someone who’s been slogging through a nasty head cold when their body decides it’s had enough and wallops them with a migraine. they take their rescue medication but it’s too little, too late; triggered by the pressure in their sinuses and their own lack of food and sleep, they go down hard. their nose plugs tighter. they’re dizzy and everything from their ears to their eyes to their teeth pounds and throbs. their own constant thick sniffling and the start of a phlegmy cough hurt their ears, and their sneezing is pure hell; it tears up their throat, shoots pain through their entire head and neck, and leaves them reeling and disoriented. blowing their chapped, red nose is a pitifully painful affair. their eyes swell and water. they lay in bed in the quiet dark, dosed on half their medicine cabinet between the cold and flu and anti-migraine medications, and even the pillows hurt. they’re too stuffed up for a good sleep, forced to breathe through their chapped lips, and their snoring irritates their head and throat even more. ice packs and heating pads caress their head and body. nothing is helping.
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The end of the thermometer hangs from their dry, flaking lips like a sucker or cigar, their posture as lax, maybe more. While you’re waiting, they stare. Gaze heavy, nearly gone, hanging on just enough for them to glare their contempt - understandable. They keep staring as they drag a viscous, mucky sniffle, the rims of their nostrils writhing with it. Raw from abuse, cavernous and glinting. Air hisses softly through their teeth. The thermometer beeps. Quickly, you take it. They snuffle and lift a wrist to scrub fiercely, audibly at their nose; a flushed irritated mess of wet skin and cartilage. The urge to nag them not to is intercepted by the number on the little screen, as it confirms your worries. They adopt a raspy soap opera voice, slouching back into the couch cushions. Sweat gleams on their smiling face as they ask in a dry husk: “Give it to be straight, doc. How bady days I got?”
Also, someone else making the sickie to do that because they're just too damn stuffed up and are probably developing a nasty case of sinusitis, so the sickie is just sitting there all helpless and exposed, their face like a the most miserable sneezy little waterfall, while the caretaker is rubbing their back and perhaps supporting the bowl a bit too.
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my oc again, sick with a cold and reading a poem aloud about being sick with a cold. a bit about caretaking too.
cw: light mess | 800k words | pt III & IV on here, all parts on the forum
-
~New recording 171~
The recording starts with a soft shift. A heater hums in the background. He slouches over the desk, weary and warm, his brow shining with sweat. Next to the open book is a steaming mug of ginger tea.
His gaze falls over the selected text, and he straightens a little, clearing his throat. “*ak’hrrem! grmm!* Hi.” The word comes out flat, and he chuckles dryly, weakly. “I… *grmm!* I dod’t eved kdow, *sddrFh!* if… if by voice is loud edough, *kof, KOF!*” He breaks into an itchy, phlegmy cough, turning his head away from the desk. “…Gosh,” he mutters, his voice cracking. “Sorry. I, uh… *sddrff!* I have a bit of a cold. *hsdrffh!* Oh by goodness, *sDDRFF!*”
He hastily lifts the hanky clutched in his right hand, and folds it over his dripping nose for a long, liquid blow. Afterward, he’s still left sniffling, his voice very nasal but a touch clearer.
“A’d, ub… I thought I’d read a text that has beed… requested, mbultiple tibes… a’d I’b godda- euUGH’CHIEWW!!! heihh! hAED’SSCHIEWWwh!!! Ohh… Excuse be.” He rubs his nose with the hanky, breathing through the soreness aggravated by each desperate sneeze. “Ub… It’s called ‘The Apartbedt Id The Sky,” by Ebily Caroll. *sdrff*”
The dight after your plade took off
I lay alode id the empty loft.
The city below id e’dless *sddrff*… fehhst...tivities…”
The word becomes a breathy whisper, the vibrations of his speech teasing at his sensitive nose. The centre of his face is heavy with congestion. Sniffling adds to the precarious sensation, thick mucus shifting in his itchy, swollen nasal passages.
“…hih? *s-snnrffh* h-heih?? Ehh-“
His chest swells with a huge gasp as the urge to sneeze consumes him, and a wet, bursting expulsion soaks the damp handkerchief. “yYY’AASSCHHIUHHh!!!” Another gasp, and- “AAASSCHHIEWWw!!! -’AAASSCHhiew-!!” He groans softly, snuffling and gently wiping his face. His raw, chapped nostrils twinge against the drenched cloth. With one hand, he lowers the soiled hanky, and reaches for another on the side of the desk.
He sits there for a moment. Breathing carefully, letting a dazed feeling linger and slowly recede. The cloth is soaked through already, and he lowers it, drawing thick, soupy sniffles. The sneezy feeling lingers. Sniffling seems to interrupt it a bit, but his sinuses are aching. He absolutely needs to blow his nose. “Excuse be,” he exhales.
His hand moves toward the last handkerchief. With a sigh, he drops the soiled one in the hamper and folds the fresh one. Again, he blows his swollen, aching nose, making congested honks. He gently wipes his deeply flushed nose and sucks in a few sharp sniffles.
“So sorry,” he pants, a hoarse utterance. He lifts the corner of the hanky to dry his eyes. “*sngk*…*g’hmb…grmm!~* Where was I…”
“The city below id e’dless festivity, *ahemm!*
Up here I’d brood, a’d thigk of whed you’d visit be.”
He lifts a curled index finger and pushes his knuckle against his right nostril, as they both flared wide.
“Back whed by deadlides hu’g over- hD’JSCHIEWw-!! *snnnrk!* …by head…
…iehhh… HAAAESSCHHIUHhh!!! … oh…”
The ear-splitting sneeze shreds his throat, dropping his voice by a few decibels.
"Your voice warb id by ear, *ahem!* a’d the thi’gs that you’d said.
By head ablaze, mby speech udsou’d
Each ragged breath dryi’g mby mbouth
A’d id the hours of peace we’d fou’d
I’d sdeeze so hard I’d shake the grou’d.
But eved whed the hour was late
Sat up id bed, you’d touch by face
… *sdrff!*
A’d all the while, *koF!* I shook with- ESSCHHiuh!! -with ndoise, hihh?? huH’ESSCHHIUE-!! *sddrffh*
Your steady ha’d a’d tender voice…”
The heater hums in the back. A soft pause lingers, and he lifts the damp cloth to blow his nose. He emerges, eyes drooping, his pink nostrils still flexing with thick sniffles.
“*grm!* … *snnff*
A bag of ice to soothe by crowd
A pill and drigk to lay be dowd.”
A wet, phlegmy cough rises in his throat. He winces as a more violent, barking cough does the job of clearing it.
“The apartbedt sobewhere id the sky
Above the streets, us scrapi’g by.”
His shoulders rise and fall, laboured, as if he’d been journeying uphill on foot. The edges of the wet hanky pinched between his fingers. Still visibly clammy, feeling tempted to forget the text and zone out. Lay his head down on the cool surface of the desk. But only a little bit remained. He could finish it.
