#poor guy lmao

“We’ve gotten three reviews in the past week saying that we don’t have enough ambiance,” Elijah rolled his eyes. “I swear to god, it must be those women who came in last Sunday and were pissed that we didn’t have bottomless mimosas. Anyway, I’m sick of seeing two-star reviews, so we’re ambiance-ing the fuck out of this place. You’re on flowers, Greyson is hanging fairy lights. I’m replacing all the lightbulbs in the lamps at the tables with those dark-as-fuck ones so no one can read the fucking menus.” Elijah held his hands up, as if in surrender. “You get the picture.”

Mark nodded slowly, his nose twitching inadvertently. “Are these, like, a vase at the host stand type deal, or…?” Elijah shook his head as he pulled out his phone.

“Three per table,” he explained, typing once again. “I switched out the stick-things we had as centerpieces for little vases.” He glanced up from the phone briefly, then furrowed his brow, concerned. “You good?”

Mark opened his mouth to respond, but instead wrenched into his shoulder. “NTSHH! HRRSHH!” Keeping his eyes closed, Mark took a moment to gather himself. Don’t, he thought, an internal warning to all of his systems. You are fine. Keep it together.

“Bless you,” Elijah said, an eyebrow now raised. “You feeling alright?”

Mark nodded, a quick, curt motion. “All good,” he said, moving the flowers to be cradled in one arm instead of right in front of his fucking face, why didn’t you move them before?! “Three per table,” he parroted. “Heard.”

Elijah nodded back. “Okay,” he said, his face betraying his confusion. “Great. Thanks, Mark. I have to go pick up tablecloths, apparently the launderers are down a van this week. Give me a call if you guys need anything while I’m gone, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Mark managed, one hand unconsciously moving to paw at his nose. “Will do.”

The GM moved past the floor manager, pushed through the back kitchen doors to the alley, and let the door fall closed behind him. The moment it did, Mark tossed the bouquet onto the closest prep table and folded in half.

“HRRSHH-uh! NTSHH-oo! NXTSH! Hh’ITSZHH! HRRSHH-ue!” Mark stood, panting, for a moment before allowing himself to glance back at the flowers – chrysanthemums. Just as he assumed. Fuck.

***

11:09AM

Mark

babe, I need your help with something

11:10AM

Matt

uhhhh, ok? where tf are you, btw? I thought you were scheduled in at 10

11:10AM

Mark

im here. im in the guest bathroom, can you just come here for like five seconds.

11:11AM

Mark

bring the benedryl from the drawer in the office, pls.

When Matt walked through the guest bathroom door, he had not one iota of a clue what was going on with Mark; the man could certainly be cryptic when he wanted to be, but this was a whole other level.

“Hello?” Matt called into the seemingly-empty bathroom. “Mark, are you-”

“HRSSH! Huh-! USHH-ue! HTSH, HTSH, HTSH-ue! HH-! NTXSHH-ue! God, fuck mbe.”

Matt furrowed his eyebrows together. “Babe?” he asked, moving towards the furthest stall. Without thinking, he pushed the door – unlocked – and stared at his boyfriend. “Jesus Christ, Mark.”

His boyfriend was standing with his back toward the door, but turned when he heard Matt enter. Mark seemed to be stuck in some sort of a tortured-looking pre-sneeze, his eyes were rimmed red and weeping, and when he spoke, his voice was completely waterlogged. “Oh, thangk god,” Mark managed when he saw the Benedryl in Matt’s hand. He took it, dry swallowed, and immediately turn back into his elbow to – “HNSTCHH-oo!”

“What the fuck happened?” Matt asked as Mark attempted to clean himself up. “You were fine when you left the house this morning.”

“HRRSHH-ue! NTGSHH!” Mark pinched his nose between two fingers to attempt to quell the fit – for the moment, it seemed to have worked. Rubbing a streaming eye with one hand, Mark pushed past his boyfriend and moved towards the sink. “Do you remember that timbe you brought mbe flowers? I thingk it was like our second dahh – HTSH! NTSH! HXGTSHH-ue! Jesus fuckigg christ.” Mark pulled a paper towel from the dispenser to blow his nose while Matt mulled it over in his mind. Finally, a look of sordid remembrance colored his face.

“Oh, fuck,” Matt said. “You don’t mean the fucking chrysanthemum incident, do you?” A look from behind the paper towel confirmed that yes – that was exactly what Mark meant. “Who the fuck brought you flowers at work?” Matt asked, envy coating his voice. Mark coughed out a laugh.

