VoOs Drabbles II

[VoOs]

 

Short drabble things go here. 

 

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- "You good?" -

You’re in bed together, they the big spoon to your little spoon. They keep one of their arms tucked beneath your head like a pillow while their other arm is looped around your waist. After a couple of warm, comfortable minutes of stillness and tandem breathing, their breathing is broken up by a series of shallow sniffles and you can feel their body tense a little, then shift restlessly against yours; next thing you know they’re pressing their nose to your shoulder blade, clearly rubbing at a tickle under the guise of nuzzling you. The nudging of their nose tip is soft at first, sending pleasant goosebumps down your arms, but this gentle approach doesn’t seem to be doing the trick and they soon begin to apply more pressure, eventually flattening their nose against your neck and scrubbing back and forth, itching in earnest.

“Hey…whatcha doin back there?”

“It itches, but I don’t want to move my arms”, comes their drowsy, grumbled respons.

“On a scale from 1 to 10, how lazy… Here, let me help.”  

You turn around in the snug nest of arms and blankets so that you come face to face with your troubled Big Spoon, snaking your hand up between your entangled bodies and sliding your knuckled forefinger beneath their nostrils. A web of creases forms at the root of their nose as they scrunch it up and sniff, gingerly, their nostrils flickering at your touch.

“Like this?”

You carefully rub their septum in small, tight circles, searching in their face for a go-ahead but instead finding a worried frown, narrowed eyes misting over -

“Nnh, yeah, but a little firmer, otherwise you’re gonna make me-ehh…hh!”

“Oh.” 

You have to hold back a giggle; they do this all the time in old cartoons but does it actually work…? Can’t hurt to test it out. You stop rubbing and instead press down hard on their upper lip with your finger, waiting, intently watching as their expression flutters between surprise, ticklish alarm, and then softens into a look of almost blissful relief. Sigh. Relax. Cuddle-disrupting sneezing fit averted. For now.

“You good?”

They wiggle their nose tentatively, rabbit-like; it’s pink at the tip and nostrils, you notice now; tender-looking, sensitive -

“Still itchy”, they confirm, almost apologetic.

“What’s the matter with this thing?”, you wonder, tapping the side of their nose, caressing a finger down the considerable length of it. “It’s been a while since I dusted… longer than I care to admit. Could that be it? Or is there a cold brewing in there?”

They shrug. Then they sniffle again, blink, worry stealing back across their face.

“I… hhuh… hihHH - !”

There’s a sudden, desperate finality to that last gasp and you instantly know there’s no use in trying the same trick again. 

You twist yourself back into spooning position and brace yourself for impact.

“Oh well, I guess we’ll find out.”

 

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- Transatlantic Distractions -

“You done?”

“Ughhh, god, I fucking hope so. -snrfl- My abs are killing me.”

“11 minutes and 20 seconds.”

“What?”

“That has to be a personal record for you, at least of the one’s I’ve witnessed.”

“You…timed it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oookay? When you said you were bored, you weren’t kidding, were you?”

“Well, I’m certainly not bored anymore. You should have seen the face on the stewardess who came to offer you the napkins. And the couple sitting next to us on the other side of the isle! At one point I thought the woman was going to have to breathe into a paper bag. They all think you have the plague now.”

“Is this - snf - supposed to make me feel better, because if so…”

“Perish the thought! I’m just trying to keep myself entertained. We still have about 5 hours left ‘till we land. Would you like to know how many times you just sneezed?”

“No.”

“166 times.”

“That’s it. We’re not…h’hh… sitting together on the flight h-home …hehh!… -ahTSSHhh’ah!”

“167!”

“Shut up. And you - yes, you over there with the eyebrows - I don’t have SARS so you can stop freaking out.”

“…”

“An audition? Listen, I’m not contagious, this is… hrm, a delayed allergic reaction. Besides, no cold is going to ruin your voice. [under his breath] You can’t ruin what’s already beyond help.”

“Iso!”

“What?”

“Rude.”

“Pot. Kettle. I’m currently flying 36 000 feet above the Atlantic and some-fucking-how pollen has still managed to ruin my day. What’s your excuse?”

“Irredeemable character flaw?”

“Sounds about rih…hihh -rih’TSHHh! Ugh, please, can I be done with this nonsense already!?”

“168. 13 minutes and 3 seconds.”

“…”

 

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- self-destruct sequence initiated -

as the day progresses he comes to think of his nose as one of those self-destruct buttons in cartoons; protruding, shiny, alarmingly red, a disaster waiting to happen, an explosion ready to go off at the lightest touch of a finger

he mustn’t rub. he mustn’t sneeze. and above all, he mustn’t think about how badly he needs to do both of those things. repeatedly.furiously -

“hh…”

no. absolutely not. not going to happen. he digs his fingernails into his palm, presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth. sniffles, just once, but as sharply as he can possibly manage. anything to stop the runaway hitching in its tracks.

later, he pleads with his overzealous immune system. afterwards. once I’ve finished with this and we’re out of here, I’m fully prepared to face the consequences. but not. now.   