“*ah-he-hem!* *sdrfh!*
A bligki’g light to grace the dark
I’d thigk of days lo’g past the spark
A voice like yours to conjure whed
I lay udwell, alode id bed.”
There’s another quiet break at the end of it. He sniffles lightly, soft on the recording. Finally, he gently clears his throat and reaches toward his phone, lying face up on the desk.
a sickie who’s so congested it’s making them feel overwhelmed. their partner encourages them to blow their nose as much as they can and helps them take a hot shower to clear up the congestion when it gets really bad.
"how are you feeling? better?" their partner asks once they're back in bed again
"i.. t-thidk so.."
"good. i'll turn on the humidifier, so try to get some sleep okay? i'll make you some warm tea when you wake up"
that hard shudder from chills that leads to a horrifically messy snz that ends up all over the blanket or towel the person is wrapped in...or it just drips heavily down their face
A compact piece of pure horn at least partially inspired by this post by @sf-libet (if you want to be un-tagged lmk)
_________________
She couldn’t help watching his nose. It was so red now, so obviously sensitive, those constantly-leaking nostrils waiting for the slightest excuse. He dabbed it gently- so, so carefully- with a handkerchief, breathing slowly as he tried to eke out another minute of concentration on his correspondence. The right nostril flexed just a little at the touch, but made no trouble. That couldn’t last, surely. The skin around the edge of both nostrils was so raw, so susceptible to irritation from the smallest cause.
As she watched, he turned over a page and sniffed, momentarily absent-minded and unwise. She saw his nose react at once, the oval rims of both nostrils curling up into high arches, triggering a wrinkling of the bridge, a flinch around his eyes. Up came the handkerchief with urgent speed, pressing itself up against the septum in a manoeuvre that had probably seen some success in the early days of this cold. His nostrils twitched a warning.
Unable to delay his breath any longer, he attempted a slow inhale by mouth that audibly warped, his jaw falling slack against its owners will. That poor red nose quivered with over-readiness to sneeze. He covered it at last with the handkerchief, finally understanding that he was past the point of all resistance.
He sneezed, hard and wet and unforgiving. Sneezed again, that red-raw nose stung into further action by the violent unsettling of its fragile equilibrium. He raised his head and tried to breathe, his too-abused nose throbbing now, goading itself towards a cruel cycle of mounting irritation and response. Those shining pink nostrils flared astonishingly wide, and (even over so short a distance) the handkerchief rose just in time.
Unable to break the cycle, he sat hunched over the handkerchief, gasping for breath between each wrenching pair of sneezes. The increasing wetness of his handkerchief couldn’t be doing that raw skin any favours, and indeed as the fit progressed the sneezes became punctuated by involuntary moans. His shoulders heaved and shook with the effort of it all.
When he finally managed to blow his nose, she was certain she heard a badly-suppressed whimper. When his handkerchief had done all that could be done he leaned back in his chair, too weakened in the moment to do more than seek support for his no doubt aching head. His poor sore nose glowed redder than ever in the lamplight.
hey @bestwhumpist remember how on your birthday last year I posted a little Zuko snippet as a teaser and then never finished writing the actual fic? WELL, it took me a damn YEAR, but folks, we made it!!
happy birthday, my lovely amazing friend -- you're my ride or die and i hope you have the best of days celebrating!
Hope everyone else enjoys too! This is set ten years after the conclusion of the animated series (so Zuko's in his mid/late 20s) and is not compliant with any of the graphic novels or anything else I may have missed. This is like 90% Zuko whump, but Suki and Sokka are also around, and the three of them may or may not have a Thing going on the side sometimes, who am I to say.* (*I am the author so I do get to say)
all the accolades and fruit baskets to @undersixskies as always, my beta beloved and the bestest of cheerleaders.
fandom: av/atar: the last ai/rbender (the og)
tags: allergies (multiple), suffering-at-a-fancy-party, hear me out LONG/DRAPING SLEEVES are underutilized in kink fic, set ten years after the animated series ends (so everyone is at least mid-20s), i think that's about it
Please DNI if under 18 / do not share to non-kink blogs!
–
When at first I learned to speak
I used all my words to fight
With him and her and you and me
Ah, but it's just a waste of time
–
He could hear the sounds of the party going on in the other room - the muted babble of conversation, the low whine of a tsungi horn - but he paused with his hand on the door. He had been Fire Lord for almost ten years, and he still had to take a moment to gather himself before stepping into events like this.
But Zuko was no stranger to performance at this point in his life, and donning the persona of the Fire Lord took only a few minor tweaks of perspective, so he sighed, took a deep breath, and then nodded at the guards flanking the door. They swept it open, and Zuko stepped through, head held high, as the herald hovering nearby thumped his staff on the floor and announced his entrance.
Reverence swept through the room like wind through a field of wheat as Zuko descended the stairs into the main hall. The room was draped in glittering garlands of silver and gold - that was the theme for the silent auction, he remembered - and even the floral arrangements on each table were frosted with glitter. It gave the hall an appearance of opulent luxury, which Zuko thought was honestly in poor taste given the reason the event was being held in the first place.
But he hadn’t been in charge of planning these events in a long time, so he nodded in acknowledgement of the assembled partygoers and clasped his hands together, long sleeves draping towards the floor, then began to wade into the crowd.
Events that catered solely to nobility were nice sometimes, in that there was considerably less bowing and scraping than there would have been among the general populace. He still had a pair of guards shadowing him from a distance (entirely unnecessary, but it was more for appearance’s sake), and the well-dressed people of the Fire Nation still moved aside to allow him to glide through the masses, but their gazes did not linger on him, and very little whispering sprung up in his wake. Yes, he was Fire Lord, but most of them had held their positions since before he was born, and in their eyes he was still an untested child.
Whatever. He didn’t need their approval.
What he did need was a drink.
There was sparkling wine being carried around by waiters, but the glasses were tiny, and Zuko wanted something stronger anyway. He was halfway to the bar when a broad-shouldered man in horn-rimmed spectacles and a well-fitting suit appeared at his elbow, stopping him in his tracks. It was Josom, Zuko’s current - and longest-running - secretary, as well as his general handler at fancy events like this.
“Well met, Fire Lord Zuko,” he greeted him, though they had seen each other not but an hour ago while Zuko was dressing for the event. Zuko stopped and inclined his head.
“Josom.”
“There are some donors who would like to speak with you before the event begins,” Josom said, nodding towards a tightly-clustered knot of nobles who were stealing glances in their direction. He kept his expression neutral as Zuko sighed.
“Fine,” Zuko groused, allowing a flicker of his true feelings to slip through before obediently composing himself. Josom had seen him in far worse moods and knew well to hold his tongue.
