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James Bond had been on a lot of trains in his life.
Which meant he’d spent a lot of time in a lot of stations. He was familiar with the hubbub of King’s Cross, packed with regional commuters and tourists wearing Harry Potter scarves. He’d been to stations in the south of Italy that hardly felt like train stations at all, with their platforms low to the ground and their rail lines that sometimes acted as little more than passenger crossings. He’d been a frequent visitor of the Gare du Nord’s behemothic halls. He’d stood at platforms that were nothing more than huts in the desert dust, and he’d walked through the corridors of stations in Russia that were so gilded in gold, they could have been palaces.
But an abandoned station that was still fit for a roaring twenties gala was new. There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling; the same curved ceiling that was held up by green and white ceramic arches and featured an ornate skylight.
There was some comfort in knowing that for all the old-world ostentation, the place was as freezing as any other station. New York’s winter was as blisteringly cold as usual; the chandeliers’ glow was a placebo. Nothing here was built to stop the chill coming in from the tunnels, and Bond found himself feeling privately thankful that he’d spent so much time on the ski slopes this year instead of in the tropics.
Through the minuscule earpiece in his ear, he heard a contented sigh.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” said Q. It transported Bond back a week to a moment when Q had straddled him confidently and crooned the very same thing into Bond’s ear.
Bond shook off the memory, warm as it was. Now was no time to think about that. That he was thinking of it at all was a surprise. He rarely struggled to keep his mind on a mission, and he was disconcerted that he couldn’t quite manage it today.
“It’s freezing, is what it is.”
From the cosy comfort of his office, Q let out an amused snort. “I’ve heard about this place. I’d like to visit one day.”
Bond checked around a corner for unwelcome visitors. “Did you hear about it from your friend?”
“He’s the CIA’s friend.”
“Your friend at the CIA, then. Don’t tell me you prodigious hackers don’t all know each other.”
“Knowing of someone,” replied Q, high and mighty, “is not the same as knowing them.”
Occasionally, when Bond least expected it, Q was capable of throwing out incisive insights about human nature. He’d hate knowing Bond thought that. No doubt it would ruin his credibility with all the machines he held dominion over.
Bond stepped around a final arch on the station’s platform to check for tourists and lurking henchmen. There was no one. For the moment, at least, it was him and Q alone. He relaxed a touch and rolled his shoulder, which was stiff and sore from the cold.
“Well, he’s not here.”
“You’re a few minutes early, yet,” observed Q.
“My watch might be off.”
“Your watch is fine. I checked it before you left.”
His watch was fine. It was beautiful. Brilliant, in fact. Bond was sure he’d never worn a better watch, which was saying something. But he hadn’t seen or heard from Q in days, not since he pressed a kiss to Bond’s cheek and shut his apartment door with a quiet snap, and it was always a joy to rile him up a bit on the comms. It felt necessary, even, to avoid the awkward silences that had blanketed their friendship over the last week.
“Are you sure you weren’t a bit too distracted to tell?”
Q coughed into a mug. Bond imagined his cheeks pinkening under the Q Branch lights. “I’m never so distracted I can’t think about my own tech.”
“I’ll have to do better next time, then.”
Q refused to dignify that with a reply, not even a tired line about next time being an audacious presumption. The only sound that came from the other end of the line was the rat-tat-tat of Q’s nimble fingers flying over his keyboard. Should Bond have asked, Q probably would have said he was multitasking. Bond thought differently.
He was being avoided.
A stale gust of air came down the abyss of the subway tunnel, and the ache in Bond’s shoulder flared hot. All his years seemed to hit him at once. He felt a flash of irritation in his gut. He was in his late forties, for god’s sake, which was too old to play the sorts of games Q was keen on playing, games he was surely also too old for. Had it been anyone else so intent on this hot and cold routine, Bond would have walked away days ago, as he’d walked away from half a dozen others who had tried it in the last few decades.
It annoyed him to realise all of this would have mattered less if Q mattered less—if he were another Doctor Nolan from Medical or Shirley from Accounting. Instead, he was Bond’s Quartermaster and his friend.
“Why is it,” Bond murmured, “that we always end up here?”
“Where? Abandoned stations?”
“Purgatory.”
Q sucked in a sharp breath. Bond had struck true. Like any good agent, he’d provoked an honest and involuntary reaction, but the satisfaction of a job well done only lasted a moment. The ensuing silence from Q Branch only made him feel tired.
