#jamesq

(He often wondered if Vesper had the right idea in changing her last name. She said she found such freedom in not having to constantly look over her shoulder and wonder if old enemies were coming to settle scores. He envied her for the freedom and yet kept the last name, thinking that maybe one day, it would have its use.)

But then Vesper vanished. He had a last phone call, where she mentioned a man named James and a boat and how she had found that last bit of freedom that she had been so craving. He congratulates her quite sarcastically and tells her to remember her poor old brother stuck in the doom and gloom of London. She laughs (and it sounds so light and musical, quite unlike the Vesper he’s known as his life), and tells him that she’ll come back to London and bring James with her so that they can meet. He says that he would like that, but then there’s a muffled voice saying something to his sister and Vesper quickly telling him that she must be off, but that she’ll call him again as soon as she can.

He never gets that next phone call.

Instead, he gets weeks of radio silence. He gets long days and even longer nights of trying to track down where his sister has gone. But he never gets an answer.

So he does the one thing he promised his grandfather he would never do.

He hacks into MI6 itself.

He only gets a name, James Bond, before they come for him.

-

He almost expected them to kill him.

The old woman in front of him (M, he reminds himself, she called herself M), looks like the last person that would be in charge of something like MI6. He thinks that she looks like someone who should have taken her retirement years ago and settled down into the country. But when she speaks, all of his doubts melt away and for the first time since they initially grabbed him, he feels fear.

“Alexander Lyon.” She makes his last name sound dirty, like it’s a crime. “I guess you know why you’re here.”

“Because you’ve got computer security so awful that a low-level IT guy like myself could get into it?” She smirks at him and his blood runs cold.

“Something like that.” She flips a page in the file folder and scans it before speaking again. “Your grandfather is Freddie Lyon? Seems like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Yeah, you could say that. My sister would agree with you.” M raises her eyebrow at that.

“Sister? Your file makes no mention of a sister.” Alex swallows, fight back the tears that sprung up the moment he mentioned Vesper.

“Well I’ve got one. Her name was Vesper, Vesper Lynd. She changed her last name when she went off to Uni. She didn’t want our family’s skeletons to follow her.” He can see M’s eyes widen and that’s when he knows exactly what happened to his sister.

“I see.” M’s voice is steady, much unlike what his own would be if he were to speak right now. “Well, Mr. Lyon, you’ve got two choices. I can have you arrested for hacking, which will come with a charge of treason since it was a government database. Or...” She pauses for a second to look him square in the eye, so that he knows that she is sincere when she makes this offer. “You can come work for us. Put that low-level IT brain to good use.”

Despite the tears that want to fall, despite how he wants to scream and howl and grieve for his sister, he knows that now is not the time. Right now, he needs to focus on himself and what the rest of his life is going to look like. So he forces something like a smile onto his face before he answers M.

“Did I ever really have an option?”

Her answering smile reminds him of a wolf.

-

He spends the first few years being little more than a nerd monkey. He’s assigned to Q-Branch, where he works directly under the department head, a slight bent old man who only answers to Q. His jobs affords him few sights of the man known as James Bond, but he sees him just enough to know that he is definitely the type of man that Vesper would have been attracted to.

(After he’s officially hired, M sits him down and tells him everything about his sister’s death. As she does, he makes two promises to himself, the first of which is that he will see the people responsible for this dead. The second is that he himself will never let his head be turned by love. He refuses to go out the same way Vesper did. Absolutely refuses.)

The day James Bond dies, he is in Q-Branch, elbows deep in a computer that was refusing to turn on. He hears M’s announcement of the death of a double-oh agent over the intercom, same as everyone else. But when he goes home that evening, he digs out the bottle of sherry that his grandfather had left him in his will. He pops the top of it open and raises it towards the window, a form of a toast to the final connection to his sister.

He goes into the work the next morning with a nasty hangover and feeling in his gut that the worst is yet to come.

-

He’s out on an errand for Q when MI6 goes up in flames.

The feeling of the world rocking beneath his feet has him abandoning his spot in the queue for the coffee shop up the street from Vauxhall and wandering back outside to see what is going on. His eyes widen as he sees the smoke coming up from the top floor of the building and he bolts into action. He was never much of a runner during his school days, but fear has hit him hard and the adrenaline is pumping through him.

