thinking about sick sh/ane having no choice but to use shitty paper napkins as tissues…
he’s in public with his team post game— he’d done his best to get out of the celebration, but his excuse of “i’ll go next time” had finally caught up to him.
someone notices him sniffling (he does his best not to but he really can’t help it) and offers him a few leftover takeout napkins from their bag/pocket. they’re the shitty, cheap, dissolve-in-your-hand-but-simultaneously-scratch-your-skin kind.
but his nose is intent on revolting against his every wish for it to behave, so he has no choice but to accept with a stuffy “thangk you. sorry”.
he folds one of the napkins in half, creasing it neatly at the middle with pinched fingers and raising it to his nose. he starts by swiping it over his philtrum, collecting the moisture that’s situated itself in the groove above his upper lip. then, he presses it to his septum, forcing a liquid sniffle as the pressure urges his nose to run harder.
the paper is rough against his already irritated skin— he doesn’t like the feeling of it on his fingers, let alone his nose.
operating as quietly as he can, he makes it through the pile of napkins he’d been given. wipe, press, sniffle, pinch, wipe, press, sniffle, pinch. anything to keep him from having to blow his nose in public.
anyways. yeah. i just need to put him in a situation where he’s coming down with a cold and his nose is constantly running and he’s overstimulated by the napkins. pink nose teary eyed sh/ane h/ollander <3
and it’s over as soon as he sneezes. they’re not loud, but they immediately demolish the napkins with how wet they are
depending on when this takes place in the timeline, i can see him going home to il/ya and earning a soft “oh, moya lyubov, your nose is so red,” to which sh/ane just nods (yes he’s teary eyed. no i don’t make the rules)
can I request a fic where Shane notices ilya is getting sick before Ilya does, and Ilya is in denial all morning as it becomes more and more obvious.
Hi there!! Thank you so much for this request!! I had a LOT of fun with this one hehe
My hc that Shane can tell if Ilya has a cold/allergies by the sound of his sneezes is inspired by one of my all-time favorite fics (ironically featuring our other favorite Japanese/Russian skater pair) by the absolute LEGEND @hessickjim! Also inspired by conversations w the amazing @softsicknose, more to come soon <333
cw: mess, slight nsfw. feat. kink!Shane and annoying!Ilya 😈
——
“Hahh…!”
Shane’s head whipped around at the sharp, desperate hitching to see Ilya’s head jerk downward in the direction of his shoulder.
“haAADZCHHHuhh!”
“Bless you,” Shane said, putting down his copy of The Hockey News on the kitchen counter as Ilya geared up for another sneeze - there was never, had never been, and would never be only one sneeze from the man - and Shane bobbed his head unconsciously in time with the next two sneezes that erupted from him.
“h’ISZCHHH’oo! hy’AADSZCH’ooo! -whoo,” Ilya let out a little breath, shaking his head slightly with a short sniff before going back to scrolling on his laptop.
“Bless you,” Shane repeated, a little slowly. Hm. Something about the sound of those sneezes…Ilya was generally a pretty loud and unabashed sneezer, which was something that Shane secretly admired about him. He had the kind of easy confidence that Shane had never quite been able to possess, even while doing something as normal and innocuous as sneezing. But this triple had been…draining, based on the dazed look on Ilya’s face as he brought his palm up to rub violently at his nose. When would he learn that doing that would never help, Shane thought at the same time as Ilya’s expression turned irritated and his nostrils flared anew.
“hah! hahESHHHhh! ha’ATZCHHH’hoo! HAADTSZCH’ooo!”
“Bless you,” Shane repeated, frowning. “Ilya, are you feeling okay?”
Ilya sniffled again and looked at Shane, pointing a finger at his chest. “Me?”
Shane gave him an exasperated look. “Yes, you. Who else?”
“Da, of course I am feeling okay. Why?” Shane did not miss how he thumbed at the sides of his nose. Hmm.
“Are you…getting sick?”
Ilya raised an eyebrow but turned his eyes back to his laptop. “Sick? No, not at all. I am feeling fine.”
Shane paused. “Um, okay. Are you sure?”
Ilya nodded hastily, starting to get up from his barstool at the kitchen table. “Yes, all is good. -snf- I am thinking of riding bike in the gym. Want to join? You are planning on doing yoga today, yes?” He closed his laptop and started walking away.
“I…yeah. Sure. I’ll be right there.” Shane’s face scrunched in confusion. What was with him?
In the home gym, Ilya stuck his headphones into his ears and started pedaling on the stationary bike. Shane watched him as he laid down his yoga mat and took off his sandals. There was a tenseness in Ilya’s shoulders, and his legs loped around in circles a bit more…sloppily than usual. Like it was taking great effort to move his body forward.
Shane was in downward dog when he heard the familiar high-pitched gasp of Ilya hitching towards a sneeze. His head snapped up so fast that he felt a little dizzy, and he had to bring himself to a seated position so he didn’t topple to the floor.
He had a perfect view of Ilya’s face in the floor-to-ceiling mirror as his face contorted into one of pure sneezy desperation.
“hyihh!” Ilya had stopped pedaling, blue eyes narrowing and looking skyward, mouth gaping open, nostrils huge and flaring…
He sneezed openly, harshly, loudly, with no covering whatsoever. Despite Ilya being at least ten feet away from the mirror, Shane saw droplets land on the reflective surface. Insanely, instead of grossing him out, it made his mouth go dry.
“Bless you,” he called over as Ilya took his towel and blew fiercely into it, his expression still looking a little tickly afterward. He rubbed his nose up and down through the cloth, and desire shot through Shane’s body at the small, relieved sigh he gave.
“Thank you.” Still touching his nose, Ilya got off the bike and looked over at Shane, then at the bulge in his pants. He stared, transfixed, and Shane could practically see him salivating. It made the familiar creep of anticipation and excitement in Shane’s tummy all the more sweeter. Then Ilya shook his head slightly and cleared his throat, giving Shane a weak smile. “I am going to shower. I will be right back.” He left the room.
Shane’s jaw dropped. What the fuck? Ilya never resisted touching Shane, especially when he was clearly aroused. By the time that Shane had uncrossed his legs from Sukhasana and made it to the door, Ilya was long gone. Shane huffed, miffed, and turned towards the mirror. The droplets were still there, and Shane blushed and wiped them away with a towel, realizing why Ilya had left him there. With fucking blue balls.
Goddammit. Why was Ilya downplaying that he was obviously catching a cold? Did he feel like he couldn’t trust Shane with such an admission? No, that wasn’t possible, Shane reassured himself despite the anxiety gnawing at his brain. Then what? Well, he was going to find out.
Adjusting himself with an embarrassing little noise, Shane headed to the bedroom. The muffled sound of the shower turning off greeted him. He sat on the bed, arms crossed, and waited for Ilya to exit the bathroom.
Ilya came out with a towel slung low on his hips and another rubbing down his wet curls. He saw Shane and stopped walking. “You are stalking me?” he said with a little smirk. Shane did not miss the tiny sniffle he gave and how it made his reddening nose twitch.
“Ilya, cut the shit. You’re clearly getting a cold. That’s why you won’t touch me. You don’t want me to get sick too.”
Ilya was quiet for a moment, looking at Shane contemplatively. For a moment, Shane thought he might be waiting for a sneeze to come. Again. Then he said, “Prove it.”
Shane gawked at him. “What?”
“Prove it. How do you know that I am getting the cold?”
Shane paused. Before he spoke, he had to remind himself, Ilya knows about you. You don’t have to hide anymore. He doesn’t think you’re a freak. He loves you. “Your sneezes sound different,” he said, feeling himself flush from top to toe.
Ilya’s eyes scanned Shane up and down, and a huge grin overtook his face. “Oh? My sneezes? What is so different about them?”
Shane was going to fucking kill him.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” Ilya said. “You look more like…you are going to eat me.” He sat down next to Shane and started brushing a lock of hair over his ear. “What do my sneezes sound like, Shane?” He said in a low purr.
Shane felt himself start to get hard again. “They sound…tired. Um…heavy. Like they’re taking a lot out of you. You keep having to catch your breath after.”
“Hmm. I see.” Ilya was petting a fingertip over the curve of his neck now. “Anything else?”
The fucking bastard. “They’re louder. Even more than usual,” he said while side-eyeing Ilya, who gave him a mock-bashful ‘who, me?’ look. “And they make you sound all stuffed-up after.”
“You are very observant of me,” Ilya said with a generous sniffle next to Shane’s ear. Shane could hear how congested he was starting to sound. He swallowed, not sure what to do next. Ilya made the decision for him, gasping and burying his face in the towel he had used for his hair.
“ah’IDZSCHH’umf! hRASHHH’hfff! haRISCHHHhhmf!”
“Bless you,” Shane said, concerned when Ilya started coughing and couldn’t stop. Shane put a hand to his back as he sputtered. “Are you okay?!” When Ilya straightened up, Shane placed a hand on his chest and started to rub in soothing circles. “Jesus. That sounds like it hurts.”
“Spasibo. I’m -hgkm!- I’m okay.” Shane was crestfallen when Ilya gently removed his hand and scooted further away on the bed from him. “Shane,” he started. Shane did not like the uncharacteristically nervous look on his face.
“What’s wrong, Ilya? Why won’t you touch me?” he cried out.
Ilya looked surprised at the emotion in Shane’s voice, and started to move a hand to Shane’s cheek when he stopped and placed it back in his lap. He took a breath in and out through his nose, which probably hadn’t been the best idea, judging by the way he needed to pinch it between his thumb and pointer finger immediately after. He sniffled, the sound thick and wet. “I am feeling…not great. Training camp is in two weeks. I do not want you to catch something from me.” He avoided Shane’s gaze and buried his nose back into the towel, blowing his nose with a painful-sounding honk that hit Shane right in the heart (and the dick).
Shane put a hand to Ilya’s thigh, and Ilya tensed but didn’t move. “Ilya. It’s okay. You’re sick, and I want to…take care of you,” he admitted shyly. “Even if I got sick too, two weeks is plenty of time to get over a cold. I’d be fine. We’d both be fine.” He snuck a glance at Ilya, and the softness in his boyfriend’s eyes took his breath away. “To be honest,” he continued with a little laugh, “I’ve barely even been thinking about training camp lately.”
Ilya raised an eyebrow. “You? Not possible.”
“I’m excited for it, of course, but…I’ve been having so much fun being with you this summer that I haven’t really been thinking about much else.” And I don’t want it to end, he thought.
Ilya’s hand grabbed his. “Me, too,” he said softly. They smiled at each other, and Shane cupped Ilya’s cheek in his palm. They still had plenty of time.
When Ilya started to nibble and lick at Shane’s neck, Shane moaned and said, “You should take some medicine for that cough.”
“Boooo! Tastes gross. Later.”
Shane made a show of rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands, but there was no hiding his wide smile. “You’re a baby.”
Ilya pressed a kiss to Shane’s cheek with an accompanying sniffle. “I’m your baby.”
“That,” Shane said, placing himself right in Ilya’s lap, where he always belonged, “is true. Now touch me, please, you fucking asshole.”
“Yes, I like all of those words, Mr. Bossy.” The wicked expression on Ilya’s face deserved to be painted and hung in the Louvre. Fuck the Mona Lisa, this was the real attraction people should come from far and wide to see. Michelangelo’s David come to life with cherubic golden curls and a crude grin. (Also, ahem, much larger assets.) “And then you will take good care of me?” he said, batting his lashes, blue eyes all pretty and sensual. He sniffled again and scrunched his perfect nose. Shane was so happy he could die.
“And then I will take the best care of you,” he agreed, placing a big smooch onto Ilya’s nose before taking his mouth into his own with a hungry kiss.
I/lya having the nastiest, messiest sneezing fit in the locker room after his first practice with the Centaurs.
It’s probably the new environment. Cleaning products. Whatever, he doesn’t even care, he just doubles over with a huge double directed into his elbow. Thank God that S/hane is always pestering him to do so, because the double is embarrassingly messy and loud enough that the chatter in the locker room dies.
They bless him, but I/lya just rolls his eyes as he directs another double into his cupped hands this time. Bad idea; he barely has time to wipe them on his pants before another pair of sneezes overtake him and this time he’s directing the triple into the general direction of his shoulder.
He doesn’t really seem to bother to properly cover anymore, he just frantically tries to find something in his bag. He is vaguely aware of his teammates blessing him again, sounding more concerned, but he shakes his head again, and tries to stifle another double with two fingers.
Bad fucking idea, he thinks, because the stifling obviously makes him snap into a double sneeze. Well, six pairs of doubles, but not like he can count because at this point he just squeezes his eyes shut, bringing his jersey over his nose. He makes a mental note that wash it before S/hane can touch it, because he doesn’t want his boyfriend to deal with his snot.
He feels heat creeping up on his cheeks as he sneezes three more times, desperate, harsh, still part of his fucking twelve sneeze fit. He is aware of his teammates blessing him again, definitely concerned.
He sees someone trying to his him a tissue but he just shakes his head again, half turns around and he directs the remaining fit of sneezes (six, to be exact) into a towel he picked up from his bag. The end of the fit is harsh and messy, and he needs to blow his fucking nose anyway, so he doesn’t even lift his hand from the towel, he just blows. And blows.
It takes him about two full minutes to clear his itchy (to be fair, it’s always itchy) nose, and when he looks up again, the whole team is staring at him. He hopes he is not blushing.
“Holy shit” says someone.
“Bless you, jesus” he hears someone else say.
He just rolls his eyes. He just wants to tell them to get used to it, but instead he just sneezes against his shoulder again.
i/lya standing at the edge of the rink, gripping the edge, with his jersey pulled over the bottom half of his face, jackknifing in half with sneeze…after sneeze…after sneeze…as his team waits for their captain to pull it together.
CW: Mess (sorry, Arlo's not usually gross, I don't know what happened)
Link to all parts: A Week of Falling
* * *
Chapter Four
What Arlo needs more than anything is rest — something that, unfortunately, seems to be in short supply. Last night may have been the worst he’s ever slept.
Arlo’s noticed that Ben’s desire for cuddling seems to multiply tenfold when he’s unwell, though he’s always refrained from this impulse so as not to spread his germs. But since the germs have clearly already declared victory over Arlo’s immune system, Ben’s become more relaxed when it comes to keeping his distance. Consequently, Arlo spent the night with his sniffly boyfriend’s head on his chest and arm wrapped around his waist.
The problem is that this boyfriend woke up every thirty minutes to cough dryly against Arlo’s chest. Or to sneeze. There were many instances when Arlo had awoken to the sounds of harsh sneezes followed by the feeling of mist against his arm or neck. Each time he’d awake, he’d become aware of his own dry throat and have to drain an entire glass of water, which inevitably led to frequent bathroom trips throughout the night. He doubts he’d gotten more than forty consecutive minutes of sleep at a time.
Ben, though also suffering from a night of poor sleep, is up and getting ready for work.
“Why the fuck can’t any of my fucking socks match? Where do the missing ones go? Does the dryer just fucking eat them? I shouldn’t have to lose ten minutes of my goddamn morning because something as stupid as socks.”
Arlo, while lying in bed, watches his boyfriend throw sock after sock out of the dresser drawer. He wants to ask Ben if could, please, try to remember to put the socks back in the drawer before leaving, but all that comes out is a weak, “Can you —” before he dissolves into a coughing fit.
“Fuck, did I wake you?” Ben asks, making his way over to the bed.
Ben had, in fact, woken up Arlo several times during the night and also, unintentionally, when his work alarm had gone off. And even if he hadn’t, all the irate grumbling about socks would, indeed, have probably done it. That doesn’t seem important to mention, though. So, instead, he continues to cough.
“I’ll get you some tea,” Ben says, already spinning around, ready to rush to the kitchen.
“No!” Arlo says, perhaps a little too quickly because Ben’s brows immediately furrow. “It’s just, um… the tea kettle broke, last week, remember? And….” Arlo coughs again, though this time it’s more a stalling tactic than a reflex.
“And? We have a microwave. I know you prefer the kettle, but a microwave will work in a pinch.”
“It won’t.” Arlo winces as he says it.
“It won’t what?”
“Work in a pinch,” Arlo says, groaning slightly. “You need to actually cook the water, Ben.”
Ben blinks several times. “What the fuck do you think the microwave’s doing to the water, Arlo? Making it dance? What the hell? The microwave does cook the water.”
