hanahaki4hanami - Tumblr blog

[hanahaki4hanami]

Rated: T

Pairing: Chris Halliwell/Wyatt Halliwell

Word Count: ~4k

A/N: incest, hanahaki disease, happy ending @hanahaki4hanami prompt: cyclamen. Jaxar comes from be careful what you wish for because you might get your way by victoriousscarf on ao3, who also has Wyatt with an oracle

Wyatt loves him. It’s a simple statement for a not-so-simple relationship, but Wyatt has always been a fairly simple guy even with all his complexities. Wyatt loves him. Easy, true, and simple.

It’s not simple when Chris has to leave. When Chris flees to the past, dust from an old attic lingering in his hair and lungs, to save Wyatt. He is so far away and Chris knows Wyatt loves him, but he is so far away and Chris misses him. Misses him more with the reminders of what was, with being able to see Wyatt now and see tints of what he will become. Not all of Wyatt is evil, in the present or the future, however you want to call it. The world is far more grey than that. Wyatt is Wyatt, even with his blood singing fire and darkness in his eyes. But this Wyatt has neither of those things. His eyes are clear and his blood sings with magic; ready to be set aflame, waiting for a spark. Chris misses the Wyatt from before Excalibur’s blade tasted the blood of innocents and he misses the Wyatt who still protects him over everything, even with demons and the world bowing at his feet. But Wyatt broke the world, and something broke him first, and Chris has to fix it.

It’s easy not to say anything to Leo. To look at the man who was technically his father and see the mistrust in his eyes and say nothing. With Piper, all he can see is the mom he loves, who gives advice whether it hurts or not, and he feels the words gather on his tongue before he swallows them back like medicine, bitter and thick. It only makes sense the petals would grow, then. That his emotions would only allow themselves to be bottled so much before they break, roots bursting through the bottle to scatter glass shards and petals through heaving lungs. He doesn’t know which words do it. Which person that swirls through his brain as he sleeps at night planted the seeds, but he doesn’t need to. The flowers bloom either way.

He researches alone. The disease is in one of Magic School’s many books, sitting innocently in the pages of a musty book with a faded picture of flowers and their petals buried within the text. There is a compendium of flower language close by and he grabs it without thinking, turning the pages absently as he reads about hanahaki. He frowns at the definition, frowns at the choices because he knows none of them are an option for him. WYatt is in the future and he can’t return yet, because he hasn’t fixed what’s been broken and if he returns he doesn’t think he’ll make it back—and even if he was in the future, he’s never exactly been great at sharing his emotions like that and he doesn’t think he’d be able to open himself to his brother even if he wanted to. Piper– his mom– and the sisters can’t know who he is, so if they’re from them he can’t just tell them that seeing them every day reminds him how much he misses them. Reminds him that they don’t know who he is, that they can’t know how much he loves them, that their distrust thrums like pain even though he understands. He can’t get rid of the flowers, because then he will forget Wyatt, and it will be suspicious to the sisters and Leo if he suddenly forgets why he’s here as well as taking away any chance he has to fix things. Or he will forget everyone but Leo, and that will be suspicious as well. He can’t talk to anybody about it, because these emotions are wild and strange and hanahaki is a magic disease and even if they weren’t, even if it wasn’t, even if he were comfortable opening his soul to someone else, he has no friends and no one can know who he is. So Chris puts the book to the side and looks at the book on flower language instead, to see what flowers are choking through his body.

The first thing he does when he reads the description is laugh, because the only person who comes to mind is Wyatt, and somehow he knew that was the answer. It’s not a pretty laugh, nor a particularly happy one, but it’s a laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” Paige asks, coming to lean against the table, and Chris slides the medical book under the flower one, flipping pages till one catches his eye.

“This,” he says, showing her a picture of a flower that looks like a butt, and she rolls her eyes like he’s prone to that kind of humour, though he hasn’t been since he was seven.

“Right,” Paige says flatly, pushing off the table and walking away with books in her hands. Chris watches her go. Once she’s out of sight, he counts two minutes out in his head, then returns both books to their place on the shelf.

Cyclamen, the book read. Lasting feelings, strong love, and resignation. Has great effect in love potions, but is considered a gambling ingredient. While it will cause the drinker to fall in love swiftly, if caught the giver’s love life will be cursed with grief.

Chris wonders if coughing the petals up means he’s already cursed, though he’s never made a love potion. He’s never had to.

Chris has been in the past for nearly a year when petals choke his lungs till they crawl up his throat. They make it harder to be a whitelighter, and in turn make it harder to find who corrupted Wyatt, but Chris doesn’t stop. Can’t stop, because if he does one day his mom and the rest of his family will die and Wyatt will take over the Underworld. He doubles his efforts, in preparation for the inevitable, reminding himself the entire time of what he knows in the hopes it will delay it.

Wyatt loves me.

He’s so far away, two decades in the future, but Wyatt loves him and he knows it and that has to be enough until he returns.

Wyatt loves me.

It’s been a long time since he’s directly interacted with the sisters, knowing that they will stare at his dark circles and sallow complexion and heaving lungs and ask questions he can’t answer. Maybe mom will call Leo, and he will finally come after she’s just about screamed her voice hoarse and threatened him twice, and tell him there is something wrong with Chris with a warble in her throat and tears in her eyes and demand he tell them what it is. Demand Leo fix it.

Or maybe it’s just memories.

Chris shakes his head.

All he wants to do is call Wyatt.

Chris coughs, a few petals falling to the map, and brushes them away before he continues to scry.

The cyclamen is choking, suffocating, when Bianca finds him, and he can’t even resist her because he feels the petals fluttering in his throat every time he breathes.

“Wyatt is sick.” Is all she says, and Chris wants to laugh, because he can count on one hand the number of times he remembers Wyatt sick growing up. He remembers hating him for it, too, every time he got sick, because it was unfair he didn’t share whatever immunity Wyatt had. Instead he just coughs into his fist and Bianca stares at him.

“You’re sick, too,” she says, and Chris waves her off.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says after he swallows a few times, choking down the flowers enough to talk. His voice is rough. “Why are you here?”

“Wyatt is sick and he’s going to forget you.”

Chris feels his heart freeze in his chest, feels every root squeeze at once. “What,” he says, quiet, no inflection making its way into his voice. After all this time, Wyatt’s choice is to just take a potion, wiping Chris from every part of him.

Meanwhile Chris has let the flowers fester till they burn like Wyatt’s fingerprints pressing brands into his skin, like Wyatt’s breath along his throat, like Wyatt inside him, surrounding him, until he is all he can see and all he can think of.

“Let him. If he wants to forget me, let him,” Chris says, all bitterness, and is surprised when no petals fall from his mouth as he does. Is surprised the flowers don’t press up against his esophagus in retaliation.

“He thinks you betrayed him,” Bianca says, a defense, which is funny because Bianca is the one who told him he should just kill Wyatt and be done with it. But then, Bianca also knows how Chris feels about Wyatt.

“I’m here to save him,” Chris says, small, because even now he can’t imagine betraying him. Because it hurts to know Wyatt thinks he would.

“I know. But the others-” And Chris closes his eyes. Of course. The demons, the Oracle. All eager to whisper their I told you so’s to Wyatt, no doubt standing yards away while they do in the hopes it will save them. Maybe Jaxar said his from right next to Wyatt, emboldened by the heedy if incorrect thought that he was right, and Wyatt finally lashed out though Chris doubts it. Even if he did, the thought brings little relief now. It doesn’t change how his brother thinks he betrayed him. Which itself doesn’t change the fact Chris can’t return. He looks down and wonders what petals are crawling up Wyatt’s throat, wonders what they might mean.

“I can’t,” he tells Bianca.

“I know,” Bianca says again. “But I also know you can’t stop me,” she adds, grabbing his wrist to shimmer to the attic, and Chris suddenly feels foolish. Of course Bianca didn’t travel all this way just to give him a health report.

“You said Wyatt was going to take the potion,” Chris protests.

“I did,” Bianca said, not looking at him. “He’s going to take it if this doesn’t work.” She doesn’t say she doesn’t think it will. Chris hears it anyway.

It hurts to see Wyatt as far along as he is, not just sick but clearly dying, cyclamen curling up his ribcage, filling his lungs and throat till his breath smells like the flowers. Chris still takes the first opportunity he gets to leave, whispered apologies on his lips.

The image stays with him, haunting him at night, keeping him from sleep and making him push himself to work faster.

“I’ve had hanahaki before,” Phoebe tells him one day, completely unprompted. Or maybe it is prompted. She’s an empath with visions and a Charmed One on top, and no matter how much he hides from her, he doesn’t really know what slips under the cracks. “And I know it’s hard, but if you need me to I can make the potion. No questions asked.”

