The Sneeze

Taka went to bed in his cramped inner-city apartment and, an uncomfortable chill festering over his sleeping pink skin, fidgeted with the blankets restlessly during the night. In the morning he awoke to the taste of a cold dawning deep within his throat. He had had an argument with his girlfriend, Ayumi, the previous night, and from her perspective it would be nothing but just desserts. "You don't care about me at all," "I'm just sex to you, aren't I." Bah, he didn't need any of it. It was way too early in the morning for anything but the routine - breakfast, shave, change, and out the door for his part-time job at Tokuya.

After work, he came home intending to watch tv for the rest of the afternoon, but arrived instead to discover Ayumi in a tornado of rearrangement. His playstation was stickytaped to the ceiling above the fridge, which itself was now standing on the small table they used for the phone. The phone was clamped midair between the tv and the chest of drawers, and the tv was balanced leaning slightly into the phone, on top of the equally tipped cd tower. In the very centre of the room, dangling attatched with string between the ceiling light and both knobs of the curtain rack, were his two 120W speakers. The cords fell away from them, and Ayumi was cradling the audio unit in her arms, with sticky tape balanced on her fingertips. She looked up at him.

"Don't you dare move any of this. If you really do mean what you said last night, then you won't. I've made a decision while you were out, and this is a test so I can see what you really feel. Everything is still usable from where I've put it."

Taka took in the view. "What the hell are you doing?" he said, but she had given her explanation already, and craned her neck around looking for a place to put the audio system.

"Oh... fuck it. Do what you want." Whatever. He picked the tv remote off the floor and went over to the bed to lie down. His nose had been dripping the whole day at work, and had to buy a mask halfway through his shift, which Tokuya luckily sold cheap. The lining of his nose was very sensitive to the humid air inside the mask, and the whole time felt on the way towards a sneeze, but it never eventuated. He had to sniff his running nose though, and when too much of the phlegmy liquid accumulated he would tip his head back to suction it out from the back, and swallow, quietly burping the air that went down with it after the line of customers disappeared from his checkout booth.

After taking the mask off again now that he was at home and inside, he immediately sneezed, nose irritated by the cold air of the apartment. Ayumi was in the process of sticking the audio box to the door of the closet - which would no longer be able to be opened more than a third of the way - the cords bounding back and forth pivoting from the ceiling light, and she called over to him, "You've caught a cold, so no more cuddling until you're better." Disgusted, he flicked on the tv.

His nose began watering like crazy, but there were no tissues within reach. "Where're the tissues?" "I think they're under the table." "Can you chuck them over?" "I'm busy! Get them yourself." Fuck, I do *not* need this. He got up out of bed and kneeled beside the table. There it was, peeking out the other side of a pile of books, and he was just about to reach for it when a sneeze stole control of his body. His eyes rolled upwards and jaw opened, and he went "Atcccchu!", head jumping forward violently. When he had finished, a sticky line was deposited all over his lips and chin, and he groaned, "Uuuuuaagh-". Holding his dirty face as still as he could, he leaned forward, eyes spacing out in the threading of the mats as he reached blindly towards the tissue box. His fingers hit something, which rebounded with a hollow "tat," and he grabbed at the top of the box, fingers bent back and straining. He pulled out a tissue. The box tagged along, and when he finished wiping the mess from himself, he took the tissues back to his bed and crawled under the covers, saying, "Uuuuuggh", eyes lidded.

He looked over at Ayumi, who had her back to him, and even though she was wearing her worst house clothes her nice ass was still discernable. Taka thought, I said I was trying to do the right thing by her, but this is clearly the work of a madwoman, and considered his options. If I tell her to get out, that's the end, and I don't want the hassle of finding another girl. If I play the victim, she would just get mad and might do something even more bothersome. So I should try to reason with her, and maybe she'll drop this whole stupid thing. "Ayumi," he said, peeking out from under the covers.

"Yes?"

