[Some Assembly Required] Have Gun Will Travel

Alec Trevelyan knew the shape of a cover-up when he saw one.

So he paid attention when he heard whispers of movement from the Aurelian Order through back channels, and then later, news that Q had been attacked and had narrowly escaped.

However, everything changed when he learned that his best friend and fellow double-oh, James Bond, had been found alive but injured. Alec went looking for him immediately, and to his horror, he didn’t find him in any of the usual places MI6 would stash him, or in any of James’s safehouses or hiding spots.

Alec looked for him in medical, in the safe house in Richmond, and he wasn’t even licking his wounds in the little fallback flat near Camden. And he sure as hell wasn’t in his empty apartment. The place looked less like a home, and more like a man had once passed through with a toothbrush, three shirts, and unresolved trauma.

That was when Alec went to M, and of bloody course, M gave him nothing.

Moneypenny gave him even less, which was impressive because Eve could wrap a refusal in velvet so well that most people thanked her after being stonewalled. Meanwhile, Bill Tanner looked tired, which meant he knew something and had decided that Alec was dangerous enough without additional information.

That offended Alec because him being dangerous was hardly new.

So Alec went to Q because if there was anyone in MI6 who knew where Bond was, it was Q. Bond had grown sentimental over the years, and in this line of business, that was a vulnerability.

Tristan Evans-Mensah looked like a man running on tea, fury, and whatever brittle thread held together geniuses after their homes had been invaded. There were shadows beneath his eyes. His hair was a mess, and his cardigan looked both expensive and somehow impossibly personally offended.

Alec stood in the doorway of Q Branch and watched him pretend to work for exactly eight seconds.

“Where is James?”

Q did not look up as his fingers typed rapidly at his keyboard. “Hello to you too.”

“I’m not in the mood, Q,” Alec said, as he crossed his arms and glared down at the younger man.

“That has never stopped you from being dramatic before.”

“Tristan,” Alec gritted out through his teeth.

Q’s hands paused over the keyboard, and he looked up to meet Alec’s eyes.

Alec very rarely used his name. Working in espionage meant names were dangerous things. They were often too intimate, too easy to turn into weapons. When Alec stared into Q’s green eyes, he could see the strain in them before Q’s placid professional mask slid back into place.

‘Damn it,’ Alec thought to himself, feeling empathy for him. He didn’t know about love, but he knew what it was to be a piece left behind in the wreckage of one of Bond’s messes.

Alec softened despite himself. “I need to see him.”

Q stared at him for a long moment. “You cannot shoot your way into this one.”

Alec threw him a smirk. “Watch me.”

“No.” Q took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “No, that is precisely the problem. You absolutely would try, and then I would have to explain to my cousin why one of Bond’s emotionally stunted assassins attempted to break into her house.”

Alec blinked. “Cousin?” Since when did Q have a cousin? Actually, it was a shock that Q wasn’t an orphan like most of the personnel in MI6. M did have a habit of collecting traumatized strays. They were much easier to manipulate.

Q shot him a look, but then he sighed as if Alec had inconvenienced him by not already accepting madness as a scheduling issue. “Give me a moment.”

He turned away and made a call on a device Alec did not recognize. The conversation was short, hushed, and full of tension.

“No, I know,” Q said. “Yes, he is armed, but Alec is always armed. I imagine he was born suspicious and carrying a knife.” A pause. “Kendis, please? He is worried.”

Alec looked away because, for all the talk of emotional vulnerabilities, Q speaking his feelings so easily did not sit well with him. He did not like the word worried, but it sat badly on him. The word implied softness and exposure.

Q listened for another moment and then exhaled. “Thank you.”

He ended the call and turned back to Alec. “Go to Brixton. There is an abandoned storefront on Coldharbour Lane with a green door and a broken sign for a tailor that no longer exists. Enter through the back.”

Alec stared at him because what the fuck was this. He shook his head as he finally said, “That is either a rendezvous or the opening move in an ambush.”

“Yes,” Q shrugged.

“Which?” Alec asked, confused because he was feeling more and more leery about this entire thing.

“With my cousin?” Q turned back to his monitor and returned to his work. “There is an equal chance that it could be both.”

The storefront in Brixton looked like exactly the sort of place Alec would have used to disappear a body, hide a cache, or meet someone he intended to betray first.

The front windows were covered in dust and old paper. The green door had peeling paint and a lock that looked broken in the specific way of something pretending not to be guarded.

Alec circled to the back, his hand never straying from his gun. The alley smelled like rain, old brick, and takeaway grease. There was a rusted metal door at the end of the alley. He carefully made his way down the alley and stood before it.

Alec didn’t know if he should touch it, but it suddenly opened before he could.

Alec froze as he looked inside and only saw darkness. Now, Alec was not a superstitious man, but he had seen enough horror movies to know that a door like that had nothing but trouble on the other side.

“No,” he muttered, slamming the door closed and taking a step back. “Absolutely not.”

Then the air shimmered, and suddenly the door transformed into an oval-shaped door. It was tall and golden, lit with carved runes that glowed like embers under glass. It stood where no door should have been, opening into warm light and impossible geometry.

