Chapter Text
Eggsy and Roxy had been attached at the hip pretty quick after they’d met. At first it was being the outcasts in the group of noble raised kids, her as the only girl, him as the only lower class… and then it was because they realized the both of them had a fierce protective streak.
Harry had almost been worried when he realized the two of them were becoming a unit, instead of singular candidates.
“There’s nothing wrong with how they act in testing, love, they’ll still take a shot against each other in trainin’ if they have to. Nae alliances formed, I’d say. Think they’ve just realized they’re mo’ alike ‘an most, with that loyal mindset they both have, it’s nae wonder they’re makin’ friends.”
Harry hummed, looking over Merlin’s screens in the control room while they watched the kids during a puppy training hour. He thought Eggsy was particularly looked adorable as he mimicked JB’s little stance, the puppy bowing to him in play, only for Eggsy to drop down to do the same. “You’re right. As long as they use this friendship for bettering both of them. Roxy has always been around, so I think no matter which one gets a seat at the table, they’ll be able to remain friends.”
Merlin turned to give him a careful look. “Ye wish ta keep ‘em even if he don’t get to the table? Another agent? A trainer? Support?”
Harry gave a little shrug. “He has a lot of potential, and I think we’ll find a place here for him after he’s licked his wounds if he doesn’t get the seat. Roxy might not be as easy to keep if she doesn’t get the seat, but if she keeps coming around to see him, she’ll end up here.”
On the screen, JB and Eggsy were wrestling in the cutest way, and Harry had to hide the soft smile on his face as Merlin gave him a knowing smirk. “Think you may have elected a wee pup, Galahad.”
Harry’s fond smile turned into a full grin, making Merlin look back to the screen. “Percival may well have elected one as well, love. You should cut and send a recording of that to him, might actually get him to smile for once.”
Sure enough, Roxy had chosen to join Eggsy and JB, getting her girl Piper to take a play stance so she could mimic the bow as well, and then the two of them were wrestling as well, though a lot rougher than Eggsy, who had mostly been trying to get JB’s energy out into cuddles. Roxy and Piper were much closer in size than JB and Eggsy.
Merlin did just that, even sending a live feed to Percival’s glasses so he could see his girl happy and playing. The man sent back a thank you.
“Do you think Eggsy would get along with Aiden?”
Merlin snorted. “They’d either be jealous of each other or Aiden would be demanding we make him a big brother. Probably annoy each other either way.”
Harry grinned. “I think they’d get along. I also think it’d be both.”
“Aye, probably.”
***
Merlin was still trying to figure out if him or Eggsy had been more traumatized by Harry’s death.
It had been a long thirty-five years with his goofy and eccentric husband… which was long enough for Merlin to get used to the idea of his husband dying on the job. It had been long enough that firey passion and love so hot it burned had bled into soft moments of comfort and care between them, just as sweet as their initial passion had been.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
And Eggsy had never in his life, opened up to anyone the way he had Harry, and to an extent, Roxy and Merlin. Roxy and Eggsy seemed to be sharing one mind, and Roxy had already told Merlin about how sad she was that Eggsy wasn’t on the table as well, saying that she wasn’t sure if he’d lash out at her when she came to him next, and when that next should be. He’d only known Harry for such a short time, and yet, he’d never trusted a parental figure more. Not even his mum. Harry leaving them had happened far too fast, and slammed the three of them together before Merlin could even inform Aiden of his passing.
Merlin remembered the look of Eggsy’s frightened screams through the cameras in Harry’s study, and had drunk himself fully sick at the thought of Aiden having been the one to see Harry die, the flashes between Eggsy and Aiden blurring from those teasing conversations between Harry and Merlin, the ways they’d joked about introducing Eggsy and Aiden, that they would be jealous of each other, and then thick as thieves, or both at the same time. The lines had blurred until Bors had been the only thing keeping him from suffocating in a toilet full of his own sick.
Aiden hadn’t been told til nearly five days after it happened. He’d been putting out so many fires in MI6 that he’d barely had the time to tell Merlin that he’d been alive and okay -not fine, could never be fine in this situation but okay- enough to go on; and by the time Aiden had come home to cry on his biological father’s shoulder, to demand that grief be repaid… Harry had woken up in a hospital in fecking Kentucky, United States of America.
“Lad, ye are shaking with rage at the mo…”
Aiden was sitting on the couch in the living room, some random pug that he’d never seen before sitting in his lap like a personal anger management guru. The little thing had climbed into his lap when Aiden had started to breathe shallow, so his owner must be using him as a teddy bear regularly. There was an agent that had come with him, but 006 had made himself scarce at first… til the phone call.
