I'm Chanel. She/her. Lesbian. Born in the 1980s, aka I'm not *old*, I'm merely vintage. DO NOT REBLOG TO NON-SNZ BLOGS!! DNI if you're a minor or not a snz/illness kink blog. I will block you if your age isn't listed or at least indicated clearly (see example above). This blog is a hate-free zone. ❤️
*work in progress, there are plenty of fics (both colds and allergies, with different characters) that I've written and posted, that I have to hunt down and add when I have the time and energy. This list so far has mostly been compiled by @snzsanctum , thank you so much for this!! 🥰
Original fics
Force of Nature (allergies)
Character: Professor Evelyn Reed
Part 1: Force of Nature
Part 2: Jump Scare Poetry
Part 3: Bingo And Mutiny
Part 4: Athena Erupted
Part 5: Fragmentation
Part 6: Reconfiguration
Part 7: Epilogue
Where Poetry Belongs (allergies, F/F)
Character: Professor Evelyn Reed
Part 1: Where Poetry Belongs
Keeping Up The Charade (cold)
Character: Professor Evelyn Reed
Keeping Up The Charade
Queen In Exile (allergies)
Character: Beatrice Howell-Reed (Evelyn's aunt)
Okay, I didn't know where to end the fic so, it got a bit longer than I expected. I have no idea if this is even any good because I'm starting to feel like I can't write for shit anymore, but at least I wrote something??🙄😅 Also I finally settled on a name for this OC, woohoo!
Anyway let's get into it. cw: coughing, some mess, mentions of various other illnesses.
***
A Victorian-Style Constitution (female, cold)
New England, 1998
Assistant Professor Clarissa Ashfield, 32 years old, was fighting an ongoing war against her own constitution. For the two years she had been working here, she had been sick two thirds of the entire time. Maybe more. No, she had to be realistic, probably more. She caught everything that crossed her path, or at least so it seemed. Strep throat. Flu. Head colds. Bronchitis. Laryngitis. Sinus infections. Ear infections. Pinkeye, for crying out loud!
Most of the time it was regular head colds (though they often turned into drawn-out sinus infections that she had to see a doctor and get antibiotics for), and that was embarrassing enough, but the frequency of these illnesses was worse than the illnesses themselves. She often felt like a modern caricature of the sickly, frail Victorian ladies she studied. A 20th century Brontë sister, perhaps.
Despite her back-to-back infections, she refused to cancel her lectures, determined to make tenure to prove to her aristocratic old money-family that her decision to go into the academic field hadn’t been a waste of time… but to make tenure she couldn’t be seen as more frail and weak than she was already perceived among the old guard of tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking men that made up 99% of the faculty.
Today she was battling yet another cold, heavy, thick congestion had settled deep within her sinuses where the pressure indicated that she would soon have to make yet another trip to the doctor for yet another round of antibiotics. And even though her sinuses were bricked up with congestion, her poor irritated nose was streaming at the same time. The persistent trickle of liquid kept making her nose tingle, and she could try to fight the urge to sneeze, but the physical reflex would always win in the end. Willpower alone didn’t stand a chance against her physiological collapse.
Right now she was fighting for her life – or at least her academic pride – in front of seventy students who were there to learn about Victorian literature and not about her talent for turning the smallest virus into a buffet of cold symptoms, but unfortunately got both.
“...which betrays the ultimate tragic irony of the Victorian elite… snrfff… their obsession with preservation is precisely what accelerates their d-decay... heh… excuse me one moment…”
She reached into the pockets of her blazer, frantically looking for a fresh tissue, but all she found were used and crumpled ones. The prickle in her nose intensified and eventually she had to settle for one of the used ones, bringing it up to her nose and mouth just in time to at least save herself the embarrassment of getting mess everywhere.
She immediately blew her nose, only too aware of her body’s little quirks. If she didn’t blow her nose, she would usually just keep sneezing in one prolonged fit. It was ridiculous, but at least that particular quirk was something she was used to. It appeared to have been hardwired into her early on, while her proclivity for catching everything that came her way had only lasted a few years. She kept hoping it would end as suddenly as it began, but so far it kept happening.
