Sick Day (Ghostbusters 2016, Holtzmann)

[Chanel_no5]

***Note***

So, this is my part in a fic trade with @AnonyMouse, who thought this should be posted on the forum, so I oblige.  

***

”I know Holtzy lives for the job, but we don’t want her to die for it, do we?” Patty asked as Holtzmann surfaced from the scrap heap where she got material to build her outlandish weapons and machines. The blonde, who even on a good day looked a bit ruffled, was a complete mess. Her jumpsuit was crumpled as if she had been sleeping in it – for all Patty knew she had – her hair was a tousled mess, and even the layers of dust and oil smeared in her face couldn’t hide the dark circles around her eyes or the prevalent redness around her nostrils. As if to further stress Patty’s words, Holtzmann doubled over with a harsh, hollow coughing fit that shook her slender frame like a leaf in a storm. The cough set off a raw, scraping pair of sneezes that she let fly with no attempt to cover.

Patty gave Abby and Erin a pointed look.

“Know what I’m sayin’?” she asked.

Abby shrugged.

“I’ve told her twice that she can stay home if she needs a sick day. She doesn’t listen. And Erin refuses to go anywhere near her.”

“I just happen to be very susceptive to respiratory viruses,” Erin said. “I catch everything.”

“You would, lecturing at universities,” Abby remarked. “It’s like the adult version of kindergarten. Less risk here when there’s just the four of us.”

“HaatSHHHuu!”

The sheer force of the sneeze took Holtzmann by surprise and she doubled over, then remained in that position for a few seconds while shaking her head. “Whoa, just imagine the abs I’ll get after this,” she muttered mostly to herself, grinned and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“That depends if someone here is sick,” Erin said and tried to hold her breath in case some of the escaped viruses decided to come her way. Instead, the virus-carrier herself did.

“We need to try out the new trap guns, I’m not sure if I got the nuclear device on right, and… huheeSSHH! Sorry Erin.”

Erin took two steps backwards to avoid the spray, and stumbled into Patty. Patty caught her by the arms just as she was about to fall onto the floor.

“Erin, calm down. It’s just a cold. Okay, I admit it’s a bad one, but it’s not like it’s Ebola or anything.”

Holtzmann got a faraway look in her eyes at the mention of the deadly virus.

“I wonder if it were possible to engineer some kind of virus to kill off ghosts… I need to look into ghost biology. It might be possible. Depends on the plasma.” She sniffled absently.

“Ghosts can’t get sick, they’re already dead,” Patty said. “And you look like you’re half-way there yourself, baby. Why don’t you go home?”

Abby cleared her throat and said in a low voice:

“Her home is actually even more of a scrap heap.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Patty said and rolled her eyes. “Alright, you come home with me then, Holtzy.”

Holtzmann didn’t seem to hear her at all. She stood there, lost to the world while connecting dots inside her brilliant but crazy mind. Her normally pale skin was flushed with fever underneath the layers of dirt, almost as if her face and neck had been splashed with paint, and the wings of her nose were beyond pink, having long since entered the colour spectra of red. It was all that absent-minded nose-rubbing, the desperate sneezing and the pointless nose-blowing. She looked awful. But yet, even with the glassy look of fever glazing her eyes, there was still a glimmer of her trademark “fuck you if you can’t take a joke”-stare underneath.

“Come on girl,” Patty said. “Whatever mad invention you’re thinking about, it can wait until tomorrow. Even you can’t go on without a break.”

It was as if this permission made Holtzmann revaluate how she truly felt, because all of a sudden, the mad light vanished from her eyes and her shoulders slumped as if she abruptly realised how very tired she was.

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

“Finally,” Patty sighed. “Guys, I don’t want to take her on the subway, so can we take the company’s car?”

“You mean the hearse?” Abby said with her usual tactfulness. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll make her feel much better.”

“It’s Jillian Holtzmann we’re talking about,” Patty reminded her.

 “Can I lie in the back?” Holtzmann asked and grinned. “I can re-enact a c-corpse… hehh… hehhESSHHheuh! HatSSHh-uh!”

Abby nodded at Patty.

“Good point.”

“Baby, corpses don’t make a lot of noise. You don’t qualify right now,” Patty said.

Holtzmann appeared to seriously consider this, but it turned out she was really just wrestling with yet another sneeze. Her irritated nostrils began to flare as her eyelids fluttered closed, and she took several deep, gasping breaths to get enough air to fuel a rather violent outburst.

“HeeetSS-“

One that changed its mind halfway, and Holtzmann groaned out loud as it failed her, leaving only partial satisfaction behind.

“That was like being cheated out of an orgasm!” she complained and rubbed her nose vigorously.

“Now I’m definitely not letting you lie in the back of the car, God knows what you’d be doing then,” Patty said and shook her head, but she was grinning. “Come on, let’s go.”

***

“So, welcome to Patty’s!” Patty said with obvious enthusiasm as she let Holtzmann into her apartment. “House rules include no carrying or creation of nuclear devices.”

“Damn, no fun, then,” Holtzmann replied hoarsely, with her hands deep into her pockets.

“Exactly. I hope you’re not hiding anything ‘fun’ in your pockets,” Patty said, and Holtzmann’s face lit up with a naughty grin, but before she could crack a joke – probably of the NSFW kind – she started coughing, a raw, scraping cough that sounded like it hurt.

“You’re really feeling worse than you want to let on, aren’t you?” Patty asked when Holtzmann was able to catch her breath. The blonde made a sound of agreement between the hacking.

 “Why don’t you go and take a hot shower, and I’ll line up the emergency cold supplies,” Patty suggested. “The towels are fresh and there’s a bathrobe you can borrow.”

