Someone sitting by the pool. Maybe relaxing after a swim.
Their nose tickles, a soft prickling sensation, and they rub at it a few times but there's no relief from the itchy feeling.
The first sneeze is rather soft, lightly jerking them forward into their hands.
They feel their nostrils flare strongly as they rub at the nose and they try not to bring attention towards themselves as their breath hitches.
The next couple of sneezes that follows are sharper, folding them over. They start to look for tissues, but can only find their towel and they lift that towards their face as another build up takes over their entire facial expression.
They snap forward again, and again. The rough sneezes are echoing over the pool area as they aggressively let out the next sneeze into the towel.
Sneezes that takes forever to build. Like starting with that small but imminent tickle in the nose, then prickles sharper and makes the person involuntarily take those hitching breaths, bracing for the inevitable.
'....hhh, hhhh... I'm gonnahh... ugh wait, it's right therehh.. hhh, hhh...! sorry, I can feel it, it's... hhh, ghhh...! ...it's hh, hhh... Hhhhhh...!'
Another day, another disappointment in not having a sneezy beauty with a giant nose sitting in my lap letting me play with her perfect nose while she sneezes all over me. Life is truly unfair
To take a break from a more emotionally intense project I ended up writing this. I've never actually been one of the caretaking/cold people, but I gave a thorough shot at it.
Theatrical male actor drunk and suffering from an awful headcold in his apartment desperately tries to preserve his self-image, and is continuously losing a battle against his own respiratory system. The officer he's involved with intervenes and tries to get him into bed. He's also a bit of a flirty drunk which doesn't help.
cw: alcohol use, flirting but nothing vulgar or overt
It was the dead of night and Adira was standing in front of the door to Ezra’s apartment, fumbling through her pockets for the spare key he’d given her. The street behind her was devoid of life and light, and being in a neighborhood without vapor lights lining the road made her uneasy. Instead she held her Department-issued carbide lamp to the door to see by, her eyes drifting periodically over her shoulder. Her fingers felt the serrated edge of the key’s tongue and seized it, drawing it out of her pocket to plunge it into the lock. There was a click as she turned it, and the moment she opened the door she was buffeted by the air from inside Ezra’s apartment, smelling like incense and spilled liquor. She scowled, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the transition into a lit room.
She did not have to go far to find him. A standing lamp by the chaise lounge in his living room cast light over a disheveled figure sprawled belly-down onto it, head lolling off of one armrest, arm dangling as he loosely clutched the top of a half empty glass. A few more glasses were scattered around, one in a different spot on the floor, another with just a disc of liquid sitting in the bottom by the sink in the kitchen. Tiny wisps of smoke billowed from an incense stick choking in a pile of ashes.
His half-lidded eyes snapped awake as he saw her, his head rotating to get a better look.
“You’re here,” he slurred softly, surprised.
His voice didn’t sound right, there was a raw, nasal quality to it. Her eyes scanned him, there was a pink tinge around the base of his nose and his philtrum glistened with moisture.
“You’re sick,” she said. She adjusted the water-lever at the top of her lamp with a thumb, then blew out the dimming flame.
He giggled, not his usual sharp punctuation, floaty and loopy.
“I gathered that when my brain started fighting its way out of my head.” He drew the glass on the floor to himself, calculating the minimum amount of movement to drink from it. “Why are you here?”
Her arm tensed as she restrained the urge to toss the lamp in her hand and spill gas across the apartment. She heard him sip from the glass and then cough, sputtering.
“You called me,” she said finally, hanging the handle of her lamp off one of the branches of a coathanger by the doorway.
He glanced at the brass handset of the phone dangling from the wall, then down at the drink he was holding by the rim of the glass.
“Oh,” he muttered, staring accusingly at the drink like it had puppeteered him into his own destruction.
Adira felt every vein in her forehead straining to contain her blood pressure. She strode over to him and plucked the drink from his hand before he could think to sip from it again.
“That’s enough.”
“But I’m dying beautifully.” He sounded genuinely offended.
“Dying?” She set his drink down a little too hard on the kitchen counter. “You have a headcold.”
“I have sufferinggh,” he drawled, breath warbling on the last syllable. His eyelids fluttered, nostrils flaring.
“Hiih! Hhh!”
His head snapped forward over the edge of the lounge for a violent sneeze.
“Ahh’pTSCHheeuh!”
