating and addictive for Bond, I think.

Great news; here is the fic referenced :D

Digging out the bullet

“You May Like”:

Ulysses - shouted out before (many times, even, lol- so Im not gonna list the As Seen On TV source segments lmao) but I mean. this fic is gr8 lol. not technically Bond gets high. But he dooooes get poisoned! twice!! once with tetrodotoxin! and honestly it still fits myyy personal bill of “put Bond thru substance-based torment nexus” and I make the rules here, so I’m gonna count it

Alexitcric (sic) - He gets sooooo drugged in this one :3 Also previously shouted out in this post- see it for Alexiteric-related You May Also Like/web-weavings :3

Mad Honey - no on-screen mad honey usage but it’s a delicious look into Bond’s head. very moody & atmospheric which makes my brain go brrrrr

and ofc have to mention the drugged brownie fic (The Best Policy), although we don’t rly see into Bond’s head and it’s more played straight (as in straightforward in its purpose of that makes sense? which is- get Bond on “weed” brownies slash truth serum) than, like, for torment nexus purposes. which is what I’m looking for more of tbh for myyyy haha-sickos enjoyment lol. so more of an honorable mention than a you may also like, but we’re still in the same area code!

feel free to add/mention/shout out any others you may feel fits the bill!

reading this again to muse on its specific tasting notes and thinking/ruminating on the like… idea of Bond being uncomfortable w Q’s brand of Constant Surveillance esp at first, like it goes beyond just bugging/simple observation- its the prickling at the realization that he doesn’t know where/how Q might be watching (revelation at the hacked bug); and also that his very biometric feedback isn’t private to himself, Q literally has a line in a gaping window opened in his metaphoric chest that he (Q) can peer through at his leisure via the SmartBlood…

this led to me toying w the thought of, like, “Q’s gaze as a form of unsolicited touch,” like the idea that Bond starts feeling Q’s phantom eyes on him as if they were wandering hands…

<- and then the “Ive connected the two dots” of how actually this is in many ways the LITERAL experience of animals (e.g. cats, pets, reptiles) being socialized, huh. They have no choice in it- it WILL happen, because the human decided it was so. and they can fight it, but there also is a certain inevitability to at least *something* shifting in the end, even if they fight succumbing to being Handled, there is still going to be some inevitability to repeated exposure breeding familiarity breeding comfortableness arising from said familiarity.

but yeah lol Ive talked about/joked about premises where Bond is like a skittish stray cat being socialized by Q. But it’s fascinating to see a fic where, to my mind, it actually presents a Bond-pov of that process. Cuz I think I usually imagine it from Q’s. of the like, patient slow integrating into his life etc. >> but actually it kinda IS true of just how… idk if ‘violating’ is exactly the right word, but trespassing - I suppose - it is, to experience that, for any reasonable person -kind of standard.

fascinating

Conventional Parabolas (Clockwork Soldiers) also my beloved sexy princess cuz. get a load'a this:

He hadn’t realized that what he had seen as a comfortable arrangement had somehow curled and wrought itself into something more anyway, something beyond the sum of an old 00’s psychological hang-ups and Q’s curiosity. Somewhere along the line, 007 had decided to trust Q with everything that made him James and not something more like Silva, and the responsibility, the power, was near overwhelming. Nearly intoxicating. He wondered if M had felt like this, keeping in control of all her deadly little killers, if the new M would learn how, and Q smiled wryly to himself, giving in. After all, this was something new, having someone depend on him for far more than scratching an unusual itch, and Q did always like novelty.

OH HO HOOO. I have Not read this in fact - my weakness is delving blind into these anthology fics alas, so I often dont, tend to,, but ooohhh boy oh boyyy

The letter, though, was a new twist. And as it turned out, Q’s letter contained two very simple yet powerful facts: James Bond is a Hellhound, and he’s yours now.

‼️‼️ big W, for ME, in particular!!! my thing of “Mallory may have inherited the seat/throne/position, but Q inherited the crown” or whatever variation of this patter I’ve used through the months lmao. yeah yeah yeah!!!!!!! babyyyy !!!!!!!

also I love me a good supernatural AU and oohhhggg hellhound Bondddd okayyy okay okayyy

thanku for alerting me to this, truly, ‘tis peaks

I know this post is already long lmao, but. ALSO makes me insaaane brain go bzzzz

“It wasn’t your idea, was it?” enquires Bond, gently, after his drink comes.

Q doesn’t have to ask what he’s talking about – the spectre of Smart Blood has been hanging over Q for three months. As awful as it was to inject it, it had also been liberating. The tech is out there now, the choice and the pressure taken away from Q. All he has to do now is protect the secret and keep it running like a well-oiled machine, and he has always been very good at that.