Chris shakes his head and Phoebe frowns. It’s getting harder to hide the pain, and he knows she can see it. Knows now she can see it better than the others can, has maybe even known for a while what is happening even if she doesn’t have the full picture. “Chris…”

“I can’t,” Chris admits, quietly. “I can’t forget him. If I do-”

He doesn’t finish. Phoebe looks at him, eyes sad, and sighs an ‘oh Chris’ that tells him she understands anyway. When she reaches out, he orbs away.

She doesn’t know Wyatt has it too. Doesn’t know the knowledge weighs on Chris, pressing down like it matters despite Chris knowing Wyatt is in the future and he is in the past and no matter how much time he spends here when he returns he’ll be deposited right where he left, because it does matter even when it shouldn’t. Because his older brother has hanahaki too, and Chris is his cure as much as he is Chris’.

Except, Chris suddenly remembers with an ache, Wyatt’s probably already taken the potion and doesn’t remember who he is anyway. He wonders if anyone has told him there’s someone messing around in the past, trying to stop him. Would they? Or would they be too worried, afraid just seeing Chris would cause him to fall to his humanity all over again.

He stares at his hands. There are flecks of blood buried in the lines of his palm and he wonders if they will ever be clean again. If it even matters. Wyatt may be able to take a potion and forget him, but Chris doesn’t have that luxury.

If he did, would he take it? The question doesn’t matter, because if he did he wouldn’t need to. If he did, he would still be by Wyatt’s side and he wouldn’t need to remind himself Wyatt loves him, because Wyatt would be right there. Chris balls his hands into fists.

The word resignation pounds through Chris’ head like a drumbeat. There is a month left for him, at best. At worst, it’s only a week. Piper and Paige have started trying to get him to take more breaks and anytime Phoebe looks at him, her eyes are sad. He thinks they know he’s dying. Leo hovers like he might be able to fix it. It grates against Chris’ skin. He doesn’t have the time. The cyclamen fills him, an invasive species covering his insides like kudzu, and he’s running out of time.

He won’t survive this and he has to save Wyatt first. He has to.

Chris jolts awake, coughing, his face in the Book of Shadows. Pain flares, his throat scraping like he’d used sandpaper as a cough drop and invisible fingers digging, curling into the pit of his stomach. His eyes water. It feels like more than flowers crowding into his throat this time, stems and leaves being forced up too. He grips the stand as his knees buckle and he tries to breathe. It’s so much harder than it usually is. Flowers splatter against the floor, pink and red petals landing with a wet, bloody thump. It’s still not enough, his body heaving as the coughs continue until leaves join them, until there are whole stems and roots at his feet. He couldn’t stop the tears if he tried.

No, Chris thinks, because he knows what this means. No.

“Chris?” Chris looks up, half of him almost expecting Wyatt, because any other time he’s been in this much pain it’s his brother by his side, and sees Phoebe instead. She stares at him from the doorway, stockstill, taking in the blood on his chin and the tears on his eyes and the bloodstained plants on the floor before she stumbles forward, shouting for Piper and Paige. Both sisters run up the stairs as Chris continues coughing, the pain stabbing into his sides.

Both of them gasp when they get to the door.

“What’s happening?” Paige asks.

“It’s the hanahaki,” Phoebe says. “It’s killing him.”

“No. We can’t-” Piper bites off, turning to Paige as she gestures to Chris. “Heal him!”

“I- I can’t,” Paige says, voice wavering.

“You have to!” Piper says and Paige shakes her head.

“That’s not how it works,” she says, voice raw.

“Wyatt,” Chris gasps, because they’re focusing on him when they shouldn’t. He has to make them understand. It’s like they never do. Wyatt’s their child, their nephew, and Chris knows just how important he is to them, has the childhood memories to prove it. But it’s like this is important only to him. There isn’t much time left before Wyatt is turned, he knows it, and he has to make them understand. Phoebe pulls him into a tight hug, moving them to sit on the attic’s floor, and Chris coughs, choking as the cyclamen squirms through him.

“You’re important, too, Chris,” Phoebe says desperately. There’s a choking sound, half a sob, and it doesn’t come from him. Chris looks up through blurry eyes to see Piper with a hand against her mouth.

“I can’t-” Chris tries to explain, shaking his head, coughing up a few more bloodstained petals. I can’t let this be in vain. I can’t lose my family. I have to save Wyatt, he’s my older brother and if he keeps going the way he is I’m afraid I’ll lose him too. If I haven’t already. His chest hurts and he’s not sure if it’s the cyclamen or just his heart. Has he? Has he lost Wyatt, the potion curing his brother but still taking him from him? Chris holds onto Phoebe’s shirt, desperate. He can’t have. Wyatt loves me echoes in his head like mist. The cyclamen presses against his ribcage, growing with each echo. He feels suddenly unmoored. The pounding in his head is getting softer and Chris knows it’s a bad sign. Knows he can’t do anything about it anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“Chris,” Piper chokes.

“Mom,” Chris says, crying, half formed around a cyclamen.

Piper snaps out of her brief moment, shouting at the ceiling for Leo and pacing as Paige watches and Phoebe holds him.

“Wyatt,” Chris gasps, aching, and feels fingers grasp his tight in response.

“Chris,” Wyatt says. Chris’ eyes open and the light hits them painfully, but it’s worth it to see bright blue eyes staring down at him.

“Am I dead?” Chris asks, though the rawness of his throat and the ache in his everything tells him he’s not. Wyatt smiles.

“You almost managed it, baby brother,” quieter, Wyatt adds, “We both did.”

“What?” Chris pushes up and Wyatt moves to help him, the hand on his back lingering even after he’s been moved to a sitting position. “The potion?”

Wyatt shakes his head. “I couldn’t lose the last family I had, even after thinking you’d betrayed me.”

“I-” Chris makes a desperate, broken sound. “I never-”

“I know,” Wyatt shushes him, pulling him close, and Chris clings. Chris clings, his lungs heaving but finally clear, the air crisp and stinging as he breathes in. When Wyatt presses a kiss to his forehead, the rest of the pain dissipates and Chris feels his entire body relax like a puppet with its strings cut. He fades afterwards, floating.

He wakes back up on Piper’s bed.

Chris flails, just a little, confusion soaking into his limbs. He should be dead, but he’s not. He should be on the attic floor, surrounded by blood and whole flowers, but instead he’s in Piper’s bed and his chest feels lighter than it has in a year. He sinks into the pillow, hands curling into the blanket.

“You’re awake,” someone says from beside the bed and Chris breathes. It feels easy now. So much so he thinks he may get lightheaded from it.

“Wyatt,” Chris says. Wyatt reaches out, taking Chris’ hand in his own, and Chris grasps back. “Why are you here?”

He didn’t take the potion. The memory settles into him, sudden and calm, of waking up the first time after nearly dying. Chris smiles up at the ceiling. Maybe he shouldn’t be so happy Wyatt didn’t take the potion that would’ve literally saved his life, but maybe it also doesn’t matter. In the end, neither of them needed it.

Though it certainly would’ve made a few things easier. Like breathing. And orbing, sometimes, for that matter. Orbing while coughing up your guts was not fun.

“I felt you dying,” Wyatt says. “I couldn’t just… let you. So I forced my way to you.” Forced. Figures, since Chris took the spell to travel with him. If anyone could force their way through time, spell or no spell, it was Wyatt.

“Thanks for that,” Chris chuckles.

“Any time,” Wyatt says. “Though don’t make me do it again.”

“I’ll try not to,” Chris says and finally opens his eyes, just to smile at Wyatt. Wyatt is smiling back, his eyes bright and his hair long but neat.

“Little Wyatt?” Chris asks, because he can’t help himself. Because Wyatt was his whole reason for being here. Because Wyatt is in front of him and he’s still Wyatt, he’s still in his dark clothes, his hand has the same calluses, but he feels slightly different. The lines on his face seem more natural to smiling than the serious, cold expression Chris is used to; he smells more like clouds and sunshine than dirt and soot; he seems hopeful. Outward hopefulness, a hopefulness that shines, not the hopefulness of being able to hold everything in your hands so tightly it won’t slip away. It makes Chris want to hope, too.

“Gideon was going to use you as a distraction, but you kept crying for me and mom thought maybe little me would help so she went to grab him. Gideon wasn’t expecting it.”

“She killed him?” Chris asks. Wyatt shakes his head.

“Leo did,” Wyatt says, and it shouldn’t, but it makes Chris’ stomach drop a little because it means Leo didn’t even try to heal him. Maybe Leo didn’t even show up for him, only orbing in when he realized Wyatt was in danger.

“I made him go,” Wyatt whispers, squeezing his hand, like he knows where Chris’ mind went. He probably does. “He wanted to stay with you, but I told him to help mom.”

“Really?” Chris asks, not quite believing him.

“Yeah,” Wyatt says.

Chris stares at his free hand, at the creases where the blood used to be, and quietly wonders who cleaned it off. The attic floor must’ve been a nightmare, though demons have definitely left worse. He can’t believe Leo actually tried to stay with him while he was dying. Did he hold his hand? How did he respond when Wyatt showed up, big and menacing and powerful? Chris kind of wishes he could’ve seen it.

