Chapter 8

At work, James treated Eve no differently than normal, despite the way she side-eyed him every time he moved. Ever since Q admitted to liking James, it was like he was taking some sort of test of which she was the proctor. The only real problem was that James had no idea what the boundaries of the test were. So he tried to pretend he hadn't followed her to lunch, hadn't overheard the conversation, and that she hadn't insinuated he wouldn't make a good fit for Q.

Outside of work, he jogged; he visited Prufrock; he started trying to spot Q in crowds leaving the tube; but most importantly, he tried to find Riley. Q continued to call him, and he continued to skirt the issue of what Riley was up to. At first James had decided to ignore it. Civilians had problems, after all. But as the calls continued, he realized he needed to find out the truth. His instincts pushed him to find what was causing Q undue distress, to find out what seedy plans Riley had and put an end to them.

An easy Google search brought him two potential men in some form of real estate. That on its own was surprising – what were the odds? But no amount of googling got him closer to figuring out which one had a son named Charlie or Charles or any children at all. Without involving R&D, he was at a dead end when it came to easily accessible public files.

So he changed his jogging path to run by the offices of each Riley, see if he caught sight of anything that stood out from Q's descriptions of work and the people he knew there. He had just slowed to take a break near one of the buildings when his phone rang with a call from Q.

"Do you jog every morning?" Q asked after James told him what he was doing.

"Unless work keeps me from it," James admitted, breathing deep to slow his heart rate. "I'm sure you have daily routines."

"I suppose so. It's more like checking e-mail and coding for half an hour before work, though. Mental exercise. Not physical," he explained and then grunted. "Bugger. Sorry. Tripped. See? I can't even walk."

"Heading to work?"

Across the street, a couple was walking stiffly together. The woman was newly pregnant, and based on the arm movements of the man, they were having a heated discussion about it.

"Unfortunately. Riley wants to see what I've been working on. As if my professional work wasn't enough, now he's concerned about my personal work." It was early in the day, but Q sounded like he already wanted to be back in bed.

"Why would he be concerned with your personal work?" James asked, eyebrows knitting in concern as he watched the discussion across the street turn into a full argument. The couple stopped walking in order to fight.

"I wrote an encryption program for him a month or so ago – impervious to hacking for the most part. Then I started working on the decryption process. The one he has for it works, but you need authorization codes and passwords and such." Q sighed shortly, a sigh of mental exhaustion. "My new program would be able to decrypt my encryption program without all that. Somehow Riley found out I was working on it, so he wants to see it. I foresee him not being terribly pleased by it, since he didn't ask me to and he'll probably ask me what I wanted to use it for."

"And what did you want to use it for?" James asked, part of him hoping to hear Q wanted to finally take Riley out, expose him in some way to the authorities… but for what? James still didn't know what Riley was up to. Was Q in the dark as well?

There was a brief pause and then, "I'm not sure, honestly. I suppose I wanted to know… Well, the truth. I feel like there's so much in my life I'm not privy too, so much I'm unsure about, and this was one thing I could finally uncover. To know what exactly I was helping him hide." Q sighed nervously then. "Oh he will not be happy about this."

"Don't tell him," James suggested obviously. Across the street, the man smacked the woman so hard she fell back against the half-wall behind her. "Sorry, Q. I'll have to call you back."

"Don't bother. I'll be at work in a minute. I'll call you later if Riley doesn't murder me first," Q replied, and then he hung up before James. Well that was encouraging.

But for now, James wanted to focus on the fight. He hurried across the street and caught the man's hand as he pulled it back for another blow. The woman was crying and screaming profanities at the man, but she stopped when James stepped in.

"The fuck do you think you are?" the man shouted, turning on James and trying to land a blow with his other hand.

With very little effort, James spun the man around and slammed him down against the half wall. He tried to get away, but James had him pinned securely. After a deep breath of annoyance, James turned to face the woman, who was leaning against the wall in a stunned silence. Her mascara was running.

"What's your name, Love?" James asked.

"My…? Marnie," she said. Just as James had expected. Her dark curls, the contour of her cheekbones, and the shape of her eyes – this was Q's sister. So he was pinning Charlie then, and this was the right address.

"Well, Marnie, are you alright?" And he pointedly looked between her face and her stomach.

"Yeh. Fine. Who the fuck are you?" She was still leaning on the wall, her hand sliding down over her stomach. As her shock wore off, she began to harden with suspicion.

"Concerned citizen," James said smoothly. He looked down at Charlie. "Real men don't hit their women. I could break your arm for that, but it would seem a tad ironic, wouldn't it?"

"No, man! Get off me!" Charlie shouted, trying again to break James' hold, to no avail. "Just let me go, psycho!"

"Stop whining. It's pathetic." James pressed down, drawing a shout from Charlie, before he let go. Like the idiot he was, Charlie took a swing at James as soon as he was free, but James easily dodged and then swept Charlie's feet out from under him, sending him crashing to the concrete. "Stay down."

Charlie groaned on the ground, rolling onto his side and holding his head, but it was Marnie that intervened next. She grabbed James by the arm and jerked him back.

