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@miserablebabes
I fear I must write a post series Steve whumpy sickfic one shot... Do y'all want stobin (platonic of course), platonic stancy, stonathan, or steddie ft an au of Eddie living?
What pairing should I do?
platonic stobin
platonic stancy
stonathan
steddie
a secret 5th option (write in tags/send ask)
since the old version of this post was flagged for 'adult content'...
reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!
along with that, reblog if your account is a non-binary spectrum safe space or owned by someone on the enby spectrum!
I fear I must write a post series Steve whumpy sickfic one shot... Do y'all want stobin (platonic of course), platonic stancy, stonathan, or steddie ft an au of Eddie living?
What pairing should I do?
platonic stobin
platonic stancy
stonathan
steddie
a secret 5th option (write in tags/send ask)
It's that time of year again. The time when I rewatch House and get angst inspo
Dapper butch with a cold, [A], enters the living room to find their wife, [B], is sitting on the couch, blowing her nose into a tissue, accompanied by a wet, bubbling sound, filling it rapidly with thick snot, When she reemerges, she groans. She sounds full of congestion. "Good bornigg, darligg," she croaks.
They sniffle, their red nose dripping just like her pink one is. She has, undeniably, caught their terrible cold. They sneezed messily all over the house and over her for days on end, and now she is miserably ill with the drippy, snotty cold they’ve given her. It's undeniable. Except, as the way of things between the two of them, she is denying it. "Good mborning," they say. "You dodn't sound good."
She drags in a wet, disgraceful snuffle, and then another. "I'b completely fide," she lies, and coughs.
Currently dreaming about a person slowly coming down with a nasty cold. Listening to their usual, polite little stifles get gradually wetter and less controllable before they inevitably pitch forward into an uncontrollable, unexpectedly messy explosion. Their poor fingers, thinking they were just there to contain another harmless (although quite powerful) stifle, finding themselves covered in spray. The desperate plucking of tissues out of a box and the first helpless, incredibly needed noseblow that completely fills them, confirming to them and everyone else in the room, that they have, indeed, caught a cold.
Well I finished s/tranger t/hings... I am so fucking emotional.
when a cold is taking too long to clear up I just constantly think of this post
S/teve H/arrington snz??
Yes this is described as a scene where they’re all coughing. Am I still thinking unholy thoughts about it? Yeah
A thought that is plaguing (ha) my mind, WARNING THIS IS FOR THE GROSS NASTY CLUB so if you’re not into mess or contagion then avert your eyes
Thinking about some like sci-fi or fantasy or alt realty where there’s a cold like affliction but it purposefully is like more contagious and compels the person to be more contagious. Like sneezing becomes much more messy, and catches them off guard more so it’s harder to cover. It’s like a borderline sentient virus in the way that its primary instinct is to make someone suffer and pass on that suffering.
Idk the thought of someone with a cold in a pharmacy aisle sneezing like five times and not being able to catch any of them while it being just aggressively messy to clean up is taking over my mind.
Okay everyone, I’m back with part 2 of the contagion chain fic. Part 1 can be found here
Y'all. I come bearing part 1 (of, according to my plan, 6) of the infamous contagion chain-fic beginning with a character... – @blooming-trees on Tumblr
My proofreading might be off because I have stared at this document for hours, so I'm sorry in advance for any mistakes. Also I don't know how any of the professions I write about actually work, so take everything with many grains of salt. 😆
Please let me know if you like it. 🥺😅
A Clusterfuck Of A Cold, part 2, female, cold, CONTAGION, MESS
The elevator doors open, but the hotel maid inside isn’t stepping out into the empty corridor with her cart. She is too caught in the throes of a sneezing fit. She has been sneezing all morning, has used up three travel packs of tissues and has now resorted to sneezing openly into the air, at least as long as no one’s there to see her.
“HaaESSSHHHoo-ESSCCHH-AESSSHHHoo! Oh my God… aaerSSHHghh!”
This cold she caught is a doozy; she doesn’t think she has gone more than three minutes tops without sneezing since she woke up, and that’s not an exaggeration. She kept thinking the tickle in her nose would go away, but instead it has doubled down, turning into a deep, prickly sensation as the cold is declaring her nose conquered territory.
She has finally reached a brief respite and pulls her cart out of the elevator and into the corridor before the doors can close again. The thick rug on the floor muffles sounds, making sure any commotion in the corridor won’t disturb other guests, and much as she hates cleaning this goddamn rug, she’s very grateful for its existence today. The last thing she needs is to have any of these important, wealthy guests stepping out to chide her for being noisy. She can’t help it. Her poor nose is so irritated, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
“HaaEESSSHHHah!”
Apart from sneezing, that is. Not that it’s a choice she’s making; this cold doesn’t just cause a tickle that eventually leads to a sneeze, this cold simply makes her sneeze, like a merciless queen torturing her lowly subjects for her own sadistic but absent-minded pleasure. Every couple of minutes she has to sneeze, and she can’t stop it until her nose decides it’s done. Which might be after two sneezes, five sneezes, or ten, or seventeen, or twenty-four. It’s ridiculous.
It’s no surprise that she got sick, though. The pharmacist was so obviously at the peak of her contagious phase and she sneezed her right in the face, and Robin wasn’t exactly at a place where her immune system could take all that and shrug it off. She has slept really poorly for weeks, has been too busy picking up extra shifts to take good care of herself. It will be worth it; she’s planning a trip overseas next year, and she wants a budget that will actually allow her to stay at nice hotels and go to all the famous sites. If that means suffering extra at work for a few months, so be it.
She hadn’t taken this monster of a cold into account, however.
Robin is walking slowly down the corridor, one hand pulling the cart and the other pinching, squashing, rubbing, squeezing her itchy nose in an ongoing but ineffective attempt at quelling this sneeziness once and for all.
“HuhhESSSHH! HuhhEASSSHHH! Oh fucking hell… snnrrghh…” she mutters in a watery voice to no one in particular. She tried to get some sympathy from her colleagues in the breakroom earlier, but they just looked at her, repulsed, and told her she should go home before she got everyone sick. Yeah, she should, she knows that, but she is not going to stay at some bedbug-infested hostel when she finally realises her dream of going to Italy. She wants to stay at places with the standard of the one she’s working at. And if she wants to save up, she needs to work as much as she can and spend as little as possible until then. That’s that. If she has to work through this hellish cold, so be it. It’s not her fault that the sneezes sometimes come on too suddenly for her to cover, even if she tries to when she’s around people. And yes, she may have sneezed all over the coffeemaker while she poured herself a cup this morning, but the way Marilyn and Isabel reacted you’d think she’d spat right in their cups, or sneezed them in the face like that pharmacist did to her. It’s not like it’s some unique situation Robin brings to the workplace; everyone catches a cold sometimes, and everyone goes to work with it too, it’s pretty pointless to deny that. Even if this is a very sneezy type of cold.
Robin isn’t actually an uncaring person, but if life has taught her one thing it’s that if she doesn’t put herself first, she’s never getting anything. And she wants this future trip to be perfect. If she ends up passing this cold on to others because she has to work, that’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make. It’s not that she wishes this cold on anyone else, but she’s not going to hole up and wait it out either. Besides, once again…she’s not going to sneeze anyone right in the face.
The housekeeping crew at this hotel have one floor each that they work, so she’s working alone on the 7th floor. Robin is a social person and this isn’t always a setup she likes, but it’s a good thing she can work alone today. That way she doesn’t have to keep up with these sneezes and catch each and every one of them, because today they’re very unpredictable. She is a rather sneezy person naturally, but she can always feel them coming well in advance. Today is something else, to say the least.
Plenty of the rooms have do not disturb signs, and it’s common for some of these people to decline housekeeping for a day or two; they stay at the same rooms for weeks, most of them. Long-distance travellers, working business projects. Oh they do want to be waited on, they’re wealthy people and that’s just something they expect, but she has been lucky in that aspect today (and so have the guests, because not having her inside their rooms have at least given them a fighting chance to avoid her cold). All the occupied rooms decline housekeeping today. It won’t make her work day easier because once you’re done with your part, you help out with those who aren’t finished… though Robin has a feeling most of her colleagues will decline her assistance today even if they’re behind.
I guess there are some perks even to having the plague, she thinks to herself.
Her nose is really bothering her though, and she brings a hand up to it, pressing the already upturned tip of her nose even further upwards with her knuckle, hoping this hard pressure against it will help.
It doesn’t.
“AaaEESSHHoo! AaeeSSSHH!”
Wetness shoots out of her nostrils and hits her hand, and instead of stopping the sneezes she’s now standing there with the aftermath coating her fingers.
“Oh God,” she growls in a disgusted voice, wiping her hand on her apron, then she wipes her nose on the apron as well. Her nose is really taking it seriously, this attempt at expelling the cold one sneeze at a time.
She gives up on trying to hold in the sneezes; she lets them out openly as she continues walking down the corridor, spraying her cold freely into the air, where the smallest droplets remain floating for a while, before they eventually settle, on the rug where guests will walk and put down their bags… on the door handles to the rooms she passes…
Everywhere she goes, her cold contaminates the area as her sneezing is essentially relentless; her nose itches so much she can do nothing to keep it under her control.
And frankly, she’s not even trying. Holding in the sneezes is only painful and usually ends up in failed stifles, shooting snot everywhere. Spray is certainly preferable to that… at least as long as you’re not in the way of said spray.
Fumbling with the key card to the door, Robin sneezes again, this time all over the doorhandle as well as herself. At least this was just a single sneeze, which she has quickly realised is an anomaly with this cold.
“Hihh-ESSSHHUH!”
She steps inside, closes the door behind her, and surveys the room and what needs to be done. A light cleaning – thankfully it’s in decent shape – and then changing bedsheets and towels, and adding the extra, champagne on ice, a fruit basket, fresh flowers… she hates having to put fresh flowers in the hotel rooms, thankfully it’s just one of those additional perks for certain guests so it’s not something she has to do every day, but she’s so allergic to flowers. With how much she’s already sneezing from this cold, the flowers will have to be the very last thing she does, or she won’t be able to get anything else done.
She sniffles wetly, tired before she’s even started, and gets to work.
***
It does feel counterproductive to sneeze all over the room while she’s trying to clean it, spraying surfaces she just wiped clean, so she opts to use her apron to contain the sneezes. She wipes surfaces with one hand, pressing the bottom part of her apron against her nose and mouth with the other, repeatedly muffling wet, sometimes messy sneezes into the white cotton.
“HahhMMKTSSHHuh! Oh for fuck’s saYIEESSSHHHoo! HahhESSSSHHH! Ugh… snrrfff… snrf-GTSSSHHHOO!”
The damp fabric sticks to the palm of her hand as she doubles over and delivers the last desperate sneeze of this particular fit. Unless you want to argue that her entire day consists of one single but very drawn-out sneezing fit.
She hesitantly lowers her hand, letting the damp apron fall back in place, and wipes her palm on her skirt. Her reddish nostrils flex when she sniffs, tentatively testing if this will set her off again. The sharp smell of cleaning products stings her nose and her eyes water as she tries to rise above the sensation. It reaches a crescendo and then backs down, still taxing on her nose but not pushing her over the edge. Her shoulders relax as she sniffs again, very gingerly.
Yes. She gets a breather. Probably not one that will last very long, but her exhausted body takes what it can at this point.
She wraps up the cleaning part quickly, and then begins to make the bed. But she starts sneezing again, and after stopping to sneeze into her apron, again and again, she decides that she can’t make the bed with just one hand. She either has to wait until she gets a longer respite between sneezes, or she has to forego covering.
It’s not like anyone is in here watching her being unhygienic with her terrible cold, and either way, it’s not the same thing as sneezing right in the face of the next guest in this room. Nowhere near. Who knows if the guest will even arrive this afternoon; it’s supposed to be one of those real hotshots and they usually don’t arrive until late in the evening. Always travelling, always delayed, always meetings or whatever. Robin doesn’t care what the guests do for a living, so she never asks when there’s a particular buzz going on, which there has been the past few days. It’s probably some influencer she has never heard of, if it isn’t some semi-high politician or businessman, or businesswoman, she doesn’t even know that.
This time around, Robin has been so utterly miserable with her cold that she has paid even less attention to the grapevine. Everything that isn’t immediately related to her despairing nose is just an unimportant blur.
She looks at the bed like you’d look at a mountain you have to climb, sighs, wipes away the snot bubble that emerges from her left nostril when she does, and starts putting the sheets in place.
She’s not sure if it’s the laundry detergent, or if it’s the tiny cotton fibres coming loose when she handles the sheet, or if it’s ‘just’ the cold, but she hasn’t even gotten the bottom sheet tucked in place before the tickle in her nose again is driving sneezes out of her.
“HEEEIIISSSSHHH! HEEISSSSHHHUH! HH-EESSSHHHOO!”
If the sneezes prior to this were wet, these are a full show rivalling a tropical storm. Each sneeze releases thousands of droplets landing on the lamp and the nightstand, the sheets, the blanket, the pillows… the viral load of this sneezing fit alone would be enough to infect probably a dozen people just from lying on that bed, but Robin can’t stop sneezing and she won’t stop making the bed. She has often joked that she has made so many beds that she can do it with her eyes closed, and she’s going to prove herself true to her word. Not that she can keep her eyes open for more than a couple of seconds at a time before she’s overcome again either way.
Spray flies out of her mouth and nose, settling everywhere all over the spot where the wealthy guest will sleep tonight, as well as the nightstand and the lamp on it, it’s all covered in contagious droplets.
She sneezes again, a particularly snotty sneeze that makes landfall on the pillow. Streaks of clear snot, on the pillow. Oh God. She sniffles back what’s still dripping out of her nose and wipes the mess off the pillow with her damp apron, grateful that it was on the pillow itself and not the pillowcase. She puts the pillowcase on and places the pillow with the snot-streaked side down, sniffling liquidly and trying to hold back the rest of the snot-loaded sneezes for the time being.
Finishing making the bed, she turns away from it and sneezes again, two back-to-back sneezes that go straight in the air. There is so much spray she can still see it lazily float in the air when she opens her eyes again.
“Ugh, God…” she moans and blows her nose into her apron, having no option right now. At least not in her mind; she could of course take some paper towels from the bathroom, but her thought process is so slowed by the cold-derived congestion that she doesn’t even consider it.
She stands there for a moment, trying to gather herself. Her nose is prickling and dripping, her head is pounding with a sinus headache, her whole body is tired from the endless sneezing fits. For the moment, however, the sneezy urge seems to have faded into the background, for which she is grateful. Even if she knows it’s only temporary.
Towels. Right. Changing the towels in the bathroom, that’s next.
She grabs a pile of towels and heads for the bathroom, when that oh so familiar sensation blooms in the depths of her nose again, hitting her so suddenly she doesn’t have time to think, and she instinctively buries her face into the soft, fluffy pile of towels, sneezing into them several times. Wet, contagious sneezes soaking into the thick softness of the fabric, her cold getting cosy in its new home, biding its time until someone else presses the towels against their face.
Robin inspects the towel, finds that although it’s a bit damp, there’s no visible snot on it, so she merely turns the wet spot inward and hangs it among the rest.
There. Just the ‘final touch’ left to do. She glances at her watch and sees that she needs to hurry. She still doesn’t think the guest will arrive promptly when the room is available, but that’s besides the point, the point is that the room must be available.
Meaning she must be finished in here and out the door post-haste.
She quickly puts the champagne glasses on the desk, gets the Moët & Chandon bottle out of the fridge (no mini fridges in these rooms), holding her breath as she opens the fridge door because the flowers are still in there, then grabs the ice bucket and heads out to the ice machine in the corridor.
She’s sniffling hard to keep her nose from dripping into the bucket, but this sniffling only irritates her sensitive nasal passages even further. She has just made it to the ice machine when she can’t hold back anymore, the sneezes begin to burst out of her again.
“Huhhh-AEESSHHHoo! Snrrf-GHEH-SSSHHHuh Heehh-ESSSHHHuhh! ESSSSHHHUH! HUH-eeSSSHHah!”
She keeps sneezing all over the bucket as well as the ice when she fills it with ice and then returns to the room, but who cares, it’s not like the ice is meant to go in the drink, and the bucket is not meant to drink from.
She puts the bottle in the ice, and as she arranges it to make sure ice covers it from each side, she’s so focused on this task that the sneeze sneaking up on her sprays all over it. Bucket and ice were already generously sneezed on, but now the virus-filled mist covers the bottle as well.
“Aaah-IEESSSHHH! Hehh… huhYIEESSSSHHHoo!”
She scrubs desperately at her burning nose with the palm of her hand, really trying her hardest to rub the itch out of her poor nose, but instead sneezes all over her palm.
“HEH-GTSSSHHuh!”
She sniffle-snorts miserably, wipes her hand on her skirt again, and places the glass next to the bucket. Of course she moves the glass with the same hand she just sneezed all over.
The fruit basket is put in place behind the ice bucket, and this time she manages to hold back the sneezes wanting to spray out of her. The fruit basket remains uncontaminated, unless you count the fact that she touched the basket with her very thoroughly contaminated hands.
Now comes the last and hardest part. Fetching the flowers. She is madly allergic to flowers, and with how sneezy this cold alone makes her… it’s not good. Even if it’s just a minute she has to be close to them, it’s lilies, and lilies are just the worst enemy her nose ever had.
Well, until this cold, that is.
Once I’ve got the flowers in place I can get out of here, Robin tells herself as she walks over to the fridge again, takes the flowers out, holding her breath as long as she can to avoid inhaling the pollen.
She is so sneezy already, she doesn’t know if the flowers have gotten to her or if it’s still the cold working alone, but it feels like a fire is raging inside her red-rubbed nostrils, nostrils that flare and tense as she tries to fight back the need, knowing it’s pointless.
“HUUUuuAARSSHHuh! AaaESSSHH! AAESSSSHHHuhh-ESSSSHHH! AaaaISSSHHHUH!”