“Q… can you give us a sitrep?” Alec had bled out of the shadows like the assassin he was, and it kind of ached because of how completely alike and different MI6 agents were than Kingsman agents. Kingsman agents tried to keep as charming as possible, especially when dealing with one of their own that was hurt, but double-oh’s seemed to have a default of dangerous when not on mission; and it relaxed Aiden. Merlin had had more than a few of those over the years. “What’s in that head, dear quartermaster?” Alec had a soft accent that wasn’t quite easy to place, unless you worked with as many international English speakers as Merlin did. Faintly Russian when he lowered the tone.
Aiden responded more favorably to that than he had to any of Merlin’s soothing tactics, which also hurt. That was his bairn… but he’s all grown up now.
Aiden looked at Alec with such soft eyes that Merlin suddenly understood why he’d chosen this agent to shadow him. It would be a very easy thing for a quartermaster to be taken or killed at the moment with every agent they had scrambling, so putting one of their most dangerous, one who was clearly in love with his boy, on him as a shadow, was just logical.
“Misplaced anger, 006. Extremely misplaced. I don’t want to fly to America, but that’s a moot point because I bloody cannae anyhow, because we have to be back at work in the morn and I have to help keep more of our agents out of harms way, and then I’m mad because Dadaidh cannae fly their either because he’s doing the same job as me, just in another organization, and we both need our agents home and safe in the soonest possible way, and we have to figure out what missions are bust because their leaders heads went pop, or what missions desperately still need our agents on them-“ Aiden cut himself off with a little noise of confusion when the pug started to lick his cheeks and chin again, making him wince, but start shakily petting the thing again. “-and now I’m wondering if you possibly let Pà name this poor creature ‘Mister Pickles the third’ and I think that’s a cruel thing tae do-“
Merlin snorted, shaking his head a little. “Donnae worry ‘bout that one, boyo, these two donnae belong to us, I just didn’t wan’tae be ‘lone in the house.” He motioned to a black poodle who was politely sitting at the fire place, and Aiden hadn’t even noticed the thing was there. “His name is JB, this polite one is Piper. She knows how tae sit still more than a minute. Act like their owners, they do.”
Aiden slowly nodded. “Ahh. The newest table members, Da?”
“Aye. Youngins, but some of the best we’ve had in a long while. Ye’ll like Eggsy.”
Aiden snorted. “Will I?”
“Aye. He poisoned Chester King.”
Aiden perked up. “Oh? Can we keep him? He’s got good senses.”
Merlin cracked his first smile in a long time, and felt tears prick at his eyes. “Your Pà thought ye’d say that, but I dinnae think it’d be til ye met him.”
Aiden finally relaxed enough that he could tell the scotch his dad had poured them before the call was setting in. He needed a bloody nap. Today was the only free day he’d be having in a long time, but M had been told the news before he’d found out a couple days ago. She’d asked him if he could handle two more days in-shop before he fell apart, and as always, their Q had delivered that.
Mostly because he’d been waiting for either Alec or James to get back in and accompany him.
Either way, now that the man had been confirmed alive, Aiden almost wished he’d never left the office. No way would Merlin let Aiden leave now. He got this specific look about him when he was going to corner a sick agent, or Pà, or try and get one of the dogs in a bath, and his radar for ‘sick bairn’ was always worse than anything. Anyone Aiden’s age or younger got that label when they looked like they hadn’t slept in a week.
“Ye’ll be staying the night, o’course. Show your beau to your room, do ye want food or sleep first? Shower is non-negotiable, your hair is a mess.”
Alec looked like he was trying to hide his chuckles while Aiden flushed a pretty pink. Good. His boy had gone far too long before bringing home a partner, and this one seemed good enough. “Q says you guys usually order in when left alone, is the kitchen stocked?”
Merlin cringed. “Eh, well enough I’d say. Harry is more of a cook than either of us.” That brought another soft smile to his face. He could talk about Harry in the present tense. His husband was still alive. Aiden returned that exhausted smile. “Had tae pick up staple supplies if I was going tae feed the pups, anyhow. Roxy’s girl has a special diet, and Eggsy found his boy does good on it too.”
Alec gave a little nod at that, straightening from the crouch he’d been in while he and JB had soothed Q. “I can find Q in a bit, I think I’ll raid your kitchen and see what’s going to happen. Do you plan on being in-home for a few days?”
