fingersnapping: (Janeway is so clever)
The Great and Powerful Q ([personal profile] fingersnapping) wrote in [community profile] tampered2013-12-18 02:15 pm

Sleep in our eyes / her and me at the breakfast table

When; December 18th
Rating; G
Characters; Kathryn Janeway [personal profile] directives  and Q [personal profile] fingersnapping 
Summary; The morning after this thread
Log; 

The light stayed on all night.

Losing the full range of his powers was difficult, but it was nothing compared to the loss of his omniscience. Don't let this handsome visage fool you! Q was no frail human, and his confinement to this fragile form was claustrophobic at best. For a creature with no need for a solid form, who existed in all places at once and none at all, the small bedroom with its four close walls was stifling. Having picked one of the corners on the very top floor, he'd found at least some small assemblage of calm; the view gave him a familiar feeling of overseeing everything, but that was all it was. A feeling. No longer were the answers to the universe in his head. No longer could he see as well with his eyes open as closed--or with the lights on as off.

So sleeping without the lights was completely unacceptable. The darkness made him feel completely detached from reality, struck intellectually dumb. There wasn't even an illusion of being completely aware of his surroundings. A Q that was afraid of the dark! Preposterous! And yet here he was.

He slept invariably badly, and tonight was no different. He rose, padded circles around his room looked out at the stars, squinting until his eyes hurt, then climbed back into bed again. In the other room, he told himself that he could hear Janeway breathing. He slept an hour or two more; rinse, repeat.

The stops and starts weren't altogether nonconstructive. At one point, sitting cross-legged on his bed, Q conspired to transform his apartment. The previous evening, Kathryn had done him a number of services, comforted him about his son, and even though he knew that she was effectively here to keep an eye on him (he'd let her insist it was he doing her the favor not the other way around, but he wasn't stupid) it became his prerogative to make sure that her stay here had the comforts of home. She'd tell him that it was cheating, but what better use of his powers than to bring emotional relief to those who brought him the same?

By morning, a sonic shower replaced the hot water and soap. Her bedsheets had been transformed from the already grim 21st century cotton into the 24th century cheese-grater variety that Starfleet captains liked best. Where once a microwave oven had sat like an ugly little home invader on one of the counter-tops, now a replicator waited to be used. When the sun rose, Q decided to abandon his attempts to sleep, and he was to be found at the kitchen table, staring a steady hole into the replicator while his hand pressed on and off against his lips, as though testing the sensation. It would be a while yet before he quite forgot that kiss. If ever.
directives: (Default)

[personal profile] directives 2013-12-27 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
[ she opts out of commenting on any of that, uncurling her legs out from under her so she can slide in a very uncaptainly manner from the couch to the floor. selecting a spot, she sits cross-legged in the middle of them, feeling like a kid in a candy store while surrounded by this much data. it feels good to have a PADD in her hands again. kirk's gift was appreciated, but it was still a piece of outdated technology, a conglomerate of 21st and 23rd century technology that should've never meshed in the first place. it was better than anything available, but this was hers. these were the types of PADDs she should be handling on daily basis. she actually missed the stack that was left untouched on her desk when she went for coffee the morning before her abduction, having not yet had a chance to lock herself in her ready room to read through them all. ]

There's a couple of notebooks and some pens on the desk in my room.

[ kathryn rises to her feet, but walks instead to the kitchen, indicating that she meant for him to retrieve them, not her. as for what she's doing? well, if she's going to be working— ] Coffee, black. [ might as well do it with proper ceremony.

coffee in hand, she returns to her spot, setting her coffee down to one side of her, and sorting PADDs to the other. ]