He’s a fussy eater because he has a strong sense of taste and smell. He was terribly picky as a child. As he got older, he learned to appreciate a lot more foods–especially spices and vegetables–but also to be even more discerning about his preferences. He’s easily overwhelmed by sweetness in foods and is much more likely to order coffee than dessert.
He’s fussy about his alcoholic drinks because YES, he CAN taste the difference between the grain-based and the potato-based vodka, and he can TELL that you used an OLD LEMON, not a FRESH ONE, to make that twist of lemon peel, you absolute penny-pinching tosser.
(He still can’t tell the difference between “branch water” and regular water in the classic “bourbon and branch water” drink though. He’s like, ‘Even I have limits to my pretentiousness.’)
He’s a fussy dresser because he’s sensitive to the feeling of certain materials on his skin; the best fabrics are less irritating or they just feel sharper/firmer/better. He likes the constriction of a three-piece suit because of the way the waistcoat puts that firm feeling of ‘and stay there’ around his ribcage but without being too heavy or overwhelming the way a weighted vest would be, the way the tie slots around his neck like it belongs there.
He likes nakedness or near-nakedness best because then there’s no clothes/sensory issues to deal with at all.
He loves the feeling of water over his skin, the feeling of buoyancy from being IN the water, the sight of water dripping down someone else’s body or lapping at the sand, and just water in general is a sensory delight. Frequent pool and/or seaside visits are 100% a requirement for a happy Bond.
He’s fussy about being sick because his proprioception is usually so sharp, his awareness of his own body in space so clear, that the slightest weirdness with his inner ear makes him feel like a cat wearing socks, clumsy and fettered, even if he’s learned how to hide it.
Bond never complains about sensory issues, but the people around him have learned to make adjustments anyway. Moneypenny wears a perfume that’s distinct but not too strong; Tanner knows exactly the places that Bond likes to go to lunch depending on what kind of day he’s had; Q makes gadgets tailored to Bond’s aesthetic preferences and never once questions why it’s so important that the tie that goes with the tie pin camera be made of a material that weighs just so around Bond’s neck, why the interior of the Aston Martin has to feel like this and not like that.
And M? M doesn’t cater to Bond at all, because he knows that Bond’s going to succeed no matter what, which is exactly how Bond likes it.
if you ever feel left out just remember that you weren’t the fifth gryffindor guy in the marauders’ dormitory
I don’t know if the timeline works even a little bit but my headcanon was always that that fifth dude was Kingsley Shacklebolt and that he immediately made a conscious decision to stay the hell away from whatever those four idiots were up to and everyone was like “Yeah, good kid, studies hard, probably gonna be Minister one day if he manages to last his entire school career without committing four murders”.
Kingley Shacklebolt is probably the best roommate ever. The reason he never gets mentioned as the fifth is because he doesn’t ask questions. The other five start disappearing all night every full moon during fifth year? He doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know. Walked in to find Sirius talking to a fucking deer in the dorm like it was James? Just keep moving and don’t make eye contact. James, Sirius and Peter leaving shit all over the floor? Combine forces with Remus to politely yet firmly remind them that we’re not living in a goddamn barn and your dirty underwear shouldn’t spend three weeks straight on the floor James.
Kingsley was, naturally, invited to the Potter-Evans wedding. The invitation was accompanied with a formal apology for the Everything, signed by the Marauders. Enclosed was a little trophy, with the plaque reading ‘best roomie ever’
It may or may not permanently live on his mantle. Kingsley Shacklebolt does not inform Harry Potter of any of this. He has enough people that knew his parents, Kingsley’s not going to make it weird. Keep moving and don’t make eye contact. Besides, he already gave copies of all his pictures of them to Hagrid to go into a photo album for Harry back in first year.
Q is the youngest Holmes sibling. This is really the only set of circumstances under which I could accept Q having a family. I just don’t see him having a mum and dad living out in The Midlands who he visits at Christmas.
For the purposes of my writing, he’s either a Holmes or he’s an orphan.
Q – he’s named Rembrandt/Remy in my Water series – is four years younger than Sherlock and is very much an “oops” baby. Let’s face it. If you were Mummy or Daddy Holmes, would you actively plan on having another child after getting a glimpse at the trouble Sherlock gets into?! In fact, Mummy was completely unaware that she was pregnant until Sherlock sussed it out – Mary Watson was not his first foray into progeny prognostication – and even he even deduced the baby’s gender and birthdate.
Because there are eleven years separating him from Mycroft – who was heading off to school when Q was born; Q finds Mycroft even more insufferable than Sherlock does – Q gets on much better with Sherlock though that relationship can be tense at times. Sherlock ran one too many experiments on Q when they were little for Q to ever fully forgive him, and they’re just far too similar in many ways, though they each vehemently deny it. James Bond and John Watson just nod knowingly and head off to the pub together to drink and commiserate on what it means to be married to a Holmes.
