Movie Marathon (2/?)

[noroomfordoubt]

Not a ton of sneezing in this first part, but it'll pick up in Part 2, promise!

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"I miss you, Ruby," Izzy said, leaning closer to where her phone screen showed her girlfriend's smiling face, clean and ready for bed, as if unaware she was even doing it. "I'm glad you kicked ass at your presentation today, but a whole week is way too long for a business trip."

"I - sngfh! - miss you too, sunshine," Ruby responded, swiping at her nose absentmindedly. "But I'll be back tomorrow, and the very first thing we're doing is-"

"The horror marathon at the local theater!" Izzy interjected, unable to let her girlfriend finish her sentence as she vibrated with excitement. "Only time to see a horror marathon on the big screen outside of Halloween season!"

"I can't wait, Iz," Ruby responded sincerely, rubbing again at her twitching nose. Sngfh!

"You feeling okay?" Izzy asked softly, leaning closer still to the screen to thoroughly assess her girlfriend's face through the fuzzy connection. She looked a little pale under the harsh corporate hotel lights, now that Izzy was looking properly; except for the tip of her long nose, which was turning slightly pink from the repeated rubbing.

"I'm fine, sunshine," Ruby responded, an unwitting chuckle escaping her at her unintentional rhyme. Izzy, despite her best efforts to remain focused on her girlfriend's health, smiled along with Ruby's laugh automatically, the way she'd been doing since the moment Ruby had walked into her life two years earlier and turned her world on its head. "It's probably the cleaning products they use here, or maybe the different allergens out West."

"You look pretty pale, love... that doesn't seem allergy related. Plus you never sleep well at hotels, and the stress of the presentation probably didn't help your immune system..."

"Oh sure, call me out on how I look without makeup under industrial lighting," Ruby chuckled again, rolling her eyes without any real bite.

"Please, you know I can't take my eyes off you, even if you turn into the Corpse Bride-"

"Maybe we'll see that one tomorrow!" Ruby was the one to cut her girlfriend off this time, hoping to distract Izzy from this line of questioning and redirect her towards more pleasant topics.

"I'm not really sure 'Corpse Bride' is considered horror. I mean, you were able to watch without hiding behind your hands, so it must not have been too sca-"

"Hih-gtdssch!"

"Honey..."

"Sunshine, I promise I'm okay," Ruby repeated, grabbing a tissue from somewhere out of the frame and using it to massage her nostrils between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. "I'm a little tired and I have a runny nose. It's no big deal. I'll be home tomorrow, we'll go to the movie marathon, you'll feel better."

"The problem is that I genuinely feel fine, so I can't imagine why we would be focused on how I'm feeling," Izzy was the one to roll her eyes this time, amazed as ever by her thoughtful-to-a-fault girlfriend even as she watched Ruby's nose threaten to drip again.

"So do I, so we cad take sobe tibe to thidk about you," Ruby responded sweetly, bringing her used tissue back to her nose and blowing softly. "There, that's better," she said, smiling when she heard that her voice was clear again. "Anyway, my love, I have an early flight, so I'm gonna go get some sleep, okay? I love you, I can't wait to see you tomorrow." She gave her nose a final swipe and blew Izzy a kiss through the camera.

"I love you too, Rubes. Get some rest, I'll see you tomorrow," Izzy responded, choosing not to remark on how early it was on the West coast, or the momentary congestion that had overtaken her girlfriend, and ending the call before throwing the covers back and hopping out of her appropriately timed East coast bed. She had a trip to the grocery store to make before Ruby got home.

[JustReading]

Can't wait for part 2

[Wirescrossed]

Looks exciting!

[Likesn]

A nice start.

[AceUpYourSleeve]

I can sense where this is going, and I like it 😉

[noroomfordoubt]

Thanks everybody! Hope y'all enjoy Part 2 - with apologies to you all for any spoilers of this movie, even if Izzy doesn't seem to feel too apologetic about them lol.

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Izzy stood on her toes to see above the crowds milling around the theater, craning her neck although she had no real idea which direction Ruby would be coming from. Ruby's flight had been delayed and she had insisted on meeting Izzy at the theater, unwilling to make her horror-loving girlfriend miss even a moment of the first screening. Pretty good turnout, she thought absently to herself as she scanned the crowd, there must be more of a year-round market for horror than the film industry would like us to believe!

“hih-Gttsch!" echoed behind Izzy, jolting her out of her internal monologue about the ills of the film industry, and she whirled around to find her girlfriend walking towards her, looking distinctly worse for wear, but giving Izzy a genuine smile when their eyes met. Ruby was still in her black suit, Izzy's favorite on her, but in place of the usual confident workplace swagger that went with the suit, she looked rumpled and somehow deflated, as if the plane had depressurized her whole self upon landing. Her hair was frizzy, natural curls framing her face wildly (also Izzy's favorite, but a far cry from her usual business straightened sleekness), and she was wearing her glasses, which she usually wouldn't be caught dead in outside of their apartment.

"Hi, sudshide," Ruby croaked, letting go of the handle of her suitcase to put her arms limply around Izzy's neck - a far cry from Ruby's usual post-business trip greeting, which usually involved a little squealing and maybe some picking Izzy up and swinging her around, depending how long Ruby had been gone. As Izzy's arms automatically went around her girlfriend's waist in response, she noticed the slight heat radiating off Ruby's forehead as it dipped into the curve of her neck, the frames of her glasses bumping at Izzy's collarbone.

"Bless you, honey. Welcome home," Izzy murmured, rubbing Ruby's back as the theater doors opened and the crowds around them began to pour into the building, eager to find the best seats. Ruby, noticing the movement around them, pulled back from Izzy and grabbed her suitcase, then put her other hand out for her girlfriend's.