Several sneezes go all over the flowers before she can stop herself, but a critical look at the mess she has made isn’t too alarming; it looks more like the droplets got on the flowers when she put water in the vase. Hopefully that’s what the guest will think, if they notice at all.
A fine mist has fallen over the fruit basket as well, but she doesn’t even realise that. More sneezes are filling her nose and she has to get out of here, her allergies on top of this nightmare cold will turn this into an absolute disaster, so she flees, grabs her cart and hurries to the elevator, nose pressed against her wrist as she tries to keep the next sneeze attack at bay until she’s in the elevator at least.
***
The doors to the staff elevator have just closed behind her when the other elevator’s doors open and Mackenzie, no-last-name-just-like-Cher, a Hollywood sweetheart for the past decade or so, steps out, heading down the corridor to find her room. She’s thinking about if she should take a shower or a nap first. Filming starts tomorrow after lunch – well, it starts at 7 am technically, but she doesn’t have to be on set until after lunch – and she’s really jetlagged after travelling from Europe. If she hears the faint sound of sneezes from the elevator next to hers, she doesn’t register it. Her mind is occupied with many things and potential biohazards in her vicinity is not one of them.
She finds her room, opens the door and steps inside. She puts her bag on the floor and gathers her long brown hair, tying it back into a loose ponytail. She has given her assistant a couple of days off to visit family in the city, and she doesn’t mind travelling on her own for a bit. Unlike many of her actor colleagues, she prefers to travel light and without a ton of staff.
The media hasn’t seemed to picked up on her presence in the city yet, they haven’t even realised that filming starts tomorrow, but she’s not in the mood for any sightseeing or outings today. Jetlag has always been hitting her hard, she never gets used to these timezone changes.
She ponders whether to go down to the hotel’s restaurant and have dinner tonight, or just order some room service. Then she spots the champagne and the fruit and decides to start with a glass of champagne and some strawberries. Then a long shower, then snuggle up in bed and just scroll on her phone and keep sipping champagne until she passes out. Maybe she won’t even feel like ordering room service for dinner, maybe some fruit will be enough on its own.
The pillow looks so fluffy, she can’t wait to bury her whole face in it. All in all, everything looks nice.
I have a good feeling about this project, she thinks, pleased, and leans into the flowers, inhaling their sweet perfume.
Always stop to smell the flowers. Good advice, that.
Then she pops the champagne, pours herself a glass, grabs the fruit basket, and brings it to bed.
The pillow is just as fluffy as it looks, and she has no idea that she is lying among millions of cold viruses, all ready to get to work on her nose and turn it into an inflamed, itchy, sneezy hellscape.
***
In the elevator, Robin is sneezing so hard, she has pressed the stop button so she can get through the fit before she has to step out of the elevator again. She wishes she had taken one of those soft towels to tend to her miserable nose, but all she has is her apron. She makes good use of that; blowing her nose into the fabric over and over, filling it with the messy contents of her nose.
Oh man, this cold is terrible, she thinks, wishing she was home watching a movie instead. Maybe one of those medical examiner movies with that hot actress Mackenzie no-last-name.
If Robin had known that the suite she just prepared was meant for the very same Mackenzie, she might have made more of an effort not to fill the room with contagious sneezes, but then again maybe not. She’s really too tired to care much at all anymore.
One thing is for sure though: she’s not going back to the pharmacy to pick up any remedies. She picked up this cold there, no doubt about it, if she goes back she’ll probably get the bubonic plague or something to top it off.
She sneezes heavily into the apron again, three intense, rough-sounding sneezes, and blows her nose into the oversaturated fabric once more.
Actually, on second thought, the bubonic plague wouldn’t be so bad, at least that would kill her faster than this snotty demise.
***
Mackenzie wakes up the next morning feeling like she was hit by a truck. Still jetlagged, that’s not really common for her, but it has to be. Because she can’t be hungover from the champagne, she only had two glasses before switching to sparkling water… but her head feels heavy and her sinuses are completely clogged.
Ugh.
She sits up, the congestion shifts back in her nose, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath and sneezes violently all over herself.
Then she just sits there, blinking, trying to process what just happened, when her nose begins to tickle again.
“Heeh-ISSSHHHEW!”
She sniffles, a knot of dread filling the pit of her stomach. Is she coming down with a cold? No, she can’t be. Please, don’t let it be a cold.
“… snrrff… hehh-ehhh… herrISSSHHHEW!”
It’s definitely the beginning stages of a cold. Just great. She has no idea where she could have caught it; has to have been on the plane, though she can’t recall any of the other passengers – or the flight crew – appearing ill. She has been on plenty of flights with sick passengers and crew, but she rarely catches anything that way. It seems odd that she would get sick when nobody is even showing symptoms.
Well. Maybe it was in the airport, then. All those people coming and going, touching things, sneezing and coughing without covering and then moving on, only for some other unlucky traveller to touch the same things or breathe the same air. Germy places.
She gets out of bed, grabs a few paper towels and blows her nose, then calls room service to order breakfast. When she speaks, she notices there’s a bit of a twinge in her throat too, driving home the idea that this is indeed a cold, and congestion immediately begins to fill up her sinuses again.
She blows her nose again, gets dressed, and sits on the bed waiting apathetically for breakfast to arrive.
“Huhh-aah-ISSSSHHEW!”
Yeah. She’s definitely coming down with something.
Perfect timing… but isn’t it always?
***
By lunchtime, her cold has really settled in, and there’s a persistent tickle in her nose, returning over and over even if she rubs it away, even if she gives in to it and sneezes, it just keeps coming back.
When she arrives on set, her makeup artist, a pretty, bubbly blonde woman a few years younger than Mackenzie, introduces herself as Ashley and gushes over how long she has wanted to work with Mackenzie.
Mackenzie, who doesn’t want to get the reputation of being difficult, always tries to be pleasant with the people on set, but she’s not in the mood for talking.
“It’s really nice to meet you, Ashley, and I’m sure you’re going to do a great job,” she says and clears her throat. “But I’m very jetlagged from travelling, so I’m afraid I won’t be very chatty today.”
“Oh.” Ashley looks momentarily disappointed, but fixes her expression within microseconds. “I understand, no worries. Do you want some music on while I work?”
Mackenzie considers, then nods. Maybe with some music on it will be less obvious to Ashley when Mackenzie needs to sniffle, which she is certain she won’t be able to avoid.
“Okay,” Ashley says and turns on a Spotify playlist that makes Mackenzie smile while Ashley lays out all the brushes, because it’s the typical Millennial split personality playlist, Linkin Park followed by Céline Dion followed by Shakira. She probably has a playlist just like this one herself, too.
But the songs are familiar, the volume not too loud and not too low, so she leans back and closes her eyes, going over her lines in her mind while Ashley begins. She knows what she’s doing, Mackenzie can tell from her touch, and she relaxes even more. Trying to get into character. Though she is fairly certain Dr Cassidy has never had to deal with a cold quite like the one brewing inside of her; she can feel how her nose is getting more and more irritated by the minute.
Mackenzie has a large, unique nose, not the kind that Hollywood happily accepts, but she has stubbornly refused to get any nose jobs throughout her career, and lately the very fact that her profile is instantly recognisable has actually been a career-enhancing detail. But the thing about a bigger nose is that there’s a bigger surface that can get tickled. And while she’s not particularly sensitive in general, whenever she catches a cold, her nose suddenly becomes very sensitive to things that usually doesn’t bother her. From scents to physical touch.
Ashley works on her with efficient skill, but Mackenzie is no longer feeling any serenity. The cold is twirling its fluttery tickle deeper into both her nostrils. Some of the powder soaring in the air got up her right nostril, teasing her. Ashley’s brush is sweeping lightly up and down the left side of her nose, tickling her like a feather. She has so many tickles in her nose now and each tickle is a potential sneeze, and they’re all increasing in strength. Mackenzie fights with all her might to hold back what is building inside her majestic nose, but it’s no use; the nose she so vehemently defended against modern beauty standards is preparing to betray her completely. She is notoriously bad at holding back her sneezes and she can’t stifle. She is at the mercy of her cold-ridden, helplessly tickly nose and Ashley’s meddling makeup tools.
She can’t fight it any longer.
“Oh God s-stopPGSHK-iksshhkk…! Aaah-huhRESSSHHHoo!!”
Ashley jumps when Mackenzie erupts with the violent, wet sneeze that marks the absolute limits to her self-control. It sprays all over the makeup bottles and brushes, and all over Ashley too.
“I am so sorry,” Mackenzie begins, but Ashley is just laughing as she grabs a couple of tissues from the box on the table, gives one to Mackenzie and wipes some droplets off herself with the other.
“Holy shit, bless you!” she says, still laughing. “How long have you been holding back on that one?”
Mackenzie sniffles miserably, dabbing at her nose, trying to avoid ruining the makeup already put on her face. Reading the expression in Ashley’s eyes, she’s not doing a great job of it, so she lowers the tissue.
“A while,” she says, not elaborating that she has technically needed to sneeze since she left the hotel, only in varying degrees. “My nose is so tickly today, and the powder and the brushes… I can’t help it.”
“Hmm, well, I have to put on your makeup,” Ashley says, almost apologetically. “Maybe even an extra layer. I’m sorry for saying it, but your nose is getting quite red. Are you coming down with something?”
Mackenzie sighs.
“I might be,” she admits. She’s blushing, she can feel her cheeks heat, she doesn’t like to admit being sick. Who does, especially in this line of work? But she doesn’t want to pass it on either. A cold on a movie set usually goes through the actors and crew like a wildfire and it’s never a good thing.
“Oh don’t worry about it,” Ashley assures her. “I’m good at this, you know, no one will notice.”
“Unless I keep sneezing,” Mackenzie says, her eyelids fluttering, elongated, arched nostrils flaring. “I r-really need to….”
“It’s okay,” Ashley says. “Get them out and maybe it feels better.”
It won’t feel better if she just sneezes, because this cold is only getting started, and Mackenzie knows it, but she can’t hold these sneezes in to save her life, and she puts the tissue in front of her mouth to at least capture the spray.
“Huh-ISSSHEW! Sorry, m-my noOOSSCHHUH… my nose is… is… so tihhh-hih-ESSSSHHIEW! ESSSSHHUH!”
“…tickly, huh? I can tell,” Ashley chuckles. “Do you need anything? Cold meds, maybe?”
“Do you have ady?” Mackenzie asks, wincing as she hears how congested she sounds by now.
“Not me, I don’t use it – I never get sick, just so you know – but I can have someone go buy some.”
“I could really use it,” Mackenzie says gratefully, and Ashley sends one of the assistants out to pick up some cold meds, while she goes back to working on the red-nosed actress.
Mackenzie keeps sneezing throughout the makeup session, sometimes into a tissue, but sometimes they catch her so off guard that she sneezes uncovered, sometimes all over the makeup stuff, sometimes all over Ashley. She keeps apologising, but Ashley just brushes it off, insisting she never gets sick.
Mackenzie isn’t someone who catches everything going around either, but this cold is a potent one, she can tell. The sneeziness hit her like a ton of bricks and she’s only on the first day. That doesn’t bode well for her, nor for poor Ashley who must have been sneezed on at least half a dozen times because Mackenzie truly didn’t feel the sneezes coming before it was too late.
But the show must go on, as the saying goes.
***
Once the makeup is finished and she’s in her outfit – scrubs with a lab coat on top; her character is a medical examiner, and she usually feels quite comfortable in this costume, but today she’s freezing. Must be the illness’s fault, but knowing that doesn’t make her feel any better. A couple of swigs of DayQuil should be helping, but it only takes the edge off and that edge is still increasing.
She pushes herself through take after take, too many of those ruined by her sneezing or sniffling mid-line, or her missing her cue because she’s too busy fighting off the tickle in her nose. Her acting is terrible and if she hadn’t worked with this director and several of these actors before, knowing they’re aware of her actual acting chops, she’s sure she’d be recast within the day.
“Rigor mortis set in aboutTSSSHIEW! HEH-ISSSSHHew! ‘scuse me, I’m so sorry!”
“Do you need a minute, Mac?” the director asks. He doesn’t sound happy; it’s quite clear despite Ashley’s impeccable makeup job that Mackenzie is coming down with – or rather is already very down with – a nasty cold.
“No, I think I’ve got it now,” she says, resigned to the fact that regardless, they’re going to have to redo her dialogue in post-production, because her voice sounds like she’s drowning in her own cold.
“Are you sure?”
She nods.
“Okay, let’s try that again, then. Without the sneezing, this time, please. Action!”
Mackenzie tries her hardest, and this time she actually gets through the scene without any sneezy interruptions, but all that earns her is to move on to a scene that will prove to be even worse.
At first glance, it doesn’t seem so bad. She’ll speak to her colleague while putting on a mask, and the mask will then hide her nose from sight for the rest of the scene, ensuring that any redness won’t matter.
As it turns out, Mackenzie’s cold isn’t going to make it easy on anyone today.
“Oh God, good thing you’re not a real doctor,” her co-star laughs when Mackenzie turns away from her mid-sentence and sneezes openly, all over the slab with the ‘body’ that she’ll soon open up. The prop looks… well, life-like is the wrong word here, but… realistic. And she has to agree, if she were a real doctor she’d probably be in big trouble.
“At least the patients are dead,” Mackenzie sniffles and turns to the camera guy with an inquisitively raised eyebrow.
“Still rolling,” he says, giving a thumbs up, and Mackenzie turns back to her colleague and makes a new attempt at getting through the scene.
“Did you speak to Charlie?” she says, putting on a pair of rubber gloves. She’s thankful there are at least no m’s or n’s in that sentence. Her nose feels like it’s about to start running, just to really make things fun, but if she can only hold off on sniffling a few seconds longer she can put the mask on and then she won’t have to sniffle back the mess trickling out of her nostrils. It’ll be disgusting, but no one will see it behind the mask.
“Yeah, he’s waiting for your report.”
“Well, let’s get to work, then,” she says and takes a mask and puts it on, not realising what a horrible mistake it is until it’s too late. This slight brush against her sensitive nose sets off the urge to sneeze immediately. In fact, the mask isn’t even in place yet when she sneezes helplessly, trying with all her might to hold it back but all that does is resulting in a string of clear snot shooting out of one nostril and just hanging there until the next sneeze pushes it out of her nose altogether, then followed by yet another wet sneeze. At least the fallout lands in the mask and not on her co-star, who is leaning in front of her looking at the lacerations on the body on the slab, just about to say her next line.
“MPSSSHHKhh! HehRRSSSSHHIEW! Snrrrkkk… hahhh-ISSSHHHUH! Oh by God I’b so sorry, that’s disgusting,” Mackenzie groans, pinch-wiping her nose with the surgical mask to make sure she has no mess left on her face at least.
“Bless you, but wow,” her co-star says, looking at the director, “can’t she wear like a hazmat suit in these scenes instead? Or can I? I’d rather not catch that. No offense, Mac, but goddamnit.”
“None taken, and I agree,” she manages to say, somewhat intelligibly, but she is deeply embarrassed. She has ugly-cried for scenes and dripped with snot, so it’s not the mess in itself, not exactly. But this is something completely different; this isn’t a character losing control, this is her losing control. She feels like a disaster, and she knows she has probably doomed half the people on set to catching this cold, simply because the sneezes are so sudden. And all the lab props she and her co-star have been handing back and forth, things that Mackenzie has handled between wiping and rubbing at her nose and then given to the other woman. She shudders with guilt.
“Okay, guys,” the director calls, “take ten. Get Mac cleaned up. Makeup!”
Ashley hurries up to them, putting several Kleenexes in Mackenzie’s gloved hands and takes the snotty mask from her, throwing it away.
“I assume you’re going to go with a clean mask for the next take, huh?” she jokes, not appearing one bit bothered by being this close to someone so obviously contagious.
“Maybe you should wear a mask while working on me,” Mackenzie says. She hates being patient zero; she has been many times, both on movie sets and in theatre groups. Ashley getting sick won’t be noticeable on screen, but she in turn may spread it to other actors when working on them, or the other makeup artists who in turns will pass it on to the actors they work on. Mackenzie feels the weight of the guilt for causing this.
“I told you already,” Ashley says, her tone one of perfect faith, “I don’t get sick. I have a failproof immune system. Bless you,” she says in advance when she notices Mackenzie’s breath starting to hitch. Two seconds later the actress bends over, sneezing into the tissues Ashley gave her.
“Ugh, thag you,” she says when she resurfaces from the now soggy tissues, but is only able to take one deep breath before she bends over and sneezes again.
Ashley puts the brushes down again, waiting for Mackenzie to regain control over her cold-plagued nose. The same brushes that Mackenzie accidentally sneezed all over earlier. While she’s waiting, Ashley takes a piece of gum out of her pocket and puts it in her mouth, not thinking twice about it but still in her calm but false belief that she won’t catch this.
There’s no way of telling if this is the moment she becomes infected, or if that has already happened; Mackenzie did sneeze on her by accident several times earlier as well, and she has handled several of her used tissues and the damp mask as well. It could have happened any time since the sneezy, cold-ridden actress entered set. Either way, when Ashley leaves work that day, her body is incubating that very same cold. Not everyone on set will end up catching it, shockingly enough, but Ashley is about to have her own battle with these viruses.
Of that, there is no doubt.
Early morning half awake thought:
Someone waking with a groan and swatting their alarm clock off only to have their partner pull them close and murmur "Good news, you get to ignore that alarm and go back to sleep, you're burning up" because they woke fifteen minutes ago to the sweltering heat of feverish skin against theirs and there's no way they're letting them go to work today.
Breakfast with my roommate 🧇🍳🧈🫖👭
Cw- cold sneezes, mess, stifles,f/f, contagion
- just writing to write and I wanted to try something new! let me know if you like :D
8:53AM
She moved around the kitchen in her usual routine, except today it was slightly different as she suffered through an unruly head cold. A congested sigh broke through the silence as she sluggishly set the coffee machine. Her sniffles filled the air as the water heated and bubbled and coffee began to drip.
