the purple blog

📖 2026 Event Prompt List

"I told you, I'm fine." / Loss of Balance

"When was the last time you actually slept?" / Sensory Overload

"Stop talking for a second." / Pharmacy Run

"I can handle it." / Lab Results

"You look pale." / Chronic Illness/Injury

"You feel warm." "I know." / Sharing a Bed

"I made coffee/tea." / Tired Caretaker

"Don't look at me like that." / Too Busy To Stop Working/Moving

"Let me help you." / Anxiety/Panic Attack

"Just sit down before you fall down." / Overworked

"You don't have to carry this by yourself." / Fever Induced Confession

"Just give me five minutes." / Hiding An Illness

"Everything is vibrating. Please stop talking." / Shaking Hands

"I'm just tired." / Burning the Candle at Both Ends

"I am completely capable of doing my job." / Brain Fog

“I was just trying to help.” / Exhausted Silence

"Everything is too loud." / Sleep Deprivation

"How long was I out?" / Waking up disoriented

"It's just a headache, drop it." / A cold compress.

"I didn't realize how bad it was until I sat down." / Uncontrollable shivering.

"Can you turn the lights down?" / Fluffy Blanket

"I don't think I can get up from here." / Warm drink

"I've handled worse than this." / New Medication

"I didn't think it would hit this fast." / Contlagion

"Hold onto me for a second, the floor is moving." / Stomach Virus

"My brain won't shut up." / Relapse

"Don't treat me like I'm fragile." / Loss of Fine Motor Skills

"I can't remember the word for it..." / Failed Masking

"I think I'm awake, but I'm not sure." / Wired but Tired

"Is it just me?" / Hot Flashes

"Just rest." / Tunnel Vision

🔄 Alternate Prompts

"Did I already say that out loud?"

"It's fine, it's just a seasonal thing."

"I don't need a doctor, I need an hour of silence."

"Everything is just... too much right now."

"I didn't mean to snap at you."

Ringing Ears

Nausea

Fight or Flight

Fever Dreams

Abandoned Tasks

Hey everyone, a quick note from me.

You might have noticed things have been a bit quiet around here lately, and the prompt list didn’t quite make the midnight debut like it was supposed to. Life got a little crazy behind the scenes, and the scheduled posts simply didn't happen. I’m really sorry for keeping you all waiting!

Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking around. The prompts are officially up now, and I’m incredibly excited to see what everyone creates this year.

Bad, because it meant they'd been waiting for her. A theory proven by a faint tremor rumbling up through her ice caked boots, only just enough to clock if one were already on the alert.

That the servants door opened on her second knock was both good and bad news for Luise: good, because it meant she was quickly able to escape the bitter morning freeze that bit at her face and fingers, ushered quickly into a kitchen large enough to feed several hundred, and already warmed from hearth fires preparing to do just that.

The kitchen boy who'd opened the door for her was a new one, his face twisted in worry as he helped her untangle the bundles of her scarf, shawl, and thick coat. Luise's skin puckered with gooseflesh with the loss of trapped heat, but it did nothing to quell the warm smile she sent his way. "He's been in a bad way today, eh?"

The boy nodded, dark hair flopping over his eyes. Her friendliness loosened his tongue a mite. "...mam says it'll knock the whole castle in, way it carries on."

Gossiping cooks. Luise blew a dismissive raspberry with her tongue, the boy's head lifting in surprise at such an unexpected sound. "Bunk. He may act the grump, but he's nothing but a big pussycat, never mind your mum." She hung her winter clothes over a broad, bare shoulder, offering the boy a conspiratorial wink. "But I'll have a word with him, yeah? The castle won't come down this day if I have any say in it."

Luise snagged a steaming roll off a nearby platter before weaving her way through a throng of frantic cooks fretting over the day's first meal as though the worry were part of the routine. She offered waves of greeting to those she was friendly with, noting with humour the naked relief in their eyes. A level of composure settled over the kitchen at her presence, something she found flattering and ridiculous in equal parts; cooks were a fussy, superstitious lot, and their proximity to her coworker made them antsy. She wasnt even certain the way they conspicuously avoided coming within arms reach of the iron door between the massive stone fireplaces was intentional, or just within their nature. People tended to avoid predators, after all.