Arlo sighs, feeling an ache form in the center of his forehead. “It doesn’t cook it evenly, Ben, and for tea, the process needs to be very specific. Or it will be too weak. Cooking is a science.”
And, again, Arlo is met with several more slow blinks from his boyfriend. “It’s… it’s fucking tea. It’s leaf water. Who gives a shit if it’s weak? It’s — and I can not emphasize this enough — tea. If a microwave can cook a potato, it can cook water.”
Arlo has a few things to say about the effectiveness of cooking potatoes in the microwave, but he’s tired, sick, and the energy Ben is currently exuding is honestly a little too much this early in the morning. So, instead, he sinks further into the bed, ignoring his bladder’s protestations for him to get up and go to the bathroom.
The sound of Ben blowing his nose hits Arlo’s ears and he burrows under the covers, pulling them up over his head as much as he can while still being able to breathe. After the noseblowing, comes a sneeze. Then another sneeze. And another…. Arlo winces at the loud noises, wishing that this man — who very likely is the love of his life — would just go to work already so he can finally have some peace and quiet. Then he chastises himself because it’s not Ben’s fault that every sound he makes feels like a hammer against Arlo’s skull.
“I texted Mike, telling him I’m still not 100%, but that I’m feeling much, much better. So, he told me I can come in. But —” Arlo hears something hit the floor — Ben’s phone? It sounds as loud as if he’d dropped a fifty pound weight. “Shit, after a day of being lazy, I’m already losing all my coordination skills. Anyway, I’m supposed to avoid customers as much as possible and, I quote, ‘not breathe on anything,’ but other than that, I’m good to go.”
Arlo mumbles something, hoping it shows the appropriate amount of… whatever emotion he’s supposed to be showing. He barely knows what Ben’s talking about. He’s still not sure why any talking at all is occurring when it’s this ridiculously early in the morning — nearly 7 AM . An unacceptable time to be awake when he’s taking a sick day.
“— And then Mr. Roberts isn’t coming in until 2, so I should mostly be fine just to stay on the computer and do, you know, housekeeping type stuff. Also —”
Tuning out Ben’s voice, Arlo mentally lists some things he absolutely has to get done today. Yes, he has to rest, but he’s also a grad student and a full-time teacher, as well as a cat owner.
Cat owner.
A smile tugs at Arlo’s lips even in this state of pure misery. He imagines Ben’s face every time he uses the phrase and the kinds of words that always follow.
“Does she act like you own her, Arlo? No! She is her own, independent, cat-person and we should simply be honored that she lets us share our lives with her.”
Ben can be so cute when he talks about Classy, especially considering how at the beginning of their relationship he’d accused Arlo as being the one to coddle her.
" — And no one cares when Marcus hangs around without shoes, but I wear a pair of jeans with a few stains, suddenly that matters and I’m the unhygienic one, so, anyway —”
Realizing Ben is somehow still talking, Arlo works harder to push away the voice. He tries to recall where his line of thoughts originally began, and… — yes, the many obligations he has despite his body screaming at him to do nothing today.
He’s a cat dad — not owner — and he needs to make sure said cat has enough food and water, as well as treats. He also has a very distinct and concerning memory from the night before that reminds him they have basically no food. These are things he will have to fix today. He can do that. It’s a small list, really, when he considers it. The first thing on the list would be to do his bathroom business. Then, to go to the store. Then come back home and feed his cat, followed by checking online for any important update on the classes he’s taking and whether his most recent paper has been graded. Then, finally, he will be free to rest.
The only thing, though, is that this isn’t actually how his life works and that the steps could be more accurately described along the lines as, “Sit up in bed, wait several minutes for the brain fog to clear. Then, stand up. Wait several minutes for his joints to loosen slightly. Then, begin the slow, painful walk to the bathroom. After the arduous process of relieving himself, turn on the faucet and hope the pain in his fingers lessens before he has to drive.” And so on.
Well, it is what it is, he supposes, so he may as well begin the process. He stops by weakly flipping the covers off himself. He hears a very disgruntled sounding groan and he’s alarmed to realize it’s coming from him.
“Oh, hey, stay in bed! Just because I’m yapping away doesn’t mean you have to get up. You’re taking it easy today, remember?”
Only now as the mental fog recedes slightly, does Arlo realize Ben does actually sound much better — his voice less hoarse, though there’s still a residual nasally tone there.
Despite the odds being against him, Arlo manages to successfully sit up in bed. He rubs at his eyes, then winces at the pain in his wrist alerting him to the fact that he must have moved it slightly wrong.
“Arlo, seriously. Today is the day for complete and total bedrest, remember?” Ben says, his tone admonishing.
Arlo’s vision is useless without contacts and his glasses must have fallen off his nightstand onto the floor — as they so often do — because they’re not there when he grabs for them. So Ben’s mostly a blur, but he still does his best to shoot a glare his way.
“My bladder doesn’t care if I’m sick, Ben,” Arlo says, his voice scraping against his raw throat. He closes his eyes as he feels pressure building in his head and the sensation of everything in his sinuses shifting around now that he’s in an upright position. “Also, I dod’t kdow how idclidned I feel to —” He pauses, frowns, then sniffs. “How indclided I feel to listednd to —” Another sniff. “To listen to someone wearing dnothidng but mismatched socks and boxers.”
“Hey, I am well on my way to being fully dressed for work. As soon as I find jeans that aren’t covered in stains,” Ben says. “And I give you permission to pee, but after that, you will do nothing else but lie in bed while your body recovers.”
Arlo glares again at the Ben-shaped blob. “What about eatidng? Or feeding the cat? Or gettidng the mail?” He sniffs, only it only serves to exacerbate the tickle that has been brooding somewhere deep within his sinuses since he woke up. He has no time to do anything other than feel a sharp flare of panic at what’s getting ready to happen.
“HRRkkgSHUH!”
That… that wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Before the sneeze, his nose had been full to the brim, so he was expecting something much messier and —
“HUH’RRGKshooo! H’UggSHOO!”
Oh.
His cheeks on fire, he briefly loses his mind, his brain sending no signals whatsoever for how to handle this situation. Finally, though, instinct kicks in and he brings up his wrist to tend to the thick strings of mess hanging from his nostrils. But his wrist screams in pain — did he accidentally sleep on it during the night? — so he lets it drop.
He’s been awake for five minutes, and he’s already managed to make some pretty egregious mistakes. He should have known better than to try to stifle. He’d been bent over with his head toward the floor right before this last flurry of sneezes. So, now the floor shines with the evidence from this awful cold. Heat creeps up his neck at the abject embarrassment he feels of Ben just witnessing one of the grossest moments of his life.
He needs to clean up — desperately needs to clean up — but his breath is already shuddering, thick with sickness and mucus begging to be expelled.
“Eck’KSHHhhh!”
Somehow that sneeze made his nose itch more. He finally has enough sense to swing up his left arm to catch two more congestion-laden sneezes.
The problem now is that his arm is practically stuck to his face. “Ben, can you please leave?” The question comes out shaky.
“And miss the opportunity to be a white knight coming in on his dark horse?”
The words take a while to break through his panic, but even when they do, he can utter nothing but, “To be a what?”
“The fucking phrase, Arlo. The thing people say. The person who comes in on their horse to save the day? A white knight… and — ”
“A kdnight in shidingk armbor?”
“Oh, fuck, sweetheart, I can hear the cold in your voice like… like it’s fucking alive. Like it’s here with us in the room as an entirely separate entity.”
Even with his head buried into his arm, Arlo manages to shake his head. “You kdnow that a dark horse is andother expression endtirely, right? And so is ‘white kndight.’ You’re mixidng up three different — HHMPshhh! Hmmgksshoo!”
Arlo feels something being pressed against the back of his hand before hearing Ben say, “And here you are, my prince — a handkerchief, bestowed upon you by your ever-loyal knight.” He even gives a bow. The mock formality of it all is slightly undermined, though, by the fact that Ben is still only in mismatched socks and boxers.
Arlo fumbles with the handkerchief before he’s able to get a decent enough hold, but once he does, he unleashes an alarming amount of fluid into the cloth.
“ — And I’d be such a fucking awesome knight,” Ben continues as Arlo releases the contents of his entire head into the handkerchief. “I don’t think people would think that because, well, you know, I’m just a bit lanky, but I don’t think I’d have to be buff. I mean, okay, I know people probably think of guys like… like Connor when they think of knights.” Head still buried in the handkerchief, Arlo can’t actually see Ben’s sneer, but he knows it’s there, nonetheless.
“But,” Ben continues. Then, he stops.
“But, what?” Arlo asks, wiping the rims of his nostrils as he finally lifts his head.
“Well — okay, if we’re being real here, I’d be a pretty terrible knight. Like, I think it’s pretty inarguable, actually. I just didn’t want you to kick me out of the room because of a few sneezes and a little snot. So… I needed to distract you,” Ben says with a shrug. “And rambling usually works.”
Arlo stares at Ben with his goofy looking grin and bites the inside of his cheek to keep his own smile from forming. “That’s very manipulative of you.”
“Me? Manipulative? Sir Ben the Knight? Nope, couldn’t be me.”
That does evoke a smile from Arlo as well as a bit of a snort, which brings attention to the tickle creeping up his sinuses. “You wouldn’t — hd’tchh! —” He catches the soft sneeze into the handkerchief easily enough before continuing. “You wouldn’t be that bad. You’re fiercely loyal. That’s an important quality in — hHTchh! IHtchhooo! — ihd a kdnight.”
Sighing, Ben rubs his hand soothingly over Arlo’s back. “That really is such a nasty cold. I am so sorry for giving it to you.”
“It’s — hht’choooo!”
“I will leave you fresh hankies, okay? Plenty. And water. And some Tylenol if you get achy. Well,” he stops, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re kind of always achy, but you know what I mean. There’s plenty more soy curl soup in the fridge and you’re going to have the whole day to rest up and let your immune system do its thing. Your stupid cold won’t even know what to do with how prepared you’ll be. It’s going to regret ever choosing you as a host, Arlo, I know it. You are going to annihilate this thing.”
Arlo laughs softly at the dramatics, then meets Ben’s gaze. “I love you,” he says.
Ben’s brows draw together as if he doesn’t understand why Arlo would choose this moment to proclaim his love. “I love you too,” he says, voice trailing off as he looks down. His gaze quickly snaps back to Arlo. “Arlo, your feet!”
Quickly looking down and seeing his feet are, in fact, still there, Arlo frowns before asking, “What?”
“You’re not wearing socks! Oh my god. You’re literally the one who showed me that article about socks! About how they help boost the immune system because of — because of — fucking… circulation or some shit like that. And now here you are, completely sockless! Arlo!”
Arlo sniffs thickly. “Ben, the point of the article wasn’t — it wasn’t really about socks,” he says, rubbing his itchy nose with the back of his wrist. “It was about keeping your feet warm. And my feet are already pretty warm. They’ve been under thick covers all night”
But Ben is spinning around, heading back to their dresser, no doubt now on a mission to find the softest and warmest socks they own. And not for Ben’s own feet, this time, but for Arlo’s.
“Babe,” Ben calls out as Arlo finally begins the process of standing up. “Do you want the ones with the penguins or the ones with the seahorses? Or maybe both? Both probably wouldn’t hurt.”
“The seahorse ones are fine,” Arlo says as he hobbles toward the doorway.
“Are you sure you don’t want both? Maybe wool ones? I think we have wool ones somewhere. I mean, not real wool because… you know, sheep. But really thick, warm ones. Like Walmart’s version of wool. Just hold on, I’ll find —”
Arlo interrupts him by planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “I love you,” he says, fixing his gaze firmly on Ben’s.
“Um, I love you, too, but —”
“I love you,” Arlo states again. “But you’ve got to let me get to the bathroom or we’re going to have a bigger issue than socks.”
And with that, he walks away leaving Ben staring helplessly into the dresser drawer.
the halloween party just ended and a guest with a cold is still waiting on their ride 🍂
(unspecified gender, mess lite)
-
Some trees on the block are more eager to achieve new hues than others. Perhaps they knew there was going to be an audience tonight. Perhaps they had stage fright. For humans on the other hand, that was tradition. The gatherings in stuffy houses. Drinks and knives and pumpkins. Endless hats, masks and accessories.
By the time it’s all done, the sun is long gone. Under the streetlights’ orange glow, the remaining green of the trees are dyed amber and various steeped tea colours, rustling, bowing with the wind. The canopy of the locust tree in the front yard shields your eyes from the moon, perfectly round and as piercing as a stadium light.
“Hey,” you say, coming up to the slumped figure on the porch steps. In their lap is the tissue box from the living room.
They lift their elbow and cough, trying hopelessly to clear their throat. It’s no better than earlier. “Hi,” they squeak.
They look like they could fall asleep right there. You sigh inwardly. The wind picks up a bit, and you wrap an arm around yourself. In the other, you clutch a beige knitted blanket. Just as you open your mouth to speak, a souped up car starts popping off loudly somewhere on the main road.
“Mbusic,” they mutter, if you’ve heard them right. Their head turns and they begin to cough again. It takes some effort to clear their throat, weakly cutting through thick phlegm.
“Just the sound of that exhaust gets you?”
“Fuck off, *sdrff!*”
An earthy breeze turns, tainted with the smells of main road fast food.
“You know,” you begin, taking a casual step nearer. “if you’re dead set on waiting out here, I… figured I’d bring you a costume.”
As you’re unfolding the blanket, they look back at you. Their shoulders descend with an audible sigh that catches on the thickness in their throat. They cough lightly, lifting their forearm.
“A ghost?” Their voice is a rare sound. Thick, and fraying at the same time. “That seebs appropriate.”
“Porch ghost,” you specify. “Ghost of our old porch. Before we redid it.”
They snort-laugh, unintentionally ejecting the stuffiness in their nose. Quickly, they start sniffling, turning away. “Sorry. *sdrfh! koF!* God…” Their hands pull a new pair of tissues and get to work folding them.
“That’s okay,” your eyes avert shyly. “Don’t worry about it.” You wait for their productive blows to end before checking: “You okay?”
“Yeah,” they say, bassy and nasal. “*sngk!* Thagks.” They tug the blanket around their shoulders.
There’s a pause and the rustling of a skittering leaf across the sidewalk. You wonder a little about where their ride must be. In the dim brandy-coloured light, they look a bit like Linus and his blanket waiting faithfully for the Great Pumpkin.
With good nature, you ask. “Your ride coming soon?”
“Ub, yeah.” Their tone lacks confidence. “*sddrfh!* They said…” You peek over and see their brow wrinkling. “The’hheyy said- ESSCHh-!!-hiew- oh gosh, excuse be. *snrk!*” They sniffle hard, and sigh. “Sorry, ode sec.” Their back turns, and- “hihHH, hUHd’ESSCHIUE-!!”
“Bless you.”
“-‘Eshh!!”
“Bless you!” You can’t help but wince.
There’s a pause. Their frame is still frozen. “hAH’ESCHHiew!! ..ah. *snrff!*”
“Bless you, wow,” your hand lifts to gently stroke their back. “You okay?”
“Yup, peachy,” - delivered in a groan. They give in and blow their nose, hard and brief. Slowly, they pivot back around. The streetlights give their teary eyes a movie-like shine, and they’re pretty. Their nose is very flushed, scrunching, contorting with irritation. Somehow their humour soldiers through, surfacing in weak chuckles.
“Sorry, wow… *snrgk!* Umb…” They glance up again, out at the street. “They said there’s… *grmm!* traffic.”
The car, somehow still within earshot, begins to crackle and echo loudly off into the distance.
“Probably cuz of, y’kdow, the codcert,” they add dryly, making you smirk.
You both sit, listening as it fades off like a drinking song. Another wind comes by, making you shiver. You glance sideways at the tired guest. Their eyes are drooping, and they sound pitifully congested. There’s an obvious soreness about their breaths and snuffles. As the cool air bites at your face, you start to speak.
“You, uh… You think I could lure you back inside with some tea? There’s gotta be some around. You got a favourite?”
Bruce fumbled for the alarm clock and switched it off with a heavy sigh.
He'd slept. Like the dead, for once. No memory of the tossing and turning that so often propelled him back down to the cave—not even fleeting moments awake. Just a stretch of unbroken nothing.
It ought have left him well-rested. Instead, his eyes ached and he had the vague impression of a tape someone had forgotten to rewind before returning to its box.
