I legitimately recorded this with the risk of being caught red-nosed with a hand towel pressed to my mouth and nostrils, sat on the floor of my shower. I pulled out my most fluffy towel and began to tickle gradually before letting my nose have it. Part of the fun is seeing how big of a sneeze I can muffle while continuing to remain unheard through the bathroom fan and closed doors. Ahhh… ah??
Leaning into every itch introduced into my somewhat large and pointy appendage, I selfishly allowed myself to sneeze louder than I should have. I thought of the comfort and safety of the soft hand towel and chose to release sneeze after hitchy sneeze to my own delight. As they kept coming the towel dampened intensely, making my sneezes all that more difficult to bury. With each one I was forced to place my nostrils into a wetter and wetter cloth. My face began to grow colder with wetness, but I continued to tickle and tickle.
At one point, I built up so greatly that my sneeze started to float away from me. Thinking quickly and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to release its full force, I let out a half-sneeze that only made me crave a true blast that would be disastrous if left unhandled. If you know what I’m talking about after listening, drop the timestamp in the comments for brownie points :)
AHEM HI what do we think of heated rivalry hollander with honeymoon rhinitis… sneezing in the locker room after getting some spicy texts… sneezing on ilya and having to explain that it’s a thing.. getting talked through it with acknowledgment for all the sneezing layered in.. im just saying!!!!!!!
this…this just changed my life. i actually just created an entire religion dedicated to this ask, so thank you for that. shane sneezing up a STORM in the locker room and now everyone is glancing at him and keeps asking if he has a cold and he cannot explain that he’s horny because his rival captain just sent him a toe curling text message. oh WOW.
and then!!!! ilya is never letting the fact that shane has honeymoon rhinitis go, like he is teasing shane about that constantly. any stray sneeze and ilya is raising his eyebrow and asking if shane is horny HERE AND NOW??? and now sneeze layered in the dirty talk in the bedroom is like. oh my god. shane sneezing on ilya and ilya using that as confirmation that shane feels good and is having a good time.
someone needs to put me in a cage because this ask just unleashed a brand new DOG IN ME
re your heated rivalry hc: ilya is 100% the worst nightmare patient LOL. trying to go to practice and games and all of the above. I can imagine him having like sharp sneezes that he tries to stifle/muffle until he’s home or can let his guard down (around shane…🤭)
oh YEAHHHH! he’s absolutely going to the game.
is he miserable? yes.
he shivers on the bench, he is constantly having to fuss at his nose because it’s so damp and runny because of the cold. his entire body aches and he’s in a bad fucking mood. i just know his pre-game speech is so short and a little bitchy and he just wants to lay down but he refuses not to play, ESPECIALLY if it’s against montreal. he would play against them with two broken legs, okay? he is gay and stubborn. nightmare patient. i think shane is a big contender of comfort and home remedies, even if they don’t do anything, just to give the illusion of comfort and ilya constantly deprives himself of these things. he doesn’t really see the point, he can power through it, even when he’s shouldn’t.
that being said, he would never allow shane to treat his body the same way. hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite.
Lady knight Ser Kassidy Durand is on loan from her home kingdom, but unfortunately on her way to her new capitol, she catches cold...just in time for her introduction to the king.
Our narrator Aryllia, a stable manager whose father is close to the king, sees the poor lady knight suffering through her welcome celebration and decides to get her out of there.
hey snzblr, what are your thoughts on a sneezy female knight? what if she's also sapphic? (3k words)
Ryll and Kassidy have lived in my brain in some form or another for like a solid 7-8 years at this point, so it was very fun to revamp them and get them out into the world! Thank you to @snezus-christ-risen for always motivating me to write more sneezy women and to @scatter-snz and @undersixskies for betaing for me! 💜
--
The party was only half over, but Ryll was long past ready to bail. It wasn't the event itself — it was the first candle lighting ceremony of the winter, which meant good food, and Kainfalla was also welcoming a new knight from a neighboring kingdom, which was at least interesting.
But most of the nobles and other ladies that Ryll usually got to flirt and spend time with at these events were out, either ill or with other duties, and she wasn't much of a dancer, which meant she'd spent most of the party by the refreshment tables, making faces at the crown prince.
Prince Solomon finally deigned to leave his throne at the right hand of the king to make some circuits around the ballroom, and once he'd greeted the more important nobles, he made his way over to Ryll.
"Aryllia," he said, still grinning handsomely, but Ryll could see the strain around his eyes. He looked exhausted. "All by your lonesome tonight?"
She dipped a perfunctory curtsy to the man she'd known since they were children, then matched his too-bright grin with one of her own. "I'm afraid so, sire." He hated when she called him "sire," so she made sure to do it as much as possible when they were out in polite society.
Something ticked in his jaw in response, but then he huffed a laugh, releasing the tension in his smile for moment. "Has your father said anything about the knight who's arriving?"
She shook her head. "I don't think he knows much, or if he does, he can't talk about it." Being the Captain of the king's Royal Guard necessitated a certain degree of discretion, and Ryll had long since learned by now that she couldn't pry anything from her father that he didn't want to share.
Solomon sighed. "I figured. Hal has been rather close-lipped in his correspondences as well."
Solomon and Prince Hallyn of Reddington had been engaged for the better part of a year, which was the above-board reason Reddington was "lending" Kainfalla one of their most highly-trained knights. But Ryll had spent enough time in court to know that there had to be something else going on behind the scenes too.
She shrugged. They'd find out soon enough. "Do you need an excuse to get out of here? They're my specialty."
"I know," he said wryly, but shook his head. "I wish, but not tonight."
Normally she'd squeeze or flick his shoulder, but in public she wasn't permitted to touch royalty, so she gave another half-curtsy instead. "We'll catch up later, then."
"Indeed." His large performance smile was back now, and he allowed his footman to whisk him away to the next group of attendees that he needed to interact with.
It had been a little less scary to return to the capitol after nearly a decade away knowing that she at least had Sol for a friend. But the Crown Prince stayed busy, and they couldn't just sneak out to sit on the roofs of random buildings like they could when they were kids or teens. And Ryll had duties of her own as manager of Stables North, but in her down time…well, she was lonely sometimes. Particularly in the winter season when many of the palace regulars left for estates in warmer climates.
Whatever. She'd had her eye for a few weeks on the new girl who was a bookkeeper in the east wing, perhaps it was time to make her move. Princess Phoebe would be back in the capitol soon too.
Thankfully before too much longer, the royal heralds appeared at the entrance to the chamber, and Ryll refilled her punch before turning with interest. The heralds had a lot to say, as always, and she tuned most of it out, until…
"Announcing Ser Kassidy Durand of Reddington!"
Ryll's attention was immediately piqued, and she tried to crane her neck to see around the heralds as the doors began to open. 'Kassidy'…so the new knight was a woman, was she? How exciting.
Ser Kassidy bore her shining ceremonial armor with the ease that a ruler bears a crown. She was tall and broad-shouldered, and she wore no helmet, which gave Ryll a clear view of a tanned face with a strong chin and dark, careful eyes that were focused solely on Sol and King Raoul on the dais at the other end of the room. Her hair was dark and cropped in a bob with a streak of white in the front that she had brushed to the side and tucked behind her ear.
Her cloak was crimson and marked with what had to be the crest of her house: a white lily-of-the-valley crossed by a pair of arrows. Her armor was polished to perfection and as neat as a pin, and as appropriate for a holiday party in a foreign kingdom, she had only a dagger strapped to her side. Ryll wondered what her normal weapon of choice was. A bow, if her coat of arms was to be considered, but what for melee combat?
She was an impeccable specimen of a knight. Ryll might have already been a little bit in love.
But just as Ser Kassidy passed Ryll's place in the ballroom, the knight's composure faltered briefly, and she leaned into the crook of her arm to stifle a cough. It had probably been plaguing her for days, if Ryll were to guess by the sound of it rattling in her chest, and now that Ryll could see her more closely, she could see the unmistakable signs of a cold marked across her proud features. Her nose especially was rubbed pink and raw, and as Ryll watched, her nostrils flickered in a delicate, reluctant sniffle.
How miserable, Ryll thought with a pang of sympathy, to be traveling all the way across the kingdom while suffering a cold. Perhaps she'd taken ill on the road. Kainfalla had been drenched by its regular summer rains over the past week or so, and if Ser Kassidy had been on horseback instead of in a carriage, there would have been no way for her to avoid getting soaked to the skin.
Hopefully someone could direct her to the infirmary once she had settled into the palace. The healers there wouldn't be able to do much for her cold if it had already set in, but they could at least get her some tonics for that cough. Ryll could feel her own scant amounts of healing magic prickling beneath her skin in response.
But Ser Kassidy had gathered herself again, and Ryll drifted closer to the front of the ballroom as the knight tossed her cloak behind her and knelt before the king and prince in a single fluid motion.
"Your Majesty, your Highness," she said, her gaze on the ground before her in proper subservience. Her voice was a pleasant alto, though Ryll could hear the blur of congestion on her more nasal consonants. "I am Ser Kassidy Durand, and I present myself with my mind, body, and spirit, all at your service."
"Rise, Ser Kassidy," said King Raoul from his throne. Ryll's gaze drifted to Solomon, who was leaning forward with ill-disguised interest. Had he heard of Ser Kassidy? There was something sharp and curious in his eyes that indicated perhaps he had. She'd have to pin him down later after the ceremony and see what he knew.
"hh'ESHHieu!"
Ryll's attention flicked back to Ser Kassidy, who had raised her arm to her face to catch what was unmistakably a sneeze, still loud and forceful even muffled by her vambrace. Amusement rippled through the courtiers, and when Ser Kassidy emerged from her elbow with a sniffle, her cheeks were beginning to flush pink.
"Bless you," King Raoul chuckled. "We are honored to have you in our kingdom." He paused, then added, "…and please get some rest."
Ser Kassidy blushed darker, but she cleared her throat and nodded before getting to her feet again.
And then Ser Kassidy was turned loose into the party, and before Ryll could even consider going over to introduce herself, there were a dozen couriers either swooping in to say hello or perching nearby like crows. Ryll could see the tension in Ser Kassidy's body language from here, and she felt another flicker of empathy.
Ryll too had been unused to socializing at court when she'd moved back to the capitol — a "large gathering" in her mother's hometown would have consisted of no more than twenty people — and while she'd grown used to it in the last few years, she knew it was more of a skill that had to be honed and developed, as opposed to something that most people could naturally do.
Perhaps Reddington's court was smaller, or perhaps Ser Kassidy hadn't had the need or opportunity to participate in many courtly events. Regardless, she did seem to be holding her own, though as Ryll watched from a distance, she could see that her cold continued to trouble her. She had produced a handkerchief from some pocket, but propriety kept her from doing more than occasionally touching it to her nose to curb a persistent sniffle, if she wasn't using it to catch a sneeze (which she was also doing a fair bit of).
After about forty-five minutes of wallflowering and watching the poor knight suffer, Ryll made a choice.
"Would you mind fetching my father?" She asked a nearby guard, pairing her request with a gentle flutter of her eyelashes. Ryll was familiar with most of the guards that orbited the royal family. This one was a newer recruit, but he knew who she was and disappeared briefly to pass a message to a servant.
Good. Ser Martin couldn't be far, not with all of the royal family who were currently in the capitol were present in one room. As expected, it was only a handful of minutes before her father appeared at the side door to the ballroom closest to Ryll.
"Yes?" He said by way of greeting, one wiry eyebrow already climbing with curious expectation. She very rarely hailed him at events like this, but she had a plan, and she needed his help for it.
"Can you come up with an excuse for Ser Kassidy to take her leave?" Ryll leaned in. "She's sick as a dog, and you know that this party is more for appearances than anything. She can make up for it at the next event when she's feeling better."
Ser Martin leveled his gaze across the room just as Ser Kassidy turned away from her current knot of nobles to sneeze heavily into her elbow. "hh'ESHHoo! ESHHuh!"
Ryll winced. Her handkerchief must be entirely unusable at this point if she was having to rely on her metal vambraces to catch her sneezes. No wonder her nose was looking so painfully red and chapped.
Ser Martin had mirrored her wince, Ryll saw when she looked over at him, and he nodded. "Well spotted. I'll make her excuses to the king. Can you escort her, either to the infirmary or to her quarters? She probably hasn't had time to get the lay of the land yet."
Ryll nodded, relieved. "Sure."
"Good." Ser Martin squeezed her shoulder briefly. "I'll see you later."
"Bye, dad."
As Ser Martin disappeared back into the hall, Ryll squared her shoulders and dove into the fray.
It took her several minutes to weave her way to the other end of the ballroom, which gave her time to summon the appropriately bland, polite smile she would need to pull off this extraction.
"Excuse me," she said sweetly when she'd finally reached Ser Kassidy and her conversation partners. Ugh, and she'd been talking with the Baron of Silverlake too, what a drag. Ryll felt justified for freeing her from that conversation alone. "Apologies, but Ser Martin has need of Ser Kassidy."
Ser Kassidy glanced down at her in surprise — she was a solid four inches taller than Ryll — but nodded. "Of course," she said, then turned to the Baron and his wife and apologized for taking her leave. When she and Ryll were alone, or as alone as they were going to be in a ballroom filled with nobles, she frowned slightly.
"What did Ser Martin say?"
"What did he — ? Oh, that was just an excuse to get you out of here," Ryll said breezily. "I'm supposed to take you either to the infirmary or to your quarters."
There was a patch of color beginning to burn high on Ser Kassidy's cheeks. "I can fulfill my duties," she started to say with force, but Ryll cut her off.
"I know, I just thought you might want to rest and not spend all evening playing musical nobles. You can thank me later."
"You thought?" Ser Kassidy's eyebrows were arched, and Ryll realized belatedly she hadn't introduced herself. She stopped and offered her hand.
"Aryllia Auclair. Or, Ryll, rather. My father is Ser Martin."
"…Ah." And the pieces began to come together. Ser Kassidy turned away from Ryll to muffle a sneeze into her fist — "hh'ESSHHooh!" — then blinked back at her with watering eyes and the beginnings of a clear sense of relief. "Then…thank you, Miss Aryllia."
They'd exited the ballroom by this point, and Ryll was realizing she'd have to pick up the pace to keep up with Ser Kassidy's longer stride. "How long have you been ill?"
Ser Kassidy sighed and gently brushed the base of her nostrils with the side of her gauntleted hand. Ryll immediately regretted not carrying any handkerchiefs of her own tonight, if only to spare Ser Kassidy's poor nose from the extensive abuse it had been subject to all evening. "A few days. I was feeling better, but then my horse went lame, and we got caught in a storm."
"Damn." Ryll would have to check on the horse later, if it was in the block of the palace's stables that was under her purview. "Rough start."
"I'll be all right," Ser Kassidy assured her, though the cough she directed into her opposite elbow sounded heavy and soupy enough that it made Ryll frown.
"Infirmary, then?"
"Perhaps." Ser Kassidy's voice was threadbare, and she cleared her throat with a pained wince. "You can just point me in the correct direction, if you would like. I'm sure you'd like to return to the party."
Ryll snorted a laugh. "No, I don't, so I was delighted for the excuse to get you out of there." But she knew a knight like Ser Kassidy had her pride — they all did, from her experience — so she acquiesced. "Sure. If you take a right up here, it's the third hall on the left."
"Right, then left," Ser Kassidy gave her a sidelong glance that was almost…coy? Fascinating. Ryll's interest was certainly piqued. "And what do you do in the palace?"
"Oh, I'm the barn manager of Stables North," Ryll said. Then, acting on a hunch, she added, "When I'm not rescuing knights from parties, that is."
Her gambit paid off when Ser Kassidy laughed, though it quickly turned to a stubborn coughing fit that made Ryll's own small well of healing magic begin to bubble to the surface again. She pushed it down, mentally shoving it into a box with a lock and a key. This was not the time. Even if she had been able to do anything (which was debatable…coughs and colds could be tricky beasts), she wasn't a licensed healer. Flirting lightly with their kingdom's new knight was one thing; offering bootleg, back-alley healing was another.
All too soon they'd reached the aforementioned split in the hallway. Ryll pointed to the right.
"Ask for Senna," she advised. "She's still a trainee, but she's one of the best."
"Thank you. And thank you again for getting me out of there." Ser Kassidy grimaced mildly. "I've never been much of a fan of those events either."
Encouraged by the laugh she'd already stirred from the knight, as well as by her entrancing dark eyes, Ryll said, "Perhaps we can escape from the next one too. Being a palace brat means I know all the best places to play hooky."
Ser Kassidy met her gaze with a half smile. "I would like that." She took a step back and sketched a shadow of a bow. "Have a good evening, Miss Aryllia."
"Just Ryll, please."
"Then thank you, Just Ryll," Ser Kassidy said seriously, and when Ryll laughed, her own smile grew a little bolder. "I hope to meet you again soon."
Ryll dipped a faint curtsy of her own. "Count on it."
Was it a bad idea, she wondered to herself as she turned left and Ser Kassidy turned right, to flirt with, or even consider courting a knight from a foreign land? She had no idea how long Ser Kassidy would even be on loan to Kainfalla.