Luise rolled her eyes fondly at them as she pushed through the iron door and descended the narrow stone staircase beyond.

The descent was long, lit only by the occasional sconce, and she took the stairs two at a time, eagerly seeking the wafts of warm air brushing her bare arms. The temperature rose, beating back the winter with every step until she'd gone from chilled, to cozy, to glistening with a thin layer of sweat.

The bottom of the staircase widened, then opened into a massive stone room big enough for the entire village to hold a fete if King Doran had any inclination to let them. The ceiling stretched to blackness before Luise could begin to make out details, sounds echoing eerily as they bounced off stone and the elaborate weave of giant metal pipes that burst from seemingly every surface, twisting and rolling in their organized tangle to converge near the back of the room.

Once, her predecessor had told her, this room had been a dungeon demanded by a wicked king forgotten by history, built large enough to hold his many foes. Later, another king with far fewer foes ordered a famous architect and inventor to fit the space with an enormous boiler and giant pipes to bring heat to every corner of the sprawling castle during the cold seasons. As much as Luise figured, the theory had been sound, but the project was abandoned after calculating how many resources it would require to stoke a boiler so large, the cost of fuel to burn and the manpower to burn it too excessive for a king who had already spent much of the royal treasury on piping. For a long time the project sat useless and abandoned, until King Doran's grandfather struck a bargain with their current boiler.

At the back of the room, the stonework had been dismantled to create an opening larger than a house, a series of natural caves visible beyond. The idea had been to install the boiler in the gap between the two, using the cave passage to recieve fuel deliveries and vent dangerous pressure in case of emergency. As such, all the pipes hung close to this area, waiting patiently to be attached to a machine that would never exist, and in the midst of these pipes lay a massive red dragon.

He was an elegant thing, beautiful in his awesome power, with sinuous muscles that rolled at the base of his wings as he shifted position, and beneath his long neck when he shook his head like a dog. Water arced off like crystals with the movement, more making languid trails down his spiral horns and scarlet scales to pool on the stone beneath him. Claws long as swords scored new marks along countless others in the floor, throwing up sparks in his restlessness. Thin tendrils of black smoke curled up from nostrils nearly as tall as Luise herself, jaw slightly parted to reveal enough teeth to rend a village into paste without so much as a blink of his yellow everflame eyes.

Those eyes locked on Luise in an instant, a low growling sound beginning in his deep chest and rising until it filled the room with his displeasure. 

She grinned. "Bad today, huh Snuff?"

The growl gradually grew more vocal, and by the time Luise reached her workstation it had morphed into a long, tortured groan. "I fear, dear Luise, that I am not long for this world. What a cruel twist of fate that a creature so magnificent as I should bravely battle the elements, risking life and wing against blizzard and blaze alike, only to die here underground, as if he were a common lizard."

"Cold's no better, eh?"

"It feels as though I have inhaled a cotton field and am attempting to irrigate it with mucus." 

Luise managed to add a sympathetic note to her laughter as she swapped her coat for her soot-blacked apron, giving the row of temperature dials leading from each pipe an initial check. "One of the kitchen boys was convinced you'd bring the walls down."

Snuff gave an irritated huff, jetting out more black smoke. "If this bloody ailment lasts much longer, I just may anyway out of pure rage."

"Of course," she soothed indulgently. Suneffessoat had been the castle's boiler for longer than she'd been alive, and regardless of his physical health he'd never make a move against the castle so long as the royal agreement remained intact: the exchange of heat for food and a salary (and a captive audience for his dramatics) was far too good a deal. "How's the snoot, you coot?"

She nearly felt the air shift with his powerful sniff, which he then released on a wavery sigh. "Primed and reh... r-ready, as always. Never let it be said that I am not a prepahh... prepared professional." He worked the muscles of said snoot, nostrils blowing wide enough in the process that Luise could've fit through without turning her shoulders.

She peered over her shoulder towards a slim tube tucked next to the temperature dials, the end feeding out into a shallow, empty tray.  Having worked this job for so long, she could normally track the incoming delivery of a request slip even through Snuff's insistently vocal sneezes, but the tube remained silent of its telltale hiss. "Judging by how you were shaking the ground, I suppose you're not far off?"