He was left to worry about it later. The distant sound of squeaking wheels came down the subway tunnel, and Bond fixed his attention on the reason he was here: to meet Q’s friend—or the CIA’s friend, rather. The man would be here any second. Bond had no time to coax Q beyond cold compartmentalisation, especially since that was a job that required days worth of work. It was as finicky as diffusing a bomb and as likely to blow up in his face. There were some days Bond thought Q might have made a decent agent, a different sort than the Double-0s, but a good one nonetheless.
That always seemed to be the way of it with Q. On paper, the two of them were as different as two people could be, but the cogs in the machine were made of the same steel. They had the same respect for duty, and their synapses fired at the same speed, even if they did so in different directions. Bond found that stimulating. It could be erotic sometimes, at the right moment, as it was a week ago. Most of all, though he found it comforting. Or at least he used to before he realised that their thoughts about each other had diverged somewhere along the line, and Bond, foolishly, had lost sight of what Q wanted from him.
“Actually, that skylight looks more like my idea of heaven,” Q replied, finally, intent on avoiding the elephant in the room.
“Heaven smells better than this.”
Bond would know. He’d visited a few times. Heaven, to him, was a lazy kiss during a skinny dip off the coast of Italy. It was the bed of a Venetian hotel. It was driving through a French wine region in an Aston Martin with no itinerary and no ties. It was running his hands under a corduroy blazer on a London rooftop with a gun case at his feet, feeling hip bones and ribs and a silk shirt warmed by body heat. Specifically, heaven was the fall of cold rain on hot skin in the midst of all that. It was the sound of a puff of laughter against his neck that ended in an ungainly snort.
In other words, heaven was as unattainable as ever.
A single subway car pulled up to the platform. It was empty but for one man sitting tall and typing on a laptop: their contact, undoubtedly. He seemed unbothered about the illegality of staying on the train, but then, Bond knew just enough about him to know he wasn’t a man concerned about working or living in the grey areas.
“He’s here, Q.”
“I see him.”
The car stopped. Bond walked towards it.
“He reminds me of you.”
The man was thin and pale. Wiry. He had a mop of dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and a pair of black, thick-framed glasses that did just as much to hide his face as they did to correct his vision.
“I’m sure I’m insulted,” said Q, with his usual wryness. He took a sip of something—tea, probably, and hummed. “Here I was thinking I was singular.”
“You are. He’s got brown eyes and a better dress sense.”
Before Q could squeeze in a cutting retort to that, the door of the subway car opened.
“Mind the gap, Mr Bond,” said the man. “That’s what they say in your part of the world, isn’t it?”
He had an imperious accent, one that didn’t sound very American. Instead, it reminded Bond of every person he’d ever met who went to an international school. The high-mindedness of it wasn’t unlike the voice that had been in his ear all morning.
“Well, the Tube announcements don’t call me by name,” countered Bond, taking a seat on the opposite side of the train carriage. “What’s yours?”
“Classified, sorry.”
“You sound just like someone I know.”
The man looked up from his laptop for the first time to pin Bond with an assessing look. Then, he smiled. The smile was too wide for his face. In all honesty, so was Q’s, but that was a charming thing. The smile in front of Bond now left him cold.
“He’s a friend of mine, too.”
In Bond’s opinion, the word friend was too broad a word, and it was too frequently overused by those who weren’t friendly in the slightest.
“That’s funny. He never told me what to call you.”
“You don’t need to call me anything. We had eight minutes the second I pulled into this station. Now, we have seven. Better get to it.”
“That’s plenty of time,” said Bond. He was only here to pick up a hard drive. “Who do you work for?”
“Everyone,” the man informed him. “And no one.”
“See, you’re reminding me less of our mutual friend now. At least he knows who he works for.”
“Does he? I’ll bet he’s on the other end of that earpiece. Why don’t you ask him?”
Bond didn’t ask. He didn’t like pandering to grey hats and shady unnamed intelligence operatives.
Q answered anyway.
“He’s not entirely wrong, is he? I work for the taxpayer. That’s as good a definition of everyone as any. Of course, that makes Queen and Country no one.”
“Queen and country isn’t no one,” corrected Bond.
“Figureheads and ideals,” said the man on the train. “There’s no better example of no one.”
“Don’t worry, 007,” said Q. Bond imagined him holding in a smile behind his mug of tea. “There’s always Mallory. He can certainly dole out a bollocking like he’s someone.”
The mention of M sent a coldness through Bond. It was one thing to be discussing where one man’s foggy ideals started and another one’s ended, but it was another to drag their colleagues into the conversation. There would never be a part of Bond that was comfortable discussing the head of MI6 in earshot of a man who hadn’t proved his worth as an ally to England.
