Flower Crowns And Festivals (female, allergies, F/F) oneshot

[Chanel_no5]

***Note***

Wrote this on a prompt combo on tumblr. The prompt was Flower crown + intentional. I had to tweak it a little with the intentional part since neither of them have the fetish, but I think it worked quite well. Sorry if there are any glaring mistakes; I tried to proofread but it's almost 4 am and I'm exhausted, and wanted to post before I go to bed. So I'm gonna take a chance, lol. 

Comments appreciated, as always.  

***

For summer vacation this year, Linda and Savannah had decided to spend two whole weeks in San Francisco, and today was the day of a Music And Arts Festival, which was held at a lovely outdoors venue with a natural amphitheatre in a massive forest clearing. One of the arts exhibits offered intricate flower crowns, which Linda completely fell in love with. Savannah, excited to make her wife happy, bought them one each.

“Fairy queens,” she joked as they continued to see the rest of the festival. A folk music band was on stage, playing a music tribute to Kate Wolf, people strolled about, looking at exhibitions, listened to music, joined workshops. Savannah spotted two young men, who were laughing and joking around, and then kissed each other. Right there. And no one seemed to care.

Savannah wasn’t brave enough to kiss her wife in public, not even in San Francisco, but seeing the two men so openly show their love, made her brave enough to sneak her hand into Linda’s, lacing their fingers together.

Linda smiled and squeezed her hand gently.

“Brave girl,” she whispered.

“Safe place,” Savannah replied. “Or so I hope.”

“Still brave,” Linda said. Savannah smiled.

“How about we get something to eat? It’s almost lunchtime.”

“Good idea,” Linda said, and they slowly made their way towards the food vendors. They had discussed whether to bring picnic food, but ultimately decided to buy food on site.

Savannah didn’t want to alert Linda, because she’d only get worried, but she was starting to feel itchy. True, this festival was outdoors, and in a forested area, but it wasn’t tree pollen season – the time of year that never failed to trigger her hayfever – and there were no lawns being mowed anywhere near the area.

Savannah wasn’t allergic to flowers in general, only to very specific types, so the flower crown she wore didn’t even cross her mind as the culprit to begin with. The flowers she had seen hadn’t given her any concern. What she didn’t know was that a layer of various wildflowers was placed right beneath the fancier ones, to make it look more lush and thick, and among those wildflowers were some that Savannah’s nose did not get along with. Their scent mixed with the others into a sweet concoction, impossible to tell which part of the scent tickled her nose, and pollen kept dripping down into her hair and face, little by little, getting into her eyes and into her nose, and there it quietly began attacking her. It wasn’t the dry, flight-prone pollen of airborne pollinating plants, but a thicker, heavier kind that relied on bees to spread… but squeezed in between other flowers and continuously roused as she moved, even this pollen escaped their floral home and easily descended upon the allergic woman unknowingly carrying it.

Savannah didn’t know any of this yet, only that her nose was feeling a bit itchy and her eyes watered, and she brought her free hand up and gave her nose a quick rub. That only seemed to make the itch worse, and she only held out a few seconds before she had to rub it again, a bit firmer and longer this time. When she lowered her hand again, she sniffled. It wasn’t a snotty sniffle, but it was decidedly liquid-sounding, and it caught Linda’s attention.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Savannah managed a smile, as if her nose wasn’t itching so much it felt like it was on fire. Rubbing it had been a severe mistake, and the only thing she could do was, well… to keep making that mistake. “Just… uh…” her breath hitched twice and she turned away from Linda and stifled two back-to-back sneezes into her right hand. “Ugh, I thought I’d be able to fight that off, sorry.”

Linda chuckled.

“Bless you!”

“Thank you.” Savannah had hoped that would be the end of it, but if anything, the fiercely contained sneezes had made matters worse. Denying her itchy nose the release it was begging for had not been a good decision. On the other hand, if this was hayfever – and it certainly felt like it – nothing could appease that need. No number of sneezes would be enough to soothe the itch, and before long she’d be a drippy mess.

But it seemed ridiculous that it would be hayfever right now, even outdoors. They’d been here since they opened this morning, it had been several hours, and it wasn’t until now that her nose started acting up, like a displeased diva. She was sniffling now. Wetly, persistently, but hopefully she wasn’t so obvious that Linda noticed.

“Okay, what do you want to eat?” Linda asked, looking around. “Tacos?”

Savannah gave her a Look, and Linda laughed.

“I’m sure they’re not overly spicy, kids are eating them,” Linda assured her.

“I don’t know… sniff… feels like children are better at handling spicy food than I am,” Savannah replied, reaching into her purse and pulling out a tissue from an open travel pack as she spoke. She let go of Linda’s hand, folded the tissue over, and blew her nose softly. “’scuse me.”

