The building fire alarm is ringing. I wake suddenly and abruptly and in fear of my life. It's only when I get the headrush from sitting up so quickly and it's intense enough to drop me back down into the pillows that I realize it's only the phone ringing. My head is just so big and sore already that this sounds like a ninety-decibel warning that London's burning and flaming death is imminent.

I snatch it off the bedside. Answering it is more of a chore than it ought to be. Firstly, the screen is so bright that my eyes white-out and I can't actually see who's calling. Which is annoying, because if somebody's been playing with the brightness on my phone while I lay sleeping I have to start making arrangements. Secondly, my thumb doesn't seem capable of finding the button right away, or of exerting enough pressure once it does. I drop my phone once, twice, and almost a third time before I give up and give it two hands.

Put it on speaker and dump it back on the bedside. "Hello?"

"…Did I wake you?"

Ah, Jesus Christ… I don't look forward to having anybody murdered, but this is one of my own. This is one that should have known better. "Dani, I know the early hours are your lunchtime, your peak activity hours, whatever activity you choose to…" And there I have to stop. Because while those were the words in my head and those were the words I was trying to form, all that's managed to come out of me is one long, guttural rolling noise, and now it has broken into a fit of coughing that jerks me up off the mattress worse than crunches. Wish my body would decide if it wants to sit up or lie down. I'm okay with either, but it needs to decide.

"Oh, love, it's after lunchtime. You should have just rung if you were ill-"

"I'm not ill," I tell her, but it's more noises.

"-Do you need me to bring anything over?"

This time I clear my throat first. "I am not ill-" and before she can start arguing. "I need nothing. Go away. You've got work anyway."

"What, the bank vault? It's planned, and I have a date with that attendant tonight. I'm free all day. Look, I'll come over and run things. You can rest up. I'll make coffees. And croque-monsieur. That's invalid food, isn't it?"

"I'm not a fucking invalid!" Oh, God, but I sound like one. I sound like my nose and throat have been plugged with wet tissue. And then, even with her still on the line and listening, the sneezing starts, and it feels a lot like the sneezing is never going to end. I'm burning these sheets, y'know. No drycleaner in the world deserves this. When it finally ends, I can just hear the sympathy glowing off her… "Just go away," I groan. "There's nothing to run. Things are quiet. There's only yer man from Aberdeen phoning down and…"

Oh. Oh, well, that might be a bit of an issue, I suppose.

"Dani, I changed my mind. I need one thing from you. It is not care or attention or your presence. I need you to make sure Moran is here well before four o'clock this afternoon. Other than that if I hear from you again and it's not about an imminent death or arrest, you can consider your own death or arrest to be imminent."

Oh, I really am in deep, deep shit. Nothing sounds scary with a bunged-up nose. No time to send the man in Aberdeen a little present, or a messenger. No time for bombs or poisons. No, it has to be a conversation and it has to be scary as hell. Shite. It would have to be today, wouldn't it?

I lie back down, but my lungs feel like lead and I try and sleep again propped up on the pillows. Theres a lot of drowsing. Then a single moment (or that's what it feels like) of solid dark, of bliss. And then the knock on the door.

Just to be sure I really do have to get up, I grab my phone again. Three-thirty. So I haul myself out of bed and go to answer the door.

I know; didn't throw the phone at anything, didn't swear, didn't think of something brutal to mutter at it. I just got up and did what it told me. Even my feet have lost all respect for me, and try to turn beneath my legs, nearly pitch me onto my face. But I make it to where I can lean on the hall table in relative safety.

Swing the door open. Two of them out there, and it's hard to even be angry at Danielle for showing up. Not that I appreciate her effort, not that I'm touched she's worried. No, it's just really hard to feel anything except dead right now.

It gets a little bit easier when the pair of them recoil. "Christ," Moran mutters.

Dani wraps her hand in the end of her scarf and reaches out, pressing my cheeks and forehead by turns. "You need to take something to break the fever. Remember the last time you had a nightmare?" We bombed a cheese factory. I remember. It was petty and ridiculous. It was also good fun, so I'm not sure why she'd be bringing that up.

