Weekly Chat and Spectre Prompt Fest! (04/09/2015)

[mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com]

A new Friday means a new Weekly Chat! Don’t forget that the weekly chat is open until Friday of next week.

Anon commenting is on so you don’t need an account to join in the fun! If you are using anon comments, if you could put your name/handle in the subject line/body of the comments that would be fab (just so everyone knows who they are talking to!)

Weekly Recs
It’s time again for you to give your weekly recs! This week we’re looking for your favourite fics/art you’ve seen over the past week and those fics/art that fit into the genre of the week!
This week the genre of fanwork recs we’re looking for is: Kink. We want those artworks and fics that revolve around all thinkgs kinky!

When reccing fic/art, please can you make a separate comment with ‘Week Rec’ in the subject title. If you’re commenting anon, then just put your handle in brackets after the ‘Weekly Rec’ bit - eg Weekly Rec (cass). This just helps your friendly mod hunt down all your links and put them into the weekly rec post!

Spectre Prompt Fest!
The MI6 prompt bingo table continues! We’re releasing a new prompt every week up to when Spectre is released in the UK on November 6^th. You can write/draw/create anything of your choice in response to the prompt, and you can post fills for any of the revealed prompt!

This week the prompt is: “Starlight”

Exploding Objects	Love doesn’t solve everything	Broken	Health and Safety	Possession
Never say never	“Make me disappear”	“No.”	The past has come back to haunt me	Suit Up
Starlight	Hidden	Hidden	Hidden	Hidden
Hidden	Hidden	Hidden	Hidden	Hidden

You can post your fills anywhere you like – tumblr, in the comments section of the weekly chat, to your own LJ! Feel free to link your fills in the chat, and don’t forget to tag your prompt fills with #mi6cafeprompt so everyone can share the 00Q love!

There is now an A03 collection that you can post your fills to! Please see the links in the sidebar on the right.

MI6 Café Book Club
Our next book for book club with be Live and Let Die, which you can find resources for in the links on the sidebar. The first Book Club to discuss this book will be held tomorrow on September 5th.
Potential trigger warnings for Live and Let Die include:
·         racism
·         drug use
·         sharks, barracudas, octopuses and other sea creatures (and people being attacked by them)
·         g*psy slur used
·         n word used
·         incorrect and possibly offensive representation of Haitian Voduo

This week’s questions
Feel free to add more questions below!

1. What kind of secrets do Bond and Q keep from each other?   


2. What would Bond and Q’s death of choice be?


3. Do either of them get jealous? If so, how do they express that with each other?


4. What does Bond do with himself after retirement? (Alternatively: How does Q avoid going crazy now that Bond is around full-time after retirement?)


5. How do Bond and Q manage the frequently long-distance nature of their relationship?

Comments

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

I'm getting behind in the prompts again, damn it! anyway...

1: What kind of secrets do Bond and Q keep from each other?
James won't tell Q about some of the more dangerous risks he takes on missions (Q reads all the reports and even if James fudges his a bit, Q can usually tell, but they don't talk about it), and Q will never tell James his name. There are things that aren't really secrets that they don't talk about, either - Vesper, Bond's childhood, etc. Q doesn't have a traumatic childhood or anything similar to keep under wraps, but he tries not to talk too much about his family to coworkers for security's sake.

2: What would Bond and Q’s death of choice be?
what the fuck w h a t. t h e. f u c k why this question. Bond: mission-related. Dramatic. Taking as many enemies with him as possible. Q: from old age and in his sleep.

3: Do either of them get jealous? If so, how do they express that with each other?
it depends what you're talking about. sex? affection? time? money? James is jealous of Eve, because she's known Q for longer than he has, and she knows things about him that James still hasn't, and might never learn. Q is jealous of James's 007ness - his swagger and looks etc, but it's not really a serious jealousy. James sulks, Q makes jokes that sting. Sometimes yelling happens, but that's very rare. they're better at communicating than they (and everyone else) thinks they are

4: What does Bond do with himself after retirement? (Alternatively: How does Q avoid going crazy now that Bond is around full-time after retirement?)
Q deals with it by making sure that Bond stays not!retired for as long as humanly possible. Bond deals with it by pretending it's not happening until it does and he's like 'well shit.'
Bond transitions better than expected - he becomes a sort of all purpose advisor to Q, M, Tanner and various other heads of departments. He also teaches various classes, in the gym and in whatever is the equivalent of a classroom at MI6. He also does a lot of driving at track days and becomes even more of a connoisseur about, well, everything.
Sometimes there are nights he doesn't come home, though, and turns up again later hungover and tight jawed, knuckles bruised. Q works out eventually that, while he can do a lot to make sure that James still feels valued as a professional and on a personal level, he can't do much about those nights.

