Hello! Welcome to a very niche corner of the internet. You can call me Ghost, or I will also happily answer to Ouro. I'm not picky about pronouns, but please note that she/her pronouns are reserved for close friends.
On this blog you will find primarily sneeze fetish (yes you read that correctly, I'm so sorry) and sickfic content, but also a fair amount of whump and a lot of hurt/comfort. I lean more towards colds/illness than allergies, but by no means exclusively. Panszual, particularly as a reader, but I tend to write almost exclusively M and NB snz content. (This is a fact I genuinely lament, but the horn wants what it wants and it wants to objectify men.)
DMs and askbox are always open, but:
- I am nearly 40 years old, please behave accordingly and make smart, safe choices if you are u18
- Ideally please be 25+ to DM me
- I am not interested in snexting with strangers of any age
A masterlist of my writing can be found here — Mostly OC, but a few fandom things more recently.
Tentatively also throwing out some fandom roleplaying/co-writing interests under the cut — will update as is relevant.
(I'm down to write any of these characters in either a snzing or caretaking role and for nearly any snz cause. Generally speaking the character I've listed as my primary interest is the character I'm most interested in/comfortable writing, but I'm certainly open to swapping that around. DM me if you want to maybe throw some words together!)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Primary character of interest: Rupert Giles
Pairings of interest:
- Jenny Calendar
- Ethan Rayne
- Olivia [surname not found?]
- I am coming around to Wesley Wyndam-Price, mostly as a platonic pairing, but feel free to petition for romance
- open to platonic dynamics with the Scoobies, but I will not pair him romantically with any of them
Cabin Pressure
Character of interest: Hercules the Bercules Shipwright
Pairings:
- Carolyn
- Douglas
- Platonically with anyone else
Tolkien legendarium
Character of interest: currently Maedhros, but honestly shoot your shot, literally everyone is a babe.
Pairing: Romantically Fingon (but feel free to petition for someone else), platonically pretty much anyone that makes sense.
The Invisibles (2008 BBC miniseries)
Character of interest: Maurice Riley
Romantically I'm really only down to pair him with Barbara, but I'm also extremely down for platonic shenanigans with Syd and/or Hedley, maybe even more interested in that actually.
If there's something else you think I might be interested in certainly feel free to ask!
Fuck this god damn whole fucking world. My Nana's dead, my mom's dead, my favorite professor from college is dead, my favorite actor is dead, and now my fucking dog is dead. MY FUCKING DOG IS DEAD. Because he's a fucking idiot who likes to chase cars and my dad is shitty about tying him when he takes him to work with him and I don't know how to not be angry at him for that right now even though it's not really his fault exactly.
Fuck this god damn whole fucking world. My Nana's dead, my mom's dead, my favorite professor from college is dead, my favorite actor is dead, and now my fucking dog is dead. MY FUCKING DOG IS DEAD. Because he's a fucking idiot who likes to chase cars and my dad is shitty about tying him when he takes him to work with him and I don't know how to not be angry at him for that right now even though it's not really his fault exactly.
It feels like a particular type of heresy to be reblogging snzblr posts while sitting in the allergist's office 😅 Half expecting to be smote from the heavens or something.
Person A '...wait. *stops in tracks* I think... hhh, I think I'm going to... snffhh, snffhhh... *eyes squints, nostrils tremble, shoulders tense* ..ugh... hold on, I think... hhh, hhh... it's right, hhhh... the-therr-hhhh'RESCHschu!! *lashes forward*
Person B '...bless-'
Person A 'hhiESCHschum!!' *bends over into the crook of the arm*
Person B 'you..!' *extending a hand at person's A's back*
always obsessed with the concept of someone teetering between feeling off and unwell, without really being able to pinpoint any particular symptom. they go to rest, maybe take nap or something, and it finally hits them like a truck.
Well, we got there! Happy Holidays all, have a wreck of a violently traumatized man struggling through both injuries and the first day of a head cold, as a treat.
For context (not necessary, but potentially of interest) the events preceding this fic can be found here. Said context is extremely grim, but there's relatively little explicit mention of any of those details here.
That said – CW: superficial gunshot wounds ; blood ; police violence ; dissociation in the immediate wake of trauma ; panic attack ; implicit, non-sexual nudity (a shower occurs).
In the days, weeks, months that follow, the beats of that evening blur into a fragmented haze; sharp, crystalline moments slicing out of a nebulous, uncertain miasma – vignetted, perfectly preserved against a sort of TV static opacity.
He doesn't remember the clouds starting to break, but they must have because by the time he gets home the last tattered remnants of a bleary sunset are just distinguishable, bleeding out on what's visible of the horizon between the forest of buildings.