Merlin thought about that, and nodded. “A couple days of monitoring from my home office could clear my head.”
Alec smiled. “I’ll try and make something with leftovers.”
Aiden had this soft little smile on his face that reminded Merlin of Harry. They might not be biologically related, but he’d always taken after his Pà. “Alec’s a good cook, him and James rarely start fires on accident in my kitchen.” Oh? and James was in his kitchen as well? Merlin had always been amused by 007’s field antics. “Who’s going to retrieve Pà?”
“Hmm… Tristan is in the States right now, close enough that he could pick your Pà up. I’ll make some calls. Up with you, you need a wash.”
Aiden groaned, less petulant and more exhausted, and let Alec pull him off the couch by his hands, JB jumping to the couch. Those too-pale hands were shaking just a little, and looked cold. The agent must have agreed, because he held onto them til they got to the kitchen, disappearing with both dogs at his heels like they belonged there.
***
Eggsy did good work in the field, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t relieved to be back home. Home, in this case, was a loose term, since he wasn’t living in council flats with Mum and Daisy, though they seemed to be doing just fine. Eggsy would have to convince them to move into a flat that Kingsman kept trying to give him, but he wasn’t staying there himself.
All the table agents had suites in the Kingsman estate, but Eggsy didn’t want to be there either.
Not unless he found Roxy there, at least. She made a pretty good pillow, and she was kind enough to let him. Mostly because she also thought he made a good teddy bear to hold.
He’d just finished the paperwork for a small mission to bring a mix of MI6 and Kingsman agents back from Brazil after they’d found each other and figured one of their extractions would come first, and had hyperfocused so hard on his mission report that he’d had to be gently coaxed away from the desk he was using by a nice woman. “Come on, Galahad, your keepers are in the infirmary waiting on you.”
Eggsy frowned, reaching up to touch one cheek. “I’m barely hurt.”
The world was bloody chaos since V-Day had happened, but the worst of it seemed to be come-and-go missions full of agent extractions and pulling people out of the hands of kingpins and trafficking rings.
He barely remembered the call he’d made to an MI6 agent confirming identities so he could bring back a couple recon agents, but he remembered that he’d been in a brawl with a man twice his size that had taken exception at agents in his area.
Eggsy couldn’t even remember what the group was, now that he was no longer focused on paperwork, but he knew it had something to do with kids, and that size didn’t matter when you knew where the automatic weapons were in the jet. Eggsy was better off not remembering what type of trafficking ring he’d had to fight through, he has a bump on his head the size of a golf ball and his left cheek felt like it was splitting in places.
“You really do need medical, Galahad, but I meant more that your keepers are there and waiting for your return.” The nice desk worker was leading him off, a single hand on his lower back in a way that felt warm and comfortable. It made him feel even smaller than he was, which felt nice with the Kingsman in a way that never felt good back in the estates.
Which is probably why when he saw Harry sitting up in a medical bed, going over reports, a white gauze patch over his right eye and Merlin sitting at his bedside with what looked like a mobile work station, Eggsy simply burst into tears.
He knew Harry was alive, but he’d not yet been able to see him, and now his head hurt and he missed Roxy and the way she held him, and everything was sort of icky.
Harry looked somewhat uncomfortable, but allowed the desk worker to lead Eggsy to the side of his bed, helping the young Galahad climb into it with him. Harry’s right eye was his only major injury, so while he was exhausted, it didn’t hurt to have the kid collapsing halfway into his stomach and making sad noises that hurt Harry’s soul. Poor little begger.
“He’s got a bit of a bump on the head, I’m going to go get a nurse for him.”
She left him there, which meant no one but Harry and Merlin could judge Eggsy for nuzzling into Harry’s soft sweater covered chest, but he soon realized that was a horrible idea, nearly spitting in annoyance when it hurt his cheekbone. Harry gave a little sigh like when Eggsy was doing something not-quite annoying, but very ill mannered, and turned his head so the swollen cheek was facing upwards. “No need to hiss, dear boy, just don’t press on things that hurt. There there, no need for all these tears, you’ll feel fine in a few days.”
Eggsy groaned, but let Harry start to run a big hand up and down his spine, making Eggsy go nearly boneless in his hold. Merlin was pretending he wasn’t grinning, but Eggsy could see him lifting his phone out of the corner of his eye, probably taking blackmail pics to show Roxy later. “Thought I woz never gunna see you ‘gain, Harry.”