“Awesome,” Holtzmann said, in a wavering, raspy voice that would soon bail on her altogether. At least that was what Patty thought, until the shower started running, and Holtzmann began to… sing? Rap? It was inconclusive what it could be called, but it was punctuated with harsh coughing fits and violently wet sneezes, all of which she let out without abandon. In fact, it sounded almost like she added some extra oomph to it, but that could just have been the acoustics.

Do all sounds in my shower magnify that much? Patty wondered. Aw hell no, that was way too embarrassing to think about, so she pushed the thought aside.

***

When Holtzmann came back out, she was fresh and clean, and had even managed to get rid of the oil lodged deep underneath her fingernails, but in exchange it seemed the hot, steamy shower had allowed her cold to speed up and the symptoms to intensify.

The moment the colder, drier air in the apartment hit her, she sneezed five times in rapid succession and her nose began to stream. She had complained about being stuffed up earlier, but at the moment all that congestion had loosened up and tried to escape her tortured nose at once, almost drowning her in the process. And it tickled and burned the already assaulted lining of her nose, to the point where she wondered if it was ever going to stop.

“HatSHHuh! AeeTSHHH! TSCHOoo! HUhptSHHH! AaaeeeSHHH!”

“Bless you.”

“Ughh,” was Holtzmann’s only response and she threw herself into the soft sofa where Patty was already seated.

“I thought a shower would make you feel better, but you actually look worse,” Patty said. Holtzmann hung her head and sniffled miserably. She wasn’t sure if she was just hot from the shower or if the fever had indeed spiked, but she suspected the latter. Her entire body hurt, and she felt uncannily weak and feeble.

Patty put a bottle of cold meds in front of her.

“Just don’t overdose it, I can only imagine you high on this crap,” she warned.

“Thanks Patty,” said Holtzmann and took a swig straight from the bottle. Patty regarded her for a moment, considered repeating the warning, then decided that what the hell. How much worse could it get with Holtzy doped up on cold meds, on top of everything else?

***

Much, much worse, as it turned out. But in a hilarious and sort-of adorable way. It was debatable if the medicine did anything to help with the fever, which seemed to soar – she was flushed, sweaty and heat radiated from her as if she was a human oven – but it certainly improved her mood. Maybe a bit too much.

“Man, I feel like a sweaty slug,” she said with a dopey grin.

“You’re starting to spread out like one,” Patty said. “How can anyone as skinny as you take up so much room?”

Rather than taking the hint and keep her limbs to herself, Holtzmann sprawled out over an even wider area of the sofa, an impossibly wide area.

“What are you, girl?!” Patty exclaimed when Holtzmann stretched her leg out so she could poke Patty in the side with her foot. “Some kind of octopus?”

Holtzmann leaned her head back and laughed, coughed, and then laughed again.

“Yeah, I think the cold meds gave me superpowers so I can turn into a…” she inhaled sharply as a sudden and overwhelming need to sneeze invaded her nose, froze with her head tilted back and her mouth dropped open… and then exhaled when the sneeze danced away from her. “…a humanoid octophhh-huhUSSHhuh!”

She blinked, dazed as if the sneeze had taken her by surprise, even though the false start should have been enough advance warning.

“Bless you,” Patty sighed and pretended to wipe spray off her face. “Wanna try aiming those into a tissue next time?”

Holtzmann sniggered as if Patty had been cracking a particularly good joke and wiggled into the pillows like an earthworm.

“Aw man,” Patty said and started laughing too. “You got drunk on those meds, didn’t you?”

Holtzmann rubbed the underside of her red, twitching nose and nodded.

“Oh yeah baby, I’m floating on fucking clouds and I feel awesome! HUhhhISSHheuh! Except I feel like I have to sneeze ahhh… all the t-time… ehh… hehhATSHhuh! But I kind of like that feeling. It’s so… s-so, so… heh… ehh… satTSHHhuu! satisfyISSHHoo! SatiSSH-kTSCHuu!”

“Satisfying?” Patty filled in. “Holtzy, you are weird as shit.”

“I’b serious!”

“No, you’re sick and drugged, and the worst part is that I think you’d be just like this even without the meds.”

“HaRESSCHuu!” Holtzmann sneezed so forcefully her entire body snapped forward. “Whoa, I feel like I might pass out. Fuck, that felt amazing!”

“You’re delirious,” Patty said.

“Yeah, that’s why it feels amazing…” Holtzmann said with a sigh of content and emptied the bottle of cold meds in three gulps. She wiped her mouth and leaned back against the pillows with a pleased (or maybe just drugged) expression. She seemed to have run out of steam once and for all, and her eyelids kept falling shut.

“Now I’m positive you will end up passing out.”

“So am I,” Holtzmann slurred with a silly smirk and curled up into a ball of stoned and feverish sleepiness. Patty was equally astonished by how small she could get when she wanted to.

“You’re kind of like a kitten, Holtzy,” Patty told the ball of Holtzmann as she put a blanket over her. “Wreaking complete havoc when you’re awake, but almost annoyingly cute when you’re asleep.”

Holtzmann’s only reply was a tiny, kitten-like snore, that only seemed to confirm Patty’s conclusion. Patty smiled and stroke her back gently.

“Sleep tight, sweetie.”

 ***   

[SneezyHolmes]

Granted I haven't seen this movie before, this was a great read!  

[Anonymouse]

3 hours ago, SneezyHolmes said:

Granted I haven't seen this movie before, this was a great read!  

Oh, you must!

I love this so much. I think I threw enough words at you to get that point across. So I'll just sign off with one more heartfelt THANK YOU!