The sneezes hurt her already sore throat and she blinked away tears of pain when she heard a loud whisper – the kind of whisper that aimed to be heard – from one of the rows in the back.
“And there she goes! Professor ATSCHfield delivers again!”
Giggles followed this remark, and she felt her cheeks heat up from more than the developing fever, but something inside of her had had enough. She stared down the student in the back, and though her voice was raspy and thick, it held a core of the ice that would become legendary later in her career.
“If you gentlemen in the back find human physiology more intellectually stimulating than Dickens’ prose, I suggest you transfer to the medical faculty. If not, I expect your full attention on the subject matter of this lecture. Do I make myself clear?”
The students in the back nodded without looking at her.
“Yes, Professor Ashfield.”
She knew, though. Once that nickname had been spoken aloud, it would take hold, just as certain as every virus she inhaled took hold in her sensitive mucus membranes. Most teachers got nicknames eventually. She’d just hoped hers would be a little bit more dignified.
At least it’s not ‘Professor Sneezy’, she thought tiredly and reached into her pocket again, pulling another crumpled, unpleasantly soggy tissue from its depths. She proceeded to turn towards the chalkboard and blow her nose.
Or even worse, ‘Professor Snotnose’, she thought and shook her head a little as she felt the tissue flood with the overly generous contents of her inflamed nose. Good God, I’m a repulsive mess. It’s a wonder no one has walked out of my lectures in protest of the biohazardous environment yet.
Still holding the tissue to her nose with one hand, as she felt another sneeze beginning to prickle itself into existence deep within, she reached for the chalk with her other hand. She wrote three words in her elegant handwriting and underlined it twice.
Preservation = stagnation = decay
She put the chalk down, but she still didn’t turn back to face the class. She was definitely going to sneeze again, and she’d rather get that over with first. She was getting quite tired of having an audience for every moment her body decided to betray her.
She took a shaky breath, closed her eyes and stopped fighting the sneeze; it was coming no matter what she did. Her head bobbed forward as she sneezed again into the damp Kleenex.
“Uuh-AAATTSCCHHH!”
She blew her nose once more, tired beyond words, dabbed at her chafed pink nostrils, waited another couple of seconds to make sure there wasn’t another sneeze coming, and when she was reasonably sure there wasn’t, turned back to the class. This time she didn’t bother apologising, she just went right back to the lecture, tissue crumpled up in her hand.
“What happens is that the elite’s armour becomes its own coffin.”
She paused briefly, waiting to see if any of the students would be cocky enough to make a snide comment about her frail health and a coffin, but no one said a word.
Good.
She quickly glanced at her wristwatch and was relieved to see that she only had to muddle through this lecture for another ten minutes. Then she could finally go home, have some soup, and take a hot shower. Maybe it would clear out her sinuses so she’d be able to breathe through her nose for a few hours. That would be nice for a change.
Ten more minutes. She could do ten more minutes. No problem.
But she had barely finished the thought when the urge to sneeze hit her so suddenly there was no time to even un-crumple the tissue in her hand, she just pressed her half-fist with the tissue inside against her mouth and nose and bent over at the waist, practically exploding into the well-used ball of paper.
“HaaATSSCHH! HATSCHHOO!”
She sneezed so hard several blonde strands came loose from her French twist, and then she started coughing, a raspy cough that wasn’t quite painful yet, but she knew from experience that her lungs would soon feel like she was breathing through two bruises inside her chest.
“It’s like being taught by an actual Victorian, pale, feverish and ailed by consumption,” a student in the first row mumbled.
“Miss Wallace?” Clarissa said, her tone calm but her voice husky and on the verge of giving out. The student swallowed and looked up at her.
“Y-yes, Professor Ashfield.”
“I can assure you, what ‘ails’ me today is a cold, not consumption.”
“I’m sorry professor, I… I didn’t mean…”
But Clarissa was unable to listen; the sickly professor had already turned away to spray yet another sneeze into her used, crumpled, sad tissue.