Indeed, his neck was beginning to pull back into a swanlike curve, chuffing breaths losing their rhythm while his flaring nose picked up the beat. "Clohhhhhser e-ehh... every minuhhhhhHH--"

Now she heard the swish of an incoming request, and from the way Snuff bit back on the rising urge she knew he had too. "Ach, you can vent that one. The way you're winding up, the next one will be along before the fire's even out your mouth."

"I resehhhhh... I reseeEHHHHH... HH! HuuhhhHHHHH--" From the base of his throat grew a red-hot glow, and even in the throes of a sneeze he swung his head round to bury his explosive snout into a low-set pipe. "HRUUHHH-X'SHUUUHH!"

Luise retrieved the request from the tray, slipping a tightly rolled scrap of parchment out of the sleeve. She turned back in time to see Snuff give another shake of his head, narrowed eyes unfocused. The next sneeze worked his chest like a bellows and set the smoke from his nose rolling in great black clouds. He didn't have long.

She read neat, looping script written on the slip of parchment. "Next one goes to the guest apartments." The Countess Iris was visiting from the southern kingdoms, and if her frequent requests were any indication, she had some strong feelings about the weather. "Can probably give her the one after, too, she's a delicate sort."

Snuff, in no state to respond, hazily twisted towards the correct pipe just as his sneeze crossed from "urgent" to "immediate". "Hh-HRRUAHHHSHOOO!!" He then settled, sated for the moment, tension bleeding from the lines of his shoulders and the base of his wings.

Luise turned to pin the parchment to her order board, but she caught the deliberately innocent slide of Snuff's attention in her direction. Behind her, he snorted. And then again, louder, just in case she hadn't heard the first.

She rolled her eyes good naturedly. Working together for decades, and still, heaven forbid he ever ask for help directly.

When she didn't instantly turn to acknowledge his discomfort, a chorus of little self-pitying moans joined the sporadic snorts and snuffles. Luise would put a day's wages on the fact that he were flexing his nostrils theatrically all the while, and she'd win that bet. "Is something the matter?"

A heaved sigh, heavy enough to move the hair on the back of her neck. "Nothing to concern yourself with. After all, dragons have proudly and steadfastedly withstood far worse than a maddeningly itchy nose."

He couldn't quite look away fast enough as she turned to prop a hip against her station, angling his head up and away from her. 'No, I wasnt looking at you, of course not, how dare you imply such!' "Truly, a hardship," she played along benevolently. "Is there any way a powerless human such as myself could assist in this travesty?"

Snuff held to his haughty aloofness for an entire second before eagerly snaking his head in her direction, smooth scales nearly skimming the floor. "I don't suppose you could take time out of your busy day to give me the tiniest scratch?"

She laughed, thick wire brush already in hand. "Just don't sneeze on me."

"I would never!"

Despite his affronted claim, Luise knew well the map of his muzzle, taught to her in serious, cautionary detail by her mentor: do not cross the threshold where the sturdy pebbled scales of his face smoothed into the plush pink interior of his nostrils. Use extra force on the septum, lest his body decides to register a tickle instead of a scratch. And above all, never stand directly in front of his nose.

When she described her job to friends, many of them thought she was sick in the head (though most of them rescinded the thought once she hinted at her salary). Admittedly, it had its struggles. But as she leaned her weight into each long stroke of the brush, Snuff's eyes drifting closed and contented hum rumbling where her body pressed against him, she thought again what an honour it was to work with such a magnificent creature so intimately.

She scratched the spots she knew he liked; just behind the hood of his nostrils, along the length nearly to his cheek, standing on tiptoe to rub tight circles on the crest of his snout like she would groom a horse. These were not things taught to her, and sometimes she wondered if her mentor had viewed Snuff as more of a beast of burden  and less of a companion, never bothering to learn his preferences and habits and quirks beyond what was needed to perform the job. Once they'd gotten comfortable around each other, Luise never needed to heed the warning about standing in front of his nose, because she could always tell when he was getting tickly by the way his inner nostril began to shiver and tic, the pink flesh growing steadily flushed until it nearly matched the shade of his scales.

Like now, for example.

He whined as she pulled away, chasing her until his snout bumped against her stomach again. No amount of shoving could move his giant head if he didn't want it to, so her cursory attempt ended in an affectionate pat. "Alright, you baby, nose in the air. You gotta sneeze."

