do not perceive me

===

Wu Ming wakes up with gills swollen, raw and almost sore, passing water through only sluggishly. Great. So it's going to be that kind of day. The brief period where the blooming of the big trees rooted in the tank edges and the pollen season of whatever the hell else that bothers him in the fields around the farm overlap is always rough.

As though to confirm that thought, his swollen gills start tingling with an insistent itch. Wu Ming doesn't have a chance to do anything-- his gills clamp and his breath hitches thickly in, in, in--

"hhHHHHh-- eXXCHHhhwww'hh!!!" The sneeze catches thickly in the ooze coating his insides in response to the pollen in the water, bubbling sullenly and leaving a thick mess slicking down his throat into his clavicle. Ughhhh. The throat gills always get the worst of it, rakers clogging with mucus and making Wu Ming feel like he's choking until he manages to swallow it all down or cough or sneeze it out.

"Good morning," Calamity says, sounding far more awake than Wu Ming and amused. Good. Amused is always better than disgusted (or worried, which makes Calamity frantic and mean with it). Wu Ming groans dramatically in response, to make Calamity laugh. Wu Ming loves his laugh; soft and a little broken still, but all the more precious for its return. The farm and the pod has given them so much.

"hh! iHHHH?! heh, eh, eh, eHHHH?! hHnh'ixXXSCHHhhwwiuwh!! Ah, fuck," Wu Ming says, instead of the greeting he'd meant to. Even if the farm does come with perfidious inland pollens that settle on their tank and concentrate in the water, making Wu Ming's poor nose and gills go crazy every spring.

"Hmm, medicine first today, i think, Xing'er." My star, Calamity's name that he chose just for Wu Ming; just for them. They don't share their private names even with the rest of the pod.

"a-Yue," (my moon), Wu Ming protests, because he's still sleepy and comfortable despite the stuffy, drippy gills and the persistent feeling lurking in them like he's about to sneeze again.

"You should see yourself," Calamity says, not ungently. "Every time I think those gills can't go pinker..."

"You can't really see that," Wu Ming says after a moment. It's dark in the underwater caves where they sleep; they're using the senses of the deep to perceive each other here. Touch and smell, the chemical and electrical signals in the water, pressure, and a kind of dim thermoceptive vision catching on movement.

"Hmm, no, but I can feel it." Calamity runs a hand up Wu Ming's waist to brush cool fingers over Wu Ming's gills (this doesn't mean they're unusually warm, he thinks stubbornly, Calamity's hands are always cold). One finger dips inside to caress the slick frills inside and Wu Ming shudders at the intensity of the tickle that shoots up his whole side at that.

"a-Yu-ehh-EH!" Oh, no. Calamity isn't taking his finger out, even as Wu Ming's operculum clamps strongly down on him, and Wu Ming can't stop hitching, the pressure never building up in his lungs quite enough to sneeze properly without that seal.

"eH- heH- eh- aHh-HHHH! ah, aH, A-UHHH? UHH-huh-! huH? a-ah-hah-aH! Yu-uH, HH! UHHH? HISSH- hIH-IH-IH- ISSH- WWSH-- HI-EHHH--"

Finally taking mercy, Calamity extracts his finger from the clamp of Wu Ming's gill and pets it closed. Wu Ming builds up in a dramatic series of gasps and sneezes hard, "hhhHHHHH'wWHSXXZCHHHH'ngt--hhh," water pressure exploding out of his gills and finally taking some of the burning itch with it.

A dull prickle remains to remind him that even that water had pollen in it, too, and the sensitive flesh of his gills do Not Appreciate It.

"Yes?" Calamity says, in a tone that Wu Ming can hear the raised eyebrow in.

Wu Ming capitulates, if only because he's in no state to serve his love like this. Although he can already tell it's going to be one of those days where the medicine the humans Xie Lian and Hua Cheng found for him is going to struggle to make much of a difference.

///

"Oh, dear," Xie Lian says, when he sees him. Wu Ming stubbornly refuses to look down at himself, accepting the little pill and taking it with a swallow of tank water. He knows his gills are probably flushed and goopy; he can feel them more acutely when they're clamped closed in the air. Breathing air is also making his nose tingle threateningly, which he hates. His nose has no business getting involved in breathing, no matter how much San Lang says it's better for breathing air. That's for long, slow draws of water over sensitive olfactory passages. Not- oh god--

"eh-heh- EH- HEH!" Air pulls itself in through his mouth, inflates his lungs-- "hHH'EDHt'zSCHHiuuhh!!" --and rushes itself roughshod back up and out, scraping through his throat and nose instead of bursting out of his gills like normal. It forces the contents of his sinuses out accordingly.

"Fu'dgck!" Wu Ming curses, pinching the offending mess away from his nose and trying to rub the remaining itch away while he's at it.

"Hmmm," Xie Lian says. "I'll have San Lang," (his nickname for the human Hua Cheng, no matter how confusing it gets with their podmate's name.) "fire up the RO/DI system. I think you need an extra water change."

Calamity nods perspicaciously. This was probably part of his plan in ringing for Xie Lian as though they were out of meds instead of just grabbing the bottle left out for them.

\FIN

---

this THANG

i was like oh that's cute and looks fun and then saw that they genuinely refer to the stamens as the "pollen" and lost my MIND