“Hah-ATSSSCHHoo! Oh my God… excuse me.”
Clarissa blew her nose again and dropped the now disintegrating tissue in the bin. Annoyingly enough she still felt that prickly, almost fluttery sensation in her left nostril, and she just knew this cold was nowhere near done humiliating her in front of her students.
“That’s all for today,” she sniffled, suddenly feeling unable to push through the last few minutes of this lecture-turned-public humiliation. “Next week we’ll discuss how Dickens’ way of portraying women reveals the Victorian man’s greatest fear.”
The students began packing up their stuff and heading out. Clarissa waited until they had all left the lecture hall, then she leaned her hot forehead against the cool chalkboard and closed her eyes for a moment.
It’s just a cold. Just a garden variety, run-of-the-mill head cold. I’ll just rest up over the weekend and I’ll be fine on Monday.
With the pounding sinus ache growing steadily behind her cheekbones, she didn’t really believe it herself. And even if it was true, who knew what the next thing would be to knock her off her feet? Another cold? A stomach bug? Flu? Mono? Last semester she’d somehow managed to get chickenpox, a childhood illness! Wasn’t she too damn old to get childhood illnesses?
Clarissa sighed deeply, and then she started coughing again.
A modern woman with a Victorian-style constitution. That was what she was.
But she was going to get tenure, even if her body fell apart as she did.
Okay, I didn't know where to end the fic so, it got a bit longer than I expected. I have no idea if this is even any good because I'm starting to feel like I can't write for shit anymore, but at least I wrote something??🙄😅 Also I finally settled on a name for this OC, woohoo!
Anyway let's get into it. cw: coughing, some mess, mentions of various other illnesses.
***
A Victorian-Style Constitution (female, cold)
New England, 1998
Assistant Professor Clarissa Ashfield, 32 years old, was fighting an ongoing war against her own constitution. For the two years she had been working here, she had been sick two thirds of the entire time. Maybe more. No, she had to be realistic, probably more. She caught everything that crossed her path, or at least so it seemed. Strep throat. Flu. Head colds. Bronchitis. Laryngitis. Sinus infections. Ear infections. Pinkeye, for crying out loud!
Most of the time it was regular head colds (though they often turned into drawn-out sinus infections that she had to see a doctor and get antibiotics for), and that was embarrassing enough, but the frequency of these illnesses was worse than the illnesses themselves. She often felt like a modern caricature of the sickly, frail Victorian ladies she studied. A 20th century Brontë sister, perhaps.
Despite her back-to-back infections, she refused to cancel her lectures, determined to make tenure to prove to her aristocratic old money-family that her decision to go into the academic field hadn’t been a waste of time… but to make tenure she couldn’t be seen as more frail and weak than she was already perceived among the old guard of tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking men that made up 99% of the faculty.
Today she was battling yet another cold, heavy, thick congestion had settled deep within her sinuses where the pressure indicated that she would soon have to make yet another trip to the doctor for yet another round of antibiotics. And even though her sinuses were bricked up with congestion, her poor irritated nose was streaming at the same time. The persistent trickle of liquid kept making her nose tingle, and she could try to fight the urge to sneeze, but the physical reflex would always win in the end. Willpower alone didn’t stand a chance against her physiological collapse.
Right now she was fighting for her life – or at least her academic pride – in front of seventy students who were there to learn about Victorian literature and not about her talent for turning the smallest virus into a buffet of cold symptoms, but unfortunately got both.
“...which betrays the ultimate tragic irony of the Victorian elite… snrfff… their obsession with preservation is precisely what accelerates their d-decay... heh… excuse me one moment…”
She reached into the pockets of her blazer, frantically looking for a fresh tissue, but all she found were used and crumpled ones. The prickle in her nose intensified and eventually she had to settle for one of the used ones, bringing it up to her nose and mouth just in time to at least save herself the embarrassment of getting mess everywhere.