Don't think bleeding out. Don't think, don't think, don't think...
Evening mists shimmer in foggy halos around the street lights between pools of watery twilight – indigo and amber filling the chill air. The pain still feels remote, an intellectual awareness more than a physical one, dreamlike, like something he's only observing from a distance. Less present, less immediate somehow than the crinkle of cellophane as he tears open the pack of cigarettes, purchased in a sort of numb fugue state at the store on the corner, lighter flame guttering in the damp November breeze. Eyes watering as the first inhale thrums a delicate, tingling itch to life in his sinuses. Knuckle pressed to suddenly flaring nostrils and an all but silent stifle that sends a throbbing pulse of pressure through his skull. The world tilts, yaws, rights itself again. Dashiell closes his eyes and leans against the rough, uneven solidity of brickwork, cold against his shoulders. Another slow drag, someone shouts something somewhere in the murky, incomplete darkness across the street and he flinches.
Effi stops him in the entryway and he tries not to register the horror in her soft brown eyes, it's easier to not feel any of it if he's not seeing it reflected back at him.
Don't think, don't think, don't think...
He doesn't remember what he says to her – hollow, numb assurances that he's alright – remembers only her face, half lit by the angle of light slicing into the shadowy hall from the cafe, the tension in her voice, the need... Need to fill the empty spaces of him with something productive, something curative, assuaging. Emotional busy work. He lets her get on with it, it's easier to just let her, to let it wash over him, and leaves with a vague, foggy grasp that she's going to bring some food up for him, mounts the stairs on auto-pilot.
The tender sting in his throat merges hazily with the penetrating ache on the side of his neck until it's hard to tell one from the other. Familiar tread of worn floorboards beneath his feet, banister gliding under his palm, the flicker of the ceiling light that still hasn't been replaced stabbing into his headache like a needle. The police department branded sweats he's wearing feel stiff and scratchy with newness, but what choice had he had, his own clothes had been –
Christ, don't think.
He’s barely through the door before he’s being enveloped in a crushing double bear hug as Charlie and Alice instantly converge on him. It all feels so far away...
The pressure of their combined embrace bears down on the constellations of bruises blooming across his skin, the raw, open wounds on his arm and neck, and yet there's a part of him that doesn't want it to stop, doesn't want them to let go; there's something strangely cathartic about the coalescence of this pain and everything it symbolizes, the waking nightmare it stands as a visceral, horrifying testament to, and the overwhelming intensity of love and refuge in their arms, something almost transcendent.
When, after a moment of struggle, he manages to find his voice what comes out, somewhat unintentionally, is: "I need to take a shower…" He feels… soiled, contaminated.
And then, because it feels easier to focus on practicalities – "Effi said she'd bring some food up."
They're kind enough, restrained enough to let him go without asking most of their questions aloud, but he can see them floating in their eyes, resting in the furrows of their brows, and has to look away.
The bathroom is too bright, exposing, he avoids his reflection in the mirror, opens the medicine cabinet so that he can look instead at Excedrin, Band-aids, store brand Claritin. The cling film bunches and tears and entirely fails to cooperate as he works to tape it over the bandages to keep them dry and he should ask Charlie or Alice for help but he doesn't. He doesn't want help. Or pity. He doesn't want to see the hall of mirrors distortions of his own barely contained distress in their faces, the unasked questions that he doesn't want to think about the answers to.
He leaves the water on icy cold at first, driven by some need to shock and overwhelm his nervous system, to drown out every sensation except the frigid drum of water on his skin. He lets it wash over him until it has him shivering almost convulsively, the cold drawing out aches all over his body, until it's impossible to tolerate any longer, before gradually increasing the temperature until it's all but scalding.
And then he scrubs, scrubs like he's trying to remove an entire layer of his flesh, like he's trying to wash away even the memory of blood.
Don't think.
He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to watch the water turn pink, scrubs until his skin feels raw, careful only of the cling film wrapped bandages and the bruise on his forehead.
The steam prickles at his nostrils, sparking a crawling itch in his sinuses. He's not surprised, he's been feeling the early signs of a burgeoning cold for a few days now; a slight, but pervasive listless feeling, a headache building somewhere deep behind his eyes, and what started out last night as an unsoothable dryness in his throat, but has grown throughout today to a genuine soreness.
Here in the privacy of the shower, with the muffling effect of the cascade of water, he braces a hand against the wall to steady himself and simply lets them come.
They're breathy, and itchy, and dry, but he can feel an unpleasant reverberation of pressure deep in his sinuses with each one.
