He doesn’t really notice it in the beginning. There was no way for him to know what was causing it. At least not at first.
“Take some medication,” his mom tells him when he comes home from school in a particularly violent sneezing fit that makes his eyes water. “I can grab some Benadryl on my way home today.”
But Benadryl always makes him tired and he’s fallen behind on schoolwork recently, so he settles with splashing some cold water on his face and blowing his nose and that’s that. Except it’s not so easy to solve at school. Classmates start giving him disgusted looks after a lunch break spent with three idiots, when his nose is runny and his eyes are red in the corners from itching. He gives them the same response he did when He Tian had gifted him the guitar and no one could mind their fucking business: a deft middle finger, punctuated by a sharp sniff of his stuffy nose. They usually leave him alone after that.
Jian Yi, on the other hand, gives him shit for it every day.
“Are you dying?” the boy asks when Guan Shan has to pause in their pick-up game to wipe his nose on the inside of his shirt. “That’s gross. Ew. Is it a disease?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Guan Shan tells him. “Just allergies. Annoyin’ as hell. Now hurry up and pass the ball, dumbass.”
Jian Yi clutches the basketball to his chest like a child. “No way, Snot Fingers. I’m not trying to die from unknown causes.”
“The cause won’t be so fuckin’ unknown if I don’t have that ball in my hands in three seconds,” Guan Shan growls. The threat seems to work, Jian Yi beginning to pout — but then it’s all ruined by a sneeze. Then two. Then three. Guan Shan swears under his breath when the fit passes, swiping unbidden tears from the corners of his eyes.
“Maybe you should get that checked out,” Zheng Xi offers from where he and He Tian sit on the sidelines, taking a water break. “Sounds like it hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt, it’s just fuckin’ annoyin’,” Guan Shan reiterates. “You idiots act like you’ve never heard of allergies before.”
“I’m allergic to peanuts,” Jian Yi offers happily, like it matters. “But it’s more of the I’ll-die-if-I-eat-too-many type of allergy and not the sneezy, zombie-eyes type of allergy.”
Guan Shan gives him a sharp look. “Note taken,” he says, vaguely menacing, and while Jian Yi reflects on his mistake of oversharing Guan Shan spares a glance at He Tian.
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