"Do not," he grumbled, purposefully ignorant of how his nose twitched as though it had life of its own. A long tremor agitated the length of both nostrils from tip to depth like a wave.

Luise noted a crease like a snarl form in his scales. "It'll be a double, send them to the baths."

"S-smuhhhhhg bastard." For all his pouting, he followed instructions and unloaded two giant sneezes into the baths pipe. "HhhHHH'XHOOO-!! HAAH-SHOOO!!"

The day continued as such: orders delivered by way of parchment and tube, then executed through Luise's guidance and Snuff's unforgiving cold. His dramatics aside, it truly seemed like a bad one this time. Occasionally on high demand days, Luise would need to dump a wheelbarrow of coal or two into his open mouth to help stoke his inner flame. Today, her arms were already black with coal dust and soot from how many trips she'd made from the coal pile to Snuff, and still as the end of the day drew near, he was tiring.

Not that he'd ever admit it, of course. But she saw it in the hang of his head, the way his internal flame flickered at his throat, too low to properly reach his nose. The sneeze reflex and the flame were intrinsically linked, he'd told her once, and the lower the flame, the harder it would be to reach satisfaction. 

"Hhh-! HUHHT-- rrrgh... hhaH-HAAH-- HADT-!!"

Judging by his stuttering half-sneezes and ticklish false starts, Snuff must've been feeling very low indeed.

At the next sneezes to fizzle away, Snuff let out a frustrated sound between a growl and a roar, thrashing in place. At this point his little tantrum was probably warranted. "Blast this nose, blast this cold, I must sneeze! HEAHHHH--" for a moment it seemed like he would finally get his wish, maw agape and nostrils blown nearly wider than his muzzle. "HEEAAHHHHHH--!!"

And then, tragically, nothing, the elusive sneeze teasing at his nose before darting mischievously away, heedless of its host's desperation.

Enough was enough.

Reaching down her shirt, Luise retrieved a key kept on a leather cord around her neck and knelt beneath her table to unlock a hidden cabinet. It was near empty of contents anyone could have considered valuable, but the two items held within were far more dangerous than the king's entire army.

On the right, a small selection of long, brown primary feathers pilfered from the rookery.

On the left, sealed tightly, a tiny jar of glowing golden powder.

Luise worked from the floor, blocked by the cabinet door. More than once Snuff's sensitive nose had been set off by the mere sight of these implements, and the general rule of thumb in dragonfire and pixie dust both was 'a little goes a long way'.

Careful not to get any on her hands, Luise opened the jar as though she were handling explosives. Using a sturdy feather, she gave the jar's rim a quick swipe. The few grains that caught the light as she twisted the feather in her fingertips would be more than sufficient. On went the lid, back went the jar, locked went the cabinet, hidden went the key. Safe again.

Snuff's wobbly hitches stuck high in his chest, eyes rolled to the ceiling. He didnt look round as she approached, weapon tucked behind the bib of her apron. "Head down please, Snuff."

Even in his all consuming battle with his stuck sneeze, he complied, resting his chin against the stone and snorting against the tickle in his nose. So violently did it twitch and flare and shudder that Luise didnt dare lay a hand on it. Other things, however, were free game.

She adjusted her grip on the feather shaft, coming to stand directly beside his right nostril. "Alright, big guy, give me a nice big sniff."

The feather flicked forward, drawing a long, slow line along the division between tough scale and tortured membrane a split second before Snuff obeyed. The feather and its payload vanished down the dark wind tunnel of his nose, trailing a vibrant red flush in its wake.

Luise took several very large steps backwards.

For a tense second, Snuff went completely still save for the rapid fluttering of his eyelids.

"Hhhhhhhhhhaauhhhhhh..." So great was the urge to sneeze that he couldn't even move his head for his first true, unsteady hitch: while his chin remained solidly on the stone, his volcanic nose tilted towards the ceiling as his jaws creaked open, scaly lips ticking up to flash gleaming teeth.

He sniffed HARD, long neck arcing into the air. His nose danced at the end of his muzzle like a leaf in the breeze, and Luise could almost see the feather's leisurely path down his sinuses based on what sections shivered with sensation. Only a slice of yellow remained visible beneath his hooded eyes. "HhaaaAAAahhhhhh..."