Bond turned back to the matter at hand, unwilling to sit in this blasted carriage or station for longer than he needed to.
“Do you have a hard drive for me?”
“I do,” smiled the man. “I just have one question first.”
“Always conditions with your lot, aren’t there?”
The man ignored that. He turned the drive over in his hands. His twitchy fingers left oily prints on the drive’s matte coating. Those fingers were long and delicate and not unlike Q’s, except for the scabs around his cuticles. He had a habit of picking at them, clearly.
“Why isn’t our mutual friend here?” he asked.
“He’s not a fan of flying.”
“That’s a shame. I’d been looking forward to meeting him.” The man twisted his head to look at Bond’s earpiece. “I’m starting to think he’s avoiding me.”
“You and me both.”
Despite his offhand reply, Bond prickled with discomfort. The man in front of him seemed too familiar with Q by half. They had four minutes remaining, and Bond wanted to spend them elsewhere.
He stood from his chair and straightened his suit.
“If that’s all,” he prompted, “I’ll take that drive now.”
And take it he did. Snatched it, in fact, while Q muttered something unintelligible—and likely scathing—in his ear. The man tried to tighten his fingers around the drive, but Bond shoved a forearm to his collarbone and pinned him back against the window of the subway carriage. His fingers loosened at the contact, and the drive fell into Bond’s palm.
“Easy,” laughed the man. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Easy. Like I said, I’m a friend.”
“Friends know each other’s names. And they don’t hold gifts hostage with invasive questions.”
“Fine. I apologise, Mr Bond. You’ve got your hard drive. If you need anything else, you know how to get in touch.”
Bond let go of him. “Thank you.”
He didn’t loiter to admire any more of the old subway station, even though halfway up the steps, Q tried to convince him to turn into another stairwell for art’s sake. It was only with the re-appearance of his Jaguar and a few breaths of fresh air—or whatever passed for it in New York— that Bond relaxed. He climbed into his car, started the engine and pulled away from the curb in silence.
“He made you uncomfortable,” Q surmised. His voice was quiet; his environment was too. Bond had a feeling he’d moved to his private office.
“Like I said, he reminded me of you.”
He could practically hear Q’s spine stiffen. “And I make you uncomfortable?”
To tell the whole truth, that Q made him more uneasy than anyone else has in years, would have been to risk armageddon. But it was the truth. He hadn’t felt anything close to this since Venice, and come to think of it, very little came close before that.
It was a rare occasion where Bond had the kind of sex that mattered to him alone rather than to Britain as well, but he’d had it in Venice. Vesper had made light fun of that while she teased him for being a cad. It happened with Madeleine, too, though that was a less potent memory. More pleasant. And it had happened with Q, who, unlike Vesper or Madeleine, seemed to realise it and shut himself off as soon as his spend was finished spilling over Bond’s belly: hot, salty, and copious.
We shouldn’t do this again, Q told him a week ago, when he was half-dressed and still pink in the cheeks from his orgasm. When Bond asked him why, he’d never got a straight answer.
Bond shifted in his seat and thought back to the night they’d spent together. He had time to linger on those memories now.
The first sign of trouble had been the way Q kissed him. Exacting, but not cold. Skilled, but not practised. It was full of an unquantifiable, familiar feeling.
The second had been his hands pressing at Bond’s scars. It felt less patronising than it had with others. With near-scientific zeal, he explored until his curiosity was sated, though he did so with a quiet solemnity that lodged itself in Bond’s throat.
The third was the sound Q made when he bottomed out on Bond’s cock, right before he breathed out an ah, James that Bond couldn’t bring himself to forget, even now.
By the time his name had even finished leaving Q’s mouth, Bond knew he’d fallen so hard he could no longer see the exit path. He was still down the well now, waterless and rudderless. Left in the dark to wonder about the route back to the light. He thought Q might have been down there with him, but if he was, he was intent on remaining silent.
Bond didn’t especially want to talk about it either. Not here, not while he was marooned over the other side of the Atlantic. Not while Q could hang up on him whenever he pleased. He wanted to wait until he saw Q in person. Maybe that would lead to a spanner being thrown at his head, but at least Q wouldn’t be able to run from him.
But, as usual, Bond didn’t have the luxury of waiting. Something told him if he let this conversation pass, the distance between them would return, and Bond couldn’t bear the thought of that.
In his ear, he could hear the sounds of Q’s anxiety. He was clicking a pen, tapping it against the desk, making a great big nuisance of it.
