❝ you sound sick. are you sick? ❞
Q had the telephone receiver clamped between his shoulder and his ear as he mindlessly jotted down measurements on the design drawn on the large paper covering his desk. It was nearly midnight, only a handful of people were still in the workshop, Q could hear soft night-mumbles outside his office every now and then.
“ I’m fine, ” he said shortly, his voice raw from coughing all day. “ Just a common cold. ”
For a few seconds he squeezed his eyes shut, letting his pencil fall on the paper so he could rub the space between his eyes when a sharp pain flashed through his forehead. The truth was that he was feeling a bit under the weather. Probably a mixture between his diet and working-hours. Perhaps the fact that the weather was still ugly and cold wasn’t helping either.
The thought of going home for a good night rest wasn’t allowed to exist long in his head. As he listened to Morse’s soft breathing on the other end of the line the short image of an empty bed, an empty couch, a quiet apartment filled his mind for a moment. He squeezed harder and then took up his pencil again, tapping it to the desk a couple of times.
Damn his lungs to cough up a storm right there and then.
“ It’ll blow over in a couple of days, ” Q rasped when he was done with an embarrassingly wheezy cough that had him doubled over in his chair.