How much it must have tickled! Snuff, by his own proclamation, was rather sensitive to the effects of pixie dust (though experience suggested he far undersold how much it affected him). Such a tiny but potent irritant, on such a delicate and wispy vessel, gently brushing and caressing and stroking nasal passages stripped of any defenses by illness. Was it any wonder why his jaw went slack, wings rising slightly as if to brace against the oncoming storm.

Everything picked up speed as the feather continued its journey, spurred on by his rapid reflexive sniffles. "Hh! Huh... huuhh... HH-HUUHHH--" His voice plummeted as his fire rose, throat glowing with the promise of release. Huge, gasping breaths stoked his internal flame, his nostrils and mouth gaping so widely Luise could see soft embers flickering in their depths.

As he didnt seem to be of the mind to take instructions at the moment, she didnt offer a pipe suggestion to put this sneeze through. Honestly, she didnt even know if they'd be able to withstand it.

Finally the feather did its job. The fiery gradient of his neck surged upwards just as Snuff threw his head forward. "HRRRUUUUUAAHHHH-T'CZHOOOOOOOO!!"

Flame shot from his mouth and nostrils in a deadly torrent, spanning the entire length of the room and splitting into starbursting jets upon hitting the far wall. Louise shielded her eyes until his sneeze ran its course, light twisting eerily in every shadowed corner of the room, exposed skin buffeted by waves of intense, rebounding heat.

After the blaze flickered out, she gave a low whistle at the giant scorch mark he left behind, coating the far wall and a twenty foot streak on the floor with black soot. A strange smell filled the room, the subtle scent of burnt rock. "You want to aim for the vent pipe next time, mate?"

Snuff's head hung low, eyes hooded and mouth slightly open as he caught his breath. One final, searching sniff saw his nose to relieved satisfaction. "If you think I was not perfectly in control through that entire ordeal, you would be most sorely mistaken. I'd sooner bite my own leg off than kill you, you're hardly more than a morsel and it would be an inefficient waste of fire."

She heard the apology for what it was and waved it away with a hand. "Feeling any better now?"

His voiced sigh was the clearest it had been all day, repeated nose-clearing sneezes having burnt away the bemoaned morning congestion. "All this dreary awfulness today has served its purpose, I suppose." So, yes, despite the extra throaty growl on the edges of his words. Another huff, and he shifted his great body to curl around himself, pointedly resting his head near his haunches and away from her. Suneffessoat had officially clocked out.

Which meant it was time for her to follow suit. Luise smiled affectionately at the back of his head, trading dirty apron for dirty coat. "See you tomorrow for more dreary awfulness."

He didnt look round. "Your dying in the cold would inconvenience me severely, so do try to be considerate."

for context if you're still clicking this while not knowing the show, these two have a strange co-dependent, antagonistic, "thing 1 and thing 2" type of relationship where the first thing out of tom's mouth to greg is "would you kiss me" in order to intimidate him and establish dominance. and if the dialogue is bizarre, it's the nature of the show, the insults in this show are hilarious and difficult to emulate... i gave it my best

“You wear contacts or something?” The small aside made Greg squeeze his eyes smaller than they were just a second ago. He quirked his head, in an owlish manner with the way he was hunched over. “No?” “Because you’re squinting.” Tom folded his hands on top of each other, leaning back in his seat to take a critical look at the man beside him who was trying to take up the least amount of space as they shared a computer screen. “Why is that a question, you can’t even tell if you wear contacts? Were you dropped on your head as a Greglet?" “I… No, I mean, I don’t know why you’d ask me that.” Greg rubbed at his nose in an upwards motion, a tiny crease forming at the tip of his bridge from the hundredth time he touched his face that day. “Uh… do I look like someone who’s in possession of contacts?” “No, but with a pair of spectacles, you’d look right at home with the basement dweller IT nerds. Which you should have gone to and gotten your own laptop.” At this, Tom shifted his weight in his office chair, knocking into Greg’s and pushing the other man further into a corner, wedged between the wall and Tom.