“How long until we only remember the new timeline?” Wyatt asks quietly and Chris looks up in surprise, though he knew the timeline was changed. Wyatt is still Wyatt, but Wyatt is also different now. All his memories of before seem to be intact, though. Somehow Chris knows no matter what he asks Wyatt of their original timeline, Wyatt will be able to answer it. But how long will that last?

“I- I don’t know,” Chris says, suddenly feeling shaky. A new timeline. One where Wyatt never ruled the underworld; one where Chris didn’t live there with him; one where they never had their first kiss in a room of dust and rock. He swallows. “I used a spell so I wouldn’t forget the original timeline even with the new memories, so I could keep track. I didn’t want to forget something important and fail because of it. But you…”

It’s worth losing Wyatt if it means gaining mom and her sisters; if it means his cousins and uncles are still alive. But… Chris never let himself think about the possibility of losing Wyatt, losing his relationship with Wyatt, and now it’s all he can think about. If Wyatt forgets everything, will he still love Chris the same? Will Chris be able to survive it, if he doesn’t?

Wyatt squeezes his hand tighter and leans over to press his lips to his forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ll love you no matter what timeline. We are not going through hanahaki again.”

“Gods I hope so,” Chris says.

“We’re not,” Wyatt repeats firmly, pressing his lips to Chris’. It’s their first kiss in over a year and Chris melts into it with a sigh.

“Oh!” Phoebe gasps and they break apart, Chris’ cheeks heating.

“Phoebe,” Chris says, looking over at her.

Phoebe laughs, waving her hand, as Wyatt stammers. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“You weren’t,” Chris says with a snort.

“I’ll just go tell the others you’re awake again.” Phoebe leaves the room and Chris falls back against the pillows with a sigh. Wyatt laughs next to him, a little awkwardly.

“Not used to being walked in on?” Chris jokes, though he knows the answer.

“No,” Wyatt answers anyway. He smiles as he adds, “I guess I’ll just have to start getting used to it now.”

“I guess so,” Chris agrees.

And Wyatt leans down as Chris sits up, their lips meeting again.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Bright Red Petals

Buck Cleven/Bucky Egan, Rated: T, Word Count: 3,836

After the SS question him, Buck gets a mysterious cough that he won't talk about. John is determined to save Buck, even if he doesn't want to be saved.

Written for the week two @hanahaki4hanami event themes: passion and declaration of love.

Read it on AO3.

You can read the beginning of the fic below the cut!

After a bunch of the Brits make a run for it, the SS show up at the Stalag. They’d been used as a threat for so long that John isn’t really surprised. The three SS officers march through the gates with matching blank expressions on their faces. John’s gut is churning from the dread that’s settled there, but he keeps his head up and stands tall when they pass him.

He glances over to his right, and Buck looks unflappable. He might have lost a few pounds since Thorpe Abbotts, but his steely gaze hasn’t changed at all. John knows Buck has always led by example, and so John vows to do the same. He just needs to keep the rest of the guys calm, and make sure they all act as inconspicuous as possible. With any luck, the SS won’t stay for long.

He taps Crank and Hambone on the shoulder, and tilts his head towards their hut. They take the hint and slowly make their way up the steps with Murph in tow. He nods at Jefferson, who quietly walks over to round up his friends. Glenn and DeMarco are close behind. John makes eye contact with Buck, who gives a barely perceptible nod. John is confident that for once in this hellish place, they are on the same page.

He follows up the steps behind him, and they quietly shut their door.

---

The next morning, John goes through his normal routine of waiting to use the sink, and then waiting in the chow line, but the hairs on the back of his neck keep standing up. He doesn’t get a chance to bring it up to Buck, but John can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched.

He’s proved right when he and Buck are walking back from chow. A Nazi officer comes right towards them. He doesn’t recognize him, which means he’s not one of the SS officers that came in the day before, but looks like he’s on a mission. John tries very hard not to panic.

“Stop,” the German officer says in English. “Major Cleven?”

John’s heart drops out of his chest. He puts out his arm and steps in front of Buck.

“Who is asking?” John hopes he sounds menacing.

“Bucky,” Buck says under his breath before he steps around John and looks the guard in the eye.

“That’s me.”

“Where are you taking him?” John demands, his hands balled into fists at his sides. This can’t be happening.

The officer eyes John and squares his shoulders like he’s ready for a fight.

“This will only take a few minutes,” the officer says calmly.

Buck is already walking towards him, and John's feels like he’s going to burst right out of his skin. He’s got to do something, before the SS get their dirty hands on Buck. The air is thick with tension, and John can see people coming towards him out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t go with them,” John pleads to Buck, his voice dangerously low.

Buck pauses and looks back at him.

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

His tone is gentle but firm, and John wants to scream. He’s got no control over anything anymore, and he feels like being restrained and cautious has gotten him exactly nowhere. He starts forward without a real plan in mind, and two guards rush him. He doesn’t even scream when his head connects with the ground.

“He hasn’t done anything!” He hears Buck yell. He sounds far away.

Someone is on top of him, holding him down. John struggles but it’s no use. Buck is already leaving. Maybe if he was stronger, or smarter, or a better pilot, they would have taken him instead of Buck. Buck was always the best of them all, and clearly the SS could tell.

The fight drains out of him as he lies there in the mud. He has no idea how long he’s down, but eventually Crank helps him up. John can’t hear anything he’s saying to him, though. There’s a ringing in his ears that drowns out all other sounds.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Rated: T

Pairing: Chris Halliwell/Wyatt Halliwell

Word Count: ~400

A/N: hurt no comfort, incest, hanahaki disease, @hanahaki4hanami prompt: cyclamen

Chris stares at Wyatt. Past Wyatt. Two year old Wyatt. He is pure, good still, and Chris knows it. He can feel it in the thrumming of the magic inside him, in the bond that doesn’t quite connect them yet but will once he is born. The bond that holds on stubbornly despite being twenty years in the past, grasping onto his wrists like iron shackles when once it was the weave of a dorky friendship bracelet. Chris breathes. Wyatt breathes, too, face peaceful as he sleeps. Tears burn behind Chris’ eyes and roots twist in his lungs. He orbs with apologies falling like flower petals.

Cyclamen. Bianca helped him learn the name of the flower, months after they became friends, when she caught him coughing up a few of the petals. They researched it together, more for her curiosity than his. All he knew was that it would kill him one day, and that was all he needed. One way or another, Wyatt would be his death, whether his older brother wanted it or not. That didn’t satisfy Bianca. She wanted to know about the disease– hanahaki, the magic books they could get their hands on called it– and she wanted to know about the flowers—cyclamen, flowers that mean lasting feelings, deep affection, innocent and passionate love. Resignation. Devotion. Goodbyes.

Bianca made him talk about it– his feelings for Wyatt, how he missed the big brother he grew up with, how he sometimes still saw him in flashes like echoes and how that almost hurt worse– because that’s the only solution the books offered that was available to them. He couldn’t tell Wyatt and if they used the removal potion he would forget Wyatt, and that wouldn’t be good for Wyatt. It wouldn’t be good for Chris, either. Chris couldn’t lose the last family he had, no matter how fucked. So he talked to Bianca through a clenched jaw until time loosened it, because it made Bianca feel better, and it made the roots in his lungs brittle; a plant with no water. Until he got better. Until they thought he could go to the past, where his Wyatt wasn’t, and the flowers would die fully as he saved his brother.

Except that’s not what happened. Except young Wyatt and Piper and Phoebe and Paige remind him of the brother he grew up with, and the roots in his lungs swell with the influx of water until Chris feels petals tickling at his ribcage and crawling up his throat. He is in the past and Wyatt will kill him, whether his older brother wants to or not, but Chris will save him first.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Week Four: April 22nd - 30th

Cyclamen - Resignation, Diffidence, Goodbye

Hanahaki For Hanami Begins!

Hanahaki for Hanami is officially here! All new Hanahaki-themed works will be shared regardless of whether or not they fit the weekly prompt. Do as many or as few prompts as you would like and be sure to tag the account when you post!

You can submit works to the AO3 collection and view the full event details either on our Tumblr page or on our Notion.

Have fun and don't forget to torture your OTPs with all the delicious unrequited love you can muster!

[AI-generated works will not be reblogged and accounts will be blocked.]

[hanahaki4hanami]

Purple flowers in a the Bath: An Octopath Erhradt(Wrath)/OC Hanahaki fanfic, in which caring about the someone going through a depression episode is a big plot point.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Red Tulips in a Taxi

A Modern AU Hanahaki fic where two friends (Gilderoy and Auguste) become lovers!