She immediately blew her nose, only too aware of her body’s little quirks. If she didn’t blow her nose, she would usually just keep sneezing in one prolonged fit. It was ridiculous, but at least that particular quirk was something she was used to. It appeared to have been hardwired into her early on, while her proclivity for catching everything that came her way had only lasted a few years. She kept hoping it would end as suddenly as it began, but so far it kept happening.
The sneezes hurt her already sore throat and she blinked away tears of pain when she heard a loud whisper – the kind of whisper that aimed to be heard – from one of the rows in the back.
“And there she goes! Professor ATSCHfield delivers again!”
Giggles followed this remark, and she felt her cheeks heat up from more than the developing fever, but something inside of her had had enough. She stared down the student in the back, and though her voice was raspy and thick, it held a core of the ice that would become legendary later in her career.
“If you gentlemen in the back find human physiology more intellectually stimulating than Dickens’ prose, I suggest you transfer to the medical faculty. If not, I expect your full attention on the subject matter of this lecture. Do I make myself clear?”
The students in the back nodded without looking at her.
“Yes, Professor Ashfield.”
She knew, though. Once that nickname had been spoken aloud, it would take hold, just as certain as every virus she inhaled took hold in her sensitive mucus membranes. Most teachers got nicknames eventually. She’d just hoped hers would be a little bit more dignified.
At least it’s not ‘Professor Sneezy’, she thought tiredly and reached into her pocket again, pulling another crumpled, unpleasantly soggy tissue from its depths. She proceeded to turn towards the chalkboard and blow her nose.
Or even worse, ‘Professor Snotnose’, she thought and shook her head a little as she felt the tissue flood with the overly generous contents of her inflamed nose. Good God, I’m a repulsive mess. It’s a wonder no one has walked out of my lectures in protest of the biohazardous environment yet.
Still holding the tissue to her nose with one hand, as she felt another sneeze beginning to prickle itself into existence deep within, she reached for the chalk with her other hand. She wrote three words in her elegant handwriting and underlined it twice.
Preservation = stagnation = decay
She put the chalk down, but she still didn’t turn back to face the class. She was definitely going to sneeze again, and she’d rather get that over with first. She was getting quite tired of having an audience for every moment her body decided to betray her.
She took a shaky breath, closed her eyes and stopped fighting the sneeze; it was coming no matter what she did. Her head bobbed forward as she sneezed again into the damp Kleenex.
“Uuh-AAATTSCCHHH!”
She blew her nose once more, tired beyond words, dabbed at her chafed pink nostrils, waited another couple of seconds to make sure there wasn’t another sneeze coming, and when she was reasonably sure there wasn’t, turned back to the class. This time she didn’t bother apologising, she just went right back to the lecture, tissue crumpled up in her hand.
“What happens is that the elite’s armour becomes its own coffin.”
She paused briefly, waiting to see if any of the students would be cocky enough to make a snide comment about her frail health and a coffin, but no one said a word.
Good.
She quickly glanced at her wristwatch and was relieved to see that she only had to muddle through this lecture for another ten minutes. Then she could finally go home, have some soup, and take a hot shower. Maybe it would clear out her sinuses so she’d be able to breathe through her nose for a few hours. That would be nice for a change.
Ten more minutes. She could do ten more minutes. No problem.
But she had barely finished the thought when the urge to sneeze hit her so suddenly there was no time to even un-crumple the tissue in her hand, she just pressed her half-fist with the tissue inside against her mouth and nose and bent over at the waist, practically exploding into the well-used ball of paper.
“HaaATSSCHH! HATSCHHOO!”
She sneezed so hard several blonde strands came loose from her French twist, and then she started coughing, a raspy cough that wasn’t quite painful yet, but she knew from experience that her lungs would soon feel like she was breathing through two bruises inside her chest.
“It’s like being taught by an actual Victorian, pale, feverish and ailed by consumption,” a student in the first row mumbled.
“Miss Wallace?” Clarissa said, her tone calm but her voice husky and on the verge of giving out. The student swallowed and looked up at her.
“Y-yes, Professor Ashfield.”
“I can assure you, what ‘ails’ me today is a cold, not consumption.”
