A/N: Just a note about the tags - later on there are references to torture but beyond James kicking some minor ass, there are no graphic descriptions, so that warning did not apply.

Thank you so much to my beta JessicaMDawn.

Slipping off his Oxfords and dropping his bag unceremoniously by the door, James Bond let out a relaxed breath at just past five in the evening. After a month abroad, he was finally home.

The cleaning lady employed by the agency had kept his home looking dust and mildew free, for which he was always grateful, and he made a mental note to leave her an extra tip the next time he was called away. Nothing ruined a homecoming like a musty, dusty home.

After pushing the shoes against the wall, he loosened his tie, and he was undoing his buttons on his shirt when he noticed his answering machine blinking.

Curious, he thought. Anyone at MI-6 would have called his mobile or radioed him on a secure line. No one called his home number. The machine was just there for appearances. Pressing play, he listened to the automated voice tell him he had three new messages, and he waited to hear some automated spam call.

"First message," said the robotic woman's voice.

-Beep!-

"Hi, it's Q. Sorry for the last minute call. You've probably left already. Honestly, you need to fix that mobile of yours so this doesn't happen in the future."

Well it was definitely not a spam call. Staring down at his machine, Bond noted the youth to the male voice – not a teenager, but probably younger than thirty. A wrong number was more interesting than fake debt collectors, he supposed.

"Anyway, in case you're just in the shower and you hear this before you head out – I'm running a few minutes behind schedule. Damn Riley had me late for the bloody tube, of course. Bastard never knows when to let silence be the end of it. Honestly, all I did was-… Well anyway, I'll tell you when I see you at Prufrock."

-Click-

"End of first message."

Pursing his lips, James waited for the second message and wondered if the young man had been embarrassed when he met up with his friend and discovered he'd left a message on a stranger's phone. He stepped away from the machine, still listening, as he undid his shirt buttons and began to disrobe right there in entryway.

-Beep!-

"Hi, it's Q. Why get a landline installed if you treat it like a painting – old, archaic, and pretty to look at, I suppose, but otherwise useless? Might as well have given me the number to my sister. Feels like I'm talking to myself more than anything else."

So the coffee date at Prufrock from the previous call hadn't alerted young "Q" to the error of his ways, apparently. James made a sound of disinterested surprise as he walked, shirtless and shoeless, to his bedroom just a few steps to the side. He dropped his clothes into a hamper for the cleaning lady to do the following day and grabbed his jogging clothes from where they were hung up beside the door to the room.

"Anyhoo, I didn't call to talk about her. Riley's threatened the rent again. I know this sounds old, Eve, but I'm going to be late again. Have to do a lot of groveling before I head out to meet you. Any chance we could change to meet in Highgate this time to make up the difference? Give me a call if so. Otherwise I'll be out to Prufrock just as soon as I am able."

-Click-

When his sweater released his head, James cast a confused stare over to his machine. If the last message was from the same young man and he still didn't get the hint about the wrong number, then James would have to seriously consider transferring his calls to his mobile, because someone needed to alert the poor boy before his girlfriend got mad about his reoccurring tardiness.

Yes, the young man was calling to let her know, which made the tardiness more forgivable, but she wasn't getting the messages, so she'd never know. Part of James ached thinking about the scoldings Q probably got for these two delayed coffee dates.

Pulling on his sweatpants, he heard the final message beep.

-Beep!-

"Um… Yes. Hello. This is terribly awkward. Well… Well bloody embarrassing, really," came the same young man's voice. He was much less confident this time around, and James smirked, guessing the cause before it was spoken. "Right, well it seems you are not my friend Eve and I have been leaving messages on a stranger's phone for two weeks. I just wanted to call and apologize properly. I've got the right number now, and… Well, damn it all, I was sort of hoping to catch you in person this time, but now I just hope you listen past hearing my voice starting the message."

Lazily, James made his way back to the machine and looked down at the blinking light. It was good Eve set the boy straight. It wasn't good to keep calling strangers and leaving personal information on the messages.

"Again, I'm terribly sorry for inconveniencing you and filling your voicemail with my prattle. Have… Have a lovely day." The last sentence was more question than statement, and then the message went silent for exactly three seconds before it cut off. Too long to be the boy finding the 'end' button on his phone.

For the remainder of time it took the machine to offer him options on how to deal with the messages and if he wanted to erase them, James imagined being at a loss for words, unsure how to end a terrible, embarrassing confession. He'd never been in such a spot before. Must be stressful.

