[Some Assembly Required] When One Door Closes

By the time James Bond escaped the MI6 infirmary, Tristan had already invented twelve new forms of murder in his head, eight of which involved hospital bed restraints, three of which involved paperwork, and one of which involved M being forced to explain to Kendis Black why a recently tortured, blood-loss-compromised 00 agent had been left with enough mobility to vanish.

Bond should not have been mobile.

This was not simply Tristan being dramatic; no, this was a medical fact.

He had three cracked ribs, a bullet graze along his left side, a knife wound that had been stitched by someone competent but clearly angry, bruising across his torso that looked like an abstract map of poor decisions, a concussion, and the kind of exhaustion that settled into the bones of men who had survived because dying would have been inconvenient.

Tristan had made damn sure that MI6 finally got Bond horizontal despite his loud protestations.

Bond had been pale beneath the bruises, lashes dark against his face, one hand wrapped around Tristan’s wrist with a grip that was weaker than either of them wanted to acknowledge.

“You’re fussing,” Bond had murmured.

“You were kidnapped, tortured, shot at, and medically sedated,” Tristan said tightly.

“Lightly sedated.”

“You tried to bite a nurse.”

Bond snorted. “She startled me.”

“She was checking your pulse.” Tristan shot him a glare. This man, who had toppled governments with frightening ease, had suddenly been reduced to a five-year-old, and Tristan wanted to slap him upside the head.

Bond opened one eye. “She approached from my blind side.”

Tristan leaned closer, his expression cool enough to frost glass. “James.”

James’s mouth softened almost imperceptibly. Tristan didn’t call Bond by his first name often. Even in bed, Tristan mostly called him Bond or 007. But in that moment, he used James. The real one. Not 007, not Bond, not some polished myth wearing an expensive suit and bleeding on government property.

No, in that moment Bond was James, and he was simply Tristan, and Tristan Evan-Mensah was terrified of losing his lover.

“I’m here,” James said quietly.

Tristan hated that it helped. He also hated the way James’s voice sounded. It was rough and low and alive, and it nearly took his knees out from under him. He had spent too many hours believing he might never hear it again.

Tristan had held himself together through the attack on his flat, through the door, through Kendis’s terrifying calm, through Miss Parker’s brisk competence, through the extraction and the debrief and the ugly realization that the Aurelian Order had been circling both him and James like carrion birds.

Now James was alive and lying in an infirmary bed beneath government lights, monitored by machines Tristan did not trust. Tristan stood in a building he trusted even less, while every instinct in him screamed that this was not over.

“You are going to stay here,” Tristan said. “You are going to sleep. You are going to allow the doctors to do their jobs, and you are not going to flirt, fight, escape, improvise, or perform any action that could be described by M as ‘classic Bond.’”

James’s lips twitched. “That is a wide restriction.”

“I made it deliberately broad.”

“Cruel of you.”

“I am emotionally devastated and therefore legally allowed to be cruel.”

James studied him for a moment, exhaustion making his eyes too open, too bare. “Your flat?”

Tristan went still.

“My cats are safe,” he said.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“It was the part you cared about most.”

James’s eyes narrowed.

Tristan sighed. “My flat was breached by an armed team and an EMP.”

James’s hand tightened around his wrist with sudden, sharp force. Pain flashed across his face for a moment, but he did not let go.

“Who?”

“We’re working on that.” Tristan shrugged.

“Q.”

“James.”

James tried to sit up, but Tristan pushed him back down with one finger against his shoulder.

James stared at him, and Tristan stared right back, not giving an inch.

“You are held together with stitches and spite,” Tristan said. “Do not test me.”

Bond’s mouth curved faintly. “Missed you.”

Tristan’s throat nearly closed because that hit him harder than he would have thought. He had known the risks when he finally surrendered to his feelings and entered into a relationship with James.

He accepted that James still had to do honeypot missions. He tolerated the way missions stole James away from him because James loved his job, and he never wanted his lover to minimize himself to be with Tristan. But it was the constant danger James put himself in for Queen and country that was the hardest pill to swallow.

“That is manipulative.” Tristan coughed, looking away.

“Yes.”

“It is also ineffective,” Tristan bit out.

“No.” Bond shot him a smug look.

He glared at Bond, and his lover closed his eyes again, still holding Tristan’s wrist.

“Stay,” James murmured.

Tristan sighed, but he stayed. He stayed for two hours, sitting in a very uncomfortable chair as he watched the door. He watched the slight rise and fall of Bond’s chest until he could believe it was real. Miss Parker stood outside like a very stylish warning sign.