Though none of the current generation of Holmes boys could be considered ‘normal’ by societal standards, Q is the one who comes closest to that abstract definition. This is due in part to his closer relationship to his father, but it is largely because of his role as the MI6 Quartermaster. While interpersonal relationships are a challenge for him, Q knows that they are essential to the success of his agents in the field, to the cohesiveness of his Q-Branch staff, and to the mission of MI6 as a whole. Consequently, he works extremely hard to cultivate positive connections to those around him, initially relying on Eve Moneypenny to help him analyze and understand the quirks of human nature that – as a Holmes – he struggled to interpret early on in his career. James has since undertaken the challenge of helping Q answer the question, “But James, why do they have to –?!”
And for those who like to say that James Bond doesn’t have a patient bone in his body, they’ve clearly never seen him interact with his Holmes-in-laws.
Okay, so we’ve had Bond asking Moneypenny for advice on how to get with Q because Moneypenny and Q are best buds, right?
But what about Tanner pestering Q on how the heck he’s supposed to impress Moneypenny? Like, what’s her favorite flower? Or her favorite color, actually. Oh! What about shoes? Does Q know her shoe size? Would that be weird? Only Eve’s got a lot of nice shoes and Tanner fancies he hasn’t got a horrible sense of style, but maybe that would be too weird…
And Q is just pulling his hair out because he likes Tanner, he really does, and he adores Eve and Eve deserves someone nice like Tanner and Q doesn’t want to be discouraging but he’s trying to work. No, Tanner, he and Moneypenny do not talk about things like flowers and shoes, alright? Her favorite ice cream is rocky road, her favorite handgun is a Glock, and Q is fucking busy.
And Tanner kinda droops, but yeah, Q is right, they should be working, he’s just so excited and he really wants to do something nice for Eve, but Q is right. Working. Very important.
And now Q feels bad, so he sighs and tells Tanner to get Moneypenny some fancy pens. People are always stealing her pens and it’s made her rather possessive over them, and she hoards her favorite ones like a dragon in a locked drawer of her desk. You know you’ve gotten her a good one if she throws it in her drawer and you never see it again.
Tanner is delighted with the advice and gets Moneypenny a really nice carved wooden pen and Moneypenny is delighted with it and she shows it off to Q when they next have lunch at her desk (and she then locks it right back up because Q is a horrific pen thief, made all the worse by the fact he barely even uses pens, what is he doing with all the pens he steals, honestly) and Q congratulates himself on advice well-given and congratulates Moneypenny on her upcoming date with Tanner (and tries to find out what Moneypenny’s favorite flower is, because Tanner’s probably gonna keep asking him until he finds out
The rubber duck thing, in Bond’s opinion, is getting slightly out of hand. Or perhaps it’s always been out of hand, and Bond is only just now exploring the depths of this particular Q-Branch madness.
The first Q-Branch rubber duck Bond saw was on Q’s desk: a splash of jolly yellow stood out among an array of papers, books, dismantled devices, blueprints and other things. Just about the size of a tennis ball, the duck was sat beside Q’s laptop, smiling cheerfully at Bond as he contemplated it while Q was busy with data on one of the screens nearby.
“Hm?” Q asked, a little distractedly, when Bond finally made an enquiry. “Oh, this is Matilda.”
Which was how Bond came to learn about the role of a rubber duck in the debugging process, whereby some programmers explain their code to a rubber duck when they can’t work out a problem – apparently, explaining it is meant to help realise what the problem is, and it’s supposed to be effective.
Q’s rubber duck is more of a nerdy token than an actual tool, although Q tells him that occasionally he does use the rubber duck method.
After that, Bond starts seeing rubber ducks everywhere. It’s a gradual thing, possibly enhanced by his increasing presence in the Branch (it turns out that warming the Quartermaster’s bed entitles him to something of a free pass, although Q never hesitates to evict him when he misbehaves or plays with things he was told not to), but it is a thing nonetheless.
Soon enough, Bond realises that Q-Branch essentially doubles as a rubber duck museum: rubber ducks on desks, rubber ducks in cupboards, rubber ducks in drawers, rubber ducks on bloody light fittings. One time, Q smirks and mentions something about rituals. Bond still isn’t entirely sure whether Q was serious or just bored and fucking with him.
Collecting rubber ducks is something of a Q-Branch hobby, a challenge even. Bond soon learns that obtaining rubber ducks by doing somehing as straightforward and mundane as ordering a boxful online is not acceptable. The ducks have to be purloined, the more creatively the better. Or, if bought, they must be collectibles or have an interesting story behind them (as is the case of one antique residing on top of the biscuit tin to guard the supply).