While she waited she pulled out the eggs and a frying pan. A familiar tingle buzzed to life in her congested nose and she hurriedly put the pan down on the stove. She could feel her nose running as the prickling enhanced. She turned to snatch a paper towel from the holder, letting out a desperate, wet, messy sneeze. Snot shot from her sinuses and they burned with another sneeze. Not a second late she sneezed again—just as messy as the first. She pinched her nostrils, wiping away the warm mess sitting between her nose and upper lip. She pulled the paper towel down, cringing at the thoroughly soaked paper. She could see wetness on her fingers as she mindlessly set the soiled paper on the counter, ripping another sheet from the holder. She wiped her fingers then lifted the paper towel to her shiny, red nose. She pressed down on one nostril, blowing gently for a moment, her sensitive nostril buzzed in reaction to the gurgling congestion— her face crumbled.
“Hehhhh???”
“EISHMPH!!”
A gurgly, congested sneeze muffled the paper towel, it was harsh against her cold-ridden nostrils. She held the napkin in place panting again for a moment, she let out a stuffy sigh then cleared her throat. She lowered the napkins after she the tickle had finally disappeared.
She kept the napkin balled safely in her hand as she started to carefully whisk the eggs with the other. She sniffled again, a congested sound that made her nostrils tingle.
Oh no..
Not again..
Her nostrils flared and her breath hitched. She couldn’t hold back, the urge to sneeze too strong, the cold completely taking over her sinuses. She turned her head and raised the balled napkins to her nose.
“heh hih AH MMNPHuh! hih AH EHMMNPHHuh! AH KNCH!!” she pinched the mess that released from her nostrils. The skin beneath her nose red and raw from all the wiping and blowing. She pulled the napkins away, a thin string of snot breaking and falling against her upper lip. She sighed, letting the whisk in her left hand fall to the side of the bowl. She turned towards the paper towels again, setting her used napkin on the counter with the ones from before. She sped up her movements as she felt another sneeze approaching, the snot sitting on the raw skin tickling more and more. She snatched another napkin from its holder, pushing it to her face just in time—
“HEEIISH! ESHUH! UHTSCHIEW!”
She blew her nose. Then rubbed it thoroughly through the napkin. She pulled the napkin away and set it next to the pile growing on the kitchen counter. Her head was too foggy to think about the blatant lack of hygiene.
“Ughhh mby dose, sndrrf.. coff coff”
She rubbed her nose, a thick squelching sound producing. She sniffled again and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
She turned back to her eggs and poured them in the heated pan. She turned towards the cutlery drawar closet to the stove. Opening and sifting through to find a spatula. Before she could find one she felt another sneeze approaching— coming so quick she knew she couldn’t do anything to cover so she stifled it hard.
“HAHKINXT uhhhhh.”
The tickled flared back to life almost immediately. She turned her head, away from the open drawer, “uhh AHTCHIEW TSHIEW sndrrrff” spray burst into the air. She sniffled again, relieved they weren’t messy. She turned back to the drawer, locating the spatula and mixed the eggs so they could cook evenly.
She reached towards the cabinet over the microwave, her shirt slight going up to reveal her soft skin. She pulled out the salt and pepper and sprinkled a dash of salt.
She set the pepper down on the counter then stumbled out of the kitchen. You looked up at her as she entered the living room, it was an open layout she didn’t need to actually leave the kitchen, you could see her fine from the couch. But she came in, nose bright red with a tickling cold. She wore a fitted gray v-neck top with no bra and loose pajama pants that hung on her hips.
She spoke, or tried to—
“Do youhh hih? Hehhh?”
Her face crumbled and she held a fist precariously under her flaring nostrils. She stared out into the distance, her face from in preparation for another cold-ridden explosion.
You couldn’t turn away, stuck in a trance as you watch a sneeze blast out of her cold-ridden nostrils.
“Bless you!”
“Ugh thangk you… snrdddff do you wand snddrrrff cheese ind your eggs? Snddrrff”
“Umm yes please.” You said quietly as she stared at you, her nose twitching again.
“Okay!” She went to turn around,
“Are you sure you should be cooking right now? You sound really sick…” You ask. She rolled her eyes.
“Imb fined! Snndrrff ive only sneezed like twice and you’re acting like i just sdeezed all over the food! Snddrrf.”
“I-im not i just dont want you to overdo yourself if you not feeling great.” You said, thinking about how she practically did sneeze all over the food… and the kitchen.
“I prombise i feel fined, plus i wandted to bake breakfast cause you cand cook for shit!” She chuckled, coughing slightly. “A’d whend imb findished we cad contidue bindging scooby doo!” She turned around, walking towards the kitchen.
“Okay!” You chirped, butterflies erupting in your stomach as she teased you. You watched her walk away, then slow her pace and lift her hand to her face. Her head bobbed down 4 times, silently stifling more sneezes. She sniffled wetly then went back into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and grabbing the cheddar cheese. You watched her untie the bread, grabbing both of you a slice. You watched her scrub her nose before pouring coffee.
She brought both of your plates out, and the closer she got the more you could see her contorted expression. She had to sneeze.
She quickly handed you the plate, her voice breathy and airy, “h-here.” then pinched her nose shut and bobbed forward,
“Eh MNNNKT ahh.”
“Bless you!”
“Thangs.”
Since Spy X Fam is back, I'm saying it again, I need Loid to be wrecked by a cold. I need a sick day episode where Loid is miserably sick with a cold and still tries to do his spy duties and then theres caretaking fluff from Yor at home. I deadass might write a fic because I think about this frequently. LOOK AT HIM
Y'all. I come bearing part 1 (of, according to my plan, 6) of the infamous contagion chain-fic beginning with a character watching a sneezer from a bus window. 😏 I, uh, hope you'll like it. 😳 😆 It's all female sneezers, contagion galore (well, duh!), and there will be mess in places. Also people sneezing on each other, stuff like that.
Do not reblog to non-snz blogs, please.
Comments/tags make the muse happy and when the muse is happy the words flow more easily, so if you like it do let me know every detail that you like, lmao!! Okay, here we go! 😁
A Clusterfuck Of A Cold (f, cold, CONTAGION, MESS)
One of Hanna’s favourite pastimes is people-watching, and she’s partaking in this activity while she’s sitting on the bus waiting for it to depart. A train has just rolled into the station and passengers step off, many of them heading for one of the three buses waiting over here. Hanna has already settled in, cozied up in her seat with her jacket as a comfy cocoon. It’s about an hour’s bus ride to get home, and the bus is so far pretty empty. Hopefully she’ll get to have her seat to herself, without anyone sitting next to her. She doesn’t like people sitting too close in general, but cold and flu season is in full swing and people are always dragging their colds around in public. Hanna happens to think it’s very hot to watch attractive strangers sneezing, but only as long as she’s on a safe distance from catching anything; her germaphobic tendencies may not seem to be compatible with her sneeze kink, but somehow the two exist in her brain simultaneously.
She looks at the crowd, a blur of faces, all ages, all genders, all walks of life. A trio of college-aged girls checking something on one of their phones. A woman in her mid-40s with a rather self-important energy about her, but she has a face like an angel and Hanna’s gaze lingers on her while she stops and takes out her phone from her pocket, answers a call, and just stands there, right in the way of everyone else. Hanna rolls her eyes; yeah, that self-importance was clearly not just her imagination.
Then she spots a woman walking from the train platform towards the buses, her shoulders slumped. Age-wise she looks to be on the threshold of thirty, maybe twenty-nine, maybe thirty-one, but definitely not much further in either direction. Her style is best described as ‘wintery bohemian’; loose, long, asymmetrical layers, cardigan, a knitted hat, an oversized scarf, high boots, a long dress… her hair is long and cut in a deliberately shaggy kind of way, and she wears a lot of necklaces and bracelets. But much as she has been dedicated to perfecting her style, that’s not what catches Hanna’s interest. No, what really draws her in is the compelling redness of this woman’s nose. It’s so red it’s almost like a stop signal, or perhaps a warning. Don’t come close, contagious cold on the move.
Hanna smiles to herself, enjoying the sight immensely as she imagines how many sneezes must have slipped out of that nose today for it to be so inflamed. The train that she stepped off must be teeming with her cold, how many others will catch what she has just by riding in the same carriage? How many times had she sneezed just during the train ride? Even though she gets excited thinking about these things, Hanna still hopes Bohemian Girl isn’t going to board her bus; she doubts there’s anywhere in such a small, enclosed space that’s far enough from her to be safe from catching that misery.
Her nostrils, Hanna can see all the way from her safe position behind the bus window, are chapped, and they’re flaring wide, as if there is a very stubborn tickle in there. She rubs her nose with the heel of her hand, really grinds it against the disaster area that her nose currently is, but it seems to only exacerbate the problem.
Oh yeah, she definitely looks like she’s about to sneeze, and Hanna keeps observing, drinking in every detail of her delicious pre-sneeze face.
Bohemian Girl gives up trying to rub the tickle out of her nose, and just lets her hand fall back to her side. Her eyes close, her mouth falls open and she tilts her head back a little bit before snapping forward, unleashing several sneezes, uncovered, straight into the crowd. Hanna can’t really hear what they sound like, but the sun has decided to be of service and comes out from behind the grey clouds, illuminating the spectacle from behind, and although she can’t hear what they sound like, Hanna can see how wet they are. Incredibly wet. Most of the first one engulfs Self-Important Lady, who immediately looks disgusted, so she must have felt the spray hitting her. She turns and says something, and Hanna doubts it’s anything remotely similar to ‘have a nice day’, or even ‘bless you’.
Bohemian Girl either doesn’t hear or is just too deeply immersed in her sneezy need to care, because she doesn’t even look at the other woman during the few seconds between the first sneeze and the rest of the attack about to hit.
The second and third hit College Trio, but they’re not quite as close so they might not feel the sneezes; they are busy looking at something on one of their phones. Hanna can see tiny droplets settling in their hair and on their jackets and bags, but they don’t seem to notice. They’re still laughing at something on the phone.
After this fierce triple, Bohemian Girl wipes her nose with the palm of her hand, but if she thought that was it, she’s immediately proven wrong. The sneezy look returns to her face as she – thank God, Hanna thinks – heads towards the car park rather than the buses. Her breath is visibly hitching as she walks, and suddenly she releases a fourth and fifth sneeze, not breaking her stride. The fourth just hangs in the air, a cloud of potential illness for anyone walking through it before it’s settled, but it doesn’t hit anyone directly. The fifth sneeze on the other hand comes just as an unfortunate woman passes her, heading towards the train. It’s a striking woman in her late 30 or early 40s with light blonde hair that reaches a bit past her shoulders, glasses, and a stylish coat. Bohemian Girl’s nose surrenders to its assailing itch just as they pass each other, and she doesn’t attempt to cover this sneeze any more this time than before. Blonde Lady gets hit right in the face with the virus-laden spray, and she stops mid-step with a look of shock on her face. She turns to look at the provider of her upcoming cold, and as she turns, Hanna isn’t sure – the angle isn’t great – but she thinks she can see droplets glistening on Blonde Lady’s glasses.
Before she can see if Blonde Lady takes them off to wipe them, or even wipe her face, the bus begins to move, and that look of shock is the last thing she sees in Blonde Lady’s face. She hasn’t even reached disgust or anger yet by the time the bus turns onto the road, making sure Hanna won’t ever know how the scene played out. That poor woman is definitely going to catch that monstruous cold, though. There is no way she’ll be able to fight off that direct hit.
Hanna is beyond grateful that she wasn’t in the spray zone for any of it.
***
Late in the evening the following day, it’s very clear that the poor woman Hanna saw indeed caught the cold she was showered with.
Félicie LeClair’s nose is tickling, it won’t stop tickling, and it’s starting to run as well.
She was fairly certain she wouldn’t escape that cold, but she did hold out hope nevertheless, a hope that’s declining with each sniffle. She is getting ready for bed when that tickle, after teasing her all day, intensifies. Leaning into the sleeve of her PJ top, she sneezes once.
Then a second time.
“Uh-oh,” Olivia says, looking up from the book she’s reading. She and Olivia have been a couple for several years now, and Olivia knows just as well as Félicie that whenever she sneezes in pairs, she is coming down with, or already has, a cold. “Sounds like you did end up catching that girl’s cold yesterday.”
“I’m not surprised,” Félicie sighs and climbs into bed. Olivia leans in for a kiss, and Félicie leans the other way, evading the affection. “I don’t want to pass it on to you, Liv.”
Olivia shrugs.
“Alright, fine.”
Then she puts her book on the bedside table, climbs up on top of the blonde and pins her arms to the mattress.
“I’m not going to sleep until I get my goodnight kiss,” she says, pressing her lips against Félicie’s. “You don’t get to keep your cooties from me like that, baby.”
Félicie smiles, but it’s a tired smile.
“I have a feeling you’re going to regret that, honey.”
“Nonsense,” Olivia brushes it off, kisses Félicie on the mouth one more time, then kisses her nose once for good measure, then she returns to her own side of the bed.
Félicie ducks into her elbow and sneezes again. Another double. She gives Olivia a pointed look.
Olivia shakes her head.
“Nope, I don’t regret kissing my girl.”
Two days later she will, when those sneezy germs have fully taken over her own body and she sneezes in fits so rapid she can hardly get a breath between, but for the time being she means what she says.
Félicie rubs her nose and sneezes again.
Twice.
***
Arriving the next morning at the pharmacy where she works, Félicie puts on the lab coat and begins to muddle through her tasks, sneezing frequently into the crook of her arm, wet, tired sneezes that are audibly full of contagion. There’s a constant itch in her nose, an itch that keeps turning into desperate, uncontrollable sneezes, coming with very little to no warning at all. She would very much prefer to stay home, but she can’t get anyone to cover her shift.
Sydney, her colleague, tries to keep the whole store between them (while trying to make it seem like a coincidence), and Félicie can’t even blame her. Unlike the woman who forced this cold on Félicie, she tries her very best to keep it to herself. She sneezes into her elbow or a tissue (if she has access to one in the critical moment), she sanitizes her hands often, but God, she’s so sneezy, sooner or late one of these outbursts is bound to take her by surprise and come out uncovered.
Usually she takes care of the transactions, but today she tries to keep as low a profile as she can, trying her best to avoid direct interactions with both customers and her colleague. She restocks shelves and moves signs and fills in order forms… but most of all she feels miserable as her head fills with congestion and her nose keeps running, the sneezes keep coming, always in twos, wetter and wetter, and she can’t deny them.
She’s restocking the shelves with cold and flu medicine, feeling like a parody. How is the pharmacist supposed to give credible advice how to get an invading cold under control when she herself is so full of cold that it’s streaming out of her? Pathetic. She’s trying to inform customers about the best options for a stuffy and runny nose while she keeps sniffling and mouth-breathing herself. The sceptical looks that the customers give her are warranted, but they still buy the stuff.
After trying to be believable with two customers in the cold and flu aisle, she just slips away from that section so she won’t have to have any more of those humiliating conversations. She can’t even take herself seriously, advising people on how to nip their colds in the bud while trying to keep her own nose from dripping too obviously.
But moving to a different spot doesn’t change the fact that she feels awful. The prickling sensation in her nose hits her full force again and she presses her face into the crook of her arm, sneezing wetly. She has sneezed into her sleeve so many times now that the fabric is soaked through, not just the lab coat but the thin sweater she’s wearing underneath as well.
“Huhh-ptSSCHH! Snrrff… uhhNGTSCHUH!”
“Bless you,” Sydney sighs from her relatively safe spot behind the counter. “Do you want to go home? It doesn’t seem to be much of a rush today, I’m sure I can manage on my own.”
Félicie thinks so too, and she’s tempted to take her up on the offer, as much for Sydney’s sake as her own (not to mention the customers). But there’s a problem; Sydney is still technically not authorised to run the pharmacy on her own, and they can both get in trouble if Félicie agrees. So she declines, but reluctantly.
And then she sneezes again, twice in a row, coughs a little, and then sneezes twice more. Somehow her nose tickles even more than before she sneezed.
She has never had a cold this sneezy before; normally she doesn’t sneeze much with a cold at all. Always in doubles, yes, but rarely more than four sets of those, tops, on the sneeziest day. This is the second day (and it only really started last night), and she must have sneezed twice that number in just one hour. Her nose feels hot to the touch and its inside is burning, the sensation can’t even be described as a tickle anymore. She doesn’t have allergies normally, but this reminds her of that time Olivia bought a new perfume and Félicie turned out to be massively allergic to it. It was the only time she’d ever had an allergic reaction to anything and she had sneezed so much she was out of breath, snot and tears streaming down her flushed face, and Olivia staring at her in a mix of guilt, horror and sympathy. Unlike then, she isn’t sneezing in rapid fits this time, but the burning sensation that won’t let up is very similar to that experience.
When she goes to the bathroom to blow her nose and try to clean herself up a little, she is shocked at her appearance. She looks like those commercial posters they put up to advertise their cold and flu meds. Watery eyes behind glasses that are slightly fogged up from several muffled sneezes and forceful noseblows. Her nose a brilliant ruby red shade, perpetually damp right underneath her elongated, red-rubbed nostrils. It doesn’t matter if she dabs it off with a tissue, it only takes a few seconds for it to look the same. At least it isn’t running down her upper lip, but it isn’t exactly presentable. She is breathing through her mouth for most part, as her nose is so stuffed up.