"What are you doing, really?"

"I don't want to talk with you about it now."

"Come on, don't you think you're going a bit far?" He sat up on the bed, looking at her. She had her back to him still, and when she dropped her head forward and started tapping the floor with the roll of sticky tape, Taka got out of bed and went over to her.

"You said before, I wish we went on trips together more, so why don't we go on a drive tomorrow?" No reply. "Leave it to me, I'll organise everything." She looked up at him, standing above her, and her eyes were red and watering. "I promise." She punched him in the knee, and started to cry. It stung a bit, but he kneeled down on it, and grabbed her in a hug. "You asshole," she said, face buried in his chest. While she was still crying, he called her name and when she looked up, he looked into her eyes, lips parted.

He kissed her, and she kissed back hard. He held the back of her head with one hand and ran the other over her lower back. Their clothes rustled together, and her breaths began to deepen, tickling his nose. He stood up, led her over to the bed, and turned off the tv. He lifted up her jumper and shirt, sniffed, and kissed her while her arms were still bound together in them, tipping her over onto the bed. She wrestled her arms out of the knot of clothes, and sat up to undo her belt and the button and zipper of her jeans. He used that time to take off his two shirts and jeans, and she was undoing her bra when he kneeled up onto the bed and straddled her lap, both of them now in socks and underpants. He sniffed, and palmed one breast while he slid his tongue over hers in a long kiss, his other arm stroking her hair. Liquid felt like it was seeping from a nostril, but it might have just been from a stray wet lip.

His nose tickled from the cold air, and he pulled away from her face involuntarily. She looked up at him in a daze. He reached down past their legs to the far corners of the blanket, and pulled them up under his feet, then grabbing the near corners and resting his elbows under her armpits, lifted his knees up and repositioned them on the inside of hers. Holding the blanket with the broad of his back, he reached under her legs to the side edges and anchored them under his knees. Finally he pulled them straight with the near corners, anchoring them again under his elbows. Inside was already warm with their breath, and his nose tingled in the humidity.

Ayumi looked up at him, eyes suddenly clear, and he started to lick a nipple, but she was pulling his underpants down and pumping his cock already, hands moving very quickly. He looked at her again, and her brow was knitted in something more than concentration, but a sneeze had started to push out from behind his eyes, and his body tensed up in preparation. She was working his cock with incredible speed now, and if she continued like this for too much longer he might ejaculate just like that. And Taka sneezed, his dick bulging in a moment of hypersensitivity, and when he opened his eyes ropes of liquid had fallen out of his nose and over her chest and abdomen. "Aahhh," he apologised, but she was already wiping it into her skin with a hand.

He reached over for a tissue. The hand jobbing was too much, he was ready to come, and it appeared on his face. She stopped for a moment, and the climax receded into the background again. Taka blew his nose and sniffed loudly, seemingly even more stuffed up. She said, "This is the last time, Taka. Remember that." Taka started, but before he could react properly she had grabbed his dick again and was working it even faster now, and almost immediately he felt the climax returning. "After we finish, I'm going to put on my clothes and go to a friend's house. The things of mine that are still here, I will leave a different address to send them to. There will be nobody at that address, so even if you go there you won't be able to find me." She would stop moving her hand when Taka's hips spasmed backwards, and start again after a second or two, and she might have moved behind him now, but he didn't care what she was doing, in fact couldn't concentrate on anything but the climax he was being kept waiting for.

Before long, a cycle of hand movement continued for slightly too long, and a tingling white orgasm seemed about to arrive. In his face, Taka's paused breath again tickled his nose, and as the words Ayumi had just spoken finally seeped into his consciousness, he couldn't hold onto it any longer. Taka exploded.

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After he finished crying deep sobs of loneliness face down on his bed, he lifted himself up. There were three stains left on the sheets. He took a shower, sniffing, and when he went to the closet to get his clothes, he found he could only open it part of the way.