Answering machine done, James Bond turned and dropped onto his couch in his much more comfortable running clothes. Maybe he'd run in the morning, but for the next twelve hours he was just going to sleep. Sleep and forget the momentary curiosity and excitement of having unknown contents on his answering machine.

Work in the office was not James' preferred activity. He was an agent for a reason. He was sent around the world on missions. At least if he had to do 'busy work' overseas, he had good views to look at while he did it. In the building for MI-6, he and the other agents generally only had to walk into other people's offices, but every once in awhile, they had to borrow an office of their own to write reports.

None of them liked it. But they all did it.

Reports felt tedious to James when he considered all the surveillance and data logs they already had about the mission – but sometimes agents went dark or weren't in view of security cameras or whatever, so he supposed he understood the need.

But really, if I.T. could just get their shit together, maybe the agents wouldn't have to work so hard and maybe missions could get done quicker and the reports wouldn't have to be as long.

"Looks like a small novel this time," Miss Moneypenny said as a greeting to him when he finally set his report on her desk. She would give it to the proper department head.

"Feels like the reports just get longer and longer each time," James admitted with a tired sigh. He ran his hand back over his short hair and gazed wistfully up at the ceiling lights. "I remember back in the day when we agents didn't have to write reports at all."

Moneypenny slapped him on the shoulder in scolding before taking his report and dropping it in someone's box. "Oh hush, 007. Neither of us is past our prime. And the minute you start trying to say we are is the minute we lose our battle with time."

"Time catches up to us whether we admit to it or not, Miss Moneypenny," James countered, too tired for her optimism. "And I am older than you by enough that time is nipping at my heels much more often than at your pretty red pumps."

"No one would dare nip at these shoes – at least if they value their lives," Moneypenny teased. But then she looked more serious and placed one of her beautiful manicured hands on his shoulder. "But honestly, James. Time is an illusion – and no one is guaranteed more or less of it."

"Reading up on your philosophy?" he asked, slipping his hand over hers to gently remove it from his shoulder. Moneypenny was one of the few people he considered a friend, and he understood she was coming from a place of love as she tried to convince him not to dwell on his own mortality. But he was a realist at heart.

She smiled and shook her head, squeezing his hand. "A friend of mine likes to say deep things like that. He says time, and many other things I complain about, are manmade conventions, and we should do our best not to be held back by them. Sometimes I tease him about it. Well, most of the time really, but you know sometimes I think he has a point or two that aren't completely crazy."

She laughed quietly and James found himself echoing the sentiment. He took a deep breath before speaking again. "Well this timeless man is going to head home. No offense to yourself, but this office has a tendency to ship agents back into the field before we get some proper R and R."

As he backed up toward the door and away from her, Moneypenny laughed again. "You? Rest? I think that's the craziest thing I've heard all my life."

"Good day, Miss Moneypenny," he said with a smirk.

"Good day, 007."

His flat was dark. His suit from the day before was clean and pressed and hanging in the closet. His bags and drawers were undisturbed. It was so quiet that he would have heard an intruder's heartbeat. And this was where he called 'home'. This was where he returned to for 'relaxation'.

For the first time in a long time, James looked around his dwelling and got only one, terrible feeling from it. It all felt cold – in that empty kind of way.

He slipped off his shoes and undid his tie. He arranged the shoes by the door and then undid his shirt. The entire ensemble he'd worn that day went in a pile to be dry-cleaned. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a less formal button-up shirt to go relax in. It was monotonous – exactly the same as every day in the apartment before.

With a slow sigh, he walked through the opening hall to head for the kitchen, but he stopped before he reached his destination. The light on his machine wasn't blinking – he didn't have a new message. But the bright, glowing three from the day before was still there. Oh right. He hadn't deleted the messages, just listened as the machine told him how to do it.

Shaking his head, James turned away from the device and found himself a pack of crackers to munch on until he found something more suitable. He should really go for a run. And maybe he would go out for lunch. Early dinner? What time was it anyway? But did he want to go eat alone?

A strange tug had him back at the answering machine and pushing play. He listened to the date and time information and popped a cracker in his mouth.

"Hi, it's Q. Sorry for the last minute call. You've probably left already."

There was something about the messages, something that kept James from deleting them the day before, but he couldn't explain it. He didn't know this boy and his jerk of an acquaintance, Riley. He certainly didn't know anything about the strangely durable relationship between Q and his lunch date Eve, who never seemed to mind that Q was late.

"Well anyway, I'll tell you when I see you at Prufrock."