No one questioned her presence after Q had snapped at a security guard and M had granted her clearance to enter the building. Eve came by once, took one look at Tristan’s face, and did not make the mistake of asking him if he was all right. Later, M arrived with a grim expression. He stood there with tightly controlled authority as he received Tristan’s preliminary report.

“You need rest,” M told him.

Tristan did not look away from Bond. “That sounds like something people say before they make foolish decisions without me.”

M’s mouth tightened into a firm line.

From the hallway, Miss Parker said, “He’s not wrong.”

M looked toward her and narrowed his eyes. Miss Parker returned the look with a smile that suggested she had never once been impressed by rank in her life.

Eventually, because exhaustion did not negotiate even with geniuses, Tristan was ordered to the adjoining secure room for twenty minutes of rest—not sleep, but real rest. He agreed only because Eve promised to sit with James personally. Tristan had assumed that James was unconscious enough that even he could not perform a dramatic escape.

That was Tristan’s first mistake.

His second mistake was underestimating James Bond’s absolute commitment to being a problem.

Twenty-seven minutes later, Tristan woke to Eve saying his name in the tone people used when the building was on fire or James had done something deeply Bond-shaped.

Tristan opened his eyes. “No.”

Eve stood in the doorway, face pale with fury and fear. “He’s gone.”

Tristan sat up, fighting the urge to strangle James Bond, but he knew James, the stubborn fool, would probably survive even that.

“Define gone,” Tristan bit out.

“The bed is empty.” Eve gestured toward the empty bed.

“That is not a definition.” Tristan crossed his arms. “That is a provocation.”

“Q—”

“He had a concussion.”

“Yes.”

“He had cracked ribs.” Tristan glared at the empty bed.

“Yes.” Eve nodded.

“He was attached to monitors.” Tristan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“He removed them.”

Tristan snapped his eyes open and stood. He nearly walked into the side table, corrected himself, and moved past Eve into the infirmary with the terrible calm of a man who had just crossed from fear into administrative violence.

“James left a note.”

Tristan turned slowly because he felt that, if he didn’t, he would shatter into pieces—not out of sadness, but out of pure frustration. James was one of the few people who could do this to him, and a part of him resented it.

Eve handed the note to him. He took it and read it. It was written in Bond’s familiar, slanted, economical hand.

Tristan,

There are too many eyes here that are not at all friendly. I’ll be somewhere safer. Don’t be cross.

J.

Tristan inhaled once and tried to scrape together the last thin threads of his patience.

He took another breath, then two, and when the urge to throw things passed, Tristan finally said softly, “Don’t be cross.”

Miss Parker appeared in the doorway. “Oh, that tone is familiar.”

Eve looked at her. “Is it bad?”

“That is the tone Jarod uses right before doing something that makes government agencies cry.”

Tristan took out his tablet, but it wasn’t his usual tablet. His usual tablet had been EMP’d into an expensive paperweight at his flat. This one had been produced by Tony Stark forty minutes after Tristan had arrived at Concord House, accompanied by the words, “Temporary loaner. Try not to fall in love,” which was ridiculous because Tristan did not fall in love with technology like some kind of undisciplined amateur.

Tristan would go to his grave denying that he had named it Persephone.

Persephone connected to the MI6 internal grid with the smooth viciousness of a shark entering shallow water.

“Q,” M said from behind him.

Tristan did not turn. “Not now.”

“That is an order.” M’s tone was flat and authoritative, the kind that usually brought him up short. Today, Tristan was too far gone for that voice to have any effect on him.

“No,” Tristan said. “That is a sentence with ambition.”

Miss Parker made a small approving sound.

M looked as if he were developing a headache in real time.

Tristan pulled every infirmary camera, corridor feed, lift log, service access ping, and restricted stairwell trigger from the past half hour. James had been slower than usual, but not sloppy. He had avoided the obvious cameras, masked his gait when he could, doubled back twice, and used a nurse’s stolen badge to pass through a supply corridor.

“Infuriating,” Tristan muttered.

Eve leaned closer. “Can you track him?”

“He is bleeding, concussed, and operating on instinct. Of course I can track him.”

“That sounded less like confidence and more like a threat.”

“It can be both.”

He found James leaving through a staff entrance in a stolen coat, face angled away from the camera. Tristan found him two streets over, leaning against a wall for twelve full seconds because his body had briefly remembered that it was injured, and then found him again just as James was sliding into a black cab.

