crowspace | Hanahaki Disease Meme

and I can roll either way on who has the disease

unrelated did you know that when you're already dead you can't actually die again, just suffer :)

[It's a City thing. Sometimes you wake up with wings or cat ears, sometimes you wake up coughing up sunflowers. It'll go away soon enough. Within the month.

Except it's just getting worse. At first it had only been a petal or two at a time, but Chuuya finds himself hacking up more and more at once, and more frequently. Clumps of petals litter his floor - he hasn't been motivated enough to clean them when looking at them makes him feel sick all over again.

It's a City thing, and it'll go away - except the month has changed over and Chuuya's still spitting sunflowers everywhere. At this point, it's time to put his all into researching what the hell's wrong with him.

Lovesickness.

Chuuya's holed himself up in his home for the better part of a week and hasn't been seen by anyone - he's too busy going through everything he could check out of the library that covered unusual diseases. All the answers are the same no matter how many different books he reads: it's lovesickness. If his love isn't returned, it'll kill him. He may be able to get surgery, but that'll mean forgetting everything about the person he loves.

...At some point, someone's likely to get concerned about him not leaving his house. It would be nice if it wasn't the person whose fault this is.]

[ it probably would be nicer for what little peace of mind he has left, but he has to know better than that. Kaiko has never bothered to hide that she's an unapologetic busybody, or that she has a fussy streak about a mile wide— if anything, she's been gleefully proud of both.

what he doesn't know is that she'd taken note of his behavior and started worrying long before he did. not quite consciously, or she'd have gotten vocal about it very quickly— but you don't spend the better part of a year watching a family member slowly succumb to a respiratory disease while denying its seriousness the entire way without getting an eye for certain things. it's just enough to make her uneasy, and that uneasiness is just enough that when Chuuya misses his third shift in a row at the library and there's still no sign of him outside of it, she passes straight over "mild worry" into panic.

fortunately for him, she doesn't actually know his address, and she can't pull the trick she'd used to play hero to his damsel that one time by default. by the time she gets her hands on his location (through entirely legitimate means that were absolutely not sneaking into the library's employee records) she's calmed down enough to realize there's at least one less drastic step she could and probably should take to check on him first.

and so, rather than a concerned demigod showing up unannounced at his door, instead his phone pings with— ]

❤

It's a match! Why don't you break the ice?

[ ...of course, considering the cause of his current condition... that may not necessarily be much better. ]

[It takes Chuuya ten minutes to even check his phone. He hears the beep, but he's not in the mood to talk to people - only if it's an actual emergency. And who would really need him for an emergency?

Eventually, he does look, if only to make sure it isn't somehow important.

When he sees who the message is from, he throws his phone hard enough at the wall to crack it to the point of unusability.

...So, it looks like he's not answering that way.]

[ an hour. she'll give it an hour— if he's home and all right he'd definitely see the message by then, and if not... well. it's already been days. another hour probably won't matter, if things are as bad as the formless swell of anxiety she's been wrestling with has been loudly insisting.

the hour mark comes and goes, of course, and so it's not long after that that she arrives at his door, all but vibrating with a weird mix of worry and self-doubt. is she overreacting? what if she isn't? ...was getting his address going too far, what if he didn't want her to have it or ends up thinking she's a stalker or something—

—knocking on the door before she can overthink it any further ]

...Chuuya?

[Of course she came to investigate. Of course she did. That's what friends do when their friends don't answer their messages. He should have expected this eventually.

He can't get her to leave, but he'll try. Maybe he can convince her he's fine.]

Go aw-

[Except that snapping at her after spending days not talking at all was bad for his lungs and he ends up hacking in the middle of the second word, loud enough to be clearly audible through his front door.

Fuck.]

Chuuya.

[ if there are certain things you get an eye for, living with someone sick, there are also things you're never going to forget the sound of. there's a crackling electrical hum as all the lights in his house flare and then dim in reaction to her stab of panic, shortly followed by the doorknob rattling as she grabs for it ]

[Like any sane person in this city, Chuuya keeps his front door locked. To keep unwanted people out, and to keep Kaiko out too, right now.

The lights hurt his eyes but he can't give any response until he gets this stupid flower out of his throat, and that'll take some ugly-sounding coughing. He knows it sounds bad, it is bad, but when he can finally speak again-]

I'm fine...