-Click!-

James hit stop before the rest of them could play. The idea forming in his mind was ridiculous, to say the least. And yet he still found himself putting the crackers away and donning his jacket. He still found himself in a cab and driving into the city.

There was something relieving about those misplaced calls, he decided. The normalcy of the conversation, the easy cadence of someone speaking to a friend, and the complete lack of anything overly dramatic – like a bomb threat or something – hidden in the messages like a code all mixed together to soothe some small part of James Bond's mission weary brain.

When he stepped out of the cab, the Prufrock Coffee Café smiled out at him, as though a building even had the ability to smile or make fun of him. Ridiculous. But he was being quite ridiculous today, apparently.

Inside was startlingly welcoming. James had been in cafes around the globe and been in many inviting and welcoming ambiances, and this one would certainly make that list. Wood, or imitations of it, was in high supply in most of the chairs and tables and counters, and that was always a plus for James no matter how often he praised new-age pristine plastics and metals in his bars.

The line for coffee was five people long, and James slid right in behind a tired looking woman gazing longingly at the baristas making fresh brews. Sliding his eyes around the room, he tried to deduce which of the patrons could be Q or his friend Eve, but he didn't have infallible hope of success. The two of them probably weren't even there. James wasn't an expert on their movements yet.

Yet?

With a slight shake of his head, he focused on the line. He was obviously starved of normal human contact if he was obsessing over these strangers already. No more. He'd get his coffee and leave, and that would be an end to it.

The line moved quickly and James was out before his espionage riddled brain could try snooping in on anyone further. Even if Q were in the café, he no longer wanted to know, and as long as James got out quickly, he could keep believing that. And if he kept believing that, then soon it would be true.

Taxis didn't hover outside of Prufrock, so James walked the short distance to the nearest tube entrance, where taxis would circle for tourists or people not interested in being stuck in a sardine can any longer. The coffee was fantastic, he noted, and he actually took the time to sniff it and enjoy another few sips before going for the nearest cabbie.

A mob of people left the tube right as James passed the entrance, and he was momentarily swarmed by them as they moved passed one another. Grunting and glaring, James remembered that crowds like this were one of the reasons he didn't wander in the city often. He preferred his flat. Where no one bothered him. And mindless cattle didn't shove against him.

"-meet you by the Thames. I'll bring you your coffee. Caramel with-"

That voice. James stopped and turned, but the mob had split into three factions and more than half of them had phones to their heads. Streetlights were either letting the pedestrians cross or they were doing it anyway, and then the whole herd was far out of hearing distance.

That had been Q's voice. There wasn't a doubt in James' mind. But he'd been distracted with his distaste for crowds, by his coffee, by convincing himself to just go home. He'd missed finding Q.

And then he rubbed a hand over his face and groaned at himself. Hadn't he just told himself it didn't matter? Q was a random civilian who happened to call James Bond, MI-6 field agent, by mistake. He needed to let it go.

His mobile rang.

"Bond," he greeted, and realized he was still searching the street for the remnants of the mob, as though Q would still be meandering about.

"Your presence is requested, 007," Miss Moneypenny's voice announced. "M's office in twenty minutes. Sam will be here to let you in."

Already changing his trajectory, James did his best to sound smooth as he said, "What? I won't get to see your smiling face again today?"

"Unfortunately," she agreed, but she didn't sound sad. She sounded quite chipper, really. "I'm meeting someone for a lunch date. But I'm sure you'll manage without me."

"Well I suppose it's a burden I will have to bare. Have fun on your date." And he hung up before she could reply.

In his gut he felt the hot pang of jealousy, but not because she was dating. James wasn't interested in Moneypenny romantically, and even though he'd never turn her down carnally, they both had drawn a line around anything of the sort. So he wasn't jealous like a jilted lover. Not in the least. But he thought of Q and his Eve, drinking coffee in that warm shop together on a regular basis. He thought of Moneypenny going to some nice little restaurant for a quick personal meet up with a lover, a friend, a relative.

Face just shy of scowling, James hoped M had a new mission for him, because the sense of loneliness in London was not a feeling he was used to and he needed to leave it behind sooner rather than later. When he got home again, he was going to delete those messages. This feeling all started with them.

If you liked the story, please feel free to leave a comment. :)

If the desire sparks in you, you may draw art, write a mini-spin-off fic, translate this into another language, or read it as a podfic. My only condition is that you tell me about it, give me credit for the original, link back to the original work, and comment with a link to wherever said fanwork is located. Thanks!