#& Pip's a hopeless romantic so maybe he fares a bit better with the disease than Damien did because of that. Pip knew what he was doing

[knightinink]

Do you have any dip hanahaki disease headcannons?

Ooh this could actually go along with my Damien hc's nicely! Lets get this one rolling! 🌹🌷

-Okay so I feel that it would affect Damien more than it would affect Pip, since he would be less likely to confess his feelings & let them bottle up. Going off of another post of mine where I (kinda) talk about how Damien's mean & evil persona is just a front because he's scared & insecure underneath it all, & he's afraid of what could happen if people were to see his more vulnerable & sensitive side. He wants to be soft & tender, but he doesn't know how to express this to Pip, so he just keeps it inside.

-At some point, the demon notices that he has a bit of a hard time breathing, but doesn't think too much of it. That silly disease couldn't be real, right? It was just some stupid folktale! Something made up to scare people!

-A few weeks go by, & it's becoming more & more difficult for the demon to breathe, & he's horrified when, while he's roughly coughing into the bathroom sink, a repeating sharpness feels like its poking into his throat & he quickly falls to his knees, knuckles white as he grips the edge of the toilet bowl, & hacks up whatever he's now choking on.

-He's finally able to cough up whatever felt like it was shredding his throat, & as he blinks tears out of his eyes, he zeros in on the small bundle of about 5 red roses, thorns shining crimson with his blood, & turning the water slightly pink. Eyes widening in horror, he falls back onto his butt, his breathing picking up as he begins to panic, & a taste of nature floods his mouth as he clenches his teeth shut; the roses have left their vines, & they have rooted into his lungs quite nicely, not intent on letting go.

-He would hide this from his father & Pip of course, but he wouldn't be able to for very long.

-Pip meanwhile keeps coughing up pink tulip petals every now & then, but they always eventually cough up all wilted, as Pip is thoroughly convinced that whatever romantic interest he's ever had will not come to be, as he is simply not capable of being loved; everyone in his upbringing had reminded him oh so many times of this. It was true with Estella, & it was true with Herbert (bless him!), that whenever Pip would finally decide to get close, he would end up convincing himself that he wasn't worth their time, that he would be bothering them, & would back out.

-This would continue... except for when it came to Damien.

-There was something within the Brit that just wouldn't let the demon go from his mind, & ever since then the petals would come up flourishing, no longer in their dreary, wilted state. About a week had gone by when the first full flower had shown up, a soft pastel pink, petals open in all their beauty. Pip was horrified.

-More time would go by & the confession would come first from Damien, who is being drowned from the inside by his own blood, as there is a full rose bush growing in & around his chest & chest cavity, the thorns ripping through the tender flesh. Pip would be in shock, completely oblivious to the fact that the feelings he had harbored for the demon laying his head in his lap as he lay dying, had been returned this entire time.

-Damien would just laugh in a fuzzy sense of warmth, as well as the irony of being killed by something of his namesake. He would ask Pip to kiss him, the latter obligingly leaning down to do so, & presses a tearful kiss to the demon's bloodied lips. Their lips are lightly pushed apart as a red rose & a pink tulip come to the surface, brushing against each other tenderly, before they melt into a kiss of their own.

-When Pip breaks from the kiss, he's met with glazed-over eyes that were once as vibrant as the blood that he could still taste on his lips. He brushed a hand delicately over the rose & the tulip. then brushes the hair away from the demon's face so he could see all of him more clearly. Pip choked back a sob.

-Damien was gone.