"The fuck, mate?" she shouted. "Leave him alone!"

"Apologies. I saw him smack you to the ground-," James began, but Marnie was a force to be reckoned with, just as Q often said.

"Yeah? Well I was handling it just fine, thanks. Didn't need your bloody help, so thanks but no thanks. Now fuck off, ya knob, and stop beatin' up my boyfriend." Her mascara was running and her cheek was starting to swell, but she was not deterred. Somehow, James had gone from savior to villain. Part of him didn't understand. The rest of him understood too well.

"Alright," he agreed, nodding his head to her with a tight smile. "Forgive my intrusion. I'll leave him to your capable hands, then."

No wonder Q found her stressful, James thought as he walked briskly away. Why would she stay with a man who hit her regularly? Why didn't she take the out when it was offered to her? If not for herself, then for the baby.

A block away, he paused in his walk and laughed sourly. He sounded like Q.

Just then his phone began to vibrate and he pulled it from his pocket. Q's name stared out at him from the screen. Odd. Hadn't Q been going in to work? Had something important happened? Was Riley truly going to hurt Q?

"Q?" he asked in greeting, trying to hide the edge in his tone caused by worry. "Is something wrong?"

"What? Oh, no. Nothing the matter," the younger man said. James would have said he caught Q off guard, but it was Q who called him, not the other way around. "I just… Well…? Have you- Have you noticed how strange the Thames looks this morning? I suppose it's unremarkable, really, but I don't pay it much attention most days. The sky is quite pale this morning, and I noticed the contrast. What do you think?"

With a half chuckle, James turned to look at the river – the dirty, freezing snake that wove its way through the city. What a thing to call about. It sounded as though Q had pulled the topic out of nowhere, which only made the call that much more ridiculous, and that much more endearing. A call with no purpose after they'd only just hung up.

"Yes," he said at length. "Quite the ghastly contrast."

"Yes," Q echoed, and he sounded slightly distracted. With his next breath, he sounded relieved. "Yes, quite."

Relieved about what? James couldn't connect the dots. "Don't let Riley toss you in, though. Wouldn't want you freezing to death."

"Course not," Q said, some of his usual cockiness seeping in. "But I'll leave you to your jog, then. Wouldn't want you freezing either. I'll call you later."

"Until later," James agreed. When they hung up, he stayed staring at the water for a few moments more, trying to draw from it the meaning behind Q's odd tones. It just sloshed around unhelpfully, like a particularly troubling pet, until James shook his head and turned away from it.

As he returned to his morning run, he thought back to Marnie and to Q's conversations about her. Maybe she was a lost cause. She seemed irrevocably attached to Charlie, and James saw no way around that. Eve's advice would have to stand – no one would change Marnie's mind except Marnie. Q just had to be there for her, and James had no doubt in his mind that Q would make sure she knew it and be damned good at keeping the promise.

Thinking back on Q made him think about Eve and he sighed out a foggy breath. He'd be seeing Moneypenny at work today. No avoiding it. And he still didn't know what she was analyzing him for.

How aggravating.


There she was, sitting at her faux wood desk. The desktop screen, the potted plant on the corner of the desk, the folder organizer beside it – nothing kept her from having a clear view of the entire room, and they definitely didn't block her view of the chairs against the wall. She was typing something with fierce concentration, but not so fierce that she couldn't spare him a glance at the end of each sentence she wrote. Sitting in his uncomfortable waiting room chair, James started to wish he had a tranquilizer dart in his pocket, because he'd rather drug Eve than kill her, and he was getting tired of her staring.

After one more glance, he sighed and stood up. Mallory was late and this was driving him insane.

"Moneypenny," he said, walking to the desk.

"007," she answered.

"Would you kindly explain the rules of the test you're giving me? Because the constant scrutiny is frankly infuriating." He fixed his jacket's set before pulling it together in the front and buttoning it.

"If I were giving you a test, 007, I'd be sure to let you know," she said in way of a denial. Before he could argue the point, she added, "I'm merely evaluating what I already know about you."

So a test then, he thought, but kept the point to himself. No need to start an argument over semantics.

"Judging if I'm too old, too emotionally unavailable?" he asked. Her eyebrows rose in surprise, and he knew he'd hit the target so he plowed on. "I suppose I'm just grazing the mark on your 'middle aged' scale, after all. And you'd be right that I haven't been with anyone seriously in quite some time. And I do hurt people for a living. So what's the final conclusion then, Miss Moneypenny? Do I rank too lowly in your esteem to be worthy of a friend's admiration?"

For a beat or two, she said nothing, just regarded him with her piercing, beautiful eyes as though seeing him for the first time in years. James didn't know if he preferred the silence or her jabs from her last lunch with Q. Both were uncomfortable.

"I think very highly of you, James," she finally said, words careful. "More so than any other agent, in or out of the Double O program. And I think the world of Q. He was my friend in secondary school when no one else would be. He's had fancies in the past, and I've watched him burn out when they rejected him. I think highly of you, but I'm worried about how your interactions will end."

