vix-spes.livejournal.com

All in all, Q mused, it was a good job that he was one of those people who could survive on very little sleep. If he hadn't been, he would have been on his knees within a week of taking up the role of Quartermaster. If he thought about it, he probably hadn't had a full nights sleep since he had been promoted. Some nights, if he was lucky, he could manage six hours but those nights were few and far between. It was more usual for him to get three or four hours but, nine times out of ten, he would end up napping in his office. The couch that lived there now had once belonged in the executive offices before it had been liberated by the double-0's and moved down to Q's office.

Q knew that quite a few of his new recruits had struggled with the relentless nature of Q-branch and the sleepless nights that inevitably ensued. Q had never minded. He supposed that it helped that he had grown used to late nights when he had been hacking his way through university. It was nothing for him to work for several days without sleeping and then be able to both function normally and not feel remotely sleep deprived.

His job contributed to his sleepless habit of course. How could it not when at any one time he could have agents out on missions all across the globe in a multitude of timezones. Although it was always worse when the double-0 division was out on missions. At least with the regular field agents Q could catch the odd cat-nap but that definitely wasn't an option with the double-0's and their propensity to cause chaos if someone wasn't riding herd over them.

Not that the agents or his job were entirely to blame. Even as child Q had never slept much. He had always been one of those reading under the blankets late into the night and as an inventor he had always been prone to losing hours and the ability to both eat and drink while he was tinkering and experimenting. Of course, the fact that he barely spent any time at home had meant that it was hardly an appealing place to spend any real amount of time.

That had all changed recently though. There was a new addition to his life that made his bed seem far more appealing; a certain double-0 agent. He and Bond had just recently agreed to make their frequent dalliances into something more official and, as a direct consequence, Q often returned home when 007 was off mission to find his bed pleasantly occupied by one James Bond. Bond tended to suffer from sleeplessness just as much as Q, mostly from years in the Navy on shifts and then as an agent, always having to be alert, not knowing what was around the corner.

Strangely though, Bond didn't seem to suffer so much from sleepless nights in Q's bed. In fact, Q had lost count of the nights where he had coded into the small hours of the morning while Bond had slept soundly next to him and he had felt privileged that a man like Bond trusted Q enough to expose himself like that. Of course, there were also the nights when Bond distracted Q from his work with kisses and touches that ended with Q drifting to sleep wrapped in strong arms.

Q had always maintained that there would be time to sleep when he was dead but, if breaking away from his work earlier gained him more time sleeping in Bond's arms then maybe he could accept getting a bit more sleep.