But there was nothing wrong with having a little fun, especially until Princess Phoebe or any of Ryll's other flirtatious acquaintances returned to court. Perhaps she'd have to drop by the training grounds over the next few days, if only to check and make sure that Ser Kassidy had recovered from her cold. It was entirely platonic concern, she told herself, which meant it was entirely permissible.
But it was those dark eyes and that white slash of hair that wove through her dreams that night, and when she woke in the early hours of the morning, she put both hands to her forehead and groaned.
Hello friends! I saw the new Superman movie twice, and my pattern with summer superhero blockbusters persists. Here’s some sneeze about it.
I know only a very casual pop culture amount about this character or DC Comics, so be nicies! Although in hindsight, what’s wrong with me? Supersneeze that is canon in several instances over the years. Am I stupid? Sign my ass up.
A few relatively minor spoiler warnings, but nothing that should ruin the movie. Set shortly after the film, all fluff, I guess minor warnings for some weird alien body stuff but I don't get too graphic. Thanks for reading!
—
It’s late by the time they escape the photo flash and clamor of the press flooding in. There’s a camera in his face at every turn, a violation that he’s never had to tolerate very long. It’s easy to fly away, and preferable to do his own journalism, but he’s… trying. Lois at least has the option of disappearing among the throngs. If he weren’t in costume, he’d be doing the same.
He keeps spotting her long after she has every reason and right to head home, though. There’s more work to be done here than can be accomplished in a day, a week, or a month. A handful of metahumans will shorten the load, but regular people will always be the first and last defense of Metropolis’s beating heart. Seeing the outpouring of humanity’s support warms his own.
It’s the sentiment, or possibly it’s a fine layer of the Engineer’s nanite bots he can still feel clinging to his throat, his lungs, his sinuses. He’ll deal with it all later.
Each time he thinks Lois has been pulled away for good, there she is again — behind the press line with their other sleepless coworkers, or helping out at relief tents being erected along blocked-off city streets. Some of the barricades are repair crews and civil engineers already taking stock of the destruction, planning clean up on a larger scale.
Guilt will nag at him about that for a while, as it always does. He’ll help with the recovery as much as he can.
Lois is the one who finally pounces and drags him off, into the first moment of privacy he’s had since their kiss earlier. She gets him behind one of the tents offering clean water and temporary charging stations to most of the block. The cafe that’s providing the power has had its windows smashed and all other services suspended until the insurance pays out, but they’re still helping the community. Lois manages to squeeze him into the service alley alongside the building, where they’re less likely to be seen and mobbed.
The moment is a well-timed relief. Not just because Lois catches his face between her hands and hauls him down into another kiss. That’s fantastic, and he chases the press of her soft mouth as long as he can stand it.
Eventually though, Clark is forced to pull away and deal with the urge to cough that’s been threatening him for hours.
He lets her down, then turns and buries the hacking against one shoulder. A bright bloom of pain erupts behind his ribs with the pulse of each one. It’s not nearly so bad as having waves of the microscopic robots choking his every last cell for oxygen while he blazes through the thermosphere. By comparison, this is a breeze.
It still must look bad, gauging by the face Lois makes as he recovers. The fire in his lungs has dulled to an uncomfortable itch, his throat now scratchy and warm with the effort. Clark swallows and ducks his head.
“Sorry. I — HKMM! Excuse me. I really didn’t want to do that on camera.”
He doesn’t want to expectorate any nanites in front of Lois, either, but at least she won’t put it on the internet. Hopefully she won’t be too freaked out by the whole situation in general. She puts up with a lot of nonsense, both alien and terrestrial.
“Okay, wow. No kidding.” There are new lines of worry tightening her features now. As he drifts back down, she lays her hands against his chest, where even their negligible pressure almost triggers another spasm. He just manages to swallow it down, disguised behind a throatclear. He’d rather deal with it than have Lois stop touching him.
“Are you okay?” She presses.
Clark flashes his best reassuring smile, reaching up to curl his fingers around hers. There’s a feeling like ground glass behind his eyeballs. He has to keep blinking to ensure it’s the burn of a foreign irritant, and not his optics malfunctioning.
“I’m fine.” When that doesn’t smooth the pinch between her brows, he pairs the smile with a patented hand squeeze. “I just need to heal.”
That’s not a lie. It accounts for the throbbing, full-body ache he’s been enduring for much longer than the prickling sensation along his respiratory tract. The irritation is but a note in the symphony of fractures and perforations. A concentrated dose of solar radiation and a nap will cure all of the above, he hopes.
He sniffs, and Lois’s expression hesitates.
“Can you… heal here? At my place tonight?”
Clark gives it a second to let his brain catch up. Lois also must know that the process will be slower and less efficient, but he finds himself nodding dumbly along with her suggestion. He’d be an idiot to decline the invitation, not after how they left it last time. More than that, he wants to spend time with the woman he’s maybe officially dating now. As Clark Kent, preferably, and not as Superman.
“I…can. I can do that.” Lois couldn’t have been more blunt, but he still finds himself swallowing and asking, “Would you like me to?”
Lois’s enthusiastic yes comes in the form of tugging him back down into an equally enthusiastic kiss, her hands wrapped around his neck and shoulders.
This time, it’s the distant but familiar sound of barking that breaks Clark’s focus. He exhales through his nose and pulls back once more. Lois looks less patient now.
“Clark…”
“Look… Lois, look at me. I know.” He wants very desperately to go back to her place right now, this very second. He can get them there in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the barking is getting louder and he has one more complication and responsibility to deal with. “I have to take Krypto home before he annihilates the entire pigeon population south of the Pickett.” He looks down at her sincerely. “It’ll be so quick.”
Lois signals exasperation, but her expression is fractured by a real, raw smile that makes his chest ache. That’s not just the collateral damage irritating his bronchi, he’s sure of it. “Okay. You know, I haven’t even asked what you planned to do with it. Is it your dog now?”
That she doesn’t immediately assume is one of the many reasons he loves her. “Thank you for asking. He is not my dog.”
“It’s just that he’s a flying alien dog that wears a cape, you know.”
Clark sighs.
“I know.”
—
In the end, he begs a favor off of Hawkgirl, rather than flying all the way to home base and back again. He’s going to owe her so, so much for this.
“I owe you,” Clark promises. “So much. I can pick him up tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d keep your curtains drawn so he can’t see any squirrels. And he’s very food motivated, so put a lock on the fridge. Or something really really heavy in front of it.”
Like that’s going to stop the mutt when he’s well and determined. Clark watches Krypto sniff around a tipped-over hot dog cart and has a sudden vision of the very real gastrointestinal havoc he might wreak on Kendra’s carpet. He gives a short, sharp whistle. It gets the superdog’s attention, but in the next moment Clark is hopping back on one leg and fending off a familiar game of boot theft.
“Maybe just assume he has no manners in gener– ow! Hey, no no no. Krypto, leave it!”
Hawkgirl watches the entire thing with her mace slung over her shoulder, looking unimpressed.
“Have you considered training him?”
“I have tried training him. You know it’s not a regular dog, right?”
Hawkgirl purses her lips, producing a pretty good approximation of his whistle. Krypto pauses in resoling Clark’s shoes and puts his head up, ears cocked. Hips starting to wag, he watches Kendra unscrew the spiked metal ball from her mace and toss it in her hand a few times. His snout follows the trajectory in a synched bob and drop.
“Maybe he just doesn’t like listening to you. Sit.”
Clark can’t even be surprised, just sighing and humbled by Krypto’s furry butt immediately planted to the pavement. He is one thousand percent laser focus, the goodest boy there ever was, and a traitor for it. Fine. At least he’s out of Clark’s hair.
He takes Kendra’s smug look on the chin, and she rewards Krypto by shotputting the Nth metal
sphere somewhere down the ruined avenue. The canine takes off after it in a thunder of clattering paws and barks. Let her figure out how to get her weapon back from the mutt in her own time.
Clark smothers another sudden, urgent cough into his shoulder, feeling each catch like sandpaper in his throat. He wants to keep coughing, but Hawkgirl is good enough not to mention it, so he gets a hold of himself.
“Alright, get out of here. Go make your girlfriend happy. You earned it, I guess.”
“You’re amazing. Seriously, I owe you.”
Please please please be good, he tries to impress upon Krypto through some late-stage telepathy he’s hoping to spontaneously develop. He’s starting to run out of dogsitters for the dog he’s supposed to be sitting, here.
—
While not quite the same as cranking the UV index up past 11, the hot shower at Lois’s apartment feels incredibly good. Clark muffles his coughs into cupped hands under the sluicing spray, swaying and soaking in the heat. He can’t tell if his nose is running in the constant streams of water, or if he’s imagining some of it. He takes advantage of the privacy to clear it into his bare hands anyway, grimacing through the nasty necessity of it all.
He also can’t tell if it’s concerning or relieving to find a faint, silvery glitter on his palms afterwards, gleaming like sand before the water washes it away. Hmm.
The warmth is more settled in his bones when he finally climbs out to find a change of clothes set out for him. That in itself isn’t unusual. It’s handy to keep a spare cache of civilian attire anywhere he can, and he’s positive he had an extra shirt or two at Lois’s apartment before they ever slept together.
He’s certainly not going to say no if she’s interested in that tonight. Still, a part of him is relieved when she appears in the doorway and herds him into the kitchen first. Lois reaches up to compulsively ruffle his wet hair, trails her palms down his back, and best of all: begins assembling sandwiches.
“I’m all talked out about it for today, if you are. I‘m definitely thinking of a social media ban for the rest of the evening. I haven’t checked the news in like… an hour.” Considerable restraint, on her part. He knows her phone has been blowing up since her article dropped. “Are you hungry?”
It’s like she’s speaking straight to his soul. “I could eat.”
Clark sinks back against the doorframe, pretending like it’s not mostly propping him up at this point. “Am I banned from social media too?” He wonders, mouth hooking with soft amusement.
“I thought you didn’t read that stuff,” Lois retorts. Her smile is sharper, but no less fond. “I think it’d be a good idea, but.” She shrugs. “You’re a big boy, make your own choices.”
“Hm,” Clark agrees. He doesn’t have the energy to argue if he wanted to.
Also, even the effort of talking is starting to aggravate his throat. He passes a massaging palm over it while Lois’s back is turned, flitting about the kitchen.
“You’re probably right.”
Those are some of her favorite words.
Lois makes him three sandwiches, which he handily demolishes. He needs the calories as sorely as he does sleep. He can tell that Lois is exhausted too, and bullies her into throwing together a turkey and cheese for herself. He’ll concede on her preference for an unholy amount of mayonnaise, so long as she’s not thriving on sugar and sugar alone. He’s never met a human hummingbird before her.
“I need something mindless, mundane,” she rambles, waving away his attempts to help with either the making or the clean up. Too stubborn or tightly wound to let herself unravel just yet. She takes unexpectedly ravenous bites of her sandwich in between putting away packages of deli meats and relegating the dishes to the sink. “I’m behind in Love River. Ethan and Hailey were about to split.”
“Oh, no way,” Clark deadpans. He moves behind her, sweeping crumbs from the counter in her wake and dodging the towel smack she flashes his way. “They were?”
Lois’s guilty pleasure of terrible reality dating shows is an indulgence that Clark is happy to ignore, relegated to a mutual but different tier of background noise. They can talk tomorrow. For now, he gets to just lay his head in her lap with a pillow between his still-damp hair and her bare thighs.
His frame is too long for her sofa at full sprawl, so his legs either hang over the edge or his knees stick out, but it doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes while she watches her trash television and threads her fingers across his scalp. She’s been constantly tousling and touching his hair, like she’s determined to make him as fluffy as possible when it dries. Clark couldn’t care less. He’s completely subdued, melting and pliant under her touch. This is all he wants in the universe right now.
The only downside is that either the steam of the shower or his natural healing processes seem to have loosened something in his chest. That deep, scratchy irritation keeps trying to crawl back up his throat, to the point where he’s forced to press a hand over his mouth and abort a few coughs that want to break through.
The gritty sensation behind his eyes has spread to the back of his nose, too. He tries to wrinkle and relax it, hoping that sleep will claim him before the irritation really gets a foothold.
He doesn't get that lucky.
Lois also seems done with pretending that she doesn’t notice his plight. Clark feels a tug on his ear, and cracks his eyes open. She has paused in her idle stroking, instead frowning at him anew.
“What’s going on with you, Spaceman?”
“Hm?” Even that much response snags in his throat. He clears it, automatic and damning.
“Your bruises are healed,” Lois says, tracing a spot between his neck and back where a broad purple stain has already yellowed and faded, now a mere shadow disappearing under his t-shirt. “But you still sound like you’ve got the black lung.”
She doesn’t know how accurate that is. The surprise makes him laugh, which makes him cough, which turns into a whole production. Clark ends up shrimped on his side away from Lois, shoulders shaking as he drives another round of deactivated nanites into his sleeve. He manages to sit up and away from her with the effort, but each inhale is quickly becoming a wheeze.
Worse, the change in position somehow exacerbates the tingling in his sinuses, and the shifting pressure finally triggers something more disastrous.
He feels himself draw a huge breath without meaning to. His chest rises sharply, and Clark only has enough time to think ‘oh… oh no’ before a sneeze rushes him like an oncoming train.
“HUH–IGHHTZSST’sshh–uhh…!”
He does his best to choke it back, albeit with only limited success. The half-strangled explosion feels like a sonic boom inside his own skull, and the gust that escapes him still completely clears the coffee table.
Lois’s haphazard piles of books, papers, charging cords, snack wrappers and empty coffee cups all go flying across the room. Scattered pages are still drifting to the floor when Clark catches his breath, nose prickling, and pries his eyes open to check the casualties.
It… could be worse. There’s no broken glass or major electronics. He missed the TV, and Lois’s laptop is still parked at her opposite side, out of his immediate range. Even so, he’s mortified at the slip-up.
Clark rocks to his feet at once, ignoring the blood rush to his head. He goes to work collecting her scattered notes and disguises a quick assessment of any environmental or structural damage while he’s at it. There’s none, fortunately. Clark is only a little reassured.
“Ugh. I’mb– SNFF! I’m so sorry.”
Lois is staring at him, as he expected, but she snaps out of it quickly.
“That’s not… Clark, sit down, it’s fine. I don’t care about the stuff.” As she realizes that he’s not going to respond, she sighs and gets up. Lois bends over to retrieve a couple of books that have landed with their spines open, and somehow her helping only makes him feel worse. They clean in silence for a minute.
“Have I… seen you sneeze before?” Lois wonders with a dose of side-eye.
“I’m sure you have.”
“I’m sure I would have remembered that.”
Touché.
Clark taps the last stack of papers together and sets them back on the table. He sinks down to the couch, embarrassed. Bowed over his lap, he runs his fingers through his hair with a sniffle.
He doesn’t want to actually be dishonest with her, not any more than he has to be. Avoidance would have been preferable. They can skip the rest of it, but somehow they have to talk about this right now?
“Right. Well.” He sniffs. ”That doesn’t… usually happen.” Not if he can at all help it.
Lois comes to perch in a newly cleared spot on the coffee table. It’s a bold choice to sit across from him, given that his eyes are still watering and his mouth is hung slightly open in a not-quite-there-yet anticipation. There’s no way he’s done. Everything within his focus feels like a fuzzy uncertainty.
Lois crosses her legs and leans forward anyway, her hand slipping under the rumpled fringe of his forelock. The press of her palm against his brow flutters his eyes shut. He’s not febrile, but he recognizes the gesture for what it is and finds himself leaning in.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but are you getting sick?”
He laughs weakly, and this time doesn’t fall to pieces over it. Lois’s unamused expression sobers him.
“Sorry, sorry– HKMM. No, I’m not sick. It’s just that a cold actually might be… less weird?” He rubs his nose. “Maybe less gross?” And overall less likely. Clark clears his throat into the cup of his hands, using the temporary cover to scrunch his nose with a little more effort.
Lois barely even blinks at the warning. She does seem to realize something is brewing, however, and comes to sit beside him rather than in the direct line of fire. Clark takes the opportunity to press the flats of his fingertips to either side of his nose. He rubs with fierce abandon, until the flaring itch starts to dull.
“You lost me again, Smallville.”
He’s trying. If his nose could just let him continue.
Clark sniffles carefully. “Uhm, I got way more intimate with the Engineer’s naa–haaah…” His eyelids flicker, fighting it. “... hhh, with her nanobots. SNFF! More intimate than I wanted to be.” He barely recovers, and goes back to scrubbing his nose before it verges again.
“You almost had it right, with the black lung. I think my body’s still trying to work some of them out.” Another sniff. “It itches like crazy.”
He’s glad he doesn’t have to spell it out in any more detail than that. Lois seems to infer the general nature of his predicament as she looks him up and down, wincing with sympathy.
“Oh. Well that sounds… wildly uncomfortable.”
So, he’s not going to give her the details on what it feels like to claw huge handfuls of the abrasive and suffocating black mucus straight from his lungs. This is better!
But he really does have to sneeze.
Lois sees it coming too, and she leans to snatch a tissue box off the same end table her computer occupies. That’s a good idea. He probably could have asked for those earlier.