Alec stared at it for a long moment. Because he had seen many things in his life: explosions, betrayals, and men die while still believing they would be rescued. Not to mention the way that his best friend often survived situations that should have turned him into a cautionary anecdote.

But this was new, and Alec didn’t know what to do with it. His instincts were telling him to shoot or run. But Alec remembered what Q said, and he hated to admit it, but he trusted Q. And in his life, trusting someone was not something you did lightly.

Alec took a deep breath, and then he stepped through with his gun drawn.

He emerged into a circular room lined with doors. His eyes swept the space instantly, taking in the exits, cover, and sightlines in a moment. There were too many doors, too much gold, and the polished black marble was opulent in the extreme. He looked up at the glowing runes overhead, and then his eyes landed on the brown leather chairs and the tea set sitting on the circular glass table.

Then another door opened, and there was a Black woman standing in the doorway. The first thing he noticed was that she was beautiful, standing there with her hair braided back in cornrows, black lines of her tattoos covering the canvas of her smooth golden-brown skin. But the next thing he noticed was her piercing green stare. Her eyes were darker than Q’s, but they shared that same look that told him she had zero tolerance for any nonsense.

He wasn’t expecting Q’s cousin to be Black, but there were some facial similarities. It was the tilt of their mouth, the shape of their eyes, and the nose.

Kendis Black, or Lady Black of Blackmere, as he knew from all the times he had seen her in the papers, crossed the space with an authority that made Alec instinctively straighten his spine.

Tony Stark appeared behind her, arms crossed as he watched Alec with bright, assessing eyes.

“Gun down,” Kendis said.

“No,” Alec smirked.

She sighed, quicker than Alec expected, pulled out a slim black stick, and with a muttered phrase, his gun went flying out of his hands right into Kendis’s free hand. The black stick, which Alec guessed was a wand, was still pointed right at him.

Alec went very still because it didn’t take a genius for him to realize if a wand was capable of snatching his sidearm out of his hand, then it was capable of doing much worse.

Tony winced. “Yeah. That happens.”

Kendis gave Alec a deeply unimpressed look. “You are in my house. You will not point weapons in my house unless I tell you to.”

Alec returned her look with a rueful grin. “Does the house usually kidnap people?”

The lights above them flickered, and somehow Alec could tell that the floor was giving a faint, offended hum beneath his boots.

Tony’s mouth twitched. “Concordia likes him.”

“No, she does not,” Kendis said.

“Wait a bloody moment.” Alec looked between them. “You are saying that the house is alive?”

“Spirit of the land,” Tony said, with a shrug.

“And she is flirting with me?” Alec said, then he stilled as a warm breeze suddenly moved through the circular room and brushed Alec’s hair back from his forehead.

Kendis closed her eyes. “Concordia.”

The golden runes on the ceiling and the walls pulsed, and Alec, to his surprise, found himself shoving down the hysterical laughter that bubbled up inside of him.

Alec shook his head. “Well. I’ve had stranger offers.”

“I doubt that,” Tony snorted.

“I don’t,” Kendis said as she handed him back his gun that, to his chagrin, was now empty of bullets.

Alec glanced at the magazine in her other hand. “Charming.”

“You came into my house armed and suspicious,” Kendis shrugged unrepentantly.

“I was invited through an abandoned shopfront into a glowing murder portal,” Alec pointed out as he slipped his now useless gun into his shoulder holster.

Tony pointed at him. “That is fair.”

“James is in the infirmary.” Kendis turned toward one of the doors. “Do not upset him.”

Alec said nothing and just followed them through the main entry door. As they walked down the foyer with its blue walls, box molding, and abstract art, and down the hall to the grand staircase, Alec felt like he was being watched.

He could feel the house’s intense focus on him. It didn’t feel like cameras; cameras were simple. This felt like being studied by something old, curious, and entirely too amused.

The infirmary was too advanced to be magical and too magical to be technology. The room was all glass walls, warm wood, and holographic displays. The beds were arranged with enough space for emergency work. The infirmary was full of machines Alec could recognize sitting beside things he absolutely could not.

James Bond lay propped against pillows, pale and bruised, one arm bandaged, a healing cut along his cheekbone, but most importantly: alive.

Alec stopped just inside the door, and a rush of emotions washed over him. For one sharp second, he was back in another life, another betrayal, another place where James had walked away, and Alec had not. The old wound opened, familiar and bitter, but then James turned his head.

Hazel eyes met ice blue, and then James Bond, 007, had the utter audacity to smirk at him and say, “Took you long enough.”

Alec let out a breath he had not realized he was holding because James was battered and bruised and still here.

“You look like shit.”

“Missed you too.”

Alec crossed the room and stopped beside the bed. He wanted to hit him, wanted to check every monitor, wanted to demand answers, and absurdly enough, Alec wanted to sit down.

Instead, he said, “What the hell is going on?”

James’s smile faded. “It’s a long story.”

Alec finally sat down in the chair beside James’s bed and glared at him. James told him everything. He talked about discovering the Aurelian Order, the ambush, the fake death report, and then he told Alec about the extraction that went wrong.

