thinking about reed900 hanahaki
gavin, who coughs up the first flower petal and holds it in the palm of his hand, glares at it, and crushes it in his fist. for good measure, he drops it on the ground and scuffs it into the concrete with his boot, pulverizing it into a mere red smear on the ground. he feels petals wilting in his lungs when he inhales nicotine smoke, thin edges scorched and blackened like aged paper. thorns scrape against his ribcage and threaten to escape their prison. it hurts like hell, but it's a pain he'd prefer over the alternative.
at least this pain isn't as relentless.
nines, who coughs up the second flower petal and stares at it in abject horror, fear of the organic thing that is somehow surviving- no, thriving- in an artificial host. fear of what it means. he can always feel the flower's ungovernable roots stretching deep into his chest, vines weaving between his chassis and constricting his thirium pump like a python - threatening to swallow him whole. at first, his systems adamantly report a foreign object lodged deep within his body, but with time, the warnings fade as his code accepts the plant as its own. plastic and chloroplast become one and the same. nines knows the plant has made its home in his chest.
he won't risk uprooting it.
he can't.