She gets the box in front of him just in time for Clark to tug a few sheets free. Now that he knows it’s coming, he does a better job controlling the breath he takes in preparation. The breakwater of his hands and tissues corrals the rest to a powerful, head-bobbing sneeze.
“—H’PHFFF’SSHH!”
He exhales shakily, but doesn’t let himself relax. The downside of checking their strength means that sometimes he needs more than…
“H’FFZSSHHh—shuh!”
That’s better. Sometimes it takes more than one to do the job. He hitches once, then again, keeping the tissues firmly in place until he trusts himself to relax. He draws a deeper breath. Turning from present company as much as he can, Clark strains to blow his nose with some remaining shreds of decorum.
He’s expecting Lois to give him a little more space for all of this, but through trust or bravery she doesn’t budge. The subsequent sneezes have only stirred a few sheets of paper and floated them to the edge of the table, so that probably helps. He’s nonetheless appreciative of her hand smoothing over his back.
“Bless you.”
“Thank you.” He lowers the tissues, and quickly crushes them into a fist at the slightest glimpse of something dark and metallic within. For the love of… “Sorry, I mean.”
Lois reaches up to finger one of his curls back into place, then another. “How about we can the apologies unless you actually break something, huh?”
Until he actually breaks something, Clark corrects in his head. It would be smarter to leave now, just in case. She really doesn’t seem fazed, though, and he does crave the company.
“I will… try very hard not to. Break something or apologize.”
Lois does her adorable laugh-snort, and leans in to kiss his arm. He thinks she’ll be less amused if he blows out her windows. He won’t, but he could.
“Appreciate it,” she murmurs through the cotton of his shirt worn soft and thin. Heat curls through his center, at her dark-eyed look and her closeness. The last bastion of his own reluctance is melting fast.
She starts to lean up and kiss him with intention, but breaks off from the contact when a belated thought occurs to her.
“Okay, wait. One second, follow-up question.” Clark blinks dazedly at her. Before they get distracted? Too late.
“Uhm-hm?”
“You’ll be okay, right? Should I be worried about these nanites doing any other damage? They’re not going to seep into your brain when you’re asleep and turn you evil or anything?” She holds his cheek with one hand and thumbs back one of his eyelids with the other, scrutinizing his corneas for evidence of a foreign invasion.
Clark puts up with it until his eyes start to water, which is almost immediately. He ducks away from the touch, sniffling.
“Sorry,” she says.
“It’s fine.” He blinks a few times. “I think that was several questions, though.”
Lois shrugs. “I never specified just one.”
He reaches a curled knuckle up to collect a tear threatening to overspill. He almost doesn’t want to know if they have the same silvery, car paint quality of disseminated microscopic tech. Maybe the whole thing freaks him out more than it will her.
“Well. I think that’s… very unlikely, though I guess not technically impossible.” He rubs the faint glitter of wetness on his fingertips away. ”I’ll be okay.”
He’s a bit touched by her nagging skepticism turned concern. They can be one in the same. He sniffles as she moves closer, yet still runs a hand up her arm. He can never say no to her.
“I’m probably going to keep sneezing, though.”
Lois seems to consider this, and finds that it doesn’t dissuade the inviting peck of her mouth against his. “I’ll take my chances,” she decides.
She’s halfway into his lap already, so he cups his hands beneath her thighs and scoops her the rest of the way. That seems to have been her angle all along. Lois straddles him comfortably, hips seated against his own, and kisses him to distraction. He’s… well.
He’s tired, but he’s not dead.
Before that thought can go any further, the arrangement is already proving problematic. Her nose rubs against his own as they kiss, and even a gentle smush against her cheek right now is enough to sow irritation. The back of his sinuses twinges, and something he’d usually never notice suddenly has Clark gasping and reeling back.
Oh, gosh, that tickles…
He gets his hands on her waist and his head turned, just in time to rock them both with another tightly-bridled sneeze.
“IGT’NK–SHHh’uh!”
He manages to hold it in, if barely. Lois puts a hand on his shoulder for three-point support, so he also manages not to throw her in the process. That’s crucial. If the coats in the hall are swaying a little, well…
He doesn’t have much opportunity to notice, anyway. Lois bails sidelong off his lap while he’s trapped in a building crescendo of breaths towards another. He can’t blame her for taking cover.
But then she presses a pre-plucked nest of tissues on him, nudging his hands away from his face so he can take them. Is she crazy?
“Bless you. Here, c’mon, don’t do that. You’re supposed to be getting rid of that crap.”
Oh. She has a point, there. Clark fumbles the tissues from her, and clasps them quickly back in place as his chest expands.
“ —IH’TZZSHHHh–SHOO!”
Despite the strength of the explosion, there’s no collateral damage this time. His own body acts as a good enough shield to contain the blow, the soft paper in between notwithstanding. He works his nose carefully into what remains of it, clearing his head in the wake of that last go.
Surely he’s got to purge it all at some point.
“Bless you,” Lois offers yet again, once he seems finished. He can’t deny that a warm golden buzz seeps through him at the attention. Hers is a very normal response, despite him acting anything but.
She’s also got another handful of tissues ready, because she’s incredible and intuitive and he’s a mess. Clark does wish he were faring a little more smoothly. In his defense, each sneeze is knocking him nearly senseless.
The second attempt to empty his sinuses is more successful, at least.
“Thank you,” he says as he cleans up. Lois still hasn’t moved from his side. “Are you sure you want me to stay? I’d completely understand if… ”
Lois seems surprised at the question. She smooths his hair back into place again, suddenly committed to keeping it neat even as he is clearly falling apart from the inside out.
“I’m sure. You’re actually very cute like this.”
Clark cuts her a skeptical look, which makes her laugh.
“I’m serious! It’s sort of… vulnerable.” When he opens his mouth to protest that she has definitely seen him at rock bottom, physically and emotionally, she cuts him off with a quick kiss. “A different kind of vulnerable. I don’t know.” It’s her turn to dole out a reassuring hand squeeze. “Look, Clark. I trust you to leave if you need to,” she says, with a softening sincerity. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Clark considers this for a moment. He’s not going to argue with her, he’ll take ‘cute’. And if she trusts him about everything else, then so does he.
“Okay.”
Lois leans aside to turn the television off, then gets to her feet and holds her arms down to him with a little flappy fingers ‘come on’ motion.
“Wait, what happened?” Clark blinks as he rises to her bidding. “Did they break up or not?”
“Shush, you don’t care,” Lois taunts him as she draws him into a familiar, standing embrace. It’s a little safer than having her in his lap, so he leans in and props his chin on her head. “And I don’t think I was actually paying attention. I was thinking about how much I want to take you to bed.”
He still jostles her with a laugh that turns to a cough, stepping back when it jags on for a few beats. He manages to recover himself before it gets out of control again.
“Uhm – SNFF! I want to, trust me, but it might not be the best idea right now.”
She looks at him in confusion while he dithers over the best way to decline, then scoffs in sudden, amused relief. “Put you to bed, I mean. I’d like you to be unconscious in the next fifteen to twenty minutes,” she assures, reaching for him once more. He lets her step back in, relaxing. “And me behind you. But…” She kisses the center of his chest, then gives him a full-body push towards the bedroom. Clark lets her displace him into a slight stagger, smiling. “I am going to jump you the second you’re better. Don’t worry.”
His smile turns up a notch, wry. “I wasn’t worried. But it’s good we’ve got similar goals.”
“Bed.”
—
Winding down through their individual routines provides a comforting sort of domesticity, the kind of cozy human connection that he favors most. Laying in the dark and just holding Lois might be a better form of healing than any Kryptonian fortress or automatons can provide.
Well, no. That’s not fair to Gary. He does a great job.
His symptoms have even died down a little, save for the persistent tug of a few coughs and sniffles. There’s still a funny, granular sort of tingling in his sinuses that could go either way, but he’s once again hoping that sleep will win out and he can deal with it all in the morning.
It’s why Clark sighs, when Lois lifts her head from where it’s snuggled into his arm. She peers up at him in the dim quiet of the bedroom.
“Hey, about those nanobots…”
“Hm’wha?” He manages, slurring back towards full consciousness. The nanobots? The ones real or imagined that he can still feel buzzing around in his head and his chest? He’d almost learned to ignore it.
“I should tell you that Mister Terrific put a bunch of micro-trackers in your blood too,” Lois murmurs against him, as she settles back in like this is a comforting weight to get off her chest. “He made it sound like a compliment.”
Great! How long have those been there? And Superman actually likes that guy…
Clark imagines that’s how they found him in the first place, so he probably can’t be too upset about it. Still, what happened to consent?
He shifts an arm free so that he can rub the flat of his hand against his nose with an effortful squint. Thinking or talking about any of the tiny invaders swarming inside him, like viruses, isn’t where he wants to be right now. It’s just making him want to sneeze.
He sniffles deeply, sheepish about how wet and dragging the sound is, and rolls partially away from her so he can rub with more conviction.
“Ugh– SNFF! Why bring it up now?”
“Jeez, I thought you’d want to know,” Lois frowns. She fishes around for the tissue box while he’s occupied. “What if that’s complicating things? Maybe they’re duking it out with that scary lady’s bots inside you or something.”
Yeah, he really can’t think about it. Mostly because he’s…
“I’m go’huh–onna—...”
It’s the most warning he gets before the urge overwhelms him. If Lois already has tissues ready, he misses them. Despite all of the warnings he’s had, Clark still just manages to get an arm up in front of his face.
It only mitigates some of the damage.
“—HUH’ESSZHHHH-SHOO!!”
Lois has the forethought to get the blankets in a deathgrip before he rips them from the bed in the wind tunnel of his sneeze. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help the resulting skid, thud, and CRASH of something finally shattering on the other side of the room. The sound of broken glass tinkles down for a few seconds afterwards, followed by stunned silence.
“... was that my mirror?”
Clark squints through the darkness. “I think so.” He sniffles. “Sorry.”
He starts to get up, but Lois puts an immediate hand on his chest. She pushes him back down to the mattress. “Don’t. We’ll clean it up in the morning.”
“But–...”
“Clark,” she warns. “It’s fine. I probably deserved that one.”
He lets himself slowly settle into her embrace this time. He doesn’t think she did, but he’ll take the dismissal. “I’ll get you another.”
Lois nudges and resettles him to her liking, until she’s corrected him into the little spoon position. “Fine, if it makes you happy.” She kisses his shoulder, and he can’t deny that he feels secure like this, both being held and because it’s easier to turn away if he needs to. He really hopes he doesn’t need to, though. He’s exhausted.
“Do you feel better, at least?” Lois murmurs, in a softer tone. He curls his fingers around the ones she twines between them, and returns the squeeze.
He does feel better. That last eruption seemed to dislodge some of the more persistent irritation. He suspects he’ll be paying for some inertia in the morning, and he’ll feel guilty about the mirror all over again. Right now he feels sore, satisfied, and loved.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Good.”
Lois also seems satisfied, because she’s quiet afterwards. Clark feels her hand slacken and listens to her heartbeat slow in the darkness, matching his breathing to hers until the tide of sleep finally pulls him under.
dom w a collared sub at a very specific sort of kink party, flaunting how they've trained her to let out big, over-the-top but still shockingly convincing fake sneezes on command
musings on a sneezy academic conference (male snz)
cw: mild nsfw, mild mess. ~1500 words. in which an apologetic sneezy man is the object of his collaborator’s interest and desireeee
I was refilling my cardboard coffee cup when I heard the first sneeze. A muffled, throaty uh’ISHH-uh from the direction of our booth. Adam — his deep, slightly southern lilt came through on the groany last syllable. My hand twitched around the cup, and I cursed the moment I’d decided to reload on caffeine instead of hanging around chatting just a few minutes longer. While I walked back toward the booth, I saw tall, freckly, dark-haired Adam, his nose gone pink, using the hand sanitizer on the end of the table. His sprawling and sinewy hands rubbed at the gel deftly. It looked almost sensuous. The sneeze replayed in my head, and, reaching the booth, I fought back thoughts that would surely make my cheeks flush.
“So, are you going to the reception later?” Adam’s words carried over the chatter of the symposium room. I met his eyes and wondered whether they looked glassy or that was wishful thinking.
“Uh, yeah, probably won’t stay too late though. It’s a long day.” I fiddled with the rings on my fingers and thought about what’d happened the last time Adam and I found ourselves leaving a party at the same time. A hotel room, a drop of limoncello from the strangely posh mini fridge, two fantastic rounds of sex, and a pizza.
“Same here.” He paused longly, and it seemed he was waiting for me to say something more.
“Maybe we can split an Uber back to the Hyatt afterwards. It’d be nice to … catch up.” I quirked the side of my mouth in gentle innuendo.
“Yes. That —" He trailed off, and his breathing grew uneven as though he might sneeze again. It seemed to fade, and he sniffled and dabbed his nose with the back of his wrist. “That sounds great.” He finished briskly and turned away to rub his nose some more.
———
A few hours later, I had smiled through small talk with dozens of strangers and was ready to eat, drink, and flirt with Adam all night long. He’d been snuffly ever since that first sneeze and had even stowed a tissue box discreetly behind our poster board for wiping his drippy nose between visitors. We’d cleaned up our materials and now faced each other across the table lengthwise.
“Ready?” I asked. Adam nodded, and we lifted either end of the cheap but surprisingly heavy plastic table. We began filing out of the symposium hall, Adam backtracking and me shuffling along forwards. Suddenly, our delicate balance faltered as Adam took in a great, shaky breath. His eyes squinted and nostrils flared for a torturously fast moment, and he released a heavy, wet sneeze toward his chest and the table. Droplets of spray appeared on his matte powder blue shirt. A zing of sensation shot inward from my spine to my core.
We’d stopped in the middle of the procession of research teams, but Adam dropped his end of the table — “sorry,” he gasped out — and sneezed twice more into his bare palm. eshh’IEU! heh-ISH-oo!
“Bless,” I breathed, perhaps more throatily than strictly intended. I tried and failed not to stare at the translucent string of snot that briefly hung from Adam’s nose as he started to pull his palm away. He noticed the mess the same moment I did and returned his hand to catch it. His eyes widened in surprise and embarrassment, and he scanned the room, likely for the tissues I’d returned to the coffee bar. All the way across the hall. I moved into action, fetching the box and striding back toward where Adam stood paralyzed with his hand covering nearly his entire face. He has such big hands. I dropped the box onto the table in front of him.
“I guess we should have kept these by you,” I teased. He plucked a tissue with his opposite hand, and shamelessly I watched as he brought the paper up to his nose and gave it a good wipe and a quiet but wet blow. He cleaned off his palm on a second tissue then looked up at me.
“God, sorry. Excuse me for that.” He sniffled twice. “This happens every time I travel. Pollen or something.” His nose had gotten redder, and he looked lightly panicked. “Sorry, um, let’s move the table, yeah?”
“Yeah, you’re fine, bless you. Again.” I smiled at him and started lifting my end, wanting to reassure him and move us past the incident, despite the thousand thoughts firing through my brain, all of them saying sneeze, hot, messy, nose, fuck.
———
Evening arrived, and I entered the conference reception wearing a backless dress with a cardigan that I planned to leave on a chair as soon as professionally acceptable. My hair was up in a clip with a few loose strands hanging out in the front. I felt academic-sexy, the perfect vibe for seducing my sometimes-collaborator onetime-lover.
Speaking of — I spotted Adam near the bar with a few men I recognized as old friends of his. His curly hair looked freshly washed, and he wore an olive linen shirt, beautiful against his pale rosy complexion. Wanting him to seek me out first, I made the rounds with some acquaintances whose posters I’d enjoyed. That is, until I heard a stuttered “sorrY-ISHHuu” and saw Adam’s lanky form bend halfway to the floor out of the corner of my eye. A few conversations nearby went quiet, the better to hear a second hu’USHH muffled into Adam’s hand.
He pulled away from his friends near-instantly, secured a few napkins off the bar, and disappeared around a corner. Fuck playing-hard-to-get. This was my moment. I made my excuses and went to hover by the bar, pretending to consider the drink options. I heard Adam sneeze twice more: desperate, vigorous sneezes likely covered by the meager cocktail napkins. He blew his nose squelchingly. A minute passed, and I expected to hear him return. He did not.
Curiosity piqued, I left the bar and stepped casually into the hallway after Adam. He stood facing a wall, nearly leaning on it, one hand braced above him. Now I was a bit worried.
“Adam?” I asked tentatively after him. He stiffened instantly.
“Uhh, hey. Um, one sec.” His speech was choppy and higher-pitched than its usual huskiness.
“Sure.” I stared at his broad, strong-looking back, waiting while the silent awkwardness slowly peaked then waned again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, uh, I might be coming down with something, I’m not really sure.” He paused. “If you, um, still want to split that Uber, I’ll probably be going soon. But I know it’s early.” He still faced the wall.
“That’s alright. We can go.” I mustered up my nerve and wished I’d actually gotten a courage-lending sip of wine at the bar. “I mostly just wanted to hang out with you anyway.”