Kendis and Tony told Alec about the reason Q had been targeted and how one of Kendis’s doors had pulled Tristan out seconds before armed men breached his flat.

Tony went on to explain the safe recovery and that the Order had wanted both Q and Bond off the board before anyone could trace their funding or their next move.

Alec listened without interrupting.

By the end, his anger had gone quiet and clean.

“Names?” he asked.

James’s eyes sharpened with familiar approval. “Tony and Q are working on that.”

“Yep, I still got JARVIS digging,” Tony said. “But we will find them eventually.”

“Good.”

“Alec,” James called out, and Alec turned back to look at James. “I’m alive.”

Alec hated him a little for saying it gently. Actually, he would have punched James for coddling him. But then he looked at Kendis leaning against the wall, returning his look with a raised eyebrow. He turned back to James.

“I can see that.”

“You were worried.”

“No.”

James’s brows lifted, and the urge to punch him got even stronger.

Alec shrugged. “I was irritated by poor communication.”

“Of course.”

“And if you ever vanish into a magical safe house without telling me again, I will smother you with one of these very expensive pillows.”

James smiled. “There he is.”

Alec told himself that he only stayed because James was there, and then Kendis fed him. He knew the moment Kendis slid a bowl of hot borscht in front of him that James had told her about his Russian background.

Alec Trevelyan had expected many things from Tony Stark’s house: surveillance, champagne, robots, and enough arrogance to fill King’s Cross station. What he hadn’t expected was Russian food so good it made him briefly consider religion.

If it wasn’t the borscht, it was the pelmeni in butter, the blini with sour cream, and the warm pirozhki that was so good it made him legitimately pause and wonder if the ghost of a dead Russian grandmother possessed Kendis Black.

Alec was staying at a magical house after all, and anything was possible.

In short, Alec ate, and then ate some more because life had taught him early on that you didn’t pass up free food, especially free food this good, if you didn’t have to.

“This is a cult,” he said eventually.

Tony, sitting across from him, did not look offended. “Probably.”

Kendis sipped her drink. “It is not a cult.”

Alec looked around the kitchen at the impossible collection of superheroes, a few people he suspected were immortals, and all different types of strange strays that Alec didn’t want to look too far into, all walking around too comfortably in the Concord House.

Alke thumped her tail under the table, emphasizing Alec’s accurate and important point.

Kendis pointed at him. “Do not bring my dog into this.”

James looked amused; Q looked exhausted; meanwhile, Tony threw him a delighted grin before taking another sip of his coffee.

“The gym has a sauna,” Tony said.

Alec paused because, of course, this place had a sauna. He would have to investigate that after testing out the rest of the gym.

Kendis glared at her husband. “Do not bribe him with amenities.”

“I’m not bribing.” Tony threw her an innocent smile that no one took seriously. “I’m informing.”

Q adjusted his glasses. “There is also a door.”

“Are you talking about the Rotunda?” Alec narrowed his eyes as he remembered the strange circular room he had arrived in.

Tony grinned, and Alec got a sinking feeling in his stomach. He had quickly learned that a grin like that on Tony Stark’s face was never a good sign.

Later, they showed him the East Wing. Alec had refused to sleep anywhere but by James’s side, but this was the first time Alec had seen this part of the house. The East Wing was warm and quiet. Framed photos of people he recognized from glances he had gotten while he was here sat between closed doors. The Avengers, members of Tony’s poker group he excitedly introduced as the Cerebral Flush, and Ian and Jason, who had ancient eyes.

All the doors had brass nameplates. Some of the names he recognized, but others he did not. Then Alec spotted a nameplate on a door near the end and froze.

Alec Trevelyan.

He just stared for a long time, his mind spinning at the implications.

The name looked wrong there, too permanent, and way too kind. It was as if the house had decided something about him without permission.

His throat tightened, and Alec did his best to control himself.

“I did not agree to this.”

“No one does at first,” Q said.

James leaned against the wall, looking far too pleased for a man still recovering from nearly dying. “Best to give up now.”

Tony nodded solemnly. “The house has decided, Kendis has fed you, and the dog likes you. You’re finished, Trevelyan.”

“This is absolutely a cult,” Alec pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Found family,” Kendis corrected.

“That is what cults say.”

Tony lifted a hand. “Sometimes with worse catering.”

Alec looked at the brass nameplate again.

He thought of growing up with no home that had wanted him. Of institutions that trained children into weapons and called it purpose. Of empty flats, false names, and exits always kept clear. Of James alive in an infirmary because these impossible people had opened a door when MI6 could not.

He would never admit that it touched something in him. Alec would also never admit that seeing his name on a door made a part of him ache like an old bruise pressed with gentle fingers.

So Alec crossed his arms and gave them all his most unimpressed look. “If this is a recruitment strategy, it is heavy-handed.”

Kendis smiled like she knew exactly what he was not saying. “Welcome to the family, Alec.”

The house lights warmed above him, and Tony clapped him on the shoulder. There was a knowing look in the genius’s eyes that he didn’t like. Tony clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you the sauna.”

Alec knew that he should have left. It would have been easier, but instead he followed, giving in and allowing this chaotic found family to envelop him into the fold.