The donors were upper-class tradesmen who had struck gold in textiles as the main suppliers of the Fire Nation army’s uniform during Zuko’s father’s reign as Fire Lord. Their fortunes had fallen somewhat in the decade since Aang had ended the war, and they always seemed to be examining Zuko to see if snooty indifference or fawning gratitude would be most effective with him. Tonight they were skewing heavily towards the latter, which allowed him to set his expression in one of mild, magnanimous interest.
The matriarch of the family was wearing a particularly strong scent that had become all the rage among the richer citizens recently - something peppery and offensively floral that never failed to make Zuko’s nose tickle.
“-- so we figured that a travel package for a stay at our house on Ember Island would be quite a tantalizing item to bid on,” she was saying. Her hair was tied up in an elaborate series of whorls and knots that evoked an old memory of Katara’s hair loopies, and Zuko bit back a smile at the image.
“Well, we are grateful for your donation, and I’m sure that the Earth Kingdom families affected by the recent floods will be so too.” He raised a hand to surreptitiously rub at his nose, which had begun to itch and run in such close proximity to her noxious perfume. Hopefully he could duck out of the conversation before he had to sneeze.
But that was not to be the case; only thirty or so seconds later, he had to bring the back of his hand, cloaked in his draping sleeves, to his face to catch a soft “hh’kissh!”
It was a small and polite sound, but as the nobles blessed him, he realized that he was not going to be able to get away with a single sneeze. He rocked back a step and sneezed into his fist again, a short percussive triple that did little to scratch the itch beginning to burn high in his sinuses. “hh’ISSHu! – tt’shhuh, ishh’uu!
“Goodness, bless you!” The matriarch said, her brows slowly rising. Zuko sniffled faintly in the aftermath and pasted a bland smile on his face.
“My apologies. If you’ll excuse me –” he glanced around for Josom, who was not far away, “I believe my secretary has need of me, but I do hope you enjoy your evening.”
Josom was already subtly offering a handkerchief when Zuko strode by him. Zuko snatched it up and stored it within the wide sleeves of his formal robes. His nose was still prickling with a faint irritation, but he knew it would fade the longer he was away from the offending scent. Everything should be back in order by the time he had to get up in front of the crowd to announce the start of the bidding.
But he did need to blow his nose, so he stole away towards a hallway he knew to be tucked behind the ballroom. There, he’d be able to grab a bit of privacy aside from servers coming and going from the kitchen, and he could gather himself before returning to the obligatory socializing.
As expected, the hall was empty but for a table of extra floral arrangements. It was quiet, and Zuko took a moment to tend to his nose with the borrowed handkerchief. He was just slipping it back into his sleeve when someone called his name, and he whirled, professional demeanor rising again, but it was only –
“Suki?” He blinked in surprise.
“Fire Lord,” she teased, ducking into a brief curtsy. She was wearing a form-fitting crimson gown with a black sash and a golden headband. Her hair had grown out some since Zuko had seen her last - how long had it been, five or six months? It now nearly reached her shoulders. “What are you doing, hiding back here?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” he snapped automatically, then softened. It was just Suki, after all. “I, ah, needed a moment. I didn’t know you were going to be at this event.”
“Just got back in town this afternoon. I know some people from Kochasa Village, so I thought I would stop by and see how the fundraiser was going.”
“I hope you went by to see Sokka first.”
Suki grinned. “Of course. He was waiting at the docks.”
Zuko found himself smiling as well. Sokka was never in as good spirits when Suki was away, and he knew he would be attached to her hip for the next week or so, or until she got frustrated enough with tripping over him that she sent him off on some errand. “I’m glad. He’s been moping for the last few weeks.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s a pain,” she said fondly. “Thanks for looking after him while I was gone.”
The tickle in Zuko’s nose hadn’t quite subsided from earlier, it seemed. He scrubbed at it with the knob of his wrist and sniffed harshly. “He’s pretty good at taking care of himself, but don’t tell him I told you that.”
“Of course not,” Suki said cheerily, and came to pluck a pale long-stemmed flower from the arrangement at Zuko’s back. “Mai says hello, by the way.”
Ah yes. Something swooped in Zuko’s chest like a wolfbat diving for a bug, as it always did at the mention of Mai. While they hadn’t been exclusive, or even really dating, for years, she had been one of the few bright points in his youth, and the support she had given him in his early days as the Fire Lord had been absolutely vital as he both got his own feet under him and began to help their nation heal. “Is she doing ok?”
“I think so? It’s…kind of hard to tell with her, to be honest.” Suki bent off the last few inches of the flower’s stem and stuck it behind her ear, where it contrasted prettily with her red hair and shimmering headband. “But she’s a great instructor. The new Kyoshi Warriors are all kind of obsessed with her.”
“Good. As they should be.”
“Have you seen – oh, bless you.” Suki cut herself off. Zuko would have laughed if he wasn’t a breath away from sneezing, and as it was he managed a soft huff of amusement before he retrieved the handkerchief from his sleeve just in time to catch a prickly double in its folds. “hhdt’ISHH! Hih – hihISHHieu!”
“I think you knew that was coming before I did,” he remarked, angling his body away from her politely to sniffle and wipe at his nose, which even after the sneezes was still tingling from the bridge all the way down to his nostrils.
“You have a couple of pretty obvious tells,” Suki said lightly. She wasn’t quite teasing him yet, but he knew where this was going. “Like…I can tell that you’re probably not done.”
Sure enough, the sneezes had been insufficient to quench the tickle still lingering from the perfume, and Zuko rolled his eyes in expressive frustration before turning three-quarters from Suki and muffling another pair of sneezes in the handkerchief. “ht’ISSHhh! hddt’ISHHoo!”
“And again,” Suki said. She cocked her head as Zuko blinked away tears and gently massaged his nose through the cloth. If he could just get in one good rub, maybe that would convince his nose that the threat had passed and there was no need for further dramatics. “You’re not catching that cold that’s going around, are you?”
“No,” he said, lowering the handkerchief and clearing his throat with a short, irritated cough. “There’s a new perfume that all the nobles seem to be wearing.”
“Oh, that Dragon…Dragon something-or-another? Dragon’s Breath, maybe?”
“I’m not sure.” He wasn’t one for colognes or other scents, though there were times in his reign that he had had to be appropriately anointed for ceremonies or other festivities. But Dragon’s Breath, or whatever it was called, wasn’t the only perfume that would send him into quick, itchy sneezing fits, and even after years of trial and error there never quite seemed to be a rhyme or reason to which ones set him off and which didn’t. It was a minor annoyance, yes, but it was one that festered beneath his skin, this apparent incompatibility with the required trappings of royalty.