He pried his eyes open. Blinked. The light stung no more than usual. He rolled over. His shoulders offered only a token protest. He swallowed once. A faint scratch in the back of his throat. Barely there.
Which only left….
He sniffled sharply—squelching—grimaced. Waited a few moments.
Nothing. Not even the faintest prickle.
With a satisfied nod, Bruce sat up. The wet in his sinuses shifted, crackled. He raised an arm to his face with a grimace—
Warmth trickled down his lips. The discomfort settled.
Bruce sighed. Glanced at the door—closed, no shadow peeking through—and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Priority one, then—containing the mess.
Well. No. Priority one would be avoiding Alfred. But priority two—checking the bathroom cupboard. Priority three—an excuse, if anyone at the office asked. Four—something to keep Alfred distracted. Five…an escape route, should the distraction fail.
Bruce nodded to himself and stood, stretching. His lower back crunched, thrumming almost pleasantly.
As if in disagreement, something pinched in his right shoulder. He stretched again, but it didn't unpinch.
Hell. The cupboard would keep.
Shower first, before it stuck.
-
Bruce closed his eyes as the wasp-hot water drilled into his back. After a few moments, it dulled to a low buzz, leaving only heat and pressure. Steam rose around him, despite the ventilation's best efforts.
He waited. One minute. Two.
Then, holding his breath, he stretched again, slower. Shifted his arms a little bit one way, then the other, until he felt his right shoulder catch. Shifted a little more, til it clicked—then lowered them cautiously. After a beat, he rolled his shoulders, testing.
Slumped forward with a quiet sigh of relief. It made his nose run. He sniffled reflexively, and—no, wait, don't—tried to hold his breath.
No use. An odd, strangled sneeze escaped. Then another.
Bruce held very still, after, acutely reminded of the barn from the Albernathy case. The way he'd wrenched his shoulder.
It had only happened the once, but it had taught him three very valuable lessons. First, that he was violently allergic to goats. Second, that it was possible to strain something just by sneezing. And third, that sneezing with a newly strained shoulder was deeply unpleasant. He had absolutely no desire to repeat the incident.
Another careful roll of his shoulders. Didn't hurt much.
Safe, then. Just a bit of an idiot. And a bit of a mess, by the feel of the warmth on his upper lip.
He the water sluice it away, rather than risk setting himself off again, and slumped against the wall, surrendering to the pleasant combination of heat and pressure and pain-made-quiet.
He could stay here, he thought. Just…stay. Until the water went cold.
…Wasteful, though, he reminded himself, after three boneless minutes. And Alfred would give him the look. Not the one with the eyebrows, but the one with the extra crease at the side of his mouth and his eyes far too piercing, meeting Bruce's own dead-on and determinedly not straying upward, not for a second.
There'd be an arch comment about if he was quite done with the dramatics. But there'd be that set to his shoulders, too, and his hands clasped together, the skin tight around his knuckles—the kind of unspoken tension that curdled Bruce's stomach, made the silvery scar above his left eyebrow burn.
Stiffly, he pushed away from the wall. Picked up the shampoo. As he worked it into his hair, he swallowed to gauge the scratch in his throat, and resolutely did not think about the shattering of glass.
-
After ten minutes under the water, Bruce's back ached less. His nose had even stopped running.
He stepped out, drew a towel round himself, and his breath snagged. The itch tugged at his eyebrows, his upper lip, his shoulders—
But they fell again as the urge faded.
He allowed himself one perfect, piercing moment of annoyance, then moved on. Alfred would be getting back from the shops in a little under an hour. Much more dawdling, and Bruce would run into him on the way out.
-
Watery congestion gathered as he brushed his teeth. He ignored it, angling for his molars. But the wet clung to the inside of his nose, trickling torturously downward, and when it reached the edge of his left nostril, his eyes watered. He barely had time to yank away the toothbrush—sneezed heavily.
Bruce cracked his eyes open. The barest impression of shining porcelain splattered with seafoam blue, then they fluttered shut again. A split second of struggle, trying to regulate his breath, outlast the urge.
As if in defiance, the sneeze tore through him, scraping the back of his throat, prompting a complaint from just beneath his right shoulder blade.
Bruce opened his eyes inches inches from the fogged-up mirror, now also dotted seafoam blue.
He let the tap run as he fetched a cloth. Well, he thought, rummaging for the least objectionable one in the drawer. It could have been worse. In several ways.
He enumerated them as he wetted the cloth and wiped out the sink.
One, he could have smacked his head on the mirror. Two, he could have choked on toothpaste. Three, Alfred could have chosen just that minute to walk in. Four, he could have failed to remove the toothbrush from his mouth. Five, he could have kept sneezing.
Only two was a mercy, after the night before.
…Still. Two wasn't zero. And there had been others. If he was still sneezing by the time the meeting rolled around…well, that was what priority three was for.
Bruce gave the mirror a more careful pass. Alfred disliked streaks even more than he disliked condensation spots.
When he was finished, he frowned. Leaned closer.
Little red flecks swept across his cheeks. A vision of a years-gone textbook page swam before his eyes, and he blinked it away, annoyed. Petechiae looked nothing like a malar rash. Though he supposed there was the faintest suggestion of wings, in the spread of them, their slight curve beneath his eyes.
His frown deepened as he took in the way they clustered, emphasizing his usual dark circles. With a sense of deja vu, he reached into the second drawer on the left and pulled out a makeup case.
A little funny to be pulling it out for this, rather than a shiner. Bewildering that it was necessary. He hadn't even coughed, it was barely a cold. Just a bit of sneezing.
He paused with a brush dipped in concealer, remembering again the barn. Then the feel of the mattress-corner under his hands, the night before, as he'd braced himself through six-maybe-seven in a row. The breathless slump, after.
…Admittedly. It had gotten a little…intense.
But, he thought, as he smeared concealer on his face. Nobody needed to know that.
He was in no mood for another spectacle. The last one had been quite enough.
For a full week, every time he'd tried to get out of bed, there Alfred had been, like a magnet. He hadn't even lectured, half the time, just gestured perfunctorily to his own cheeks, as though Bruce needed a reminder that he'd coughed himself past the point of plausible deniability.
The papers had had their bit as well, of course, but the Gazette had nothing on Alfred Pennyworth with one eyebrow raised.
Frankly —
His mind went blank as the brush grazed his left nostril, sparking a thready tickle. Bruce wrinkled his nose, holding his breath, but the tickle crept higher.
He sniffed hard, scrubbing at his nose with his wrist, and mercifully it went away.
With a lingering frown, he cleaned the brush and put it aside, then returned to the concealer. Ignoring the residue, he applied it with a fingertip.
…Frankly, it had been infuriating.
All the moreso because—he could begrudgingly, privately admit—it hadn't been entirely unwarranted. The cough had been—certifiably, clinically—a pain in the ass. Much as he'd loathed it, he had needed the rest. He had the empty prescription bottle lingering in his bedside drawer to prove it.
He hated little more than knowing Alfred was right, except perhaps for Alfred knowing that he knew. It had driven him up the wall, being unable to escape that look, somewhere between snide and smug but pretending at genteel. Even the memory of it burned.
But.
Six days in, a more patchwork memory—shuffling through the halls in a haze, vision bleary in the dawn haze and getting blearier. Blinking away spots, leaning on a doorframe—cracked paint beneath his fingers, an ache in his chest—catching his breath. Across the room, Alfred. Asleep, sitting up, a pile of spoons gleaming on the table in front of him.
Bruce blinked the vision away. Rubbed his chest with his free hand. Finished fixing his face. He tilted his head this way, then that, then put everything away.
No one would notice.
Alfred might, if they ran into each other, but if Bruce claimed a bruise, he'd have no reason to disbelieve it.
Unless he'd been wandering the halls last night and overheard Bruce fighting a losing battle with his own sinuses. Unlikely, though. He'd have knocked. Commented.
So.
All he had to do was keep any conversation with Alfred short, get to the office early, keep himself to himself. And try not to sneeze through the entire meeting, because if he did, it'd be the talk of the town by dinnertime.
And then he'd have Alfred rounding on him the second he walked through the door, accusing him of hiding another illness, and that was the last thing he needed. Never mind that technically—
It was different. Not the flu, not pneumonia, just a stupid cold. He was fine.
But Bruce could hear him now. That is precisely what you said last time. Need I remind you how that ended? How many days of amoxicillin?
And he wouldn’t believe a word otherwise, no matter what Bruce said. Wouldn't even be mollified by a temperature check, nor a flu test. He'd not be able to force Bruce to stay in, but there'd be the silence when he got back.
Granted. There was usually silence when he got back. But it was the quality of it. The edge.
…But that was the point of priority one.
Bruce put the case away and washed his hands twice. The residue lingered, still, set his teeth on edge and his shoulders tight, but there was nothing for it. He was on a timetable. Couldn't wash his hands all day.
What he could do was get dressed and leave immediately, twenty-five minutes earlier than planned.
-
Halfway to the car, the stinging-cold air got to him. He stifled a sneeze, sniffled, and scowled at himself. There were worse sounds, but not many of them. If no one strangled him for it, he'd have to do it himself.
Barely two minutes into driving, his nose twinged again. He gripped the steering wheel tight, trying to keep his eyes open until the feeling crested, but—it never did. Just died away.
He wiped his watery eyes with his good shoulder, willing that to be the last time for a while. Weepy was, if possible, an even worse look than sickly.
Three turns later, as if to spite him, a tingle settled high in his sinuses, faint but persistent. Enough to make his nose damp and his eyes misty, but not quite enough to tip him over the edge, though occasionally it peaked, bringing him to the shuddering brink before settling back into vague want.
He was just considering the distance to the next light, where he might take the opportunity to blow his nose, when at last—
A shivery breath, a half-stifled sneeze. A deeper gasp—two more, open-mouthed.
He opened his eyes. The steering wheel gleamed, here and there.
Bruce stared at it, then reached into his pocket for—
Nothing. No tissues. He'd left them in the cupboard.
A small, nagging voice suggested that he might be little more out-of-sorts than he'd thought, forgetting step two. He ignored it.
There was a travel pack in the glove compartment, of course.
The voice pointed out that it was unlikely to last long, at this rate. A fair point.
However, counterpoint: there would be tissues at the office. Priority two was still perfectly achievable. This was just—
batman snz fic, bruce all by his lonesome, era undefined, 1.6k
Bruce dropped his head into his hands, closing his over-dry eyes. His nose squelched against his palms.
He ignored it.
Thirty seconds later, the gathering moisture formed a quivering drop just on the inside of his right nostril. He wrinkled his nose in irritation.
Before he could move for the tissues stashed in his desk, the drop fell. A quiet sigh escaped him. He reached for the drawer one-handed, without lifting his head, and sniffed sharply.
He sneezed.
A long, watery hesitation, then—again. Twice as vicious.
Bruce groaned, sniffling obnoxiously out of sheer habit. Seconds later, he scowled. No one was around to hear him. He didn’t need to playact.
He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a few tissues—not the entire box. Alfred might decide to come back down before the night was through. He’d come to entirely the wrong conclusion.
Which was to say, the correct one.
Bruce swiped a single tissue under his nose, crumpled it, and elbowed the drawer shut again.
Glancing over his shoulder, he found the top stair empty, and the door closed. Alfred must be asleep, for his sixth sense to have failed him.
Good.
This didn’t warrant retiring early. Nor staying in tomorrow night.
The worst of the irritation always passed within a day. He’d be fine in plenty of time for his usual late-night circuit.
…More or less. He might still want to sneeze, at the start.
The first symptom had, after all, begun midway through tonight's route. Seconds after he'd landed on the rooftop beside Celia's, he'd felt it. A warm damp, gathering just where the cowl lay over his left nostril.
Minor thing. Mildly annoying, but ignorable. Concealable, in the dark, even as it began to escape the confines of his nose. Unimportant, in the face of the work. And utterly forgotten when an Arhkam alert sounded, some twenty minutes later.
When at last he'd removed the cowl, back in the cave, it had crashed back in. Sharper, more discomfiting. And plainly visible.
An excuse leapt to mind. Simple cold-air reaction, after clashing with Mr. Freeze. It happened, sometimes. This had the benefit of being true. Of course, it was also irrelevant, given the timing, but what Alfred didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
Not that it had mattered. Alfred hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow.
If Bruce didn’t know better, he might have said Alfred hadn’t even noticed. As it was, all he could be certain of was that Alfred hadn’t asked.
A minor miracle, in itself.
To say nothing of how perfectly timed Alfred’s exit had been. He’d gone upstairs, door clicked shut behind him, and not five minutes later the second symptom had come to call. Irritation, spidering deep in his sinuses.
He'd managed to ignore it for forty minutes, more than half-expecting Alfred to return at precisely the moment he lost control over his breath. He had such a knack for it, usually. Appearing exactly when Bruce most wanted to be alone.
But not tonight. A third miracle.
He didn't trust a fourth, but…if Alfred hadn't noticed anything amiss yet, and Bruce just kept his distance over the next day or so, he might not notice at all until the whole thing was past the point of caring about.
Low odds. Alfred discovered everything, always.
But maybe this time —
Bruce's breath stuttered again. He hastened to uncrumple the tissue in his fist. Sneezed. Dragged it to his face belatedly.
— maybe this time he’d let it pass without comment.
Probably—Bruce wrinkled his nose—probably not. But maybe.
He stifled the next sneeze.
-
Bruce blew his nose. Two minutes later, warmth beaded on his upper lip.
He sighed.
-
Bruce’s breath caught, soundless. His expression crumpled as his chest shuddered with need.
A single, measly sneeze came of it.
A small frown flitted across his face, there one second, gone the next.
-
The itch flared, like a spark alight deep in his nose. He jolted over the keyboard with a rushing sneeze, and another, and—he teetered on the edge, shoulders hunched—another. Damp clung to his lips.
He wiped his face with a worn tissue, opened his eyes to find a few drops of spit on the keyboard. At least, he hoped it was just spit.
His nose was still running.
He blew it again. Thirty seconds later, it ran clear to his chin.
He scrubbed it, trashed the tissue, and tried to refocus on the case.
-
Little strings of three and four plagued him for the next hour. Awful, piecemeal things, strung out so he kept thinking it would be just the one sneeze, no, okay, maybe two, no, okay—over and over.
Tiresome. He was trying to read.
-
As he rounded off the report, he sneezed no less than five times in a row, sighing heavily when a sixth slipped away.
He ground the palms of his hands into his eyes and sat like that for a long moment.
Then he dropped them away. Opened his eyes.
The keyboard gleamed in the pale light of the monitor. He’d not had time for a tissue.
He stared at it for a moment. Then stood.
He’d clean it properly tomorrow.
-
Midway through removing his belt, Bruce froze. The first sneeze was little more than a silent flinch, but the next three bent him in half.
-
Bruce pressed a hand to the wall, one leg in his joggers, the other bare, as his breath snagged. He wanted to paw at his nose, but his other hand still clutched the waistband, so he gripped it tighter in hazy-eyed frustration.
After an agonizing pause, he sneezed. Twice. The force of it tweaked something in his left shoulder. He grimaced, rolling it a few times, then pulled up his joggers. As soon as he let go of the waistband, the hazy sensation returned, this time even higher in his sinuses.
It was getting old.
“Hn.” He wrenched forward with another two sneezes. They felt pulled from his chest. “...Hng.”
He picked up his shirt—long-sleeved to placate Alfred, who’d surely have words come morning if he opted for short sleeves or a singlet. He’d explained a million times that merely being cold didn’t cause a cold, that it wasn’t scientific. But the argument hadn’t convinced him decades ago and wouldn’t now. Certainly not when Bruce had, quite plainly, already caught one.
Explaining that he must have been coming down with it before he went out on patrol in the first place would do him no favors. Quite the opposite.
So. Long sleeves.
Bruce started to tug it on and sneezed with it still over his head. Registered heat and damp on his chest, had just enough time for disgust before he was going to sneeze again. He tried to stifle, but his breath still puffed uncomfortably hot against his skin, and the sound crackled besides.
Ugh.
He pulled the shirt on properly, hastily slipped his arms in the right holes, and sneezed openly, just once.
For the moment, the urge retreated. He sighed and made his way to the stairs. With any luck, it would stop long enough to make it to his room. The last thing he needed was to run into Alfred while actively sneezing his head off.
-
He didn’t run into Alfred.