Tristan’s jaw clenched, and the urge to wrap his hands around his lover’s neck and squeeze increased. He took another deep breath because throwing a chair would not help him in this situation.

“What address?” M asked.

Tristan rewound the cabstand audio, cleaned it, and then isolated Bond’s voice beneath traffic, rain, and the driver’s radio.

Then Bond’s low, rough voice came through. “Notting Hill.”

Tristan froze and closed his eyes again because of course that prat would go there.

Eve’s face changed. “Your flat?”

Tristan didn’t answer her. He was already moving because his flat was already compromised. He would not allow James to become any more seriously injured than he already was. James might not care about his health, but Tristan sure as hell did.

“Q,” M snapped.

Tristan rounded on him, and the room went still.

For all that Tristan was not a field agent, for all that he wore cardigans and looked like he belonged in an underfunded university archive rather than inside the violent machinery of British intelligence, there was something in his face then that made even M stop.

“My flat was attacked tonight,” Tristan said. “My cats were terrorized. My devices were destroyed. James has a head injury and believes MI6 is compromised, which, given recent events, is not an unreasonable conclusion. He has gone to the only civilian location he associates with me because he is injured, frightened, and too bloody stubborn to say so. I am going to get him before the people who attacked me realize he is there.”

M held his gaze.

Then, very quietly, he said, “Take backup.”

Tristan was already halfway down the corridor. “I am.”

Miss Parker fell into step beside him.

“So,” she said, heels clicking sharply against the floor. “That’s your idiot?”

Tristan’s mouth flattened. “Unfortunately.”

“Pretty.”

“He is concussed.”

“Still pretty.” Miss Parker shrugged.

“Focus.” Tristan shot her a glare.

Miss Parker lifted an eyebrow. “I can multitask.”

---

By the time they reached the garage, Tristan had already pulled his flat’s backup security cloud through three emergency redundancies and one illegal private relay he was absolutely not explaining to M. The feed came up grainy at first, then sharpened.

His sitting room had been damaged in the earlier attack. Books were displaced, Tristan’s desk was scorched, and his doorframe was broken. His heart twisted at the sight of it. Tristan had been living in that flat since graduating from Oxford. His Notting Hill flat had been his own calm sanctuary in a world full of chaos and violence, and it had been violated.

Then James stumbled into frame, and Tristan stopped walking so abruptly Miss Parker nearly ran into him.

James looked worse under the lights in Tristan’s flat than he had in the infirmary. In the infirmary, there had been sheets and monitors and the illusion of care. In Tristan’s ransacked apartment, he was simply a wounded animal in a stolen coat, one hand pressed hard to his ribs, blood seeping through the side of his shirt where he had pulled a stitch.

James stood in the middle of Tristan’s sitting room like he did not know what to do now that he had made it there.

“James,” Tristan whispered.

On screen, James looked around the damaged flat.

“Q?” he called, his voice rough. Then he called out again, “Tristan?”

Tristan swallowed.

James took two steps toward the desk, saw the dead equipment, and went very still. Then, to Tristan’s surprise, Turning emerged from beneath the sofa. But that didn’t make any sense. Turning was not in the flat. He was still at Concord House.

On screen, James saw the orange tabby, frowned with the confused intensity of a concussed man trying to solve a magical continuity error, and said, “You’re meant to be with Q.”

The cat yowled in indignation, and Tristan could only stare at the screen because none of this made any sense. This couldn’t be his orange tabby cat.

“That is not Turning!”

Miss Parker squinted. “Looks like Turning.”

“It is not Turning.” Tristan shook his head. “Turning is with Kendis.”

“Could be a magic cat.” Miss Parker shrugged.

“Magic?” Eve asked as her eyes darted between Miss Parker and Tristan, but Tristan was too busy having a mental crisis.

“There is no such thing as—” Tristan stopped. “No. I refuse.”

On screen, the false Turning walked toward the center of the sitting room and sat down, and suddenly golden light spilled across the floorboards as a door abruptly appeared.

Tristan went cold because this shouldn’t be possible.

It wasn’t the one that had appeared for him, tall and oval and carved with glowing runes. This one was smaller at first, flickering uncertainly as though it was trying to decide whether James counted as family, threat, guest, or problem.

James stared at it for a long moment as his hand reached beneath the stolen coat for a weapon he no longer had.

“Q,” Eve said from behind them. Apparently, she had followed them. “What is that?”

Tristan’s voice was thin. “That is a door.”

“I can see that.”

