Work Text:
Q was fine. He'd taken painkillers with breakfast, and he could focus on a screen; that was all that was important.
There was a two-litre water bottle under his desk, and he was going to limit himself to two cups of tea, one in the morning and one after lunch. No coffee. He was going to eat lunch. He was going to stay away from the loud noises of the R&D labs. There was absolutely no reason he shouldn't be at work. He'd even go home before six, agent permitting.
Now, if Bond hadn't been there when he'd taken those painkillers, there wouldn't be a problem.
Scratch that; who was he kidding? Any of the double-ohs could have spotted he was in pain from across the room; they were like a flock of irritatingly observant overprotective geese. At least this particular double-oh knew to let Q do what he needed to on his bad days instead of trying to send him home: if he were at home any time he had a headache, it felt like he'd never be in at all. Still, today was pretty bad. Okay, really bad, he hadn't felt this bad in months.
Maybe he should have listened to James when he told him to stay in bed and work on the budget spreadsheets there. Why hadn't he listened?
Well, he was here now; if he could finish the infernal punishment budget accounts before lunch, he could probably take a half-day with all the spare holiday time and avoid worrying people by taking sick leave.
He'd deal with the rumours when it didn't hurt to think. Or ignore them, that seemed to work for everything else (except Moneypenny's betting pool on his relationship status, which frankly made him uncomfortable and far less inclined to tell her anything: at least she'd stopped trying to set him up with random members od M-branch- he found he was never in the mood to justify his existence to her, he'd had enough of that at uni, so she was still convinced he was a sad single with no time to date.)
By the mercy of whatever divine being watched over MI6 staff, the nightmare excel document had been sent off to R for checking by just gone one, and he'd retrieved his mind in from the rather depressing tangent it had travelled on; God, why was it so hard to focus.
Now all that was left was to secure the afternoon's leave- he was done by quarter past -and to escape before anyone came to question him.
Several hours later, dozing on his overstuffed sofa with the blinds drawn and the lights dimmed, Mango doing a remarkable impression of a scarf, he wondered why in the world he'd got out of bed for accounting that morning.
Later still, head feeling markedly better and brain feeling only half replaced with cotton wool, he was buying takeaway for an agent who was irritatingly smug while still somehow coming across as concerned. The hot water bottle, snuggles and the hand brushing through his hair was nice, though he would still be smacking James with a pillow the second the unspoken 'I told you so' was voiced.