Didn’t make a sound either, but it was a near thing.
-
Bruce closed the door, collapsed face-first on the bed, and allowed himself a single, drawn-out groan. The resulting vibration made him sneeze three times, because of course it did.
He didn’t bother getting up to search for tissues. There were none in the room. The bathroom was too far away to bother.
Instead, he made a mental note to do his own washing near the end of the week, ahead of Alfred’s usual round-up, and shuffled himself under the covers.
The sooner he got to sleep, the sooner this nonsense would be over with.
-
Bruce rolled over for the twenty-second time, groaning internally. For the life of him, he could not sleep.
He turned on small fan for the noise. Sometimes that worked.
-
Bruce rolled over for the thirty-first time, frowning himself a headache.
The fan’s design was ever-so-slightly imperfect. At irregular intervals, the sound wavered, a little flicker that itched in his ears. Jolted him awake.
And his nose wouldn't stop running. He'd nearly drifted off to sleep twice to visions of burning the sheets, rather than washing them.
The fan, of course, woke him both times.
He rolled over yet again, flipping his pillow to the cooler side. It appeased the growing fire in his chest, the tension in his jaw.
But as he relaxed, his sinuses twinged.
Not again, he thought, more exhausted than annoyed. He lifted his head, so as to avoid making a mess of the pillowcase, and leaned towards the edge of the mattress.
The slow-rising itch left him plenty of time to brace himself, but once it crested he was left in place, jolting forward once-twice-three-four-times. A watery sniffle triggered four-five-wait-lost count, these breathless but no less wrenching.
He collapsed back to the bedspread, grinding his teeth.
If he just—turned off the fan, maybe. He might be able to sleep in the quiet.
Doubtful, but worth trying, as the numbers on the clock crept ever-higher. He did still have that meeting. Lucius would give him the look if he missed it….
-
Bruce turned off his fan, plugged in his phone, and turned on a white noise video.
Maybe this would do the trick.
-
A fit of seven left him winded.
-
A fit of three jolted him from an almost-dream.
-
He turned the fan back on, mulishly, and sneezed twice on it in the process.
-
Finally, in start-stop pieces, he mentally recounted the night's patrol. Where he went wrong. What he should have done instead.
…How it might’ve been if this had come over him then. If he’d only been able to sneeze on Victor, instead of trying to talk him down….
Do you ever write the smutty follow-up to a fic, just to have it end up waaay longer than the original? Anyway. Here, have some more Superman stuff! Lois POV! Some actual explicit porn for once! 18+ Only!
I got some other good prompts in my Inbox that I’m percolating on, so thank you guys for that and for being nicies in general :) The words of horny encouragement doth sustain.
Mild warnings for mess, weird alien/sci-fi bio stuff, destructive snz trope, etc. All the good shit. Enjoy, thanks for reading!
The bedroom has seen better days.
It has also seen much worse days, when Lois has been chasing a lead for weeks and barely had time to stop home for a shower before she’s in the city or on the road again. College Lois was also a complete disaster, and her shithole apartment at the time suffered much more than a broken mirror and some hastily rearranged furniture.
Her only real concern now is stepping around the broken glass when she gets up to start the coffee pot, but that’s still a minor inconvenience. Wholly worth it, too, for the sight that greets her when she returns with her first heavily-doctored cup.
She’s already pulled the blinds all the way open, which reflects the scattered mirror shards and creates an oddly whimsical, disco ball pattern of sunlight cascading around the room. More importantly, it comes streaming in through the windows and across the bed with the kind of full force morning brilliance that was only an annoyance before she acquired a solar-powered boyfriend.
Six feet and some change of chiseled alien boyfriend, in fact, his impossible body still relaxed with slumber as he continues to drool on her pillow. Lois masks her smile behind a sip of the jet fuel and sugar slurry she’s concocted. Even while unconscious, Clark has curled himself into the rays of warmth, chasing the heat and light that casts him in a resplendent golden glow. Every time. He’s like a cat in a sunbeam.
She doesn’t think either of them will have the pleasure of sleeping in long, though it’s still early. She’ll take all the time they can get.
Especially if she starts caffeinating now.
Lois sets the mug aside on her end table, which has survived so far and is therefore probably in the safe zone. If not, oh well. She’s careful as she slips back into bed, only because she’s trying not to wake him.
Clark stirs anyway, with the sharpness of a sudden, deeper breath and the groggy shift towards her body, groping for her frame. She’s not sure she’d call it full consciousness. Still, Lois is preferable to the sunlight? She’s flattered.
“Mmn,” he mumbles, curling an arm across her middle. Lois welcomes the weight of it as she lugs him over into a proper cuddle, guiding his head down against her. “Time’sit?”
“Still way too early. Go back to sleep, farmboy, we’re good for a while.”
She allowed herself the indulgence of exactly ten minutes to sift through her phone notifications while the coffee brewed. Just enough to confirm that nothing is actively, literally on fire. It takes incredible dedication to her relationship and not her job to go back to bed, but now she’s very glad that she did.
This is what it’s all for, isn’t it?
She kisses Clark’s brow and takes the opportunity to assess him more closely, once he drifts back off into a compliant doze. He doesn’t look banged up and bruised like he did last night, all the marks of betrayal faded from cellular memory in the warmth of the sun. His skin is smooth and unbroken now, the curves and dips of it leading her gaze down and down his length to...
Lois pauses. Okay, well that is some truly impressive morning wood that she’s now wishing she’d addressed before shushing him to sleep again.
Maybe they can circle back.
For now, she returns her attention to his face. Long, dark eyelashes fan over his cheeks, and Lois draws a musing touch down the line of his jaw. There’s a pleasantly rough texture there, a faint shadow of stubble that catches under her skin. He seems to grow a beard at approximately the same rate a human man does, though Lois still isn’t sure she believes him when he claims that he lasers it off every morning via heat vision. She’s refused to indulge him enough to ask for a demonstration, yet she knows she’s going to cave eventually.
Lois pauses again, when she arrives at a darker smudge across his upper lip. Just under his left nostril, in fact, is a shiny mark that looks almost like pencil graphite or a sort of glittery eyeshadow. Frowning, she skims her thumb across the swatch and comes away with a faintly metallic smear on her skin.
It takes a moment of studying the sheen as she tilts it in and out of the light before recognition clicks.
So, she wasn’t seeing things last night.
Clark looks better on the surface, sure, but she has no idea what’s going on internally. The answer, apparently, is thousands and thousands of microscopic robots that his body is still in the process of purging. She glances at the small drool spot on his abandoned pillow, and can’t decide if that also has a silvery look to it, or if that’s her imagination.
“Weird,” she murmurs to herself, fascinated.
There’s no palpable grittiness to the nanites when she rubs her fingers together, but the desiccated tech crushes down easily to a finer and finer particulate. She can see how irritating this would be clinging to the entire surface of his respiratory tract.
Lois can’t feel any disgust like he seemed to be fretting about last night, just a fresh wave of sympathy. Dating a metahuman takes a lot of adjusting expectations, and one dedicated to global… possibly galactic heroism even moreso. They’re both very much still figuring the paces of it out, in addition to figuring each other out. The quirks of biology are sometimes the easiest thing for her to just roll with. Residual, nanite-laden mucus after a bloody battle is an oddity that barely blips on her radar.
She steadies Clark with one arm and leans up with the other for the tissue box she spots near the headboard. Lois folds a couple sheets over and steals a swipe or two under his nose, while he’s still out.
“C’mere,” she mutters to herself as she adjusts him closer. “You’re a mess.”
Clark scrunches his features a bit at the attention, not quite awake. He’s getting there, especially as Lois checks her clean-up efforts with the brush of her thumb around the edge of his nostril. Back and forth a few times, idly, admiring the unusual softness of his septum as she bumps against it. Only when the rim of his nare twitches and trembles under her touch does she fully realize what she’s doing to him.
Oh… oops.
On the one hand, she’s treated to Clark’s quivery ‘I have to sneeze’ face, which is about as precious as it gets. On the other hand, she should probably give some consideration to damage control.
Does the finger under the nose thing only work in cartoons, she wonders. Does it work on Kryptonians? Either way, she’d feel bad denying him the relief — especially when she’s the one teasing him, however unintentional.
She gets another handful of tissues ready, instead.
Clark squints his eyes open with the first, wavery “—h’uhHH…!” before his breath catches and his chest rises.
“Clark,” she warns, shifting so he can have his other arm. He’s already got one hand clasped clumsily to his face, and is now struggling to sit up and away from her.
“I… I ndeed—…” He starts. The sentence dissolves as he hitches wildly, his eyes squeezing shut, nostrils curling open behind the splay of his fingers.
Whether he’s requesting tissues or alerting her of the imminent explosion, Lois has the same response. She presses her bounty upon him and spreads a hand to his back.
“Here… take these, c’mon. Let it out.”
Maybe she should brace herself, too?
“Uh…!” Clark inhales. He still manages to take the tissues from her, crushing them to his nose and mouth at the last moment.
“HUH’EIDSZSHHHH—-SshhOO!!”
He gets it under the control behind the clap of both hands, for which she’s certainly grateful. Even contained, the strength of the sneeze is enough to make the bed creak dangerously. Lois is almost certain that the whole room shakes, but when she looks up from her instinctive hunch at his back, all of her windows are still intact and the ceiling isn’t falling down around their ears.
Well, that’s a relief. Especially since Clark is already building helplessly towards another.
She keeps a hand pressed beside his spine, feeling the swell of his breath through thick muscle and overwashed cotton. She’s sure he doesn’t need a reminder of her presence or anything. Her interest here is a little more… self-serving than self-preservation. She’s aware that she has very little sense of the latter, she’s been told as much by both Clark and Superman, along with most of the bosses and boyfriends she’s had in her life. She knows.
“Huh…. ! H-EHDTTSSH-sHHHH!”
Yeah. There’s definitely a weird little zing of arousal that shoots through her nervous system as Clark ducks over his lap and sets the bed to rocking. She wasn’t misremembering that from last night, either.
There are several possibilities at play here.
Is Lois in the honeymoon phase where the guy she’s found herself really really caring about got imprisoned, poisoned, and almost squashed by his own clone? Probably yes. She’s just happy to have him here, warm and alive and evacuating strange tech from his lungs beside her. She’ll take Clark in any shape right now.
Is she always a little bit attracted to the display of Superman’s powers, whether he’s fully in control of them or not? Apparently also yes. The second sneeze managed to flutter the sheets, despite his efforts, and it trips an absurd excitement switch in her brain. Maybe it should be fear, and she got her wires crossed somewhere along with that healthy sense of self-preservation.
“Gesundheit,” she offers. So far he’s tapped out after one or two, in her limited experience. Lois can’t be blamed, then, for the surprise surge of horniness when he gasps and dives forward into an uncharacteristic third.
“HD’JZSSHHH–SHHhoo!” And… seriously, another? She must have gotten to him more than she thought. Maybe this is just the result of his body pushing tiny irritants to the surface all night long, while he was unconscious. Clark is bent away from her now, but Lois can picture his crumpled expression just fine as he inhales at a shaky, broken clip. She swallows.
“H-h-h… --hd’DjjJSZHHH-shhuh!”
The strength of his response seems to be lessening each time, yet the fire that’s stoking low in her belly is only fueled by the successive eruptions.
“Oh m’by gosh,” Clark sniffles through a heavy sluice of congestion as he finally straightens. His curls are a rumpled mess, eyes watering and nose flushed a bright, wet pink. “…SNFFH! Excuse m’be.”
“Jesus, Clark,” Lois laughs in a reflexive attempt to conceal her arousal as she fetches the tissue box. She puts it in front of him, since he seems relieved enough to manage his own exchange. “Bless you.”
“Thagk’s,” he murmurs on the recovery, dazed and sheepish in equal amounts. Clark makes a slight face at his persistent stuffiness, and plucks another round of tissues to deal with some of it. It takes a few tries, while Lois reaches for her coffee cup and pretends to give him some sort of privacy.
At last, Clark sighs and wrinkles his nose, scrubbing it on the backs of his knuckles.
“Ugh,” he groans. “Sorry, if I woke you. I had the worst tickle.”
Lois shakes her head and sets her cup aside. “You didn’t wake me. Other way around,” she says. Clark pitches the tissues into the trash beside the bed, and she kneel-walks the short distance between them closed. She leans in to test the waters with her lips pressed to his shoulder. “And I think that might have been my fault. It was only… mostly an accident.”
“What’s that?” Clark laughs. One hand is compressing the tip of his nose into a rough pinch between thumb and forefinger, working it back and forth like he’s trying to get an unreachable itch somewhere inside. God, that’s really not helping…
“Nothing,” Lois says quickly.
Clark gives her a curious look, but he drops his hand and accepts her attention without fuss. An arm slips back around her waist, and he ducks readily into the distraction of a follow-up kiss. No hard feelings, then, not that she expected any.
“Good morning,” she adds, once they’ve broken off, both a little flushed and glassy-eyed. Clark especially so. “There’s coffee.”
He smiles. “Is it coffee, or is it high octane mud?”
She narrows her eyes. Brewing it strong is a side-effect of her masochistic relationship with what amounts to hot, rancid bean juice. Her methods don’t always translate to someone who actually likes the taste.
“That’s rude.” She steals another kiss. “I followed the package ratio, just for you.”
His breathy chuckle turns into a twist aside into his shoulder, where he fields a series of light, repetitive coughs. The effort is enough to jostle her against his side. It also drives up her need to pin him down and bite him all over.
“Hg’khmm, sorry,” Clark exhales afterwards. He leans without resistance into her hands combing back through his hair, the assertive kiss she presses to his temple.
“Don’t be. Maybe I should make you some tea, instead,” she hums. “With honey.”
He groans, then pulls back to peer at her. His big blue eyes are limned with tears and warmed with a haze of pink irritation. “I promise I’m not sick. This is just…” He makes a loose, helpless gesture to his general upper body. Yeah.
Lois valiantly resists the urge to smooch the tip of his nose, sensing that it might be disastrous. She settles instead for the brush of her thumbs across his cheeks.
“... crud?” She suggests. It earns her another laugh-turned-cough, his head turned away in time. This one he manages in just a few beats before he’s swallowing and nodding.
“Yeah, sure. Fight crud.”
There are sexier ways to put it, of course. Sadly, it really is working for her no matter what she calls it.
“I know,” Lois says. “But it might help your throat anyway.”
His gaze flicks over her face, seeming surprised.
She must have said something right, because in the next second Clark has her buoyed into his lap as if she weighs nothing at all. To him, that’s true. The transition pulls a short, sharp gasp of delight from her, and Lois is too pleased to be embarrassed about it. Instead, her arms wind around his shoulders while Clark boosts her up and puts his mouth to her neck.
Okay, good. This is good. They’re on a similar trajectory here after all.
Lois scratches her nails across his nape, smiling as she feels his full-body shiver in response. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless and still sounding a bit stuffy, his huge frame warm and solid beneath the arch of her own. “That does sound good, actually. But… in a minute…?”
Lois nods. Caffeine can wait. The rest of the world can wait. They’ve barely had any time to themselves the last few days, and she wants him.
His teeth find her collar and she gasps again, her hands sweeping up into his hair for fingerfuls of loose curls. Bearing down into his lap grinds her against his cock, still stiff and wanting from either a good dream or her slow build of kisses. The meandering, sleepy morning intimacy is some of the rarest kind, for them, but she’s been thinking about it for… well. Since she knew he wasn’t going to die, anyway.
“Can I assume that you’re feeling better otherwise?” Lois murmurs as she rocks her hips down into him. It draws a low groan from her partner, his fingers flexing against her thighs and riding up under the edges of her soft linen shorts.
“I–… I feel great.”
Lois's smile sharpens. “And you’re up for some more rigorous physical activity?”
“Yes,” his voice cracks on the word, which only makes her want to hear it again. She can’t tell if his glazed look is all from arousal, or if there’s still a fuzzy urge to sneeze in there somewhere. The expressions are remarkably similar, which is something she’s going to have to unpack later, with the rest of all this.
Not now, though.
She smooths his hair back, even as he ducks under her jaw so she can’t see his face when he sniffles. This time it takes greater effort, like he’s trying to curtail something. The sudden show of bashfulness is not helping her desire to pounce at all. Neither is the return of his normal, low baritone after a careful throat clear. “I just… uhm…”
“Clark,” she laughs, hoping she reads him right. She rubs the back of his neck. “You can tap out to sneeze and blow your nose, you know. I don’t care.”