Moran seems to be edging away from the door. Looking like he might make a break for it. So I shift my weight so I'm no longer hanging in the frame, so he can get past. He moves reluctantly past me, holding in front of him a white plastic bag from the garage down the road.

A thought strikes me, and in spite of my head I cry out, "Stop!" For the record, this was a mistake, and the word throbs in my skull and burns in my throat and clutches at my lungs. But that's all to one side. Here in the moment, I turn to stop Danielle. Close the door as far as I possibly can with her already a half-step inside and address her round the edge. "Stop-stop-stop, how many throats has your tongue been down since cold-and-flu season started?" Her eyes flutter up to one side; she's thinking about it. In fact, she's counting, and having to concentrate on it. "No," I say, and push harder on the door. "Bye bye!"

She gets her boot between door and frame. I feel the clunk as her ankle gets trapped, but it doesn't put her off. All indignant, like I'm doing her a great disservice, "I am trying to be here for you."

"You are a human petri dish. Now piss off."

Another yelp of offense, but I slam the door again and she has to take her foot back before I take it off.

Which just leaves Moran. Bless him. Looking a bit scared there, when I turn back round. Nothing to be scared of, nothing at all. Not so long as he does what I need him to do and doesn't push me in any way and doesn't give me any arguments. He already made me get out of bed to open the door. Moran's on thin ice. But he's got nothing to be scared of, no. Not so long as he's careful how he skates.

"Come through to the office," I tell him.

"You look awful, mate. I'll just leave this stuff here and let you rest, shall I?"

"That's some trick, Moran. That's some hell of a trick, getting from 'come through to the office' to 'I'll just go' and only one sentence between." He starts, with his eyes down and a scolded little shuffle, toward the office. Still clutching the bag of 'this stuff' like it's all he's got. "What is that, though?"

"Well," he says, peering in at a top, "Painkillers and Lemsip and honey Lockets. And a tub of soup."

"Soup?" He couldn't have led with that? He had to leave that to last? He couldn't have started with soup and worked his way down to the bloody stinking Lemsip? "What sort of soup?"

"Chicken and vegetable, I think, but you'll hardly want it."

Moran should not be telling me what I want and don't want. "Why not, pray tell?"

"'Cause Dani made it."

Ah. Well, that does present something of a quandary. It was, after all, only recently I concluded that the woman is one giant biological culture. The very idea of her in a kitchen, any kitchen, never mind the unholy mess that is her kitchen, should drag all the sickness out of my head and lungs to be put to better use in my stomach.

But you don't understand. A while ago, I was young, and had a mother. She was hopeless, and clueless, and I, like so many before me and so many still to come, am hardwired, yay, unto the depths of my soul, to want either chicken or vegetable soup when I am… thus incapacitated. And this is both. Made for me by the closest thing I have to a caring female figure in my life.

I grab the bag off him. "Never heard of boiling things? Sterilizes them?"

"Well, then, can I stick it on for you and then take off?" Unbelievable. Utterly fucking unbelievable. I need him and he doesn't want to be here. Dani wanted to help and I can't have her in the flat. Un-fucking-believable, but my throat has chosen just now to fill with thick, sticky mucus, so I can only stare at him until he comes to understand, I think this is unbelievable. He sighs, tosses his head, "I've got the Turin job next week. I can't get sick."

"Who's paying you to do the Turin job?"

Sulking, all but pouting, "Client is."

"Yeah, via me. And I'm the one that needs you to do something for me today. So yes, you can put the soup on to boil, but no, you can't then take off."

"Just keep your distance."

"I swear to God, Moran-"

"Then you can't shout at me when I call from Italy and say I missed the shot because I had to blow my bleeding nose, alright?" He pulls the plastic tub out of the bag on his way to the kitchen. Mumbling like I kicked him, "Should've let Dani stay, she's had everything, she's immune." Which is an interesting argument, but invalid. She can't do the thing I need him for. Well, she can. She can do it pretty well too. But Moran's got this particular thing down to an art. But I won't confuse him with all that just now because he's trying to work the hob.