Suki was watching him curiously, head still tilted to the side as she seemed to analyze him like an opponent before a sparring match. It made him feel uncomfortable and exposed, and he stowed the handkerchief away again after one final nudge beneath his nose. “If you say so,” she finally said, though Zuko wasn’t sure which of his statements she was suspicious about. Then she softened, and something unintelligible flicked across her expression. “Hey, is it okay if I stick with you tonight? I don’t really know anyone else here.” She winked. “Plus I can get you out of any conversations you don’t want to be a part of.”
Zuko didn’t know how she would manage that, but if he had learned anything over the last ten or so years, it was to trust Suki implicitly. He only hoped her idea of a rescue wouldn’t require a full evacuation of the building. So he sighed and let his shoulders twitch upwards in a shadow of a shrug.
“Fine. I need to speak with some of Uncle’s friends anyway.”
Suki grinned. “Amazing. I bet they’re a lot more interesting than most of the other nobles at this thing.”
She wasn’t wrong – Iroh’s old compatriots (the genuine ones, not just those that had ‘reappeared’ once he had returned to the crown’s favor) were all whip-quick and perceptive, and many of them shared his wicked sense of humor. And for all that Suki had claimed to want to use Zuko as a conversational shield for the evening, she had a natural charisma and grace that, combined with her own sharp wit, quickly had all the old-timers snickering behind their hands.
If he were honest, he appreciated the break. His Uncle’s friends were easier conversation partners than the simpering nobles that were only here to hobnob and float about like jeweled butterflies, but the itch fluttering around his sinuses seemed to have settled in for good, and he could feel his breathing beginning to snag with congestion. Additionally, there were only so many times in polite conversation he could sniffle back the dampness of his still-running nose before it became a clear faux pas. At least in this current social circle he could murmur an apology and turn away for a ticklish cough or to sneak the handkerchief from his sleeve to wipe at his nose.
“h’EISHHieu!”
Or…to do that. Fuck. The sneeze had startled him, but even the Fire Lord sneezed occasionally, and the conversation had continued to flow around his minute disruption without more of a ripple than a brief, perfunctory blessing.
He could feel Suki’s eyes on him again as he turned from the circle again to quietly blow his nose. He was scowling a little too deeply for a public event, he knew, but it was better than giving space to the anxiety beginning to rise in his throat. He couldn’t still be reacting to the perfume, could he? None of Iroh’s friends were wearing the cloying Dragon’s Breath that he’d smelled on the first set of nobles.
“hdt’ISHHuh – ISHHHiuu!”
Fuck.
Zuko coughed a little in the aftermath, waving off the concern from the others in the conversation. He was making more of a scene than he’d like, but at least the last sneeze had been forceful enough to temporarily satiate the irritation deep in his nasal passages. It was still there, prickling gently, but at least each inhale no longer presented a risk of triggering more sneezes. “My apologies. Please enjoy your evening,” he said, the default phrase slipping from his lips with practiced ease, and he gave a small bow - which wasn’t befitting someone of his station, but he had far more respect for friends of his Uncle’s than just about anyone else in this nest of vipers.
“Your eyes are getting red.”
Suki was moving with him, holding position just behind his left shoulder, and he glanced back at her.
“What?”
“Just saying.”
He knew that tone, and ‘just saying’ wasn’t generally how Suki operated, but he had more rounds of social interactions to check off his list before the bidding was set to begin, and he didn’t have the mental capacity to think about anything beyond getting through this evening. He really ought to see if he could ban that toxic scent from formal events, if he was going to react this dramatically to what he would have previously considered a very brief exposure.
Though maybe it wasn’t just the perfume, he thought with a flicker of panic as he muffled another sneeze into a wide sleeve. The tables of the event were overflowing with elaborate flower displays, with crimson lilies and pearlescent hydrangeas sculpted into phoenixes and leaping flames draped with gold and silver garlands..
This had happened to him before – not at an event of this size, but in the occasional gathering or meeting where a side table or serving bar were graced with colorful arrangements of blooms and branches. In a larger room with only a few flowers, it took a bit for the reaction to set in, but he could no longer ignore that his current symptoms were in line with how he’d felt during and after those meetings – congested and all-over itchy, his throat and eyes and ears and god his nose, with all of it prompting numerous ticklish fits that left him sniffly and watery-eyed.
But it always seemed to be flower arrangements that set this off, and it wasn’t like he’d ever sat down and tested every bloom in the bunch to see what it was that he was allergic to, but maybe, he thought as he paused with Suki in the shadow of a pillar and retrieved his handkerchief just in time to snap away from her with two more muffled sneezes, it would be worth trying it.
“Well, shit.” Suki glanced around them to confirm that they were concealed from the view of the rest of the party. “You’re really allergic to that perfume.”
There was a delicate layer of skepticism gilding her words, and Zuko sighed. “It’s probably the flowers too. It…happens, sometimes.”
Suki raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you sneeze this much.”
She had, probably – there had been some particularly unpleasant instances in certain areas of the Earth kingdom that Zuko didn’t like to remember – but never when he was wearing the mantle of the Fire Lord, never when he already felt sometimes like he was clinging to credibility and the public goodwill by his fingertips.
He folded the handkerchief over his nose and tried again to scrub away the itch that had by this point traveled up through his sinuses into his eyes and ears. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it, but he was only forty-five minutes into an evening that was sure to go on for several hours.
“Zuko…” Suki’s tone was bordering dangerously close to pity, which took the panic and frustration simmering in his chest and twisted them tightly into something sharp and biting. Anger was an old response, written into his bones by two decades of fear and abuse, but it was always closer to the surface when he was stressed, and it was with a distant sense of helplessness that he felt it snap from his tongue.
“Leave me,” he growled, turning from her. “I don’t want you here.”
“Zuko,” Suki said again, sharper, rebuking, and it was the hint of pushback in her tone that his anger leapt to meet, because he could do something about that, he could fight it. He scowled over his shoulder.
“I said go away.”
She crossed her arms. “You’ve got to pull it together at least long enough to start the auction.”
He turned his back to her and gritted his teeth into the beginnings of a curse before sneezing angrily. “I’ll be fine,” he said, though the ensuing necessity of a sniffle put somewhat of a damper on his stubbornness.
He flinched when Suki’s hand landed on his arm, but she was only giving him another handkerchief, something plainer than the one Josom had passed him at the beginning of the evening. He snatched it from her grasp without a word of thanks before stalking away towards where he knew his secretary would be waiting to nudge him on to the next group of donors he needed to fawn over.
As expected, the intensity of his symptoms only increased the longer he was in the pollen-saturated air of the banquet hall. He began to shoot angry glares at the cheery bouquets whenever he passed them. The worst of it happened when he caught a glimpse of the saffron pollen smeared on the petals of a ruby-colored lily, which by suggestion alone was enough to make him lapse into an irritated, extended fit of sneezes mid-conversation.
