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Jean-Luc was having what he had once overheard Lt. Zeedle, who ran the pre-school learning center, refer to as a 'horrible, awful, rotten, no-good, very bad day'. He had chuckled at the time, but today it seemed merely descriptive. He stepped into the turbolift with a scowl and barked out his deck.
Starting off the day with a near collision with the pulsar they were supposed to be studying was one thing. One thing that was decidedly *not* helped by Will, who had made absolutely no effort to hide his amusement during his report.
The second thing was the cause of the near-disaster. Apparently, the brand spanking new Ensign at the helm had been distracted enough merely by being in the presence of "the great Jean-Luc Picard" to nearly destroy the Enterprise. Merde!
The URGENT! IMMEDIATE-ACTION-REQUIRED memo he'd gotten from Records Control at Starfleet HQ had served to add another layer to the simmering stew of annoyance. In terms that were positively prissy, Reginald J. Hembly had informed him that for the last six months his reports had been filed in an outdated format. They all, of course, would have to be redone right away, preferably before a stardate that was already in the past by a month.
The glitch in the replicators that had them refusing to serve anything but Worf's old Klingon gagh recipe just as he arrived in the mess hall for lunch had only increased the simmer to a boil.
The glitch in Data's latest attempt at self-improvement that had him absently muttering pi to the nth place while he flew the ship in lazy figure-eights two light years long for an eternal half hour turned the heat up even more. The pot in Picard's metaphor was hopping all over the metaphorical burner, annoyance stew cascading down its metaphorical sides.
As the lift stopped and he stepped out, he counted up and realized he was one short of the six terrible things required by the formula of the description. For some odd reason, that made his spirits lift just enough to contemplate an evening of Shakespeare with, if not contentment, then at least relief.
He keyed his door, stepped in, froze, blinked twice, then burst into laughter. Long, loud guffaws of gut-wrenching laughter leapt out of him as his visitor cocked his head in confusion, absently returning the jade sculpture he'd been toying with to the shelf. Jean-Luc stumbled over to the couch and collapsed onto it, taking deep, gasping breaths as the laughter finally subsided. "Number six, right on time," he said, ruining his newly regained power of speech with an aftershock fit of giggles.
A raised eyebrow at the giggles was followed quickly by what looked remarkably like a worried frown. "Jean-Luc, are you quite all right?" Q asked, in what sounded remarkably like a worried tone. The entity was getting quite good at the subtler forms of mocking.
Picard felt a bit light-headed, as though the laughing jag had released a hidden pocket of light, good feelings that were buoying him up. He shook his head and smiled, just a touch, at Q. "I'm fine. Just a very bad day followed by a cathartic release, for which I thank you."
Q nodded slightly, but remained uncharacteristically quiet, despite the confusion Picard's behavior must be causing. He was also uncharacteristically avoiding Jean-Luc's gaze and uncharacteristically fidgeting in what would be, for a human, a very nervous manner. Jean-Luc paused a moment to wonder exactly why his guard was not leaping back up at the sight of Q in his quarters, fingering his nick-knacks.
"If you've come to play games, Q..." Jean-Luc's voice, still somewhat husky from his laughing fit, trailed off as Q's eyes widened, then closed momentarily while a small but noticeable shudder wracked the entity's frame. When his eyes popped back open, Q would no doubt have shuddered again at the speculative look that Jean-Luc quickly wiped from his face, if Q weren't looking at anything but Picard, that is. "...I should probably warn you, you might not get the response you expect," Jean-Luc continued smoothly. He rose and crossed to the shelves to stand just outside Q's personal zone, his eyes never leaving Q's face. "So. You still wanna fuck with me tonight?"
The clay figurine Q had been reaching for shattered on the carpet, reappearing whole in Q's palm before the sound had died. Q gingerly replaced the figurine on its shelf, took a deep breath and met Picard's eyes for the first time that evening. "Um... Yes?" he half-asked in a soft voice nothing like his usual booming bravado. Jean-Luc felt a mocking smirk start to form, but one look in Q's frankly terrified eyes soothed it immediately into a soft, warm smile.
Picard froze and blinked once. Again. A third time.
And as his eyes refocused, as he raised a hand to curl around the back of Q's neck, as he gently tugged Q down to place a soft kiss on his forehead, as he brushed a thumb across Q's cheekbone and whispered "All right", as he took Q's hand and tugged him through the partition to his bedroom, all the time his mind was flying at Warp 9.5 from memory to memory, from moment to moment, trying like hell to figure out exactly when Q had fallen in love with him and, even more importantly, exactly when he had fallen in love with Q.