Adam looked down at me over his shoulder and, seeming torn and stuck and vulnerable, finally turned his body toward me. He looked a tad disheveled, though handsome as ever, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his shirt untucked and — oh. His bulge straining against his khakis in a way that it definitely had not been when he walked into the party. I snapped my eyes back up to his, and his hands holding the soaking-wet sneeze-filled napkins twitched uncertainly in front of his pants. I glanced backward to make sure the hallway was still empty, then took a few steps toward him. I stretched out a palm for the ruined tissues, and Adam barely reached out his arm then hesitated. I nodded encouragingly, and he passed me the damp wad of paper, our fingers brushing. I dropped the trash into the bin behind me without haste.
He seemed to take a deep breath then, and his shoulders dropped an inch or two.
“I would really like to hang out with you too. Fair warning, I don’t know if I’ve got a cold or not, or if it’s just allergies. But this, um, this happens.” He spoke in a low near-whisper. I felt like my mouth might start watering.
“The sneezing? When you travel?” I asked, daring not jump to any conclusions about this man I was already halfway in love with and did not need any more reasons to want.
“No. Well, yes. But I meant. When I sneeze. I get … turned on.” All the blood in my body flowed straight to my center. My mouth opened uncouthly. I paused a second too long, because Adam was already apologizing. “I know it’s so weird, I’m sorry, I can’t control it. I just wanted to be honest —"
“Adam. It’s fine. It’s, um, more than fine.” I looked over my shoulder again. “I … like it too.” I gulped. “So if we go back to your room, you can sneeze as much as you want.” We held heated, amazed, desperately excited eye contact, and I felt a grin rising on my face. “In fact. You should sneeze as much as I want.”
Hello! I’m obsessed with your fics. I’ve been trying to find one I used to love that I thought was yours but I haven’t been able to find. Any chance you know it? It’s Steve and Eddie trading a cold back and forth to see how many times they can catch it
Hi there! I'm so glad you like my stuff 🥰💕
Ohhh, I know exactly what fic you mean! It's this one, and it was written by the lovely @poetic-illness!
It was the first s/teddie fic I read and the one that encouraged me to actually get back into watching ST - so really it's the catalyst for allll of my own s/teddie fics! 🥳
Someone in the throes of an allergic reaction, taking or being handed a cold, wet washcloth. They press it to their nose, desperate to soothe the smoldering tickle, but it’s still so itchy they can’t help but scrub at it. The coolness helps, but the scrubbing does not, and soon they’re muffling sneeze after squelchy sneeze into the damp cloth.
I have the second part half-written but I release this into the universe as is, to hold myself accountable. Some details likely not consistent with previous fics because I haven’t reread them in a while, and I always made up and erased them on the fly anyway.
I know that I never gave Mia the fetish, and that was an oversight on my part. We are here to correct for previous behaviors, with allergies and monsterfucking.
Second Part is 18+, this one not so much but there is some mention. Thanks for reading!
“Here you go, honey. Sorry it took so long to come in.”
Mia straightened up from inspecting a handsome creepthorn spilling long, menacing needles over the edge of its pot. She smiled past the pocket jungle of fronds and flowers to the sight of Patchouli’s shopkeep emerging from the back. Ravi was equally handsome, but decidedly less menacing than some of his stock. Probably. She’d never seen him out of glamour. He balanced several bags of potting soil on one arm, and with the other nudged an unassuming little plant onto the front counter.
“Customs was a pain.”
“Please. I’m thrilled you found it at all, man. You’re the actual best.”
Ravi smiled under the praise. He offloaded the soil somewhere behind the desk, brushing his palms off as he approached it.
The plant between them was innocuous enough, with a wild cluster of leaves that surrounded some stubby racemes of flowers. It was obviously a younger specimen, a bit traumatized by the shipping process. Despite it, a few long and deeply lobed scarlet petals were already opening up from a few days in Ravi’s care. Aconaris avoracaea was a notoriously finicky species - the last two hadn’t fared so well in making it across the border. This one was kind of cute for being such a lot of trouble, she had to admit.
Mia was well-assured of her own green thumb, and even she was going to punt this thing as soon as she could.
“I like a challenge,” Ravi chuckled. “Did we say one eighty?”
“You know it was two,” Mia scoffed. She counted out several bills and then some from her wallet. “But if you throw in a quarter of that Starship Diesel, I’ll bring you something fun next time.”
“Ooh,” Ravi said, eyes gleaming. His fangs showed beneath the curling, stylized ends of his mustache as he grinned. How she’d even once mistaken him for anything human was a mystery to her now. “How exciting. I’ll be right back.”
One of the nice things about Ravi was that he was always happy to barter in plants, be they interesting flower hybrids or the weed he grew in his basement lab.
The other nice thing was that he didn’t ask too many questions.
As he disappeared behind the veil of the shop front, Mia fished her phone from her pocket. She lined up a quick photo of the plant on the counter, then took a moment to weigh her options.
Was she being over-eager? She hadn’t even left the shop yet so… maybe. It had been months since Bluebell mentioned the Aconaris. Weeks since they’d made contact at all, actually, but that wasn’t unusual – plus Mia was willing to give them some sort of immortal slack on it. Sometimes you just had to forcefully reinsert yourself into your local necromancer’s unlife.
She shrugged and scrolled through to a familiar contact. Mia attached the photo of the spiky red blooms against the verdant backdrop of the shop, then cast her line into the aether.
Hey! Call me when you get a chance?
Sent 7:13 AM
Even for a creature, a being… an entity that didn’t require rest the same way a human did, Mia was roughly aware of her friend’s nocturnal schedule. If not exactly asleep, they did tend to be offline and unavailable during the morning hours. She could harbor the Aconaris until they got back to her.
Ravi returned, and Mia managed not to fumble the baggie of bud when he tossed it towards her.
“The actual best,” she reminded him as she stashed this prize more securely into the innermost compartments of her bag.
Ravi just laughed, folding his arms across his broad chest and brightly patterned shirt. “Alright. Bring your friend next time, though.”
Mia looked up from adjusting the strap of her bag. She arranged the Aconaris in the crook of her other arm. “What friend?”
Ravi nodded towards the plant. “The one you’re giving that to.”
Mia frowned at him. She was very certain she’d never mentioned Bluebell at all. “What makes you think it’s a gift? Maybe it’s a personal project.”
Ravi’s smile softened, though he tempered it by rolling his eyes and tipping his head back and forth. “Call it intuition.”
Mia huffed. “Or me being way too obvious, maybe.” She took it back, Ravi was nosy and annoying and she needed to get to work. “But for the record, I don’t think that would go well for anyone involved.”
Ravi was back to full fang in his smile again. “Mysterious. Alright, honey. Enjoy the day, though, it’s beautiful outside.”
He was right about that. Mia was not the only human, plant, or serpent to enjoy the early spring thaw. She was looking forward to the growing season. “I will. Thanks again, Ravi.”
The shop’s bells jingled as the door shut behind her on the egress, closing her out of Patchouli’s humid green warmth and into the brisk air of the alley.
Mia kept the plant tucked into her arm with the care of a newborn, although maybe not her first one. Cut flowers and potted plants alike were often hardier than people assumed, even the Aconaris. She resisted the urge to both feel and act furtive about the whole thing as she hit the street. There was nothing strictly illegal in her new acquisition. An average passerby wouldn’t even clock her. They wouldn’t and didn’t need to know that she was pairing a morning coffee run with nefarious errands at the behest of a lich.
Ugh, Ravi was right. It was too nice a day to be in her head.
By the time she’d made it back uptown, the slight chill of the morning had already melted off. The tidy urban treescape was dotted with buds, and ragged garden bed crocuses poked their beaks out from between the leaves. A thin layer of sweat had even collected under her jacket in the twenty minute walk. Mia was both annoyed and satisfied by the predicament as she juggled keys, coffee, and plants outside the entrance to Branch & Bloom. It had been a long winter, and she did love spring — she would be in the wrong business if she didn’t. Playing musical layers was just not her favorite.
She let herself into the shop, ensuring that the lock clicked shut behind her until she was obligated to interact with the public. She managed to offload her cargo behind the counter without losing anyone, only briefly snagged in a tangle of sleeves and bag when she registered the insistent buzz of her phone from the jacket’s pocket.
“C’mon Mike,” she grumbled. With a yank she managed to free herself and retrieve the mobile before it went flying. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to her boss this early.
A glance at the incoming caller halted her exasperation in its tracks. Not Mike.
She swiped on Bluebell’s name, then cradled the phone to her shoulder.
“Hi! I wasn’t sure you’d still be up.”
“Good mornin’, sugar,” Bluebell’s syrupy drawl practically dripped through the line. ”You caught me at a good time.”
That was two sweetened pet names she’d accrued this morning. From anyone else, she’d have raised an eyebrow. She didn’t mind them from Ravi, who was as sincere (and also as gay) as they came. She definitely didn’t mind them from Bluebell.
Especially not when she could immediately clock an odd saturation of their voice. There was some thickened flux of acoustics and accent there, on this glorious spring morning. They sounded stuffy.
As if to confirm her observation, Bluebell punctuated the greeting with a soft sniff.
If she’d had dog ears and a tail, like the kid that loaded papers at the newsstand outside the shop in the mornings, they’d have been perked and wagging. Lucky her, she could downplay her sudden laser focus.
“Uh… yeah, great! So… is that the one you were looking for?” Mia recovered. Coolers. She needed to receive the morning’s delivery, and hopefully combat the rising heat in her core at the same time.
“It sure is,” Bluebell agreed, their own voice warmed with approval. There was limited concern for the second, sharp sniffle that followed, except that this one lagged for a second, like it wasn’t as efficient as Bluebell preferred. “Your international plant smuggling operation paid off, I see. SNF! Aren’t you just full of surprises.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Good. I meant it as one.”
Mia smirked to herself as she fetched down her work apron and tied it on. She paced towards the back of the store, into the cold storage room where the greenhouse trucks had already been in and out some hours before. She had a finite amount of time to run through her morning routine before she opened the shop, but… she could stretch her minutes out just a little.
“I told you I knew a guy. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing with it.”
Bluebell chuckled. This time, when they sniffled, there was an audible twinge and drag of wetness. A slight shuff of material accompanied its repetition, as if swept against a fold of tissue or fabric. Maybe even the edge of a sleeve? She tried to focus on stacking boxes to the work table, and not the mental image of Bluebell’s hands manipulating the long, straight line of their irritated nose.
Was it the weather that had put her in this kind of mood — crawling out of her winter den and into the sunshine, ready to frolic and fuck like the animal she was? She needed to get it together, here.
Bluebell had sneezed in front of her before. They’d been suffering from something the first few times they’d met. Any visit longer than five minutes inside the shop generated a few sniffles too, but they tended to avoid that. And Mia had been too blindsided by circumstance and about a thousand more immediately pressing questions to really appreciate their magical lurgy at the first pass.
Now, though…
“No – SNFF! I haven’t. Are you holdin’ her hostage for it?”
It was Mia’s turn to laugh. She paused in slicing through box tape and counting stems. In the back room, removed from even the muffled noise of street traffic, the hum of refrigerators was her only company besides Bluebell’s voice. She leaned one hip against the table. “What, the Aconaris? Maybe I am. Thanks for the idea.”
While she strained for details in their tone, she could detect a faint background buzz as well. A distant click-click-click-beep of a machine she could neither see nor imagine whirring away behind them. Some piece of expensive laboratory equipment, an ominous bank of computers generating screens of code, or construction outside their place? All seemed equally likely and unimportant in the moment.
Bluebell cleared their throat, drawing her attention back to the forefront
“The project might need a little refinement before it’s ready for peer review,” they replied, the amusement plain in spite of their mounting distraction. “But… on my honor. I’ll show you.”
Mia would have yielded anyway. It wasn’t like she could actually enforce anything in this relationship, where a power gap was more of a yawning chasm. Still, she liked sticking her foot over the edge.
”Hopefully not as the test subject,” she teased. ”But I’ll hold you to it.” Mia paused when she picked up a distinct, catching inhale from across the line. That felt promising. “Hey, are you–....”
“--hh-HH! Hang on a seh—…!” Bluebell broke off their plea with another sharp and escalating breath, their voice retreating from the receiver. Mia’s grip tightened on her phone.
“—hehhy’EISSSHHHhh-ue!”
She heard them explode all at once, far enough off to suggest they’d turned their head and angled the phone away. Wet enough to suggest there had been little, if any attempt to cover.
There it was.
Mia bit her lip and carefully set down her shears. Heat and pleasure curled through her — she could feel the pulse keenly in her neck and between her thighs. Fuck.
Fortunately, Bluebell seemed too thoroughly distracted by their own follow-up gasp to notice hers.
“ISSHH-ue! … hhd’YISSSSHHH—ue!”
Mia shivered with private satisfaction. A pity they’d leaned away, but she could hardly complain about the lack of restraint on the release. She savored the image in her mind’s eye a few seconds longer, yet still managed to compose herself by the time Bluebell returned.
“Hhh ‘scuse me,” they sighed. Their voice still seemed clouded, as if nagged by irritation. She guessed they’d given up on the promise of relief and decided to press on anyway. “SNFF! You were sayin’?”
“I was going to ask if you were sick,” Mia admitted. “Bless you.”
“You’re sweet,” Bluebell hummed. “I’m fine, darlin’. It’s just the wea—… the weather.” She heard their voice waver and break, a record skip in the tape as they pulled the phone away and sneezed again into the background. “—IDSSHHH’ue!”
“Bless you! Oh… the pollen, right? I didn’t think it had really started, yet.”
“Pollen’s only the… SNF! S’cuse me. Pollen’s only the half of it. Might wanna save your breath on those blessings, though. It’ll be like this for the rest of the season.”
Mia tried her best to bite back her thrill, lest it actually come through in her tone. The rest of the season? Like, all of spring? Bluebell had professed to being “allergic to life” before, notably when surrounded by the flowers on the show floor. She’d assumed it was hyperbole, but the promise of weeks of sniffling still to come felt like she’d won some kind of prize — one she didn’t know she’d been competing for.
“I’ll keep it up until it’s really annoying you,” Mia promised. She wasn’t without a bit of sympathy for their plight. “Unless we’re already there.”
“No,” Bluebell chuckled, rueful. “But I’ve had a tickle all morning, ‘course it didn’t turn into anything until I’m talkin’ to you.”
Of course, Mia thought to herself. Because someone up there is looking out for me. Not only that, but Bluebell was a certified yapper about this and most things. It was either going to be a truly climactic spring for her, or a very frustrating one. Was she expected to act normal about this?
“Yeah, well… you’re welcome. Call back if it happens again.”
She was only half-kidding, but at least Bluebell also found the humor in it. They broke with their distinctive four-beat cackle, while Mia grinned in silent victory.
“I might.” A recovery sniffle blended into another throatclear and a sigh. “I oughtta let you go, sugar. I thank you kindly for the favor. SNF! I can come by to pick it up thihhs—... hh-H!”
Mia closed her eyes and pressed her knees together, bracing herself for the urge insistent enough to keep interrupting.
“HehYISSHHh-ue!” She heard Bluebell sneeze somewhere in the background. A second, louder “—EIDSSHHH’ue!” chased almost immediately behind it.
Even removed, those managed to sound astonishingly itchy. If Bluebell was telling the truth about how uncomfortable they’d been for… what, hours now? Maybe it felt equally good for them, working it out of their system.
Get a grip, girl. Mia yanked herself back from that particular train of thought, like a cat being scruffed. She gave her libido an imaginary shake. She had to go be a person, and interact with other people very soon.
She probably shouldn’t have let Bluebell set the tone of her morning like this, but there were plenty of things about the relationship that were ill-advised. That it existed at all was one of them.
A final “—IHSSHH-shieww!” erupted just out of range, followed by a storm of sniffles. All the while, the machine in the background beeped softly, rhythmically. It went on like a metronome, unbothered by Bluebell’s escalating irritation or Mia’s skyrocketing levels of horniness.
“Gghuh,” they exhaled, upon returning. “Fuck me runnin’. Excuse me.”
Gladly, Mia thought. Out loud, she offered, “Bless you!”
Bluebell groaned softly, nearly as nice a sound as the sneezing. “Thank you, darlin’. Now, b‘fore I bring the house down…” They continued, which prompted another small crisis from Mia because wait a minute, how literal was that? “I’ll be by to pick it up sometime this week.”
“Uh… y-yeah, great. I’ve got it at the shop now.” She stepped back out onto the main floor, still quiet and sun-drenched in the morning hours. The Aconaris was sitting patiently behind the counter, where she’d left it. She really needed to move that into the back before they opened and someone tried to buy the damned thing. “Actually…”
“Hm?” Bluebell prompted around another sniff.
Mia barely gave herself a moment to second-guess the offer.
“I’ve got some deliveries to do later today. I can drop it off at your place, if you like. Saves you from venturing into the floral hellscape.”
“Hah. Now that does sound appealing. Don’t let me be a pain, though. I’m out of town until tonight.”
Mia absent-mindedly dead headed a few hanging baskets as she wound her way back to the front of the store. “After work, then.”