“I’m sorry professor, I… I didn’t mean…”
But Clarissa was unable to listen; the sickly professor had already turned away to spray yet another sneeze into her used, crumpled, sad tissue.
“Hah-ATSSSCHHoo! Oh my God… excuse me.”
Clarissa blew her nose again and dropped the now disintegrating tissue in the bin. Annoyingly enough she still felt that prickly, almost fluttery sensation in her left nostril, and she just knew this cold was nowhere near done humiliating her in front of her students.
“That’s all for today,” she sniffled, suddenly feeling unable to push through the last few minutes of this lecture-turned-public humiliation. “Next week we’ll discuss how Dickens’ way of portraying women reveals the Victorian man’s greatest fear.”
The students began packing up their stuff and heading out. Clarissa waited until they had all left the lecture hall, then she leaned her hot forehead against the cool chalkboard and closed her eyes for a moment.
It’s just a cold. Just a garden variety, run-of-the-mill head cold. I’ll just rest up over the weekend and I’ll be fine on Monday.
With the pounding sinus ache growing steadily behind her cheekbones, she didn’t really believe it herself. And even if it was true, who knew what the next thing would be to knock her off her feet? Another cold? A stomach bug? Flu? Mono? Last semester she’d somehow managed to get chickenpox, a childhood illness! Wasn’t she too damn old to get childhood illnesses?
Clarissa sighed deeply, and then she started coughing again.
A modern woman with a Victorian-style constitution. That was what she was.
But she was going to get tenure, even if her body fell apart as she did.
A suffers from really bad case of dry, chafed skin, it's painful, and the one thing that works wonders and almost instantly, is a coconut lotion.
It's just that their partner B has one scent/ingredient that never fails to set them off sneezing their head off. Coconut.
But B knows how painful A's cracked dry skin is so they never complain. And A is always extra apologetic when they know they simply have to pull out the coconut stuff.
And then you can add in the kink however you wish, lol.
Two appointments two days in a row. Therapist yesterday, doctor today. I cried both days because I'm so exhausted and my head feels like the thoughts flutter past so quickly I can't really finish a thought. I feel like I don't even know how to think right now. And the assessment hasn't even started yet. I'm just so tired and everything feels so pointless. The insane heat isn't helping either.
Dr. asked about the past year. I got to the point where I had to mention my cat passing away and it just hit me so hard how much I need him. How desperately I wish I could just put my face in his fur and shut the world out and just listen to him purring and feel his unconditional love and know I don't have to pretend and script every interaction with him the way I have to do with every person I ever meet, including my own family. My black knight-cat. I choked up talking about him and she noticed and asked if he was "my favourite" (knowing I had another cat that passed away in 2024). And it's not really fair to call favourites among the pets I've had because I really did love them all, but yes, yes he was my favourite, he was my soulmate, he was my everything, and I have never felt as lonely as I have this year, after he passed, and I started crying.
I've never had a doctor wrapping up an appointment that fast EVER. She was like "okay, I can use what's already in your chart to finish this, I'll send the note to you as soon as I'm done, thank you for coming in, take care of yourself."
I'm not sure if she was just trying to avoid having to offer comfort or if she thought it was the kindest thing to do to just let me go home (honestly I think it was a combination), but I used to have a psychologist back in the day who intentionally made me cry and then sent me on my way mid-breakdown, and this was unpleasantly similar. Except at least the doctor wasn't trying to make me cry.
Told my mom I can't do our Saturday dinner this weekend. She accepted it but she still thinks it would be better for me to have company. And I'm too tired trying again to explain that other people are what drains me the most, because I have to play someone I'm not and I always get it wrong. Withdrawing is my way of preserving the energy I have left, because I no longer get any input of energy from anywhere.
It's not that I don't want to be with people ever. I do. But I no longer have the energy and ability to adapt and try to be more palatable for others, so it would have to be someone who actually wants to be around me, the real me, without requiring me to change, adapt, hide parts of me and pretend to have skills I don't, and I have yet to find such a person irl.