5: How do Bond and Q manage the frequently long-distance nature of their relationship?
Mainly they suffer in silence, because for a long time they were both under the impression the other only wanted to be friends with benefits. Once they work that misunderstanding out they spend as much time together as possible when they can, and put up with the separation when it happens. Q refuses to wipe the comms ('that's unprofessional! and potentially suspicious behaviour!'), so no phone sex, but Q sends little notes in the cases if he has to send Bond equipment during missions

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

2. Q: Something where he has enough time to put his affairs in order, whether that's two minutes emailing his "in case of emergency" file to his second in command, or two months properly organizing his future absence and saying goodbye to the people and places he loves. In the event of a fatal illness, he'd find some painless way to commit suicide before his quality of life dropped to agonizing levels.
Bond: "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO--oh, shit." J/k but not really. He'd probably want to die with his boots on in some way, whether that's in the field stopping baddies or taking the Secondhand Lions route and doing crazy shit when he's an old retiree who's ready to shuffle off already.

3. Q knows he's awesome, and he's not generally jealous of the people that Bond sleeps with on missions--Bond is duping them, after all, and they're usually disposable to him, and one characteristic of Bond and Q's relationship is that Bond asks Q for help instead of trying to trick him into it; Bond respects him and values him as an equal partner. Q even teases Bond about "doing his duty for Queen and country" sometimes.

Q actually gets much more jealous of the field agents that Bond likes to work with, especially the ones that Bond finds attractive and flirts with. They're everything that Q isn't: physically dangerous, with impressive abs and biceps instead of a soft belly and muscles that are technically there but also pretty lean, and the agents have a first-hand understanding of the field that Q just doesn't because he might have observed thousands of hours of field operations but it's almost always been from a position of relative safety outside of the action. The fact that Q is generally grateful to these field agents for saving Bond's arse at some point and being usually competent (like Moneypenny) complicates his feelings, but he still tends to climb Bond like a tree when Bond gets home after a successful partnership with another field agent. Q likes it when HE'S the one Bond has a successful partnership with, in and out of the field.

Bond sometimes gets a little possessive if another field agent is making obvious moves on Q, but sometimes he also just thinks it's hilarious. Like Q, he only really gets jealous when Q has chemistry with from someone in his department. Bond is really smart, okay, but there are still times when Q and one of his fellow nerds are talking about things that go completely over his head, and Q's ENTIRE FACE LIGHTS UP because he works with BRILLIANT PEOPLE THANK GOD, and a tiny stupid voice in Bond's head is like, "What if what Q secretly wants is someone who can keep up with the nerdy parts of his genius brain instead of an old relic of a field agent?" Bond's coping mechanisms: Making Q laugh and making Q orgasm.

In any case, they both like giving each other hickies.

5. Carefully. They're professional on comms, or at least as much as they can be with a working relationship founded on banter, and they don't sext nearly as much as they could probably get away with. They both do some compartmentalizing in order to keep their heads in the game while also being available for extra support if the other needs it, or extra stimulation if there really is a nice long stretch of boring free time in a relative safe zone for both of them.
Honestly, they're both independent as fuck, and sometimes it's the coming home and figuring out how to tangle comfortably into each other again that's trickier than living an ocean away from each other for a few weeks or months. But it's a trickiness that's worth navigating.

1 and 4 later since it's about bedtime here!

Re: Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

1) Secrets: Q doesn't tell Bond his name, at first for legitimate security purposes and then because he doesn't want to ruin a long-running joke between them; he thinks of Q as who he is now, anyway. Bond doesn't tell Q that he's figured out Q's first name from the way Q flinched when someone happened to shout it in a bar; Q was a bit tipsy and didn't realize he'd given himself away.

