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It’s crisp tweed and snazzy eyewear as far as the eye can see, oxfords and razor-sharp french cuffs and cuts that haven’t been updated since 1962. Q takes in the rich, moneyed atmosphere and suppresses a shudder; each of these suits cost more than rent on his first flat for a year, and the peculiar blend of worsted wools and mustard plaids is just this side of too old to have been caught up in the recent trends. There is, after all, a difference between vintage, repro, and just decrepit.
“You’re taking the piss,” he tells Bond, but the man just strides by coolly, already stopping on the other side of the room to take in the darted jacket on a suit form. The place looks like Bond’s aesthetic got shitfaced on vodka martinis and vomited gabardine. Even for Savile Row, this is minted.
There’s a pretty girl at the counter, the owner’s daughter perhaps, who looks for all the world like she’s just resting idly between rounds of clay pigeons. Her twill trousers and tall hunting boots are as immaculate as they are intimidating. She lets her eyes skim over him with the casual disregard of the very wealthy, but Q knows enough to feel her eyes long after they’re meant to have gone. He sidles over to where Bond is regarding the delicate turn of a shawl-collared tux jacket.
“It’s a lesson my father instilled in me as a young boy, Q: every man should own at least one good bespoke suit,” Bond tells him as he reaches out to finger the satin band.
“I couldn’t agree with you more.” The man is elegant, glasses clean and polished—not entirely dissimilar to Q’s own, Q realises smugly—and best of all, he’s wrapped in a snuggly jumper with leather patches. He looks like an older, balder Q. Bond wrinkles his nose as though he can read Q’s mind. “Your son, sir?” the man asks, and Bond’s expression twists further, from “I’ve just bitten into a lemon” to “dear god, what is that smell?”. Q catches the man’s wink.
“I wouldn’t even know what to do with a dinner jacket if it bit me on the arse,” Q tells him bluntly, because this is a man who understands the importance of dressing comfortably, albeit professionally. The man nods.
“Generally, you wear it,” he says.
“Thank you—” Bond says, fishing for a name.
“Merlin.”
“Thank you, Merlin,” Bond continues stiffly. “I was hoping to have him fitted by the master tailor. Is he around?”
Merlin freezes, something vague and tight pinching at his eyes. “Restructuring the company, sir. He’s left the business.” A disagreement, then, or a buyout. A breakup? Q wonders, but Merlin sinks back into his serene smile. “I assure you, Geoffrey will take great care of you today, gentlemen.” There’s a Scots burr to his voice, pleasant and soft.
“Geoffrey?” Bond repeats. When Merlin gestures to the elderly man arranging brollies in an elephant’s foot that may not be a replica, Bond tuts.
“Stop being a twat,” Q murmurs under his breath. Bond’s smile is sour.
“I want a three piece on him,” Bond tells Geoffrey, who bows and scrapes with easy deference. Merlin’s smile grows and he nods.
“If I may recommend a blue plaid—?”
“You may not,” Bond tells him crisply. Q pokes him in the side with the stylus from his phone, then catches Merlin looking at it from the corner of his eye. There are more than a few aftermarket upgrades; Q tucks it away casually and reminds himself not to bring it out again. Most phones don’t have a flash on their cameras strong enough to blind a man, and the hardware might be noticeable.
Bond settles on a deep slate that picks the greys out of his eyes, and since he’s basically informed Bond that he’s not going to participate, Q listens with half an ear as Bond tells Geoffrey about shirts with mother of pearl buttons and shadow stripes in indigo to catch the blues. At first he thinks Merlin is bustling around taking notes, but there’s something just a tiny bit off; Q spies the hinges in the coat hook, carefully disguised with a bit of clever scrollwork, just as Merlin clicks his tongue, taps his pen to the pad of paper in his hand, and nods.
“I’ve got a dark grey lining you might like for that. Let me fetch it?” He’s gone from the room before either Bond or Q can respond, and it’s not a terrible surprise when Q’s phone vibrates in his pocket a few seconds later—privacy shield engaged. He shoots Bond a significant look. Geoffrey continues to pin pieces of wool obliviously.
“How did you find this place, did you say, James?” Q asks, and Bond looks up from a row of nearly-identical buttons to smile.
“My dad used to shop here. He had the whole line, from the oxfords—not brogues—to the brolly. I suppose I got my sense of style from him,” Bond says. “Brushed steel, do you think?” he asks. Geoffrey nods genteelly.
“Is this where you got your first suit, then?” Q presses. The urgency rolls off Bond’s back, though. He’s in his element, clearly, selecting threads and fabrics, then pairing the ties and buttons easily.
“Cufflinks?” Bond asks. Q tries not to growl.
His phone vibrates again, and when he slips it from his pocket, there’s a text from an unknown number. “Yeah, whatever,” Q tells him, distracted, and he only gets a brief, disappointed look from Bond before he turns back to designing the suit; the text is blank, a “hello world” intended just for him, and Q tips his head back, glancing around until he finds what he’s looking for—he makes eye contact with the buttonhole for a solid thirty seconds before turning back to Bond. “Oh, I’m sorry, James. You know I’m dreadful with this sort of thing. It’s only work is so terribly hard on my clothes—you know that—and I don’t want to ruin your beautiful gift. I’m not a posh suit kind of guy, anyway—give me a good accessory any day and I’ll be good to go.”
“The sleek curves of a well-designed pen?” Merlin’s back, lips turned up impishly. There’s a fountain pen tucked into his pocket now, an honest-to-god fountain he holds up for Q to see. There’s a tortoise lid capped on the end and the nib is engraved gold; he slips it into the pocket of Q’s jumper easily.
Q grins. The thing’s got a subtle whiff of something acrid, some chemical that’s not quite the normal scent of ink. He’s looking forward to peeling it apart in the lab to see what he’s got. “Now there’s a thing I can get behind,” he tells Merlin. Now that they’ve taken the shape of each other, he’s easy to recognise, and when Bond is discussing production timelines with Geoffrey, Q and Merlin watch each other carefully. He’s heard rumours, whispers that seem verified by each slender black dot he sees where a dot oughtn’t to be, and he remembers some vague mention, now, from an uncle about being kitted out in a suit from the city—he’d always balked at the thought, and after MI6 had materialised, the talk had dropped off. There’s a pretty boy, young and possessed of the kind of jaw owned by American superheroes, who walks in and heads straight over to the girl; his glasses are as lovely and on-point as everyone else’s in the shop.
“You want to trade your shoes for a nice pair of oxfords sometime, you know where to find us,” Merlin tells him. “In the mean time, hold onto that pen. It’s on the house.”
Q reaches into his pocket. He’d had other plans for this, but James can wait another short while. It feels awkward to offer the natty biro with a chewed cap in exchange, but Merlin takes it gingerly, folding it into an inside pocket. Bond throws them an odd look as he rejoins them; Q smiles guilelessly, once again the boy out shopping for his first grownup suit. It’s only a little bit obvious when Bond stiffs Merlin’s handshake, but Q takes it and recognises the businesscard pressed into his hand when he does. He tucks it into his pocket.
“Pleasure to meet you, Merlin,” Q says smoothly.
“You too, Q.”