Summary: Gilderoy had been coughing red tulip petals for a while now. Five weeks. He counted. He also knew it was related to the fact that he almost kissed his best friend, Auguste. He didn't like the implications of that.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Rated: T

Pairing: Guy Hamdon/Ben Tennyson

Word Count: ~4k

A/N: Written for @hanahaki4hanami and while it doesn't have vomiting one scene is definitely inspired by it

Flowers. It’s a little hard to tell with the way they glow, colours flashing between a scarlet red and aqua, and the feel of the petals between his fingers, somewhere between silk and a soft wood. But the smell, once you get past the bile and blood, and the shape of the petals makes it clear they’re flowers.

“Kelly, why am I spitting these up?” Guy asks from his seat on the table, kicking his legs absently. Kelly looks up from the Shemanual with something akin to worry in her eyes, her face pale. It doesn’t make him feel great. There are a lot of good things with being Shezow, but he’s found a lot of rough consequences too. He still remembers his brief attempt at a “dark and gritty” phase.

“Are you…” Kelly looks back down at the book, biting her lip. “In love?”

“In love?” Guy scoffs, laughing in disbelief. He hasn’t been in love in– ever, he thinks.

“Are you… sure?” Kelly asks, looking up at him and the stack of petals next to him again with a frown.

“... what does the book say?” Guy asks, feeling suspicious now. Kelly licks her lips, tasting the grape of her chapstick.

“It says when a Zow becomes trapped in unspoken love they start coughing up flowers. Till they confess or till it… kills them,” Kelly looks down. “The shemanual calls it hanahaki.”

“Oh,” Guy says. He stares at the petals next to him, watching them rotate between their two colours, taking in the shape of the petals. They glitter like sequins, they’re soft like silk behind the flaking red. After a few moments he begins to laugh. “Then I’m fine, because I’m not in love.”

“Guy…” Kelly says sadly.

“I’m not,” Guy repeats, looking at her. She sighs.

“Fine. Can you at least ask one of your alien buddies about them?” Guy opens his mouth, but she’s quick to speak over him. “They’re clearly not terrestrial and I’d like to know more about them, at least. It’d make me feel better.”

Guy sighs. “Alright, next time I see one of them, okay?”

“Thank you,” Kelly says, tone sarcastic but eyes sincere.

“Hey, do you know anything about flowers?” Shezow asks Diamondhead as he’s holding a shield up for them, stopping this stupid laser some smuck left firing.

“Flowers?” Diamondhead asks incredulously, looking back at her. “No, why?”

Shezow shakes her head. “No reason, just found some alien ones and my partner’s curious. I think she wants to see if she can make a cutting and grow more, but she needs to know more about them first and we don’t really know where to start looking.”

“So you ask the first big alien you see?” Diamondhead asks and Shezow shrugs.

“I’ll ask my si- sidekick and see what she says. She knows shit like that better than me,” Diamondhead says. It’s not the first time one of these aliens has nearly slipped on the word ‘sister’, and sometimes Shezow wonders what it means. Have they just not been doing the superhero gig for very long? Was their sister not a secret before? Or do they just trust Shezow enough that a part of them wants to tell her the secret, but the importance of a secret identity won out every time? Shezow’s chest tightens and she coughs, just slightly.

“Thanks, big guy.” Shezow winks. “Now I think it’s time to fight a little laser with laser.”

It wasn’t very hard to realize the ten aliens he fought with as Shezow occasionally were all one person. Maybe it would’ve been if Guy didn’t have his own– albeit much smaller– transformation, but it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together when one guy would run off and then another, different guy would show up several minutes later with the first nowhere in sight. There aren’t many aliens in Megadale. Not ones that look so obvious or fight crime, at least.

He sighs, looking at the petals he coughed up after Diamondhead left and tapping his fingers against the table. The shemanual has never been wrong before, but… Guy scrubs his hands over his face before he can consider the possible smudging of his eyeliner. The worst part is, given the flower, there’s only one possible answer if the shemanual is right and he’s pretty sure Kelly knows it.

“The flowers are supposed to represent the person you love in some way,” she’d said before he left. Guy gathers up the flowers a little rougher than he needs to and throws them in the container with all the rest. Since they don’t know what they are exactly, they haven’t been able to throw them out or even burn them. Just because they’re fine in his body, doesn’t mean they’d be okay when introduced to other conditions. Or so Kelly said. Personally, Guy thinks if they grew inside him they should be perfectly safe even if they’re alien. Maybe they even only look like the alien flowers they represent, but are much closer biologically to something from earth.

But what’s he know? Science is his worst subject.

It’s stupid anyhow, whatever this is. Guy’s never been in love before and he’s not in love now. Especially with some boy he only kinda knows who turns into ten, admittedly really cool, different aliens. If he was, he’d know it.

“Hey! Shezow!” Diamondhead calls, running up to him. Shezow turns and nearly laughs at the dents Diamondhead is leaving in the sidewalk. “I have the info on those flowers you wanted!” He stops in front of him with a wide smile, holding out a pile of pages held together with a paperclip with print Shezow is sure is too neat to be his. Too neat to be Diamondhead’s, at least. One of the other alien forms could’ve written it, or his human form, or one of his partners. The idea the boy behind Diamondhead could’ve taken the time to handwrite multiple pages of information on an alien flower for him makes him flush. He swallows down the swirl of flowers.

“Thanks,” Shezow says, keeping his eyes on the packet as he takes it from him.

“Sure thing!” Diamondhead smiles at him. “Anything for my favourite super-powered sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Shezow repeats, looking up at him. “Excuse you, you’re the sidekick here.”

Diamondhead snorts, but it’s fond and amused. It’s an old joke between friends, not distaste like he got from those assholes when he was just starting and considered joining a bigger team. He’s still glad he’d decided against it in the end. And glad he tried, if just to force the old heroes too stuck in their ways to see past themselves to actually look at other heroes for a change. Shezow folds the papers to store them in an empty pouch on his utility belt.

Later, he throws up the petals he’d swallowed down.

“This is a dangerous place right now, you know.” Guy jolts at the hissing voice and looks up into XLR8’s visor. He showed up out of nowhere, right as Guy was about to transform. Though it’s not very surprising. It’s more XLR8’s thing than any of the others to show up suddenly, completely silent. She curls her hand into a fist, hiding her ring, despite knowing no one else who’s noticed it has ever connected the dots so the idea of XLR8 being able to is a little silly. But she also knows he’s a good hero. She won’t risk it.

“Is it?” Guy asks, coughing as she nearly uses her Shezow voice on instinct. If XLR8 notices the slight way her voice warbles, she can’t tell.

“Well yeah,” he gestures out of the alley, to where the villain of the week is making a giant mess of the road. Without a doubt, her dad will be complaining about it during dinner. Though he’s started to complain less, between the years of living in Megadale and Shezow starting to do the best she can to keep the damage to a minimum during the fight as well as helping fix things after. “There’s a villain right there, you can’t seriously tell me you missed it.”

Guy shrugs. “There are a lot of villains here. If I hid or whatever everytime one popped up, I’d never get to do anything.” Even with the visor, she feels like she knows the exact expression XLR8 is making. Eyes narrowed, staring at her like he thinks she’s a little off-kilter but unable to say anything because she’s not exactly wrong. “Aren’t you supposed to protect me, anyway?”

XLR8 snorts. It’s a noise he’s made before and it makes Guy just as curious as it has every other time he’s made it. As far as Guy can tell, XLR8 has no nose. How can you snort without a nose? He picks her up, dashing off before one of the androids spots them in their little alleyway. It’s always a little dizzying to travel by someone else’s super speed.

“You’re not gonna fight them?” Guy asks once she’s put down. They’re far away from the action now, though she can still hear it.

“I’m waiting for my partner. She’s later than she usually is,” XLR8 says, looking around.

“Can’t you do it without her?” Guy asks, feeling her heart pound. He has to be talking about her. In all the time they’ve worked together, whenever he talks about the people he works with he calls them his sidekicks, so it has to be her.

“Yeah, but this is her city and it’d feel weird,” XLR8 says. The petals shift in her chest as she breathes.

“That’s nice of you,” Guy says and XLR8 laughs, the sound crackling like tv static before he runs off. Guy watches him go. Once he’s out of sight, she transforms.

“Where were you?” Kelly asks quietly once Shezow is by her side.

“XLR8 caught me before I could transform, so I had to make a detour,” Shezow says, refusing to look at her sister. It didn’t help that she’d had to cough up more petals before she could even transform. The flowers were starting to get annoying, scraping against her insides. Kelly tilts her head and Shezow moves to join XLR8 before Kelly can connect any dots. Before she can see Kelly connect the dots. It wouldn’t be the full picture, anyway. Because if Shezow really is in love with XLR8, then she’s also in love with multiple other boys. And as far as she knows Kelly still thinks all the aliens are different people.

“You’re in love with him,” Kelly says.