Linda frowned.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound a bit…”

Savannah kept the tissue in place over her nose and mouth and sneezed into it, not stifling this time, hoping that if she allowed herself to sneeze fully it would at least calm the tickly urge for a while.

“HuhhISSSHEW! AaahISSSHuh! Hahh-EGTSSCHIEW!”

“… allergic,” Linda finished. “Wow, bless you, baby.”

“Ugh, thank you,” Savannah sighed and blew her nose again. “And to answer your question, I’m okay. I do feel a bit allergic though.”

Linda stopped and took a closer look at her wife. Savannah’s eyes were red and slightly puffy, watery enough that her makeup was beginning to smudge. Her nose was taking on a pinkish shade too, and there was a hint of dampness glistening right underneath her twitchy nostrils.

“Just ‘a bit’?” Linda asked. “Because sorry for pointing out the obvious, but you look way more than ‘a bit’ allergic.”

Savannah’s watery eyes narrowed and then closed completely as her breath caught in her throat. The prickle in her nose was building up to yet another sneeze, and she put the used, soaked tissue over her nose and mouth, hoping to at least contain the sneeze and save her wife – and potential innocent bystanders – from getting sprayed.

“HaaayISSSHEW!”

This sneeze was more forceful than the ones before it, and her head bobbed with more force too, shaking loose even more pollen from the flowers crowning her shiny auburn hair. Flowery itching powder rained down into her face, being inhaled as she sniffled deeply trying to get herself back under control. She didn’t notice this fine powder herself, her eyes were much too watery, leaving her viewing the world through a teary kaleidoscope. Linda might have noticed the pollen falling into her wife’s face if she had been looking for it, but she was much too concerned that Savannah would end up tripping herself, so her focus was elsewhere. But then again, there wasn’t a huge amount of pollen, so she might have missed it either way.

“Bless you! What’s…?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Savannah replied in a drenched voice and sneezed again, scrambling to catch the sneeze in the now practically useless tissue. “HuuuhESSSHHUH! Oh for the love of… hahhISSSSHgghh! God, it tickles! Hahh-ggTSHEW!”

People were starting to look at her, and Savannah blushed, really not wanting to draw this kind of attention to herself, but unable to rein in this sudden allergic eruption.

Linda put an arm around her waist and started guiding her through the crowd so they could get to a more private spot, finding a nice picnic area that as of yet wasn’t flooded with visitors gathering to have lunch. A set of wooden bench/table, the farthest away from the crowd, became their refuge, and as soon as Savannah was able to sit down she immediately reached into her purse for a fresh tissue, and ended up taking the whole pack out. She blew her nose hard, then sneezed again, so violently that the flower crown tilted.

“Oh God,” she muttered under her breath and reached up – tissue crumpled into the palm of one hand – and removed the crown, putting it down on the picnic table. “I’m gonna end up sneezing this damn thing off my head anyway…” she began, then trailed off. Linda thought she was just wrestling with another sneeze, but Savannah’s itchy, watery eyes had caught sight of something she did not like to see.

“Oh, oh no,” she groaned.

“What?” Linda put a hand on her arm. “Talk to me, Annie.”

Savannah would have loved to, but her nose was burning, and she was already gasping for air to fuel the next sneezy outburst, so she was only able to point at the flower crown.

Linda picked it up and examined it.

“Are you allergic to any of these?” she sounded sceptical. “I see carnations, peonies, spray roses… eucalyptus for base, oh I like that… but you’re not allergic to any of those, are you?”

Savannah shook her head, pressing her tissue against the underside of her poor allergic nose, not even thinking about how she had held the flower crown while clutching the tissue in her hand, ensuring that it got doused with pollen as she took the crown off.

“… so, what…?” Linda began, but then she turned the crown over in her hands and saw what Savannah had spotted. “Ouch. Yarrow.”

Savannah was more or less allergic to everything in the aster family, and yarrow wasn’t something she really thought about – it was more difficult in general to avoid things like daisies, chrysanthemums, dahlias, that kind of flowers. Often used for decoration and bouquets.

But yarrow wasn’t something she had expected to have a run-in with.

Now Linda took off her crown too, carefully examining it, finding the same flower wedged between the more luxurious ones and the eucalyptus base. Savannah wanted to tell her it was fine, she could keep her crown, but Linda took both crowns and walked over to a mother and her young daughter who were eating an early picnic lunch several tables away. Savannah couldn’t hear the conversation, because she was too busy muffling messy sneezes into pathetic, damp tissues, but it was still obvious what Linda had done because she came back without the flower crowns, which were now adorning the mother-daughter duo instead. To Linda’s credit, she didn’t look too disappointed, only concerned about her wife’s allergic distress.

And Savannah was definitely in distress at the moment. There was only one thing worse than having an allergic sneezing fit, and that was when your allergies were so bad and you needed to sneeze so desperately, but the sneezes were firmly stuck. Building in both numbers and strength behind rosy, quivering nostrils, yet refusing to come forth.