"How so?" James asked. If she thought highly of both of them, then why did she look concerned?

"Do you fancy Q?" she asked bluntly, her expression serious.

The question was so sudden, and James hesitated to answer. Did he fancy Q? They'd only ever spoken on the phone and that one short moment at Prufrock. The calls were certainly a bright point in his life lately, and he looked forward to hearing about Q's day, about what projects he was working on, about his family. But did he fancy him? Was it just friendship or did he feel more?

"You see?" Eve continued when James failed to answer. "If he likes you and you don't like him, then his feelings will go unrequited. He'll either confess and be rejected - which he would take hard. Knowing him, he'll be lost in programming for weeks before he recovers. – Or he'll never say anything and suffer quietly while you pretend not to know. Both aren't pleasant for Q emotionally."

"And if I do? Fancy him, I mean," James said, adjusting his cufflinks.

Eve's smile was sour. "Don't make promises you can't keep, James. This is not a situation that you can fix just by being obstinate with what's expected of you. If you fancy him, then do so. But don't lie to yourself, to Daniel, just to prove me wrong. It's not fair to anyone."

The door on James' left opened and Mallory was standing there, oblivious to the conversation he was interrupting.

"Ah, 007. Come in. Sorry about that. Call to the minister ran over. You know how it is," and he left the door ajar as he walked back to his desk.

James and Eve continued their staring contest as he spoke, and when he walked away, it continued on for another few heartbeats. Eve's stare was a warning, both in his favor and against him. And for his part, James didn't know if he could honestly tell her she was wrong for giving it.

"Come along, 007," Mallory called out, and James turned briskly away from his friend to join his master in the office, shutting the door resolutely behind himself.


"Favorite color," Q said. "Blue."

"Silver," James said.

The order of the evening was twenty questions. Riley had apparently given him a very hard time over the new program, and after several long hours at work, Q wanted an easy chat. Nothing serious. James could understand. Mallory, for all his usual calm, was stressed from the lack of advancement in the Spectre case. The minister was breathing down his neck, and so he was breathing down everyone else's.

But as much as James could understand the need for relaxing, pointless conversation, he didn't miss the cues in what Q wasn't saying. The way Q spoke about Riley resembled the way he spoke of his sister and Charlie. James didn't want to assume Riley was hurting Q, but it was hard to keep his mind from connecting the pieces that way. Too often on assignment, what contacts weren't saying was just as important as what they were, and he'd definitely run into a situation of a similar sort down in Mumbai some years ago.

Like James needed anymore reason to find Riley and- and what? MI-6 wasn't exactly going to condone the killing of a British citizen, especially over a domestic disturbance. And how would he threaten Riley? Q would find out and undoubtedly be upset that James had stepped in at all. He wanted to handle the situation on his own – he said as much whenever he told James he didn't want to discuss the finer points of working for Riley.

Without a plan, James had to settle for being Q's outlet after work. He could do that. Q was doing the same for James, after all.

"Favorite number." Q paused to consider. "Six. The smallest perfect number."

James smirked. "Seven," he said, careful not to sound too amused by his own joke.

"Why?"

"Would you accept it if I just said 'because'?" James asked. He was standing on the roof of the MI-6 building, the sun going down in the distance. All his work was done but he didn't want to go home quite yet.

"Fair enough. We're all allowed to have our quirks, aren't we? Least favorite number," Q continued. "Zero or one. I see enough of those in coding for a lifetime."

"Seven," James repeated. It was possible to hate his codename at the same time he loved it.

"But-," Q began before catching himself and sighing. "Just because, right? Okay then. I won't pry. Life of a spy and all, I'm sure there's a confidential reason. I won't be the one to get you in trouble with the government."

That had James smiling too. Q accepted that James was a spy so easily. There was no judgment, no panic, no sweet talking him for information. There was very little change in Q at all with the gaining of this new information – although James had never exactly confirmed that he was indeed a spy. Q was going off conjecture, but still. Silence was a type of confession too.

While Q searched for a new thing to quiz them both about, James recalled Q's worry in the diner – that he had been bugged – and he thought about Q's concern about James using his spy network to figure out pieces of his life.

"I didn't look into you," James said, breaking into Q's train of thought about favorite foods or fruits or chocolate. "I set up call forwarding and got your number from that."

"Oh." Was he disappointed or just confused?

"I thought it was important that you know. No government programs were used to look into your personal life – at least not by me." He may want to know more about Q, but he wanted Q to tell him most of it. Eve was like a giver of breadcrumbs, but it wasn't enough, and he didn't want to abuse her access either.

"Then how-," Q began and then there was a loud sigh. "No, that's good. And rest assured, I also have used no government technology to snoop into your life. Cross my heart and hope to not get thrown in the Thames ever, but especially now."

"Yes, beware of dropping temperatures," James agreed with a chuckle. Someone who was not Moneypenny poked their heads out onto the roof and called for him, for 007, for the agent and not the man. Ah, work beckoning even in after hours. "I have to go. I'll talk to you soon."

"Until later," Q said, a small smile in his voice as he mimicked James from before.


A/N: Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review!