No I’m not, Guy wants to say, but “which one do you mean?:” slips out instead. He wants to bash his head into the counter. It’s cruel of her to confront him on this when he hasn’t even had his breakfast.

“I don’t know. All of them?” Kelly shrugs. “I have a theory about them, but I haven’t really been able to confirm it yet.”

“What’s your theory?” Guy asks, hoping to distract her away from whatever her original intent was.

“I think all the aliens might actually be one, shapeshifting alien,” Kelly says quietly, like a conspiracy. Despite the fact they’re in the She-Lair. “We never see them all together, even when multiple of them help you in the same day. And none of them ever stick around despite helping you.”

I wouldn’t say that… Guy thinks, remembering several times he’s hung out with one of them after they’ve saved the city. Playing in the park with Wildmutt or getting a fizzy burp with Four Arms… He doesn’t say anything, though. It’d only give Kelly more fuel.

“So you think they’re all the same person?” Guy asks

“Yeah. But like I said, it’s just a theory.”

“A game theory, thanks for watching,” Guy mumbles around his spoon and Kelly gives him a flat look.

“Can’t you be serious about this, at least?” Kelly asks. “You know, since it’ll kill you eventually.”

“See, the key word there is eventually.” Guy hops up onto the counter. “And if I’m even in love, instead of this being some other weird flower disease.”

“Another weird flower disease,” Kelly says flatly.

“Yeah! I work with aliens constantly, a magic ring’s messed with my dna, who knows what I could’ve caught that a normal human wouldn’t?” Guy says. Kelly sighs. “Maybe it’s not a Shezow thing.”

“But what if it is?” Kelly asks.

“Then I’m fine,” Guy says, hoping off the counter, and taking Kelly’s hands in his. “Because I’m not in love.”

Kelly, like any sister, is lovely, helpful, and a major pain in the ass. She doesn’t drop it, which leads to him being out more. He can’t take it to Maz, because Maz is on Kelly’s side. So he only has one friend to turn to. Or, ten friends.

The sun is bright enough to glitter off Diamondhead in rainbows. It’s something Guy would’ve said looks dumb, back when he was twelve and only just starting out as Shezow. And only just learning about himself. Now, he just thinks it looks cool and kind of pretty, the way the colours paint the sidewalk and grass. “So what’s up, Zow? You don’t usually call.”

He doesn’t. He should, probably, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know where their base is, or when they’re in the area, so he’s never bothered before. “My sister’s being a nuisance,” she says and Diamondhead nods. “I know she doesn’t mean to be, she’s just worried, but I’ve told her she doesn’t have to be. And now she’s dragged my best friend into it, too.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Diamondhead pouts, and Shezow laughs.

“One of them,” she says with a smile. Diamondhead looks at her like he knows she’s not just talking about the friends he has as Guy Hamdon, but he doesn’t say anything. She wonders if he would’ve as Greymatter.

“So you want me to distract you?” Diamondhead asks.

“It’d be nice,” Shezow sighs. Diamondhead mimes cracking his knuckles.

“That I can do,” Diamondhead says with a wide smile, and Shezow smiles back.

Maybe it’s the days he spends hanging out with the different forms his alien friend takes that does him in. But he feels good around the aliens, feels happy and distracted, and he needs the distraction. Wants the distraction with Kelly, Maz, and even Sheila breathing down his neck. So he ignores the tickling of his chest, the painful squeeze of his ribcage, holding in the petals and flowers until he has no choice but to speed away to cough them up. They always look worried when he comes back, despite Shezow making sure to wipe away any spit or blood. To make sure there is no evidence of this disease which isn’t a sign of love, slowly twisting his running thoughts into knots around his lungs and heart.

It’s what kills him, except it doesn’t, because he is Shezow and if it did Kelly would find a way to kill him herself instead.

Four Arms catches him as he stumbles, coughs wracking painfully up his throat, too sudden and powerful for him to hold down. When the heaving starts, the petals and flowers forcing their way up and out, Four Arms scrambles before holding his hair back. It makes him want to smile. Then the stems squeeze more painfully, making him gasp and choke.

“Shezow?” Four Arms asks, worry dripping from his voice. Shezow wants to reassure him, wants to tell him she’s fine, but the flowers are more insistent. They don’t want to stop. She coughs until her lungs are on fire, until her throat feels like she ate seven bags of super-spicy nachos. And then she coughs past it. Flowers and blood and spit lay on the ground in front of Shezow, blurred by tears. Then it’s done. Shezow sits there for several long minutes, breathing slow through a burning throat, until she registers Four Arms with one hand still holding back her hair and another rubbing her back as he makes soft sounds, like he’s done this before.

It is quite possibly the stupidest moment to have the sudden realization that Kelly might just be right.

She scrubs her arm across her eyes, the cloth of the gloves brushing away the tears.

“Are those the flowers you asked Diamondhead about two months ago?” Four Arms asks, looking over her shoulder. Shezow swallows once, twice, feeling the burn of acid in her throat.

“Yeah.” Her voice croaks. She doesn’t risk clearing her throat.

“Why’d you spit them up?” He asks.

“It’s a Shezow thing,” Shezow answers, doing her best to smile. Four Arms raises an eyebrow.

“Are you dying?” Four Arms asks quietly. Shezow wants to say no. Thinks she should say maybe, since it’s closer to the truth, and ends up saying “Naybe” instead. It makes Four Arms snort, at least. The petals in her chest flutter at the sound. She clears her throat on instinct. Regrets it immediately.

“I should head out.” She stands up, feeling rocky in a way she hasn’t since she traded in her high heels for hightops.

“Wait!” Four Arms quickly moves to standing as well, holding out all four of his hands. He gestures to himself with two of them. “Maybe I should take you back or something.”

“Thanks, but I’m a big girl. I can make it back to my lair on my own, I promise,” Shezow says.

She leaves behind the flowers, too busy running to think about them. Even if she wasn’t, she’s not sure she wouldn’t have left them there anyway despite what Kelly would say, leaving them behind like evidence of guilt.

“I’m in love with all of them,” Guy admits to Kelly once he’s back in the She-lair, catching her and Sheila off guard and interrupting their conversation. Kelly stares at him for several seconds before jumping to her feet.

“Guy! You look-” Kelly breaks off, mouth open, just staring more.

“Like she-it?” Guy says, laughing bitterly.

“I think I just coughed up about three entire bouquets. You know, maybe I should get into the flower arranging business.”

“Guy.” Kelly’s using her serious tone and Guy’s shoulders droop.

“Can we not do this right now? I’m feeling pretty tired actually,” Guy says. It doesn’t take much work for him to sound pathetic. He feels pathetic. He feels like he just got run over by a steam engine. Kelly frowns.

“What happened?” She asks, tone gentled, and Guy isn’t sure if it’s better or worse. Guy shrugs, because he doesn’t want to admit she’s right when already she knows she is. “How bad was it?”

“Remember that bad I ate? The one you told me not to?” Guy asks. Kelly hisses between her teeth.

“That’s bad.”

“Yeah.” Guy sighs. He doesn’t really know what else to do. Usually Kelly is the one with all the bigger-picture ideas. And the only solution he knows is one he really doesn’t want to do.

It’s also the one he knows Kelly will give.

“You going to tell them?” Kelly asks.

“I don’t want to,” Guy whines, pouting at her. He’d bat his eyelashes, too, but he was still transformed and didn’t want to accidentally activate his wind winkers. There is not much pity to be had when your ‘pity me’ act is interrupted by near-bodily harm. Kelly pats his shoulder.

“Too bad.”

“Kelllyyyyy,” Guy whines. “Don’t make me.”

“Oh, I can’t make you do anything,” Kelly says and pokes him in the chest. “But your body can. Promise me you’ll say something before your stupidity actually does manage to kill you, yeah?”

Guy huffs out a breath, gently knocking her hand away. “Fine. Though just remember, technically you’re giving up any chance to take over being Shezow.”

“An incredible sacrifice on my part,” Kelly says drily.

If Guy is anything, it’s awkward. He wishes he still had the super empathy because at least then he seemed to know what to say, but now he can only rely on his own twisting tongue and pounding heart. The flowers choking up his throat don’t help. She rocks back on the heels of her white sneakers, looking up at Heatblast. “Did Four Arms tell you about me coughing up flowers in front of him?” Heatblast blinks at her. She holds onto the end of her gloves, arms crossed behind her back.

“Yeah.” He says slowly, giving her a searching look. His eyes flicker across her torso and limbs like she may fall apart into petals, right there in front of him. Maybe she will. Neither Kelly or she knows just how a Shezow dies to this, if the petals will choke her until the stems come out her throat like a vase or if they’ll simply expand outwards until she’s nothing but flowers and roots. The thought doesn’t push her like she wishes it did. Who knew it was this hard to just tell someone you kinda-sorta like them? (Maz. Maz probably knew.) “Hey said you might be dying?”

Shezow swallows, adam’s apple bobbing painfully. “I am.”