“I h-have t-to sneeze,” she moaned, looking helplessly at Linda with tears of irritation streaming down her freckled cheeks. “But it’s -s-st… uhhh… stuck… oh Gohhd… hahh… ahhhh… arrghh, it won’t come out…!”

Slowly shaking her head, trying to look at the bright sunny sky to coax it out, attempting to sniffle to trigger that elusive sneeze, nothing worked. Savannah was caught in a torturous limbo, needing to sneeze so much that her body seemed unable to carry out the action. More watery liquid leaked out of her now-crimson nose, but she barely noticed. Her entire being was focused on that white-hot pinprick in the back of her nose, so intense, too intense…

“I c-can’t… oh Lin, what the hell do I do?” she whimpered.

Linda wasn’t someone who was at a loss of action for very long, and she wasn’t this time either. She knew Savannah probably wouldn’t like it once that dam actually burst, because then she’d sneeze like crazy, but needing to sneeze without being able to was almost worse, so Linda bent down and picked a straw of grass. Timothy grass, which she could tell from that distinct, almost brush-shaped flowerhead. This straw had already had its pollen shaken off, which was probably for the best, but when Linda brushed it gently underneath Savannah’s flaring nostrils, only giving them a feathery tickle lasting a second at most, the sneezes hiding inside her wife’s irritated nose came tumbling out like beads falling off a broken necklace.

“I’m sorry baby, please don’t kill me for that,” Linda chuckled and dropped the straw again, just as Savannah buried her flushed face into the whole wad of remaining tissues, unleashing a violent, harsh allergy fit into it. Yeah, Savannah wasn’t in condition to kill anyone over anything, at least not right now, so she felt reasonably safe.

Still chuckling a little, Linda stood up, stroked Savannah’s shoulder tenderly, and kissed the top of her head.

“Stay here. Sneeze all that nasty pollen out of your poor nose. I’ll go see if I can find us something to drink, so you can take an allergy pill. And something to eat, if you ever manage to stop sneezing long enough. Okay?”

Savannah nodded, too caught up in the allergy attack to really care about anything not directly related to the torturous antics of her dramatic nose.

“Bless you a thousand times,” Linda whispered before she walked off.

It’s nowhere near a thousand times, Savannah wanted to counter that remark with, but as the sneezes just kept coming, she had to make a mental revision to that:

Yet.

 

[starpollen]

Lovely!  Great premise.  And these two are adorable

[Chanel_no5]

10 hours ago, starpollen said:

Lovely!  Great premise.  And these two are adorable

Thank you so much! ❤️  I'm glad you enjoyed! Oh man, they're such dorks, but they're so cute together, I can't stop writing them.. 😆

 

[Chanel_no5]

Soooo... since I've had people ask me for more fics about these two, I posted this here too, cross-posted from Tumblr, doesn't seem like this particular fic was really anyone's taste though. 😂 Either way, I'm doing a fic prompt challenge on Tumblr, and only have a few prompt combos taken already, so I thought I'd ask here too. Two prompts combo. This above posted fic was flower crown + intentional. Below is a list of the prompts left that I haven't already written or plan to. So... combine two, and I'll write something on it when I have the time. This is as close to requests I do apart from trades, lol. 😆

I'll mostly be writing these two characters for these prompt challenges, but I'll also write, like, Diana from The 4400, Kath from Pine Gap, or Lou from the Netflix movie Lou, so let me know which one you want me to write for any given combo. 😅 

As for my ocs Linda and Savannah, few notes; Savannah has allergies, Linda doesn't. Neither is allergic to animals/fur. For fanfics, I'm more flexible. 😅

So, prompt list. Either comment here or send private message. First come first served. If a prompt is already taken, it's taken. ☺️ And I'll get around to it when I can. ☺️

 

Picnic

Festival/celebration

Spring cleaning

Gifting

Allergy meds/nasal spray

Diagnosis

Farm/market

Windy

Hiking/backpacking

Sports

Travel

 

[kiku]

Ooooohhhh @Chanel_no5 ... This was so wonderful to read! Your description of Savannah's sneezy nose is so delicious and hot! 🔥 😊 And I loved Linda helping her to get the stuck sneezes out by teasing her allergic nose with the timothy grass... *swoon* 🫠 ❤️

You really are an amazing writer. Keep up the great work! 👍

[SleepingPhlox]

Oh my goodness gracious.  Okay, like, the sneezing parts were very beautiful and breathtakingly well written, but the relationship bits had me melting all over the place.  Just so cute and sweet and perfect and wonderful.  I would like to very much be Linda now, please.  I love all the things you write, but this one hit particularly right. 

[AntheaHolmes]

This is a wonderful story. Amazing sneezes and adorable characters with great chemistry.