“Huh.... h'Ih'fffsshhhH! HiiHh... Hh'uh'CHHuFFF!”
One – two – an agonizing, anticipatory pause, breath hitching, eyes watering, before a third finally works its way out, scraping at the tenderness in his throat on its way.
“Uh... HhH...! Hhh'IH-h'HnntTSCHHFFF!”
He's not sure if the wave of dizziness or the wrench of pain across his neck is worse. It take him a moment to recollect himself, head bowed beneath the spray, wet curls clinging limply to his forehead, hand still braced against the tiles as the world threatens to spin.
He returns from the shower – cleaner, dressed in his own comfortingly familiar pajama bottoms and t-shirt (the oldest and softest he owns), but feeling no less like some kind of internal tether has snapped, no less numbly adrift – to find the coffee table laden with more food than he thinks he could eat in a week, let alone tonight. Avgolemono, spanakopita, moussaka, a whole plate of dolmades, a veritable mountain of baklava. She shouldn't have. She really, really shouldn't have, he's not sure he could stomach even a bowl of cereal right now.
More appealing is the glass of whiskey Charlie gently presses into his hands. Only…
"Don't think I'm s'posed to, with a concussion," He murmurs vaguely.
He probably has discharge instructions somewhere, probably in one of the pockets of the police department sweatpants, but he has no memory of having anything handed to him, the hospital is a fever dreamlike blur of florescent lights and the smell of iodine. His clearest memory is of the surreal experience of seeing himself in footage from the aftermath on the television in the exam room with the news ticker pronouncing: Police officer turned fugitive – 3 dead, more injured in shocking bloodbath.
There's a rushing, pounding sort of noise rising to fill his ears and he's struck, abruptly and incongruously – absurdly, by memories of holding a conch shell to his ear as a child. He's suddenly uncomfortably aware of the fabric of his clothes against his skin, of his skin itself, his finger and toenails, the feeling of his tongue inside his mouth.
It's the touch of Charlie's hand, excruciatingly gentle as she lays it on his arm, the sound of her voice, that draws him back.
"I think, under the circumstances, one drink probably isn't going to –" He's not sure if she catches a flicker of some kind in his eyes or if the thought occurs to her on her own, but she reroutes, once again with such gentleness that it almost hurts, "I think it'll do more good than harm right now."
He feels like her words are coming through static, like he's having to piece them together from a language he only half understands. Her eyes are so tender it aches.
"Let's just focus on getting through tonight."
He sips the whiskey, picks at some spanakopita, manages somewhat less than half a bowl of soup, a few bites of baklava, can't stomach any more and returns to nursing the whiskey. The pain is no longer a remote, ephemeral thing, it throbs against his bones, traces fire through his muscles, thrums like electricity across his skin, and when he dips into his elbow to smother another couple of ticklish, insistent sneezes he tries to move as little as possible; every incautious motion like a thunderclap openings seams in his flesh. And all the while his mind is a sort of howling void, somehow both too empty and too full.
But the whiskey helps. A little.
He fields concerned calls and texts until he can't anymore, tells them all he's going to bed and turns off his phone. But instead he goes out on the fire escape and smokes – a joint and then more cigarettes – and looks up to where he knows the stars must be, somewhere out beyond the light pollution, tries to remember what direction the Pleiades are in. Tries not to think.
When someone has a really bad cold or hayfever, and even when they're not sneezing, they look like they're about to. Eyebrows constantly pulling together, eyes narrowed with that vacant look coming and going, pink nostrils flaring/quivering, lips parted, upper lip slightly pulled up, showing a glimpse of teeth... they just look so, so sneezy, even as they go about their day.
And no wonder they look sneezy, their nose and sinuses are prickling and tickling nonstop... sometimes they tip over that tickly threshold and they sneeze. And they sneeze and sneeze. But every time they manage to stop sneezing, they still need to.
Well, here it is. In the year of our snzlord 2025 I come bearing pre-millennium fanfic.
You ever read a vanilla fic and think 'man, you really missed an opportunity'? Yeah. That's how this happened.
Also this post.
I don't know if there's any market for B//T//V//S fic here these days, but please enjoy everyone's favorite be-tweeded Watcher having a less than stellar day at work.
Set early S1. S/unnydale's previous school librarian has a lot to answer for.