“Oh.” Heatblast’s fire crackles in the silence between them, and Shezow knows she really should say something, but she doesn’t know how.

“I have a secret?” Shezow says, voice turning up into a question instead of staying steady for a statement and she winces. Heatblast’s head tilts. “I know you’re all one alien. Person?”

Heatblast’s fire splutters. “W-whaaat? No we’re not, have you seen those other guys?”

“Yeah.” Shezow licks her lips, tastes the oddly waxy taste of her lipstick. Quieter, “I have another secret.”

Heatblast’s denials cut off. This time, he looks nervous. “Yeah…?”

“I think I like all of you. Uh. Like-like. The gross mushy kind. Except maybe not the mushy kind? I’ve never really… done this before, so I’m not sure, but definitely the romantic kind,” she rambles, looking at the ground. The sidewalk is cracked; a dandelion is popping through, bright and yellow. When she glances up, Heatblast’s mouth is agape.

“What.” There’s no inflection to his voice, but his flame’s gotten lighter. He’s blushing. Shezow feels her own face heat at the realization.

“Uh- Y-yeah,” Shezow says.

“Wh- what does this have to do with you… dying?” Heatblast asks. Shezow laughs, the sound strangled and high.

“Apparently when a Shezow falls in love, flowers grow in her lungs until she admits it!” She laughs again. It feels hysterical, like helium going to her head.

“Well that’s stupid.” Heatblast frowns. Shezow gives a flat smile and nods.

“She-yeah it is. A surprising amount of rules are bullshit. They really like ‘Zows to be honest with their feelings, or whatever,” Shezow says. Heatblast makes a noise Shezow recognizes as a snort, but sounds more like a flame spluttering.

“You don’t like it?” Heatblast asks with a smile.

“Yeah, sure, I love the feeling of flowers curling into my ribs. Feels great,” Shezow says drily. She takes a breath and finally realizes just how much oxygen fills her lungs. She didn’t even realize she was breathing smaller breaths before now. She takes another breath, just to feel it completely fill her lungs, the taste of flowers still tainting it. Each breath makes the air feel clearer.

“If it helps any, I think I have gross mushy romantic feelings for you, too,” Heatblast says. Shezow smiles.

“It might,” she says and Heatblast laughs. The sound makes her chest flutter— butterflies, not flowers. The relief makes her laugh as well.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Week Three: April 15th - 21st

Heliotrope - Eternal Love, Devotion

Hanahaki For Hanami Begins!

Hanahaki for Hanami is officially here! All new Hanahaki-themed works will be shared regardless of whether or not they fit the weekly prompt. Do as many or as few prompts as you would like and be sure to tag the account when you post!

You can submit works to the AO3 collection and view the full event details either on our Tumblr page or on our Notion.

Have fun and don't forget to torture your OTPs with all the delicious unrequited love you can muster!

[AI-generated works will not be reblogged and accounts will be blocked.]

[hanahaki4hanami]

Rated: T

Pairing: Guy Hamdon/Ben Tennyson

Word Count: ~4k

A/N: Written for @hanahaki4hanami and while it doesn't have vomiting one scene is definitely inspired by it

Flowers. It’s a little hard to tell with the way they glow, colours flashing between a scarlet red and aqua, and the feel of the petals between his fingers, somewhere between silk and a soft wood. But the smell, once you get past the bile and blood, and the shape of the petals makes it clear they’re flowers.

“Kelly, why am I spitting these up?” Guy asks from his seat on the table, kicking his legs absently. Kelly looks up from the Shemanual with something akin to worry in her eyes, her face pale. It doesn’t make him feel great. There are a lot of good things with being Shezow, but he’s found a lot of rough consequences too. He still remembers his brief attempt at a “dark and gritty” phase.

“Are you…” Kelly looks back down at the book, biting her lip. “In love?”

“In love?” Guy scoffs, laughing in disbelief. He hasn’t been in love in– ever, he thinks.

“Are you… sure?” Kelly asks, looking up at him and the stack of petals next to him again with a frown.

“... what does the book say?” Guy asks, feeling suspicious now. Kelly licks her lips, tasting the grape of her chapstick.

“It says when a Zow becomes trapped in unspoken love they start coughing up flowers. Till they confess or till it… kills them,” Kelly looks down. “The shemanual calls it hanahaki.”

“Oh,” Guy says. He stares at the petals next to him, watching them rotate between their two colours, taking in the shape of the petals. They glitter like sequins, they’re soft like silk behind the flaking red. After a few moments he begins to laugh. “Then I’m fine, because I’m not in love.”

“Guy…” Kelly says sadly.

“I’m not,” Guy repeats, looking at her. She sighs.

“Fine. Can you at least ask one of your alien buddies about them?” Guy opens his mouth, but she’s quick to speak over him. “They’re clearly not terrestrial and I’d like to know more about them, at least. It’d make me feel better.”

Guy sighs. “Alright, next time I see one of them, okay?”

“Thank you,” Kelly says, tone sarcastic but eyes sincere.

“Hey, do you know anything about flowers?” Shezow asks Diamondhead as he’s holding a shield up for them, stopping this stupid laser some smuck left firing.

“Flowers?” Diamondhead asks incredulously, looking back at her. “No, why?”

Shezow shakes her head. “No reason, just found some alien ones and my partner’s curious. I think she wants to see if she can make a cutting and grow more, but she needs to know more about them first and we don’t really know where to start looking.”

“So you ask the first big alien you see?” Diamondhead asks and Shezow shrugs.

“I’ll ask my si- sidekick and see what she says. She knows shit like that better than me,” Diamondhead says. It’s not the first time one of these aliens has nearly slipped on the word ‘sister’, and sometimes Shezow wonders what it means. Have they just not been doing the superhero gig for very long? Was their sister not a secret before? Or do they just trust Shezow enough that a part of them wants to tell her the secret, but the importance of a secret identity won out every time? Shezow’s chest tightens and she coughs, just slightly.

“Thanks, big guy.” Shezow winks. “Now I think it’s time to fight a little laser with laser.”

It wasn’t very hard to realize the ten aliens he fought with as Shezow occasionally were all one person. Maybe it would’ve been if Guy didn’t have his own– albeit much smaller– transformation, but it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together when one guy would run off and then another, different guy would show up several minutes later with the first nowhere in sight. There aren’t many aliens in Megadale. Not ones that look so obvious or fight crime, at least.

He sighs, looking at the petals he coughed up after Diamondhead left and tapping his fingers against the table. The shemanual has never been wrong before, but… Guy scrubs his hands over his face before he can consider the possible smudging of his eyeliner. The worst part is, given the flower, there’s only one possible answer if the shemanual is right and he’s pretty sure Kelly knows it.

“The flowers are supposed to represent the person you love in some way,” she’d said before he left. Guy gathers up the flowers a little rougher than he needs to and throws them in the container with all the rest. Since they don’t know what they are exactly, they haven’t been able to throw them out or even burn them. Just because they’re fine in his body, doesn’t mean they’d be okay when introduced to other conditions. Or so Kelly said. Personally, Guy thinks if they grew inside him they should be perfectly safe even if they’re alien. Maybe they even only look like the alien flowers they represent, but are much closer biologically to something from earth.

But what’s he know? Science is his worst subject.

It’s stupid anyhow, whatever this is. Guy’s never been in love before and he’s not in love now. Especially with some boy he only kinda knows who turns into ten, admittedly really cool, different aliens. If he was, he’d know it.

“Hey! Shezow!” Diamondhead calls, running up to him. Shezow turns and nearly laughs at the dents Diamondhead is leaving in the sidewalk. “I have the info on those flowers you wanted!” He stops in front of him with a wide smile, holding out a pile of pages held together with a paperclip with print Shezow is sure is too neat to be his. Too neat to be Diamondhead’s, at least. One of the other alien forms could’ve written it, or his human form, or one of his partners. The idea the boy behind Diamondhead could’ve taken the time to handwrite multiple pages of information on an alien flower for him makes him flush. He swallows down the swirl of flowers.

“Thanks,” Shezow says, keeping his eyes on the packet as he takes it from him.

“Sure thing!” Diamondhead smiles at him. “Anything for my favourite super-powered sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Shezow repeats, looking up at him. “Excuse you, you’re the sidekick here.”

Diamondhead snorts, but it’s fond and amused. It’s an old joke between friends, not distaste like he got from those assholes when he was just starting and considered joining a bigger team. He’s still glad he’d decided against it in the end. And glad he tried, if just to force the old heroes too stuck in their ways to see past themselves to actually look at other heroes for a change. Shezow folds the papers to store them in an empty pouch on his utility belt.

Later, he throws up the petals he’d swallowed down.