Bond hasn’t really got room to judge – 00 agents do all sorts of things. Alec Trevelyan (006) collects the bullets that doctors dig out of him; Camille (009) routinely spends a not insignificant part of her salary on tattooing her cars (a service she first encountered in Taiwan), and Bond himself can’t really ever say no to a pair of custom-made Oxford shoes. The rubber ducks are just another species of oddity one can so easily encounter at MI6; eventually, Bond starts finding them almost charming.
Bond kills a man in his own bathroom. Nothing particularly memorable or even noteworthy about that, but once the deed is done, Bond notices a rubber duck perched on the edge of an ostentatiously large marble bathtub. On a whim and with a fond smile (the sort of fondness one reserves for ostensibly harmless insanity) Bond pockets the duck and promptly makes his exit to chase a down a lead.
He puts the duck out of his mind until twelve hours later, when he’s queuing to go through airport security on his way back; he bends over to pick up his bag and the duck squeaks incriminatingly in his pocket, attracting looks from at least three people around him and one of the security guards. Naturally, he gets the pat-down and a raised eyebrow when the duck is put aside along with a few other things in his pockets.
The duck is worth it. He gets the pleasure of presenting Q with a hard drive full of data, two out of three pieces of his equipment (one can’t have everything one wants, even when one is Q), and then he gets to clear his throat, distracting Q from the hard drive, and present him with the duck.
Q actually laughs, and it’s such a light, happy sound, his eyes so bright, that Bond resolves there and then to keep his Quartermaster in rubber ducks till the end of his days.
“Dare I ask where you found it?” Q asks, taking the duck and placing it on his palm, grinning.
“I rescued it from a very bad man’s bathroom. It might have a bit of a trauma, so be gentle with it.”
“Poor thing, you did right to rescue it. I’ll put it next to Matilda, she’ll take very good care of it,” Q says. It’s utterly whimsical and utterly charming; Bond is utterly smitten.
“Have dinner with me,” comes out of him in a soft rumble.
Q looks up at him, eyes bright and calculating; they haven’t been doing this very long, but long enough for Bond to learn different types of ‘calculating’ in Q’s eyes. This one is a quick and easy sort, delving into his schedule and assessing Bond’s time off rather than toeing the edge of pondering what this arrangement between them means.
Soon enough, Q gives a small, satisfied smile.
“Thai or Spanish, please. Then we can come back to mine,” he says and then turns back to whatever he was doing with the hard drive, just bossy enough to get Bond’s engines pleasantly revving.
Since the beginning, Bond’s been quite charmed by Q’s frankness and easy way of directly saying what he’d like from Bond, no hesitation or ceremony, be it in bed or in the office. It’s simple, open, and delivered with a hint of a smirk, clever eyes glinting behind spectacles; Bond has never been more charmed. And what’s more, it makes him feel he can be just as honest with Q about what he would like. Pleased, Bond leaves Q with the hard drive and the new acquisition for Q-Branch’s rubber duck museum.
That would be the first time a rubber duck has got Bond laid; he has a feeling it won’t be the last.
It was, indeed, not the last.
Bond summits Mount Rubber Duck Madness on a sunny April afternoon on the eastern coast of Japan. It’s been almost a year since his first rubber duck, and he has since gifted Q with five other rubber ducks obtained on his missions, and he has also gradually shuffled most of his belongings over to Q’s, and has been living with him for just about five months now.
This duck – duck number 7 – is the crowning glory.
Bond spots it on the beach, washed up by a recent tide. At first, he can’t believe that the unmistakeable spot of yellow could really be it, but upon approach it turns out that yes, it’s indeed a rubber duck. Bond picks it up and brushes off the wet sand clinging to it; the duck has clearly been on some interesting voyages, bearing a scar or two, and it solidifies Bond’s conviction that this is one of the ducks.
It was Q who told him that in 1992 a shipping container carrying 28 000 rubber ducks was lost at sea, and ever since then the duckies have been found on all sorts of beaches of both Pacific coastlines; some scientists have even begun using them to learn more about the ocean currents. They apparently keep washing ashore to this day and, naturally, obtaining one has become a fervent goal in Q-Branch. And, also naturally, buying one online simply won’t do. It has to be found.
And now, because Bond is a lucky, lucky bastard, it seems he has found one.
Because the horrifying truth is, Bond has been beachcombing for bloody rubber duckies all over the Pacific coastlines whenever his missions landed him there, be it Japan or Alaska. He’s even gone so far as to download a map showcasing the spots where the most duckies have washed up. And now, at last, he’s found one.
Two days later, he finally gets to present it to Q.
Q reacts by laughing in disbelief, taking the duck from Bond’s hands and declaring the otherwise unremarkable Friday a great day to the minions who have flocked to look on.
“You lucky, lucky bastard,” Q growls later into Bond’s neck, in the privacy of the blacked-out glass walls of his office, before nipping Bond’s earlobe.