The nobles hadn’t been quite sure how to handle this inadvertent lapse of decorum; they had started by blessing him, but when he continued to have to step away to catch breathless doubles in his elbow or handkerchief, long sleeves trailing dramatically, it became a necessity to continue chatting and to pretend politely that the young Fire Lord wasn’t clearly in the grip of prolonged allergic reaction.
Josom found him a few minutes later in a side chamber, stifling sneeze after sneeze and panting through parted lips when even breathing through his nose proved to be too overstimulating.
“My Lord,” he started, stiffly formal, and Zuko sighed, then coughed.
“I know.”
He saw Josom’s shoulders drop a few centimeters in relief. “I’ll call for a carriage. I can have Eylon open the auction, if you wish – she is already presiding over the rest of the event, it wouldn’t be unusual.”
Another prickle of ego flared beneath his skin, but Zuko was exhausted at this point. His head was aching, and he knew that his voice had grown far too congested for him to speak intelligibly in front of a crowd. It was past time to call it.
Zuko nodded, and Josom gave a small bow, then left the antechamber. Zuko had about fifteen seconds of solitude and was still in the process of blowing his nose when Suki joined him. He didn’t flatter himself to think that she had been doing anything beyond keeping a sharp eye on him throughout the evening; it was entirely possible that she had been the one to send Jossom his way just now.
“Are you okay?”
He did not respond at first. Pride still lurked sharp and raw in his lungs, but there was also shame and shyness, and he didn’t trust himself in the moment to keep any sort of composure. He could always apologize to her later, back at the palace, when there weren’t dozens of people waiting on the other side of the wall for him to stumble.
In his periphery, he saw her move closer, and he turned on reflex.
“Your bun – hang on.” Suki started to reach up to fix his hair, like she would do if they were in the privacy of his quarters, then seemed to remember where they were and stopped herself. Zuko raised his hand to the flame ornament stuck into his dark hair and frowned to feel the loose strands.
“How bad do I look,” he sighed, which turned into an irritated cough caught haphazardly against the back of his hand.
“Terrible,” Suki said, but she said it so cheerily that he couldn’t help but roll his eyes, which he realized several seconds later had been the effect that she’d desired. Lighthearted ribbing had been the backbone of their relationship for over ten years, and it was an easy script that gave him comfort, particularly after long days of political maneuvering.
“Thanks.” He scrubbed at his nose with the side of his wrist, then flinched into a sneeze as the pressure set off the hair-trigger irritation once again. He was going to be at this all evening. “IDDT’shhuu! Ugh, Spirits.”
“Let Sokka know when you get back to the palace, will you? Just so if you, like, collapse in the next two hours you’re not just lying on the floor until the morning.”
Another eye roll. “I’m not going to sneeze myself to death, Suki.”
“You never know,” she said very seriously, then broke her brightly antagonistic role to squeeze his shoulder gently. “Feel better, okay?”
He didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He managed a nod, though, and that seemed to be all she needed.
–
It was difficult sometimes, to be known. It wasn’t an experience he’d ever sought or even expected to have in his life. Maybe his mother had given him a sense of that, when he was young – many of his memories of her were tainted by fear and confusion and bitterness, but he remembered her kindness, as well as the careful pride with which she’d treated him.
(He’d had to grow up very quickly after she’d left, and any remaining illusions of safety had gone up in smoke when he’d knelt, trembling, before his father, and been greeted only by violence.)
He saw the messenger hawk pass the carriage as it rumbled back towards the palace, but it didn’t register as significant until he slowly climbed the stairs, rubbing at his good eye with the heel of his hand, and heard the distinctive throaty chortle of a pleased bird.
“That’s a good boy, Hawky.”
Zuko’s head snapped up. Sokka was waiting at the palace entrance, his beloved hawk perched on his forearm. Hawky was getting up there in years, but he was one of the most reliable birds in their mews, and he’d do just about anything for Sokka.
He also had an uncapped container on his leg, and Zuko scowled at the small scroll in Sokka’s hand. “I’m assuming that’s from Suki?”
“Yeah.” Sokka squinted down at Zuko. “She’s right, you do look like shit.”
“Thanks ever so much,” Zuko snapped, and he let his shoulder hit Sokka’s as he brushed past, jarring Hawky’s perch. Sokka yelped as the bird squawked angrily and dug his talons in for better purchase, then took off in a flurry of crimson feathers.
It made Zuko feel a little bad, especially when Sokka caught up with him in the hallway and Zuko spotted the beads of blood on his sleeve. He stopped, wincing.
“Is your arm okay?”
“What? Oh, it’s fine.” Sokka glanced down, unbothered, as if he’d already forgotten. “Are you okay?”
“You already told me I look like shit,” Zuko grumbled. He was past caring at this point how he looked, especially when it was just Sokka present. He could feel his eyes swelling from his aggressive itching, and he knew his nose looked pink and chapped from the abuse of his fist and handkerchiefs. His sinuses throbbed, and every congested inhale made him feel like he had to sneeze. Even thinking about how he had to sneeze made him have to – have to – he twitched away from Sokka and raised a draping sleeve as a half-effective shield. “h’ISHHuh – h’ISHHiu! hdt’ISHHuh!”
“Wow, bless you –”
“I’m not hh–EISHHieu! hdt’ISHHuh!”
He felt Sokka’s hand thump him reassuringly on the back. “You done?”
Zuko sniffled, feeling his face heating in shame and frustration. “I guess.”
“You should get out of these clothes, they’re probably not helping.”
Sokka was probably right, and Zuko knew even before the words left his mouth that he would sound like a petulant teenager, but he still scowled and said, “Whatever. The evening’s fucked anyway.”
Sokka arched an eyebrow. “The whole evening, huh?”
Zuko knew he was mocking him, and he scowled deeper, though the effect was ruined somewhat by the damp sniffles still making his nose twitch. “I was awful to Suki. She probably hates me.”
Something shifted in Sokka’s eyes, like an old memory, and Zuko felt his prickliness intensify as Sokka’s faint incredulity morphed into a very clear, familiar expression of smugness. “Oh yeah, she was talking all sorts of shit about you in her letter.”
Zuko knew that wasn’t the case – he had been able to see through the paper that the message was only a few lines – but he still made a grab for the small scroll that Sokka suddenly had in hand again. Sokka nimbly stepped to the side and faked reading the scroll in an imperious tone. “His Royal Flaminess Zuko was an absolute turd this evening. The smelliest of turds. Please inform him I never want to see him ever ever again, ever. Triple underlined. Signed with a heart.”
“You don’t get it,” Zuko snapped, half-panicked, although the better and wiser half of him recognized what Sokka was doing and was attempting to give the orders for his teen angst to stand down.
“Of course I don’t,” Sokka said, and furrowed his own brows into a mock frown. “Because you are the most miserable man in the world, you have suffered soooo much more than –”
“Oh shut up,” Zuko mumbled, then used the excuse of blowing his nose to turn away from Sokka’s gaze for a moment. “You’ve made your point.”