Harry’s hand never paused, but his voice was softer. “I know, my boy. I’m glad that I’m back with you all as well.”
Eggsy sniffled into his chest. “You seen my Roxy?”
Harry couldn’t help the little smile at that. Roxy and Eggsy tried to pretend they weren’t a matched set like Harry and Merlin had always been, but they barely pulled that off.
“She should be back at the estate within twelve hours, per her last check-in.” Merlin was looking at a screen that had a glasses feed from it, so Eggsy avoided looking that way, feeling sort of sick at the way the camera shook from someone running. The last thing he wanted right now was to throw up on Harry. Then they’d both have to get up so they could clean up and change.
The door opened up, and Merlin stiffened, clearly looking nervous. Oh. Morgause must be here.
Much like her Arthurian counterpart, she made Merlin uneasy for some reason. Eggsy thought it might be because she was the only one who could out-bitch him. Eggsy didn’t lift his head, feeling like it weighted a ton, but felt a presence at his back. “Hullo, Doctor Morgause.”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “Smart little thing you’re becoming, young Galahad. Can I get some balm on your cheek? It’ll help reduce that swelling. Head too, but it’ll icky up your pretty hair.”
Eggsy made another annoyed hiss, but let her and Harry get him sat up a bit. He closed his eyes with a grimace when the room spun a little. He kept his eyes closed til it doubled back on him and now the room was spinning because he didn’t have anything to focus on. He opened his eyes with another annoyed noise, and found Morgause giving him an encouraging little look. “It’s okay, Galahad. No one expects perfection while you have a head wound. You are in safe company and that means there’s nothing to keep you on your toes. You’ll feel like shit for the next day or two, but that’s okay, you’re safe at home with us.”
She used a flashlight to check his pupils, and gave a little nod like she’d expected what she found, and opened up jar of paste that smelled like daffodils. It made him wince when she rubbed it over his cheek, but he found Harry’s hand at his waist and covered it with his own. He growled a bit when she parted his hair to put it over the lump at the back of his head, but it was more because that was so gross than actual pain.
She gave the jar of balm to Merlin, and stepped back, moving enough that Eggsy could see an orderly moving into her spot with another hospital bed. Eggsy didn’t want to move there, and growled again to make that clear. Words were hard now, and agents were so in tuned with body language and stuff that they all seemed to get it. Morgause smirked at him, but didn’t force him to the other bed, just watching as the orderly started snapping the sides of the beds down, and used some sort of hooks to keep them connected. “I won’t force you to move, if Harry wasn’t comfortable with you right there, he’d have already made you move, but a single hospital bed is a shite spot for two grown men to share. Just stretch out a little so you aren’t squishing him.”
Eggsy gave a pleased rumble and stretched back out on his tummy, moving so he could pillow into Harry’s stomach and not bothering much as Merlin started pulling off his shoes and trousers.
Morgause sounded amused when she spoke. “Oh, I like this one. Barely any sass from him. We’ve had a lot of roughed up agents these past two weeks. So much complaining.”
“That’s probably just because he got his bell rung. To be fair, I haven’t been telling the orderlies to bugger off as much as I usually do either.” Harry sounded amused anyways, moving a big hand down to Eggsy’s spine so he could pet him again, before pausing. “Merlin, can you get rid of his vest? The material is a bit stiff.”
Eggsy did grumble a bit as Merlin did so, but relaxed again when they at least didn’t try to redress him. As comfortable as Harry’s sweats were, Eggsy would rather just have a blanket and pass out til his Roxy was back.
“Now the part that annoys most agents.” Then Morgause attacked him by putting him in those annoying monitoring cuffs and clips. It was bloody rude, and it made his arms itch when he felt the wires against them. But then she gave him a blanket and dimmed the lights in the room.
It wasn’t so much a crash into sleep, but a wave of comfort over him as he laid right where he wanted to be, pressed into Harry’s stomach and a hand petting his back and neck under the heavy blanket they gave him.
***
“I can force them to leave, if you want?” Morgana was less amused than Morgause, but it was mostly because they looked more concerned about random strays in the medical wing. They were younger than Morgause, and didn’t usually deal with patients or agents as often as their sibling counterparts, since they were the lead chemist in the estate. They dealt with vaccines, keeping people’s shots up to date, making sure they had the right vaccines for whatever country they were heading to next. They also were, as Morgause called them, ‘head vampire on staff’, so they were in charge of the phlebotomy labs in Kingsman estates.