One of his forearms raised to scrub absentmindedly at his nose with a lavender sleeve, and Adira guessed she’d be forced to listen to him mourning the imperfections on the shirt once he was sober. Her eyes flicked to the end table at one arm of the lounge, where a handkerchief lay crumpled next to a bottle of whiskey a third of the way empty.
“Sweet lord,” she grumbled, making her way to the end table. “How much of this did you drink in one night?”
“Enough.”
“Enough for what?” she snapped.
Instead of bristling under her anger he tittered, smiling loopily.
“Enough to medi—” his breath caught, hitching, and he fought with it. “Medicate—” he managed to complete the word before his lungs filled and he sneezed again.
“HeaAAH’TSSHhue!”
Twice, as if to punish him for resisting.
“Aaghh’pTSSHHeeuuh!”
He sniffled, dabbing at his nose with his sleeve again.
“Medicating?” she asked, her voice sharp with doubt. “With whiskey?” She tossed the crumpled handkerchief in his direction.
“With enthusiasm,” he corrected, plucking the handkerchief where it had landed on his hip and taking it into one hand. With the other he groped for the top of the chaise lounge and pulled himself upright.
She stared at him, contemplating the mess she was to deal with after work tomorrow. The whiskey might have him in an agreeable mood now, but it would fade quickly once he discovered every cough or sneeze aggravated the headache from a monstrous hangover.
After work tomorrow. Sleep deprived. On a Friday. She clenched her fists, holding them shut for a few seconds, then released them and sighed.
“Does the playhouse know?”
“They sent me home,” he informed her, like he was describing a personal slight. “I can hardly talk without it itching,” he paused briefly, estimating whether finishing the sentence was worth the potential aftermath. “It’s the m’s and n’s.” The last consonant had him blinking hard, nose twitching.
She watched him cup the handkerchief over his face and blow his nose, cough, and then blow again. The events started to piece together in her head. He went to work, thinking he could work around it. Once committed, it was made clear in rehearsal, before the entire cast, he couldn’t. Then the humiliation of his bruised ego sent him crawling for the bottle.
“Would you like to know the word, Adira, I could not get past in my lines?”
She didn’t respond, making her way to the swaying man, hoping to pull him up to standing before he collapsed back onto the lounge. He provided the answer anyway.
“Monu—” his breath shook, eyes glazing, “—mental!” Not a second after the last syllable he inhaled deeply, spine curling as the second consonant dragged against his sinuses like a matchstrike.
“Ahh–hahh!”
He pitched forward, muffling a sneeze into the handkerchief.
“HaAGH’SCCHmmpfh!”
“Oh,” he coughed, tears pricking his eyes. “I finished it.” He sounded equal parts surprised and pleased with himself.
The frustration smoldering in her chest warbled the slightest bit.
“You idiot.”
She reached for him, and he anchored himself to her arm as she pulled him to his feet, handkerchief clasped loosely in his fingers. For a moment she was amazed at the difference liquor made in how cooperative he was. He had to shuffle back and forth a bit to keep balanced, and she drew his arm across her back and planted her shoulder into his side.
“Walk,” she said, softer than the order she meant it to be.
“Yes, Officer.” He chuckled at his own words.
His weight shifted unevenly as he took a step forward, but her support was enough to keep him from falling. A bit of tension melted out of her spine. He was not a small man, and she didn’t believe she had it in her to carry him so much as drag him across the floor. They eked forward down the hall in a gangling tango of limbs.
“Where are you taking me?”
She didn’t answer him, only dragged them both around the corner. His liquor-dulled eyes lit up as he spotted the door to the bedroom.
“Am I to be locked away for my crimess–aah!” His head tilted back, mouth parted, nose twitching. His tongue dragged irritably along his tickling palate.
“Against medicine?” It was a few too many m’s and he paused mid step, inhaling. Adira braced an arm across the small of his back, clasping his waist to her a second before he bent with a set of harsh sneezes. She felt every jolt of his body, each contraction of his abdomen traveling through him into her.
“Stop chattering. You’re making it worse.”
“I’ll chatter if it pleases me.”
His nose wrinkled, eyes narrowing. His wrist came up to press under his nostrils, a wettened mark forming on the cuff of his sleeve. She rolled her eyes as his empty hand told her he’d dropped the handkerchief.