“Of course not.” Q sighs.

“M’s too much of an antique to know about nanotechnology. Whose was it?”

“It’s a bit rich of you to be calling others antiques, isn’t it?” teases Q, with a wry smile. “Someone new in my department. They never got the memo about hiding experimental research until such time as it could be considered functionally and ethically sound.” Q sips his drink for bravery before turning to Bond and looking him in the eye. “I am sorry.”

Bond huffs a laugh. “You should pay more attention to my file. Of all the shit the job has thrown at me, this hardly ranks.”

“All the same. ….”

It’s, like. sooo so much. and soo important. to ME. that Bond Knows it wasn’t Q’s idea!! and is so gentle about it!

and alsoooo. That Bond is so dismissive/flippant/indifferent about it!!!!

To Q this IS an egregious overstep in a series of “much too much"es that they ask of their agent. To Bond, it’s an average Tuesday!!!!! *Jenny Slate NASA scream voice*

But!! to Q!!! all the same! it IS a step too far! it’s invasive, it’s dystopian! and then he goes on to assure Bond that only he can track him. which DOES reassure Bond! A small consolation, but one nonetheless!!!! (again re: my throughline abt stealing little bits of comfort where he can… but THIS one was offered to him. nay, manufactured!! by Q!! especially out of consideration for HIM!! as a PERSON!!! and not a weapon or a tool!!!!!! 8VVVVV)

anyway. Im very normal about all of this.

hello to further convince you of this fic. This fic has some GREAT character work & character exploration. It’s got, like. prickly assholey - and dare I say, brittley - Q, a la Mr. Put your back into it / Told You Skyfall.

and it’s got an interesting Bond, too, who is like. at once smoother and more abrasive/caustic than you typically get in fic. but VERY movie-esque of him.

It’s perhaps rather spoiling it a bit, but, as a taster:

He’s hurt Q’s feelings.  Anyone with eyes would see it in the delicate, wounded way he’s picking his way down the hall, shoulders tight and high around his ears.  And Q has this habit, he’s noticed, of pushing hard only to retreat the moment things don’t go his way, pulling back into dark mutters and embarrassed silence.  Q has a right to be embarrassed, has a right to feel any way he likes, really, but Bond is beginning to resent this passive-aggressive forwardness, this dance of approach and retreat that happens every time he lets himself relax around Q.  It’s not really Q’s fault—attraction eats at Bond like acid, no less damaging for its slow, insidious burn, a feeling like a splinter caught in the back of his mind festering half-forgotten….  Except he’s never really forgotten, has he?  And that’s the problem.  He remembers too well.
He remembers too well a thin, shaking frame wracked with sobs at the terror of seeing a corpse for the first time.  He remembers dark curls plastered to pale skin as he’d held thin, trembling limbs against his own.  Even the eyes, blue instead of green but the same pale, nearly colorless with shock, anger, fear, desperation.  How little he’d understood then.  How little he feels he understands now.  She’d looked at him and seen a killer, and it had been easy to comfort her because she wasn’t one.  Saboteur and thief and liar—the bitch is dead—but not a killer, and the judgment in her eyes had gutted him.  He’d cleaned her hands for her of the invisible taint of blood because he was a killer and didn’t have the right to be squeamish, and now Q is asking for the same absolution, but this may be more blood than he can stomach, and all of it too real.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?  Right there is the issue they’d taunted each other over the moment they’d first met: Q’s capability.  Perhaps not even his capability—if this exercise has taught him nothing, it’s to avoid underestimating his Quartermaster’s ruthless brutality—but his culpability; one corpse has Q shaking and raging.  What about the hundreds of others that are his fault, too?  Does Q have the right to reach across the world with digital fingers and snuff a life before tea?  Death is intimate—dirty, sticky, stinking, bloody—and Bond remembers his first almost better than he remembers losing his virginity: the way the informant struggled and fought, the tinkling sound of shattered glass and the raspy crunch of powdered porcelain underfoot.  Who was Q’s first kill?  Does he even know?
It’s easy, terribly easy, to kill without seeing the results firsthand.  And perhaps it may take a special kind of detachment verging on sociopathy to ignore the instinctive uneasiness that comes with dealing with the dead, and perhaps an uncomfortable level to be able to accept the knowledge that it’s your own fault for the death.  Bond is aware that he’s not the best portrait of mental health.  But is it better to be uneasy with the corpses and fine with the killing?  Does it make Q more human to tiptoe around the body in the hall as if it might touch him when it’s Q’s own work that caused it to be there in the first place?  For the first time Bond is glad he knows the visceral feel of a throat in his hands, knows the kick of a gun and the reek of singed flesh that comes with a gunshot wound at close range.  He knows the pain and blood and agony of an ended life, and it means more to him than a blip on a screen.  Q has stopped where they passed Allain on the floor, lingering lost in thought; Bond pushes by and walks on.  If he doesn’t, he’ll say something they’ll both regret.

and this is on TOP of the delicious prose and like, really immersive and expertly crafted horror set-up going on in the fic.

the kelpie fic, btw:

Whisperer, by Nana_71926

Summary:

Take care down by the water. There is a dangerous creature that roams the lonely lochs and rivers of Scotland. A conniving beast, it lures its unsuspecting victims to the water only to mercilessly drown them…

After losing three agents in one day, Q takes time off from work to recover at his sister’s farm and there he meets someone… extrarodinary.