“Jealous?” he asked, tossing the paper towel and washing his hands. Matt rolled his eyes. “They’re for the restaurant. Elijah gave mbe this big-ass bouquet the second I walked in and put mbe in charge of putting themb on the tables,” Mark explained, straightening his tie and pushing back his hair. It was for naught; no one would be able to look past his swollen eyes and streaming nose at this point. “Apparently we’re gettigg bad reviews for lack of ambiaahhh – HNTSHH-uh! NGTSH! Huh -! HTXSH! NGTXSH!” Mark attempted to stifle another round of painful-sounding sneezes, while Matt cringed behind him.

“Could you please just sneeze normal?” he asked, pressing a hand into the small of his boyfriend’s back. “You sound like you’re going to burst a blood vessel.” Mark rubbed his nose on the back of his hand and gave Matt a look in the mirror.

“I genuinely thingk I wouldn’t be able to stop if I wasn’t tryigg to hold them back,” he said, clearing his throat. Matt pressed his lips together.

“Has Elijah seen the, uh… state he put you in yet? Why didn’t you just tell him you’re super fucking allergic to chrysanthemums?” he asked. Mark shook his head.

“He had to go get tablecloths. I doubt he even kndows what kind of flowers they are, and honestly, he already seembed pissed off, I didn’t want to pile ohh -” Mark said, his face already starting to collapse as another fit rapidly approached. “Fugck – HRTSHH-oo! HTSH, HXGTSH, ITSZCHH-ue! Huh – HUHHESCHOO!” Finally, Mark allowed one grating, throat-scraping, full sneeze out. As it did, his hand flew up to cover his nose and mouth. Matt cringed – partially in sympathy and partially in mild disgust – and pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser to hand to his boyfriend.

“Dude,” Matt said as Mark blew his nose. “How the hell are you going to work like this?”

Tossing the paper towels and rubbing his eyes again, Mark just shrugged. “Hopefully the Benedryl starts workigg soond.”

“And what do you think Elijah is going to say when you’re half-asleep and doped up on Benedryl?” Matt asked.

“To be honest,” Mark said, “I thingk anything would be better than thiihh – ITSZCHH-ue!”

***

“Mark, pre-shift!”

Startled, and pulled from a Benedryl-induced near-coma, Mark bolted upright. His eyes flicked to the corner of his computer screen – 4:31PM. Fuck, had he really fallen asleep for almost an hour?

Before the impromptu nap, Mark thought he’d finally gotten it mostly back together. He’d splashed enough water on his face to waterboard an elephant, he’d blown his nose until both his ears popped, and he’d avoided the dining room like the plague, insisting instead to Elijah – who, fortunately, couldn’t look up from his phone long enough to see his floor manager’s eyes swelling near-shut – that he would work on schedules in the office so his boss could continue to zhuzh up the front of house. Thankfully, his boss had agreed.

Apparently, though, the Benedryl had taken its well-known promise that you can’t sneeze if you’re wracked out a little too seriously, because Mark couldn’t for the life of him remember anything past sitting down and opening the schedule up on the computer. Now, he was attempting to smooth his shirt, push his hair back into submission, and try to look like he hadn’t spent the last sixty minutes drooling onto the desk.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mark said as he entered the dining room. “Lost track of time.”

“It’s fine,” Elijah said, curt. From his peripherals, Mark could see Matt tossing him a concerned look – one that he refused to meet. The GM handed the floor manager a copy of the cover count over one of the vases Mark had filled earlier that day – as his hand brushed against one of the flowers, he could feel the relentless fucking itch reenter his nose. Well, Benedryl, the important thing is you tried, he thought, staring as hard as he could at the paper. Focus, idiot, fucking focus.

“Alright, guys so tonight – shit,” Elijah pulled out his phone as he began pre-shift, swearing when it started vibrating in his hand. “Fuck, that’s the lighting guys, I have to take this. Mark, you run things. I’ll be right back.”

Oh, no.

Elijah stepped into the kitchen and the servers trained their eyes on Mark; he could immediately feel the itch lodge itself directly between his eyeballs. Pawing at his nose, the floor manager looked down; just get through the covers, you can do this.

