Original Writer's Block - Complete. Updated Jan 25, 2020 ("Starpollen's Sandbox")

[camillapapen]

I keep coming back to this. It's so perfect. I'd do anything for more!

[Coffee Mug]

How on earth did I miss this? It is my idea of perfection 😍 

And I have a stutter fetish so it’s a double win for me 💜 love it!! 

[starpollen]

I had promised an Epilogue, and - lo and behold, a very long time later - here it is.  

Hope you enjoy! ☺️

=====================================

Epilogue 

Fingers tapped furiously across the computer keys, dancing with lightning speed.  Words appeared unerringly on the laptop screen, a flood of text streaming forth unabated. 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing streaming. 

James paused briefly to scrub his dripping nostrils with a fresh hanky, sniffling wetly and adjusting his glasses before continuing to flex his frenetic fingers.  His nose was swollen, nostrils red-rimmed and twitching. There were dark circles under his hazel eyes, which were also red-rimmed and irritated, which is why he couldn’t wear his contacts.  A tell-tale crease on the bridge of his nose told the date better than any calendar.

April was the worst month for his hayfever. 

Benny was across the room, working out on the complicated multipurpose exercise machine that now took over one corner of the open living space.  There was a familiar symphony in the air of James’ flat: the rhythmic swish and clink of weights, Benny’s controlled exhales, the clack of the keyboard, James’ liquid sniffling. 

The clacking abruptly ceased, the author’s hands grabbing desperately for his hanky, breath hitching madly. 

“Hyuh- hyutchuh!  Hyeh-heh - heh! Hyehhtchuh!  HYIEHHtschuh!!... YIH’ EHTSCHHOO!  Ah. Hyihuh… hyehhuh… hyehhtschoo!... HEEHHKSSCHIIEWW! … ugh god…”

The swish and clink stopped, too.  “You ok-kay?”

It hadn’t escaped James’ attention that Benny’s stuttering had gotten worlds better in the months they’d been seeing each other.

“Fide,” James gave a honking blow and scrubbed vigorously at his perpetually itchy nose. Replacing the glasses, which had flown off his face during the fit, he went back to typing.

The swish and click resumed, the symphony continuing. 

Benny and James had spent the rest of that terrible October cold in James’ bed.  The ill author had sneezed and coughed and whined, tossing and turning in cold-ridden misery.  But he’d had clean handkerchiefs pressed to his dripping nose when he sneezed, his aching body pulled upright to breathe easier when he coughed, and been stroked with gentle hands along every inch of exposed skin.  Benny had kissed him, held him, and seemed content to fetch and carry and indulge any whim the sick author could invent.

It was the best cold he’d ever had. 

James was convinced that it was Benny’s expert nursing that caused him to wake a few mornings later  feeling worlds better - the thick congestion that had smothered him for the past days had broken up and run, quite literally, out of his nose.  The dissolution of the solid block of mucous in his head had also apparently removed the writer’s block he had been wrestling with; he had been consumed with inspiration.  

Benny’s handsome All-American face had sported a dopey grin as he obediently fetched the older man’s laptop, also bringing a hot cup of perfectly prepared tea. The blond behemoth had smoothed a big hand over the disheveled brown head, pressing a kiss to its crown before softly stammering that he was going to run home and change clothes. 

“I’ll b-b-be b-b… b-back soon.” 

James’ fingers were already flying across the keys, his hazel gaze glued to the screen. 

Benny just smiled at the bent head, breathed a small content sigh, and left. 

When he had returned a few hours later, he’d found his new lover in the same spot: hunched over the laptop in bed, typing away. 

Their life had settled into a similar routine in the months since.  

Benny still made grocery deliveries in the morning, then came to James’ for lunch and stayed most of the afternoon working out.  Some evenings he went back to his apartment, but most nights he spent with the reclusive author. James discovered that Benny was an avid and ingenious cook, and Benny discovered that James’ moodiness and mercurial temperament were a smoke screen covering the fact that he was an incurable sappy romantic, and an unabashed cuddler.

James had bought Benny the “exercise contraption,” as he called it, as a Christmas present.  Benny, in turn, had given James a rare first edition for his antique book collection. The look on James’ face when he unwrapped it - the sudden shine of wetness in his eyes, the shocked ‘O’ of his parted lips - had caused the younger man’s heart to nearly burst in his solidly muscled chest. 

New Year’s found the couple at home, with James battling another cold.  Less intense this time, only lasting a few days. Benny once again was the expert nurse, applying tea and comfort liberally until the condition surrendered. 

Valentine’s Day was almost a total disaster: Benny not realizing that the older man was - literally - allergic to every flowering specimen known to man.  After an hour of near-panicked hyperventilating by the one party and frantic attempts to calm and soothe waylaid by attacks of violent sneezing by the other… they managed to end in bed amidst a tangle of sheets and used hankies. 

March had brought James a nasty case of bronchitis, which scared Benny almost as bad as the October fever flare when the author was forced to drag out his nebulizer from the closet and ply his constricted lungs with a near-constant stream of albuterol in order to manage every struggling, crackling, whistling, wheezy breath. 

And now, April. 

James was at the dining table, which - for him - was only ever viewed as a large office desk.  Strewn about him were gads of papers, pens, reference books that Benny had fetched from a university library downtown, and the solid laptop. The spring sunshine coming through the windows fell in angled beams across the scene, highlighting a few silvery strands in the older man’s brown hair and glinting off the rims of his glasses. A crumpled handkerchief lay just next to the laptop. 