They had come to get Roxy’s blood drawn after an incident with Roxy’s latest principal coming down with an unknown infection, and Morgana needed to make sure it hadn’t spread to her. It didn’t react like it would spread, but neither of them knew exactly when her principal had gotten the infection, so some blood was needed. It wasn’t much of a hardship, anyways. Morgana tried to do bloodwork after every out-of-country mission, but they’ve all been on wartime footing for the past two weeks.
Harry was giving them an amused look. “I’m not actually sure it’s possible to get rid of them all.” He looked down to where Eggsy was drooling on his stomach, with Roxy laid across his back like a weighted blanket, and Merlin was pretending he wasn’t falling asleep in the corner chair. At least those could recline, or his husband would have a very angry back at the end of this.
Morgana hummed. “Well. I could get rid of the healthy ones, anyways. I don’t need that one crying on me, anyhow. You know I’m not great with children.” They waved towards Eggsy at that.
Harry snorted. They really weren’t all that good with kids. Aiden used to make them nervous, mostly when they’d first been recruited. “I wouldn’t call him a child, more like a sad wet cat, right now.”
Morgana just sighed, moving to pet down Roxy’s arm to wake her up a little. “Suit yourself. You can keep the wet cat, I don’t need him hissing either, I just need to steal this wee one’s cells for a checkup. Come now, Lancelot, can you sit up for me?”
Roxy gave them a couple of sleepy blinks, shockingly relaxed for an agent so new, but probably just too exhausted from the past two weeks to put up a fight in medical. “Not a wee one.”
Morgana snorted. “Just about everyone is wee when I’m standing. Come now, may I have an arm?”
Roxy was back to splaying over Eggsy’s back within ten minutes, a contented little sigh coming out. Harry would prefer not to kick any of them out. He was rather comfortable here.
Even if he was being drooled on.
***
Aiden hadn’t cried nearly so hard when he got to see Harry again, but he had cried, and they looked like angry tears. “I’m so mad, the world went tits up and it’s not even Bond’s fault for once! Why do Kingsman supervillains have to be so much more destructive?”
Yeah. Those were angry tears.
Harry was sitting alone on his hospital bed for once, Roxy and Eggsy having gone to a meeting with a different handler to discuss their next assignments. Normally, Merlin handled the round table’s assignments himself, and other handlers were for non-table agents, but wartime footing had put agents wherever they were needed the most, and the majority of that was extracting other agents from danger and putting them somewhere they were needed in the aftermath of eight percent of the world’s population being killed.
A lot of cards had to be reshuffled, and it’s why Q, the head of the double-oh division of MI6, was also just as exhausted as Merlin. They were both the top of their fields, and they both held the leashes of the most dangerous people of their organizations.
Wartime footing was the worst of the worst, but war only lasted so long, and Aiden looked like he needed some sleep. Maybe that’s why he’d finally left his computer caves to come greet his not-dead father. So he could yell at him and take a fifteen hour nap.
The man he brought with him was wearing a glaringly bright nametag attached to his suit jacket, loudly proclaiming him to be an MI6 agent. He had looked mildly offended when Aiden had said it wasn’t even Bond’s fault the world had changed. He must be the elusive James Bond, then.
“I don’t always turn things tits up, Q. If I did I wouldn’t be a double-oh.”
Q looked back at him and those angry tears turned soft, and Harry wanted to coo at him. His boy is all grown up and still so much like his Da. “Yes, while that may be true, you do have a habit of causing the largest problems when you aren’t getting enough attention.”
James snorted in amusement, that dangerous edge that table agents wore just off an assignment melting away in the face of a favored handler. “I’m not a dog, either, even if I feel like I’m wearing a collar right now.”
Harry hummed in amusement, putting his tablet down so he could cross his legs and give a little stretch. He was mostly confined to this bed because of head trauma exhaustion, but he wasn’t letting them pull him entirely from work. Not when things were this bad. He’d been going over Bors’s latest assignment, trying to figure out what must be happening in Bolivia if a Statesman had been trying to get into the country at the same time as Bors himself. He didn’t really like working with any of the American organizations, but they had some impressive agents at times.
“Just wait until one of them catches you without Aiden at your side. That’ll really make you feel like an untrained puppy when they ask where your keeper is.”
The feared 007 gave Harry a very impressive pout, and Aiden finally cracked a smile, scrubbing the tears off his face with his shirt sleeves like a messy toddler. His sweet boy, all grown up and still the same.
“Do I get a hug, love?”
