Chapter Text
Of all the things Bond knows of Q, it’s his blue veins Bond thinks of most often. The seemingly translucent skin stretched across them, the way they form ridged roads over Q’s heartbeat. They run dark blue at the base of his hand and get progressively paler as they disappear into arms that can never seem to lie still, those same arms that are always explaining things through delicate motion.
In all the time they’ve known each other, Bond can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Q outside his lab. That, at least, explains why Q only appears in his memories as a basement creature for whom the hours of the day and the seasons of the year are mere numbers on a screen. Unimportant. To be ignored in favour of more important things. To Bond, Q is constantly cool and calm, as unchanging as the temperature of his server room.
All of this Bond now realises is simply a massive failure of imagination. He could kick himself for it. Here, on the eastern coast of Sicily, Q blooms under the blue sky, dressed in white linen and leaning back against the dusty rock they’re sitting on. His face turns towards Bond in the sunlight, eyes glinting in time with the ocean.
“All right?” Q asks, bemused.
“Mm,” Bond hums, reaching for one of Q’s wrists. He places a kiss there, right over a fluttering pulse and thinks of nothing but the warmth under his lips.