As she looks at her reflection, dismayed, the wings of her nose quiver when another prickle rushes through it. She is so tired of sneezing and tries to fight it back, but her body has a will of its own and her breath starts to hitch, nostrils flaring, eyes closing… eventually she admits defeat and clasps a paper towel against her nose and mouth, herself unaware that she’s a split second too late to fully cover the first sneeze. A few droplets escapes, not much at all, but since she is still turned towards the paper towel dispenser, some of those contagious droplets land on the first paper towel. Félice doesn’t notice, she is too busy blowing her nose, and when she is finished, she doesn’t wash her hands with soap, she rubs some alco gel into them instead. Lots of it, in fact. And she also wipes off the door handle with disinfectant wipes when she leaves. It is all done in a well-meaning way; she doesn’t want to touch the faucet or soap dispenser, trying to spare Sydney from touching the same things Félice has touched, but even if the faucet and sink were clean, and her hands sanitized and the door handle wiped, next time Sydney goes to the bathroom she will wash her hands with the soap, then wipe them with the paper towels. And the first paper towel she’d touch has been sneezed on. Félice hasn’t realised, but her germs are already out and about and ready to wreak havoc in a new host.
Sydney has placed herself at a reasonably safe distance when Félice comes back, once again trying to act like it was pure coincidence, and Félice gives her a wide berth and goes back to the shelves further down the store. Painkillers and antacids.
Her nose is burning, a deep-seated irritation that she can’t do anything to placate, and she’s in a perpetual sneezy haze, but she’s determined to fight until the end; her cold-ridden nose will have to wrestle her willpower for each and every sneeze.
“HuhhEMPSSHH! Uhh-EASSSHHUH! Oh by God… uhhh… huh-MMMPh-SSSHuh! MMMGGTSSHH!”
Her willpower has no authority over her nose anymore. The more she sneezes, the more she needs to sneeze. And she can’t stop it. It’s very much like that perfume-provoked allergy attack, actually. Only this time it’s viruses.
At this point she keeps alternating between arms to cover with, trying not to spray every sneeze into her right sleeve, but all that leads to is that both her sleeves are soaked through. She considers changing to a clean lab coat – there are a few spare ones in the back room – but what good would that do? Her sweater sleeves will still be drenched, and she’s going to soak the new lab coat through with just a few pairs of these sneezes.
She sniffles thickly, and goes back to putting stuff on the shelves.
The burning in her nose doesn’t let up.
***
When the woman approaches her, Félicie is trying to think of remedies for sneezing specifically (and coming up short), and doesn’t notice her at first. So the woman reaches out and gently touches Félice’s arm to get her attention.
Her hand rests on Félice’s right elbow, and the sneezy pharmacist feels a pang of panic when she feels the touch right where the fabric has been thoroughly sneezed and snotted on all day, but then she realises that the woman can’t feel it. And she can’t feel it because she’s wearing a pair of leather gloves. Félice relaxes, but quickly puts some distance between them.
“Vitamin D, please,” the woman says with a warm smile, “where have you hidden that?”
“Right over there,” Félicie says and points. “See?”
“Ah yes, thank you.”
This is as long as Félicie’s nose can behave, and she has to duck into the crook of her arm – away from the customer – and sneeze again.
“Bless you,” the woman says, not looking particularly worried about catching the cold that Félicie keeps ejecting into her lab coat’s sleeves, and walks away to get her purchase.
Félicie doesn’t keep track of her, but she does catch a glimpse of her by accident when the woman is at the counter ready to pay, and she winces when she sees the woman taking her gloves off to be able to pull a bill out of her wallet. It’s not that she does it that makes Félicie wince, it’s how she does it. Because she pulls the first glove off with her teeth, then remove the second with her now ungloved hand. But the glove she just bit down on, albeit only slightly, is the one on the hand she touched Félicie’s sneezed-on arm with.
When the woman heads towards the exit, she walks by Félicie again on her way out, and the pharmacist is overcome by the urge to sneeze again just as she walks by.
“Bless you, that’s a nasty cold you’ve got,” the woman says, completely unaware that she has just introduced that very cold into her own body.
“Thank you,” Félicie sighs.
The woman gets a rather self-satisfied look on her face.
“Vitamin D,” she says smugly. “Works wonders, I haven’t been sick in ten years, not since my children were in middle school.”
“I’ll think about that from now on,” Félicie says, but adding in her thoughts
Your ten-year-streak is definitely over now, ma’am. Give it a day or two, and you’ll probably be as much of a mess as I am.
Of course, she doesn’t say anything like that. But part of her would really like to see the look on this woman’s face when she realises that her precious Vitamin D has let her down for the first time in a decade. She won’t look so smug then.
***
It’s only about ten minutes later that the first fully uncovered sneeze escapes her, and it’s at a rather unfortunate moment. At least she’s not sneezing directly at someone, but she’s trying to stock the highest shelf with some rarely-used items and she’s reaching above her head with both hands when the urge to sneeze hits her. It’s so strong, there is no negotiating with it, and if she moves her arms or even her head in any direction she is probably going to knock the whole thing down on the floor instead.
It's not that she’s making a conscious decision; her body just automatically does what makes the most sense from a self-preserving perspective, and she sneezes straight ahead, right onto the shelf she’s at face-level with. And of course that’s not the only shelf that gets hit; some of the spray rains down on the shelves beneath it, too. Virtually the whole section of painkillers is now a potential biohazard.
But the items she’s balancing above her stay in place, and she finally manages to get the last ones up there, so that’s a win at least.
I don’t recommend buying painkillers from us for the next couple of days, she thinks, but of course OTC painkillers are the most sold items they have, so these will be going out soon – and her cold with them. God, she wishes she could have stayed home.
She rubs her nose against the cuff of her lab coat and then has to press her face against it and sneeze when even this casual touch sets her off again.
“NGTSSHH! Huhhh-uh-EMPTSSHH!”
“Fél,” Sydney calls from the counter, “can you take over here for a minute?”
That’s code for ‘bathroom break’, and Félicie nods, then respectfully waits until Sydney has disappeared before she walks over there. There are only two customers in the pharmacy at this point, two young women in their early 20s, and they are browsing the hygiene products. Very few customers want any attention when they’re in that aisle, so Félicie pretends she hasn’t noticed them.
Just as she hopes she won’t have to actually ring up any customer before Sydney is back, a woman steps inside, hurriedly. She is in her early 30s, with dark hair in a messy bob cut, full lips – natural, not fillers – hazel eyes and clear features. Her nose is slender but perhaps slightly larger than average, and it’s quite upturned (the word that comes into Félicie’s head is perky; it’s a perky nose). Félicie has always wished for a nose like hers. Not that her own is ugly… well, at least not when it isn’t as red as Rudolph’s and dribbling snot… but this customer has the perfect nose in her opinion. Though to be fair, at this point, any nose that isn’t as full of sneezes as her own is a perfect nose.
The customer makes a beeline for the painkillers and grabs one from the shelf directly in the line of fire when Félicie’s nose exploded a little while ago, then she walks straight up to the counter.
You behave now, the pharmacist silently orders her nose, but she can already feel an all too familiar buzzing, tingling sensation in her sinuses.
The customer seems to either be in too much hurry to notice or simply not caring about Félicie’s very sneezy, very contagious appearance, she just hands over the painkillers to be scanned, and takes out some money from her pocket.
Félicie tells her the price, the woman hands over a bill, and Félicie is just going to hand her the change and the receipt, so close to being home free, when she sneezes. She has the change and receipt in her right hand, so she leans to her left and into her left sleeve, eyes fluttering shut as she tries to sneeze as softly as she possibly can.
“PTSSSHHuhh! MMTSSSHHHew!”
The sneezes are wet, so, so wet, but they’re contained in the crook of her arm, the usual double, muffled, germs contained as best she can. Maybe this customer will have a chance of avoiding the cold even if she bought painkillers from the contaminated shelf.
Félicie lowers her arm and turns back to the customer with an apologetic smile, reaching out to hand her the change and receipt, but before she can even react, a devious and previously unthinkable third sneeze bursts out of her, unexpected and thus uncovered, a biohazardous expulsion with an impressive reach.
“HAEESSSSHHH!”
In short, Félicie just replicated the exact action that gave her this cold in the first place, onto another unassuming person.
“Oh my God I am so, so sorry,” she says, stumbling on her words trying to apologise over and over.
The customer looks disgusted at the result of this historical moment, but still chooses to be gracious, although Félicie wouldn’t have blamed her for a second if she had decided to verbally flog her.
Instead, this woman accepts the tissues that Félicie, still apologising, offers her so she can at least wipe her face, and even makes an attempt to joke about it.
“I see, that’s how you ensure your customers return to buy more meds, is it?”
It’s evident that she feels awkward, but so does Félicie, so they both decide to try making light of this.
Félicie makes a rather good imitation of a genuine smile.
“I’m afraid it may seem that way today, I am really, really sorry.”
“Yeah… well… it wasn’t on purpose. I hope you get well soon.”
“And I hope you don’t catch it.”
They both laugh awkwardly and the customer leaves. Félicie has never felt more like an idiot in her entire life and it doesn’t matter if no one can cover her shift tomorrow. She is not coming in to work tomorrow, and that’s final.
Sydney comes back out, looking pale.
“You okay?” Félicie asks.
“Cramps just started,” Sydney groans and walks past Félicie, now preoccupied with something other than evading her co-worker’s germs. Félicie doesn’t realise where Sydney is going until she sees her at the section for pain relief, grabbing a box of Ibuprofen. Félicie looks on as Sydney opens it on the spot and dry-swallows two pills. Then she walks back to the counter and scans it, dropping a bill in the cash register. At this point Félicie has moved out of her way, but she hasn’t warned Sydney about the uncovered sneeze that went all over the counter.
What a clusterfuck of a cold this is, Félicie thinks.
Then she sneezes again.
At least this time it’s into her sleeve. And it’s the regular, hallmark Félicie head cold pattern with two in a row.
No stray third this time.
Look, I have no excuse. This is a piece of nasty snz kink stuff. (it's completely unrealistic in most places lmao). It's heavy on grossness and people sneezing on others and their belongings. The only actual "plot" is contagion. This is part one, there is... uh... much more to come but I write large swats with one hand, okay, so it requires plenty of editing. 😂 For this one, we have three ladies passing this cold forward. One too-tired-to-be-polite, one trying-her-very-best-to-be-polite, and an ice queen-character completely unable to be polite. 😏
It's Catching (various female, CONTAGION, mess)
“HehhddISSSHHHew!”
Helen sneezes so violently that she has to steady herself against her desk for a moment, feeling dizzy. She is wrapping up the work day with a sense of immense relief that it’s finally over. The cold that has firmly settled in her sinuses is at its peak and she has no idea how she managed to get through the day in the first place.
Tomorrow she will have to call in sick, there is no way she can muddle through another day like this. You’d think university students would be at least somewhat better at keeping their germs to themselves than pre-schoolers but it sure doesn’t seem that way. Hours of teaching in a lecture hall where the air seemed thick with viruses – at least two thirds of the students were coughing and sneezing and blowing their noses – all but guaranteed that she’d catch something before the week was over, and indeed she has. Maybe several different colds, even. The nasal symptoms certainly feel more intense than they usually do.
Going outside in the chilly air makes her nose run even more than it already was, and she is already out of tissues. She could have brought some paper towels before leaving her office, of course, but she forgot. Her head feels like it’s full of snot, it’s hard to think through the sinus pressure. But her nose is running so persistently that she ends up having to wipe it on the sleeves of her coat. Nasty, but desperate times and desperate measures, and all that. All this exhausted university professor really wants is to get home, take a hot shower, make a steaming cup of tea, and go to bed. Sleep this cold off.
“EeeISSSH-ISSSHHH-huhDISSSHHHIEW! Oh God, it just won’t stop!”
She wipes her nose with her sleeve again, thankful it’s late enough that none of her students is around to see what she’s reduced to. Her classroom authority would never recover.
The bus pulls up at the stop, and she groans when she sees how crowded it is. But she feels like death warmed over, and it’s starting to rain and she doesn’t have an umbrella, so there is no way she is going to walk home, even if it isn’t that far.
***
Oh please don’t sit next to me, Chloe thinks when the woman in the red coat steps onto the bus. She is in her late 30s or early 40s, attractive, or would be if she had been healthy, but she is visibly bogged down with an awful cold. Her nose is almost as red as her coat, there are dark circles around her eyes, and when she makes her way down the aisle Chloe realises that she has streaks of snot on her sleeves. Eww. You’d think grown women with a civilised appearance would at least know to use a tissue or something.
Keep going, keep going, she quietly urges the sick woman as she gets closer to Chloe’s seat, but rather than continuing further down the aisle, the woman stops next to her.
“Is this seat taked?” she asks in a thick, stuffy voice. She looks exhausted. Chloe does feel bad for her, it’s not that, but she really doesn’t want to catch that cold; she has to work the whole weekend and she already knows it’s going to be hell. She doesn’t need a cold on top of that. But her polite nature overrules any self-preservation she has, so she moves to the window seat with a sigh of resignation.
“Thag you,” the sick woman says and takes the offered – well, forced-offered more like it – seat. Her snot-streaked sleeve brushes against Chloe’s purse for a moment and Chloe involuntarily makes a disgusted face, but the other woman doesn’t notice. She has a faraway look on her own face and Chloe realises to her horror that the woman is about to sneeze. The sick woman, right next to her, so close she can feel the feverish heat from her body, is about to sneeze a ton of contagious droplets into the air Chloe has no choice but breathing.
She’s going to cover, Chloe soothes herself. Of course she is. Maybe that’s why her sleeves are so gross, because she has sneezed into them. Not perfect but way better than uncovered. Yes, that’s it, of course it is.
But the woman merely holds her hands up in front of her face, several inches away, and when the sneeze comes out it’s wet, it’s messy, and it’s essentially uncovered because she’s sneezing at her hands rather than into them.
“Heeehhh-ISSSSHHHEW!”
Nothing is contained, and the sneeze spatters everywhere. Chloe holds her breath, but the smallest droplets are still mingling in the air like tiny dust particles when she has to surrender to her body’s need for oxygen and inhale again. Which she does at the exact moment that the woman’s red, cold-filled nose explodes again, this time halfway turned towards Chloe and thus sending an abundance of droplets teeming with illness in her direction.
“EeehhD-ISSSHHHIEW!”
Chloe can feel some of the spray hit her face and her brain just blanks out for a moment. This can’t be happening.
“Oh shit, I’b so sorry,” the woman says and sniffles thickly. “I hope I didn’t get you with that. I didn’t feel it cobig. These sdeezes are so udpredictable. Do you by ady chadce have a tissue?”
Little late for that now, isn’t it? Chloe thinks, but shakes her head, still in shock from what just happened.
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
She will in a couple of days, of that she’s now convinced, but not now.
“Oh. Thags adywa… ahh…”
Fuck politeness, this time Chloe pulls her scarf up over her nose and mouth and turns towards the window, pushing up so close she’d melt into it if she could. Become one with the window. Glass panes don’t catch colds. Oh to be a glass pane for this ride. Or not be on this ride at all. Yes. That would be light-years better than sitting here and being exposed to what sounds like the nastiest cold she has ever encountered in a public setting. Why is this woman not at home? Why is she even out in public with something this contagious? Why?
“…ahhh-DISSSSHHHHIEW!”
Chloe can feel the woman’s body convulse with the force of the sneeze, which is not suppressed at all, it’s let out with the same gusto as if she was alone in her own home.
The woman sniffles again, a disgusting, snotty sound, and then starts to cough a raspy, chesty cough. She coughs almost nonstop for the rest of the ride, and the only ‘cover’ she provides is a loose fist placed approximately two inches from her mouth.
Kill me now, Chloe thinks. Or I’ll be murdered by at least one patron when I come to work on Friday.
***
Madeline is in her late 40s and is the embodiment of the epithet ‘attractive older woman’, though she would likely send a contract killer after anyone who calls her ‘older’. But she is objectively beautiful, and she is of the opinion that she certainly should be, considering how much money she has invested into her appearance. Whatever flaws her appearance used to have she’s paid professionals to correct. It has all been done very tastefully, she has no interest in looking like some of those celebrity freakshows who don’t know when to stop going under the knife.
Right now, she is annoyed, though you’d never believe it because she doesn’t want to frown. It gives you wrinkles. It’s not worth it just because the waitress serving her is sniffling all the time. Not obnoxiously loud, but it really is relentless.
“You keep sniffling, are you ill?” she interrupts the young woman as she rattles through the wine list with a thick voice, sniffling every few seconds.
“No ma’am,” she replies, and she’s blushing. “My apologies. It’s allergies.”
“This time of year?”
“A gentleman here is wearing a cologne my nose doesn’t quite agree with,” she says.
“I see,” Madeline says. She doesn't really care. She just wanted to alert the young woman to her unpleasant habit so she'll stop.
She orders the wine she wants and as the waitress jots it down on her notepad, there is an expression crossing her face, first briefly and then it returns and lingers, an expression like she’s about to sneeze. Eyes narrowing, eyebrows knitted, nostrils – they are decidedly pink around the edges – flaring. This waitress has a very, let’s call it ‘expressive’ nose, and there is no doubt in Madeline’s mind that it’s tickling. Her nostrils flare wide and they twitch, almost like a bunny’s nose. Of course, a bunny has a small, adorable nose while this young woman’s nose could really benefit from an appointment with Madeline’s plastic surgeon. It’s much too long and too wide to be particularly feminine, and otherwise her features are delicate and pretty. Of course Madeline would never say it, it would be rude, but it’s a pity such a pretty face is so dominated by a nose that big.
After a few seconds, the expression fades and the waitress’s face relaxes again. In fact, her shoulders relax too, as if she was fighting with her entire body to hold back a sneeze. Well, it’s a good thing she succeeded, because Madeline would not take kindly to staff snotting all over her dinner table.
As the waitress keeps taking Madeline’s order, she tries to sniffle quieter, and less frequently, but all that really accomplishes is that it sounds wetter. There is a look of immense worry in her eyes when she can turn away and head back to the kitchen.