His shoulders relax a little, suggesting that some of his anxiety was indeed tied to that. Ridiculous. This man can move literal mountains.
“In fact, remember when I said that you were kind of cute like this?” Clark looks up from between the valley of their bodies, eyes a brilliant blue.
“Very.”
Her brows raise, amused. “What?”
“You said I was very cute.”
Lois pushes herself off his shoulders to get a better view of him, bleary and wavering a bit around the edges. Oh, he’s definitely fending off another sneeze. The way her pulse picks up at this is also patently ridiculous. That he can probably see her heart beat faster inside her own thoracic cavity is an eerie reality that she doesn’t always like to think about. In the moment, that sureness only bolsters her confidence.
He’s kind of hard to lie to, after all.
“Okay, well I’m upgrading you to ‘weirdly sexy’.”
He splutters a laugh. “That’s an upgrade?” Clark sniffles hard enough to inspire a cough. He gets a hand up to contain it – even so Lois can still feel a burst of air escape between them.
Clark doesn’t seem to notice, but Lois is biting her lip and fighting not to squirm off his lap as she feels it rush across the tops of her thighs. Good God…
“Now I know you’re… SNDFFH! You’re m’bessi’g with mbe. Ugh…”
Lois resists the urge to roll her eyes. Nevermind, maybe she could have kept him going as long as she wanted.
Clark switches the cover of his hand to a fitful rub against his nose. It appears successful at heading off the sneeze, which is a pity. The effort produces an audible click of his fingers itching at the edges of his nostrils, and Lois can’t tell if it’s her pulse or his throbbing so hard between their hips. She’s still ridiculously turned on by all the set dressing of the moment even without the actual discharge to follow, it seems.
“Alright, you be the judge,” Lois smirks. Her hand slips down over the large, sprawling shape of his own where it supports her. She redirects his fingers up over the waistband of her shorts, then down her midline until he finds the drenched and eager heat.
“Oo–kay,” Clark exhales. “Oh wow, you’re…” He’s dropped the other hand away from his face to help brace her. Likely for personal reasons as well, with the way one palm effortlessly cups her ass. He swallows with the nudge of his fingertips threatening to breach her entrance, but not quite… not quite. His whole hand spans the length of her instead, almost reverent. “I’mb uh– SNFF!” He gazes at her and oh yes, there’s definitely enamored awe there. “Happy to stand corrected.”
Satisfied, Lois sinks down on his hand and gasps as he angles it just right. He lets her grind against the meat of his palm, bearing as much weight as she wants to give him. Delicious strain sings up through the muscles of her abdomen. There are many applications of enhanced strength in bed, as it turns out. Being a willing recipient of anything she can dole out is just as exciting as when he takes a more dominant role. Moreso, really.
Especially when he’s like this.
“Ssshit, okay… yes. Right there,” Lois breathes, twinging as she finally feels his middle and ring finger press up into her. She rocks into his hand, almost spasming already with her clothes still on and her stupid, sexy boyfriend barely two knuckles deep. She has both hands braced against his shoulders for balance as she twists into the roll of his thumb over her clit. Again, then again. “Don’t stop.”
She nearly makes good on her earlier thoughts of biting him, when Clark suddenly maneuvers his hand away, gripping below her thigh with his slicked up fingers. She half-bucks into the emptiness of his absent touch, groaning. “Clark.”
“I know,” he rumbles, voice gravelled from either arousal or the increasingly persistent sniffling he’s doing, the wet and urgent little sounds that are underscoring her own. “Just… is it the sndee–...?!”
Her breath catches almost at the same time Clark’s does. Lois gets a second to process his watery expression, and eases back down into his lap with a thrill of anticipation.
He gets ahold of himself with a shaking exhale, but she can tell from his dopey look that the urge hasn’t gone far. “... hhhuh. SNDF! The sndeezing? B’cause I m’bight ha–aaave to…”
No shit, Lois thinks to herself. At the same time, though, she feels her heart constrict with ferocious affection for this man who wants to know more, do more, make it the best experience for her possible because any other option really hasn’t occurred to him.
“I think so,” she does her best to answer, while she’s still deliriously horny and Clark is obviously trying not to sneeze. “I haven’t really examined it myself, yet.” Lois frowns as she watches him raise a shaky hand to his faze, focus fizzling out. “Just don’t…!”
Too late. Clark keeps her secured with one hand, but the other crushes his nose shut the moment he draws a sudden, gusting inhale. She swears she can even see the ends of her hair pick up, before…
“H’INGGKK’Ttt–uhhh…!”
Calamity. Or… it probably would be at this range, if Clark hadn’t held it in so tightly. The tide of guilt lapping up over her is still secondary to the lust that surges in like a flash flood.
As it is, the suppressed strength of it rushing through his body jogs her hard in place. Lois feels herself actually leave his lap, bounced for a fraction of an inch and a second of pure exhilaration. She doesn’t hear any resounding crashes in the background, suggesting that he’s managed to contain the tail end of it as well. She’s barely paying attention to collateral damage anyway. She nearly climaxes from that alone, just feeling his shoulders and thighs shake beneath her. She’d be a definite goner if she were still riding his fingertips.
“Bless you,” she groans in her daze. That’s becoming a reflex too. Lois has never once in her life been a casual blesser, but it would feel somehow criminal not to say it to Clark.
He can’t respond anyway, because he’s not done. Of course he’s not done.
“Hh-hhh…! NGKT—… ssSHOO!!”
This time, Clark keeps both hands on her hips and throws his head to one side, scrunching his features into it and only half-hiding the display behind his arm. The hands-free stifle isn’t quite so patented a technique, and Lois is aware of the curtains flaring up on the edge of her vision, whipping in the backdraft. There’s a clatter of something hitting the floor that doesn’t sound important. She pushes up into his hands, arching like an animal in heat.
His thumbs press against her hipbones, the two smallest points that keep her from climbing him like a tree while he sniffles through a punchdrunk recovery.
“Don’t what…?” He musters at last.
It could be that she's a little punchdrunk too. Lois blinks down at him. “What?”
Clark squints, turning into his bicep to half-cover a few coughs. “You said ‘just don’t’ and then’d I…snfSNF!”
“Oh.” She sits deeper against his pelvis, feeling the heat of his erection pressed close. She’d like to get to that very soon. She trails her hands down her arms in the meantime, now that she doesn’t need them for balance. “I meant don’t hold them in like that. It sounds miserable.”
Clark sniffs, and sniffs again. It no longer sounds like he’s moving much air or congestion, just trying and failing to maintain some sort of constant drip homeostasis.
“It looks worse than it is, I promise.”
Lois gives him a skeptical look. “Do you hear yourself?”
To her surprise Clark laughs full and open, despite the chastisement and his obvious discomforts. The sound warms her from within as keenly as his sneezing and sniffling does.
“I do,” he assures her, with a kiss to her throat that softens her right up, the sap for him that she is. She runs her fingers over the back of his neck, scratches her nails up through his hair just so she can feel him shiver when he isn’t trying to tamp down on a hurricane.
“Listen, I’ll try not to,” he sniffs. “But I do have to hold it in sometimes – SNFF! Just. There’s not always better options.” He doesn’t sniffle directly against her skin, but Lois swears she’s going to claw right out of it anyway.
“Point taken,” she swallows. He would know the consequences of his own powers best, something she always inherently trusts him to. The admission of something he knows he can’t control is… that’s doing something for her.
Lois pulls back to consider their position, and presses a kiss to his brow. It brings him to attention nicely – so sweet and present for her. The uptick in his sniffling and half-choked little coughs hasn’t escaped her, the slow distortion in his focus. There are more twinging moments with his nose, too, and have his nostrils always been so expressive? They’re sharply defined, and she’s noticed before that they flare dramatically when he’s upset.
Ugh, how long has she been like this?
Lois also needed him inside of her, like, yesterday. That might have plenty to do with it. She checks her own lust with another kiss, this time daring for the bridge of Clark’s nose. He permits it, apart from the crinkles forming beneath her lips just before she leans back.
“Ssspeaking of which, do you need a break?”
“Nn—…” Clark starts to respond in the dismissive, automatic, then catches himself and lets the thought actually gestate. His nose twitches with a sniffle, eyes fluttering. “…maybe. SNF! Two mbidutes?”
She gives his flank a couple of quick pats, like a faithful horse, and grins when he dumps her unceremoniously back onto the bed. “Take five.”
His dick says he’s up for it, but she’d like for the rest of him to get there, too.
Lois climbs out of bed while he folds himself over the opposite edge of the mattress, tissue box in tow. She makes a mental note to buy more of those, possibly even accounting for bulk purchases within her tiny apartment’s storage space.
Unless… oh, God, how adorable would her ruffled dweeb of a boyfriend be, if she could convince him to carry a handkerchief? She puts a pin in the notion, for later.
Lois slugs the rest of her coffee before it cools to room temperature, then strips herself from her top and bottoms without ceremony. She’s not exactly wearing her sexiest set, and there’s no real point in doing a stripshow for someone with x-ray vision. In the background Clark is already busy, making a valiant effort to levy some of the fallout from his sinuses.
After several attempts to blow his nose, it sounds as if he’s relieved at least some of the burden, leaving him in a tingling and breathy aftermath. Breathy enough to get her attention in full. If he tries to suppress it again…
“I–...”
He starts to say something, but is suddenly overwhelmed with sensation. Clark inhales loud and fast. He clutches the current nest of tissues back to his face, then spasms forward with an intensely muffled sneeze that leaves the windows rattling.
“H’WHFFSZHHHhh-SHOO!!”
Lois jumps, despite having seen it coming.
“Jeez. Can’t ding you for that one,” she says as she crawls back onto the bed, and across the distance between them. Once she’s sure he isn’t going to go again right away. “Gesundheit.”
“Thangks,” he sniffs. “Snduck up on me.” He lowers his head into a last short, amending blow, then pitches the tissues into the trash and rolls back to face her. “I’m good now.”
His gaze travels down, clocking her naked body for the first time. His brows raise. “... really good.”
Lois smirks. She uses the front of his shirt to pull him back into a kiss, which he’s happy to return. When she gives them both a break for air, she switches her grip to pulling the tee up and over his head. Clark lifts his arms to accommodate, then draws her in and begins lavishing attention from a pulsepoint of her throat and wending downwards. She can feel the heat radiating off of his bare chest.
“Fantastic. I’ve got an update for you,” Lois breathes as he presses a kiss to the top of her breastbone.
“Uh-huh?”
She twists her fingers in the curled ends of his hair where it brushes the back of his neck. “It’s definitely the sneezing,” she admits, swallowing. “Not just that. But it’s helping.”
He kisses the center of her stomach, and she debates the merits of pushing him lower, guiding him to the blazing center of her energy. She’s so turned on, it wouldn’t take much. She wants him even closer than that, though.
“Great,” Clark murmurs. He sounds genuinely interested. He’s also planning his path downward, palming and mouthing at hot skin as her hips lift into him. “That’s… SNF! Really good news. What can I do?”
“You can hurry up and fuck me before I go crazy, Kansas.”
His laughter whooshes over her stomach and thighs with a warmth that makes her ache.
“Well, I think I can oblige you there.”
He leans up and over her, not a moment too soon. Lois already has a hand skating down the hard planes of his stomach, dipping below his waistband to encircle the equally stiff heat within. Clark’s breath rushes out of him in a shuddery exhale as she gets a hand around his cock and palms it free.
She gives him a few slow strokes, savoring the feeling of controlling a being so powerful with so little effort. Just her hand where the curve of his thick length fits perfectly in its center, squeezing just a shade tighter than she’d ever dare with a human man.
“God, Lois–....!”
He thrusts shallowly into the fist she gives him, wrapping her fingers around his shaft as tight and far as they’ll go. She’s aware of the faint crackle and catch in his breathing as his chest presses close.
Undeterred, he sinks down into her as she guides him into place. It’s usually a very snug fit – she’s a small woman, and Clark is not a small man. There’s usually a good deal more teasing, of rubbing his erection leisurely across her dripping sex, kissing her breasts, mumbling the most ridiculous country-ism praises she’s ever heard. No matter how many times they’ve done this, regardless of her can-do attitude, there’s still an adjustment period. Right now she’s wet and ready enough that the glide is almost frictionless.
“Oh,” she pants out when he’s fully seated inside her with so little effort. She claws at his back while acclimating to his size, his closeness, and the reality of her primal cravings being answered. “Wow, okay. Hi,” Lois breathes, and kisses his shoulder. “Missed you.”
She gets a kiss smushed to her temple in turn, and the press of his cock bottoming out as far as she can accommodate. The burn of stretching and entry becomes an ache, which becomes a pulse that throbs white light and pleasure up through her core every time he moves.
“Missed you too.”
Lois didn’t want to admit it, in case things didn’t work out, and she doesn’t want to be hyperbolic here either. Still, sex with Clark has probably ruined her for every other man on Earth.
He is the only metahuman she’s slept with, but she sees no reason to expand her repertoire at this point. It’s also only partly due to his superior strength and stamina. Moreso it’s because Clark holds and touches and fucks her like she’s the only person on Earth. Being in the epicenter of his focus and adoration is a powerful drug.
If anything, she has to bully him away from being too careful with her, sometimes. It’s better than the alternative, though, and Clark is a responsive lover in every sense. They find their rhythms quickly and easily.
“Hhhyou feel so good,” he huffs against her neck, where his breath sticks to and then dries her sweat almost as soon as it forms. He’s like a handy, built-in HVAC system. In the stickiest and swamp-ass months of summer that was actually quite helpful for their intimacy, versus rutting near her geriatric window unit air conditioner. The memory of sprawling in bed like a princess while he exhaled cool air across her body and touched her slow and sweet is one of her favorites.
Where is she going to find that convenience in a human man?
Not that she’d be forcing him to do any tricks for her in this state. Even having recently evacuated a fresh round of nanites from his system, Lois can hear Clark sniffling and panting on the threatening edge of more.
It’s hard to form thoughts when he keeps rocking on the edge of her sweet spot at the same time, but Lois manages to pull herself back from the event horizon of pleasure to check in, breathless.
“You okay?” She presses her mouth to his neck, then gives into the urge for a little nip. Clark’s hips jerk into her with a grunt. “Need a break?”
Clark shakes his head, curls scattered loose in his eyes. He looks beautiful like this, tear streaks starting to shine across his cheeks. He sniffles again, heavy, then turns his head over the barrier of his arm and coughs freely.
Lois feels the blankets tug off the loose tangle of their legs. The involuntary lung squeeze manages to spasm his entire body against her, inside her, and she juts up with an involuntary cry of her own. Fuck, that’s good.
She can see the advantage of this position for multiple reasons, now. Usually she’s on top, although they both enjoy variety. Being pinned beneath him, with his arm propped on either side of her, gives him a little more freedom to redirect the ongoing nanite management. There’s less fear of either harm or just… sneezing them down onto her like this.
Actually, the jury is out on that possibility and her reaction. She might be okay with it. She can’t think over the stretch and the rhythm that makes her brain want to turn off and just ride the waves of rapture.
“Im’b good. Just… SNFF! Godda… snff! …s-sneeze.”
He says the word in such a casual hush, between thrusts, that she feels like she’s mishearing him. Possibly flirting the line of sanity here, but very much paying attention now.
“Should I–... ahh-h, should I… move?”
She really hopes she’s not expected to, somehow, when he’s currently almost knocking on her liver. Rolling her hips up still gets him to respond with more of those short, shallow strokes that build pleasure rapidly inside her.
“N’do, just… SNF! … s-sstay…”
Lois locks her ankles around his legs as she feels his trunk expand with an escalating draw. Not her first close-range sneeze, but it feels like he’s about to… like she’s about to…
She did ask for this. Lois feels the blankets catch, pull, and take riotous flight in the backdraft, his sneeze discharged somewhere past the shield of an arm and shoulder curled around her. Something heavy hits the opposite wall. She feels the natural thrust of his body like he’s trying to spear her into the mattress, deep and tight and hot. A shockwave seems to start almost from her toes and radiate higher.
“Clark…!”
He barely gets time to breathe in from the first explosion, feeling her clench tight. She’s gone by the second sneeze that barrels out of him and into the bedding.
“GZZSHSHHH–SSshoo!”
It’s loud and desperate and close enough to make her ears ring.