The two were sharing a screen, shoved in Tom’s office and huddled around his mahogany desk, attending a shareholder Zoom meeting on behalf of Gerri. Boring, banal, useless, coma-inducing, Tom’s brain ran through any adjective he could use to describe it. Irritating, with the addition of a squirmy Greg at his side. Tom had to dole out his admonishments carefully when muting their audio, between pretending to take in every droning word emanating from the laptop speakers. At this point, he was nagging Greg just to keep himself from falling asleep.

Struggling to pay attention to stock market analysts and various number guys was a task made a bit harder on account of Greg practically needing to sit in Tom’s lap to be able to see the screen and follow along the Word document being shared right now, by some tech-illiterate geezer who didn’t know what the zoom in button was. Or volume control, as his voice was small enough that the laptop’s volume was jacked all the way up. 

“Would you quit rubbing your nose already, Greg.” “But it really itches,” came the response, a petulant whine tacked on. Tom smacked at Greg’s wrist, which was traveling halfway to his face to abuse his pinkening nose. “And you’re jostling me every time you do it. We don’t have much real estate space here,” he snipped.

Greg’s sigh was louder than it had any need be, but Tom kept his hands to himself for all of four consecutive minutes as their attentions were dragged back to the laptop screen, with Gerri taking the mic and going on about… something. 

It was wrapping up, which meant Tom had to be on standby for Gerri to hand it over to him, so the head of ATN could make his voice heard, and pretend the last hour wasn’t dedicated to playing some sort of slow-mo chicken with his executive assistant.

The next distraction came in the form of Greg’s foot gaining a nervous tic, bouncing his leg at a staccato pace that did more than simply irritate Tom, it made their chairs audibly clack together with each beat. 

“Greg, if you don’t calm your ten foot tall tits this instant I’ll fucking truss you up and-” “Tom?” came Gerri’s voice, tinny through the laptop’s speakers, yet exasperated all the same. His muscles stilled, anger now settled under a blanket of shame. A nervous clear of his throat, and a polite and affable “Yes?” was met with silence for only a split second, but it was enough for Tom to wince at himself. Greg had stopped moving all together. Tom had half a mind to kick himself or pinch Greg’s thigh under the table.

“I was just saying that the shareholders would like to hear any closing statements from you?” Gerri was addressing him the way one would address a toddler, and Tom wiped his hands on his suit and smoothed his hair down before he realized the camera was off anyways. “Ah – Yes, yes, and thank you again to, uh, Gerri… For such a wonderful talk. On.” “Percentage drops in tech industry shares,” Greg whispered.

“On percentage drops in tech industry shares, very compelling, compelling uh… stuff. Now…”

When it was safe to hit the Leave Call button without further worsening his social standing with Gerri, Tom let out a growl of a breath. Greg had slunk out in the midst of his face-saving speech, ignoring Tom’s failed grab at his blazer hem, and Tom was left to manage an entire Zoom call wrap up on his own. He survived the harrowing ordeal, on the grace of Gerri not being one to stick her nose into Tom’s business and the meeting not being attended by anyone else Tom gave a shit about, but it was still embarrassing. 

Tom had half a mind to find the gangly motherfucker and give him that pinch he’s been raring to inflict on him, just to hear him whine and let off some steam. The office chair squealed as he rose from it, his movements loud on purpose, and he strode into the hallway with a renewed irritation. 

Greg was getting sloppy as of late, as he spent the majority of yesterday yawning and dozing off. Most of today found Greg lounging on Tom’s office couch, whining about this and fucking that on the humidity levels of the room or bright lights, or whatever his delicate stoner sensibilities were affronted by. With a slew of terse words laying heavily on the tip of his tongue, Tom shoved Greg’s basement office door open, only to be met with an empty room. 

It was fine, after he collected himself from the very real disappointment that coursed through him for a moment. Tom wandered into the office, roughly handling the toys and knick knacks that adorned Greg’s desk, having the urge to shove his files to the ground. He flicked the head of an obnoxious bird toy, a long necked colorful thing with a top hat, and it bobbed up and down to sip at its plastic cup. Annoying. Goofy. Just like Greg.

As if on cue, the cartoon fuck in question made his grand entrance, his gangly limbs creeping behind the door like a spider. Tom placed his hands in his pockets and squared his shoulders amicably to face him, tilting his head up at Greg’s bewildered expression. You could almost hear Greg's blinks, little piano plinks when his lashes brushed across his pink cheeks, as his big stupid doughy face looked at him with an openness that made Tom’s jaw clench.