Chloe walks as fast as she can, but not to the kitchen, but to the staff bathroom. She has barely managed to close the door behind her and get her arm up to her face before the sneezing begins. It’s impossible to hold them back longer than a few seconds, they just won’t be controlled; once they start to build inside, she has to make a run for it so the patrons won’t notice. She is very careful to cover each of the dozens upon dozens of itchy sneezes that comes on throughout the evening, direct them firmly into the crook of her arm, so she won’t spray them everywhere like that inconsiderate bitch on the bus who she definitely caught this from – but even when she’s not sneezing her nose is so unbelievably itchy. It feels a lot like her spring allergies when it comes to the intensity of that itch, but there is nothing in bloom this time of year that she’s allergic to, and the cologne excuse was just that – an excuse. If you have no choice but to be here, there’s no reason to put off the patrons.
“HehhNKKT-nnkt-Tsshhoo! HaaaESSSHHH! NNKTissshhhoo!”
Her nose is still burning with the urge to sneeze, but she thinks she can stave them off for a while now. She grabs some paper towels and blows her nose forcefully, then washes her hands thoroughly.
She really is trying to be considerate, but that itch is so annoying, she keeps having to rub her nose without even thinking about it. And the wetness inside her nose, teeming with viruses eager to move on to other hosts, sometimes gets on her hands when she runs her knuckles or her fingers or even the heel of her hand back and forth underneath her burning nose. These viruses then hitches a ride on the plates she carries, the glasses she fills, the menus she hands out. Still, while she involuntarily ends up passing the viruses to most of the patrons she serves that weekend, only one of them actually comes down with the cold.
That one patron is Madeline.
***
Madeline wakes up that Sunday morning with a prickly throat and blocked sinuses. She thinks of the sniffly-nosed waitress while she gathers her luggage for her trip cross-country, and just knows those ‘allergies’ she claimed it was, was really the cold that is now claiming Madeline as its next victim.
By the time she’s at the airport, Madeline’s surgically perfected nose has developed this irresistible tickle resulting in small fits of stifled dainty sneezes that she suppresses into an expensive handkerchief. To begin with, she puts the lace-edged handkerchief away between each fit, but she soon decides it’s more convenient to keep it in her hand all the time. The tickle just keeps coming back, it feels like she has a very fluffy feather stuck somewhere deep within her nose, tickling and tickling. It might go away if she let out a sneeze, but she will not. Her natural, unrestrained sneezes are about as unladylike as can be, harsh and loud and spraying, and not something she allows herself even if she is alone.
The tickle is relentless, though, and her nose is already getting red. Well, that’s not terribly surprising, she has very fair complexion (along with her arctic blue eyes and ash-blonde hair it earned her the nickname Ice Queen in her circles) and the continuous brush of the handkerchief along with the brewing inflammation in her nose takes a toll on her skin. But one look in her makeup mirror when she has boarded the plane and she is assured that it is far worse than she thought. She looks like she’s been suffering from this drippy, tickly cold for weeks rather than hours.
***
The flight attendant does a double take when she sees the attractive middle-aged woman in the expensive skirt suit take her seat in first class. She sees a lot of rich people in expensive suits, including some very good-looking ones, that’s not what catches her eye. It’s how impossibly cold-ridden she looks. Her nose, too perfect not to be the work of a talented plastic surgeon, is cherry red, a stark contrast to her very pale skin. Her lips, coated with a discreet layer of soft pink lipstick are parted. She must be very congested.
That woman is going to have a real problem as soon as the pressure changes, the flight attendant thinks. But she knows better than trying to tell the first-class passengers the unfortunate facts of life. They complain and the company always sides with them because money.
She still looks at the woman when those red, tender-looking nostrils quiver, flare, and then are hidden behind a thin barrier that consists of a handkerchief. It looks like it has been used quite a bit already; there seem to be fewer dry spots than wet ones on it. The woman proceeds to sneeze a series of very restrained, tickly stifles, her entire body shuddering with the force she suppresses.
She’s not going to be able to keep stifling like that throughout the flight, not unless she’d rather blow out her eardrums, the flight attendant thinks, still blissfully unaware that it's everybody else's eardrums that will be in danger on this flight.
“Amanda? Could you come over here for a moment?” her colleague says, and she momentarily forgets about the lady with the cold as she goes to see what Luisa needs.
***
A while later it’s no longer possible to forget about the lady with the cold. Amanda knows from experience that it’s painful to fly when you’re congested, but for this woman the air pressure seems to do something more: it makes her sneezing worse. Not just the expected amount with changed air pressure and irritated sinuses. Much, much worse.
If she sneezed a stifled fit of four, five sneezes in a row every twenty to thirty minutes earlier, she now sneezes seven, eight, even ten times in a row every ten minutes. When these bigger sneeze attacks started, she was still trying her hardest to stifle, then she started doing everything within her power to simply hold them back – an endeavour that was doomed to fail if her nose tickled as much as it appeared to.
And now she just can’t deny herself the release any longer.
The first completely unrestrained sneeze cuts like a whipcrack through the cabin, and Amanda is certain she isn’t the only one who jumps. But that sneeze is only the first of eight, and the rest of them ring out like thunderclaps, one right after another. They’re so loud, they sound so desperate, almost painful – actually, scratch the ‘almost’ – and they’re also spraying, dripping, soaking wet.
That fit alone sounded like she could wring that handkerchief out after. Amanda hopes that these powerful outbursts was what she needed to once and for all quell that tickle in her nose that had plagued her since before she boarded. For everybody’s sake.
The lady mumbles an apology to the people who turns to stare at her, and goes into the bathroom, presumably to blow her nose. She sure can't rely on her handkerchief to take in any more of what her swollen mucus membranes produce, that’s for sure.
When she returns to her seat she begins to flip through a magazine, but Amanda can tell from the hazy look in her eyes and the way she’s pressing the saturated handkerchief against the underside of her aggravated nose, that she needs to sneeze again.
She holds out for almost five whole minutes before she can’t even pretend to focus on the magazine. Then her breath begins to hitch, and she franticly presses the handkerchief even firmer against her damp nostrils during the buildup, almost as if she’s trying to block the sneezes from coming out. As if that would help.
This time, ten of those wet blasts are being screamed into the expensive, drenched fabric. While fetching a box of tissues for her, Amanda is frankly both horrified and impressed. This is surely not going to last the entire flight; no one is able to sneeze that loudly and that frequently for any prolonged period of time… right?
Well, yes and no. The frequency of the sneezes goes down somewhat after the first hour or so of this, but not the volume or the number of sneezes in each attack. Now she sneezes about an even dozen in a row of those ear-splitting, waterlogged, throat-scraping RAH-AAAASSSHHHOO’s and HERRRIIIIISSSSHHHOO’s and HAA-RREESSSSHHHAAH’s and HUH-RUUSSSSSSCHHUH’s once an hour or so for the rest of the flight.
The now useless handkerchief has been abandoned, unceremoniously stuffed into the side pocket of her purse, crumpled tissues filled with clear, contagious mess are spilling over her lap after her desperate attempts to blow that troublesome tickle out of her nose, she has resorted to trying to muffle the sneezes into the blanket by her seat, embarrassed beyond words, but some of these monumental explosions of noise, spray and germs catch her off guard and come out completely uncovered. Amanda has never heard a woman that small sneeze that loudly before, and she has never witnessed a cold as aggressively symptomatic as this one before either. She doesn’t know whether the air in the plane that is just one big concentrated cold soup by the time the plane finally touches ground again, but she’s willing to bet the other first-class passengers will all catch that cold, at least.
And she is not hopeful about her own chances of escape either.
Are we ready for the second part (of three)? I hope so, lmao. In this one we have some revenge contagion and some completely careless-with-her-germs, and some mess. I would run for the hills if I ever saw any of these situations irl, but apparently they're hot as fuck in imagination. Hope you'll enjoy it too! 😏
***
Part 2
Josie cringes when she spots the flight attendant’s pink, swollen nose and hears how sniffly and hoarse she sounds during the in-flight safety demonstration.
Normally she wouldn’t really care; public transport of any kind is a petrie dish and everybody catches a cold once in a while, it’s no big deal. But in this particular instance it’s very unsettling news, because Josie is going to her old college friend’s wedding the day after tomorrow and Crystal is… well, she is…
While Josie tries to find a nicer word for bitch, the flight attendant pauses mid-sentence, takes several hitching breaths, her eyelids fluttering briefly. She hesitantly raises her arm a little, ready to aim her sneeze into her elbow, but eventually exhales without sneezing. She waits a few seconds, as if to be absolutely sure the sneeze is gone, before she lowers her arm again, sniffles and goes back to speaking, but this time her voice has an even thicker quality to it.
***
Amanda feels her cheeks burn as she picks up where she trailed off and keeps talking. This cold is still settling in, but it’s getting ominously comfortable in her nose already. It first started last night with a touch of a sore throat, that kind that is more a discomfort than pain, where you swallow repeatedly to see if it’s still there, and it always is. When she woke up this morning that uncomfortable sensation was gone; she was a bit more congested than her usual morning congestion could account for and it lingered longer, but nothing that really set off alarm bells. She had no doubt this was the beginning of a cold, however; there was no way she hadn’t caught the cold from that first-class passenger the other day. That woman had looked and sounded like she was a week deep into the worst cold in the history of mankind, sneezing uncontrollably. And Amanda had been the one to serve the first-class passengers the entire flight, she had picked up the snotty tissues and the damp, sneezed-in blanket that woman had left behind, like a trail of contagion.
Follow the trail of contagion and get your very own cold, Amanda thinks, but it’s not funny on any level.
She had honestly believed that her version of this woman’s cold would be much milder, based on the first symptoms, but when she arrived at work, her nose was running almost nonstop with clear watery mess. Every time she sniffled to maintain control of this drip, that intense, almost pepper-like, sneezy feeling flared up deep inside her nose.
She isn’t sneezing with the same ferocity or anywhere near as often as the lady in first class had, but she is far sneezier than she’d normally be from a cold. Sometimes, like now, they just tease her right up to the edge before leaving her itchy-nosed and unsatisfied, other times she sneezes once, feels like she is done, until the tickle returns a couple of seconds later and then result in a whole fit. Thankfully, with her being used to high altitudes, she believes she will be able to keep them at the very least half-stifled, but it has a price. Her sinuses are pounding and she’s pretty sure her whole face looks swollen.
Take-off was painful, as she had known it would be, but when they level out, the pain is replaced with an overwhelming itch, and Amanda turns away from the passengers, bring her arm up to her face, and lets the sneezes take over.
***
Josie sees the pretty flight attendant lean into the crook of her arm, breath hitching, and this time it’s no false start. A soft but wet “Hihh-NTSCH!” sprays into the sleeve of her proper navy blazer.
Well, at least she tries to contain it…
“Hihh-TSSHH! IHHKTSSHH! TSSHoo!”
She keeps sneezing, as if that first one had removed a seal that unleashed an uncontrolled storm of sneezes.
Oh God, Josie thinks as the other woman hurries to get away from the sight of the passengers.
Josie can still hear her sneeze; it sounds like she does everything in her power to keep the sneezes quiet, soft, restrained, but they are coming faster and faster and sounding like they melt into one another until it sounds more like tisssh-issshh-issshshhhshhh!
I do not want that cold, Josie thinks. If Crystal even suspects that I’m sick it’s going to ruin her ‘perfect wedding’, and that’s gonna be everyone’s problem.
The flight attendant with the very itchy nose must have sneezed at least twenty times in rapid succession by the time she finally manages to get herself together and stop. Josie can hear the fit taper off, and then a soft but very productive noseblow. She hopes that the sick woman washes her hands after, but she isn’t sure.
When she steps back out a few minutes later, she has reapplied some concealer on her nose, but she is unable to stop sniffling. The kind of wet, light, persistent sniffling that isn’t very loud, but quickly grates on your nerves.
Josie notices that when she’s near the passengers; serving them or leaning in to listen to them, she tries to avoid sniffling, but every time she turns around to go back after this, Josie can see a trail of thin, watery snot slowly trickling out of her nostrils. She disappears behind the curtain, and then follows another noseblow. This cold is worsening in real time.
***
The middle seat of Josie’s row is empty, and the elderly woman in the window seat appears to have dozed off already. Either a veteran flyer, or someone who needs to dope herself up on sleeping pills to get through it, Josie assumes. It could have been a rather pleasant flight, if Josie wasn’t constantly reminded that she was sitting in a tin can with recirculated air and at least one person with a doubtlessly contagious cold. Ironically, for once it doesn’t seem like any of the passengers are sick; there is an occasional cough, but it doesn’t sound as urgent, persistent, or ticklish as a cough brought on by illness.
But as the flight goes on, the flight attendant’s sneezing and sniffling becomes more and more frequent instead. She is lovely and service-minded despite her own obvious ailment, and she does attempt to downplay her symptoms as best she could. It just seems to get more and more difficult for her.
Well, Josie is definitely not going to call for her, not once during the entire flight. She is not going to eat or drink anything served by someone so obviously contagious. No way. It’s only a few hours, she doesn’t need anything to eat or drink in that time. Each time the sick woman walks past Josie’s seat, Josie holds her breath. She is glad she isn’t an actual germaphobe; she has no idea how anyone could deal with the anxiety that came with it, if she is this anxious just this one time.
Her plan to avoid any form of close contact with the cold-ridden stewardess might even have worked, if only Josie’s seat neighbour hadn’t woken up mid-flight and pressed the button above her, calling for the flight attendant’s attention.
***
Josie steels herself when the pink-nosed woman leans over her seat. The elderly lady has a very soft voice, and the flight attendant seems to struggle to hear her, leaning in even further. Her face is less than two feet away from Josie’s, in fact, she can almost look right up into her nose.
Josie tries not to, tries to ignore the whole scene and pray the ill woman will step away soon, but she can’t not look. It’s like watching your own demise coming closer with no way of escaping. That’s overly dramatic of course, but the interior of that rosy nose is damp, as in, she can see watery snot moving inside. The flight attendant’s nose twitches; holding back on the sniffling for so long seems to make it tickle again. She wiggles her nose. She flares her nostrils. Stretches her upper lip. Scrunches up her nose. She has a picture-perfect version of a ‘cute button nose’ that Josie, who has a large, wide nose, had been so jealous of as a teenager, but at the moment she isn’t jealous of that nose at all. Even if it wasn’t sporting a shade like pink rose petals it would still look like an extremely tickly nose. If she’d had both nostrils stuffed to the brim with feathers and downs, that nose couldn’t have looked ticklier.
And it’s visibly running, too. Josie watches with increasing apprehension as liquid begins to gather right underneath the nostril that’s mere inches away from Josie’s face. She hopes it won’t begin to run down that twitching upper lip and maybe drip down on her.
The flight attendant seems to be concerned about the same thing, because she gives a quick sniff to recapture the escaping wetness.
This is a terrible mistake, and Josie realises what’s about to happen a split second before the woman leaning over her takes one single sharp, deep breath and turns her head away from the woman she’s talking to, about to sneeze. But in her haste, instead of turning to her left where all she would have hit with the virus-infused outburst is the backrest of the row in front, she turns to her right and unleashes a huge, spraying double-sneeze downwards.
“HEYISSSSHHHHEW-IIISSSSHHH!“
Right in Josie’s face.
And before Josie can fully comprehend what just happened, the cold-ridden woman sneezes again, blasting Josie in the face with a third, high-pitched and even wetter outburst, before she manages to pull all the way back into the aisle and get a hand up in front of her face.
“Oh God I… hehh… I am s-so… hahhh… so s-sorry,” she stutters, but even as she tries to apologise, she keeps building up to another sneeze.
“It’s… it’s okay,” Josie says, almost stunned. No, it isn’t okay, not even remotely okay, but what is she supposed to say? It wasn’t on purpose.
“Excuse me,” Josie mumbles and gets up, walks past the woman who is sneezing into her elbow again (if only she’d done that a few seconds ago!), and goes to the bathroom to wash her face and say a prayer that her immune defence is strong enough to fight back this accidental assault.
***
Josie fights bravely with the determination of a real trooper, armed with an arsenal of vitamins and other things that claims to prevent colds, but she has to admit defeat on the evening before the wedding.
Colds are normally slow-burns for her, symptoms coming on slowly and gradually, and if this cold had behaved the way they usually did, she might have managed to get through the wedding without showing obvious symptoms.
This cold does not behave that way. This cold just marches in and takes over. Her nose, normally as resilient as it is big, surrenders without a fight; she views it as a deserter.
She knows that she somehow has to find a way to suppress the sneezes when she’s in company, and sneak away somewhere and let them out when she can. Because if she doesn’t show up to the wedding, there will be drama. Nobody ditches Crystal.
Of course, if she shows up obviously contagious, there will be drama either way.
Josie puts on her bridesmaid’s dress – Crystal insisted on bright purple silk, which isn’t something Josie would ever choose for herself. She is a voluptuous woman with generous curves, and the dress is uncomfortably tight, making her feel trapped and suffocated. She doesn’t even want to think about having to sneeze in it, but her itchy nose makes no promises to stay calm.
It'll be fine, she tells herself.
But the redness around her nostrils is glaringly obvious despite the makeup, and the tickle inside them is not going to remain ignorable for very long.
It’s going to be bad.
***
She had no idea how bad.
Crystal is as insufferable as she was in college, and Josie wonders why she even agreed to come here. She doesn’t fit in with these people anyway; they’re loud and entitled, rude and selfish. The groom is worshipping Crystal in a way that at least suits her perfectly, but other than that he hardly says two words to anyone.
Maybe he’s just overwhelmed.
Josie is overwhelmed, anyway, that’s for sure. Or rather her nose is. Crystal has decided to go all-in with the same colour scheme as the bridesmaids’ dresses, and all decorations are a light, pastel purple. It’s beautiful. Unfortunately, the wedding bouquet, along with the majority of the flower arrangements, consists of lavender and lilacs to stick with the colour theme.