Pushy, she knew, and if Bluebell wasn’t exaggerating then there was no real rush. They would apparently be sniffly for days or weeks yet. She just wasn’t sure she loved the idea of the Aconaris hanging around the shop. Not-technically-illegal didn’t mean it was harmless, and gauging by the reading up she’d done…
“You sure? SNF! It’d be after ten or so.”
“Honest, it’s no trouble. Plus, I get to see the Crust Princess.”
There was a muffled snort.
“She is not crusty, I just bathed her.”
“Sure,” Mia fought down a smirk. “Around ten, text me when you’re back? I can–...”
She paused, not for a tremulous inhale from Bluebell this time, but a different, distinct noise in the background.
Layered in with the click and beep of the machine, a low moan arose. It sounded nearly animalistic in nature, but the tone was so close to a human voice that Mia froze in place.
Navigating a friendship… maybe even a mentorship with someone who operated on the darker spectrum of magic meant sometimes (often) looking the other way. A healthy mixture of curiosity, attraction, and fear had served her well so far. Occasionally, Mia got a little too comfortable in their banter and let that last point slip. She wasn’t sure if this conversation was about to dip into that valley, or if she wanted to encourage it.
She probably could have pretended she didn’t hear a thing, if not for Bluebell’s voice retreating to hiss an annoyed “hush!” at the culprit. She narrowed her eyes.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” Bluebell replied, even and easy.
Mia stared at the Aconaris. She again, thoughtfully, weighed her options.
“Are you… calling me with someone on your slab right now?”
Bluebell barked a sudden laugh. She could imagine their broad, delighted grin framed by dark lipstick a bit too easily.
“My slab? What does that mean?”
The moan again, buoying up behind them and forming something that definitely sounded like words. Bluebell forced an aggravated sigh.
“Look - SNF! I’ve got to run. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
Mia paced the length of the floor. “Bel, wait a second—…”
“Bye!”
The line went dead with a last, apologetic boop from her phone. Mia considered the blank screen and the empty shop for a few moments afterwards.
So fucked that my period makes me this horny and it’s literally the most inconvenient time to have sex. I’ve just been stuck in this cycle where I’m kind of horny so I go on tumblr, make myself more horny, repeat. And then I can’t do anything about it. I know it’s a bad idea to go one here but I can’t help it
Summary: A secret agent is going undercover for a few days, and his target has a sneeze fetish. It’s time for him to put his research to the test.
PART 1 - PART 2 -
AAAA EVERYONE ♥️ I am overwhelmed TwT. Thank you so much for sharing your likes, comments, reblogs, asks, and tags QwQ. My original stuff means a lot to me, so I’m really, REALLY touched that people enjoyed this!! To everyone who left kind words, you give me soul power 💕 I hope this part hits as hard as the first one did, and that you all like it!
Also wanted to quickly shout out @themiseryandcompany, @bestwhumpist, @juxtaposedrose, and @stormyweaver for going so hard in the tags!! Seriously kicking my feet and squealing, I felt spoiled by your commentary, thank you so much for all the love🥹
These are original characters, all in their late twenties and early thirties!
(Warnings: Unrealistic science, Mess Lite™, fake contagion themes [nobody can catch this cold], exhibition / humiliation themes [main character gets horny in public], feeling pleasure from sneezing, masturbation).
THIS STORY IS NSFW!
-
It was a little after 1930 in this timezone, standard military time. They’d started their final descent to the landing strip with the beginnings of a sunset smeared across a cloudless sky. And during the flight, Omicron learned three key pieces of information.
Firstly, he absolutely could not stop sneezing. It was simply impossible. He’d swaggered to his plushy recliner with hubris and paid for it about 57 minutes later after dutifully repressing every single rising urge that niggled his sinuses over the course of the hour. It grew and grew in him, increasingly worrisome in its size, until the tickle was just too strong to hold at bay. No amount of snorting, nose blowing, or finger rubbing would ward it back.
It forced him at metaphorical gunpoint to the closet-like bathroom, blindly staggering through tears and wrenching hitches, where he dropped to a crouch and then to his backside with almost a dozen cataclysmic sneezes. Each one worked his lungs like a bellows, dizzying him until he saw spots, winding him until he felt breathless. By the end he was wrecked, and clinging perilously to his self control. He realized then that his sneezing wouldn’t bring him to orgasm alone; it could only lead him to the edge and trap him there until he finished the job himself. Which he obviously couldn’t do in the agency’s aircraft lavatory.
So. He gave up on the ‘don’t sneeze until the jet lands’ plan.
Instead, Omicron washed his face, dried his hands, and resigned himself to minding his nose’s whims. His original hypothesis was correct - if he did nothing to deter his sneezes, they’d come at regular, but controllable, intervals. This remained consistent as long as he didn’t make the other critical error.
Which led him to the second issue: if his mind strayed too far toward anything sneeze-related, he armed the tickle with more ammo. His sneezes became unwieldy if he held them back, yes, but they also magnified to arousing proportions if he imagined literally anything tickling his nose. This was the hallmark of Dr. Voster’s virus - the ‘suggestion sneeze.’ So to avoid a case of blue balls, Omicron did his best not to ruminate on the ceaseless, beckoning sensation that lived in him now. This was by far the most trying aspect of his predicament.
And the third and final bit of info was an exasperating realization: Agent Delta was a chronic and committed blesser even in these circumstances.
“H-ah.. DZSshuh!”
“Bless you.”
Omicron resisted the urge to rub his nose, and instead treated it to a dab from his beleaguered tissue. Any motion more substantial than that would goad it into further misbehavior. He wasn’t interested in another stumbling trip to the bathroom.
“Sir.” He sounded as congested as he felt; his voice was locked up in his sinuses. “You really don’t have to bless me every time.”
Delta patted Omicron’s knee. The two of them sat side by side, despite the sea of empty seats around them. “Aw, Omicron, you keep saying that. I really don’t mind.”
I mind, groused Omicron. That’s why I keep saying it. His gaze drifted to the porthole window and all the little, passing structures beneath. The ground drew closer meters at a time, just as the tickle, yet again, tugged him closer to a conclusion he’d given up fighting. He blinked wetly against the sensation, then let his eyes fall shut. The image of the tiny cars cruising down below lingered, each one speeding undeterred to a destination. They were perpetual. Indefinite. And it was far beyond Omicron’s ability to stop their momentum.
He felt the tickle lurch forward, ripping his breath into a shuddering, “-hUH!hh.. mbb..” Omicron swatched his finger beneath his nose, pausing when the tickle reprimanded him with a lancing spark. “eh-HEH!..hh..”
Hurry up already, he chided with a daring snub to his nose. His nostrils pulsed erratically, aggravated, and another gasp shivered out of him. “h-hh-hh.. HAH-TZSS!sss’uhh..”
“Bless you!” chirped Delta.
It was a particularly unsatisfying sneeze, and ridiculous as it was he felt mocked by his own nose. Omicron sniffled, sniffled again, trying to flare the tickle into action. But it wouldn’t budge. He dug at his eyes with his palms.
“Does your head hurt?” asked Delta.
Omicron dropped his hands and leaned his head back against the seat with another defeated sniffle. “Ndo, sir. Mby head doesn’d hurt.”
“Do you need more tissues?”
His fingernails bit into the palm of his hand. “Ndo, sihHH-”
Unwilling to endure another hygiene lecture, Omicron flinched both elbows to his face and kept his nose there. He heaved through a series of increasingly yearning breaths, light on the inhales, heavy on the exhales, shoulders lifting and dropping each time he thought the sneeze might grant him mercy. In the end it left him wanting. He dropped his arms and panted, eyes still closed, cheeks streaked with tears.
Delta cleared his throat and Omicron lulled his head in that direction, squinting through sticky eyelashes. His superior held a fresh pack of tissues in offering, and Omicron’s cheeks heated. How many of these did he bring??
He didn’t snatch them, but it was a near thing. Delta’s smile tilted with sympathy, and Omicron prickled like a wet cat. “You can vent your complaints to me if you want, I don’t mind.”
“Not sure what you mean,” he muttered through gritted teeth, scrubbing his nose with intentional strength. It stung, but served it right.
“It’s okay to be grumpy, Omicron.” Delta spoke like he was soothing a startled horse. “I’m sure this is a tricky situation to manage.”
What remained of Omicron’s professional decorum disintegrated, and he snapped with a waspish, “What would you know?”
Delta’s eyebrows flew up and Omicron’s blood flashed cold. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“P...Pardon mbe, sir,” he mumbled and lowered his tissue with a sniff. “I apologize. That was uncalled for.”
“Yes, it was,” Delta agreed, his tone contemplative. “But it was also very out of character for you. I’ve seen you stay composed during triage for a gunshot wound. Just what about this has you so out of sorts?”
Admitting to Delta that there was more to this than simply sneezing - disclosing the induced erections that were slowly eroding his self control - would be professional suicide. Even if this side effect wasn’t Omicron’s fault, it was his responsibility to manage. This was a chance to prove himself, and if he screwed it up he’d never get this chance again. That’s just how it was at the agency.
He’d have to lie. Lie until he could deflect.
“Dnothi’g, sir,” he said. “It jhhust tih.. iih..ckles-hh..hH..” Omicron’s eyelids fluttered and he crushed his crumpled tissue to his face.
Please, please, please, he found himself begging as the itch crawled around behind his eyes. Give me a good one.
Against his better judgement, a smoky silhouette sprung to his mind’s eye. Something lithe and graceful, skulking through his nasal passages heedless of the sorry state of them. It glided across raw nerves, pausing to snuggle against their warmth as Omicron sliced his lungs with a gasp. Then dragged the breath back out on a groan. Fuck, he could feel it. Could feel the dimensions of the tickle as it prowled and pawed, arched and sprawled, coy in its torture. He could feel his nerves recoil, his nostrils spasm - a panicked cry for action.
“h-YEH!hh..oh.. hh-HEH-”
Omicron panted as the tickle receded, plumeing into an indistinct but irritating mist. Like a phantom it spread through him, coating his quaking membranes as it drifted deeper.. deeper.. deeper still. It filled his nose with a sensation too ambiguous to do much more than hopelessly itch. His hiccuping breaths eased to stillness; he was trapped on this plateau, punished by a tickle that wouldn’t grow. It merely wanted to endure. A bit frantic, Omicron tried to grasp onto a more solid visual. It didn’t matter what it was, it could be anything, just so long as-
“Agent Omicron?”
The torturous mist evaporated, leaving his nose singed and no longer imminently sneezy. It took substantial restraint for Omicron not to pound his armrest in abject, miserable frustration. He blew his nose in defeat, raked his sleeves over his cheeks to clear the tears, and sniffled. His nose squeaked in reply.
“.. I don’t think I can adequately communicate how annoying this is, sir.”
“Well, it really must be a bother if it’s making you pout like this.”
Omicron puffed up in offense and casted for a snide reply before he remembered that this was his boss. He bit his tongue, figuratively and literally. “It’s true this is testing my patience,” he said, “but I assure you that it won’t impact my performance. I’ll achieve nothing less than exceptional results. And respectfully, sir, I’m not pouting.”
Then he shimmied in his seat to face the window.
Agent Delta considered him with a skeptical eye, and as someone who knew the extent of his subordinate’s gifts he was right to do so. Deception was something of Omicron’s specialty. Trained in the art of information extraction, he excelled at becoming whomever a target wanted to see: a cautious creative type, a severe and dismissive businessman, the gullible boy next door or the leather-clad motorcyclist your friends warned you about. This ability, among other qualities, landed him this case.
But tricking a stranger he’d researched for weeks and swindling his superior officer were two different beasts.
“As you say,” Delta conceded to Omicron’s back.
The jet’s landing gear grazed the runway.
+ + +
The destination was tropical, but close enough to a coastline that the heat wasn’t stifling. Their resort hotel was nothing short of opulent, offering amenities such as: a grand carpeted staircase, bellhops in uniform, and over a dozen glittering chandeliers. They’d changed into their civilian clothes before entering to better blend in. Well, blend was a strong word for Agent Delta; he wore Bermuda shorts with an equally garish aloha shirt printed with hibiscus flowers. Omicron doubted it was an officially sanctioned garment. He himself donned something understated - khaki shorts, boat shoes, and a white v-neck t-shirt. A pair of gold aviator sunglasses sat on top of his head.
He’d done what he could for his nose. When he caught sight of it in the jet’s bathroom mirror just before they deplaned, he could understand why Delta kept needling him. The skin was blushed an obscene red, the color deepest at his nostrils and fanning out across his septum, cupid’s bow, and as far up to the bridge of his nose. He also hadn’t been aware of how much it moved on its own, incessantly prodded by the tickle inside. Looking at himself too long just made him feel sneezier, and Omicron had braced his hands on the bathroom counter with helpless hitching until he coughed out a single, underwhelming, ih’BZSch!
Now watching Delta check in at the front desk from across the hotel lobby, Omicron tempered his trembling nostrils with a touch of his index finger. Settle down, he bargained. Stop teasing me.
His phone vibrated against his thigh. It was a burner; he got a fresh phone for every assignment and didn’t keep a personal cell. A glance at the number told him exactly who it was. He lifted it to his ear.
“Make it quick, Doctor,” he said. “I’m onsite.”
“Well, hello to you too, Mr. Grouch!” Dr. Voster trilled. His mood further soured at her enthusiasm. “New phone again, huh? How’d you know it was me?”
“I memorized your number.”
“Because I’m your favorite?”
Omicron wrinkled his nose. “I memorize all my numbers. Don’t get excited.”
“You really know how to make a woman feel special, O.”
“Did you want something?” he asked, eyes on Delta as the man chatted amiably with the clerk. His nostrils twinged and he gave them an appeasing rub. “I’m busy.”
“Just checking in. How’s your nose doing?”
As if to answer, the tickle squirmed. Omicron snorted reflexively and rubbed more sternly against his sore septum.
“You’re calling at..” He checked his watch. “..1:15 in the morning your time to ask about my nose?”
“Your viral load should be pretty high by now,” she replied, sounding wide awake despite the hour. “I want to know how it feels.”
“It feels-” He’d been gearing up for a snarky remark, but it died on his tongue. Between one breath and the next something changed. His nostrils slowly flared, grazing his finger where it rested against his lip.
“… it feels?” prompted Dr. Voster.
To his credit, Omicron tried. “I-hht.. h’tzuh..”
But then his eyes flickered shut as he became entranced by that incurable tickle. It advanced slowly, enormous in his nose, lumbering forward and promising him a bounty. The swell would have intimidated him if he hadn’t been waiting for the better part of a day. He dropped his finger from his lip and braced his hand against the wall instead. If this was as big as it felt, he’d need it to stay on his feet.
“hUH-… ugh..” A sharp sniff, and a mutter under his breath. “..chhome on.. h-hh-!”
Fuck, it was oppressive. Omicron cinched his eyes tightly shut as he eased a breath through his tingling nose. It didn't hasten the advance, only threw gasoline on a raging fire. The tickle licked at his nasal nerves, which began to spasm in alarmed reply. Suddenly he was gulping down air, hitching so loudly it felt lewd.
“hah!hh.. uHH!h.. HUH-.. HUH-.. HUH-!”
The fire burned on, colossal and all consuming, demanding so much of him that his lungs filled to the brim. He could feel his head ratcheting by degrees, twitching back even when he could take no more air. If he could open his eyes, he’d probably see the shimmer of those fancy chandeliers. The tickle seethed for an agonizing moment. A quiet ache of pleasure twisted his gut. And then-
“WRRUZZSSSSHOOO!!”
Ecstasy.
“HHHH-!.. RRIHSSSSCH’YUU!”
It scraped through him thoroughly with a crack of throbbing relief. Dazedly, he hitched anew. In, in, in-
“h-hH-HH-” And out in one fell swoop. “HPT’ZSSSCHOOO!!..nnngh..”
Omicron thanked himself for the foresight of leaning against the wall. Otherwise he’d probably be on the ground, or at the very least staggering aimlessly as his sneezes tossed him around. His nose didn’t seem to know what to do, other than grant him another.
“HAH’DIZSSSH’uh!”
And another.
“HEH’YIIZSSCHOO!ohhh..”
He gasped for breath, the hand holding his phone routing to his sternum. He could feel his heart hammering, his chest heaving. Each time he sneezed, his abs clenched. And with each release, a cloying ache spread through his groin. He was probably erect by this point but-
“Hih-.. HIHBISSSH’YAHhh!”
He didn’t want to stop. Omicron breathed deeply into the tickle, feeling it paint the inside of his nose with a swath of sensation. Something speared into his sinuses - the probing tip of a paintbrush, a thin piece of twine, a fiendish little intruder intent on undoing him.
“IIH’TIZZSCH’iu!!”
His lungs emptied and replenished themselves with another single, flowing breath. Despite his light-headedness and unsteady legs, Omicron felt himself smiling.
“HHHH!.. EHJZZSSHUE!!’hhhooohh by god..”
It resonated pleasantly, like he struck his body with a tuning fork, and the trancelike need to sneeze, gasp, sneeze finally ebbed. The tickle receded, mollifying his nose in its tide. He could still feel it floating around in his sinuses somewhere, sated for now but impossible to fully satisfy. And of course his dick wasn’t satisfied in the slightest. His balls ached terribly. He’d had the good sense to arrange himself before entering the hotel lobby, fully aware he might find himself in this predicament in public. Again.