The crest of orgasm breaks over her, crashing like a wavefall across her body as her nails dig into his arm. If she whimpers or if she screams, Lois isn’t sure. She could be squawking like an endangered toucan and neither she nor Clark would care right now. Her hips drive up into him in an aching undulation, drawing out her unraveling euphoria as long as she can.
She’s so busy chasing the last curls of pleasure, trying to drag him over with her, that she barely notices Clark’s recovery from the last, violent sneeze. He doesn’t have much of one, locked instead into an open grimace that she only observes when her spasms start to ease.
“Clark…” She breathes, barely a whisper.
He’s an impressive sight with nostrils open at full flare, the pearl-white tips of his teeth showing beneath an expression curled with torturous irritation. That tickle must truly be a monster…
“HURRESSSHZHHH-SHHhhoo!!”
The sneeze whips past them, crashing or blustering through whatever is in its path. She can still tell that he’s letting them go with a fraction of his strength, since there are no obliterated walls or spewing water lines in their wake. Meanwhile, Lois can’t decide if she’s even fully come down from her first orgasm when the second rips her off her moorings.
His too, judging by the way Clark goes suddenly, critically stiff above her. Tiny, controlled ripples down his spine push him into Lois as she feels him twitch inside, feels heat begin to spill deep within. He fills her up and up into overflowing as she rides him with every scrappy inch of her human enthusiasm, letting herself come and come apart, wrung out on his cock until she can’t take more.
At some point, when her blind, surging rush of dopamine and oxytocin have begun to gradually subside, Lois becomes aware that he’s either pulled or slipped out. Clark spends the last few rounds of his orgasm across her inner thighs.
He’s watching the mess through tear-glazed eyes, nose red as he fights for breath harder than she’s seen him after altercations with twelve story tall killer robots. He reaches down to fist himself through the final spasms, then sinks back… not unlike a collapsing kaiju, actually.
Lois gets her arms out of the way before he hits the mattress beside her with a whumpf. The pair of them bask there in a post-coital bliss that’s nearly a coma. She watches him catch his breath and enjoys the rare emptiness and peace that comes from having every last thought fucked out of her head.
Slowly, the tinnitus in her ears fades, and the blurry edges of Lois’s world narrow back to the man sharing her bed.
Clark is sprawled on his side, gazing at her with unchecked esteem in his starry blue eyes. His devotion feels like it’s still penetrating her, even when his prick is going gradually soft against his thigh.
Not that that matters. Kryptonian refractory periods are shorter than even Earth women. Most of the time she and Clark match up nicely for rounds two, three, and so on. Right now, she just wants to cuddle him.
“God bless you,” she says, stretching a hand down. She strokes his forehead with the backs of her knuckles, the only part of him she can reach without moving too much. His eyelashes flutter shut like she’s giving him the sweetest and most thorough petting in the world.
“Thank you, Miss Lane.”
Oh, God damn him. He knows exactly when to spring that on her to do the most damage. Lois fights the urge to shiver.
Clark is back to staring up at her. “You were really into all that?”
Lois snorts, regaining a few sparks of energy as she makes a flapping, come-hither gesture at him with both hands. Clark looks at her through a similar haze of exhaustion. He inches closer like the world’s saddest, most sniffly superpowered caterpillar until she groans and forces herself upright.
“Get over here. Was I turned on by you hacking and sniffling and sneezing your big beautiful head off? Of course I was.” She pulls him down against and atop her, slumping his not-inconsiderable weight across her ribs. “Oofh.” She buries a kiss in his hair. It’s satisfyingly fluffy after all the exertions. And some of the stray gusts. “Either that, or I’m a really incredible actor. I even had myself fooled.”
Clark laughs, shaking her a little. Shaking her more when he makes himself cough. “Hk-KHMM, ‘scuse me.” He takes the bulk of his weight onto an arm as he pushes up, leaning to kiss her. She pulls him in for more. “That’s fantastic,” he sighs, when they break. “But I really, really need to blow my nose. Can I…” He pats a palm to her arm twice, lightly, and she lets him up without a second thought.
“Oh, yeah. Of course.”
He only taps out as long as it takes to empty the rest of the tissue box. Lois closes her eyes and lets him work through it. She’s pleased when he returns and does all the moving hereon out, in fact.
Pulling her towards him, Clark draws Lois atop his body, cleaned up and back at full stretch. For all of the impressive muscles, there’s just enough squish to him that he’s surprisingly comfortable to lounge upon. Very good to hug. Lois can tell from the weightless, nearly imperceptible bob that they’re also in mid-air, floating a few inches above the bed. She rests her head on his chest and ragdolls with contentment, listening to the improved sound of his breathing.
“I think that actually, finally cleared my head,” Clark admits. He sniffles for emphasis, and there is indeed much less drag on it now. His voice still has a slight, resinous cling, but from what she understands his lungs took the worst of it to begin with. “Thank you.”
Lois smiles against him, feeling warm inside. “I’m glad. I mean.” She tilts her head up and presses her lips to the rough underside of his jaw. “Bad news for me, I suppose. But you needed it.” The man deserves to breathe clearly after the week he’s had.
She also deserved to get thoroughly dicked down after the week she’s had, so Lois considers it a fair trade.
“I wouldn’t be too disappointed,” Clark chuckles. He cups her shoulder with one hand, steadying her in place while he adjusts himself effortlessly in their float. “This was very enlightening.” When he sniffles, it’s much closer to the shell of her ear than before. Lois trembles against him, toes curling.
“Yeah, well. Don’t get it twisted. That might have been a one time thing because I was so happy to have you in one piece, or whatever.” She’s lying, obviously. If anything, she’s giving him more ammunition as he smiles and noses gently behind her ear.
“Sure, okay,” he grins. “Then you won’t care that I’m allergic to cats, and that I always hold my breath when you put pepper on your turkey sandwiches?”
She shudders again. “God damn it, Kent. That’s not true.” Lois pushes herself up onto his chest, looking down at him. She has a leg straddled to either side of his torso, hanging down in mid air. They’ve fucked like this before, Clark on his back and untethered by gravity, arms folded cockily behind his head. Not that she’s thinking about that now, or anything.
“Is it? Don’t tease me.”
She’s sore and stretched out and still has what feels like a bucketful of his cum wanting to leak out of her, but Lois could go again. Shower off their sins before the world needs them and....
Clark shrugs. He takes one of her hands resting on his chest, framing where his emblem would be, and brings the backs of her fingers to his mouth. “I guess we’ll find out.”
The romantic filter over her field of view finally widens, past the heart bubbles and lustful haze to her bed beneath them.
The room itself actually isn’t in too bad a shape – nothing that he can’t clean up by the time she’s poured his first cup of coffee. Lois can throw some spackle on the rest. She’s also pleased to see that her mattress and pillows have survived, even if they did get blown into the shattered mirror.
The fitted sheet, on the other hand… well. It will probably wash out, she’s sure it will, but Lois is startled to a sharp and bleating laugh at the absurdity of the scene. From somewhere near the head of the mattress and streaking nearly to the foot, there is a whalespout spray of dark, metallic pinpoints striking at range and dispersing outward. Was that his last sneeze, and the last of the nanobots along with it? It must be. It looks like when one of the interns loses a fight with the toner cartridges, at the Planet.
Okay, well now she really is cackling, head thrown back and fully enjoying it regardless of how pink his cheeks get in response.
“So, I was going to warn you. I’ll replace them.”
“Oh, my God.” Lois grins, wild, but she only inches up and over him so she can dip towards his mouth. “No wonder you feel better.” She keeps breaking off into runs of giggles between kisses. Clark does not seem to actually mind being the source of her amusement. Or he doesn’t mind enough to fend her off, anyway, as she rains affection down on him.
“You know what,” she says, peering past his shoulder to the impressive spread of micro-irritants below. It’s like a shiny soot print of his sneeze. “There’s something wrong with me, because that’s still pretty hot.”
“Stop it,” he grumbles, pinching the tip of his nose.
“I’m serious,” Lois laughs. “I like it.” She fights past his hand to capture his mouth, however briefly he lets her take possession. Clark waits to sniffle until she’s pulled away again. “But listen, while we’re up…” Very… literally up in the air. She lets him appreciate her pun with a begrudging smirk before she continues. “... and until a flying dog comes crashing onto my balcony, I’d like to open the discussion for round two.”
Clark makes a face. “Lois. Come on. Why would you invoke him?” That he doesn’t immediately startle and bolt off to check on a forgotten pooch suggests that the day’s responsibilities aren’t far from his mind either. However… “And what’s to discuss? I’m already game. SNF!”
Lois grins. She leans down to kiss him once more. “Discussion closed, then. All in favor – hey!” She breaks off with a laugh as he pulls her close and into a crushing embrace, with the kind of restraint that suggests Clark is also suffering from cute aggression with his partner. She manages to free one of her arms to wrap around him in turn.
“Fine, tough guy. Then I’ve got a few more things I want to try, before the world figures out where you are.”
He’s already kissing up the side of her neck to make good on his word, a hand tangling in her hair.
“Sure, me too,” he chuckles. “Looking forward to it.”
Sneezy guy w/ big crooked nose that's super sensitive in odd places due to previously breaking it playing sports or being stupid or something, and who as a result also can't stifle very well,, save meeee
an additional panic behind cupped hands: someone in the throes of a fit uncharacteristically ridiculously harsh and unrelenting, giving a wide eyed flash of a look to their partner, as long as they can manage, to say help!! it wont stop…
this fic is almost entirely self indulgent nothingness, and it's not entirely finished yet, but it's over 7k words and i wanted to post what i've got so far (fic is under the cut if you want to skip my rambling)
summary/info: J/ayce and V/iktor get stuck in an elevator together while J/ayce struggles with one of the worst colds he's had in years. It takes place about a month after V/iktor moved into the apartment complex, so it's their first "real" introduction to one another.
It's from J/ayce's POV (i'm an awkward, nervous J/ayce believer -- also an audHD J/ayce believer). I haven't written from his POV in a long time, so if anything feels OOC feel free to let me know :)
CW for mess!! I don't describe it in a lot of detail, but it's definitely present in this fic, so be warned! Warning for contagion as well, I plan on writing a followup where V/iktor catches J/ayce's cold
I don't love the introduction/first page (I was impatient to get to the snz and rushed through it), but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out :3 anyways, if you read all this ily, here's a treat:
To say it’s been a long day would be an understatement. It’s felt endless, obnoxiously long in that particular way that makes every small inconvenience feel personal. Jayce is running on fumes, his head aching, throat raw, and nose so stuffed he can barely draw a full breath. He’s been impatient to get home for the past hour, but his bus had been delayed three times, it had started to rain, and his plans to pick up more tissues had been entirely forgotten.
By the time Jayce steps into the lobby of his apartment complex, he’s running on autopilot. His limbs are aching and heavy, his body having forgotten how to function without discomfort hours ago. He barely manages a nod towards the security desk; he’d usually stop to chat, especially with the woman working tonight, who always engages in friendly conversation. He must look as shitty as he feels because she just gives him a sympathetic look and allows him to pass by in silence.
Jayce quickens his pace as he notices the closest elevator shutting, just barely managing to slip through the narrowing gap in time for the doors to shut with a loud PING! Once inside, he lets out a stuffy breath of relief, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes and rubbing them slowly. It’s not the most hygienic move, sure, but considering that he’s already sick, he allows himself the small comfort. That is, until he registers a presence beside him, immediately dropping his hands to his sides and glancing over.
‘Just my luck.’ Jayce thinks as he recognizes the man standing beside him, their eyes meeting for the briefest second before both of them glance away.
He should’ve just waited and taken the other elevator, another minute of standing there wouldn’t have hurt him. But it’s too late now, especially after slipping in at the last second and making direct eye contact with none other than his next-door neighbor. They’d only ever had a few brief conversations – polite, out of necessity, and highly-performative on Jayce’s end. Afterall, he’d been taught to put on a well-mannered mask and adapt, so he did exactly that; at least he tried to, but his anxiety makes him far less calm and collected as he’d like to think he appears.
‘Thank God we live on the third floor and not the sixth’ Jayce thinks, trying his best not to sniffle audibly as he feels an unwelcome trickle of moisture slip over his upper lip, ‘And thank God I’m wearing a mask.’
PING! They pass the first floor.
Jayce is certain that he looks worse for wear, even with the bottom half of his face covered with not one but two medical-grade facemasks. It might be overkill, but his mom had raised him with the understanding that “just because you’re sick doesn’t mean everyone else has to be”. Besides, he doesn’t find it all that inconvenient to wear a mask, aside from those moments when he can no longer deny the itch that constantly lingers in his sinuses whenever he’s congested.
He’s no stranger to sneezing in masks, but he’s certainly not a fan of it. The sensation alone is enough to make his skin crawl with discomfort, not to mention the either disgusted or pitying looks he receives from anyone nearby.
Jayce feels his nose continue to run, the moisture beginning to collect on his upper lip and risk slipping further down, but he knows if he sniffles, it'll sound disgusting. The last thing he wants is to gross out his neighbor, who’s politely ignoring him and focusing instead on a loose string dangling from his sleeve.
Jayce chances a glance at Viktor, feeling his heart thrum a little at the sight of him. He looks tired too, but Jayce ignores the prominent eyebags of the shorter man, drawn instead to the light freckles cast across his face. They’re not nearly as noticeable as his moles, but still, Jayce finds himself rather endeared by them – light, small, decorative things. He only realizes he’s staring when Viktor turns towards him, meeting his gaze wordlessly.
Jayce blushes crimson, his mind stuttering to a halt as he’s caught staring. He quickly diverts his gaze, looking anywhere aside from Viktor. First it's his scuffed sneakers, then the wristwatch his friend had recently purchased for him, then the smudges on the elevator door.
Is the elevator moving slower than usual? Jayce swears it is, time dripping by like molasses as he tries to ignore the embarrassment swelling in his chest. ‘Great job Jayce’ he thinks sarcastically ‘what a stellar impression you’re making. Why don’t you just go ahead and–’ his internal spiral screeches to a halt as he feels the buzzing in his sinuses shift, prickling up to the tip of his nose and making the sensitive appendage twitch. ‘No… no no no no no–’
“hh–,” his breath hitches before he can do anything to stop it, the prickling swelling to a full on itch. Desperate for a solution, Jayce decides to do the thing he’d been dreading the entire elevator ride. He sniffles, feeling the moisture that had slipped over his lip shoot back into his nose and cram itself in his sinuses with a loud SNRKkk!
For the second time in just two minutes, Jayce feels his face burn scarlet. He does his best to swallow his embarrassment, silently reassuring himself that a little sniffle was much better than him sneezing into his mask. Still, that thought does very little to dissuade the anxious voice in his mind. He stares fixedly at the elevator doors, trying to will them to open fast. Anywhere but here. Anytime but now.
Jayce glances at Viktor again, only for a split second, and to his surprise, this time he catches Viktor staring at him. ‘Oh God.’ Jayce’s mind immediately jumps to the worst conclusions: ‘This is it. Caitlyn’s never going to let me hear the end of it if I lose a chance with my crush before we even exchange more than five sentences.’
His fever’s certainly not helping with his mind’s anxious ruminations, causing him to spiral illogically without any end in sight. He barely registers the feeling as his nose begins running again, intent on making a mess inside his mask.
PING! Only one floor left, Jayce can handle that. He glances at his watch again… odd… he must’ve misread the time before, but he swears, it’s been almost three minutes since he first entered the cramped elevator. It shouldn’t take more than two minutes for him to arrive at the third floor… he must’ve misread it. Afterall, he’s feverish and hopped up on dayquil and–
THHHHUMP!
Without warning, the elevator jolts violently, lurching with a mechanical groan. The sudden motions throws both of them off balance, tossing Viktor straight into Jayce’s side. There’s no time to react, no chance for either of them to brace themselves, just a blur of motion.
Jayce reaches out reflexively, arms wrapping around Viktor as the floor seems to drop beneath them. The two of them topple over, Viktor landing half on Jayce’s chest as Jayce hits the floor with a dull thud. The impact knocks the wind out of him, but he barely notices. His only thought (aside from ‘What the Fuck!’, that is) is that somehow he’d managed to catch Viktor before he could hit the floor too hard. Realistically, he would’ve tried to help anyone in that situation, but the fact that he can feel Viktor against him makes it a bit more satisfactory.