Sokka was still grinning obnoxiously when Zuko tucked his handkerchief back into his sleeve, but the edges of his smile softened when Zuko sniffled pitifully and began walking again. “Sorry. I know you don’t feel great. Do you need me to get a healer?”
“IISHHhhu! No, I just need to bathe and sleep. Although…I may ask if we can reschedule brunch with the Gaang tomorrow.”
“Oh, Toph already asked,” Sokka said breezily. “She went home with that butch Earthbender chick who works at the blacksmith, I think she’s not anticipating getting much sleep either.”
Zuko coughed on a rough laugh. “Good. I’m glad someone’s having a good evening, at least.”
Sokka’s hand was on his shoulder again, this time for a brief squeeze as they arrived outside Zuko’s quarters. ”Do you want company?”
It was incredibly deft and a little bit unnerving, the way Sokka and Suki had handled him this evening. Suki had given him the space to lash out, had taken the brunt of his words when he couldn’t fight the actual cause of his misery, and then she’d patiently waiting for him to burn himself out before handing him off to Sokka, who would poke and tease to keep him from falling into too deep of a brooding state. But at no point had he been treated with scorn or punishment for his actions, at no point had they frozen him out or played mind games to teach him a lesson for being impudent.
And he knew what Sokka was offering now – an outlet, a distraction, something pleasurable. They didn’t often sleep together without Suki present, but Zuko had no illusions that she would be upset or even surprised if this was where the night took them. For all he knew, she may even have said something about it in the messenger hawk note. “Sure, Sokka, go fuck Zuko, he’s pathetic and would appreciate it.”
“Zuko?”
Oh, right, he still hadn’t answered Sokka. Zuko ducked his head and cleared his throat. “Perhaps for…a bit. If you don’t mind all of this.” He gestured vaguely at his face, at his pink eyes and twitching nose and whistling, congested breaths.
“Nah, I don’t mind. Maybe we can wait up for Suki, too.”
The sense of safety that Sokka and Suki offered to him time and again was unmatched by anything he’d ever experienced, with any of his partners (which, to be fair, was not a very long list). It was the idea that he could be messy and angry and angsty and dumb and suffering an embarrassing allergy attack, but that it would not be held against him in any way that mattered.
Sometimes he worried about it, if he was letting them (any of his friends, but particularly these two) too close and would regret it, if he was only baring a place on his back for them to bury a knife.
But tonight…Sokka found his hand, laced their fingers together, and then led him into the bedroom.
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i like the idea of a person having to drag somebody out of bed when everyone knows they’ve been sick, and they feel totally guilty about it but for some reason the need for the other person’s skills, knowledge, and/or presence is important enough to override the hideous cold they’re just in the middle of fighting
another day, another vaguedrabble of senseless allergy torture (sort of a “companion piece” to this scenario)
———————————
as the day progresses he comes to think of his nose as one of those self-destruct buttons in cartoons; protruding, shiny, alarmingly red, a disaster waiting to happen, an explosion ready to go off at the lightest touch of a finger
he mustn’t rub. he mustn’t sneeze. and above all, he mustn’t think about how badly he needs to do both of those things. repeatedly. furiously -
“hh…”
no. absolutely not. not going to happen. he digs his fingernails into his palm, presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth. sniffles, just once, but as sharply as he can possibly manage. anything to stop the runaway hitching in its tracks.
later, he pleads with his overzealous immune system. afterwards. once I’ve finished with this and we’re out of here, I’m fully prepared to face the consequences. but not. now.
“ih’huh…”
god, but he is just so itchy. so unbearably impossibly itchy. from the inner rims of his nostrils all the way to the far back of his sinuses, every nerve seems to be writhing in agony. it’s like he can feel each individual pollen grain lodged in there, like a myriad of stabbing pinpricks.
another sniffle, another noseful of pollen. fuck, he hates spring. hates it with every histamine-laden fiber of his being. the next person who stops by his desk to ask him if he’s okay will get a stapler hurled at their head.
there’s nothing for it. he’s going to have to blow his nose, or else he’ll start dripping all over his keyboard. tenting a tissue over his throbbing nose, he tries to blow as gently as possible, but the slight pressure shift inside his head is still enough to send a veritable shock wave of tickles through his nasal passages and, just like that, he is done. self-destruct sequence activated. 9, 8, 7…
“Yih… hih'DTSCHh! Y-yeah, it’s just… just… HT'nxgh! …just ah- hD’NGHxh! … just ah-ller-giehh… h! hh! hH…!! (…) …ugh. snf. It’s just allergies,” is what he actually says, when he finally manages to speak. It takes every ounce of his self-control to keep his tone polite, apologetic even. Having been cruelly robbed of that final sneeze and, before that, even forced to stifle, his nose is in absolute uproar. How dare he stop there? They’re not even remotely done!
“Doesn’t sound like there’s anything "just” about it. You sure you don’t need to…?“
I need you to stop talking to me.
"I’m fine. It sounds much worse than it is.” What does that even mean? His forefinger goes to the underside of his nostrils, applying pressure, stalling for time. He can feel the swollen curves writhe against his finger, flaring in and out with an uneven rhythm. Pulsing, burning, crawling, t-tickling…!
Long time, no post! Remember this old fic of mine, about an office worker with quite spectacular spring allergies? I decided to follow the poor bastard home, to see what would happen after the incident at the office.
And if you thought the first fic was horny... well. I can confidently say that this is, hands-down, THE most indulgent, unapologetically horny thing I've ever written. I treated it as a kind of challenge, basically I wanted to see what it would take for me to be properly turned-on by my own writing. I've done similar experiments in the past, but practise makes perfect. (◕‿◕✿)
Anyway. You know the drill. No plot, only symptoms. A couple of mentions of mess, but nothing too graphic. Ridiculously long build-up, followed by ridiculous amounts of sneezing. Nose action-heavy to a pornographic degree.
Enjoy!
˖⁺‧₊˚❀˚₊‧⁺˖
The commute home is a nightmare. Not quite rush hour, the train car is still crowded enough for him to feel deeply self-concious about his near-constant sniffling and the stifled sneezes that he only barely manages to keep in check. It's equal parts humiliating and exhausting, pinching his nose closed for the tenth time in as many minutes and turning a would-be disastrous sneeze into a pathetic, wet little squeak. Like a drowning mouse, he thinks, bitterly, as he tries his best to wipe the resulting overflow with his already damp fingers. The stifled sneezes do less than nothing to soothe the burning urge in between his eyes, that hot, clinging, allergic itch that serves as a constant reminder that spring has sprung and he has at least two more months of this to look forward to.
"Heh'dnxgh!-uh."
He can't wait to get home. Once safely indoors, there are only two things on his agenda: taking his allergy meds, and getting in the shower.