Aiden, to his credit, didn’t stoop to climbing into the hospital bed with him, but Harry had the feeling that he only resisted because they were in front of his own agent. Harry didn’t like that, so he tugged the boy in til Aiden had rolled his eyes and climbed into the bed next to him. Harry didn’t let him go, missing his kid just as much.
Training Roxy and Eggsy had reminded Harry a lot of his boy, mostly in how their excitement was contagious, how they put their all into those candidacy trials and wanted to save the world.
Aiden was never going to be table material, he was always in the labs as a child, helping Merlin build, code, learning their programs and helping improve them. But he’d always had that drive to handle agents. To help them get their mission done, and to get them home as painlessly as possible.
Harry finally pulled back enough that he could point to something in the corner of the room, looking at Bond expectantly. “I got you something. I know you’ve been working the same pace as your Da and me, so maybe something can convince you to take a break every once in a while.”
Aiden looked at him sharply, and then to James, watching him lift up a pet carrier. “Pà, nae, I cannae take care of a dog at the mo-“ Bond gave Q a sharp look at that Scottish brogue coming out. The whole of Q branch knew their leader was exhausted or upset when it came out, but James was starting to think it was just a reaction to his parents, now. James knew he had that same brogue as a kid, but those things wear off a bit when the people who go to school with you made fun of you for not ‘speaking proper’.
Maybe Q was trying not to give anyone in MI6 rankings a reason to question him. They could be so bothersome at times.
“As if I’d give you a pup. You’d be scared of it, and upset that you’d have to go on walks. You’d probably die of allergies.”
James couldn’t help but think that was all very accurate. Q wouldn’t take the disruption to his routine well, and when he glanced at the face of the carrier, he couldn’t help but grin. He set the carrier at the end of the bed, so it could face Q and Harry, and watched the way his beloved quartermaster just melted at what he saw.
“Sphinx kittens? Pà, where did ye-“
“One of our agents has a sister who breeds them. Several of her buyers are no longer… with us… and she figured we’d know some people who could use a cat or two. Your Da immediately snatched these two up for you. About two and a half months old, you can keep them in your office so they can be checked on for now. MI6 is such a stuffy place, you’d think it’d be less dour if they had a couple pets running about.”
Q snorted, and James grinned. “M would never admit it, but she’d probably like a dog or two running around. Got any bulldogs in the kennels? We can hand her one and see if she cracks.”
Q had his long fingers past the face of the cage, and was being nibbled on by one of the kittens, while the other one just purred and glared at him from the back. These would do just fine, Q thought. He cooed at them as the one in the back hissed. So precious.
Harry was giving Bond a smile that seemed honest enough, nothing like the caution he’d shown when the man had followed Q into the private hospital room. “I don’t know, but I can send one along if I find one? It would make meetings between us all less boring, anyhow.”
Bond gave a wolf-like grin. “She’d put it in a sweater. We need to get her a dog.”
Q snorted. “We’ve had to move into the Churchill bunkers for the moment. We’ve had several low level attacks on the staff and it’s easier to keep everyone contained like this. Cats are perfect for my temporary office, but a dog would not fair as well.”
Bond pouted. “I still can’t find her office down there. I think she’s fucking with my head, not keeping an office in the hopes I never bother her again.” To be fair, he was M’s -least- favorite problem child.
Q snorted at him, looking only vaguely amused, and turned back to Harry. “How bad is your depth perception, now?”
Harry looked particularly unamused. “Worse than yours without your glasses. So, about as good as a cyclops can get.”
Q looked awed for some reason, and Bond could see the little brat’s brain start to work in the same way it did before he said something to Alec that would get him cursing in Russian for an hour. “Can I see it?”
Oh. Yeah. That would do it. Not as clever as his normal quips with Alec, but Bond recognized the temple throbbing annoyance of a father trying not to strangle his child.
“Absolutely not.”
“Is the eye still under there?”
“No. The eye had been punctured and your Da didn’t want to risk infection and a higher chance of migraines. He said he’ll make me a new one that can send infrared signals to my brain… or something, I don’t know, you two start talking tech and I honestly just tune you both out.”
Bond’s grin was probably more puppy-like this time. He adored this one. Alec had said the other father was the biological one and seemed likely to strangle someone for getting too close to Q, which is why he’d placed silent sentry until the call about Hart had come in and Q had started finally letting out all the emotional whiplash from the last week before it.
But this one was Bond's speed. Bond understood the need to zone out when Q started technobabble.