I'll probably delete this later. I just had to write something down before my head explodes. I'm so tired. I miss my cats. Both of them. I miss feeling a streak of hope that things could get better.
In the meanwhile, this song pretty much sums it up.
witch putting a silencing spell on a handkerchief and then getting too used to it for one reason or another (the fetish; being generally guarded about sneezing; etc). it’s only after they’ve already loaned it or lost the spell on it that they are bodily reminded just how hard it is to silence their sneeze without it
A is a university student in their 20s who has no family (maybe they're an exchange student if you don't want a sad backstory lol), but a friend, B, has invited them to come along over the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever family-centered holiday you prefer). They're a bit hesitant accepting because they don't want to intrude on family time but are assured they're very welcome.
They get there and A makes sure to immediately go thank the hostess for letting them tag along, especially on such short notice, but as they do, they realise that this will be the most unintentionally torturous bliss they will ever experience... because the hostess C (the mother or an aunt perhaps of the friend's) is this shockingly attractive older woman, and she has caught the sneeziest, drippiest cold A has ever seen. And A happens to have a secret but very intense snz kink. 👀😏
(maybe A is even one of us germaphobic snz lovers, giving an additional layer of anxiety to the horn)
From there it could be a straightforward snz or contagion scenario, or it could get spicy if Sneezy Lady C realises that the younger visitor seems very flustered around her. Could get into caretaking territory as well, which would be even funnier if A is actually studying to become a nurse or doctor. 😏😅
A would of course feel a bit weird for being so turned on by C, who is their friend's family member, but oh dear Lord the woman sneezes like a goddess.
A very, very cold-stricken goddess. Bless her poor sneezy nose. 🥵
Someone who just won a trophy for whatever reason (sports or something else) kissing the trophy as cameras capture the victorious moment.
What no one, least of all the excited winner, knows, is that the person giving out the prize has an awful cold and sneezed all over it behind the scenes earlier... and now it's only a matter of time before the viruses invade their body too... 😈
Somebody taking off their sun glasses to clean them, sneezing on the freshly cleaned lenses due to phonic reflex, cleaning the sunglasses again, repeat.
Thinking about my older lesbian professor OCs again... I think the strict older ice queen character is naturally the type who never gets sick (but when she does she really does). BUT I also got the idea that maybe when she was younger, a new professor at her first real job, she caught EVERYTHING that she crossed paths with. She was always sick. Then after a few years her immune defence was like "oh fuck this, enough!" and built a (nearly) impenetrable fortress. 😆
I can so imagine her telling her lover (when one of them is sick with the garden variety campus cold - or maybe both are sick) what sounds like extremely tall tales about all the times she was sick in her first couple of years as a professor, with all kinds of completely wild diseases on top of the usual colds and flus and strep throats. 😂
"Oh, and then there was that time when I had the bubonic plague..." "YOU DID NOT HAVE THE BLACK DEATH, CLARISSA!" "Well... actually, it was after an excursion to Arizona to interview the indigenous people about stories passed down orally over generations..."
😂 Don't ask, I just could hear the exchange in my head clear as day and I nearly spat my drink because I laughed so hard!
This heat made me think of one summer when it was so fucking hot, and I had been drinking alcohol and was sitting in front of a fan all evening. Woke up the next day with a horrible summer cold. I had been to the doctor's getting my blood drawn the day before, and I had noticed that the nurse was sniffling constantly, these light, wet sniffles. I assumed it was allergies but when I got sick two days later I suspected she was actually coming down with a cold. I usually don't get sick from very brief exposure like that, but I still think the fact that the very next day I was sweating and overheating all day, then had a bunch of wine and cooled down by a fan made it actually break out. 😆
(I was so mad, obviously, but in hindsight I think it's hilarious to spot those details. I know you don't catch colds from being cold, but I strongly suspect there's something to the idea that if you've been exposed to a virus and then get chilled, especially if you were warm before, it can cause the illness to break out).
I have cramps so bad I just curl up on the bed whimpering, wishing I had a girlfriend to hold me and comfort me and... maybe stifle allergic sneezes against my shoulder or back of my neck... 🥺