“Tom! Did - did it go okay?”

“Did it go okay.” Tom’s nod while he spoke was incongruent with his tone, dipping low into the familiar sarcasm-slash-derangement level it got when he was pissed. “Did what go okay, Gregory, when you fucking sabotaged me in front of all the shareholders?”

“Okay, sabotage isn’t really… applicable there.” “It went as fine as it could go, fuck you very much.” Tom was blocking Greg’s seat, flicking at the bird toy over and over as Greg pressed himself up against a filing cabinet, waiting for an opening. Tom wanted to grab him by the tie and yank it, bob Greg’s head up and down like the stupid toy, just to shake off the nervous aborted movements that were overcoming Greg. “I’m just dying to know, what is your major malfunction today?” “Hm?”

“What?” Tom barked back. “The fidgeting and squirming is getting to be a bit much. Adrenaline? Need to punch it out like big boys?” The lack of immediate response from Greg made pursuing that avenue of thought halt for a moment. Greg looked more like a gross little pillbug than usual, with not much acknowledgement to Tom’s riffing, his limbs folding into his torso. There was a sheen to his eyes that Tom couldn’t immediately gauge, which alerted something deep inside him enough to warp into slight worry.

“Shall I take you out for a walk?” Tom offered, changing tracks. A final smack upon the toy made it topple from the desk. Tom watched Greg’s eyes follow its trajectory to the floor where it clattered, with a miniscule pout emerging on Greg’s face. “We can get lunch,” Tom continued, “take you around the block and properly shake these zoomies out. Mondale gets the same way.”

Greg sheepishly scratched at his neck and tried to match Tom’s smile with a weak one of his own, his other hand curling up to his chest floppily. “Oh, um, thanks. I guess I’m hungry, but I’m not, like, hungry-hungry. It’s more like, nauseous-hungry?” “Greg? Not hungry?” Tom approached him, his voice tilting up an octave, and he pawed at Greg’s uselessly hanging elbow. “Something’s definitely up, what is it? You look peaky. Bad cart? Don’t pretend I don’t know you don’t smoke in the bathrooms. Everyone knows. I read emails. The vents connect to the mail office’s break room by the way, you hotbox them every morning. You nefarious little hippie you.”

“Why… do you still read emails,” was Greg’s only response to the barrage of information, his attention straddled between trying to massage his nose furiously with his palm, and Tom getting all up in his space. He jerked his head to the side when Tom got closer, attempting to barricade him or something into the filing cabinets that were now digging into his back. “Because I can, and I’m the bossman. Now listen to your boss and grab your coat Gregory, we’re going to get some bruschetta in that stomach.” At that, he patted Greg right on his tummy too.

Instead of moving out of the way to let Greg complete the requested task, Tom continued to hover in front of his face, his eyebrows perched high as Greg squirmed under his gaze. The fidgeting was getting more frequent upon scrutiny. It was like watching a worm on the sidewalk, Greg shifting on one foot then the other like he was trying to get a breath in.

“I uh, thank you Tom, for the offer, I just-uh, don’t wanna right now,” he said from the corner of his mouth, his shoulders scrunched up against his ears.

“What are you twisting your face up for?” “Because.” With a spectacular shudder that crawled up his entire body and settled somewhere in the middle of his face, Greg wrenched to the side and let out a harsh sneeze, directing the sudden deluge of spray away from him. 

"HUESCH'hhhhooo!"

“Because,” he attempted to continue, and with a horse-like shake of his head that made his bangs flop over his face, he sneezed again, folding into himself like a question mark. 

"HUURRSHSHhchhh!"

“Gesundheit.” Tom blinked. He’d reflexively pulled back when he realized it was coming on, but made no other move to step back, even when the second sneeze dusted the front of his coat a bit. His hands were still at Greg’s elbows, and the shivers that wracked the other man traveled down his own arms like a lightning rod.

With a vague sense that wasn’t strong enough to scold him for it, Tom watched Greg’s fist reach up to wipe at the dampness along the bottom of his nose childishly. It was pathetic, pitiful even, and it clicked in Tom’s mind why Greg was adamant in rubbing at his nose hard enough to cause a crease earlier. He clicked his tongue as pity made his eyebrows knit together.