He gets as close at the main doors before someone is pulling him back, yelling at him that it’s too dangerous. He screams at them that he works here, that there are people trapped inside. But the person doesn’t let him go. He’s forced to sit there and watch as the people that he’s started to view as a second family filter out of the building in droves.

He gathers what he can of Q-Branch around him, trying to wave down medics to look at the worst of them, all while watching the door to see if Q himself is coming.

He never does and Alex feels another seed of rage take place next to the one already planted for Vesper.

-

His job as the Quartermaster was only supposed to be temporary.

Q’s death had put M in a tight spot and the sudden return of 007 puts her in an even tighter one, so she grabs the first member of Q-Branch that she can find and shoves them into Q’s shoes. Alex feels like there are much more qualified candidates for the job, even temporarily, but when he opens his mouth to argue with her, she gives him that glare that basically tells him that he isn’t going to win this fight. So he sighs, takes his new badge, and darts out the door so he can go meet 007.

The meeting goes about as well as he expects. They snark at each other and then Alex hands over the gear and leaves. He doesn’t want to get too close to 007 right now. Q’s death is weighing on him heavily and is bringing Vesper to the front of his mind, which makes James being alive harder for him to deal with.

And a few days later, when James is asking him for a favor, he still hasn’t dealt with it. His first instinct is to tell James to shove it, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees the photo of Vesper that he keeps on his desk. He still wants revenge for her, and he now wants revenge for Q, and he knows that the best chance for either of these things is to keep James Bond alive. So even though it could mean the end of his career, he does exactly as James tells him.

And when he’s done, he sits back with his mug of tea and thinks that he might have quite the promising career in espionage after all.

-

When Mallory takes over as M, Alex fully expects that he will be demoted back to nerd monkey, or even fired, especially after the whole Skyfall mess. Instead, he’s given the job of Quartermaster as a permanent position.

“Wait.” He reads the paperwork in front him at least three times, not entirely sure that it’s not some elaborate prank. “You’re not actually firing me?” Mallory nods his head slowly, like he’s trying to convince a stubborn child. “But I’m the whole reason that M is dead!” Mallory sighs.

“No, M knew full well what could happen and she decided that the risk was worth it to bring down Silva.” Alex sighs softly. He hasn’t stopped beating himself up since he had been told that M died in the line of duty at Skyfall. “You proved to me and to the rest of MI6 that you were willing to do what it takes to keep England safe. I think you’ve more than earned the right to call yourself Q.”

Q.

The word knocks around in his head, pulling up images of his one-time boss. He tries to see himself in the same role, issuing the same orders, but he just can’t. But Mallory is looking at him, one eyebrow cocked, waiting for an answer, so he sighs again, grabs the pen next to the stack of paperwork and starts signing.

He keeps telling himself that this is for Vesper, but deep down, he can’t deny that he doesn’t want this a little bit for just himself.

-

Being Q means that he’s put into contact with James Bond more than he would like to be. The more he talks to the double-oh, the more he would like to deck him once or twice in the throat. He doesn’t understand what Vesper saw in him and his patience with trying to learn that is worn thin by the fact that Bond seems incapable of bring back his equipment in one piece.

So he’s not entirely thrilled to be stuck on the same elevator as him when leaving M’s office after a briefing about a mission. And his lack of enthusiasm turns to dread when Bond decides that he needs to hold a conversation with him while they head down to Q-Branch.

“You know, your file is quite difficult to find.” Alex rolls his eyes. When he took on the role of Q permanently, the first thing he did was bury his records. He didn’t want anyone to be able to go in and poke around for info about who he was and where he came from. “But, I did find it.” Alex almost breaks his neck as he whips his head around to look at Bond, his eyes wide with fear. “Were you ever going to tell me that you were Vesper’s damned brother?” Alex takes a step back from the double-oh, preparing to defend himself if he needs to, before speaking.

“No. Because frankly, that was none of your damn business.” The elevator stops and dings, informing the two men that they’ve reached their destination. “Besides, you and I are working for the same goal now.” The doors to the elevator open.