On screen, James took a step backward. The false cat blinked, and then the door brightened, gold spilling across the ruined room like sunrise.

James tilted his head, eyeing the door dubiously. Then he shrugged and walked through it because apparently he had the self-preservation skills of a drunk lemming.

Then the feed flared brilliant white, and the video ended.

Tristan made a sound he would later deny.

Eve grabbed his arm before he could bolt blindly forward. “Where does it go?”

“Concord House,” Tristan said, already pulling up every connection he had to Tony’s temporary communications system. “It has to go to Concord House.”

“Your cousins’ place?” Eve asked incredulously. Tristan gave a sharp nod as he tried to get his breathing under control.

The door that had taken Tristan to safety had appeared for James, which meant Concord House had seen him, judged him, and decided he was close enough to Tristan to be rescued.

Tony answered the video call before the second ring.

“Please tell me this is a social call and not more paramilitary bullshit,” Tony said.

“James escaped the MI6 infirmary.”

Tony blinked on the screen. “Of course he did.”

“He went to my flat.”

“Of course he did.”

“A door appeared.”

Tony’s expression sharpened, and behind him, Kendis’s voice rose. “What door?”

Tony turned his head. “Honey, the house may have abducted Bond.”

Tristan made a strangled sound. “Do not say abducted.”

Kendis appeared beside Tony, eyes wide and furious with worry. “Is James there?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tony said. “JARVIS?”

“Sir,” JARVIS replied, voice crisp but carrying that subtle edge that meant even an artificial intelligence had realized the household was about to become emotionally unmanageable. “There has been an unauthorized arrival in the Rotunda.”

Tristan’s hand tightened around the tablet. “Unauthorized?”

“Medically unstable guest,” JARVIS amended.

“Bond,” Eve said. “That has to be Bond.”

Kendis disappeared from frame.

Tony looked back at Tristan. “She’s running.”

“I am coming.”

Tony’s face softened in a way Tristan did not have time to process. “Yeah. I know.”

The black garage door beside Tristan shimmered.

Miss Parker looked at it. “Convenient.”

Tristan’s eyes went wide as he stared at it in shock. “It can do that from here?”

Apparently, it could, and Tristan did not have time to unravel the fact that his life had just turned into a paranormal romantic suspense thriller. The door opened not into the MI6 garage, but into the Concord House Rotunda.

Tristan ran and stumbled through the door into warm amber light, with Miss Parker and Moneypenny on his heels. His eyes quickly took in the polished black marble, gold-veined floors, and the terrible, impossible beauty of the room that had saved his life hours earlier. The first thing he saw was Kendis kneeling on the floor in front of James Bond.

James was sitting against the base of the central table, one arm wrapped around his ribs, head tipped back against the polished wood. His face was grey. One eye was half-open and unfocused. Alke stood beside him, massive body planted between James and every door in the room, not threatening him but guarding him. Lovelace sat on Bond’s good side, one paw delicately placed on his thigh as if she had personally supervised his arrival.

Turning, the real Turning, stood several feet away with his tail puffed to triple size, yelling at James with the outrage of a cat who had not approved any of this.

James simply blinked at him and said, “Tristan.”

Tristan crossed the room so fast he nearly slipped.

“You absolute lunatic,” Tristan snapped, dropping to his knees beside him. “You medically noncompliant monument to government liability.”

Bond’s mouth twitched. “Missed you too.”

“You know M is going to murder you for this,” Eve said as she took in the room with wide eyes.

James snorted, and in that moment, Tristan wanted to shake him and kiss him and wrap him in a blanket burrito and lock him in a server room so he would never be hurt again. Instead, he pressed two fingers to Bond’s pulse, checked his pupils, and then put one shaking hand against Bond’s cheek.

“You left the infirmary.”

“I had to,” James said. “It wasn’t safe.”

Tristan glared at him. “But my destroyed and very compromised flat was better?”

James didn’t say anything, and Tristan felt like his heart was going to pound right out of his chest. Tristan was startled when Kendis’s hand settled gently on his shoulder.

“He’s alive,” she said softly.

Tristan nodded as he felt his eyes fill with tears he refused to let fall. “I know.”

Tony crouched on Bond’s other side, scanning him with something that looked like a medical device and probably cost more than a London townhouse. “I’m going to say this with love and professional admiration for your brand, but you look like shit.”

Bond’s eyes shifted toward him. “Stark.”

“Bond.”

“Your house kidnapped me.”

Tony sighed. “That word is getting thrown around a lot tonight.”