“Can you do it without sneezing on me?”
The arm drawn across her back stiffened, then gripped her shoulder tightly in a wave of quiet, petulant anger. She brought up a knee to push up on the door handle to the bedroom. When it didn’t work she brought her foot back down, adjusted his weight, and the second time managed to get it to unlatch, kicking it open.
They shambled forward toward the bed, knocking a lamp over as they came to the bedside.
“Sit down,” she ordered.
He stared at the bed like he was contemplating an elaborate philosophical proposition.
“Mm.” His weight sagged against her. She had to take hold of the band of his belt and heave him back up by the waist to stop him from sliding down to the floor.
“Ezra.”
“I’m con—” he gasped, squirming to direct a fittish, tired sneeze away from her. “Hiih’tTSHHuue! Snnf. I’m considering it.”
The hand at his belt moved to the small of his back and guided him forward. He stumbled toward the bed, falling toward it.
“Careful.” She pulled him back by his belt. Her momentum slowed him. He had just enough time to slip a forearm between his face and the mattress, bracing himself.
“You’re enjoying this,” he breathed, bent over in front of her and drawing his knees up onto the bed.
“I’m not enjoying anything.”
He flopped onto his side into the pillows, his eyes rolling sluggishly over to her.
“There it is.” He mumbled.
“What?”
“Cruelty.” He rolled over onto his back, one arm collapsing gracelessly across the top of his chest.
She glanced down at his feet and breathed a sigh of thanks he was in socks and not dress shoes. Ezra’s uncoordinated fingers started fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, fingernails picking at pearled button rounds. He got three buttons down, and then gravity’s effect on his congested, inflamed sinuses became audibly apparent.
“Hhheh!”
The pursuivant stepped to the mattress and loomed over him, reaching for the last of the buttons still secured. His head thrashed into the mattress, finding nowhere to turn away from her. His knuckles flew to his septum and pressed.
“Hh'kxxTCH! Ah!” He cut it off with clenched teeth. The little cringing gasp that followed it nipped vengefully at her chest.
“Don’t. If it happens, it happens,” she corrected even as she wrestled with the buttons on his shirt.
He nodded but wouldn’t look at her, curls of black hair rubbing into the mattress. The hand that had pressed to his nose moved to massage his throat. Her jaw tightened with the regret of grumbling at him in the hall.
As the last button snapped open he wriggled, trying to drag his sleeves down his arms. One awkward limb got tangled partway, and after two or three tries at freeing it he groaned and rolled his head into the pillows.
Adira reached for the flap of the shirt and pulled it back down over his shoulders, straightening it with a quick tug. Next she reached for his thighs and patted up toward his hips, feeling for anything in his pockets. His crackling breathing caught on something in his throat and he started to cough. She looked up to check him, watching until the subdued hacking subsided, but didn’t say anything. His face twitched with a split second of agitation as she started to look away.
It would take a miracle to get his clothes off, but she didn’t want him rolling over onto his belt buckle. Her hand fidgeted in the middle of pulling the end of the belt free from the buckle. She expected him to point out the fact she was disrobing him, and waited for him to jab or flirt with her as she started to feed his belt loose in a ring around his waist.
“You have the bedside manner of a prison w—” he trailed off and then fell silent.
The end of his belt got caught on one of the loops of his trousers, she pulled but it didn’t budge. Instead she had to squeeze her fingers between his back and the mattress, probing for it and then threading it through.
An odd noise rattled from him and she looked up. His eyes were closed and the lids fluttered delicately like butterfly wings. His head had fallen sideways, his cheek resting serenely on top of the bedsheets. The rattling sound came again as he inhaled. He was asleep, the sound a soft, congested snoring that would have mortified him if he were awake to hear it.
I'm so into apologetic sneezes. Like the excuse me, pardon, sorry something really tickles in my nose, so sorry I really can't help it. It just gets to me. It's so hot and so adorable at the same time, it drives me nuts.
I feel like I'm a character trapped in a sneezefic today, holy shit. I have an event where I need to present a research project I've been working on, but I'm sleep deprived, cannot stop coughing/sneezing, and am slowly losing my voice. I don't present until the very last panel at the end of the day, so frankly I'm terrified my voice will be completely shot by the time I have to step up to bat.
I spent all week prepping for this, will someone please tell the author of this fic I'm in to throw me a friggin' bone here? 😭