Josie’s nose, when not under siege by this rapidly developing cold, has few enemies. But lavender is one. The scent alone is enough to make her nose itch something horrible. As if she isn’t in trouble enough trying to handle her cold, which is very firmly settled within her sinuses, tickling and teasing, wanting to push her over the edge at the worst possible moment.
She holds back so many sneezes during the ceremony and stifles even more of them. She pinches her nose between thumb and index finger and tries to swallow the sneezes, keep them contained within her body, nothing is allowed to come out.
She gets a couple of strange looks, but not too many, and she doesn’t really notice most of them. She is too concentrated on her nose, burning underneath her fingertips. It would feel so good to just sneeze, just let loose, but she doesn’t want to disturb the ceremony, and she knows that even if a sneeze is triggered by her lavender allergy, the cold is flourishing inside her and she must be peak contagious right now. She would feel so bad if she gave Crystal a cold right before her honeymoon.
***
At the party after the ceremony, Josie is getting more and more fed up. The dress is uncomfortable, Crystal is even more insufferable than she remembers, the other guests are snobs, and her nose just can’t keep fighting against the amount of sneezes that tries to come out. All the lavender with its pollen and strong fragrance keeps nearly tipping her over the edge, but she can handle it.
Her cold, however, is only getting more pronounced. She isn’t sure how she knows it’s the cold and not the lavender, but… she knows.
Then Crystal, who hasn’t really picked up on Josie’s predicament at all, (which actually is good news for the struggling, sneezy woman), seals her own and Josie’s fate when she shoves her wedding bouquet in Josie’s arms.
”Hold these for me, Jo, I need the ladies’ room right now.”
And with that she’s gone, leaving Josie’s exhausted, tormented, cold-ridden and allergic nose to deal with the unexpected floral ambush. The flowers get in her face; in fact, one of the lavender stems goes straight up her right nostril, not just brushing at the edge, but going deep inside her nose and digging into her already aggravated mucus membranes. The sneeze is practically immediate. She tries so hard to hold back, that the sneeze that ends up pushing itself out of her comes out sounding nothing like her normal sneeze.
”UH-WOOSSCHUH!”
A thin string of transparent snot hangs between her attacked nostril and the flower when she opens her watery eyes to look at the aftermath. She sneezed out the lavender sprig, but she can feel that it’s not out in its entirety. There is something stuck in her nose; pieces of petal maybe, or worse; pollen. Before she can really do anything, she sneezes again, and this time it’s altogether uncontainable. She ends up misting the bouquet with abundant spray.
”HATSSSSSHHH!”
She sniffles, and immediately sneezes again, spraying yet another substantial cloud of droplets over the flowers.
”HAAATSSSHHHHUH!”
Her large, rounded nostrils flare wildly, determined to get rid of the irritation once and for all.
”Snff!-snnfff! HAA-AATTTSSSSHHH!”
Each time she sneezes, it shifts whatever is stuck in her nose, but doesn’t expel it, it only brushes against the inside of her nose and makes her sneeze again.
”AaaaKSSSHHHH! HAAASSSSHHHoo!”
Her dress is straining to allow her the room to sneeze, but that’s the least of her problems right now. Whatever got lodged inside her nose is still there. Poking and prodding at the inside of a nose that is getting desperate to free itself from this torture.
”AAAAKKKSSSHHHUUH!”
Quickly, she reaches for something to blow her nose into, getting hold of a napkin. She gives her suffering nose a one-handed, forceful blow, and, thank God, whatever was stuck there finally comes out. She isn’t someone who looks at the tissue after blowing her nose, but she needs to know what it is.
A flower. One of the small flowers on the stem, fully intact. She can swear the fragrance is still stuck in her nose even if the flower is out, but maybe that’s just because the bouquet is still so close to her face. She shudders and rubs her nose frantically before she looks down at the mess and droplets she has just sprayed all over the bouquet, horrified.
What have I done??
The part of her that has had it with these people and the whole situation, finally pipes up.
Why not do it again; make sure she gets an extra wedding gift for the honeymoon?
No, I can’t do that.
But then she thinks about how many times Crystal has gotten her sick through college because she’s so utterly careless with her germs whenever she catches something. Like that time Crystal got her sick in time for a very anticipated date, leaving Josie stuck in the dorm with a high fever and tissues up her dripping nostrils, while Crystal, mostly recovered thanks to Josie’s caretaking, went out. And hooked up with Josie’s date.
Okay, yeah, why not. Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say, and a cold is exactly what I have to serve up.
She carefully inspects the flowers and wipes off the most obvious wetness. She doesn’t think Crystal will notice the rest; the newly minted missus has shifted focus to gifts, cake and champagne, not bouquets, veils and vows.
When Crystal returns from the bathroom, she takes the flowers and rejoins the party, not asking why Josie isn’t coming. Josie considers just leaving, but no, she is going to give Crystal a cold as an additional wedding gift before she heads home to a warm cup of tea and a movie instead of this lavish idiocy.
Her nose is tingling with this sneezy need, nowhere near satisfied with the sneezes earlier, so she decides to make the most of it.
The table with gifts is closest by, so she makes her way over to it, looking around to make sure no one is there to see her. Her nose is so sensitive, that she only needs to touch the side of it with her fingertips to set off that burning urge again. Her breath hitches, and then she hovers on the edge for a couple of suspenseful seconds, before snapping forward with a:
“HAAA-TSSSHHHHEW!”
Spray disperses in the air above the gifts, lazily floating down and settling on them. Josie feels a moment of guilt, but it’s too late now; her nose is already gearing up for another.
“Aah-ETSSSHHHHoo!”
Sniffle – gasp –
“- HEH-TSSSSHHHHEW!”
For a moment she wonders if this was a mistake and that she’s never going to stop sneezing now that she started; it’s not really how her allergies work, but if her version of the flight attendant’s cold is anything like the source material, it’s going to be an exceptionally sneezy one.
“IITTSSSSHHHOO!”
But she doesn’t have to worry, four sneezes in a row is apparently what her nose is capable of at the moment.
They were all very wet, too, so she won’t need more to thoroughly contaminate the wedding gifts. Crystal will surely handle the gifts by herself, not letting her husband butt in even if he wants to. It’s just her nature.
She continues to the champagne glasses, of which two are very conveniently engraved with MR and MRS in golden cursive letters – Josie isn’t sure if she thinks that’s cute or tacky, but it’s convenient for her purposes anyway – and takes the one engraved MRS. This time she doesn’t even have to touch her nose to set it off, it’s already eager to sneeze again, so all she has to do is hold the glass in front of her and let them rip. A very tickly rapid triple bursts out of her, coming so fast and so furiously that she almost drops the glass.
“AAASSSHHH! AAASSCHHH! HAAASSSHHHOO!”
She could probably keep going forever, the way her nose burns, but she pinches it with her free hand, squishing it so hard between her fingers that the next couple of sneezes are contained and eventually stops the acute need altogether.
If she sprays too much on and in that glass, it’s bound to be obvious even by the time they pop the champagne. With her nose back under her control – reluctantly – she wipes the most obvious droplets off and puts the glass back.
One more stop before she makes her escape. The wedding cake.
The cake, as extravagant as the rest at this wedding, is decorated with real lavender, lilacs and violets. Josie’s nose twitches again at the very sight, but she leans in close and sniffs them. Lavender is the only flower she’s allergic to, but the scent of the lilacs when her nose is already this raw and sensitive may be one straw too many.
She backs off a little, her nose is tingling with an intensity she’s never experienced before, and she doesn’t want to be too close when she sneezes, worried that the force of the sneezes from too close a distance might disturb the elaborate cake decorations.
She inhales deeply, this time filling her lungs to capacity so fast that her dress finally gives up on her. The front abruptly rips in a vertical tear, making the previously modest cleavage so revealing her breasts are almost entirely exposed. Her bra is sturdier than the dress, though, and at least keeps things in place, but the dress is ruined.
Her need to sneeze is so strong that she barely notices her dress tearing, and she sprays five rapid, strong, and most of all wet, sneezes all over the beautiful cake.
“HAA-ATSSSSCHHH-AASSSHHH-AAATSSSHHHHEW! HAH-TSSSSHHHHoo!-HAA-AKTSSSHHHHUH!”
She tries not to sneeze too loudly, not wanting to draw attention to herself, but even if they’re not as loud as they want to be, they’re louder than she wants them to be.
One last sneeze sneaks up on her as she turns away, and she sprays this one all over her exposed chest and bra.
She feels like she could be set off again just from a sniffle, and decides that it’s time to ditch the party. She holds the remnants of the dress front together while she hurries to the bathroom and cleans herself up the best she can. When this is done, she goes to get her coat so she can hide the ruined dress and then she heads for the door. But she bumps into Crystal before she can get away.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” Crystal pouts, as if Josie’s presence was particularly important to her in the first place. “We’re going to cut the cake and pop champagne soon…”
“I’m sorry,” Josie says, hears how congested she sounds and gets an idea. She fakes a sob. “I’ve had a wardrobe malfunction,” she says and shows a glimpse of the ruined dress under her coat. “I can’t stay like this.”
Wardrobe malfunctions is something Crystal would take seriously, and she does.
“Oh noooo! I understand, but thank you so much for coming, it was wonderful to see you again!”
Yeah, I really felt welcome, Josie thinks cynically, but when Crystal throws her arms around her, Josie returns the hug with warmth. It may be fake warmth, but the entire friendship has been fake, so why not?
“You too, I hope you have a wonderful honeymoon!”
And a very bad cold, she adds to herself before letting go and heading outside.
The door has barely closed behind her before she sneezes again, but that’s no surprise. She knows she’s not done sneezing, not by far, it’s like her nose is only getting started. Even if she gets away from the allergens, she still has this cold.
And soon enough, so will Crystal.
***
AAYIISSHHHH!
AAATISSSSHHH!!
One… two… three…
Angelina hates that she’s counting, but it has become almost a bizarre game to see how long that guest can drag out the tension between the second and the third sneeze.
Eight… nine…
HAAYYESSSSSHHHEW!!!
Angelina raises her eyebrows. Last night she held out for almost twenty seconds. She’s either getting tired of her own drama, or her cold is getting worse. Both options seem almost impossible to the hotel’s front desk clerk; that guest is the kind of attention seeker that never gets tired of her own drama, and there is no way that cold can get any worse.
The newlyweds were a problem from the get-go. Well, not the Mister, he is quiet, nerdy, and seems completely submissive to his unbearable wife. But the wife. She was already sick with a horrendous cold when they arrived, sneezing up a storm of altogether uncovered sneezes, and seems to feel it’s her duty to share her misery with everyone. She keeps loudly declaring how she “simply can’t believe her bad luck getting so sick just in time for her honeymoon,“. Angelina thinks it seems more like she’s in fact very pleased with having caught such an attention-grabbing condition. Or at least caught a condition that allows her to show off those attention-grabbing sneezes.
She has the lung capacity of a goddamn Amazonian warrior anyway, because Angelina can hear her sneeze from the front desk almost no matter where in the hotel the woman is. Thankfully the rooms are mostly soundproof, otherwise Angelina is certain they’d get disturbance complaints from other guests.
One of the maids disclosed to her that it seems like the woman is actually blowing her nose into the towels and sheets in their suite. Somehow, Angelina isn’t surprised. Nor is she surprised when that poor maid comes to work with a nose so red it rivals a certain pop culture reindeer’s, sneezing every five minutes. It must be a biohazard inside that room, with all the cold viruses whirling around in the air and covering every surface.
Heralded by the sneezes, the couple in question comes out to the lobby, dressed for a night on town. The wife certainly isn’t dressed like she’s feeling very sick; the skirt is very short, showing off long, tanned legs, the top is low-cut and sleeveless, the boots high heeled. She does have a jacket with her, but she’s not wearing it yet.
Her nose is… indescribable. Its redness is so intense it almost jumps out at you, as if it’s signalling the danger you’re in if you stand too close when that tickle hits. No makeup can stand a chance against that cold.
A sneezy look comes over her face. She grabs her husband’s arm.
“Wait baby, I’m gonna… I’m gonnaaaahhh…aahhh… AAHH…!“
The show is on, Angelina thinks. The same pattern as every time she’s sneezed since arriving five days ago; not covered, not restrained in any way, if anything she exaggerates.
She has turned to her right, the sneezy look on her face so intense that Angelina almost feels the urge to sneeze herself, just watching her.
“AAAATTSSSHHIIH!“
She sneezes all over her husband’s arm and hand, even from a distance Angelina can see spatter on his expensive wristwatch.
The sneezy expression doesn’t leave her face, and she turns to her other side, releasing the second.
“HAAYISSSSHHHH!!“
This one showers a petite woman who chooses this unfortunate moment to walk past them on her way to her room, and shower is the exact right word. The spray ejected from the sick woman’s mouth and nose is so plentiful it resembles a shower stream when illuminated by the lamplight, and the sneezing woman is almost six feet tall with her high heels on, towering over her petite victim who stands no more than 5’3, tops.
The woman makes a disgusted face and walks faster to escape, but the damage is already done; she has been soaked with that cold.
The dramatically sneezy woman doesn’t apologise; she doesn’t even notice that she sprayed someone else with her sneeze. Instead she makes a big scene out of sniffling, hitching, and fanning her face with her hand, shaking her head a little as if the tickle is being forced into her nose from the outside and she tries to evade it.
… six… seven.. eigh-…
And then she snaps forward, using her entire body to deliver this third and most dramatic sneeze, no attempt whatsoever to contain this extreme cold to herself.
“AAAYYYIIIISSSSSSHHIEWW!!!“
A giant cloud of droplets of various sizes sprays out in front of her, much of it falling down over the table and potted plant nearby. The plant probably doesn’t mind, but whichever guest sits at that table later, touching the virus-covered surface, might.
Also, some snot flies out of her nose and onto her cleavage.
“Oh, eww,“ she says, as if she couldn’t easily have prevented this outcome herself, and then the husband takes out a tissue and hands it to her.
Now, he hands her a tissue??
But she can’t even take it before she erupts again.
“AAAIIISSSSHHH!“
Spraying him head on.
“AAATTSSSSSHHHIH!!“
Spraying a bouquet of flowers in another passing guest’s hand. At least the flowers prevent him from getting it in the face, but Angelina hopes whoever he brings flowers to won’t put their nose into them and smell them, or they’ll inhale a noseful of cold germs too.
“Hah… ahhhhh… AAAH-!“.
That look of dramatic agony, head leaning further and further back, hand waving…
Three… four… five…
“HAYYYISSSSSHHHIIIH-HAH-! ISCHHH-ISSSCHHH…!!“
Just a moment’s trembling anticipation before the grand finale this time.
“HEYYYYIIISSSHHHOOOO!!!“
Unbelievably enough, that cold actually seems to get worse.
Get out already, Angelina thinks. Go contaminate a club or restaurant downtown with your germs instead.
“You didn’t bless me,“ the woman pouts.
“Bless you, honey,“ the husband says, obediently enough. “Well, do you think we should ask?“ he continues, as if he’s not rattled at all by her behaviour.
The wife lets out a drawn-out, snot-filled sniffle while she wipes the mess off her cleavage. She doesn’t blow her nose, even though it’s obvious that she needs to. She hands the tissue back to him, and he puts it back in his pocket without blinking.
“Okay,“ she agrees, and they head towards the front desk, hand in hand.
Towards Angelina, who dearly hopes that the red-nosed germ spreader has sneezed enough now to last her a while.
“Excuse me,” the husband says. Angelina puts on her best customer service smile.
“What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to know which is the best Italian restaurant nearby?”
Angelina knows exactly which the best Italian restaurant near the hotel is, but she is not going to recommend it to them and doom the poor owners to catching that cold. She’s mentally going through the other restaurants she knows, and picks one, not quite at random. As it so happens, her cheating ex-girlfriend works there.
She names the restaurant, and the husband asks for directions. Angelina is just about finished giving them when she glances at the wife, who is once again bothered by her cold, scrubbing at her nose with the palm of her hand, sniffling and groaning.
“… snrfff… ugh… snrrrrffff!”
It sounds more like she wants attention for her condition than actual, genuine struggle. Angelina hopes that if she gets it without sneezing, she’ll be pleased enough.
“Are you alright, ma’am?”
It feels ridiculous being so polite to someone so ignorant of good manners, but it is her job.
“Oh, yes, I’m fine, it’s just this stupid cold, it makes my nose so… ahhh… so tihhh…tiihhh… hihhh…”
Oh God, no, Angelina thinks as she looks at those nostrils, containing her doom, crimson red and ready to explode.
This time the sneezy woman deviates from the pattern, but not to Angelina’s benefit.
“TIHHH-HISSSSCHHHIH! Tickhhhly…. AHHHISSSSSHHH!!”
Both sneezes are sprayed straight ahead, not even a slight turn to the side. Angelina backs up, but the spray range of these sneezes is inescapable and easily cross the desk to where she is.
”AAYIISSSSHHHHIEW!!”
And immediately a desperate gasp and repeat.
”AATIIIISSSSHH!! AAAAYISSSSHHH!”
Shaking her head, looking desperate, but seemingly enjoying the attention she’s getting from people in the lobby who are staring at the free horror show.
”Oh no… I gotta… aahhh… I’m g-gonna… sneeze agaihhh… hah-hahh-HAAHDD-RISSSSCHHHHHOO!!!”
She belts out this last sneeze almost triumphantly.
After this fit, the desk is coated in contagious spray. Angelina can still see some mist in the air that hasn’t settled yet, the sneezes were that wet. Now she has this woman’s cold in her hair, on her face… probably in her nose, too. She’s speechless. She looks at the husband, waiting for him to at least offer an apology on behalf of his wife, since it doesn’t seem like she’s going to herself.
What he does is to fish out the tissue and offering it to his wife with a soft ‘bless you, babe’, but she declines it. There is a trail of mess running down her face, but she nonchalantly wipes it off with her hand, then wipes her hand on her skirt.