"Yeah?" The venom in James's voice is almost lethal and if Alex were a lesser man, he would be shitting himself in terror right now. "And what's that?" Alex smirks, a thrill running up his spine as he takes a step and pushes into James's personal space.

"Revenge." He sweeps out of the elevator after that, leaving Bond to stare after him.

-

Helping bring SPECTRE down is bittersweet.

A part of him, (the bloodthirsty part of him that has slowly been growing during his time at MI6), wishes that he had been the one to push C over the ledge. But in the end, the bastard is dead and Blofeld is in custody. Alex wants to wander down towards the holding cells and demand that Blofeld answer him on why his sister had to die, but he's afraid of what the answer might be and with Bond basically up and leaving, taking the rebuilt Aston-Martin with him, he really isn't ready to face anymore hard truths at the moment.

Instead, he locks himself up in his lab and works on the gear and stuff that he needs to have ready for when M gets the approval to reinstate the Double-Oh program. Tanner brings him food and Moneypenny reminds him to go home and feed his cats, but beyond that, he doesn't leave his lab. He thinks that with the downfall of SPECTRE and his sister's killers dead and behind bars, he's a bit lost. He joined MI6 because he wanted to know why she was dead and then he stayed on because he wanted revenge and now, with both of those things accomplished, he's not sure what's honestly left for him.

But then James Bond comes sweeping back into his life.

It's another late night in the lab, with 009 needing new gear before they're sent out next week on a mission that should have been taken care of days ago. Alex hasn't slept in about 48 hours and there are enough empty take out containers strewn across his desk to build a cat fort for either of the two waiting for him to come home and sleep. He hears the side door open and without looking, thinks that it's Tanner or Moneypenny coming to yell at him for not sleeping.

"As I told the last five times you've come to down here to yell at me, I'll sleep when I'm dead." He gets a snort in response and he almost falls out of his chair to turn around to see who is actually in his lab. His eyes widen further than they already were when he sees James standing there, smiling at him like he hasn't been gone for the past few months, running off to god knows where with Dr. Swann.

(Alex doesn't have anything against the doctor, he's just a touch bitter that James gets to move on with his life while he's still stuck in London, mourning his sister and trying to figure out what to do next.)

"What in the bloody hell are you doing here?" James's face falls, as he was clearly expecting a different sort of homecoming. "I thought you quit!"

"It was more like a very long, very overdue vacation. I thought M told you that." Alex snorts at that.

"The only words I've heard from M are 'the double-oh's need gear, so hop to it'. Which reminds me, I need to finish this gun for 009, so unless you're dying, I need you to leave." Alex turns his chair back around so he can focus in on the gun, trying to see what all needs to be done on it before he's satisfied with it. But as he does that, James starts to speak again.

"I came back for you Q." Alex turns his head, not quite sure he actually heard what Bond said. "I came back for you. Madeleine is lovely and all, but she can't handle my life."

"And what makes you think that I can?" Alex turns his chair again so that he's once again facing James. "I'm not my sister you know. I'm nothing like her. She was all neat edges and tucked corners, so if you think that I am anything like that, you are dead wrong." James huffs out a laugh.

"I know that you aren't her Q. And I don't expect you to be." James crossed the room so that he can lean on the table in front of Alex. "If I'm being honest, I quite like the fact that you're nothing like her” Alex sighs, he's tired and not in the mood for whatever games Bond wants to play.

"What are you trying to say James? I'm going on two days of no sleep, so if you would..." Whatever Alex was going to say is cut off by Bond's lips pressing against his own. It's been years since he's kissed anyone, but his body responds automatically, with his hands finding their way into James's hair, trying to find something to hold onto while Bond kisses him like he's the last thing on this earth that matters. Eventually, Alex gets lightheaded from the lack of oxygen and has to break the kiss. But he only pulls away to the point that their foreheads are touching.

"So," James asks, sound just as out of breath as Alex imagine that he would if he were to speak. "Does that answer whatever questions you may have?"

Alex, who is running on two days of no sleep and is still not entirely sure that any of this actually, just starts laughing.