A voice spoke intelligibly, muffled against his shirt. Oh right, the phone. He put it back to his ear.
“What?” he panted.
“Did those feel good?”
He sniffled and fended off a full body shiver. “Don’d all sdeezes feel good?”
“Mm. Yeah.” Her tone was weirdly stilted. “Well. So. This is awkward, but I might have-”
Omicron tuned her out as he gathered himself. He was in dire need of a tissue, and he’d caught his own shirt in the crossfire of those last few sneezes. A quick scan of the room confirmed that just about every guest and employee saw him letting loose without even an attempt to cover his mouth. Many people were staring, including Agent Delta. The man was agog, but as Omicron stared back, he got the prickling feeling that it wasn’t him Delta was looking at. It was a second after that when he heard who exactly caught his superior’s eye.
“Bless you.”
He clocked the voice before he turned, which gave him a split-second to prepare his expression. He arranged a look of chagrined surprise and hung up the phone on a still-nattering Anita.
“Oh!” He jumped, and flashed a shy smile. “Thagk you.”
She was taller in person, with legs a mile long and hair falling in thick waves to her waist. She wore burgundy lipstick, accentuating the plush shape of her mouth. A voluptuous woman, her Bohemian ensemble framed her curves and flowed around her like a modern renaissance painting. Her jewelry spoke of wealth, her painted nails spoke of elegance, and her eyes concealed a careful fire.
She held out a pair of sunglasses. Mine, Omicron realized.
“You dropped these.”
He took them from her with a chuckle. “Ah, jeez, that’s embarrassi’g.” He sniffled and didn’t miss her swift glance at his nose. “I really mbade a spectacle of mbyself. Sorry about that.”
“Not at all,” she said. Her voice was dark velvet, soft and sophisticated. “I’m sure you couldn’t help it.”
Omicron juggled his phone and his sunglasses, keeping his eyes on her as he unearthed a half-empty package of travel tissues. He kept up his sniffling, in part for her benefit and also because his nose dripping onto his shirt was an imminent concern.
“Yeah, I’b kind of a mbess todahhy..” He tried to keep his eyes open even as they fogged with emergent tears. His voice scratched against a tender throat, tremoring around little hitching hiccups. “I do-hh!T huh.. don’t eved doe where th.. hh-hH!..mbghh, where all thad came fromb I-hhH!.. ndormally don’d sdnee-”
It overpowered him suddenly. He just barely rushed a tissue to his nose in time.
“hiH’TISsh’oo!” Back to the regulars, and just one didn’t quite cut it. Omicron huffed his way to a second. “..uh.. hck’KSSH’u!.. ugh..”
“Bless you,” she said.
That took care of the itch (for now). He wavered on his feet, fawn-legged from his earlier fit, and muttered a guttural “Pardod be” as he ducked away to noisily blow his nose. It took several tissues before he deemed himself presentable and by the time he got all the used ones shoved into his shorts pockets, he turned back around to see his sunglasses being offered to him again.
Omicron chuckled hoarsely as he took them from her. “I should probably start carrying a spare pair, at this rate.”
There was an amused tilt to her lips. “Perhaps.”
He shared in her smile until the pause between them stretched a little too long. Then he jolted into awkward conversation. “Ah, um- where’s my manners, jeez, I’m Nicolas.”
Nicolas Foster, his cover for this operation: an under-the-weather tourist in town for a destination wedding.
She inclined her head to him gracefully and held out her hand. “Josaline.”
Josaline Jewel, his target: business mogul of the fashion world with a clothing line, makeup brand, and lucrative designer bag collection all sold exclusively online. The agency suspected her of extensive cybercrime; Omicron’s job was to uncover any signs of money laundering, malware manufacture, or identity theft.
“I’d shake your hand,” he said with a self-conscious scrub of his palms against his shorts and another self-deprecating laugh, “but I’ve been sniffly all morning, I’m sorry.”
“Oh?” Again her gaze flashed to his nose when he wrinkled it with a sniffle. “Are you not feeling well?”
He sniffled again as he fiddled with his sunglasses, bashful. “I’m still hoping it’s the jet-lag, but it feels like I’m coming down with something, yeah.”
He punctuated this with a wrist swipe beneath his warm, chapped nostrils. They flared to caution him against further meddling. Josaline crooned in sympathy.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Doubt it, he thought to himself as he offered a warm smile. “That’s really sweet of you to say. Thanks.”
Omicron researched sneeze fetishes as thoroughly as he cased intel on Josaline Jewel. Operatives observed her engaging with unfamiliar men at industry events or galas, escorting them off the dancefloor and into private quarters. All these men had two things in common: they were shorter than she was, and they were at the time afflicted with sneezing. Though she didn’t seem deterred by illness, the agency lacked further details. To fill his void of knowledge, Omicron dove headfirst into a world of niche kinks; he read and watched a towering amount of sneezy content, some of it about fictional characters he’d never even heard of. But he left the experience a more educated man, enlightened and prepared to perform. Now it would be a game of discerning Josaline’s preferences.
“What brings you to town, if I might ask?” Josaline asked. She took a hesitating step in her peep-toe wedges and Omicron followed the cue to walk with her.
“A friend’s wedding,” he said, and it became obvious that his increasingly wet sniffles required maintenance. He sighed as fished around for his last clean tissue. “He’s an old college buddy, super nice guy. The wedding’s not until next week, but I had some time saved up at work and the flights were cheaper on weekdays, so..” Tissue acquired. “..I guess it worked out pretty well.”
“Do you enjoy traveling alone?” she asked, setting a sedate pace across lush carpet and spotless tile. “I find it invigorating, but it can be a little lonely now and then.”
He blotted gently at his nostrils. They fussed at the treatment, jerking and fidgeting against his fingers. Yes, that’s right, Omicron goaded. Tickle me. Go on. The virus humored him, unfurling and sauntering forward with ambition. Instantly his eyelids got heavy, and his voice grew heady.
“Oh, I couldn’t afford this place by mys-.. mys-hhelf..” He kept the tissue tucked to his face this time, muffling his voice and obscuring her view of anything but his fluttering eyes. “I’m hhuh-”
The tickle got to work, trailing feather-light fingers along his nasal walls. They writhed, trapped and helpless to the whims of a persistent itch. It stroked sensitive places, unhurried and secure in the knowledge he could do absolutely nothing to stop it. He tried to speak around the buildup, each breath a little blip or sigh he couldn’t repress.
“Ho, sorry, I’m rooHH-!.. uh.. rooming with another frihhend whose… als-uHH’h..H-H!”
He paused as the tickle escalated, now lounging indulgently as it guided him to a gasping high. Its approach was always rhythmic, an everlasting titillation that magnified as the tolerance of his nose diminished. Omicron shot Josaline an apologetic glance over the edge of his tissue and found her looking right at him. For the first time she lost composure, and hurriedly ducked behind a lock of her hair.
“.. Are you alright?” she asked, staring at the floor as they continued to stroll.
Omicron cringed through another playful swipe of the tickle, like fingers made purely of fluff skimming up the length of his nose. He gasped hugely, certain it would come, but then let it out on a near-moan. “..ohhh, sorry- it’s this cold, I-.. Iyyiieee..HH! iG’GZZSCHhu!”
It was a little stronger than he thought it would be. Instinctually he flashed a hand out and anchored his grip to whatever was nearby. The tickle gave him another long, firm stroke and his nerves begged mercy.
“HIH!PPSSHh’oo!” And another lancing tickle, like washing your car with a sponge, running your hand along a cat’s back, a frictionless glide but it was malicious in its softness and it agitated his nose into rebellion. With one hand, Omicron sealed the tissue more tightly over his nose and mouth. “MMPPHSssh!”
He emptied his remaining air in a desperate blow. His nose tingled with temporary relief. The single, brave tissue did its best, but he’d absolutely need to wash his hands and find another fresh package as soon as possible. Picking his head up, he balled up the trash and knuckled his nose with his fist.
“Sorry, that was gross, I’m-” Genuine anxiety prickled in him as he looked up and realized his other hand was clasped firmly to her upper arm. That was an accident. Omicron flinched away and clung white-knuckled to his disguise. “-SO sorry, oh jeez, I really didn’t mean to grab you like that, I wasn’t- I just, I had to sneeze and then it felt like it was gonna be a big one so I-.. guess I reached for whatever was around, I wasn’t thinking…”
Josaline stood and silently let him run out of steam. A molten heat pooled in her irises. A rose tint glazed her cheeks. She lifted her purse, an understated but expensive clutch with a golden chain, and popped it open.
“Not at all, Nicolas.” Her words melted from her lips. “I truly don’t mind.”
She slipped a swatch of white fabric from her bag and shook it. It unfurled like a flag of surrender, and she held it out with a coy smile. He lifted his finger once again to his nose to graze it just beneath his itchy nostrils and felt a telling touch of moisture. His ears flushed and her smile grew.
“Oh gosh, sorry, that’s..” Cupping one hand over his nose, he reached with the other. “Thank you, Josaline.”
Omicron took the handkerchief and paused when she didn’t let go. Their eyes met.
“I do hope this won’t be the last we see of one another,” she told him.
Just behind her, the elevator dinged. He blinked, only just noticing where exactly they were. She stepped back into the gilded lift, leaving him with her handkerchief and one last view of her burgundy smile. Then the doors closed. Omicron dropped his shoulders and blew a slow breath from his cheeks. Initial contact: not a catastrophe. Step two: arrange a serendipitous rendezvous.
Agent Delta appeared beside him. Omicron was certain he’d watched it all from a covert corner. He spoke softly, so as not to be overheard. “This is going swimmingly. Well done.”
Omicron ignored his heart’s little leap at the praise. He didn’t like to count chickens before they hatched. His mind raced to assemble all that he’d learned, the pieces of what intrigued her. “Thank you, sir.”
“Nicolas.” Omicron looked at him, and resisted shooting the man a withering glare when Delta brightly grinned and said, “Your nose is running.”
He tucked into the handkerchief. It was a balm to his sore nose after so many cheap tissues. The cotton was of superb quality, probably with a thread count higher than his bed sheets back home. Omicron nuzzled into it to snuffle and blow; seconds later, he realized with dawning dread that this was the wrong thing to do. For while this handkerchief was freshly laundered, it was also steeped with an overpowering perfume.
The tickle took umbrage with this. It bristled in his nose like a startled cat, sinking claws into his tender membranes and whipping its tail angrily against the sensitized border of his sinus. He couldn’t even suck a breath in before-
“Tssh! Ih’TSsh!.. HSH’u!” He ripped his nose away from the handkerchief, holding the cloth away from him with revulsion. “Hih’KSSh!.. h’KZSh’iu! Ugh!”
“Ooh, bless you, bless you.”
The handkerchief disappeared, and without any other options, he buried his nose into the prayerbook of his hands.
At last it abated. He could imagine the tickle huddled far back in his nose, growling low as it continued to lash its tail. Omicron sniffled behind his hands and coughed from the effort.
“It’s impossible to say whether she doused this intentionally or not,” mused Delta, studying the handkerchief. He tried to pass the offending item back to Omicron, who shrunk away from it. He didn’t want it anywhere near his nose. “She couldn’t have known you were allergic.”
“I’b dnot allergic,” Omicron argued through gritted teeth. Delta gave him a look that plainly said, I don’t believe you, but I’ll humor you because you’re irascible and sneezy. Omicron fantasized about strangling him with a garrote.
They took the elevator up in silence. Delta passed over another package of tissues and Omicron plowed through several of them. More garbage to add to his pocket collection. He’d have to unload once he got to his hotel room, and used tissues weren’t the only load on his mind. His erection had yet to flag. It was easy to ignore during his conversation with the target, focused as he was on his work, but with nothing to distract him Omicron was getting tense and eager for alone time.
Which is why he balked when Delta tried to follow him into his hotel room. Omicron stopped just over the threshold. “Is this your room?”
“It’s our room.”
Omicron’s grip tightened on the doorknob. He’d been lying when he told Josaline he had a roommate. That was his cover story, yes, but not the actual plan. “I thought we were bunking separately.”
“I’ve reconsidered,” Delta replied, and while his tone was light there was a finality to his tone. “Sharing a room will reinforce our cover, and given this is your first high stakes case I’d rather stick close to support you on the ground.” He fixed Omicron with a pointed stare. “Unless there’s a reason you’d rather not share?”
Oh, you bastard, he seethed. You know what I’m going to say. Delta was already suspicious - giving him anymore ammo would just worsen things for Omicron. His hand slid off the knob. “Of course not, sir.”
There were so many reasons Omicron would rather not share a room with Agent Delta. He preferred solitude over company, silence over noise, and Delta was the opposite. The senior agent prattled about nonsense while awake and he snored very loudly while asleep. He hovered around Omicron all evening and compulsively blessed his sneezes and bullied him into watching crappy reality television shows. The hotel room was excellent, but small; there was no opportunity for privacy. The silver-lining was that there were two beds so they didn’t have to share.
After unpacking, discussing tomorrow’s plans, and sharing an array of delivery boxes from Panda Express while they watched some inane matchmaking show, Omicron collapsed into bed with a heavy head. All the congestion settled behind his eyes, and both nostrils were blocked as soon as he reclined. He jammed the charger into his phone with stuffy grunts of exasperation and then noticed the flurry of missed calls and text messages from Dr. Voster lighting up his screen. They were hours old, most of them berating him for hanging up on her and demanding that he call her back.
But it was late, he was tired, and surely by now she was asleep. He’d catch up with her tomorrow.
+ + +
Steamy hot water fell around him, sliding warm down his skin and thickening the air. Omicron tilted his head back. He hitched a single breath, and shuddered it out on a voiced sigh. “..huh..”
He braced his hands more securely against the shower walls and steadied his feet beneath him. He woke this morning with post-nasal drip and a too-big tickle in his nose. Just as Delta said before, it stockpiled power in his sleep and by the time he came to bleary consciousness, he could feel the itch in every nook and cranny of his respiratory system. It wanted out.
The tickle scuffled with his weary sinuses and his lungs snagged with a sharp gasp, “Hih!” and another slow, yearning sigh. “..hhuhhh..”
His prick throbbed and he brought a soaped-up hand down to grip the shaft. He was rock-hard, woke up that way, too muddled with arousal and tickling misery he could do nothing but stumble to the shower. Another grungy sniffle roused the tickle to action; it shimmied in the confined space, touching every nerve with its feathery borders. It was such an overpowering sensation that he couldn’t actually sneeze. Only suffer.
“h-H-HH!” Both he and the tickle waited, but to no avail. He deflated with a moan. “.. hhh-uuuhhhh..”
Omicron stroked himself, stepping forward to press an arm to the cool tile wall and lean his forehead there as he lost himself to the climb. Sneeze or no sneeze, he was going to come. Muggy air coaxed a dry cough, a snuffling breath, another flexing fidget from the tickle. It didn’t settle afterward, but instead began to twist and turn. Thrash and flail. His nose shuddered helplessly in the onslaught. Yes, yes, yes, chanted Omicron as his nostrils pulsed. That’s it. Tickle me.
He smoothed his thumb over his slit, arching forward. He panted hot breath against the sweaty tile. Water pounded down against his shoulder blades, muscles shifting beneath skin as the tickle wriggled and wormed against its prison. His nose frazzled at the attention, and Omicron’s parted lips flinched up with a little grin. He heaved with breath, whining his way through a monstrous buildup. All the while he pumped his hand at an increasingly feverish pace.
“..uh... hhUH-hh!.. HUH!’hh.. HAH-H-” His voice reverberated off the walls with obnoxious volume. The sound of wet skin squelching mingled with the patter of water on the shower floor. He gasped at the bolt of pleasure sparkling below his stomach. “-H-Hhh’oh-hh.. h’H-uhh..”
The arousal broke his momentum. He thumped a fist against the wall with an abysmally soupy sniffle. With warring sensations, neither could win. Omicron lifted his head to the shower spray to wipe his face and paused to chafe his index finger beneath his flitting nostrils. He slowed the rhythm of his other hand. You can do better than that, he challenged the tickle. C’mon, let me have it. He snorted, feeling his sinuses vibrate with the strain. Make me sneeze.
Wish granted. With a loss of sensation down below, the tickle rushed in to fill the void. It consumed him in an instant. Omicron inhaled as if the shower water suddenly turned to ice.
“HHHHH!! IIHDDZSSSCHHYOOO!!”
It was finally out, the start of what felt like a dozen. His whole body trembled, including his dick, and Omicron dazedly picked up the pace as his nose cramped with another powerful swell. Another butter-smooth gasp.
“HIIIIH!! EHTZZSSHHH’EH! Mmmbb-!”
A beautiful ache bled through his abdomen, mirrored in the tingling clarity of his nose. Fuck he didn’t know when Delta would be back from his morning run, but.. “nnnggh..HAAASCHHYUU!-uuooh..”
