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"I can get us a ride," Hua Cheng offered, but Xie Lian had said,
"Oh, but I always take the bus, it's no problem,"
And Hua Cheng had gone along with his beloved, because of course he had. The horrible, always late, filled with strangers bus with Xie Lian was always going to be better than a private ride alone.
That doesn't mean he can't complain about it a little.
"Ugh, who thought bathing in perfume was a good idea," he grumbles into Xie Lian's ear, nose crinkled up in disgust at the sharp, overwhelmingly ambiguous floral scent drifting to their seat from one of the other passengers.
Xie Lian raises his nose to the air and sniffs.
"Hm, I can only smell it a little," he says, "San Lang's nose is more sensitive than mine, though."
"I assure gege that he is not missing out," Hua Cheng sighs. Xie Lian laughs; he always thinks it's funny when Hua Cheng gets a little mean.
He hopes that it will settle from the initial overwhelming nasal assault, but no: the longer they sit there, the bus creaking and jostling about, the more it escalates to burning a little, and then-- oh no. An ominous tickle starts at the back of his nostrils. Not anything that will make him sneeze immediately, just. Threatening it. Every breath reignites it, too, and then his nose starts to go thick and wet in reaction. Horrific.
Hua Cheng pulls out his phone to check the bus route; it's still twenty minutes to their stop. Maybe the offending other passenger will get off soon. If Hua Cheng's luck holds and not Xie Lian's.
Ten minutes later, though, the smell is still wafting back to them, perpetrator untraceable with the throng of humanity around them. An ache is starting up at his temples in response, and Xie Lian has sympathetically noticed him rubbing at his nose to try to settle the godforsaken itch that won't leave him be, but luckily hasn't set him sneezing yet. Hua Cheng can think of few things he'd like less than to be the guy having a sneezing fit on the crowded bus (he had quite enough of that humiliation on the bus to school at the height of allergy season back in the day).
The bus lurches to a stop (Hua Cheng lets himself lurch with it, because Xie Lian catches him every time even though he knows Hua Cheng is doing it on purpose). Hua Cheng lays his head adoringly on Xie Lian's shoulder, trying to smell him instead of the rank cloud of perfume around them. Xie Lian smiles down at him and pets his hair. Bliss.
Passengers shuffle off the bus, then more shuffle on to replace them. Someone comes down the aisle with a huge, bright, frothy bouquet of flowers cradled in their arms, sitting across from them a few seats up. Hua Cheng has a bad feeling about that, like if he rolled a pair of dice right now, he'd get snake eyes.
"Oh, how pretty," Xie Lian comments. Hua Cheng nods. It is very striking, the kind of arrangement one might get for a birthday, anniversary, or (Hua Cheng thinks cynically) a big apology.
Seven minutes left to go. Surely that's not too long? Maybe he's not even that allergic to those flowers; he's never tested himself to find out exactly which ones make him sneeze. The lushly ruffled petals and bright yellow stamens heavy with pollen taunt him. He watches them rustle and bounce with the motion of the bus and can practically see the pollen shaking out of the bouquet to drift down to him.
Hua Cheng's nose, already tortured by the scent sensitivity, wastes no time in reacting to an actual allergen. The plaguing tickle flares into a hot, swelling need-to-sneeze that fills up his nose and flutters his eye shut. Hua Cheng pinches it shut but it doesn't make a difference, he's going to--
"hh'mPTchhh!" he strangles it down as small as possible, stifling into his pinched fingers. If anything that makes his nose itch more, though, an urgent burning that makes him sneeze again three more times in rapid succession: "hh'nNGgh-- nh'GKhh-- nN'GTCHhhuh--!"
"Ah, San Lang, are you okay? Don't--"
Hua Cheng sneezes again, "hHH'NNGH'tchiuhh-!" the impact catching in his sinuses and pounding through his ears and already achey head. Ugh.
"Oh no. Don't stifle, love," Xie Lian finishes, running a soothing hand up and down Hua Cheng's back.
"'m fine," Hua Cheng assures him, rubbing his nose into submission and belying this immediately by having to pinch away and sniffle back the deluge of running brought on by the sneezing.
"Ah," Xie Lian notices immediately, of course. This is, shamefully, not the worst allergy attack Hua Cheng has had in front of his beloved, although it may be the most embarrassing. "I have a tissue in here somewhere, I'm sure," Xie Lian says, diving his hands into his pockets and then opening his shoulder bag to dig through that.
Hua Cheng watches him pull out scrap after mysterious scrap, loving him so much it hurts. His nose itches fiercely at him, every breath fanning the urge to sneeze. Holding it just makes the itch bloom into-- oh no. "hh-ih-ih-iih-hHHH'NKGT'chieww! Fucgk," he groans.
"Bless you," someone in the seat across from them says. Hua Cheng burns at having his loss of control acknowledged.
"San Lang," Xie Lian scolds. But Hua Cheng can't let them out, he's only barely avoiding making a mess of himself as it is. He was already stuffy and goopy from the perfume reaction and now it's rapidly becoming a flood inside his head. "Ah, here, I knew I had something!" Xie Lian exclaims in triumph, pulling a fistful of battered fast food napkins out of a side pocket in his bag of many treasures.
