Ficbit: Make It
This got trapped in my head and wouldn't go away until I wrote it. I might make it part of a bigger fic later, but for now it's standalone Saphalos (OC!Sith Inquisitor Saphina + Lieutenant Talos Drellik which has claimed my brain for days.)
“Hihh…” Saphina took a couple steps back from the fire, nose wrinkling up in itchy dismay. “That’s… hih!”
“Poor hitchy thing,” Talos murmured with a ridiculously fond smile.
“I can’t just… snf… can’t make myself snehhh…” She inhaled sharply and exhaled a cough. “Ugh. Smoke.”
“Noted. It’s a shame you can’t, though, it’s terribly convenient,” Talos said.
“Can’t what?” She asked, pressing her nose briefly to her wrist.
“Make yourself,” he said, as if that made any kind of sense.
“Who do you know that can just make themselves sneeze?” She asked, torn between curiosity and frustration. She hadn’t expected him to suddenly wrinkle his nose up, dipping towards his elbow with a sharp —
“isk’SCHEH!”
Talos straightened, idly smoothing his uniform’s front as if there were nothing out of the ordinary here.
As if he hadn’t just…. just…. “Are you serious?”
“Oh quite,” he assured her with a mischievous smile. It suited him.
“Again.” She couldn’t believe—
There wasn’t a hitch or staggered breath, just a little twitch of the nose and a sharp inhale before — “sktSHEH! There we are.”
“Are you making yourself sneeze, or faking it?” she asked suspiciously.
“Mm… six of one, half a dozen of the other. If I kept it up I wager I’d elicit a few natural ones,” he mused.
“Force, you’re trouble,” she breathed.