“This is a dangerous place right now, you know.” Guy jolts at the hissing voice and looks up into XLR8’s visor. He showed up out of nowhere, right as Guy was about to transform. Though it’s not very surprising. It’s more XLR8’s thing than any of the others to show up suddenly, completely silent. She curls her hand into a fist, hiding her ring, despite knowing no one else who’s noticed it has ever connected the dots so the idea of XLR8 being able to is a little silly. But she also knows he’s a good hero. She won’t risk it.

“Is it?” Guy asks, coughing as she nearly uses her Shezow voice on instinct. If XLR8 notices the slight way her voice warbles, she can’t tell.

“Well yeah,” he gestures out of the alley, to where the villain of the week is making a giant mess of the road. Without a doubt, her dad will be complaining about it during dinner. Though he’s started to complain less, between the years of living in Megadale and Shezow starting to do the best she can to keep the damage to a minimum during the fight as well as helping fix things after. “There’s a villain right there, you can’t seriously tell me you missed it.”

Guy shrugs. “There are a lot of villains here. If I hid or whatever everytime one popped up, I’d never get to do anything.” Even with the visor, she feels like she knows the exact expression XLR8 is making. Eyes narrowed, staring at her like he thinks she’s a little off-kilter but unable to say anything because she’s not exactly wrong. “Aren’t you supposed to protect me, anyway?”

XLR8 snorts. It’s a noise he’s made before and it makes Guy just as curious as it has every other time he’s made it. As far as Guy can tell, XLR8 has no nose. How can you snort without a nose? He picks her up, dashing off before one of the androids spots them in their little alleyway. It’s always a little dizzying to travel by someone else’s super speed.

“You’re not gonna fight them?” Guy asks once she’s put down. They’re far away from the action now, though she can still hear it.

“I’m waiting for my partner. She’s later than she usually is,” XLR8 says, looking around.

“Can’t you do it without her?” Guy asks, feeling her heart pound. He has to be talking about her. In all the time they’ve worked together, whenever he talks about the people he works with he calls them his sidekicks, so it has to be her.

“Yeah, but this is her city and it’d feel weird,” XLR8 says. The petals shift in her chest as she breathes.

“That’s nice of you,” Guy says and XLR8 laughs, the sound crackling like tv static before he runs off. Guy watches him go. Once he’s out of sight, she transforms.

“Where were you?” Kelly asks quietly once Shezow is by her side.

“XLR8 caught me before I could transform, so I had to make a detour,” Shezow says, refusing to look at her sister. It didn’t help that she’d had to cough up more petals before she could even transform. The flowers were starting to get annoying, scraping against her insides. Kelly tilts her head and Shezow moves to join XLR8 before Kelly can connect any dots. Before she can see Kelly connect the dots. It wouldn’t be the full picture, anyway. Because if Shezow really is in love with XLR8, then she’s also in love with multiple other boys. And as far as she knows Kelly still thinks all the aliens are different people.

“You’re in love with him,” Kelly says.

No I’m not, Guy wants to say, but “which one do you mean?:” slips out instead. He wants to bash his head into the counter. It’s cruel of her to confront him on this when he hasn’t even had his breakfast.

“I don’t know. All of them?” Kelly shrugs. “I have a theory about them, but I haven’t really been able to confirm it yet.”

“What’s your theory?” Guy asks, hoping to distract her away from whatever her original intent was.

“I think all the aliens might actually be one, shapeshifting alien,” Kelly says quietly, like a conspiracy. Despite the fact they’re in the She-Lair. “We never see them all together, even when multiple of them help you in the same day. And none of them ever stick around despite helping you.”

I wouldn’t say that… Guy thinks, remembering several times he’s hung out with one of them after they’ve saved the city. Playing in the park with Wildmutt or getting a fizzy burp with Four Arms… He doesn’t say anything, though. It’d only give Kelly more fuel.

“So you think they’re all the same person?” Guy asks

“Yeah. But like I said, it’s just a theory.”

“A game theory, thanks for watching,” Guy mumbles around his spoon and Kelly gives him a flat look.

“Can’t you be serious about this, at least?” Kelly asks. “You know, since it’ll kill you eventually.”

“See, the key word there is eventually.” Guy hops up onto the counter. “And if I’m even in love, instead of this being some other weird flower disease.”

“Another weird flower disease,” Kelly says flatly.

“Yeah! I work with aliens constantly, a magic ring’s messed with my dna, who knows what I could’ve caught that a normal human wouldn’t?” Guy says. Kelly sighs. “Maybe it’s not a Shezow thing.”

“But what if it is?” Kelly asks.

“Then I’m fine,” Guy says, hoping off the counter, and taking Kelly’s hands in his. “Because I’m not in love.”

Kelly, like any sister, is lovely, helpful, and a major pain in the ass. She doesn’t drop it, which leads to him being out more. He can’t take it to Maz, because Maz is on Kelly’s side. So he only has one friend to turn to. Or, ten friends.

The sun is bright enough to glitter off Diamondhead in rainbows. It’s something Guy would’ve said looks dumb, back when he was twelve and only just starting out as Shezow. And only just learning about himself. Now, he just thinks it looks cool and kind of pretty, the way the colours paint the sidewalk and grass. “So what’s up, Zow? You don’t usually call.”

He doesn’t. He should, probably, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know where their base is, or when they’re in the area, so he’s never bothered before. “My sister’s being a nuisance,” she says and Diamondhead nods. “I know she doesn’t mean to be, she’s just worried, but I’ve told her she doesn’t have to be. And now she’s dragged my best friend into it, too.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Diamondhead pouts, and Shezow laughs.

“One of them,” she says with a smile. Diamondhead looks at her like he knows she’s not just talking about the friends he has as Guy Hamdon, but he doesn’t say anything. She wonders if he would’ve as Greymatter.

“So you want me to distract you?” Diamondhead asks.

“It’d be nice,” Shezow sighs. Diamondhead mimes cracking his knuckles.

“That I can do,” Diamondhead says with a wide smile, and Shezow smiles back.

Maybe it’s the days he spends hanging out with the different forms his alien friend takes that does him in. But he feels good around the aliens, feels happy and distracted, and he needs the distraction. Wants the distraction with Kelly, Maz, and even Sheila breathing down his neck. So he ignores the tickling of his chest, the painful squeeze of his ribcage, holding in the petals and flowers until he has no choice but to speed away to cough them up. They always look worried when he comes back, despite Shezow making sure to wipe away any spit or blood. To make sure there is no evidence of this disease which isn’t a sign of love, slowly twisting his running thoughts into knots around his lungs and heart.

It’s what kills him, except it doesn’t, because he is Shezow and if it did Kelly would find a way to kill him herself instead.

Four Arms catches him as he stumbles, coughs wracking painfully up his throat, too sudden and powerful for him to hold down. When the heaving starts, the petals and flowers forcing their way up and out, Four Arms scrambles before holding his hair back. It makes him want to smile. Then the stems squeeze more painfully, making him gasp and choke.

“Shezow?” Four Arms asks, worry dripping from his voice. Shezow wants to reassure him, wants to tell him she’s fine, but the flowers are more insistent. They don’t want to stop. She coughs until her lungs are on fire, until her throat feels like she ate seven bags of super-spicy nachos. And then she coughs past it. Flowers and blood and spit lay on the ground in front of Shezow, blurred by tears. Then it’s done. Shezow sits there for several long minutes, breathing slow through a burning throat, until she registers Four Arms with one hand still holding back her hair and another rubbing her back as he makes soft sounds, like he’s done this before.

It is quite possibly the stupidest moment to have the sudden realization that Kelly might just be right.

She scrubs her arm across her eyes, the cloth of the gloves brushing away the tears.

“Are those the flowers you asked Diamondhead about two months ago?” Four Arms asks, looking over her shoulder. Shezow swallows once, twice, feeling the burn of acid in her throat.

“Yeah.” Her voice croaks. She doesn’t risk clearing her throat.

“Why’d you spit them up?” He asks.

“It’s a Shezow thing,” Shezow answers, doing her best to smile. Four Arms raises an eyebrow.

“Are you dying?” Four Arms asks quietly. Shezow wants to say no. Thinks she should say maybe, since it’s closer to the truth, and ends up saying “Naybe” instead. It makes Four Arms snort, at least. The petals in her chest flutter at the sound. She clears her throat on instinct. Regrets it immediately.

“I should head out.” She stands up, feeling rocky in a way she hasn’t since she traded in her high heels for hightops.

“Wait!” Four Arms quickly moves to standing as well, holding out all four of his hands. He gestures to himself with two of them. “Maybe I should take you back or something.”

“Thanks, but I’m a big girl. I can make it back to my lair on my own, I promise,” Shezow says.

She leaves behind the flowers, too busy running to think about them. Even if she wasn’t, she’s not sure she wouldn’t have left them there anyway despite what Kelly would say, leaving them behind like evidence of guilt.

“I’m in love with all of them,” Guy admits to Kelly once he’s back in the She-lair, catching her and Sheila off guard and interrupting their conversation. Kelly stares at him for several seconds before jumping to her feet.