- - -
By some miracle, he manages to make it home without accidentally sneezing on a fellow commuter. Front door barely shut behind him, he shudders out of his coat and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Stepping in front of the sink, he reluctantly looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. Certainly not a sight to instil confidence. It's worse than he had feared.
The culprit is there on full display, of course, front and center of his tired, bleary-eyed, slightly puffy face. For the past - god, what might it be? Eight hours now, at least? - he has known all too well what it feels like, but it's only now that he's had the chance to actually survey the damage, as it were.
He winces at the sight, but his expression quickly morphes into something less sharp, less intentional. Feeling the dreaded sensation pull at his facial muscles once more, he stubbornly fights to keep his eyes open as his mouth relaxes open and his eyelids droop.
"Huhh..."
The last thing he sees before his eyes fall involuntary shut is the star of this terrible show he has found himself in. His nose. Huge on his face. High in the air from his head tilting back, his nostrils take center stage. Scarlet ovals flared wide open, pulsing impatiently -
"Hh...! Huh...! H'DJSHNXGHiew!"
He sneezes uncovered, straight down toward the sink. Something between a bark and a wet snarl, the sound distinctly angry. He can feel the spray land on his hands that are gripping the sink.
"HEH'DJSCH! HIH'DDJSH! HEH, HEHH, -H'TJJSCHew!"
Horrible, awful, disgusting.
(Bliss.)
Leaning over the sink, shaking his head groggily, twin strings of drool and snot, thin as spider silk, slide from his nose and mouth into the drain. He sniffles, or tries to, and his nose gives a whistling squelch instead. He opens his eyes again, looks up. His gaze flickers across the mirror for a moment, as though searching in there for something other than his own reflection. His eyes soon revert back, however. Drawn by the sheer spectacle.
Fuck, but he looks a mess. His normally immaculate hair is standing every which way, his eyes are puffy pink slits, his lips chapped, his nose painful-looking, so red and inflamed it looks like he's taken a punch to it. He knows that, technically, it can't actually have swollen to twice its normal size, but it certainly feels like it. His nose isn't exactly small to begin with, and with all the rough treatment it's been put through lately... well. It definitely isn't pretty.
Hand not entirely steady, he reaches up against better judgement and touches the tip of his nose. Bright red bulb, shiny with inflammation, too warm to the touch. Itch immediately stirrs inside it, spidering up and down his nasal passages, making his eyes water.
Right. No time to waste.
Blinking hard and scrunching his nose to buy himself some time, he hurriedly reaches into the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror and pulls out his antihistamine nasal spray.
Bracing himself, he gingerly inserts the nozzle tip into his left nostril, but his nose is already on such high alert that he doesn't have time to press down and release the spray to where it might, hypothetically, do some good. For the second time today, he sneezes full force without so much as a second's warning, a clipped double sneeze that echoes off the tiles in his bathroom. He opens his eyes and meets his own gaze in the mirror again. A look says more than a thousand curse words.
Next try he actually manages to push some spray up there, but again his nose rebels on him, violently evicting the medicine with a sharp "Eh'TDSHHjsh!" before he can contain it.
For fuck's sake.
Attempt number three. This time he pinches his nostrils closed before he can take another breath, squeezing tight as the repressed reaction shakes his diaphragm with strangled little "hdT-!, htTT-!, hdtT-!"-sounding sneezes. The action leaves him dizzy and his eardrums pop, but this time around the medicine stays put. He can't wait for it to start working. Even just the slightest bit of relief would be a massive improvement compared to his current situation. Sensing a small break in the ongoing fit, he lets go of his nose just long enough to push a second dose into his right nostril, then promptly squeezes it shut again. His nostrils twitch in his grip, the sharp menthol-y sting of the medication prickling horribly.
"heh'dt-! eh'dtj-! 'ttdjNXGH!"
Finally daring to loosen his grip of his nose, he looks at his reflection once more and cringes at the sight. Why couldn't he just have... moderate hayfever? Itchy eyes, runny nose, some sneezing here and there. Annoying, sure, inconvenient, absolutely, but not... not this. Not this embarrassing, crippling, dramatic spectacle of an allergy. A nose that demands him to drop everything to deal with its constant temper tantrums at having to breathe a little spring air. Speaking of breathing, his nostrils have begun to twitch again with little fluttering hitches. It's not that his nose has started to tickle again - it never stopped tickling in the first place - but rather that the ever-present irritation spreads and grows in intensity, its crawling, bristling needles of sensation blooming all throughout his nose, hijacking all other mental and physical functions. His breath stutters, his eyes overflow, his face twitches and contorts into all sorts of ridiculous expressions while his hands fan limply at the air in front of his face. For all he knows, the only thing this accomplishes is to waft even more pollen into his nose, but the action is reflexive, barely conscious. His chest heaves and expands, head rearing back, upper lip curling, baring teeth. His nose itches. God, it itches so bad. He wishes he could reach his fingers up there and just scratch, wildly rake his nails across the inside of his nasal passages with complete abandon. It's as if someone has packed his nostrils full to the brim with a mixture of dust, pepper and chili powder, or a million tiny feathers, or the world's most potent itching powder, or...
Or pollen. That hateful, inescapable stuff that seems to coat every surface outside in a powdery film. Just now, when walking up to the house, he had seen it floating on the surface of the rain puddles in his driveway, like watercolor splotches of pale yellow. So much of it. Everywhere. Sticking to everything. His coat, his hair, his eyelashes. Grass. Birch. Oak. Hazel. Riding on the breeze, infiltrating his every breath.
"hihuh... h'hih, hih, huhh...!"
Reddened eyelids drift to half-mast, his gaze goes unfocused, then cross-eyed. His nostrils spasm fitfully, seeming to flare wider with each consecutive breath until they're gaping open, perfectly circular, frozen in limbo. His head is thrown back, chest straining against his shirt, his lungs full to capacity, his face a cartoonish caricature of an allergy sufferer on the cusp of a truly devastating sneezing fit.
"huhh...! hhHHUH...!"
He can't think for itch. For a brief moment, his entire face seems to consist of itch, his nose its red-hot singularity. Stinging, burning, all-consuming. A crisis of itch.
"-AAHH...!!"