"I'b surprised at you, Iz - you're dorbally the first ode id the doors for this. I doe how seriously you take your gore viewidg adgles," Ruby teased, sniffling hard rather than drop either her suitcase or the hand she had stretched out for Izzy.

"I was thinking maybe we would go home," Izzy countered, taking the hand Ruby offered, but not moving towards her.

"Why would we do that? We've had these tigkets for bodths," Ruby frowned, letting go of the suitcase to rub the back of her other hand under her twitching nose.

"Maybe because when you say 'months' it sounds like 'bodths'?" Izzy asked, cocking her head at her girlfriend's false confusion. "Bless you," she added preemptively, as Ruby stifled a sneeze into the back of her hand before she could respond.

"Thadks," Ruby grumbled, finding a crumpled tissue in the pocket of her blazer and dropping Izzy's hand so she could use both of her own to blow her nose thoroughly, then giving Izzy a more energetic smile when she had finished. "You're sweet, Iz, but I think I can handle sitting through a movie. That's what we'd be doing at home anyway, right? And this is your favorite event of the year."

"Sure, but at home you wouldn't be sitting up straight and wearing a suit," Izzy replied, hoping her tone was persuasive. "And this might be my favorite event, but you're my favorite person, so."

"Lucky you that you get to have both then," Ruby replied, offering Izzy her hand again, then turning her head to cough into her shoulder. "Now come on, before all the good views of the gore are gone."

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Izzy dragged her eyes away from the screen to glare at the person two seats over from her. He didn't notice, because he was too busy glaring at Ruby, sitting between them and sniffling for probably the fifth time in the fifteen minutes since the movie had begun.

"Honey, just blow your nose. Maybe it'll give you a minute of peace," Izzy whispered, squeezing her girlfriend's thigh comfortingly.

"I dod't - sngfh! - deed to," Ruby whispered back, rolling her eyes at Izzy with less bite than the guy on her other side was giving her. "Dow hush, or you're godda biss the first burder."

"Seriously?" interjected the guy on her other side, leaning forward to make eye contact with Ruby. "The sound effects weren't enough, now you gotta spoil the movie too?"

"This movie came out in 1984," Izzy whispered back, putting an arm protectively around her girlfriend as Ruby wilted under his frustration. "If you haven't seen it before you're not a real horror fan."

The guy let out a quiet huff, then settled back into his seat, noticing that their whispered argument was attracting more attention than Ruby's sniffles initially had. Just as Izzy was thinking about letting out a triumphant "that's what I thought," she felt her girlfriend take a shallow gasp, then turn into her chest at an awkward angle over the arm rest between them as she fumbled for the used up tissue in her pocket.

"HihGDDTSCHIih! HehGIDTTSCHIIHh!" Ruby stifled into Izzy's chest, not having found her tissue in time, and then let out a whisper of a groan as she pressed her face further into Izzy in a silent apology. Izzy squeezed her tighter and pressed a kiss into the back of her hair, trying to convey that it wasn't a problem in the way that would attract the least possible attention to her already embarrassed girlfriend, and passed her a napkin, cursing her lack of forethought to bring Ruby extra tissues. Ruby gave her a grateful smile, then sat back up and refocused on the screen, running the napkin under her nose as Izzy grabbed for another to discreetly wipe her shirt off.

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By the time Freddy got to Glen, Izzy was running out of napkins to pass Ruby and had given up on cleaning her shirt off in order to prioritize all of the napkins for the seemingly unending flow of mucus from Ruby's nose. "HehhGINHNGxt! Heh... iGNxt!" Ruby stifled fiercely into the remnants of one of her napkins, clenching her thumb and index finger tightly around her nostrils, visibly pink even in the dark of the theater. Izzy put her hand back on Ruby's thigh, trying to convey as much silent support and comfort as she could to her girlfriend despite her clear misery. Ruby smiled at her weakly when she felt Izzy's hand land on her leg, picking at the remnants of the rough, shoddy napkin. Izzy jerked her head towards the exit, trying to convince her girlfriend without words that they should finally go home. Ruby wrinkled her brow in equally silent incredulity, then shook her head determinedly. Izzy shook her head back in exasperation, but allowed herself to be drawn back into the movie. A collective gasp went up in the theater as Nancy started to run on screen, and Izzy felt Ruby stiffen beside her, then reach for her hand, dislodging it from her own thigh. Izzy smiled slightly - Ruby had seemed too distracted by her nose to be fully immersed in what they were watching up to this point. 

As fire appeared on screen, the tension in the audience escalated to another gasp by the room at large. Ruby, however, was gasping for an entirely different reason.

"D-dapkid-" she stuttered quietly, looking at Izzy with a wide eyed panic Izzy would have normally associated with her girlfriend's reaction to what was happening in the movie. Izzy's own eyes widened and she looked helplessly at both of their laps to realize they had used them all, then shook her head. Ruby's eyes got still wider and she roughly pinched at her flaring, dripping nostrils, attempting to to prevent what appeared inevitable. Izzy quickly pulled her girlfriend back into her chest even as Ruby's head jerked back, then snapped forward into Izzy, no longer able to stifle. “EhTISHIEWW! EhnNTSCHIEWWw! EgTCHIEW! IhGTSCHUHHh! EKTSCHUUH! KTSCHIEW! Hih… h-hih… HuhINGTSCHIEWWw!”

Amid the stunned looks of their fellow movie goers, many of whom appeared to have missed the climax of the film, Ruby lifted her face from Izzy's chest, keeping her hands firmly tented over her nose and mouth, and stepped over the legs of the man next to her, who had stopped glaring in favor of leaning as far away from Ruby as he could get, and made a run for it out of the theater. Izzy grabbed their purses and then, stooped to block her neighbors' views as little as possible, followed, whispering apologies as she went.