We used to laugh about him not being able to work the hob. Me and Dani, we'd ask him to stick the breakfast on, something like that. Then we'd sit and watch and shake with silent laughter until he turned round. Stop. Start laughing again when he looked away. Eventually get caught because one of us would be on the floor.

Which all led to a very disturbing breakfast to which dear old Seb brought his rifle and I honestly believed I was about to be taught a very final lesson about laughing at people with short fuses and weapons expertise. Instead, he put it down on the worktop, blindfolded himself with a tea towel, disassembled it, reassembled it, and then he shot a hole in the wall about an inch above my head.

"Point taken," said I, and now I don't confuse him when he's trying to work the hob.

It's maybe a little bit patronizing to keep to small talk the whole time he's 'cooking', but those burns on his fingers are not from still-hot barrels or powder, no they're not.

Those are from a pizza pan, which he didn't seem to think would be hot when coming out of the oven.

He helps himself to a bowl and all, sits down at the table. Well, about a foot away from the table. I'm at the table, see, and he's still keeping his distance. I don't even have the energy to think about possibly ending him for this slight right now.

"So what am I here for?" he says eventually. "Moral support?"

"No. Client's going to phone. In about ten minutes. And I can't take the call sounding like this. That would be very weak, don't you think?"

He sighs, flings his head about as though released from a great weight, "Then we do need to get Dani back. She's the one does the talking when you don't want to."

"Yes, I'm aware of that, it's my system." Oh, look, there's my energy, there's the momentary fantasy of hooking out his eyes with the soup spoon… "But it won't work this time."

"Why not?"

"Because I've already been on the phone with the fucker, alright? He knows what I sound like and he's calling to talk to me." His eyes started to widen round about 'sound like'. They have not stopped widening. It's starting to look a lot like two marshmallows melting on top of a hot chocolate. Either my fever is worsening, and starting to get to me, or he needs to be stopped. "What's the matter with you?"

"Is this a test?" he says. A bit bizarre and out of nowhere. Maybe I'm starting to hallucinate.

"…What?"

"Are you about to tell me I have to do my impression of you down the phone?"

"Yes."

"Right. But do you remember what you said you'd do to me if I ever did my impression of you again?" …No. Not in so many words. I know vaguely what I said, I know the jist of it, but I'm too far gone to be remembering entire threats right now. "Only, things are going right well with Tom and-" Oh yeah, now I remember. "-And I do sort of need those parts to stay where they are and-"

"Well, I will most definitely have you parted from those parts if you don't shut up and agree to do this for me because I'm really not in the mood to argue effectively." Or find a new and suitably gruesome hollow threat to deliver to him, one that won't necessarily scare him, but will niggle at that little part of his brain that would never, ever put it past me.

As if to prove my point, in the precise second where I would have been in the middle of such an elaborate threat, another sneeze splits my skull in two, tries to fling my eyes out the front and quite possibly dislodges part of my brain.

But oh look. I've confused him now. He's trying to figure it out. He thinks he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He still thinks this is a test. He thinks there's a Secret Answer he just has to find.

Look. Look at him. Look at the little eyes, doing four-to-the-dozen round their sockets. Look at him. God, I can hear the antiquated clockwork in his head as the heat builds up and it starts to scream.

Look! The daft sod's still going. I've had time to think all this. Christ, I've had time to finish the bloody soup and he's still going.

"Moran?" He looks up, reminded all of a sudden that I'm still in the room. "Get over to the office and warm your voice up."

He bites in his lip. Isn't breathing too well. "And no repercussions."

"I swear to God, Moran…"

[Dedicated to the excellently-named wasted-moustache at Tumblr, who made it okay to write this when really it's the rant of my epic self-pity because guys, I am ill. I am so ill. I've got a whole winter worth of colds in one head at once. As I suffer, so shall He. But it's okay, because somebody said they wanted to read it! Many thanks!]