“You should have told me you’re sick, Gregory. Why’d you come into work sick?”

“Um. I don’t know. I didn’t feel bad earlier.” Greg seemed to not notice, or care, that Tom was effectively holding his arms, answering him absentmindedly as his focus was between making his mouth run, and making his nose not run. His eyes were half-lidded as he continued disjointedly, swaying in Tom’s half-embrace. 

“It got worse around the Zoom meeting, actually? Like all up here.” His hand made a clawing motion at the general area of his sinuses. Another sniffle and nose wipe. “And I really needed to step out, because like. I couldn’t hold it…” His sentence ended breathlessly, and now he reflexively pulled his dress shirt’s collar up against his face to shield Tom from the spray of another sneeze, which was wetter this time. 

“Hhh…. hhHH'GTCHNxxtt – Guh. And like, ondce I start, it’s so. Ugh.” 

Tom held his retort in his mouth, choosing to instead follow Greg’s current face journey. His nose scrunched up once, pulling his lips along with it with a flash of teeth and reminding Tom suddenly of his mother’s old pet rabbit, wriggling its nose this way and that. Greg’s eyes had been wrenched shut in anticipation of the sneeze that was clearly building, eyelashes fluttering on his cheeks, shaky little wavers of his head and cut off inhales illustrating how badly he was on the precipice.

Like a buoy wavering on lulls of the ocean right before a wave came crashing in.

Tom pinched his fingers on Greg’s nose.

“Whuh?”

Tom decidedly held off on following up with a cheeky little ‘got your nose!’, and addressed Greg firmly, with his fingers still held tight on the damp appendage. “Let me speak.” A blocked off grunt was all Greg offered, his eyes crossed and his mouth agape like the world's stupidest trout.

“You’re going to get your coat, accompany me for lunch, and go home for the day.” “Buh-”

“No buts!” Tom released his nose, wiping his hand on Greg’s blazer shoulder as the other attended to his abused nostrils with his sleeve, fingers scrubbing at the itchy appendage like he could press the cold out of it. 

“The longer you spend here the more you’re going to spread your nasty little plague along to the underlings. And I don’t need you percolating in your illness at the office, and I don’t have time to scrape your comatose body off the floor. We’ll eat, and I’ll send you home.” 

He paused when Greg made a face at that, which led Tom to follow up with a surprisingly gentle question. ”Unless you really meant it? Are you nauseous, buddy? Your stomach?” Greg shivered under the sympathetic arm rub Tom was giving him. The whiplash of how he was acting just a minute ago was still catching up in his foggy head. Lunch with Tom sounded nice. Probably. But going home, now? Greg shook his head, the vague discomforted expression still present in the way his eyebrows caused a little fold in his forehead. “I’m supposed to, uh, Kendall is… doing shit at my place later. As per usual.” Now, a rarer expression was laid out lavishly for Tom to witness, the bitter draw of his eyelids as Greg relayed Kendall’s party antics, the beginnings of a scowl across his top lip. 

“So I don’t want to be home? Around all that. Patrying, and such. I’m not keen on having to sleep in a room where his cohorts are doing blow off my nightstand.” His congested sentence was punctuated with a stifle of a sneeze, palm pressing hard into his face. 

“Hhgh… hhN'xXTCHshh– Ooh…"

Tom gave a huff and turned to the side, spotting what he was looking for. He waggled the tissue box in front of Greg. “I don’t know how you have more sneezes left in you, but you better wring them out of your mile long windpipe here now, because you’re staying the night in my guest room apparently.”

“Guest room… Tom.” A more productive sneeze burst out of him the moment he got a fist full of tissues, this time being accompanied by a harsh cough. “I don’t want to.” He swallowed roughly, and when he next spoke he kept his eyes closed, his voice nasal and laden with snot. “I just wadda go hobe, stay in bed for ligke, five years.”

Tom nodded and placed the box into Greg’s arms, who fumbled it and let it drop to the floor. “Your brain is effectively cooked, you fucking idiot. Why’d you let it get that bad?” His voice betrayed the insult, all soft and worried. He made a big show of collecting Greg’s overcoat and scarf where they hung on the rack, huffing and muttering like a mother hen as Greg continued to sway in his spot with his little wavering cornstalk act.