“ih’huh…”

god, but he is just so itchy. so unbearably impossibly itchy. from the inner rims of his nostrils all the way to the far back of his sinuses, every nerve seems to be writhing in agony. it’s like he can feel each individual pollen grain lodged in there, like a myriad of stabbing pinpricks.

another sniffle, another noseful of pollen. fuck, he hates spring. hates it with every histamine-laden fiber of his being. the next person who stops by his desk to ask him if he’s okay will get a stapler hurled at their head.

there’s nothing for it. he’s going to have to blow his nose, or else he’ll start dripping all over his keyboard. tenting a tissue over his throbbing nose, he tries to blow as gently as possible, but the slight pressure shift inside his head is still enough to send a veritable shock wave of tickles through his nasal passages and, just like that, he is done. self-destruct sequence initiated. 9, 8, 7…  

“hh’uhh…”

…6, 5, 4…

“hihHH -!”

…3, 2, 1 -

“-hd’ISCHhh! -ht’DSCHih! -h’dtTISHh!”

“Hey man, are you okay?”

 

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- Audition -

There’s ‘difficult’, and then there’s ‘trying to audition for a role while your potential director is suffering a sneezing fit’.

On the plus side, Isandro Edéll is probably as distracted as he is being distracting, and with any luck he will be too busy fighting the next importunate flurry of sneezes to notice her suddenly blushing ears, dry mouth and sweaty palms. On the downside, he probably won’t notice much of her performance at all if, against all odds, she actually manages to deliver something half-decent.

Either way, the situation isn’t exactly what you’d call ideal.

She can hear her carefully (bordering on maniacally) memorized lines coming out of her mouth, but they sound muffled and distant, as though she is overhearing someone else speaking in a nearby room. Even as her eyes remain fixed on his colleague the casting director, she can’t block out what is happening at the edge of her peripheral vision; the tall, bespectacled man to her left behind the desk, one long hand pressed to his nose, occasionally scrubbing irritably at the affected organ with a curled indexfinger but mostly just holding the hand in place like some kind of breakwater. Every twenty seconds or so, two or three stifled sneezes will force themselves through his defenses with a near-silent but pronounced full-body shudder, followed by a soft but distinctly congested exhale that could make her forget her own name, never mind half a page of emotionally complex dialogue.

She is a young Astrid… turning down her old editor’s hand in marriage, even as his child is kicking in her womb… she will be an unmarried mother, in the 1920′s, disgraced, alone, but she’s never going back to that man, she’d rather be dead, she… she -

He sniffles, a thin, damply ticklish sound, and removes his hand to instead squeeze his nose between the folds of a tissue and, oh god, her Smalandian accent is slipping, isn’t it?

“Goodbye, Reinhold”, she says, with the finest mixture of dignity and vulnerability she can convey, and with this she’s finally reached the end of the scene but that doesn’t mean she can stop acting.

Next, she has to act neutral as the director interrupts himself in the middle of the standard 'thank you, we’ll let you know' speech with a harsh gasp and three even harsher sneezes, itchy desperation in every tightly clenched syllable:

“aegshh! ah’esch! aehngxhhah!” 

Then she has to act as though blessing him doesn’t make her feel like she’s having some sort of out-of-body experience.

Finally, she has to act politely concerned as she asks him if he’s alright, finishing off with a downright award-worthy interpretation of a Normal Person while the casting director gives her half-amused, half-sympathetic explanation:

“No, no, he isn’t, and he probably won’t be for another month or so, will you, Iso? Pollen season.”

He rolls his eyes, still sniffling behind his tissue.

“Don’t remind me. The birches are out to get me, I’m afraid. I do apologize, but I have to say you did very well, even with m-mehh… heh’nxgh! Ugh. Sorry. Even with me interrupting you.” 

“Thank you,” she squeaks, her Normal Person smile still plastered across her face. “It was nice meeting you both. Bye!” 

Wobbly legs, out the door, walking quickly through the studio lobby she’s ninety-nine percent convinced she’s just given a career-worst performance and can kiss Astrid goodbye. The remaining, foolish one percent hopes they won’t be doing any shooting in spring because there’s ‘difficult’, and then there’s ‘trying to do your childhood hero justice while your director is being… distracting’.

One call-back and eleven months later, she’ll learn to deal with it.

 

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- Code Red -

By the time she returns to their bedroom to check on him the worst of the storm seems to have passed; the attack has slowed to a crawling pace, causing him to dip forward with heavy, curiously drawn-out sneezes and then heave himself upright again, unfailingly with his eyes still closed and his face lined with exhausted irritation as the tickle still lingers, rooted so deep in his sinuses that no amount of sneezing, blowing nor rubbing can shake it loose. The second he’s finished one sneeze his breath is already snagging and hitching in preparation for the next, but now it builds maddeningly slowly, holding him in its grip for thirty seconds or longer during which he can do nothing but gasp, exhale, gasp, exhale, chest rising and falling helplessly, tear-streaked face tilted further and further back, his nostrils - oh, his poor nostrils - flaring to their widest limit as the need teases him mercilessly, waxing and waning but never actually going away.