“Ah – okay,” Mark began. “So tondight we have one twenty on the booooh…” Not even one sentence in, Mark could feel himself gearing up to sneeze. The first five, he managed to stifle into complete silence, his fist pressed against his nose. Mark let out a shaky breath as the servers, Greyson, and Matt murmured a collective Bless you; that phrase alone was enough to set him off completely.

“HTSCHH-uh!” The first out-loud sneeze caught him off-guard enough to catch in his palm – gross, he thought to himself, as if the rest of this fit wasn’t going to be. “HTSHH! NGTSHH! Hh’RRSCHH-ue! Fuck – NTSHH-ue! HRRESCHH-ue! ITSZCH! NGTXCH! Huh-! ESCHH-oo!”

“Christ, Mark,” Greyson said, his voice more annoyed than concerned. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Unable to answer, Mark just turned away from the table, away from the chefs and servers, and folded himself in half over his own lap. “HRRSHH-uh! Huh-! HUHESTCHOO!”

From the kitchen, Elijah called, “The fuck is going on out there?”

If he wasn’t so completely caught up in relentless itch, Mark would have been horrified, beyond embarrassed. As it was, he could only focus on one thing: “NTSHH! Huh’GTSHH! Fuckigg – HRRSHH-oo!”

Elijah had made his way back out to the dining room and was standing over the floor manager, confused and a little disgusted. Between sneezes, he placed a hand on Mark’s head. “You aren’t warm,” he mused as they all watched Mark succumb again and again.

“He isn’t sick,” Matt called from behind them. “He’s – Christ, Mark I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell him earlier – he’s like, insanely allergic to chrysanthemums.”

Elijah glanced briefly at the flowers on the table, then turned back to Mark, who had both arms over his head in an attempt to cover the mess that was his face. “Mark…?” Elijah asked, handing the floor manager a perfectly-folded napkin from the table before them. “I assume that’s, uh… true?”

Mark took the napkin, too exhausted and fucking itchy to be ashamed. He wiped his face as well as he could and sat up; one of his eyes was swollen half-shut, his nose was streaming down his face, and he could feel his lungs starting to constrict with the effort of sneezing so fucking much. “Yeah,” he admitted, voice husky and congested. “Yeah, I amb. HRRTSHH-oo! Huh-ITSZCHH-ue!”

Immediately, Elijah sprung into action. He turned towards the servers – all of whom seemed to be frozen, unsure of what to do about the scene before them – and clapped his hands. “Fuck, alright, okay guys, everyone needs to go around and take the flowers off the tables. Throw them in the dumpster outside, alright? We’ll figure out something else to do with the vases tomorrow.”

The servers complied immediately, collecting the offending flowers while Mark, ever the realist, gave his boss as dogged a look as he could imagine. “But… what about the ambiance?” he asked, a question so ridiculous that Elijah, Greyson, and Matt all choked out the same tension-breaking laugh.

“Mark,” Elijah said, placing a careful hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Ambiance… the ambiance isn’t going to mean much if the background music is drowned out by you, uh… sneezing until you pass out. You know what I mean?”

Mark colored – his embarrassment a good sign that the fit was finally letting up. “Oh,” he said, sucking in through his nose. “Yeah, I guess… I guess that mbakes seeehhh – NGTZCH-uh!” This one, he attempted to stifle into his shoulder, making Elijah and Greyson cringe.

“Why don’t you, uh… run home and change, kid,” Greyson said, locking eyes with Elijah. “Maybe just, like, throw those clothes away.” Elijah nodded in vehement agreement.

“We’ll hold the fort down,” he said, patting Mark on the back. Mark just nodded as both of the senior managers walked back into the kitchen.

Alone but for his boyfriend, Mark let out a congested sigh and leaned his head on Matt’s shoulder. “You doin’ okay?” Matt asked after a minute or so. Mark coughed, shrugged.

“I mbean, if I haven’t died of fuckigg embarrassmbent after that, I thingk I’ll probably live forever,” he joked, rubbing his swollen eye until he saw stars. Gently, Matt removed his boyfriend’s hand from his face and kissed his palm. They sat in silence like that for awhile, until Matt’s breathing finally got back to mostly-normal.

“Fucking chrysanthemums,” Matt muttered, coursing a hand through Mark’s hair. The other man huffed out a laugh.

The nail polish I used to coat it actually made it bleed a little, but I was going for a misty-smoky vibe so I think it might have helped? Idk you chose.