“Guy! You look-” Kelly breaks off, mouth open, just staring more.

“Like she-it?” Guy says, laughing bitterly.

“I think I just coughed up about three entire bouquets. You know, maybe I should get into the flower arranging business.”

“Guy.” Kelly’s using her serious tone and Guy’s shoulders droop.

“Can we not do this right now? I’m feeling pretty tired actually,” Guy says. It doesn’t take much work for him to sound pathetic. He feels pathetic. He feels like he just got run over by a steam engine. Kelly frowns.

“What happened?” She asks, tone gentled, and Guy isn’t sure if it’s better or worse. Guy shrugs, because he doesn’t want to admit she’s right when already she knows she is. “How bad was it?”

“Remember that bad I ate? The one you told me not to?” Guy asks. Kelly hisses between her teeth.

“That’s bad.”

“Yeah.” Guy sighs. He doesn’t really know what else to do. Usually Kelly is the one with all the bigger-picture ideas. And the only solution he knows is one he really doesn’t want to do.

It’s also the one he knows Kelly will give.

“You going to tell them?” Kelly asks.

“I don’t want to,” Guy whines, pouting at her. He’d bat his eyelashes, too, but he was still transformed and didn’t want to accidentally activate his wind winkers. There is not much pity to be had when your ‘pity me’ act is interrupted by near-bodily harm. Kelly pats his shoulder.

“Too bad.”

“Kelllyyyyy,” Guy whines. “Don’t make me.”

“Oh, I can’t make you do anything,” Kelly says and pokes him in the chest. “But your body can. Promise me you’ll say something before your stupidity actually does manage to kill you, yeah?”

Guy huffs out a breath, gently knocking her hand away. “Fine. Though just remember, technically you’re giving up any chance to take over being Shezow.”

“An incredible sacrifice on my part,” Kelly says drily.

If Guy is anything, it’s awkward. He wishes he still had the super empathy because at least then he seemed to know what to say, but now he can only rely on his own twisting tongue and pounding heart. The flowers choking up his throat don’t help. She rocks back on the heels of her white sneakers, looking up at Heatblast. “Did Four Arms tell you about me coughing up flowers in front of him?” Heatblast blinks at her. She holds onto the end of her gloves, arms crossed behind her back.

“Yeah.” He says slowly, giving her a searching look. His eyes flicker across her torso and limbs like she may fall apart into petals, right there in front of him. Maybe she will. Neither Kelly or she knows just how a Shezow dies to this, if the petals will choke her until the stems come out her throat like a vase or if they’ll simply expand outwards until she’s nothing but flowers and roots. The thought doesn’t push her like she wishes it did. Who knew it was this hard to just tell someone you kinda-sorta like them? (Maz. Maz probably knew.) “Hey said you might be dying?”

Shezow swallows, adam’s apple bobbing painfully. “I am.”

“Oh.” Heatblast’s fire crackles in the silence between them, and Shezow knows she really should say something, but she doesn’t know how.

“I have a secret?” Shezow says, voice turning up into a question instead of staying steady for a statement and she winces. Heatblast’s head tilts. “I know you’re all one alien. Person?”

Heatblast’s fire splutters. “W-whaaat? No we’re not, have you seen those other guys?”

“Yeah.” Shezow licks her lips, tastes the oddly waxy taste of her lipstick. Quieter, “I have another secret.”

Heatblast’s denials cut off. This time, he looks nervous. “Yeah…?”

“I think I like all of you. Uh. Like-like. The gross mushy kind. Except maybe not the mushy kind? I’ve never really… done this before, so I’m not sure, but definitely the romantic kind,” she rambles, looking at the ground. The sidewalk is cracked; a dandelion is popping through, bright and yellow. When she glances up, Heatblast’s mouth is agape.

“What.” There’s no inflection to his voice, but his flame’s gotten lighter. He’s blushing. Shezow feels her own face heat at the realization.

“Uh- Y-yeah,” Shezow says.

“Wh- what does this have to do with you… dying?” Heatblast asks. Shezow laughs, the sound strangled and high.

“Apparently when a Shezow falls in love, flowers grow in her lungs until she admits it!” She laughs again. It feels hysterical, like helium going to her head.

“Well that’s stupid.” Heatblast frowns. Shezow gives a flat smile and nods.

“She-yeah it is. A surprising amount of rules are bullshit. They really like ‘Zows to be honest with their feelings, or whatever,” Shezow says. Heatblast makes a noise Shezow recognizes as a snort, but sounds more like a flame spluttering.

“You don’t like it?” Heatblast asks with a smile.

“Yeah, sure, I love the feeling of flowers curling into my ribs. Feels great,” Shezow says drily. She takes a breath and finally realizes just how much oxygen fills her lungs. She didn’t even realize she was breathing smaller breaths before now. She takes another breath, just to feel it completely fill her lungs, the taste of flowers still tainting it. Each breath makes the air feel clearer.

“If it helps any, I think I have gross mushy romantic feelings for you, too,” Heatblast says. Shezow smiles.

“It might,” she says and Heatblast laughs. The sound makes her chest flutter— butterflies, not flowers. The relief makes her laugh as well.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Cyclamen

Cyclamen by Sebastina_Michaelis Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Helluva Boss (Web Series) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Stolas Goetia Additional Tags: implied/past stolitz, hanahaki, Drabble Summary:

Stolas is wasting away from hanahaki, resigning himself to the fate blitz left him to.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Under Pressure

Under Pressure by: Sivan325 Chapters: 1/? Fandom: 9-1-1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Tommy Kinard, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz/Tommy Kinard Characters: Evan "Buck" Buckley, Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, Howie "Chimney" Han, Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Tommy Kinard, Christopher Diaz (9-1-1 TV) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Feels, Hanahaki Disease, Sick Evan "Buck" Buckley, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Jealous Evan "Buck" Buckley Summary:

Buck's life was ebbing away slowly.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Red Tulips in a Taxi

Red Tulips in a Taxi by: Sazuka57 Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Octopath Traveler: CotC (Video Game), Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Auguste/Gilderoy (Octopath Traveler) Characters: Auguste (Octopath Traveler), Gilderoy (Octopath Traveler) Additional Tags: Hanahaki Disease, Modern AU, Fluff, Confessions, Happy Ending, Game: Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, Friends to Lovers Summary:

Gilderoy had been coughing red tulip petals for a while now. Five weeks. He counted. He also knew it was related to the fact that he almost kissed his best friend, Auguste. He didn't like the implications of that.

[hanahaki4hanami]

Week Two: April 8th - 14th

Red Tulip - Passion, Declaration of Love

Hanahaki For Hanami Begins!

Hanahaki for Hanami is officially here! All new Hanahaki-themed works will be shared regardless of whether or not they fit the weekly prompt. Do as many or as few prompts as you would like and be sure to tag the account when you post!

You can submit works to the AO3 collection and view the full event details either on our Tumblr page or on our Notion.

Have fun and don't forget to torture your OTPs with all the delicious unrequited love you can muster!

[AI-generated works will not be reblogged and accounts will be blocked.]

[hanahaki4hanami]

Yellow Flowers on the Waves

We have our first entry into the collection!

Yellow Flowers on the Waves by: Sazuka57 Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Octopath Traveler: CotC (Video Game), Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Characters: Fabio (Octopath Traveler), Menno (Octopath Traveler) Additional Tags: Hanahaki Disease, but remixed, Unrequited Crush, Nonbinary Character, Friends comforting each other Summary:

Menno is a picture of fury, and Fabio decides to pry. Turns out, they have feelings for the Ringbearer Chosen, who already has a lover...

[hanahaki4hanami]

Week One: April 1st - 7th

Yellow Hyacinth - Jealousy

Hanahaki For Hanami Begins!

Hanahaki for Hanami is officially here! All new Hanahaki-themed works will be shared regardless of whether or not they fit the weekly prompt. Do as many or as few prompts as you would like and be sure to tag the account when you post!

You can submit works to the AO3 collection and view the full event details either on our Tumblr page or on our Notion.

Have fun and don't forget to torture your OTPs with all the delicious unrequited love you can muster!

[AI-generated works will not be reblogged and accounts will be blocked.]

[hanahaki4hanami]

Hanahaki For Hanami Begins!

Hanahaki for Hanami is officially here! All new Hanahaki-themed works will be shared regardless of whether or not they fit the weekly prompt. Do as many or as few prompts as you would like and be sure to tag the account when you post!

You can submit works to the AO3 collection and view the full event details either on our Tumblr page or on our Notion.

Have fun and don't forget to torture your OTPs with all the delicious unrequited love you can muster!

[AI-generated works will not be reblogged and accounts will be blocked.]

[hanahaki4hanami]

Hanahaki for Hanami is 2 Days Away!

Hanahaki for Hanami is only TWO DAYS AWAY!! What budding creations have you come up with? Feel free to share a sneak peek of the work(s) you have in store! 🌸