Giles wrinkles his nose and scrutinizes the shelf in front of him as though it's committed a deep person offense against him. Which, in a way, it has. Or at least the person responsible for the state of it has. He's been here for months now and every day he becomes more baffled and incensed by the cataloging system employed by his predecessor. No, no - system is too generous a term for the sheer madness with which whoever held this position before him has gone about manhandling the contents of the stacks. It's as if they'd never even heard the name Melvil Dewey. Not, in Giles' opinion, the most efficient or intuitive of systems, he prefers the LCC, or even Bliss, but at least it is a system. And, he had been led to believe, the standard in America. The S/unnydale High library however is clearly the product of some sort of mental disease. Or perhaps a particularly robust acid trip judging by the complete absence of any apparent logic in where absolutely anything is in relation to anything else.
The wrinkling of Giles' nose becomes more pronounced. He sniffs, disdainful, yes - disapproving, certainly, but also - Christ...
Another bone he has to pick with his predecessor... Admittedly he's seen what depressingly little interest most of the S/unnydale students have in books, but still, lack of use is no excuse for such an abysmal lack of housekeeping. This particular shelf of - he squints at the bindings - Middle English literary verse and... the Mexican revolution (good grief ...) bears a layer of dust so thick you could wade through it. Just looking at it makes his eyes itch, not to mention -
With sudden urgency Giles jerks his hand back from the books he's been examining as if he's been singed and fumbles in his pocket for his handkerchief, his breath scissoring an uneven, staccato threat.
He spares the offending shelf a watery-eyed glare in the brief instant that's all he's graced with before his eyes squeeze shut against his will, flaring nostrils buried in soft folds that smell of laundry soap and Habit Rouge.
He tries, out of spite for the cause as much as anything, to bite down on the reflex - and realizes almost immediately what a mistake this is, a thousand microscopic feathers dancing against the walls of his sinuses could hardly spawn a more all-consuming, almost burning tickling sensation.
"h'NgXtt!-ihHh!"
The breath it wrenches from his lungs is more helpless gasp than anything else and any question of further attempts at restraint are rendered academic.
Blindly, he gropes for the shelves with his free hand, bracing himself against the merciless, inexorable onslaught of it, but of course that only serves to further disturb the long neglected mantle of dust… He barely has time to draw breath between them now - as if they're racing each other to escape, crawling over each other in their haste to rid him of the mounting irritation.
When at last he gains a (slightly breathless) reprieve his glasses have slipped down the bridge of his nose, teetering precariously near the tip. With a shaky, exasperated exhale and reflexive sniffle he readjusts them - a sharp, irascible motion, peevishly rougher than is strictly necessary - another mistake. It's hard to say if it's the traces of dust on his fingers or simply the friction of the nose piece of his glasses themselves, but it's enough to send another maddening itch tearing across the angry, inflamed membranes of his nose. With an even more exasperated groan he capitulates to it, has no choice in the matter really, and collapses back into the handkerchief, damp eyelashes fluttering against cheeks just beginning to flush a delicate, disheveled pink. Exertion, embarrassment, pique - it's hard to say. He can only be grateful there's no one there to see any of it. A thoroughly undignified display all around.
The sound that escapes him in the wake of it is embarrassingly close to a whimper.
He should not, he feels quite strongly, need to take an antihistamine tablet in order to come to work. Inside. Far from the proximity of even the faintest whiff of pollen, or hay, or violently chintzy scented candles. … Alright, the latter is more likely to be found inside than out, but not, generally speaking, in high school libraries, he should still be safe here.
He's going to start submitting his pharmacy receipts to Principal Flutie… But first he's going to make himself a strong cup of tea, find something cool and damp to press against his eyes, and imagine the serene, well organized stacks of the Bodleian. Even the University College with it's - he all but shudders - Garside classification, would be better than this. At least they have the decency to dust once a century or so.
Oh God, he's going to sneeze again…
Maybe he should just go home, what's the worst that could happen if he takes an afternoon off after all, the end of the world? Yes... well… quite.
Giles groans and fishes his handkerchief back out, just in time. Maybe the end of the world wouldn't be so bad actually.
Based on recent real-life events: I love when people comment on their partner’s allergies, sort of speaking for them! Like, the person with allergies sneezes and their partner goes “He has hayfever, it’s pretty bad today” or something.
Also love how people respond to their partner’s allergies if they are super used to them. Like saying Bless You after every sneeze, but sort of casually or bored or even with a slight hint of exasperation?? And this goes on for multiple weeks each year??!
It feels silly to be genuinely devastated by the death of an actor, someone I had no personal connection with, but fuck man. Giles. And so many other characters and performances that have brought me immeasurable joy over the years. Hands down the best Frankenfurter I've seen — like, life changing lol. And just from all accounts a genuinely lovely person. I'm gonna go sob into a cup of tea if anyone needs me.