Hua Cheng accepts them gratefully, cursing his own proclivity for dressing in pants whose lines would be ruined by a pack of tissues in the pocket (to be fair, he really didn't expect this to happen, so it's not like he would have packed them anyway). Any time Xie Lian is forced to provide for him instead of the other way around makes the little thrill of warmth at being taken care of war with the part of him that wants to no longer be a burden, to always take care of Xie Lian.
It proves to be a timely rescue, as even stifling the successive fit of sneezes forces unmentionable amounts of slick wetness from his nose, leaving Hua Cheng cursing mentally into his napkin covering as he cleans it up as discreetly as possible. He's trying not to be overly aware of the people around them, but being on public transport and making a mess of himself again makes him feel... small. He doesn't want these people to see or hear him like this. The aisle neighbor blesses him again, a little more startled this time.
"One more stop," Xie Lian assures him, drawing Hua Cheng down into his shoulder to hide again, despite the sniffly mess he's become.
"Gege, I'm-- I'm gonna--" The itch fills up his nose, catching his breath and preventing him from even thinking enough to finish a statement as simple as going to sneeze. "eh- heh- eh- hhh! NN'tk'shhiuh!" The sneeze pushes him hard into the junction of Xie Lian's shoulder and the cover of his hand. Xie Lian shivers at the rush of Hua Cheng's breath into his shirt. Hua Cheng just hopes he didn't get any leaking from his nose on him.
"It's okay, you know I don't mind," Xie Lian says.
The combination of the noxious perfume torturing his nose and the pollen now filling up the small enclosed space of the bus is inescapable even with the filter of Xie Lian. The rest of the ride to their stop feels like an eternity of trying not to sneeze, sneezing anyway and then trying to clean up while he pants wetly through his mouth, nose blocked up completely and unwilling to blow it in here. The aisle neighbor has mercifully given up blessing him, thank god for small favors. Hua Cheng wants to die.
When the bus finally lurches to a stop and Xie Lian shifts, indicating they're getting up, Hua Cheng pulls himself away and hurriedly wipes himself as clean as possible, balling the incriminating napkin tissues up in his hand as they make their way out of their seat. They have to brush past the bouquet holder as they go down the aisle and Hua Cheng's nose actually twitches with the intensity of the tickle that assaults him despite the fact that he's not even breathing through it. He presses a knuckle hard under the tip and manages to last through disembarking the bus through sheer willpower.
In a stroke of luck (finally) there's only one other person getting off at the same stop, and they're hurrying off as the bus pulls out, leaving them alone on the sidewalk before Hua Cheng's irritated nose is finished hitching in air, "ah, auhh, uhh, uhHH," for finally, the full bodied sneeze he's been crushing down, "hHEDH'ZSCCHHIIUHhhh!!"
The relieving force of it bends him over into his tented hands and their already-damp mess of napkins. One is not nearly enough to satisfy the itching, though, his nose seizing again and again immediately. "ESSZXCHHUHh! huh-UH- HAH'ED'GSSCHHIEW! HUH'IDZSSHHUuhh! huh'IHGGSSCHIEWWh!!" He pants and sniffles helplessly for a brief moment before his nose twinges him into yet another fast, hitching "ah- h- h-h- HH?!dhSXCCHHUHhh!! ah! hUH'IHG'DSCHHIUHh-- iHDGSXCHHuh- IHH'DJSCHHIUHh!! Oh, oh, fuck. sndff! ah? sdrnkhh-- hH'NGDK'SCHHIUHhh!!" Fuck, his fucking nose!
Xie Lian's steadying hand at his waist registers once Hua Cheng's nose stops taking up his entire attention for a single second, along with the wetness that's sluiced from it and the soreness in his throat from the rough sneezing fit.
"Ugdhh. Gege, kill me," Hua Cheng begs.
"Ah, San Lang, I'm sorry," Xie Lian says instead. "This is all because I wanted to take the bus..."
"Gege couldn't have known," Hua Cheng says, or tries to. His voice sounds so thick, wet, and sludgy he can barely understand himself. He tries to blow his nose into what's left of the napkins in his hand, but they're more snot than paper already at this point. Despite that and the annoyingly intense itch assuring him that he's going to sneeze again sooner than later, he's just so glad not to have that fucking awful perfume constantly invading his olfactory senses that he feels better already.
"Still, I'll have to make it up to my San Lang," Xie Lian says.
"With kisses?" Hua Cheng suggests, trying for levity. He doesn't expect Xie Lian to swoop in to take him up on it immediately, and yelps in alarm when he feels Xie Lian's perfect lips slip on the slick, salty wetness still smeared around Hua Cheng's after the napkins became useless for wiping it. Xie Lian just licks it away and kisses him again, firmly. His arms loop around Hua Cheng's shoulders to pull him down into easier kissing range.
Hua Cheng groans in agitation even as his cock warms a little at Xie Lian's blithe and total acceptance of the situation. He can't resist kissing Xie Lian until he has to pull away abruptly to sneeze again-- again-- again, fuck, muffled into Xie Lian's shoulder. This time there's definitely wetness left on Xie Lian's shirt that isn't just spit, it strings away from his nose when he pulls back. Hua Cheng rubs it away on his knuckles in hurried mortification, then rubs those off on his pants for lack of anything else.
Xie Lian just giggles at him and pats his shoulders fondly.
"Poor San Lang," he says, "Let's go see if we can't find you some real tissues, hmm?"
(Hua Cheng sneezes twice more in answer.)