She knows he hasn’t called in from work. It hasn’t even crossed his mind, even though he has barely gotten any sleep and he’s already ten minutes late. In his mind, calling in from work is something you do when you’re laid up with a 40°c fever and, let’s be honest, even then you’re still being kind of a wuss, and you’re certainly not taking yourself seriously as an artist. Hayfever is something you complain about, loudly and profusely, but it’s not something you let yourself be defeated by. You’re not ill; your immune system is merely throwing a tantrum. It’s a bloody nuisance but the show must go on. 

Another couple of sneezes roll through him, and she can practically hear his energy draining with each deep, almost growling release. He is swaying lightly where he stands, a redheaded beanpole in well-worn pajama pants, his wrist pressed to a nose so red and inflamed it seems to emit visible heat. He looks so itchily uncomfortable, so utterly worn out. Her heart can’t bear it.

Then he tries to speak and it is the last straw. The show is just going to have to go on without him.

“I’m gonnahh - hh! - have to take a taxi. I’b a fucki’g traffic hazard. -snff-   Can’t drive like thiihh… th-this…“

“Yeah, no, you’re not going anywhere.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but she has already dialed the number, brought her phone to her ear - 

“Hello, Yvonne? We got a code red here. We’re talking painfully red. Like he got into a fist fight with a birch and lost spectacularly. Yeah… okay, great! Thank you. Bye!”

A pause.

“Vonn’s going to hold the fort.“

He glares at her, but behind the watery, red-rimmed indignation there’s a glint of gratitude as well. This way, he can pretend the whole thing was out of his hands. 

“Shower?“ she suggests.

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.“

His sure-to-be-witty comeback is lost in another series of stuttering gasps.

 

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[Anonymouse]

I love the "guess we'll find out" comment in the first one... does that mean you can tell by their sneezes what might be troubling them?  I love how you left it ambiguous in gender, appearances, what triggered the itch, even sneeze sound, so the reader can plug in whatever combinations they feel like reading in that moment.

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caressing a finger down the considerable length of it.

Reported for lewd content.  

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Ughhh, god, I fucking hope so. -snrfl- My abs are killing me.”

I love comments like this because it really speaks to the physicality of the sneeze. Or I guess in this case the sheer frequency of it.

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“Shut up. And you - yes, you over there with the eyebrows - I don’t have SARS so you can stop freaking out.”

 What does this even mean? Is it like "Hey, you there, with the face" or did the individual he was addressing have somehow remarkable eyebrows?

I'd like to meet the allergic gentleman in number three... and I love how the director in the fourth one waited until she finished to let them out. 

I am very excited about this thread!

[CLG]

I'm dying. I've been a lurker on here for a while and your writing is just so good. I particularly loved Audition, but all of these are just perfect. Thank you so much for sharing, omg.

[queenie]

Oh, these are lovely. I don't know how I missed them! Iso is a real gem. 

[VoOs]

let the cross-posting commence. 

- morning - 

you watch their face in the morning. at first a blank canvas. peaceful and soft in sleep. then, reliable like clockwork, the tiny crease appears between their brows, and they do that circular squirming motion with their mouth and nose. just once at first. pause. the tiny brow crease deepens to a frown. lips pursed, nose scrunched ever so slightly, around they go again. and again. their nostrils flare and relax, flare wider, relax, flare even wider and stay flared as their lips finally part to let the first, fluttering gasp into their lungs -

“hh'ih…”

their eyelids flicker. something like confused worry pass over their face, their consciousness still trapped in sleep but floating closer to the surface with each second. you focus on their nose then, shamelessly caressing it with your eyes if not your fingers. not just yet. tracing the modest length of the bridge, the softly upturned tip, the elegant oblongs of their nostrils that are visibly twitching now, still flared with both tension and swelling. a light sweet pink and shine to the outer curves. beautiful. and so, so tickly.

“hh… nnh…”

one of their hands escapes the warmth of the blankets and they scrub it back and forth across their nose, producing a damp, clicking noise as their nostrils are pushed first one way, then the other. it seems to help. they sigh with drowsy relief, relax and begin to lower their hand, only to quickly raise it again a second later, working their knuckles under their nose again with even more fervor than before, upper lip drawn into a frustrated grimace.

so, so, so tickly.

“hih…!?”

they seem to freeze for a long moment. sleep-tousled head reared back and pressing deep into the pillows, mouth hanging open, eyebrows forming an upside-down ‘v’ of pained anticipation as their hand hovers limply in front of their face, prepared to catch what’s looking to be a harsh awakening.

you reach out, run one outstretched finger down their nose, ending with a gentle tap at the quivering tip.

their eyes fly open - “wha…? hhHHIH -!” - fully awake at last, and hit with the unfiltered force of a whole night’s accumulation of pollen and dust, not to mention the bright morning sunlight peeking through the blinds.

even after that final, desperate gasp, they don’t seem to have enough air to fuel the first sneeze that bursts out of them, a short, deafeningly sharp detonation in the still morning quiet.

“AAKGSHiuh!!”

the first of many, many to follow.

you couldn’t ask for a better start to your day.

[MyOwnPrivateSFC]

I continue to love this!

[PennyLane]

I love them ALL