Q doesn't tell Bond about the times he's had to kill people. It's always been from a distance, you see, and he feels--almost ashamed about any internal angst related to being "a killer," because how can he claim that identity and that sorrow when he has Bond right next to him, Bond who's been covered in people's blood and viscera, and isn't that what real killing is? ("So sorry you had to push that button, Q, I imagine it was a terrible experience for you," the mocking voice in the back of Q's mind might say.) He doesn't tell Bond about any close shaves on his end of the mission. He doesn't tell Bond that he wishes Bond could meet his parents. He doesn't tell Bond that he occasionally stops at a corner store, buys a medium-sized pack of cheddar-flavored crisps, and devours them while thinking about how grateful he is not to be a stupid fecking teenager anymore but also wondering what he'd do differently if he could go back and do it all again. He doesn't bring the brood home with him; Bond does enough of that for both of them.

Q tried not to tell Bond about stupid office politics things, both because he didn't think Bond should have to deal with that bureaucratic shit and because he didn't want to give Bond the impression that Q couldn't deal with that shit, because he can, but Bond always knows who to talk to for the best office gossip and inevitably found out anyway; Q might as well plumb the depths of Bond's knowledge and experience for helpful tips when he can.

Bond doesn't tell Q about some of the senselessly violent things that happen off comms, doesn't clarify interrogation details when Q doesn't ask for them, doesn't tell Q--usually--about those times when he's thought, "This is it, I might not be coming back from this one." He doesn't tell Q that a tiny part of him wishes Q could do that one thing with his tongue that a few other people he's slept with have done, and a few other idle sexual things that don't really matter. He doesn't tell Q that he's glad he's never going to have to meet Q's parents.

4) Retirement: Bond determinedly ignores whatever crisis of the week is making Q work late, indulges in his hobbies, spends some time as a product tester for Q Branch equipment, and trains experienced field agents who either 1) think they're the shit and need taken down a peg, or 2) are showing lots of promise and could benefit from some scary-ass honing of their techniques. (Agents who think they're in category two are usually in category one, and vice-versa.)

It's an adjustment for both of them to have James home all the time. Q has to get used to sharing his space full-time, which is nice but still involves a few spats over domestic arrangements. Bond has to properly get used to Q's long hours, which are no longer balanced out by Bond's prolonged presence in foreign countries, and Q has to learn to delegate a wee bit more than he's used to so that he and Bond actually do get some leisure time together now that they occupy the same city. Bond tends to take small trips around the UK every so often; he's used to traveling, and sometimes the get-up-and-go bug leaves him with an urge to take off for a little while.

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

2. *is the question maker* *cackles evilly* I feel your answers, though.

3. I love these answers, and the way you took it to places other than sex. Beautiful.

4. STOP BREAKING MY HEART WITH BOND'S TIGHT JAW AND BRUISED KNUCKLES AND Q'S INABILITY TO STOP THOSE FROM HAPPENING. I love Bond becoming an adviser and driving more and becoming more of a connoisseur of everything, though. (Still not over his "This is the best champagne, you might not have heard of it" line from CR!)

5. Awww! Q's little notes! So cute. Glad they work out that first little misunderstanding, too. :D

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

2) I hate you. why.

3) if Q was going to be jealous of the amount of sex James has, they wouldn't have got together in the first place

4) all of my headcanons have a painful part to them ok... you haven't known me & my angst as long as some people. it's impossible for me to avoid. sorrynotsorry. also, James as a fusspot just brings me so much joy

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

2) Bond: "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO--oh, shit." YES

5) Honestly, they're both independent as fuck, and sometimes it's the coming home and figuring out how to tangle comfortably into each other again that's trickier than living an ocean away from each other for a few weeks or months. But it's a trickiness that's worth navigating. oh my god I feel this on so many levels this gives me life

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

1) Bond doesn't tell Q that he's figured out Q's first name from the way Q flinched when someone happened to shout it in a bar; Q was a bit tipsy and didn't realize he'd given himself away. I love this!

Week Rec

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

I am not a kinky reader so only one from me this week... I mean, I think this qualifies, but idk
http://archiveofourown.org/works/767647/chapters/1439120