[-of course he's going to try to keep her out, even if it's hopeless. He knows it's pointless, but the words still leave him in a wheeze.]

[ with the kind of shaky fury that comes from being deeply upset: ]

Then you can either prove it by coming and telling me that to my face or you can handle me coming in.

[ she's a ghost. she damn well doesn't need to use a door if she doesn't want to. ]

I'll come out.

[Because the state of the room doesn't give the impression of good health, he knows.

There's the sound of someone getting out of bed - and then, immediately after, the sound of someone stumbling and ending up on the floor with a loud bump, as one might if they've barely moved for several days.]

[ why did she say that? she should have expected him to be stubborn— ]

—I'm coming in.

[ stepping right through the door ]

[Noticeable immediately:

The floor is littered with flower petals. Large yellow petals, sometimes in ones and twos and sometimes in larger clumps, with a rare few having the center of the sunflower attached.

Chuuya's cell phone is next to the wall, nearly in two pieces.

There is a large stack of books next to the bed. All the titles suggest they're medical journals or encyclopedias centering on disease. There is also a stash of food sitting out, sizable enough to feed Chuuya for a few more days before he would have to leave.

Chuuya is sitting by the bed, slowly picking himself up again after he'd fallen.]

...Just fine. I told you.

[ taking that all in, her expression shuttering the rest of the way as she sees the ruined phone— her eyes linger for a moment on the food (good, at least he'd been eating) and then a lot longer on the books. a lick of electricity crawls a circuitous path down her body before grounding itself at her feet, but thankfully there are no more shenanigans with the lights. ]

You've been coughing hard enough for it to hurt and you fell when you tried to get up. That isn't "fine."

I haven't been moving much for a while, that's normal.

[Leaving aside that staying mostly in bed for days at a time isn't normal.]

Edited (discovering typos hours later) 2017-06-01 00:14 (UTC)

In the sense that bleeding because you've been cut is normal, perhaps.

What do you want me to say? I-

[However he was going to finish that sentence, probably with something like 'I don't need your help', it's interrupted by another coughing fit, which ends with Chuuya spitting large yellow flower petals out onto the floor.]

[ takes an automatic step forward before stopping herself, hands curled so tightly her fingernails are digging into her palms. she's all but vibrating with tension by the time Chuuya finishes choking the petals up, but at the sight of them she freezes entirely, the implications of the petals littering the room sinking in.

her eyes dart to one of the larger clumps, the center still attached, and it's like the unsteady anger in her voice and the set of her shoulders has had a bucket of water dumped on it. ]

...You don't have to say anything so long as you don't try to act like this isn't something worth worrying over. Please.

...Alright.

[There's no way she'd be fooled into just leaving him be anyway. Not now, and maybe not before that either. So he can try to be a little more honest.]

There's nothing you can do.

[It's lovesickness. Unrequited love. And of course he's aware that it's her - but he's equally aware that she doesn't love him, why would she? Kaiko deserves better. Even if he's dying, that fact hasn't changed.]

Noth—

...I can get you to one of the Temples or bring a doctor, can't I?

[ she hadn't even begun to think far enough ahead to get to the possibility that there might not be anything to do. it's a mess and he looks a mess and he scared the hell out of her, certainly— but her mother had looked so much worse and she'd pulled through, so surely...? ]

The surgery's risky on a human being, where the doctors understand all the body parts going on. I'm not a human being and my insides don't work that way.

[It might be worth trying, but it'll probably kill him. And even if it doesn't, it could fuck him up.]

There's still— that still leaves the temples? The gods here can bring back the dead, so surely...

It's a possibility, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[The temples are powerless at the most inconvenient times.]

You should get used to the idea now, I guess.

['That I'm going to die'. He sounds disconnected, as if he isn't talking about his own impending death. Like he's just discussing something somewhere else, far from him.]

[ between one blink and the next her eyes go dark, almost all the color leeching out of them and leaving them a dull, dark steel-blue ]

...no. No. To Hell with that.

[She doesn't need to be this upset for him. He isn't sure why she is. It's not like he's someone who's still alive?]

It's not as bad as the meningitis was. Hurts like hell, but other than that it's not that bad a way to go.

"Other than that—" are you even listening to yourself? I've seen what getting your lungs eaten away does to a person, and that was by ordinary disease! And dying once is damn well enough!

Kaiko/OC/OTA I am so easy

hi

RUBS HANDS TOGETHER

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