She looks at Angelina, expectantly.
She cannot possibly expect me to bless her after she sneezed her cold all over me, can she? Of course she can. She is the main character in her universe.
“Bless you,” Angelina says reluctantly.
“Thank you, oh, this cold, oh my gosh you have no idea, I’ve never had a cold quite like it before…”
“Yes, you have,” the husband reminds her. “Remember when we were in Vegas? You just couldn’t stop sneezing when we were playing poker, you were so sick, my poor babe.”
She ignores him, now she’s basking in attention from Angelina.
“It’s so sneezy! They just come out of the blue, it starts to tickle and it’s so intense, I just can’t stop it!”
Really? I'm certain no one around you has noticed, you’re being so discreet about it, Angelina thinks.
Then this hotel guest delivers the ultimate absurdity:
”I reallyhope I’m not contagious or anything.”
They finally walk out of the lobby and onto the streets. The dramatic sneezes can still be heard for a while, though they get fainter.
Angelina needs a drink.
She really, really needs a drink.
And maybe a decontamination shower.
I can't contain myself any longer, hahaha, here goes! I've had a lot of fun with the last one in particular! 😆 I very much hope you'll enjoy it too. 😉 A polite but very ill desk clerk, a cop with a VERY messy cold, and a nurse with the kink having to work alongside an oblivious-to-kink but viciously cold-ridden doctor. Contains some descriptions of masturbation at the end.
Part 3!!!
The hotel desk clerk, a tall, handsome woman in her 30s, whose sharp features would have given her a somewhat intimidating appearance if not for her warm brown eyes, interrupts herself mid-sentence.
She asks the female cop taking statements to hold on a moment, then sneezes into a tissue, gently massages her nose through the tissue for several seconds, and sneezes again before lowering her hand.
It's obvious to Tess that this woman has a really bad cold, no matter how much she tries to be stoic about it. She has sneezed seemingly every couple of seconds the whole time Tess has been here about the fight in the hotel bar, either into a tissue or the crook of her arm. She has dark circles around her pretty eyes, and while she has made an effort with her makeup, the continuous use of the tissues – the one she holds now isn’t the first she’s used since Tess arrived – rubs any powder and foundations off her nose in no time, making it redder and redder as time goes by.
“Excuse me, officer,” she says, quickly dabbing at her nose again as if to make sure nothing has leaked out of it. She has an interesting nose; not exactly big, but with nostrils that are naturally wide, making it look like they’re constantly flaring. When she breathes, there’s an almost bubbling sound from inside her sinuses, which she seems quite embarrassed about, but she’s also reluctant to give her full nose a proper blow in front of an audience.
Tess smiles and tells her it’s fine.
“Coming down with something?” she asks, even though it’s glaringly obvious that this cold has asserted dominance over this woman’s sinuses. She is not coming down with anything; she is very, very down with this cold already.
“Oh God, yes,” she says and laughs, a raspy laughter that turns into a chesty cough that she smothers into her elbow. There is a bitter, almost angry undertone to that laughter, and as soon as she gets her cough under control, Tess learns why.
“We had a guest last week who had a really horrible cold and never covered her mouth when she sneezed. Just sneezed freely no matter where she was. I could have caught it at any time during her stay, of course, she was spreading it everywhere, but I think it happened the evening before they checked out. She sneezed all over me; I wish I was exaggerating, but she really did. It can’t be that hard to cover your mouth, can it?”
Tess, who rarely covers her mouth when she sneezes either – who wants snot and spit in their hands or on their clothes, honestly? – only hums in response.
“Either way, I’m confident I caught whatever sneeze plague she had. I nevehhh…”
Her naturally flared nostrils flares even wider, almost impossibly wide in Tess’s opinion, and then brings her hand back up to capture the sneezes in her spent tissue.
“Eehhmptschhoo! EhhmpSSSHHoo! Hah…MPTSSCHoo! ‘scuse me again, oh my God! I never sneeze this much from a cold normally,” the desk clerk says and shakes her head, still with the tissue to her face. “It’s not even as bad as hers, but it only started two days ago. I don’t think it has peaked yet.”
She pinches her nose in the tissue and rubs it, up and down, trying to alleviate an itch that seems relentless.
“Sounds like you need to take a sick day,” Tess remarks.
“Yeah, right,” comes the sardonic response, followed by a wet noseblow as she finally accepts that she can’t make it through this conversation without blowing her nose. “If I’m gone one day, this whole place falls apart.”
Tess thinks it looks like this woman is the one who’s about to fall apart, but keeps her mouth shut.
That noseblow proved too much for the heroic tissue, and the cold-ridden woman disposes of it in the trashcan, which is already housing many of its fallen comrades. She then immediately takes a new one from a box that’s two-thirds empty, and rushes to get it up to her face before she has to sneeze again. She does manage to catch the sneezes, but it’s at the last moment.
“Hehssshhoo! Essshhhooo! HgnnNTSSSHHoo! Oh my Gohh-hhhESSSHHHHoo! God, ‘scuse me, I… hhhESSSHHHHoo! I’m so sorry about this…”
Tess waves it off. She’s not here to interview the clerk about her cold, notable as it may be.
“Can you tell me anything else about the incident?”
“I think that’s it,” she says, once more massaging her nose with the tissue she just sneezed into. “I only saw parts of the brawl; I called you right away.”
“As you should,” Tess says and smiles. The woman in front of her looks completely drained, but she manages to return the smile as she removes the tissue from her face. Her cheeks are flushed, either because of the force of the sneezes or because she’s embarrassed. Maybe she’s running a fever, too. If her job is as stressful as she alludes to, she’s bound to get a bad run of every illness she catches.
“Well, if you think of anything else that can be of help, no matter how small, call me,” Tess says and stands up, handing over a card with her cell phone number and the number to the station.
“It’s embarrassing, we never have bar fights in our hotel bar,” the woman says, and she sounds almost offended.
“Never say never,” Tess says. “Whenever there’s alcohol and people at the same place, fights can happen. Actually, whenever there’s more than one person in one place, fights can happen, especially if there is a pre-existing disagreement underneath, as seems to be the case here.”
“I suppose,” the sick woman replies, balling up the tissue and rubs it under her irritated nose, first lightly, then harder, really pressing it up against the underside of her flared nostrils. It looks painful against the already chafed skin, but she doesn’t stop. Her eyes get an unfocused, sneezy look in them, but she visibly fights it off and exhales in what’s half relief, half disappointment.
How itchy is that nose anyway? Tess wonders.
“We’re getting this sorted,” she promises and extends her hand. The other woman only looks at it first, hesitating.
“I should probably not shake hands, I don’t want to pass this on,” she says, gesturing to her face with the hand holding the very well used tissue. Her nose is the main recipient of the gesture, Tess presumes. That progressively redder, nostril-flaring nose. “I promise you, officer, you do not want this cold.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I never get sick,” Tess says in a flippant tone.
“Never say never, was it?”, the woman responds, her eyebrows raised, but when Tess doesn’t pull her hand back, she takes it briefly.
“Feel better,” Tess offers, and then she goes to find her partner, who’s been interviewing the other staff.
Behind her, Angelina sneezes again into another tissue, over and over, grateful that the cop has left so she doesn’t have to struggle so hard to hold them back as much as possible. For every time she has sneezed during this conversation, she has held back an additional two sneezes. She has never been this sneezy before in her entire life, and that says a lot because she has pretty awful allergies early in spring. This is something else entirely.
She hopes the handshake hasn’t doomed the policewoman to the same miserable fate, but she did insist on it and Angelina was careful to cover her sneezes.
What she doesn’t really think about is that she held her tissue in her right hand – or both hands – and thoughtlessly moved it to her left hand to shake the other woman’s hand. She has been sneezing and blowing her nose so much into each tissue that she can feel the wetness through them, in fact that’s when she decides to toss it and grab a fresh one. She doesn’t want to waste tissues when she is going to need every single one to get her through the day. So no matter how careful she has been to cover every sneeze, there were still viruses in that handshake, now passed over to Tess’s hand.
Walking out to the lobby where her colleague waits, Tess reaches into her pocket and takes out some Tums. All the coffee she’s had on an empty stomach today doesn’t sit well with her, but it’s okay, it’ll be better in a little bit.
It doesn’t cross her mind that she’s touching the antacids with the same hand she just shook the sick desk clerk’s hand with, and then puts them in her mouth. But even if it had crossed her mind, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because the cold-ridden woman had covered her sneezes so carefully, and besides, Tess never gets sick anyway. A little heartburn from way too much coffee is the only thing that bothers her healthy, athletic, fit body.
***
“AaaaSSSCHHOO-ASSSCHHOO-hah-GEHSSSHHH-OOO…!! Hahh-HARRGGSSHH! Fuck be!”
“Holy fucking shit, Tee,” her partner Ben says, laughing. He is driving and that is a good thing because Tess can not stop sneezing today. It’s only getting worse. They come with no warning, just a sharp pinprick in her nose and off she goes; there is nothing she can do about it but let them out.
“I kdow, she says and scrubs at her nose with her knuckles. “Ugh… srrrrfff. This cold really hit be like a tod of bricks. Snnrrrkkk. Guhh…-AAAH-RGSSSCCHHGH!-snrrrkk. I’b so stuffed up it’s dot eved fuddy. ARGGSCHHHH!”
”Here’s a radical suggestion; blow your nose,” he says.
”I would if I could… snnrrrfff… dothig cobes out… huhrresscchhh!”
”Well, stuff sure comes out when you sneeze, anyway,” he says.
“Are you saying I’b gross?”
He shrugs, grinning.
“If the shoe fits…”
“I didn’t kdow you were such a gerbaphobe,” she says.
“I’m not,” he replies, “I’m just making an observation.”
“HARRGSSSCHHH!” Tess sneezes without abandon and a string of clear snot is violently ejected from her tormented nose along with copious amounts of substantial spray. Some is spattered across the glove compartment in front of her, most is on the front of her uniform.
“As I was saying,” Ben says and hands her a napkin with a small, dried coffee stain but otherwise clean.
Tess takes the napkin and grumpily wipes her nose and uniform. The droplets covering the glove compartment will dry on its own, no one but her and Ben will see it anyway and she can’t be bothered. She is annoyed with her nose not giving her any warning; she usually has plenty of time to turn away and sneeze to the side or towards the ground. Also, she has always been a messy sneezer, but this cold makes them messier than normal.
“I cadt help it,“ she says, “I cadt feel theb cobig.“
“Tee, if you don’t blow your nose soon I’m going to need a translator to understand you,“ Ben says as he pulls into the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store.
“Fide, I’ll get sobe tissues while you fill up od gas,“ she says and gets out of the car.
When she returns from the convenience store, she’s already on the second tissue, blowing her nose with all her might while walking towards Ben, who laughs again.
“Nothing coming out, huh,“ he says as she tosses the two used tissues in a trash bin as she walks past it, then digs out a third tissue from the puny travel pack she bought.
“Now it’s all coming out at once,“ she grunts and sneezes again, this time taking advantage of the force of the sneeze to blow her nose. She hasn’t fully gotten the tissue up to cover her cold-tortured nostrils though, so Ben is treated to the unpleasant view of her nose ridding itself of a wealth of mess in one strong blast.
“God, there’s so much snot,“ Tess comments, both disgusted and fascinated by her body’s expulsions.
“Yeah, I kind of noticed,“ her partner says as she cleans herself up, blows her nose for a fourth time, and discards the used tissues.
“How do I sound now? “ she says.
“Say something with lots of n’s and m’s, “ he asks her.
She thinks for a moment.
“Cinnamon buns and M’n’M’s.“
He nods with a perfectly straight face.
“Yeah, I think I can get by without a translator now.“
She gives him the finger and opens the door on the passenger side, but just as she’s about to get in, another sneeze sneaks up on her.
“UH-ASSSSHHH!“
Tess snaps forward as with every sneeze before this one, but this time the car door is in front of her and she whacks her head against it, hard enough to split her eyebrow. Blood starts gushing.
“Fuck, that hurt,“ she says, dizzy from both the impact and the sneeze. Ben takes one look at it and cringes.
“Yeah, we’re going straight to the ER, you might need stitches,“ he says.
Tess objects, but it’s only symbolic; it hurts like a motherfucker.
***
“How did this happen?” Dr Jasmine Ashford asks. She’s the head of the hospital’s emergency department, and right now she may be a bit rougher in her examination than she’d be with a civilian; she is not overly fond of the police force in this city. Far too many of them shoot first and ask questions later, causing rather than preventing the influx of gunshot wounds to the ER, and then they come in with fairly minor injuries expecting to be treated first.
“Oww, careful, Doc! I just split my entire head open!”
Jasmine rolls her eyes. Minor injury, major drama.
“I know it looks concerning with all the blood, but head wounds always bleed a lot. It’s really just a scratch, you don’t even need stitches. I’ll just clean this out and tape it. Now, how did this happen?”
The cop looks uncomfortable. Her cheeks begin to flush red, a similar shade to that of her nose. She is visibly and audibly sick with a really bad cold on top of everything, and frankly looks and sounds like she should be home in bed rather than out in uniform.
“Well?”
“I sneezed.”
“You… sneezed?” Jasmine doesn’t smile, her face is completely expressionless, but behind her stoneface she is amused. Not by the injury itself; she’s not so callous she thinks anyone deserves to be in pain, but by the ridiculous way she acquired it.
“Yes. I sneezed. So what?”
“Well, I’ve seen burst eardrums and burst blood vessels in the eyes and even a cracked rib from sneezing too hard, but I’ve never seen a head laceration caused by sneezing. Humour me, please. Do elaborate.”
“I hit my head on the patrol car door when I sneezed.”
This time the briefest expression of amusement crosses the doctor’s face as she begins to tape the laceration.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. It’s this fucking cold’s fault, the sneezes just take me by surprise,” the cop mutters, and, as if on cue, she whips her head to the side – Jasmine scowls, knowing she has to start over with the taping – and sneezes over her shoulder. “Huuh-GGTTSSCHHGH!-snrrrrfff-GUHHESSSCHHHoo!”
The sneezes are wet and snotty, and without a word, Jasmine hands her a tissue so she can clean herself up.
“Can you get me anything for this cold? snrrrrffff. It’s fucking killing me.”
“If you plan to keep banging your head against things when you sneeze, that does sound like a valid concern,” the doctor says dryly, “but if you avoid doing that from now on, this cold isn’t going to kill you. There are over-the-counter medications to ease the symptoms.”
“Those things don’t do shit.”
“No, they actually don’t,” the doctor agrees, “but it’s the best we got. There’s no cure for the common cold.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, well, a cold is nothing compared to a lot of things we see here in the ER, so… just drink lots of clear fluids – by that I mean water – and rest, let it run its course. Maybe put on a helmet so you don’t hit your head again,” she adds as an afterthought while she starts over with taping the laceration on the cop’s forehead.
“Very funny, Doc.“ But she does smile.
“Thank you, I’m doing stand-up comedy as a side gig.“
“Don’t quit your day job.“
Jasmine chuckles.
The uniformed woman leans her head back a little.
“Hold still please, I’m just about done,” the doctor says and looks away from the laceration she’s been taping just in time to see the patient’s red nostrils, gleaming with mucus, flare wide and her mouth fall open, sucking in air in a deep gasp. The doctor takes a step back, but she’s a moment too late.
“AAARSSSSCHHUH-AH!-HARRGGSSSSHHHuuh ! ”
Jasmine winces when she feels the spray on her face. It’s not that she hasn’t been sprayed and splashed with all kinds of body fluids before; of course she has, she works in the ER. It’s that as much as she trivialised the common cold when speaking to the patient, she absolutely despises having one herself. She is a woman who very rarely, almost never, gets sick with anything. She is among those few lucky enough to carry the gene that makes her immune to the norovirus, she has no chronic illnesses, allergies or sensitivities, and she hasn’t had a cold in five years or so. But in the rare instances that she does catch a cold, it goes straight to her nose and tends to stay there for the whole duration. It’s like an endless goddamn carnival of sneezing and noseblowing. It never goes to her chest but it tends to linger in her sinuses, keeping her in that loop of sniffling, sneezing and blowing her nose for even longer than any normal person is symptomatic from a cold.
There is no reason to believe this will be the cold that gets her when she has treated God knows how many people who have coughed in her face the past few weeks, and come out of it perfectly fine, but the risk is there and it’s a thought she’d rather not entertain.
The patient wipes her nose and looks at her with a sincere apologetic expression.
“Sorry, Doc. I told you, they come out of nowhere. It caught me off guard.”
Jasmine sighs and finishes the taping.
“Don’t worry about it. It happens. I’ll get you some Ibuprofen for the pain,” she says and walks off, taking a detour to the bathroom and washes her face.
She’ll be fine. It may be a potent cold, but her track record all but guarantees she’ll get out of today’s little mishap unscathed.
***
ER nurse Caitlyn cannot believe her luck when Dr Ashford, head of the ER, comes in for her shift a few days later, dragging an absolutely frothy headcold with her. That cute cop with the wicked heavy cold sneezed her right in the face a couple of days ago, but Caitlyn has seen similar things happen before and Dr Ashford never caught a thing from either patients or colleagues. That woman simply never gets sick. Flu season after flu season, Caitlyn has been working the same shifts as this doctor, and even when the entire staff passes something back and forth, she never gets as much as a sniffle. Caitlyn has hoped to see her with a cold someday but never dared to believe she actually would. But now that glorious day has come.
Jasmine is a beautiful woman in general, but Caitlyn’s favourite feature of hers is her striking nose, it’s so majestically chiselled that it could have been a work of art – not the kind of symmetrically perfected, boring art that the plastic surgeons up on the fifth floor create, but the distinct, unique kind only nature does and only when it feels particularly forthcoming. It’s very prominent but not to a point where it completely takes over her face, it’s angular in just the right places, curved in just the right places, with an ever so slightly upturned tip and arched nostrils that allows you to see a bit of its inside. It’s a fantastic nose, but unfortunately also very resilient; Caitlyn has never seen her sneeze, not even a random sneeze, much less from a cold.