A near-constant tickle wormed its way through James’ irritated sinuses, like it always did during hayfever season.  Breath hitching lightly, the long fingers plucked the handkerchief and scrubbed his raw nostrils with the crumpled cloth, trying to stave off the sneeze.

“Hih!...-hih!---... ahhhhhh.  *sdff* ”  Massaging carefully caused the tickle to back off.  Battle won, but not the war. 

Benny stopped his sets, using a small towel to wick away the sweat on the back of his neck, and took several minutes just to gaze at him.

James’ body was lean, spare, with that lithe musculature that many call a ‘swimmer’s build.’ His hands were what Benny was most fascinated by.  The older man’s hands were elegant: long fingers and curved palms that flew over the keyboard like gazelles. 

The smaller man’s mouth was hanging open, his tongue hovering just behind his lower lip.  Benny watched as one nostril twitched, the eye on that side squinting slightly in reaction to the sudden prickling in the sinuses.  

The lips stretched just a fraction, the cherry-red nostrils flaring as their owner attempted to sniffle away the pollen-induced tickle. 

The fingers never faltered. 

The sunlight illuminated the subtle tics and jerks in the allergic man’s muscles surrounding his nose and mouth, the pinkness of his tongue as it darted out to wet his lips, the bob of his Adam’s Apple as he swallowed down an itchy throat. The glimmer of wetness around the rims of those sweetly irritated ovals. 

Benny had spent hours watching James work over the past few months.  Enough to recognize the signs. 

The older man’s nose gave another twitch, more sudden and violent this time, and he responded by pressing his two front teeth into his lower lip and sniffling deeply. Still determinedly typing, sharp hazel gaze never wavering from the screen, he wriggled the offending organ and gave another visible swallow. 

Benny wondered what would happen if he crossed the room and wrapped a soft, clean hanky around his lover’s nose, allowing those elegant hands to continue their important work.  Because it clearly needed one, and quite badly. It was also clear that the diligent author wasn’t about to allow the rebellious bugger to interrupt his surge of creativity. 

Benny sat on the machine in the shadowy corner, watching the battle play out on the sunlit stage. 

One crimson nostril had started a slow leak, the silvery trail glinting in the warm light.  Heaving a chuff of irritation, the allergic author angrily snatched his crumpled hanky, pinching it around the wet rims one-handed and rubbing in hard, fast circles.  Dragging the hanky down with a snap of his wrist, James gave a snorting sniffle and continued typing. 

But that rough treatment must have been the wrong thing to do, because Benny could see from across the room that his lover’s red nose was twitching like a rabbit’s. 

Benny watched as the puffy hazel eyes slowly began to squint, the very kissable lips parting further, tongue hovering in the dark depths. The fingers continued to type, almost desperately now in their fury, even as the brown head began a subtle shake from side to side.  

It was obvious that James was fighting it. It was just as obvious that he was bound to lose. 

The older man’s chest expanded with involuntary hitching breaths, his lungs attempting to gather air for the oncoming fit.  Benny could see that James was trying to even out his breathing, to stall the inevitable. But his lean frame shuddered with a deep gasp, which the smaller man tried to hold only to succumb to a second.  Finally, those long fingers were forced to cease and scrabble desperately for the crumpled hanky as he heaved a final great gasping breath, then plunged his face into it and just shook with them.

  “Huh… huh… HYEIT’TSSCCH-uu!!  EhUhetchht! Eh’tch!eh’tch!eh’tch!  Ehtch!ehtch!ehtch! ei”EHTSCHH’U’U!!uhh…”  He tried to snuffle and couldn’t, coughed, and continued sneezing. “Hyehhuhh… hyehhuh… hyehht’tschooo!  *sdrff* EIH’ EHT’TSSCHHiioooo!”

He took a while at it. 

“Hyuh- hyutchuh!  Hyehhtchuh!  HYIEHHtschuh!!... Hyeh-heh - heh!YIH’ EHTSCHHOO!  Ah. Hyihuh… hyehhuh… hyehhtschoo!... HEEHHKSSCHIIEWW!”

When he finally raised his puffy, streaming eyes, Benny had appeared at his side with two clean hankies and one of his nasal sprays. 

“Oh by god thagk you…” he breathed throatily.  Taking one of the fresh handkerchiefs and blowing and blowing and blowing. 

Benny moved behind the older man’s chair, laying his big hands on the smaller shoulders and beginning a soothing massage. 

James emptied his nasal passages as thoroughly as he could into the first hanky, tossing it next to the other spent one and reaching for the spray.  Benny stepped into the kitchen to pour a cup of tea while the allergic author applied the medicament, the anticipated result of which required him to stifle a flurry of sneezes into the third handkerchief.

“...ngxt-ch!ngxt-ch!ngxt-ch!chst!chst! -chst!ch!ngxt!GSTCHoo!!...” 

“Bless,” the tea cup clinked on the table top.  A kiss was pressed into brown hair. 

Watery hazel eyes gazed into clear blue. 

“Whad would I do withoud you?”

A warm smile. “I d-ddon’t want to f-f-ff-f…f-f—”

A kiss spared him those bothersome f’s. 
 

The End.

Edited January 27, 2020 by starpollen

[starpollen]

@Juto if you’ve got prompts, I’m all ears. ☺️ (Or, rather, fingers. For typing... yeah...) 

[doggo]

That... that... that COLD!!! A thing of beauty. You write them miserable men so beautifully. Thank you.

[Coffee Mug]

Oh my God!! I loved every letter of it! 
I’m so happy the story moved on to spring and allergies 😍 and loved the ending too! 
Thank you Starpollen for another beautifully written story ☺️

[Privatedancer]

💖