A beat. His body is so ready, so desperate to sneeze that it actually starts the process, producing a half-strangled "AH'DJh-...!" at the back of his throat, but then... it doesn't follow through!? His voice manages a pathetic, whispered "...tsheww"-sound, a toothless imitation of the release he was promised. His entire nose aches with disappointment. Fat, itchy tears spill down his face, adding their salt to the metallic taste in his mouth. Groaning, he grinds the lower part of his palm up against his nose, then again, and again, working the bulbous tip back and forth with aggressive fervor, attempting to ease the itch inside by rubbing his nostrils together. It barely makes a difference, and the screaming tickle high up in his sinuses threatens to drive him mad. He snatches a handful of tissues from the box on the sink and blows for all he is worth, immediately soaking the paper all the way through. Another handful, same result, but the blowing seems to be helping at least a fraction. Gasping and cursing, he buries his nose in a third wad of tissues, massaging the bridge of his nose through the paper all the while, giving a final, resounding blow... one that sets his nasal passages vibrating at just the wrong frequency. The resulting tickle goes off inside his head like a fire bomb:
Bliss. Torture. Bliss. Torture. The faint flicker of relief each sneeze grants him feels so good, even as the unbearable itch reignites immediately after. Goosebumps break out on his arms and his whole body tingles with sensory overload as he keeps sneezing and sneezing and snh... huhh-
He hates the rapid-fire sneezes the most. They make him feel so out of control, not to mention dizzy from the lack of air. Each frantic, breathless double-triple-quadrouple-quintuple bursting out of him only seems to aggrivate his nose further, triggering an endless chain reaction of allergic frenzy.
It's never-ending. That dreadful, squirming, crawling sensation of panicked nerve-endings writhing inside the tight confines of his swollen sinuses. Like a nest of angered ants, swarming and biting.
"AH'KGDJSHHIW!"
But maybe it's...
"GH'DTSCHEWW!-TCHEW!"
...finally starting to...?
"HP'TDSCHUH-TSCHUH!-tCHEW!"
Tingling lips parted, pouring eyes blindly shut, pulsing nose pointing at the ceiling -
"HAH'TDDJSCHHIEWW!!"
Bent over the sink, nose buried deep in his... fifth? six? handful of tissues, one hand gripping the side of the sink for support. Panting. Lightheaded. Exhausted. He tries to sniffle but is so brutally congested at this point that he barely makes a sound, his nose only manages a kind of wet squeak as he wipes it. Like a fucking clown nose, he thinks mirthlessly. Big, red, and making ridiculous noises.
"Guh..."
Please, that must be it, right? He has been sneezing non-stop for at least five minutes straight. His nose is so stuffed-up at this point that it feels physically heavy on his face, pulsating dully and aching with pressure. His abdominal muscles are sore, his throat raw, his eyes stinging, but his nasal passages don't feel like they are actively on fire anymore? Ever so carefully, he wrinkles his nose, scrunching his nostrils first to the left, then to the right. Waiting, breath withheld. It still tickles, of course. That feather-light buzzing tingle won't go away for at least another two months (god help him), but at least for the moment it seems his sinuses are no longer in absolute panic mode.
The meds must finally be starting to take effect. Either that, or his body is simply too exhausted to keep firing on all cylinders like that. Whatever the reason, he'll take any respite he can get.
At least now, he's able to keep his eyes open for long enough to find his way to the shower. He can't wait to get under the hot water and finally rinse all of that p... p-pollen off...
Don't think about it.
Of course he's still covered in the stuff. It's on his shirt collar. His sleeves. His hair. His face.
"Hh..."
No. He flat-out refuses.
"Huh... hh... "
Shirt, trousers, socks, underwear. In a mad scramble, he's shed them all and dropped them on the bathroom floor. Then he's in the shower, nearly slipping on the floor tiles in his haste to get in there before his nose can take him hostage yet again. Faceing the shower head, he doesn't even care that the water is freezing at first. If anything, the cold spray feels good and soothing against his flushed, itchy face.
"Hhuh --- djsh!"
The sneeze is weak, half-hearted, spray meeting spray, barely audible over the sound of the shower.
He might as well not have sneezed at all, the way his nose doesn't even register this sisyphean attempt to scratch at the itchiness inside.
Wincing deeply, he jams an outstretched forefinger up against his sore septum and starts to rub his nose again. Lightly at first, but soon he is applying more pressure, crushing his nose upwards, shortening the sloped bridge into a mass of crinkles. Finger sawing away, back and forth beneath his nostrils, pushing their inflamed insides together and grinding them against each other. The itch is a throbbing heat all throughout his nose, but searing sharpness has been replaced with a duller, more muted sort of irritation now, one that doesn't threaten to make him sneeze every two seconds. Instead, he's stood there scrubbing away at his face, not wanting to stop despite how tender and sore his nose is becoming. It feels so good to rub, to finally be able to scratch the itch that's been plaguing him for hours and actually feel it have a soothing effect rather than make it worse. A sigh of relief, then an almost sensual whimper escapes him, as he switches the position of his hand and starts pulling his nose up and down with his fingers wrapped around either side of it.
"Nnh... fuck..."
The squelching sounds are disgusting, and he couldn't care less. Eyes blissfully shut, fingers working away, loosened congestion mixing with the shower water and running down his lips.
All day he has been so. fucking. itchy. From the second he woke up and started off his morning by sneezing violently six times in a row into his pillow. All throughout his workday which ended with a disastrous sneezing fit and an humiliating early exit. Nine hours of this. Non-stop. Of the histamine-drenched nerves in his nose, eyes, ears and palate screaming bloody murder.
And now it's letting up.
One final, sensous pull on his nose, from brow to tip. He lets go of his grip just as the last remnant of a tickle sparks back to life in the raw depths of his sinuses. A pinprick stab of sensation, one big, quick gasp, and he is thrown forward with possibly the most satisfying sneeze he has ever experienced in his twenty-odd years of suffering from hayfever.
”AHH --- ! 'AATTDJSHOOohh!-ohhhh god.”
And so, for one, long, blissful moment there in the shower, his nose feels completely clear, calm, and unaffected by the raging springtime outside.
It may be temporary, but he'll enjoy it while it lasts.
have we ever discussed historical sneeze fetish? and i don't mean fetish stories written today set in history, which are still quite impacted by the discovery of germs and sanitation and all that
i mean someone living in the 12th century northern france fantasising about q/uentin of a/miens or some other celebrity (=patron saint) bloodletting them to balance their humours (and maybe even getting sneezed on). or was the fact that the common cold was much more of a death sentence back then too much of a turn-off
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imagining my favs snowed in at a cabin with stuffy, sneezy colds. neither of them know who brought it with them since they can’t keep their hands off each other. I imagine them in thick sweaters and warm socks, cuddling in front of the fire under a bunch of cozy blankets. outside, the frosty wind rattles the windows. their pink noses glow in the firelight. after they finish a lazy dinner of steaming soup and soft bread, the one whose voice sounds less hoarse than the other reads aloud from a cozy mystery book in a whisper—but not too soft—because both of them have clogged ears. a box of tissues sits beside them at the ready to catch every inevitable wet sneeze and gurgling blow. lots of soupy sniffles set off fits of tickling sneezes. they have been drinking tea all day for their raw throats, and have decided to add just a bit of whisky this time for good measure. maybe it’ll help them get some much-needed sleep tonight, they think wistfully. and although they feel miserable, at least they are there together.