He’d never been a quiet man in bed and these sneezes were some of the best he’d had so far. His membranes twitched in relief each time, as did his prick, before another storm quickly gathered. Omicron instinctively sped up the tweak of his wrist as he rocked into each stroke. He wouldn’t last much longer; he’d been edged long enough. His flaring nostrils flew wide.
The orgasm hit like a truck. It rippled through him, wrenched him forward, and it would have been perfect if the shower floor wasn’t so damn slippery. As he shook his way through the aftershocks, the tickle snuck up on him.
“iiGGXSHH’TT- AAH-” Nothing about him was prepared. It exited roughly through his congested airways and upset his equilibrium. His feet went out from under him and rolling with the momentum spared him a concussion from the slick tile. It didn’t spare his pride however when he heard a voice from the other side of the door.
“Bless you, Omicron! You okay in there?”
Fuck, cursed Omicron, back flat to the tile as the shower pelted water into his eyes. When did he get back?
“Fine!” he barked back. The slip-scare soured what remained of his orgasm and the inside of his nose ached with raw exhaustion. He touched a knuckle to the tip. Before Delta could ask, he added, “I dropped the shampoo!”
“Well, be careful,” Amused, now that he knew his subordinate was alright. “Sounds like that nose of yours means business today!”
Omicron covered his face with his hands and sighed.
+ + +
Sunshine coated the simmering pavement. People kept their sandals on as they milled about for fear of burning their feet. Couples cuddled together in upholstered loungers around the pool’s perimeter. Loners relaxed with books on couches sheltered by giant, colorful parasols. A dual walk-and-swim-up tiki bar bustled at the far end of the pool, surrounded by wading, tipsy tourists. This was an adult-only area, so aside from the group of trust-fund college grads squealing and shoving one another off the diving board, it was quiet and classy.
Nicolas ignored wandering eyes as he maundered the water’s edge.
After his ill-fated shower, Delta informed him there was surveillance of Josaline Jewel in this area and it was time for a fated meeting. He’d put on a pair of colorblock swim trunks and a thin cotton cream shirt he left unbuttoned over a waxed chest. He was not a big man, but his work kept him toned. Defined abs, firm pecs, broad shoulders with muscles that rolled across his back when he moved. He’d use them all to his advantage.
Deep in his sinuses, the tickle swelled. His nostrils weakly complained and he hushed them with a quick back-forth sweep of his finger. He’d use this too, when the time came.
An arm draped over his shoulders, dragging him in for a chokehold hug. “The whole team should take a vacation sometime,” Delta said fondly. “This is fun.”
Speak for yourself, groused Omicron. Irked as he was to have Delta here, it would help his cover. Acting with a partner provided an opportunity that single performances couldn’t. Besides, jerking off in the shower took the edge off his temper, so Omicron weathered the affection without complaint. He only pressed an elbow to Delta’s chest when his own expanded with a fast-rising urge.
“G-Gonnaahh-” He hiccuped a hitching breath. Experienced now in dodging, Delta leaned away as Omicron pitched haphazardly into his opposite arm. “hih’DZSSS’ooh!”
“Bless you,” muttered Delta, and mercifully didn’t complain about the distinct lack of vampire-sneeze etiquette. Some of these sneezes just got away from him, no matter how slow or quick they came on.
They both paused for more, but after a couple uneasy breaths, none arrived. Omicron checked the damage: no shirt stains, a slight drink spillage but not on himself or anyone else, and Delta wasn’t caught by collateral. Insufferable as his senior officer could be, Omicron would perish if he accidentally sneezed on him.
Delta lowered his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose. “See her anywhere?”
Omicron scanned as they walked, swirling his stemless wine glass before he took a sip. “Not yet.”
“Maybe she left before we got-”
“Hello.”
They whipped their heads to the left and there was Josaline. She wore the widest brim sun hat that Omicron had ever seen, black with a dramatic dip, and streaked with a white ribbon that matched the chic blacks and whites of her asymmetrical one piece suit. She still wore heels, toes painted to match her nails, ankles crossed. Her smile peeked at them from under her hat and designer sunglasses.
Nicolas roused himself and gave her a helpless smile, as if he hadn’t meant to stare. “Hi.”
“Were you looking for me?”
He fished a hand at the back of his neck, flushed to his ears, and Delta playfully tightened his grip. “Yeah, he couldn’t stop talking about you.”
Nicolas elbowed him with a hiss under his breath. “Harry!”
“I’m Harry by the way,” Harry told her, swooping in to offer his hand. Nicolas wrestled out of his hold in the meanwhile, straightening his shirt with a huff. Josaline raised a hand to her mouth to hide her widening smile.
“You must be the friend Nicolas mentioned. The one he’s rooming with?”
“Oh, he told you about me, huh?” Harry smoothed back his hair and waggled his eyebrows. “All good things I hope.”
Nicolas took another sip of his drink as they chatted, wrinkling his nose to one side and then the other. A quick, strong sniff flared his nostrils wide. He let the breath go on a sigh. Josaline tilted back the brim of her hat.
“Feeling any better?”
“Ndot really,” he conceded, then moved to sit across from her on an empty lounge chair. His shirt fell open to frame his sculpted chest and she curtly inspected the view. His pecs jumped with a brisk sniff, then another. He knuckled more aggressively at his nose. “But I’mb dnot gonna let it spoil mby vacation, if I can help it.”
Feeling lousy wasn’t actually a lie. Omicron woke up in the thrall of the tickle, yes, but when he had the ability to think afterward he realized he wasn’t at his best. His throat stung when he swallowed, scraped sore from all his harsh sneezing. His abs felt like they’d been through a ruthless core workout. And there was a disconcerting malaise settling over him, a woozy feeling that he refused to acknowledge in hopes it might just go away.
“Forgive me saying so, but should you be drinking in your condition?” she asked, nodding to his glass. He took a breath to reply but Harry interrupted with a booming laugh and an amiable slap to the smaller man’s back.
“That’s just lemon tea and honey,” is what he told Josaline and that was also true. He did lie to Delta about it just being a prop for his cover story though. In actuality, it took the edge off his aching throat. Harry carried on, unaware. “I told him to try a hot toddy but he’s a little goodie two shoes when it comes to nursing a cold.”
Nicolas narrowed his eyes, blinking as they began to glass over. All the while since he woke, the tickle in his nose continued to haunt him. Contrary to Dr. Voster’s claim to Delta, the sensitivity hadn’t diminished at all. He bodily turned from the conversation with his drink held far away from him. His other arm tucked snugly around his nose as he sucked in a shuddering breath. Then quaked in place.
“.. hik-.. iH-GZSShu!”
“Bless you,” chorused the other two.
He picked his head up by hesitating degrees before giving it a sharp shake. More sniffling, a thick clearing of his throat. His gaze darted to Josaline, who glanced away when he caught her looking. “Pardod mbe.”
“You know what? Try not to ruin my vacation either,” Harry griped at him, then looked to Josaline. “Nobody wants to get within five feet of me with him around. He’s like a walking cold medicine commercial.”
Omicron’s eyebrow twitched. “Well at least I don’d snore.”
Delta shot him a look that Nicolas met with innocence and a sip of his drink. Omicron shouldn’t push his luck, but he refused to pass up the chance to take pot-shots at Delta while he could get away with it. Josaline giggled.
“I can tell you’re old friends,” she said as she looked between them. “Do you see one another often, outside of events like this?”
This spiraled into deeper discussion. Delta and Omicron rattled off fake trivia to all her questions, and asked about her in turn. She was vague about her work but fairly open about her personal life. Almost all of it was useless small talk, aside from a compelling instance when she told them she created the software for her website’s security certificate herself. Her competency in coding wasn’t something Josaline Jewel advertised to the public.
Dr. Voster called him exactly three times during the chat, and each time he dumped her to voicemail. She knew he was working. Whatever she needed to ask him could wait, or ideally, be an email.
Soon the sun was past its apex and Omicron was running out of tissues. Mortifyingly, a passing poolside waiter brought him a little bin for him to toss his trash so he didn’t have to keep walking off to a garbage can. Over the course of their conversation Josaline’s attention gravitated squarely to Nicolas and both men took this as a cue.
Harry slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “Alright, I’m gonna check out the casino. I’ll catch up with you later, Nick.” He winked. “Have fun.”
Nicolas waved him off with one hand and tended to his unruly nose with the other. His nostrils pushed against his fingers, pulsing irritably. The tickle seemed to get worse over the course of the day, and his sneezes were coming with frustrating regularity if he didn’t waylay them. He tried to strike a balance between holding back and letting go, observing Josaline’s reactions all the while. She definitely wanted him to sneeze as badly as he did, which is why he chose to press the flat of his forefinger hard against his septum until the urge receded. He huffed away the gasp he’d gathered.
“.. huh-hh, sorry, I’b probably ndot great combpadny right ndow..”
He opened his eyes to find Josaline staring at him from under her lashes. She’d taken off her sunglasses some time ago. “On the contrary, I find you captivating.”
Nicolas laughed, ducking his head to cough. “Really? Thad’s a relief. I was worried all… this,” here he gestured to his nose, “would put you off.”
He punctuated with a sniff, the sound purely liquid, and rushed a hand to cup his nose while he tried to free the last of his tissues from the pack with the other. “Ugh, sorry-”
“Did you lose the handkerchief I gave you?”
Omicron feigned surprise, as if he hadn’t been waiting for her to ask. “Umb.. so-.. hah.” He scrubbed his finger under his nose, subduing his wavering nostrils. “I did use it, but I thig’k you had someb kinda perfumeb on it?..”
Her lips parted in shock, and Omicron knew at once that the scent on that cloth wasn’t intentional. Maybe it was a habit of hers, dousing her handkerchiefs in perfume, but she didn’t know it would actually make him sneeze. There was a faint, petal-like blush spreading across her cheeks and her thighs tensed more tightly together. Well, well.
Nicolas blinked wetly, as if the memory of the handkerchief was enough to make his nose tickle. Granted, literally anything was enough. “As soon’d as I-.. as I-yee…huh-” He blinked again, and again, each time a little harder and with more moisture in his lashes. With a swallow, he tried to hurry through the rest, “As I used ihht I.. st- st..”
He pressed a hand to his sternum as his chest jumped with a little sip of breath. The tickle fluttered in him, enticing. Omicron gave in for just a moment, letting his eyes fold shut, relaxing into the sensation of it. Sometimes the virus felt mechanical, automatic, indifferent to him and his reactive nose. Like a machine chugging ever onward, so did the tickle continue to toil. Tickling.. and tickling.. and tickling… Blind to his convulsing nerves, deaf to his snagging breaths, just carrying on with its function with no regard for the consequences.
Unable now to open his eyes again, Omicron spoke around compulsive gasps and breathed his words on the exhales. “hH!S’made be-.. h-HH!Bade be-uhhh.. snd’HIH!.. sdeehEEZZSSHOO!”
Nicolas snapped forward, sneezing over his lap, and belatedly raised a hand to his nose. It was running copiously. He wouldn’t get the job done with what was left of his tissues, unfortunately. He squinted against another hopeful tickle, begging himself now to keep it together. He really didn’t want to sneeze again like this.
A flash of white caught his eye. Josaline, her gaze boring into him with palpable weight, offered another handkerchief. He swallowed. It was identical in every way to the first, and Omicron suspected it smelled the same too. But this was what she wanted, and he was a professional. He would deliver.
He took it from her and began to unfold it with both hands to give her an uninhibited view of his face. As he began to wind up for another sneeze, he gave the tickle full control over every micro-expression. The fitful flare of his nostrils. The crease of his crow’s feet. His quivering, parted lips. The way his nose gathered grimacing wrinkles at the bridge when the urge became undeniable. His voice bled into his heaving exhales, unintentional but not unwelcome.
“H’uhh.. iIH!hhh..h-h-!hohh.. mbbggh..”
This was the worst part, when it crested to a peak but couldn’t quite get him high enough to tip him over. Throwing caution to the wind, he lifted the aromatic cloth to his face and breeeeeeeathed-
“KZZSSSCH!”
Rough, wrenched out of him in fury. As the methodical tickle gave way to a fierce burn, Omicron had just long enough to wonder if Delta was right: he might actually be allergic.
His eyes rolled closed and he shuddered helplessly into the handkerchief. “iih’TZSsh!” A tight breath and then, “iik’KISHH!... hd’IZSSH!.. Tshh! it’TZSH!”
There wasn’t time for anything else. No wavering gasps, no bleary moment of respite before the next volley. It was a quick trigger release, too itchy and ineffective to do anything but wind him. “-DSSH’uu!.. hd’DZSSH’oo!! ohh..HH!”
He heard Josaline stir in her lounge chair, and then felt the jostle of his own when she sat down beside him. A hand smoothed up and down the line of his spine, pausing to feel his back expand with a single, catching breath.
“-ig’GEZSC’Hoo!.. GZSShuu!.. Chshh-IH’chzssh!.. HIH!chzsch! Ugh!” He finally managed a shaky blow into the folds of the handkerchief. A couple desperate hitching breaths and then he quickly committed to another. It cleared away most of the mess; he was able to free his nose for air.
His eyes were still locked shut, but he could feel his nostrils twitching like a rabbit’s. Rushing a finger beneath them did nothing. He sneezed against his hand. “iihpssh!... h’TZschh!h- hIKssh!! TIZSSCH’u!”
It felt endless, and nothing like the big, bad wolf sneezes that the tickle cooked up. No, these didn’t help anything. Each sneeze just somehow itched him more. “..hah-..hh.. hH’ZSSCH’yah!”
He nearly lifted the handkerchief back to his face and caught himself at the last moment. Loathe as he was to do it, he used the collar of his shirt instead. He had nothing else. Omicron lifted the corner to his nose, his nostrils so warm to the touch they felt feverish, and muffled what he could.
“MMFZSSH!.. hg’ISHH!..” At least it was slowing down. He sniffled, feeling muzzy, and finally cracked his eyes open. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He closed them again with a jumpy, “hih- IH!-..MMPHZSSH!!”
Omicron waited, tense, for the next one. It sizzled in his sinuses for a solid few seconds before dissipating in a wave of prickling dismay. It left his nose wary, on guard for the next attack, even as the virus insidiously labored away inside him. His shirt was a lost cause, so he shrugged it off and used it to blot at his face as he snuffled and hitched his way into presentability. Holy hell, that was more than he bargained for.
“Bless.”
A touch alighted on his bare arm. Nicolas picked his head up, squinting through puffy eyes and already cringing with apology. “Sorry,” he croaked. “I thigk I mbight be allergic.”
“Yes, so do I,” she breathed, and smoothed her touch to his back again. Without his shirt in the way, her palm glided up and down his skin. Her other hand thumbed a tear from the corner of his eye. “You poor thing.. I didn’t realize that’s what you were trying to say. Forgive me.”
They were both lying to each other now. Nicolas shook his head, both his hands coming to hold one of hers. “Ndo, ndo, it’s ndot your fault! I couldn’d explain itd well.” He gave her a pitifully tearful smile. “Had to sdneeze too bad.”
The tone shifted. Omicron could feel it keenly. Josaline squeezed, then let them go. Her hands lifted instead to cradle his cheeks, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I need to confess something.”
He blinked at her, wide eyed. “... Codfess whad?”
“I’m not the sort of woman to be repelled by all... this,” she said softly, with an equally soft graze of her thumb against one of his chapped nostrils. It flared in response, and Omicron fended off the visceral need to rub it. Josaline stroked him again, and his nose twitched away from her. The tickle bristled and he leaned out her hands, racked with fittish hitches. He jammed his finger beneath his septum, barely catching himself before a sneeze tumbled out.
She watched him avidly as he battled back the urge, one eye squinted shut in a lopsided wince. Her attention honestly flustered him; Omicron never liked attention when he sneezed, and her gaze in particular stripped him bare. He lowered his finger reluctantly, and kept his hand hovering at chest level. The sneeze was stalled but certainly not gone.
He sighed his words. “S-uh.. Sorry, I-.. hooh, I bight.. I-ihhm godda-HH!” He wiped his head to the side. “iih’DZSCH’iew!! ugh, b’sorry..”
Her voice wavered. “Please don’t be sorry.”
“I-hhuh.. hkrrm!” Omicron cleared his throat, bringing the edge of his shirt up to his nose to blot and then, with great disgust, blow. He was going to burn this thing when he got back to his room. When he finished he looked away from her, painfully embarrassed. “I’m seriously so gross right now, I’m sorry-”
“Nicolas..” She slid a hand up his arm, splaying her fingers on his shoulder. Her other arm came around to rest at the juncture of his neck so she could toy fingers at the short, fine hairs on his nape. “I want to be clear. I’m not put off at all by your cold. Frankly, I think it looks very good on you.”
He frowned at her as the gears turned, then perked up when they slotted in place. “.. Oh!”
Josaline smiled wide enough to show her teeth, humming a little laugh. “I would like to kiss you. Is that alright?”
She drifted into his orbit as she spoke, her smokey stare flicking between his eyes and his lips. He nodded, and met her halfway. As their mouths met, she tugged down the brim of her hat to hide them from view. They kissed behind a black veil, his hand reaching to cup her jaw as she pushed a palm up the plane of his bare chest. With his nose so completely packed, Nicolas gulped air between passes of her tongue and chuffed soft, stuffy breaths against her skin.