Viktor’s breath is short with surprise, his body tense as it registers the impact. For a second, neither of them move, staying frozen in place as they listen to the elevator groan. Neither of them dare to move and risk plummeting down to the ground level.
Jayce blinks up at the flickering light overhead, his mind scrambling to process what had just happened. He can feel Viktor’s hand pressed awkwardly against his ribs, the unmistakable pressure of the smaller man’s weight on top of him.
Slowly, hesitantly, Viktor detangles himself from Jayce, doing his best not to make any sudden movements – both due to the elevator's instability and an aching in his hip. He’s only semi successful before the elevator groans again, and he stills.
As Jayce’s mind finally catches up to reality, his voice stumbles over itself to fill the shocked silence, each word more useless than the last, “Sorry! I didn’t– I wasn’t–” His face burns, heart racing from both adrenaline and the sudden proximity. His flustered apology grinds to a halt as his breath catches painfully in his throat and he jerks forwards with a wet, scraping cough.
It bursts out of him before he can stop it, crackling deep in his chest and forcing him to bury his face in the crook of his elbow. His nose and mouth are already covered by two layers of medical-grade masks, so whether the action is a desperate attempt to muffle the noise or simply muscle memory, he doesn’t know.
The cough blooms into a small fit – tight, rattling, as if his lungs are trying to turn themselves inside out. His whole body shakes as he desperately tries to muffle the sound, though he knows it’s a useless effort. Viktor is still pressed awkwardly against his side, cautiously leaning away, but remaining still enough that he won’t risk jostling the elevator.
And Jayce? He’s one humiliating cough away from begging the elevator to just drop him through the floor.
He finally manages to catch his breath, his coughing tapering off into shallow, shaky inhales. His eyes are glassy, bleary with fever and exertion, but he still forces himself to look over at Viktor. He’s half dazed, half mortified at the disgusted expression he’s sure he’s about to see. But instead, the smaller man looks at him with sympathy… No. That can’t be right. Jayce really must be out of it, because there’s no way Viktor wouldn’t be looking at him with anything but outright revolution at this point. He opens his mouth, preparing himself to stammer out an apology.
And then the elevator shudders. And not the nice “wow the elevator is fixed!” kind of shudder, but rather the kind that causes the floor to drop a few inches with a dull, stomach-churning THUD!
Jayce freezes, his heart lurching up into his throat. How has his bad day somehow found a new level of awful? He’d already had a parade of delays, illnesses, and public displays of humiliation. But this takes the cake.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t do anything aside from stare wide-eyed at the flickering overhead light and prepare to plummet to his death. He doesn’t even register his hand half-curled around Viktor’s arm.
Caitlyn has always teased him for his so-called irrational fear of elevators, rattling off statistics about how rarely they actually malfunctioned. Afterall, he’d been in elevators hundreds of times and never had any issues aside from having to make awkward conversation.
This, however, is starting to make his fear feel very, very rational.
Jayce takes a little breath, trying to keep his cool. He looks at Viktor, who doesn’t seem to be any happier about the situation than he is, but significantly more calm. There’s no visible tension in his shoulders, no wild look in his eyes. He seems far more controlled than Jayce feels.
Jayce wants that, needs that – or any semblance of calm or comfort. So he takes a shallow breath through his nose, ignoring its congested squeak and focussing on not freaking the fuck out… Even though his chest aches, his fever simmers under his skin, and he’s sitting in a half-crumpled pile on an elevator floor with the guy he’s been admiring for weeks.
But Viktor isn’t freaking out, so Jayce won’t either.
He lasts all of one minute before his thoughts start amping up again. One silent, dreadfully long minute in which neither he or Viktor dare to say a word.
‘It’s fine, right? Elevators stall all the time, it’ll start moving again in a few seconds…’
Jayce shifts uncomfortably, trying not to let his anxiety build into panic as he realizes the gravity of the situation. He’s stuck in an elevator with none other than his nextdoor neighbor, who just so happens to be one of the most jawdroppingly gorgeous people Jayce has ever seen. And he has the worst head cold he’s had in years. It would almost be comedic, if it wasn’t happening to him.
He clears his throat, hesitantly asking, “should we… uh… press a button?”
In all his years of higher education, not once had anyone covered what to do if you get stuck in an elevator with your ridiculously attractive neighbor while sick and semi-delirious. There’s no syllabus for this, no instruction manual, no messy notes or annotations for him to reference.
So, the most logical – panicked, deeply flawed, and purely adrenaline driven – solution he can come up with is to press the third floor button again; maybe the elevator just needs a gentle reminder of where it’s supposed to be going.
Viktor doesn’t seem to have any better ideas, so he just nods, his expression unreadable as he watches Jayce slowly shift onto his knees and press the bright white 3. And then press it again. And again. And once more for good measure.
And a fifth time because his panic is gaining momentum and the only thing keeping him from thoroughly embarrassing himself is the vain hope that maybe the fifth time is the charm… No? Okay. What about a sixth?
After Jayce presses the button upwards of ten times, Viktor finally pipes up, “It was probably disabled when the elevator…” he gestures vaguely with his hand, unsure what to say other than “fucking broke,” and that didn’t seem like the most suitable option, given Jayce’s evident panic. So Viktor lets the sentence trail off, doing his best to remain calm in an attempt to ground Jayce.
Jayce sinks back down to the floor, nodding a little and saying, “Right… so we just… wait.” His voice is strained, resigned to the fact that he can’t do anything aside from sit and do his best not to completely freak out. He leans his head against the cold metal wall behind him and exhales through his mouth stuffily.
Viktor nods, shifting so he can lean back against the wall and relieve some pressure from his hips. The motion is practiced, subtle, like he’s done this before – and he certainly has, he knows exactly where the strain lives in his body.
Jayce taps his fingers nervously against the floor, taking a steadying breath and doing his best to ignore the steady thrum of anxiety pulsing through his body. It’s fine. This is fine. Except realistically, it’s anything except fine. Jayce must’ve done something truly horrible to deserve whatever karmic shit the universe was throwing at him today.
As if the situation just had to get worse, Jayce feels his nose twitch, the lingering itch making itself known again: persistent, teasing. He scrunches up his nose beneath the mask, moving it from side to side in an attempt to lessen the itch, but it only serves to make it run more. He can feel a drop of mess slipping over his upper lip and towards his chin, and once again he attempts to sniff – afterall, it solved his problems last time, why wouldn’t it work again?
SND-RKk! Jayce’s attempt at containing the mess is all but humiliating, halting halfway upon entry into his nose and resulting in a soggy, congested squeak. The sound is deeply unflattering, breaking through the stillness of the elevator and doing nothing to help relieve the irritation in Jayce’s nose.
His eyelids flutter as the buzzing worsens: a sharp, needling sensation that blooms right behind the bride of his nose. His eyebrows knit together in a grimace, and he clamps his mouth shut in an attempt to stop himself from hitching.
He presses his tongue to the top of his mouth, holding his breath and repeating ‘I don’t have to sneeze. I don’t have to sneeze. I don’t have to sneeze’ in his mind, as if he could mentally block the sensation prickling through his nose. He can feel his nostrils flare beneath the mask, wet and sensitive against the fabric. At the risk of making things worse, Jayce rubs his finger along the base of his nose over the mask, but it barely provides him any relief.
‘Please. Not here. Not now. Not in front of him,’ He begs internally, squeezing his eyes shut for a second.
Despite his best efforts, Jayce can feel the itch worsening. He clamps his jaw shut stubbornly, refusing to draw a breath, but his head still snaps forwards with a pitifully stifled runt of a sneeze, “h’nNGKSXgTCHh’uh!”
The stifle (if you can even call it that) is harsh enough to jolt his whole body; his shoulders hunch, his legs twitch involuntarily, and his torso forcibly curls in on itself. It’s muffled into the fabric of his masks, but messy all the same – wet and uncomfortable and clinging to both the fabric and the base of his nose. Within seconds, he feels the heat of it seep through the first layer of the material.
‘Oh. My. God.’
For a second, he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything aside from sit there dazedly, his eyes fluttering half-closed as the itch lingers.
Then, a mortifying sense of shame burns through his chest, and he feels himself flush with embarrassment. He downright refuses to look at Viktor, desperately trying to think of some solution aside from the obvious one. He has to clean himself up somehow, and he has to manage it with the few tissues he has shoved unceremoniously in his pocket… but in order to do that, he’d have to remove his mask and risk Viktor seeing the absolute mess he’s made.
Jayce’s thoughts are interrupted by a soft, almost tentative “Bless you,” from the man sitting beside him, and he feels his face flush an even deeper shade of red from his cheeks to his ears and down his neck.
He doesn’t dare try to speak; he doesn’t trust his voice right now – he doesn’t trust anything about his body right now – so he just dips his head in a quick, polite nod. He can feel the mess sitting inside his mask, humid and awful and clinging uncomfortably to his lips and skin. But the thought of taking off his mask, of drawing attention to himself, makes his chest tighten with anxiety. So he just… endures it. Miserably.
Within seconds, Jayce’s nose twitches again, and this time he doesn’t even have a moment to prepare before a harsh sneeze grates against his throat, “hHH-hHRRRSZZCHhuew!”
He takes in a shaky breath, realizing in horror that there’s no possible way for him to avoid removing his masks. They’re already soaked anyways, and Jayce is almost certain there’s a visible damp spot where the mess has been clinging to the inside of the fabric.
“Sorry,” Jayce apologizes sheepishly, holding a hand over his masked-mouth out of habit, “do you mind if I -sNDFf- tagke off my masgk for a secgond?”
His voice is so congested it’s almost incomprehensible, but somehow Viktor doesn’t seem disgusted with Jayce, in fact, he seems almost fascinated by the sickly man. No, Jayce must be misreading the signs… maybe Viktor just happens to be a very good actor, and his disgust is merely hidden behind a neutral expression.
“Not at all,” Viktor responds, his voice heavily accented and softer than Jayce remembered it, “you seem quite uncomfortable.”
Jayce blushes once again, rubbing the nape of his neck sheepishly and saying, “Yeah… id’s nodt the ideal scenario,” before realizing how that sounds and quickly trying to recover, “nodt that you’re– idt’s mbe. I’mb… uncomfortable,” he finishes lamely.
Somehow he earns a smile from the smaller man. An actual, real smile, the kind that makes Viktor’s eyes crinkle at the sides and reveals thin but visible smile lines along his cheeks.
For just a moment, Jayce’s hatred of the situation lessens.
But then his body reminds him of the circumstances, forcing him to clear his throat as he feels phlegm start to build at the base of his throat. Now that he at least has Viktor’s permission, he feels slightly more comfortable with the prospect of taking off the masks (and besides, he really can’t handle the sensory discomfort of them while they’re coated in mess).
He turns away from Viktor slightly, pinching the material around his nose to try and contain as much of the mess as he can as he removes the bands from around his ears with his other hand. He shoves the masks unceremoniously into his pocket, making a mental note to throw them away as soon as possible.
As soon as he takes off the masks, his nose twitches, apparently upset at being exposed when it's in such terrible condition. With the barrier removed, Viktor can see just how sensitive Jayce’s nose is: bright pink, chapped, and twitching in irritation.
Jayce fumbles to pull a mostly-intact travel pack of tissues from his pocket, noting that he only has a few left. He can’t quite sum up the confidence to blow his nose, so he just does his best to wipe away the residual mess while sniffling wetly against the tissue.
He knows he’s being gross. He feels gross, but he seems to have caught a cold that downright refuses to be tamed. Usually, he’d hole himself up in his apartment with a bottle of NyQuil and do his best to sleep it off, but the universe decided otherwise.
Viktor, who’s been respectfully quiet, shifts slightly beside Jayce before saying, “I don’t think anyone looks particularly dignified when they’re sick.”
Jayce glances at him in surprise, the dampened tissue still pressed to his septum. Viktor doesn’t look directly at him, instead choosing to pick at the same loose thread on his sleeve again. Neither his tone nor expression reveal his intention in saying that… but Jayce has a feeling it wasn’t meant to be an insult, though it certainly could’ve been interpreted that way.
“Whadt, you don’d thingk this is dignified?” Jayce tries to joke, tucking the used tissue into the same pocket as the soiled masks and offering Viktor a tired grin.
“Do you?” Viktor replies, his lips curling up ever so slightly – just enough to reassure Jayce that it’s okay, he’s not intending to be an ass, he just comes off a bit harsh.
“Ndo…” he admits, running a hand through his hair and clearing his throat again as it protests against its use, “so… we’re neighbors.” Admittedly, smalltalk isn’t one of Jayce’s strongsuits, not with strangers anyways (especially strangers who he happens to be attracted to). But Viktor seems to find Jayce’s awkward blunders amusing, huffing out a little breath and agreeing, “yes. We are.”
“Righdt. I mean, you already knew that.. Because of the teas and–,” Jayce internally groans, thinking ‘why am I still talking’ as he tries his best to string together enough words to form a coherent sentence. Between his fever, his anxiety over the elevator’s malfunction, and his infatuation with Viktor, he can’t quite compose himself. His voice trails off, letting his sentence hang in the air unfinished.
His nose gives a sudden, traitorous twitch and he presses the back of his wrist beneath his nostrils, sniffling thickly in an attempt to stop the mounting itch. Instead, it worsens, buzzing up through his sinuses and causing his nostrils to flare against his sleeve. His brows furrows, his eyes starting to shut as his breath catches in his chest, “hh-”
He barely manages to stutter out, “S’cuse mbe,” before sucking in a desperate breath, “hhHHHh–” and pivoting into his elbow, “hhHG’GDSXCHhew’hgh!”
The sneeze tears out of him, wrenching and wet, his shoulders jerking forwards with the force of the expulsion. He snuffles wetly in the aftermath of the sneeze, turning away from Viktor again as he fumbles to pull another tissue from his pocket with his free hand. His pocket resists him, the crinkled plastic of the tissue pack catching on the fabric, so by the time he manages to get a tissue free, he can already feel a damp splotch forming on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
Blushing crimson, Jayce removes his nose from his elbow, quick to fold the tissue over his nose in an attempt to clean himself up. To make things worse, his nose doesn’t seem to be done yet.
A slow, unmistakable tickle crawls up through the bride of his nose, and he draws a breath through his mouth as his eyes flutter half-shut again.
“hhHHhh… huhh-HHh’…”
He pauses, waiting. His nostrils flare. His lips part. The tickle worsens into a full blown burning, testing his already worn patience.
“hhihh… huhh’HHhh—”
Within seconds, he goes from wishing he wouldn’t sneeze to wishing he could just let it out. Embarrassment eats at his chest as he feels Viktor shift next to him, reminding him of his close proximity.
Jayce attempts to rub his nose through the tissue, pinching it shut with a squelch before moving his fingers up and down. It only results in another desperate series of hitches.
“huh-hHhhuhh…! H-hhhHHh-huhhh… hhHHH–” and then nothing. “Oh c’mbon,” he breathes hoarsely, his voice barely audible. He doesn’t even care that he’s humiliatingly desperate to sneeze right now, he just wants to get it over with. His chest swells with another inhale, “HHHhhuhhhh–!”
By this point, his eyes are watering, his mouth hanging agape, and his brows pinched tight in pure, itchy suffering. The tissue sits uselessly between his fingers, fluttering as each hitching breath catches its surface.
After what feels like ages, Jayce sucks in a shaky breath, “hhHHHihHh-” before he finally snaps forwards, “hh’HGZZSCHhtCHhuh!” and a second follows right on its heels, “hhRRZZSCHhh-uh!”
He stays there, bent at the waist and keeping the soaked tissue pressed to his nose as he sniffles experimentally, letting out a breath of relief as the itch dies down.
“Gezundheit,” Viktor murmurs breathlessly from beside Jayce, watching as Jayce holds the mess of a tissue to the base of his nose.
“Thangks,” Jayce rasps in response, doing his best to wipe his nose and snuffle back the moisture threatening to drip from the appendage, “Sorry… thad was preddy gross.”
He cringes at just how congested his voice is. He desperately needs to blow his nose, but he only has two tissues left and there’s no way in hell he’s using them now. They’ve barely been stuck in the elevator for five minutes, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll start moving again any time soon. The tissue he’s currently holding has lost all structural integrity, and he resigns himself to shoving it into his pocket along with the other.
“It’s fine,” Viktor dismisses simply, “you’re sick.”