Bond rumbles a low laugh and kisses Q’s smile, then his jaw, then his neck, smoothly pushing closer, fingers toying with the zip of Q’s cardigan.
“James,” Q admonishes softly. “Not in front of the ducks.”
They do indeed have an audience of three ducks perched on Q’s desk, and Bond drops his head onto Q’s shoulder, laughing silently for a moment while Q chuckles and cards his fingers through Bond’s hair.
“Hmm,” Bond says into Q’s neck, then presses another kiss there. “Then how about you try to leave early today,” he rumbles, trailing more kisses up Q’s neck before looking him in the eyes as seductively as he can manage when three rubber ducks are watching; he flatters himself it’s a testament to his skills as an agent.
“We’ll see,” Q says, just to be difficult, but Bond can see the gleam in his eyes and makes sure to kiss him most thoroughly before leaving to terrorise anyone who might keep Q working late.
(Q does manage to leave early and they have a very lovely time indeed; that’s twice now that a rubber duck has got Bond laid.)
@nixsducky , I wish I had written this for you, but you MUST read it right now, Ducky.
wish fulfillment au where boromir lives through amon hen and since the ring has moved on his thoughts are clear and he’s just aragorn’s devoted right hand
and he and gimli bitch endlessly about the run across rohan because “i had THIS MANY ARROWS in my chest i want our hobbits back but CAN WE SLEEP” and he’s 5000% shitty to rohirrim who don’t respect aragorn and he and eowyn become rampaging bffs and he gets in on the body counting at helm’s deep (“ARAGORN I’M BEHIND I’M GOING TO THE DOOR” “YOU ARE NOT GET BACK HERE”) and he and treebeard become instant kin because mi hobbit es su hobbit and he goes through the dimholt pass with aragorn and hates every single second of it but is unfailingly by his side through all of it
and then gets to minas tirith and reunites with faramir and finds out pippin is a guard of the citadel and has to go lock himself in a room and laugh for hours
Everyone thinks that Bond is the one who sees Q and decides, “yes, that cute boffin there, I want that” while Q obliviously goes about his life clueless to the agent’s attempts at wooing–because Q’s a lot of things, but Bond’s usual brand of tea he is not.
In fact James Bond is literally the most oblivious dork when he’s off the clock. It’s like, if he’s not doing the seducing, he doesn’t notice? And that baffles the hell out of Q. Because Q has been trying for years to get 007′s attention and has been doing the lion’s work of the seduction.
Pretty sure it started with a look at 007′s smoldering obituary file pic and legend status: “yes, that ruggedly handsome 00 there, I want that. power couple goals.” Presumably Q has a hand in arranging his own meeting with 007, via Tanner, and chooses a museum on purpose. You know, if I want to be snarky, pretentious, and look really good doing it I’d pick a museum, too. Lots of things to be pretentious about, and truly excellent lighting.
The way Q throws Bond off his game in Skyfall and then damn near bats his eyes? Hard to miss, but Q considers that maybe the agent thinks he had something in his eyes. Or was just getting his nerd eyes adjusted to non-computer lighting? Q even talked about his pajamas. And exploding pens. Within moments after making 007 think Q was an art student looking for a bit of strange. Wtf, dude. Does he have to spell it out for him?
Probably. Bond’s been knocked out a lot. So Q:
Rebuilds Bond’s beloved car
Endangers his career at least twice, canonically
Flies out to Austria to get him, despite a canonical fear of
flying
Mentions mortgage and cats, you know, in case Bond has a
kink for stable and well-adjusted
Definitely starts dressing sharper
Flirts awkwardly with Bond
Makes him an exploding watch (not a pen but still not subtle)
Is salty as a polite potato chip about Bond turning up with Dr. Swann at his hotel room
And let’s not even get started on this:
Actually, no, let’s. It’s my favorite. I can’t think of any other character in the entire franchise, besides maybe Dench!M who would be able to casually disarm Bond. And if she did, it would be more like classic Q grumpily snatching his sandwich back. Q doesn’t snatch or get grumpy. He just slides in close, wraps around the gun, and pulls it slowly from Bond’s grasp while basically looking Bond in the eye the whole time. Look, I’m super ace and slow on the uptake, but I’d totally get that message.
In sum, Bond’s not so much the seducer. Q is.
Can I just say that not only is this brilliant headcanon, but it’s so funny I can’t stop laughing.
It also really makes me want to write fic of all of this using the following tags on Ao3: #Mentions mortgage and cats, you know, in case Bond has a kink for stable and well-adjusted #Is salty as a polite potato chip about Bond turning up with Dr. Swann at his hotel room
Also #yes, that ruggedly handsome 00 there, I want that. power couple goals.
Reading this makes me want to dust off my 00Q materials and start making new stuff.
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