Today, this gorgeous nose is an angry scarlet red, from the tip to high up on the bridge. The rims of her nostrils are even more irritated, burning with a miserable yet somehow elegant shade of ruby red. The glimpse into the even more irritated inside of her nose reveals that it’s glistening with moisture, threatening to spill out of those cold-battered nostrils at the slightest provocation… such as breathing.
Caitlyn has never seen this nose look so sensitive before, and the prospects of finally getting to see her sneeze are good, to say the least. The flaming redness from the viral infection suits her nose beautifully, just like Caitlyn has pictured in her mind many times, usually at home with one hand down her pants.
Jasmine, unaware of the delight her dreadful cold brings to her colleague, is focused on the prickle that seems to fill her entire nose. She furiously rubs the heel of her hand against her hot, squishing, liquid-filled nostrils, then pushes the tip of her nose upwards – leaving a very distinct horizontal crease across the bridge – while giving a thick, repulsive snort.
“…snrrrkkkk…“
“Good morning, doctor,“ Caitlyn chirps, unable to completely hide her selfish joy to see this beautiful, always in-control woman practically overflowing with something she cannot control at all.
“It is not,“ the doctor deadpans, then buries her face in the sleeve of her lab coat and aggressively barks out a dry-sounding one-syllable sneeze. It sounds like her sinuses are so blocked with congestion that nothing shifts inside, so the full power of the sneeze has to force itself out through her throat, clawing at her vocal cords on its way out.
Dry sneezes aren’t Caitlyn’s favourite type, but Jasmine’s sneeze is fantastic nevertheless. The angry desperation in the sound, it’s delicious.
“Oh, bless you. Why not? “
Oh, she knows she shouldn’t push her luck like this, but she has worked with Jasmine for several years and has never seen her as much as touch her nose before. To see her display this formidable cold and being grouchy about it, is so hot that Caitlyn feels a little bit lightheaded.
It turns out Jasmine may hate having a cold, but she has no objections to talking about it.
“It’s not a good morning because I have a raging head cold of… snrrkkk… of epic proportions and… snrrgggkkk… and m-my nose is… is… haahh-…“
She buries her nose and mouth in the crook of her arm again, barking out another rough, very sick-sounding sneeze, only wetter this time.
“-RAHESSSCHHooo! “
“Bless you, doctor.” It almost comes out as a purr.
“ Problematic,“ the doctor finishes as if Caitlyn hadn’t said anything, and pours hand sanitizer into her hands, rubbing it in with a look of utter gloom on her face.
That lovely nose being problematic today, huh? Caitlyn immediately decides to stay close to Jasmine this shift. She wants to see more of this.
She gets her wish right away; perhaps it’s the strong fumes from the hand sanitizer, perhaps her nose just really is that sensitive from this cold, but the gloomy look on Jasmine’s face is slowly replaced by a pre-sneeze expression. It’s the sneeziest pre-sneeze expression Caitlyn has ever seen, and she is something of a connoisseur on the subject; it’s like every fine muscle in in Jasmine’s face is perfectly tuned to create the optimal pre-sneeze face.
Jasmine holds up a finger in that universal ‘hold on’-gesture.
“I feel more coming,“ she says in a breathy voice and slowly begins to raise her arm, but not covering prematurely, meaning Caitlyn is treated to more of this unintentional visual erotica.
The sick doctor’s pre-sneeze face is a study in itchy suffering, from the trembling, parted lips to the deep-red, needy nostrils, to the fluttering eyelids and the fine lines between her eyebrows becoming visible. A tear begins to run down her cheek as she squeezes her eyes shut.
“Oh God,“ she whimpers, then leans into the crook of her arm, sneezing heavily. It sounds almost like she’s wrestling these sneezes out of her agonised airways, slamming them into the sleeve of her white coat. Her shoulders shudder from the force.
“AAATT-JIHHSSSSHHH!! HATTT-JIHHSSSCHHHoo!!”
“Bless you, doctor! Wow, are you okay?“
Jasmine shakes her head, still with her face hidden in her elbow, eyes closed. She takes a deep sniffly breath before lowering her arm.
“Doh, I’b dot okay. This cold is ad idsult.“
She sniffles again.
“I deed a tissue,“ she says and walks away, sniffling thickly, as if those sneezes loosened up the congestion which is now flooding her nose.
If so, Caitlyn thinks ‘a’ tissue, singular, is very optimistic.
***
Jasmine certainly has problems with her nose today. She is a complete mess. She keeps blowing her nose with a thick, gurgling, wet sound and yet her nose is still overflowing with cold. She sneezes into the sleeves of her lab coat. She sneezes into tissues she has stuffed into her pockets, or which are readily offered by Caitlyn or other staff. She sneezes into the collar of the warm, soft knitted sweater she’s wearing under her lab coat. She sniffles, she snorts, she sneezes. She comments on how her nose feels. She sneezes. She complains about her cold. She sneezes. She does not apologise about her excessive sneezing. And she sneezes.
To Caitlyn it feels like the entire shift consists of phrases and nose-based sounds like
“Where are the… uh, hold on, I have to sneeze… AaESSSCHHH! Ugh, this damn cold… where are the discharge forms?.
“Wait, I’m so itchy… hahh… harusssshhh! ERSSSSHHHHuh! Ugh... you were saying?“
“… snnnrrrkkk… ugh I’b so congested agaid I can’t breathe through by dose… snrrrrgggkkkk…“
“And of course now my nose is running like a faucet instead.“
“Did you do a… test… uhh… for… what’s it called… arrgh, I can’t even think today! My entire head is full of snot, there are no brain cells at work anymore. HuhASSCHHH! Pregnancy test, oh my God!”
“This is ridiculous, I need to sneeze so much… I swear this cold is a punishment from a higher powerREESSSHHHH!“
“Uh-oh, here we go agaihh… HATSSSHHHH! ERRASSHHH! HAESSSSHHHEH! I just can’t stop sneezihhNGGSSSSHHHIEW! Isssschhew! HARRSSHHHOohh! Yes, of course I’m sick, you think I’m sneezing like this for the sheer fun of it?“
“Oh come on, why do I need to sneeze again…?! ATSSCHHHihh-ISSSSHHHIH-HITSSSSHHHOOO! Snrrrrfff… Am I done? Please tell me I’m done… no… haahh… HATSSSHHHOO!”
“Ugh, my nose… it’s so…I still feel a sn-… sn-issschoo-isschhih-ahhissshhh! Ghh-ISSSHHH-ESSSHHHOO-ESSSHHHIH-whatthehellisthisSSHHHOOO!!“
“Ugh, I feel like someone’s shoved a feather up my nose, it tickles so much, right here, and I can’t…. I can’tTIEEESSSHHHH! ESSSSCHHHOO! I can’t get rid of it…“
A few hours of listening to this endless cold-tickle-congestion-sneeze-related whinging, feeling like she’s in the middle of a sneezefic, Caitlyn is about ready to hump the good doctor’s leg. If it had been a busy shift she would have had something else to occupy her mind, but it’s been very slow.
When an emergency does come in, Jasmine calls for Caitlyn and gives her the most jaw-dropping task imaginable.
“I need you to wipe my nose for me.“
“Huh??“
Caitlyn is sure she misheard that. There is no way she actually said what Caitlyn thought she heard.
But Jasmine repeats the thing that Caitlyn thought she couldn’t possibly have heard. When Caitlyn just stares at her, dumbfounded, the doctor decides to clarify.
“I need both hands, my nose is running, and I obviously can’t drip on the patient. It’s no different from wiping sweat off a surgeon’s brow, get over here and bring the tissues!“
Caitlyn would argue that it’s very, very different for many reasons, but she has sprung into action automatically; there’s a patient that needs help and if she has to do something incredibly erotic for the oblivious doctor in order to do her part, then so be it.
At first, she just takes one tissue and wipes off the mess that leaks out of those red, feverishly hot nostrils, dabbing at the underside of her nose with a hand that wants to tremble but that she won’t allow to.
“That tickles,” Jasmine says in a breathy voice. “You’re gonna make me sneehh…”
Before she can finish the sentence or do what her body threatens (or promises) to do, Caitlyn snatches a whole bunch of tissues and holds them over her nose and her mouth, and it’s just in time too because Jasmine, trying and failing to hold back, sneezes a really messy, closed-mouthed, half-stifle into Caitlyn’s tissue-covered hand. She takes a sharp, deep breath that is muffled by the tissues, and sneezes again. This time she doesn’t even attempt to stifle. She’s clearly not good at it anyway.
“..haaGH-YIIH-ESSSSHHHOO ! “
“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says. It’s an incredibly sexy-sounding sneeze, making her swoon for a moment, and she’s relieved she manages to avoid moaning out loud when blessing her.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jasmine mutters, ignoring the blessing like Caitlyn suspected she would. It’s alright. She says it mostly for her own pleasure anyway.
Somehow Jasmine has managed to keep the pressure steady while the other doctor is intubating. Caitlyn is standing close enough that she can feel Jasmine’s breath hitching throughout her body. Her chest is rising and falling in erratic waves before she sneezes into Caitlyn’s hand again. Hard.
“ESSCHHHOO! ISSCHHHOO! ESSCHHOO-EESSCHHHAH!” A viscous, snoring inhale, followed by a harsh, snotty “HARRUSSCHHH!” that is so forceful that Caitlyn only barely manages to keep the tissues clasped over the lower part of her face.
“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says again, again the blessing is ignored.
“This isn’t going to work,” Jasmine says, “just put a mask on me, please.”
Why didn’t you put one on yourself right away, before you sanitized your hands and put on gloves? Caitlyn wonders but doesn’t say out loud. Most likely she just didn’t think about it; if she usually never gets sick, anything that has to do with working through a cold just isn’t that close to mind.
Another nurse grabs a mask from the container on the shelf and hands it to Caitlyn, who currently functions on two levels; one is the stone-cold professional that just does what needs to be done, the other is fluttering around in the clouds of lalaland feeling like she’s practically jacking off the head of the emergency department in front of God and everyone.
“Okay, blow your nose first and then I’ll put the mask on you,” Caitlyn says to the doctor, whose nose may be a disaster zone, but her hands are still professional, working on muscle memory, they are not distracted by what’s going on above her shoulders.
“Fucking cold,” Jasmine mutters, “is there any limit to this humiliation?” But she takes a deep breath and blows as hard as she can into the bundle of tissues Caitlyn holds over her nose. Caitlyn can feel it through the layers of paper, the hot, contagious mess drenching the tissues, and there is far more of it than she thought. Luckily the trashcan is close enough that she can drop the whole wad into it right away. She can’t wipe the residual wetness off the other woman’s face, the tissues are far too soaked for that, so when she puts the mask on her, it sticks to her skin. Jasmine makes a grimace behind the face covering.
“Better double-mask me,” she says in a clipped tone, and Caitlyn puts a second layer of surgical mask on her. The mask is barely in place over the first when Jasmine lets loose with a colossal, watery sneeze. And another, and another. Undeterred, she starts giving orders through the sneezes, and Caitlyn wonders briefly if she’s in heaven or in hell while she calls up to surgery to see if they can take over the patient.
Once the patient is stable and wheeled off to surgery, Jasmine disappears. Caitlyn has a good idea of where; the ladies’ room. She’s going to clean herself up, because she must have sneezed almost a dozen squelching wet sneezes into that mask and gotten all of it ricocheting back in her face.
Caitlyn doesn’t follow her. On one hand it’s due to a sense of guilt mixed with sympathy: she thinks Jasmine deserves a little bit of privacy, without being quite so enthusiastically sexualised by her perverted colleague. On the other it’s basic self-preservation: she fears that if she’s subjected to one more thing originating from Jasmine’s anguished sinuses in the next few minutes, be it sound or fluid, she’s simply going to cum in her pants.
“Wow,” her nurse colleague says, leaning against the wall. “What a cold she caught. I hope we’re not all going to catch that monster from her. I’ve never even heard her sneeze before, much less having full-out sneezing fits like that.”
I hope I catch it, Caitlyn thinks. She doesn’t enjoy getting sick herself, despite her odd little kink, but she’s making an exception for Jasmine. There is something wildly sensual about the idea of having her viruses inside her own body.
“She can’t help it,” she says. “We’re always a physician short here, she can’t call in sick for a cold either way.”
“I know. Poor Dr Ashford,” the other nurse says.
“I don’t need to be pitied,” Jasmine says from behind them, as if she hasn’t spent the whole shift ‘informing’ (which was really very thinly veiled complaining) everyone about every detail of her misery.
The other nurse excuses herself and scurries away, not wanting to test the exact level of grouchiness this cold gives the doctor.
Jasmine sighs. She looks a bit embarrassed.
“Thank you for helping me out earlier. That got really disgusting, I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I should be the one thanking you, she adds in her head.
“Have you heard from surgery? How’s the patient doing?”
“Better than you are, I think,” Caitlyn hazards a joke.
“Good God, let’s hope so, because I feel like I’m at death’s door,” Jasmine says and rolls her eyes. “Before you say anything, yes, I am indeed going to complain the rest of the shift, if we’re supposed to have gender equality, then I can and will have man flu instead of a plain cold.”
“For what it’s worth, that cold sounds bad enough to qualify,” Caitlyn says, and Jasmine laughs. It’s a raspy, wheezy laughter, but it’s genuine enough.
“Sorry to say, but I think you might find that out for yourself in a day or two,” Jasmine says and blows her nose.
“I…” hope so, is what Caitlyn almost says. “I’ll be fine,” she corrects herself.
“Let’s hope. By the way, I meant what I said; I don’t need to be pitied. I am very good at pitying myself, it’s a real talent of mine, so I don’t need others to. Just let me keep at it, that’s how I cope.”
Caitlyn chuckles.
“Got it.”
“Aaaand now I’m going to sneeze again,” Jasmine says in a resigned tone. She twirls her hand in front of her face while she’s building up to it; it’s not that ‘dramatic fanning’ thing that some girls do, this is more of an impatient gesture; ‘hurry up!’
Caitlyn is watching as the sneeze takes hold of the doctor little by little. It’s a slowly building, torturous sneeze, but eventually she explodes into the already used tissues she’s holding.
“AaaRSSSHHHuh! HaRSSSHHHHuh!”
They scrape at her throat and it sounds like it hurts.
Caitlyn has cooled off enough that she can handle it without a panty emergency. Barely.
“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says again, not expecting any answer this time either. But Jasmine gives her an exhausted smile.
“Thank you. Now I need coffee, or I’ll fall asleep in a corner somewhere before the shift is over.”
“Good idea.”
“Which one? Coffee or falling asleep in a corner?”
Caitlyn laughs.
“Both sound good, but coffee is probably best while on the clock.”
“Unfortunately, you are correct,” Jasmine says and leaves to get that coffee. She sneezes several times walking down the corridor, head bobbing forward with harsh, noisy sneezes into wilting tissues.
Caitlyn lingers, not sure if all this is really happening or if she’s having the most vivid sneeze dream of her life.
***
Caitlyn knows that she’s needed at work, and the cold that she indeed caught from Jasmine isn’t anywhere near as bad, at least not yet, but she calls in sick anyway. She won’t miss out on further dreamy observations in doing so; Jasmine gave up a few hours into yesterday’s shift and went home, declaring that she would go hide under a rock for the rest of the week, and if they needed her, they should think long and hard about it and then call in someone else. No one has quite figured out yet what to even make of Dr Ashford with a cold, other than a collective ‘what the hell was that?’.
Caitlyn doesn’t want to pass this cold on, that is one reason to stay home, but she would be utterly useless either way because now that she has processed the whole thing, she is endlessly horny thinking back at the sexy doctor’s nasty, sexy cold, and how Caitlyn somehow held out the entire shift without touching herself.
Now she’s going to make up for that self-restraint; she can’t stop thinking about how it felt to hold that tissue to Jasmine’s red-hot, streaming nose and wipe the mess off her chafed philtrum, to feel her wet, contagious sneezes through the layers of Kleenex, and to innocently say ‘bless you, doctor’ every time that ailing, dripping, reddened nose erupted with yet another one of those offensively messy sneezes.
Her clit is throbbing just recalling these memories. She’s had multiple orgasms – fits of them, you could say, as intense as the sneezing fits Jasmine’s delicious cold gave her – numerous times already, but her craving pussy still wants more.
Caitlyn rolls over on her back in bed, closes her eyes and thinks back to what it was like, putting the mask on the helplessly cold-ridden doctor and how she immediately sneezed over and over into that mask without holding back even the slightest, such desperate and such juicy sneezes, she must have nearly drowned in her own cold behind that mask and yet Caitlyn knew her nose still wouldn’t stop tickling because those strong, torturous sneezes just kept coming, those awfully wet sneezes, those indecently juicy sneezes… no, let’s call it what it was, snotty sneezes, such snotty sneezes just exploding right into that flimsy little mask, her exquisite, ticklish nose sneezing out torrents of mess… it was shocking how such an elegant nose was capable of producing such loud, uncontrollable noises and a deluge of something as inelegant as snot…
Caitlyn’s hand goes back inside her panties for the umptieth time since she got home after That Shift, the cotton fabric is as drenched with her juices as Jasmine’s tissues were drenched with snot, her swollen folds hot and wet, her clit steadily pounding with need, needing this orgasm as badly as Jasmine’s nose needed the sneeze, and she only has to touch herself for a few seconds before she reaches climax, riding the wave of multiple orgasms again and they feel even better this time than any of the many times before… but she still knows it won’t be the last time she’ll need to do something about the state the doctor’s godawful cold puts her in.
The cold may be awful, but oh, the orgasms… the orgasms are amazing!