“You’ve been making me uncomfortable since the day we met,” admitted Bond, with only a hint of humour in his voice. “But not like he did.”
He could hear Q walking somewhere. A door shut with a click.
“Perhaps you don’t need reminding, but I’ll remind you anyway. I’m not him, James. I don’t work for no one. I have a name. And I don’t own a subway car. I know you don’t trust him, but you can trust me. Even if—I know I haven’t been...“
Q was struggling with his words. There was a rare thing.
“I know I can trust you.”
“Good.” Q exhaled. “Good.”
“What’ll it take for you to trust me?”
Q swallowed.
“I do, with the job.”
“I wasn’t asking about the job.”
“I know.” Somewhere in the distance, a car horn made an enormous racket. “I’ve been a bit of an idiot about this, haven’t I? I apologise.”
“Don’t apologise,” replied Bond. “Just tell me what I can do.”
A beat of silence passed, and Bond started to worry he wouldn’t get an answer.
“Don’t disappear. Or, if you do need to, just…let me know first, won’t you? And send a postcard or something.”
It was an understated way of talking about what they’d never really talked about: Madeleine and the DB5. It was on the tip of Bond’s tongue to promise he’d never run again—he certainly had no intentions of leaving the Service or his friends now—but the job had taught him how worthless promises were.
“You told me not to send one last time I offered.”
“Bond.”
Bond sobered. He felt a faint, well-worn twinge of discomfort at putting his heart on his sleeve. “I have no plans to disappear, Q. Not anymore.”
“All right. Good. Oh, and for the record, I’ll never trust you with my equipment. You burned that particular bridge a long time ago.”
Bond huffed a laugh and agreed he had no plans to do any better with his return rate either. The rest of the day’s tension bled out of his shoulders.
“You’d have liked that place. The station,” he said, content to leave any more heart-to-hearts until they could see each other in person. He was stuck at a red light, and Q seemed to have no intentions of hanging up. They may as well make conversation about something that didn’t make their insides feel like nails scraping at a chalkboard.
“I would have. It reminded me of the bunkers where I became Q, only nicer.”
“The stench was about the same.”
“Yes, well. There are some universal constants. The smell of a city’s underground is one of them.”
A beat of silence passed between them, interrupted only by the sound of a fire truck doing its best to speed down 6th Ave.
“I’m on leave as of the weekend,” said Q. “For three weeks. Mallory’s orders. Apparently, if I don’t start taking the leave I’ve accrued on a more regular basis, he’s going to start delegating to R on my behalf.”
“That’s cruel of him.”
“Quite.”
“Going away somewhere?”
“No. At the risk of sounding as dull as a doornail, my only plans involved restocking my tea cupboard and coding in my pyjamas. But I could...”
“You could what?”
Q cleared his throat.
“I could book a ticket,” he finished. “Meet you in New York. You could show me that station. If you don’t have any immediate plans, that is.”
Bond’s heart thudded. “I thought you didn’t like flying.”
“Nobody likes flying, but we do what we must to see the things worth seeing.”
“You’re really that keen to see an abandoned subway station?”
After a pause, Q took a deep breath. “No. Not the station.”
Bond smiled. It was a silly thing, a wide and ridiculous expression that tugged at his cheeks. He was out of practice at smiling like this. M would have strung him up if she’d ever caught him at it, but she wasn’t around. No one else was around to see it, either, save a couple of taxi drivers in the lane next to Bond who were busy talking in broad accents to their disinterested and bewildered passengers.
Anyway, if a man couldn’t smile in his own Jaguar, what was the bloody point in driving one?
“You do say the loveliest things, Q.”
Q huffed. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself. I only meant I was looking forward to seeing Central Park.”
But it was clear from the relief in his voice that wasn’t true.
“I’ll book us a suite,” said Bond. He could pass on the hard drive to the CIA. He owed Felix a favour, anyway. “One bed or two?”
He was relatively certain of the answer, but he’d learned a long time ago never to trust his own assumptions when it came to the people he—
“One,” answered Q decisively. “I’m quite finished with purgatory.”
“Good. So am I.”
On a rare stretch of empty road, Bond briefly accelerated his car. His speed didn’t last long; he was backed up behind a line of cars again within less than a minute, but that didn’t stop him grinning at the prospect of what lay beyond the traffic. He’d go back to his hotel, upgrade to a suite in a better one nearby, and order a few necessities: champagne, caviar, and the best tin of imported tea he could get his hands on. A new suit wouldn’t go amiss, either.
A new experience in heaven awaited. Surely that was an occasion worth celebrating.