#ehehehhehehhehehe#my vision: put him in a concrete room. no blankets no lights no pot to piss in. complete darkness#speakers in the room either play: white noise. a sound so low it cannot be heard but still makes it so you can’t hear anything else#and voices. random people. audio from bugs they’ve planted so Bond can hear the voices of people he knows. BUT. it’s scrambled and muffled#so that he can’t understand anything they say. but it’s enough to recognize the voice#now alter the audios so those voices are screaming#in terror. in pain.#play audio of puppies yelping in pain#shit like that#complete darkness but he gets no rest#make that grown ass man afraid of the dark plz and thank you (@the-book-reaper)

hello. Not exactly the same but could I “You May Also Like” interest you in:

Close, by beaubete

Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom, SPECTRE (2015), James Bond (Craig Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Hurt/Comfort

Summary:
He wakes to a dark so solid that it rests on his eyelashes like snowflakes.

o!!!

“You May Like:”

i get down (when she gets you high), by thestalwartheart

–

the relevant excerpt from the fic, linked above:

Q has never seen anything like it.

There have been times he’s appreciated his office’s soundproofing and tinted windows for the private space it gives him, but never has he felt he’s needed them to hide from the world until this very moment.

The fight is bloody, gruesome, utterly animal. Q has seen Bond fight a hundred men like this, but never a woman. Even on the slight side of five foot six, she is stronger than she looks and seems to know plenty of spots to hurt a man’s body — places a male assassin might shirk out of his own squeamishness. She had turned on Bond just as he was about to orgasm. Q had only had a second to shout his name in warning before it was too late. A knife had been her weapon of choice at the start, but she’s since committed to using her fists, nails and teeth in more and more brutal ways.

After a horrifying few minutes of Bond trying to crush her skull enough to break it, he manages to snap her neck instead. Q can hear the awful crunch of it through the comm line. Almost as bad is the dreadful, wounded noise from Bond’s throat when her body hits the bed, uncannily still.

A minute full of heavy breathing passes before Bond gets up and snatches an armful of miniatures from the hotel room’s minibar. He makes his way to the bathroom and when Q sees him through the camera placed behind the mirror, he cannot suppress a gasp. Bond’s collarbone and shoulders are covered in vicious lacerations. A bloody cut on his mouth makes him look like a freshly-fed vampire, and there are welts covering his torso that will doubtless be deep bruises in a number of hours. His cock is still at attention, though Q cannot imagine he wants anything to do with it at the moment. Q turns away to organise the cleanup while Bond downs three of the whiskies then splashes his cuts with vodka. He cleans and bandages himself in silence until the moment he catches his own eyes in the mirror.

“Fuck, fuck!” Bond grasps the bathroom sink for dear life.

“Stop, 007, just listen. Keep your focus on my voice,” says Q, in a tone as calm as he can manage. “Cleanup is on the way. You’ll be on the 2315 British Airways flight back to London — the tickets are on the BA app in your phone. Your alias for the flight is your usual, Richard Sterling. I’ve ordered a car to pick you up in ten minutes. On your way out, throw your bags in the third skip from the exit, the cleanup team will take care of it. I’ve organised a debrief with M at 1400 tomorrow, you needn’t come in before then.” Q takes a deep breath. “Got it?”

“Yes,” croaks Bond.

“Alright, good.”

Bond breathes slowly for another minute before resuming his wound care and changing into a fresh suit.

“Q?”

“Yes?”

“Can you stay on the line?”

Q has a meeting at 0730 in the Prime Minister’s office. He has done everything he’s been asked to do for this mission, and by all rights should be handing the rest of it off the night team so he can go home to cuddle his cats. But Bond’s eyes are the colour of a vicious storm, blown out by both alcohol and adrenaline. One look at him tells Q that if he hangs up, there’s every chance Bond will forgo the airport in favour of turning the gun on himself down on the banks of the Vltava.

“Of course. I’ll be here as long as you need.”

Some days, he thinks his department budget has never paid for anything so useful as the sofa bed in his office.

–

but also definitely read the whole fic