Something about Omicron. He was suited to his job in many ways, one of which being his attitude toward infatuation and sex. Romance made his skin crawl, and physical intimacy was to him nothing more than a nice dessert. Delicious? Yes. Mandatory? No. He desired sex as much as he desired bubble baths or a night at the opera. He never let it distract him from his mission, even when at times it was his mission. It was a point of pride for him.
She eased him onto his back, kissing him deeply into the plush of the lounge chair. The new angle wasn’t great for his nose, shifting congestion in his head like tetris blocks until he whimpered against her lips. She finally let him up for air and he heaved in a breath, snuffling squeakily and then coughing when the air bottled up in his sinuses. He belatedly turned his head, and flushed up to his hairline.
“- guh, suh-sorry,” Nicolas whispered, his voice gravelly. “Can’d breathe through by dose at all.”
“Stop apologizing,” Josaline whispered back. She nudged the tip of her nose against his, nuzzling him even as she bit down on his lower lip to mumble around the flesh. “Can I help?”
He didn’t get a chance to reply before her tongue was back in his mouth. It was dark beneath the shade of her hat, with bits of sunlight dancing through the weave. While it was no mystery what they were getting up to under there, it was as subtle and as tasteful as public displays could get. She leaned more of her weight against him, pushing the planes of her palms up the span of his chest until he made another pleading sound.
Again she leaned back by an inch and again he tried to catch his breath. His nose fizzed with a wicked tickle. Sinuses immobile. Couldn’t agitate his nose with air. It would have to be something else, another method..
A bolt of inspiration struck.
“Josah-H!.. Josalind,” he mumbled. She was passing time sucking a bruise on his neck. “hah.. Josalind, cad you-”
She blew a puff of cool air over the patch of wet skin and smirked as he shivered. “Can I what, baby?”
“Hhhelp,” he gasped, and arched when she laved her tongue over his collarbone. His neck was sensitive, and Omicron resolutely continued even as he arched his back. “I’ll breathe better if I cad sdneeze, bud.. huh..” He sniffled in vain. The attempt ended in another disappointed cough. “.. id won’d combe.”
It was like he said the magic words. Josaline lifted her head and refocused her attention on his nose. It looked pitiful, so raw from rubbing and snubbing that the skin shined a brilliant red. His nostrils flared like a beacon, irregular but frequent. Nicolas gazed up at her, blotchy and half-lidded. She skimmed her pinky finger up the bridge of his nose, watching his eyes fall closed and his brows crunch and his nose wrinkle up beneath her touch. She sighed, besotted.
“I can certainly do something about that, but I’m not sure I should do it here,” she murmured. Fingers threaded through his hair, scritching lightly at his scalp. “I have things in my room-”
He slivered his eyes open. “Whhee.. cad d..” They fluttered closed again as he breathed, breathed!... And then sighed out a groan. “-ohh..We cad go to your roomb-h-H!.. hiiff you w-wand.. but..huh-”
Unable to help himself, one of his hands routed from her waist to his nose to grind beneath his throbbing nostrils. Just enough to take the edge off so he could finish what he was saying. His entire expression scrunched as he worked his nose, but he plowed onward.
“..I usually don’d ndeed buch,” he clarified. “Jusd thinking about id is edough to.. to…” He dropped his hand and snatched in a gasp so deep, his chest lifted Josaline where she lay across him. “HHHUH-!” But nothing came. He growled, his first real display of frustration in front of her. She comforted him with another rake of her fingers through his hair.
“Truly?” she asked, and when he fought his eyes open to look at her she seemed awed. “No.. external stimulation at all?”
Omicron knew of the methods to which she alluded, but Nicolas didn’t. He gathered his eyebrows together. “.. Ndo?”
“How do I help?”
“You cand just talk.” He anchored his hand back to her waist, his gaze glassing over. “About how buch id t.. tiihckles..”
She pressed her lips together, her cheeks beginning to darken. “.. could you demonstrate?”
Not the response he expected. He figured she’d want to take the lead, but Omicron was nothing if not flexible. “Yeahhh..h!IH-.. I usually thig’k about fhheathers or.. flowers or.. sombthig like..” He closed his eyes and conjured an image. “Like a little bug, crawli’g around up there.”
And just like that, it’s what the tickle became. Small, at first so unobtrusive as to be barely of notice but over time the irritation compounded. Omicron hauled in a hearty sniffle, coughing for his trouble, but the endeavor cleared up some of his consonants.
“It doesn’d know what it’s doing, but it’s tryi’g to escape and the luhh.. lohhnger it searches the.. huH!ohh.. the mbore unbearable it becomes.”
He could feel it zipping about, uncaring and unaware of how it stirred his haggard nose into motion. As it scampered along the length of a nerve, the membrane flushed and quivered. As its glossy wings grazed the tender pink walls, they shuddered. Another sensation pulsed further down; heat began to pool into his abdomen.
“And it’s tiih.. tiHII-!ckling mbe, but it doesn’t know that and I can’t tell it to stop and at this p-hhoint I don’dH! wantHH!- hhihht to..”
The little presence adventured in the wrong direction, into more sensitive depths, so deep in his nose he didn’t know it could tickle there. Omicron moaned at the honeyed ache in his groin. He desperately wanted friction, but common sense kept his hips welded to the lounge chair. He felt the tickle flutter, then flit, and then begin to panic. It realized this wasn’t the exit.
“Ahhnd th-then.. it starts freaki’g out. It’s buzzing all around and maki’g my ndose itchier and itchier, and I’m st.. start-HH!h’ingHH!!h-to.. IIH!”
Omicron imagined the wet, cavernous expanse of his tortured sinuses, every inch of it undulating in agitation all because of one little tickle. And that tickle persevered even now, darting around in the abyss of his nose unceasing. A smile flickered across his lips as another pang of pleasure swirled through him.
“.. and I just want it to keep..HHHH!” He huffed a momentous breath and his chest jumped under her hands. Words carried on his pining exhale. “.. -want it to mbake mbe-HHHHH!” Tingles trailed down his spine as he uttered the last few words in a high, airy voice. “.. make mbe snhheeze… HHDZZSSSCCHH’OOO!!”
Sparks popped behind his eyelids and Omicron moaned helplessly through a wave of carnal delight. He didn’t come, but the sneeze was paradise. He hitched gratefully up to the next one in line. “HH! HH! HHHH-” Something billowy and soft tucked over his nose and he pitched into it. “EH’JZZSSHHH’IUU!”
He groaned into fabric, stretching restlessly on the lounge chair as his cock twitched again. It was confined to the tight pressure of his swim trunks, a problem Omicron couldn’t think clearly enough to solve as he huffed and puffed his way toward another humongous sneeze.
“-ah.. haH.. HAAASZZSSSH’UE!” And still his nose craved more. Who was he to deny it? “-iihHHIIZZSSHEW!! mmbb..” Once they started, they felt too good to stop. “.. uhTZSSSSCH!!iuuhhhhh..”
Omicron keened, muffled by the cloth snugged over his nose. The break afforded him a chance to snurfle into its folds and reach up to brace his hand over the one that held it there. Deep in his nose, the tiny intruder buzzed brainlessly against nerves flayed raw. They were defenseless, vulnerable and so, so very sensitive. His chest rose and fell with an increasingly staccato rhythm, his expression frozen with need. He needed t-to.. He hhhad to-!
“ehhHPBBZSSCCH’IIYUU!”
He seized into the cloth and collapsed back to the chair. Heat surged through his veins, wondrous but left wanting as his erection strained against the front of his shorts. But at last the attack on his nose abated; the tickle retreated to the dark, hidden place where it liked to bide its time. Omicron mustered through a long, alleviating blow into the sturdy fabric. Sinus pressure dissipated from behind his eyes, just enough to take the sharpest edges off his encroaching headache. Then he just laid there panting and steadying his hazy vision when he finally opened his eyes.
He noticed a few things.
Nearly everybody in the vicinity was looking at him, sunbathers and staff members alike. Josaline was not an exception. Her hand rested lax in his, where she’d held his shirt to his face as he sneezed. And blew his nose. And he had a visible erection, blocked mercifully by Josaline’s position to the wider crowd but absolutely not hidden from Josaline herself. And for the first time, Omicron thought, Oh shit. I might actually be compromised.
“Um-..” he squeaked. All he could hear was a rushing noise, like standing in a wind tunnel, his heart banging against his ribs. Cold sweat broke out over his skin. “Um-..”
Josaline was similarly speechless. Paralyzed, even.
Did she not like it? Was it the bug thing? Fuck, he should have gone with pollen or something, that was more mainstream or at the very least, comparatively less weird. What was he thinking?! He thought this ‘sneezing untouched’ method might entice her, but a hell of an idea that was. Dr. Voster and her ridiculous pursuits. ‘Sneezing by suggestion,’ his ass. Now he was sprawled out here on display with a cock harder than diamonds and he’d just blown his nose into his shirt and practically into her hand-
Don’t panic, he counseled himself through shaking breaths. This is salvageable. Just play it off with a laugh, apologize for everything, then tactically retreat, regroup with Delta, fess up, come clean, apologize AGAIN-
“I-I’ll go,” he said, barely present as he gathered his shirt and held it in front of his crotch to stand. “I’m really sorry, very sorry about this. I just… um..”
Delta will be so pissed that he’ll take me off the case and the agency will put me on probation and I’ll be sorting files in the office for the rest of my career and they’ll never let me live this down, I’ll be the laughing stock of the force, I’ll-
A hand caught his wrist. He looked down and there was Josaline, coaxing him with soft, careful touches to sit back down. She smoothed hair off his sweaty brow.
“Relax,” she told him. “No one knows. They only looked because you were loud, and nothing more.”
If she meant that to be reassuring, it didn’t help. Everybody and their neighbor just watched him obnoxiously sneeze and moan for what might have been several minutes. So much for subtly, which was his entire job description as an agent. He was a disgrace to the force. Omicron buried his face in one hand, elbow propped on his knee. Nebulous plans to cut his losses and find a new job stalled at the sound of her chuckle.
“And didn’t I tell you to stop apologizing?”
He shrunk inward, painfully embarrassed and hissing a whisper into his clammy palm. “Yeah, but that was-”
“It was incredible.”
Omicron snapped his head up, blinking the blur out of his eyes. Josaline’s flushed cheeks and smile came into focus. She scooted closer to him, pressing her bosom to his arm and tucking her head in the crook of his neck. She raised the edge of his shirt, still piled between his limp hands, to dab beneath his nose. Omicron startled, recognized the feeling of something wet on his upper lip, and lost what remained of his composure.
“Could I not be a disaster for just five seconds? Please??” he demanded of the universe, of the virus, of anyone, and turned his head away to clean himself up without help. Sniffling and scuffing his nose prompted retribution. It tickled like a dangling string. Omicron ducked forward. “..h’HIDZssch!!”
Josaline swayed with him and pressed a kiss to his throat. She trailed her lips up and up even as he rushed to wipe his nose. “Listen, Nicolas,” she said against the corner of his mouth. “There is something else I need to confess to you. I want to introduce you to someone.”
Omicron’s nostril wrinkled as it was bestowed a kiss. “.. intro..hh.. duhhce me to someone?”
“Yes.” Silken breath glossed over the bridge of his nose. “To my husband.”
Everything grinded to a halt.
It was a good thing she expected him to be floored by that news. Husband? Husband?? The word echoed around in his head, immaterial; he couldn’t grasp the concept. There was no intel about a husband. Nobody mentioned a husband. She’s married? How can she be married!? His eyes jerked to her left hand, bare of a ring. She followed his gaze with a charming smile.
“Neither of us wear one,” she explained. “We married for practical reasons, and we aren’t interested in exclusivity. He and I consider ourselves free to explore as we like.”
She’s… married. The fact churned sluggishly in his mind, untethered and unexpected. She’s married. So..
Oh for fuck’s sake. He fought tooth and nail to keep his eyes open, watching Josaline bite her lip as the last sliver of light disappeared. Now the tickle was just kicking him while he was down. It snagged him by the lungs and hurled him forward over his lap.
“-eHTCHZSS’hoo!”
“Bless you,” Josaline purred, stuck to him from shoulder to hip.
Omicron tucked his fist beneath his nose with a couple convalescing sniffles. “-nguh, thagk you..” Another sniffle, sharper, and a crinkling blink to disperse the dark spots floating in front of his eyes. “So, you want me to.. meet him?”
“While my husband and I have similar tastes,” she continued delicately, “we find it more gratifying to seek pleasure with others than with one another. However..”
Here she guided him to look at her with a single finger to his chin.
“.. very rarely, one of us will meet someone special. Someone who would please us both. Together.”
This conversation was going at light speed while Omicron was still floating in space. He nodded, buying himself time, trying to gather more than just the word husband. So his mortifying sneeze-fit failure was actually a success, to the extent that Josaline wanted him to meet her husband, who also had the hots for sneezing? Presumably? Possibly? But wait, nothing in the files ever mentioned a husband, so that meant this was a secret husband..
“Do you understand?” Josaline asked. “What I’m proposing?”
Ménage à trois, his strategic mind supplied. Ménage à trois with the suspected cyber criminal’s secret husband.
Suddenly, and Omicron truly didn’t know how, everything was turning up aces. Not only did he have intel on a secret husband but he’d get to meet the guy. Talk to him. Learn more about Josaline through him. Find some incriminating indication that she actually was a white-collar mastermind screwing thousands of people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then he’d get his ass kissed by everybody at head office and they’d crown him King of Spies and give him only the coolest assignments henceforth. Maybe he’d get a fancy company car.. or a commissioned self-portrait in a tuxedo.. or..
Omicron jolted, as if coming awake from an impromptu nap. Shit. He rubbed both hands over his face, dismayed when they came away sticky. The humidity must be getting to him. Moist air always made him groggy.
“Nicolas?” Josaline looked a little uncertain now.
“I’d love to,” he blurted, then ducked his with a sheepish sniffle. “Ah, I mean.. if that’s-.. if you’re offering..?”
“If you’re comfortable?” she asked back. Nicolas nodded, maybe a little too quickly because his head felt like it was on a string five feet in the air. Josaline broke into a toothy smile, reaching to smooth thumbs over the puffy skin beneath his eyes. “Really?”
“Well, I-... as long as you’re both okay with it,” he replied. His nose creased at the bridge when she nuzzled the tip of hers to his. Omicron hiccuped a breath, and huffed it against her lips. “I-hhah..”
“Dinner tomorrow night,” she promised him, watching avidly as his expression contorted. Omicron squirmed his nose in a bid for it to behave, but Josaline wasn’t having it. She kissed just beneath his nostrils as they flared against her own. Lurking in the recesses of his sinuses, the tickle emerged. “We’ll ask him.”
Then she sealed her lips over his as he contended with the damage in her wake. His nose felt full of fuzzy bits, and with his nose as his only source of oxygen, Omicron was forced to keep stirring them with air. Each inhale swept them in a wind, sending them spinning against every inflamed atom of his nerves. They moved deeper, joined by more, an escalating infestation drifting deeper into his sinuses until he was dizzy with it.
“mmm!” he hummed into her mouth. Both her hands sunk into his hair, holding him still, keeping him locked to her lips as the tickle grew and grew. He sucked a hitching, shaky sniffle that whipped all the fuzz into a storm. Omicron whimpered again, higher and sharper. “-MM!”
Only when he set hands on her shoulders did she part from him with a soft sound, and even then she did it reluctantly. By now Omicron was lost to his gasping ascent. “hih-..hIH!h.. IHT-!” On the cusp, he whirled to the side and rocked with a perfunctory, “-DZSHH’iew!!”
She draped her arms around him, tugging him into her side as he fussed with his nose. Nicolas topped backward with her to the lounge chair. “Bless.”
“Ugh, thagks,” he snuffled and shifted in her arms to see her better. “Had to sndeeze, I’m sor-”
Josaline pressed a finger to his lips to silence an impending apology, and when she was sure he’d gotten the message, she trailed her painted nails along his bottom lip. “It’s a date, then?”
Nicolas smiled. “It’s a date.”
/tbc!
I know what happens next, I just have to write it! Thank you so much to everyone who’s stuck around for part 2, I really appreciate you!💗Hope to see you again at part 3 ^w^
you guys normally I post every interesting snz thought I have but I have this little scenario that I play out sometimes that I haven’t shared cause it’s kinda cartoonish and idk 🫣 but basically it’s where there is some royal lady like a queen and she is very uptight and super mean and scary and concerned about her image but she sneezes a lot so she hires someone as her personal sneeze catcher so that she is not spoiling her hands or having to bother to cover all the time. So there is just someone who stands there all day with a handkerchief and their job is to watch and clock when she is about to sneeze and catch it for her. And if it were a fic that would be the pov character and they would have somehow ended up in this situation with the kink and they would have to keep it together and like deal with her meanness but yet not help but be completely enamored with her obviously 🤭 idk in the small amount of writing I’ve done I usually go for stuff that’s a bit more grounded but idk would u guys read that? 😅