“It did,” Tristan said tightly.

The room gave a low, warm hum, and then the lights brightened.

Kendis looked up. “Do not argue with us right now. You took an injured spy from Notting Hill without warning his boyfriend.”

JARVIS spoke gently from above. “The infirmary is prepared.”

Tony, Kendis, and Miss Parker got James upright under Alke’s stern supervision. He swayed once, badly, and Tristan caught him around the waist, ignoring the blood and the way Bond’s weight nearly dragged him down.

James leaned into him, not much, just enough that Tristan felt it.

“I thought you were dead,” Tristan whispered, too quietly for anyone but James to hear.

Bond’s face turned toward his. “Tried not to be.”

“That is not funny.”

Bond’s mouth brushed almost invisibly against Tristan’s temple. “I’m sorry.”

That was worse, but Tristan had held his tattered pieces together this far, and he could hold on a little longer because he needed to remain functional. If he did not, he was going to fall apart in front of his cousin, Tony Stark, Miss Parker, a sentient house, two cats, one enormous dog, and the man he loved, who had apparently decided escape was a valid post-trauma care plan.

They moved through the black door marked Infirmary, which had not been there when Tristan arrived earlier.

Of course it had not, because of course the house had grown a medical wing because Kendis collected injured people like some families collected decorative plates.

The room beyond was bright, warm, and advanced enough that Tristan briefly forgot to be angry. The space featured white and neutral finishes, warm wood accents, a glass-enclosed surgical space, diagnostic beds, holographic medical stations, and black-framed windows looking out over the dark lawn.

James looked around with one eye half-open and snorted. “Bit ostentatious, isn’t it?”

Tony snorted. “He says, as if MI6 doesn’t hide murder basements under government buildings.”

“Those are less tasteful,” James murmured.

Kendis pointed at the nearest bed. “Down.”

James looked at Tristan, but he would not find any help from him. Tristan pointed to the bed and shot his lover a glare.

James carefully lay down on the bed, and the infirmary moved around him with a kind of intelligent gentleness that made Tristan’s skin prickle. Soft restraints suddenly appeared, then stopped and hovered uncertainly in the air.

Kendis looked up. “Consent.”

The restraints vanished.

Bond, despite everything, seemed amused. “Your house has manners.”

“My house has better manners than you,” Kendis snapped.

James smiled faintly. “Fair.”

Tristan took his hand before he could think better of it, and at the feel of Bond’s fingers curling around his, some of the stress that had sat on his shoulders since this clusterfuck began started to fade.

The infirmary scanned him, and they all stood there as JARVIS narrated the results with clinical precision and only the faintest undertone of disapproval.

“Concussion remains moderate. Blood loss is concerning but not critical. Two stitches torn. Rib fractures stable but aggravated. Elevated stress markers. Dehydration. Exhaustion.”

“I’ll call Lana,” Tony said, taking out his phone.

“Already done, sir,” JARVIS replied. “Her arrival time is estimated to be 11.5 minutes.”

“Lana?” Tristan asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Scary ER surgeon and my poker buddy.”

“Poker?” James asked with a gleam in his eye that Tristan did not like.

Tony opened his mouth, but Kendis slapped a hand over it. “Don’t even start.”

Tristan turned back to James and squeezed his hand. “You are utterly ridiculous.”

“But I am yours,” James murmured.

Tristan stared at him because, as much as it pained him, James was right. From the moment they had met in the National Gallery, from the moment Tristan had seen that small smile as James called him “Q” for the first time, it had been over for Tristan. It was no wonder he had been willing to risk his career and possibly his freedom to help James lay a trail for Silva.

James closed his eyes, and he had no right to look that pleased with himself.

“After he wakes,” Tristan said, voice calm again, too calm, “we are going to discuss the Aurelian Order.”

Miss Parker’s smile turned sharp while Tony’s lit up with a vicious intelligence that mirrored his own.

Meanwhile, Kendis’s face went still in a way Tristan had known her long enough to recognize as a promise of magic and violence. From the bed, James slept on, finally safe enough to stop running.

Tristan held his hand and stared at the man he loved, with the impossible door behind them closed, the house watchful around them, and the village beginning to move like a storm waking over the horizon.

The Aurelian Order had wanted institutional collapse. Unfortunately for them, they had touched Tristan’s cats, hunted Kendis Black’s cousin, and made James bleed on Concord House marble.

By morning, they were going to learn the difference between starting a war and choosing a family that already knew how to finish one.