That felt like the understatement of the year. Jayce had tested for the flu and strep just to be safe, and both tests had come up negative, but he feels like he’s been hit by a truck. Whatever cold he’s managed to catch is doing a number on him.
“Yeah, budt thad was excebtionally–,” his breath stutters out of nowhere, catching him by surprise and barely giving him enough time to half-cover with a hand before, “Hh’DTSSZCHhgh’uhh!”
Despite his best efforts, some of the spray makes it past his broad hand, glinting in the luminescent light before falling lamely onto his lap. He snorts back as much mess as he can, certain that Viktor is getting a full on view of the most humiliating moment he’d experienced in years. His palm glistens with moisture, uncomfortably wet and probably less sanitary than the floor of a New York subway.
Jayce groans softly under his breath, his chest twisting in embarrassment as he weighs the pros and cons of using his second-to-last tissue. He lowers his dripping hand, fishing in his pocket for another tissue as he admits defeat. He’s absolutely fucked.
After taking a minute to clean himself up, Jayce resigns himself to apologize again, sounding a bit like a broken record at this point – sneeze, apology, sneeze, apology, and so on.
“I’mb so sorry,” he mutters, his voice even thicker with congestion now, “Thadt was… I swear, I’mb usually a lod less digdusting thand this…” He doesn’t dare look up to gauge Viktor’s reaction, instead dabbing his nose with the sodden excuse of a tissue held in his hand.
“I’m sure you are,” Viktor replies, almost sounding amused by Jayce’s predicament. Jayce can’t even begin to fathom why Viktor isn’t entirely disgusted by him, especially when they’re trapped in such a small, confined space.
Viktor breaks the silence with a blunt, but not unkind suggestion, “You should blow your nose.”
Usually, if anyone had suggested that to him, Jayce might feel like a child, but something about Viktor makes him appreciate the comment slightly. It’s obviously not coming from a place of judgement, but rather much needed advice (Jayce doesn’t even notice that his nose has begun to run over his upper lip again, but Viktor has a clear view of it).
The sick man gives a pitiful laugh, which turns into a short bout of coughing, before admitting, “I only have two tissues lefd… and I clearly need themb. I don’d wanna -sNNFf- use themb yet in case we’re stugk here for hours.”
“That is… an optimistic estimate, is it not?” Viktor replies simply, casting a doubtful glance at Jayce, knowing the tissues won’t last another five minutes. Again, he’s not rude, but upfront. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in dancing around the subject of Jayce’s illness.
Jayce tries to come up with a response as his ears burn bright pink again, but he’s interrupted as Viktor shifts, reaching into his coat pocket. There’s a quiet ruffling of fabric before Viktor wordlessly extends his hand, holding a neatly folded dark-gray handkerchief. Its edges are soft with wear, but it appears to be well maintained.
Jayce blinks, “Waidt… seriously?” He’s always surprised when people extend small kindnesses to him, despite Caitlyn reassuring him that he’s just as deserving of them as anyone else.
“Well,” Viktor finally meets his eyes, “You seem to need it more than I do.”
When Jayce hesitates to accept the fabric, Viktor adds, “I wash it frequently. It’s clean.” It’s a simple gesture, small and likely insignificant, but it unspools something knotted in Jayce’s chest.
He grins, enough as to wear Viktor can see his tooth-gap and dimples, and says, “thangk you, really. I owe you one.”
Viktor shrugs, politely averting his gaze as Jayce wipes his nose with the cloth, “technically, I owed you for the tea. We’re even.”
Jayce settles for nodding in response, unfolding the handkerchief and wiping at the moisture clinging to his septum again. No matter how much he tends to the appendage, it seems intent on running. Thankfully, the fabric of the handkerchief is soft, but it still does little to soothe his raw, irritated nose.
Jayce glances down at the cloth in his hands, folding it carefully along the seams out of habit. He usually carries a handkerchief, especially when he’s sick, but he’d managed to soil all of his in the past two days since catching this cold. It’s not like he’s been in any condition to do laundry, so he’s been surviving off of whatever half-empty tissue packs he could find around his place.
Jayce’s breath suddenly catches mid-thought, his chest swelling with a loud hitch, “hhHh’h–” and he tents the handkerchief over his nose just before he shudders forwards with a poorly muffled, “hhH’HMPDTSCSHHuhh!”
He doesn’t have time to mutter another apology; the elevator lurches, stuttering down a few inches before there’s a mechanical whirring. The two men stay perfectly still, Jayce’s hands still holding the handkerchief over his nose. The whirring continues, but the elevator doesn’t move, for better or for worse. Jayce wipes his nose against the dark-gray hankie and snuffles once the coast seems clear.
“If we’re going to die in an elevator, you might as well blow your nose first,” Viktor suggests again.
Jayce can’t decide whether to laugh or panic at Viktor’s comment, so he just settles for swallowing his pride and blowing his nose. It sounds pathetically clogged, but it allows some of the congestion in his sinuses to shift, giving him a moment of relief.
A very, very short lived moment of relief.
His nose twitches, the sensitive appendage downright revolting at the congestion having moved, and Jayce barely has time to cup the handkerchief over his nose again before his breath catches, “hhHh!”
“hhhHHR’DZSSHh’CHhgh!!”
The sneeze bursts out with a damp, desperate force, caught into the folds of the hankie, which is quickly becoming wet from overuse. Jayce draws another uneven, desperate breath, another sneeze already building, “hhHHhh’ihhh… hh’DZGXTshhhuhh!! Huh’GXSSHHhhuhf!!”
The second part of the double takes him completely by surprise, leaving him breathless. A quiet groan slips out before he can stop himself, and despite his breath hitching again, he mutters, “Hh’uhh… fuhhck– I’mb–I’mb s–hhhhhuhhh… sorhhh.”
His voice trails off, his eyes fully closed as his breath hitches in uneven, pitiful gasps, “hehh–hhHHHHuhhh… hhh-” his head tilts back, his adams apple bobbing with each desperate breath, “hh’DdZZSSCHHguhh!!”
Jayce can’t remember the last time he’s sneezed like that, and it takes him a second to catch his breath. He winces as he swallows, his throat aching as a result of the fit. Despite the handkerchief having caught all of the mess, Jayce is still beyond mortified. If he had thought he had no chance with Viktor before, he sure as hell doesn’t now.
He sits there, stewing in his embarrassment as he blows his nose as quietly as possible. Once he’s cleaned himself up, Viktor offers a “bless you. Again.”
“Sorry… againd,” Jayce replies, trying to offer Viktor an awkward grin, but it ends up as more of a grimace, “I shouldn’d habve lefd mby apardmend today, bud -snNFf- I had to tagke an exam and… and you don’d ndeed to know this… Sorry.”
Viktor shrugs, once again playing with the loose string on his sleeve as he dismisses the apology, “You said that already. Several times.”
Jayce feels a bit of the anxiety sitting in his chest dissipate, and he nods a little. He’s generally talkative, and he tends to ramble when he’s anxious, but it doesn’t seem like Viktor minds all that much.
He rubs the nape of his neck, noting the way his skin seems to radiate feverish heat, trying to change the subject away from his incessant apologies, “So.. you jusd moved in a few weegks ago?”
Viktor nods, shifting his position once again, wincing ever so slightly with the movement, “Yes. Almost a month ago now. This complex is much closer to my university’s campus than my previous one,” he explains conversationally. If it was anyone else, he’d probably ignore any attempt at smalltalk, but Jayce is… an exception to that.
“Universidy?” Jayce asks, perking up a little, “Where do you go?”
“Piltover Technological Institute,” Viktor answers, glancing at Jayce and noting his smile. How someone so sick still manages to smile like that is beyond him, “I take it you’re familiar with it?”
“Yeah!” Jayce’s voice catches in his throat, a bit too enthusiastic and forcing him to cough into his elbow. After taking a second to catch his breath, he continues, “I’mb a junior there. I’mb sdudying engineering with a fogcus on Aerospace engineehhring … hhh- and thhihhermo–” he blinks rapidly, his nostrils flaring outwards as his breath starts to catch, “thermodynamihhHihcs–” he barely manages to stutter through the word before, ““hHH-hHRRRSZZCHhuew!”
Luckily, he covers the sneeze with the handkerchief, catching the splurge of mess and muffling the sound as best he can, “Ugh, sor–”
“Don’t apologize,” Viktor interrupts him, waving his hand dismissively and leaning back against the elevator wall again, “it’s rather redundant at this point.”
Jayce swallows, nodding and trying to ignore the growing fondness in his chest. Viktor doesn’t seem disgusted by him, or irritated with his ramblings and blunders – maybe his chance at becoming closer with his neighbor isn’t completely blown.
“Right. So uhmb, whadt are you studying?” He asks, trying to keep the conversation going, if anything just so he can hear Viktor’s voice. He wants to ask where the other man is from, he assumes somewhere in Russia, but there’s an aspect of Vitkor’s accent that he can’t quite place.
“Chemical engineering and biotechnology, though I prefer the ladder. It has more opportunity for innovation,” even from the simple response, Jayce can tell that Viktor’s passionate about the subject. He has subtle, but noticeable mannerisms that give his interest away – a slight upturn of his eyebrows, a glimpse of smile lines along his cheeks, a little shift in his posture, as if he’s drawn in by the topic.
“So you’re – sNDDFf’gh – inderesded in STEM?” Jayce’s question is dulled by congestion, but sounds excited nonetheless, “we habve thad in common.”
He’s forced to press the handkerchief against his septum again, wiping away a bit of moisture that was threatening to drip over his upper lip. He tries to find a relatively dry section of the cloth to clean himself up, though most of it is already sodden.
Viktor nods in response to Jayce, “We do,” he agrees as he looks over at the sick man again, “so Aerospace engineering, this is what you want to have an occupation in?” he asks. Jayce grins at the way he phrased the question. His grammar isn’t wrong by any means, but after growing up in Piltover Jayce had become well accustomed to the “speaking-norms” – norms which Viktor seems unaccustomed or uninterested in.
“Yeah, I thignk so ad leasd. It’s the mosd realistigk field I can go into,” he pauses, swiping his wrist against his septum, “budt we’ll see. I always wandted to be an invendtor.”
Why exactly Jayce is telling Viktor he wanted to be an inventor, he’s not entirely sure, but once it comes out of his mouth, he realizes just how childish it sounds. He opens his mouth to try and say something, anything that makes him sound like a functioning adult when Viktor notes, “me too.”
“Really?” Jayce’s surprise must be written all over his face because he earns a little laugh from Viktor, making his chest flutter.
“Yes, really.” Viktor sits up straighter, correctly his posture with a quiet, concealed breath of discomfort before continuing, “Biotech is very interesting, but I would like to have my own lab. Unrestricted research, without the guidelines and paperwork.”
Jayce grins, finding Viktor’s evident dislike of paperwork amusing.
“I mean it is useless. Why waste time with regulations?” he continues, his accent a bit thicker as he grows more comfortable around Jayce. In an attempt to impress Viktor, Jayce desperately tries to remember a quote he’d read from one of his coursebooks. His fever-addled brain takes a moment to piece it together; he knows it’s from Iven Maren, one of the founders of the Piltover Institute for Radical Inquiry (PIRI).
Something about disobeying rules… science knows no limits. It's from Maren’s most recently published book; he tries to remember the page he’d read it on, vaguely picturing the image of the founder beside the quote.
“You kdow, Iven Maren said that “science isn’t meant to be polite, or convenient. It’s meant to – hhhh –” his breath hitches, but he tries to continue, “to ask the hHihh– thhhheh– hh’DZSSCHhhuh!!” He catches the sneeze against his wrist, keeping it held there as he stubbornly keeps talking, “the questhhhions – hhHHh’GGDTSSHhhuehh!!”
The second one is considerably messier, and he keeps his wrist pressed against his septum to contain the mess. The fabric of his sleeve dampens, clinging unpleasantly to his skin as he fumbles to grab the handkerchief off his lap and clean himself up. He gives a wet little groan in the back of his throat, blushing crimson once again.
“I do not think he said that,” Viktor teases, his tone dry, “bless you,” he adds, his lips curling into a grin. Despite his blushing embarrassment, Jayce laughs, feeling a sense of comfort at Viktor’s teasing, “thangks.”
After a moment, Viktor’s voice breaks the silence, “it’s meant to ask the questions no one wants answered, especially the ones that threaten the rules.” He finishes Jayce’s quote with ease, grinning at Jayce’s impressed expression.
“You’ve read Theoredical Pathways ind Modern Engineering?” Jayce asks excitedly, his tooth gap once again making an appearance as he smiles.
“Who hasn’t?”
For the next twenty minutes or so, the two of them talk about the various texts they’ve recently read. Jayce does most of the yapping despite the aching in his throat, but he can’t help it. His wallowing misery over being so sick is temporarily put on hold, replaced with an opportunity to talk about his interests. Viktor is equally as engaged in the conversation, noticing when Jayce wears out his voice and taking it as a cue to talk more so the sick man can rest his throat for a moment.
Jayce listens intently whenever Viktor speaks, making a mental note of every new thing he learns about him: he prefers natural sciences over mechanical engineering, he recently conducted an experiment with the aid of a professor, he’d like to design his own experiment in the future… and there there are things like the fact that his eyes have little golden specks throughout them, making them change color ever so slightly as the lights flicker. Or that his hands absentmindedly play with the bit of threat hanging from his sweater sleeve, twisting it just enough as to where it won’t fall off.
His internal observations are interrupted as he feels the itch in his nose return, interrupting Viktor with a sudden, “hhhHHuh–”
Viktor pauses, recognizing the sound and knowing exactly what’s about to happen. Despite it being rather obvious, Jayce insists on stuttering out, “shhsorry I’mb gonnahhh… hHHHh snhhehH– sneeze– hhH’RRSZSCHhhuh!! hhhK’TSSCHhh’uhgh!!”
The expulsions come back to back, spraying the already sodden handkerchief and leaving Jayce a little breathless. “Whew,” he exclaims quietly,
“Bud’te zdorovy,” Viktor murmurs, the Russian blessing slipping out without him fully intending.
i know it ends suddenly, but there will be more!! if anyone has any ideas/requests for the second part feel free to send me a message or DM :) i plan on keeping them trapped in the elevator for quite some time... sorry J/ayce...
as always, any comments or tags are so so so appreciated!! thank you to anyone who read it, i'm doing my best to spread the j/ayvik agenda
j/ayce, who’s generally incapable of a full stifle (or even a quiet half stifle), being so utterly congested that his sneezes come out stifled and messy without him intending for them to
ok hear me out i love a post-shower fit like idk pick your fav to torture and he's just gotten out of the shower, has a towel wrapped around his waist (slut), the mirror is all foggy, there's so much STEAM
it's probably morning and he's about to get ready for the day which means like the usual teeth brushing, hair product, shaving, whatever but as soon as he steps out of the shower-- sneeze
ok no big deal? maybe it was the change in temperature. warm shower to cold bathroom. it happens, right? but then he's drying his hair and there's another, and another and it folds him in half
so now it's a THING. is he allergic to his new shampoo? did all the steam loosen up a bunch of congestion from a cold? who knows take your pick but whatever it is, it's becoming a Thing
(bonus points if s/o with the kink has caught on by now and is poking their head in like? uh? everything ok?)
your fav continues on, determined. snuffling, sniffing, rubbing at his nose. he wipes a circle in the fogged up mirror to see himself as if looking at his face might give him a clue about what's setting him off, but all he sees is his expression crumpling up before he sneezes again
and it's just relentless. he thinks it'll taper off after a while but it just doesn't. trying to do his hair, wash his face, put on deodorant, every few seconds he's just waylaid by another sneeze. it's one of those slow but persistent fits that just will not leave him alone
also it's kind of defeated the purpose of a shower to begin with because now his face is a mess and he has to keep blowing his nose to keep ahead of it, he's leaking like a faucet, he's probably flushed from just the sheer amount of sneezes
eventually he gives up on the morning routine entirely and just sits on the edge of the tub with a handful of tissues and decides to just sneeze it out. shuddering, exhausted sneezes by that point, the ones that fold him up and even make one foot come up off the floor as he crunches in on himself
he's completely dry by now but still in just a towel, has not even made it to clothes yet. bathroom is completely de-fogged. how much time has passed? he has no idea. when he's finally done he feels like he just ran a marathon, and probably needs another shower
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
pixelskylines
dededos
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
