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You don't really talk about it. There are a lot of reasons for keeping your mouth shut, not least because of how profoundly fucking stereotypical it is. Hanahaki is practically a keystone in the Sad Trans Girl Memoir, for fuck's sake. What's more tragic and sympathetic than some cis person's rejection taking physical, flowery form?
Of course, it wasn't a cis person. And you're not even sure, technically, if it was rejection. Ash is still texting you, after all, sending scattered glimpses of her picture-perfect trans girl commune that she's building in the wilderness and maybe it is rejection, even if she's inviting you to join them.
Because you want all of her, or you think you do, utterly and completely, without any strangers. It's selfish of you, really, your soul is too full of wicked demons and worse men, you could never give her all of you. But your body doesn't know that, and so the petals come.
Nora finds you outside a party once, vomiting into a trashcan. She comes up behind you and holds your hair, one of those instinctual tenets of girlcode, transgender or otherwise. You feel her grip tighten ever so slightly when she realizes just what you're spitting up, but she doesn't say anything.
At least, not until you've finished retching. She hands you a tissue from the pack in her pocket, watching you wipe off your mouth before she asks: "How long?"
You toss the tissue into the trash can, rubbing a finger between your aching eyes. "It's...chronic, but sporadic." Meaning, not fatal, and you feel her relax. You pluck a loose petal from the ground, wincing at its sickly-sweet odor, and hand it up to her.
"Honeysuckle," you explain, pushing yourself to your feet as Nora rubs the petal between her fingers. "FloraMD says it's 'bonds of love.' Affection, devotion, all that shit." Also intuition and psychic awareness, but that part would only raise more questions, ones you're not quite willing to answer.
"Okay." She peers into the trash can, wrinkling her nose. "And the--green sludge?"
Fuck. It doesn't show up often, but when it does... "Black-market 'cure' I got from some guy," you say, shaking your head. "Thought it'd work, guess not." You laugh hoarsely, and Nora joins in. You'd never really heard her laugh before.
"I'm pink camellias," she says, extending a hand to help you up. "Longing. Pretty basic, I guess, but it fits." You think of all the time you've seen her dabbing at her mouth with a napkin while working home from the club, while Hazel gushed about her latest tumble with her latest gorgeous girl.
"Oh." You stare at your feet, not sure what to say. Nora makes things easier for you by turning towards the club, so you follow, the thumping music so loud it makes your tender stomach throb.
"There are, um, support groups," she says, her hands on the doorknob. "Online. I'm in one that's just for trans girls, you know, there's a big market for it." Oh, you're sure. "I could send you the invite if you wanted."
"I'll think about it," you say, wondering if any of the other girls in the group experience their Hanahaki with a side flavoring of demonic possession. For all you know, some do. Only way to find out is to try, right?
You don't try. Or maybe you do, if you switch out "online support group" with "secluded commune/cult led by your ex." Ash forces your knees to the church, claims you in flesh and word, and you think that maybe this is something new.
In the woods, you hide how your stomach flips when you step into a field of flowers, how your shoulders tense ever so slightly when she calls you honeysuckle. It doesn't mean anything, not to you and not to her. The demons may or may not have followed you out here, but the flowers are certainly gone, right?
Stupid. Naive. You end up on your knees in porcelain prayer anyway, scrabbling to hold your own hair back while tile bites into your knees at three in the morning. You retch as quietly as you can, which isn't very quiet, or maybe it's just that Ash has always had ears like a fucking bat.
The door creaks open and you flinch, scrabbling uselessly away from the toilet. "Sorry," you whimper, spitting out petals, unable to meet her eyes. "Sorry, I--" You lunge back over the toilet as you spit up more flowers, honeysuckles blossoming on a ragged green wave.
From far away, you hear Ash's footsteps creak back into the bedroom. You wipe your mouth with toilet paper and toss it into the bowl, propping your fever-hot cheek against the cold seat. You're half expecting her to come back and throw you out, lash you with scorn like the Doubting Thomas you are.
Instead, Ash kneels beside you, her shadow brushing your skin until you force yourself to look at her. She's holding out a Tupperware box, patiently waiting for you to take it. You need a few tries before your shaking fingers can unlatch the lid, and when it finally opens, you have to blink a few times to be sure of what you're seeing.
You look at the box, then her, then the box, then her again. "These are..."
"Honeysuckle. Yeah." Ash reaches into the box, crumbling desiccated petals between her fingers. "Started after you left. Been sporadic ever since." She gently takes the box from you, sets it aside. "I guess we were both dumbasses, huh?"
"Yeah," you say, or try to, but it comes out as a sob, and then as a giggle, and then as a whole other cavalcade of noises as she pulls you to do it. Ash fucks you right there in the bathroom, tiles burnt into your back, your ass, your thighs, a happily ever after if there ever was one.
She doesn't ask about the sludge. You don't ask about how long it's been since she's coughed flowers, the petals in her box are so old. You don't ask why she gave you a nickname flavored with heartbreak, with bits of rejected matter and growth stopped short.
You don't ask, but the answer comes to you anyway in the turn of her head, in the torn bodies, in the pages of an invisible contract laid out neatly before toys. It's not a rejection in word, but in silent, ugly deed, searing through your lungs like ash.
Indigo finds you alone in the woods, vomiting harder than you ever have in her life. She hands you a rag to rub your mouth clean, pulls you away from the mess of pets and blood and sludge mixed across the ground. There's recognition in her eyes, but she doesn't tell you what her flowers were, or are, and you don't ask.
Easier to take the things she's willing to give, the waves of illicit pleasure lapping at the undergrowth. You wonder, viciously, if Ash will feel a tickle in her throat while in bed with her latest pretty young thing, if she'll discreetly cough when she thinks no one is looking.
Or maybe it's too late for that. I can say I loved you if it makes you feel better...maybe Ash really did love you, or loved what you brought her, but she loved power more. You watch her weave through the skeletal garden, and for a moment you can see yourself coughing up flower-wrapped bones at her feet, eternal devotion.
It's easier to look at Legion than at her. To stare into the face of your nightmare bridegroom, knowing Ash is the one responsible for your silver platter. It's a relatively simple task to spit at his feet, offering him nothing save the dust of desiccated flowers and the holy water in your own body.
I do not repent.
You wake up without a trace of flower in your belly. You go back to New York, thresh yourself out a life, keep a packet of tissues on hand just in case. It never comes; all your stomach bugs produce is plain, beautiful bile.
You wake up crying and Ash's name on your lips, but no blood or sludge in sight--you're mourning, missing, but not pining. It's a small difference, but a precious one, and it keeps the flowers from anywhere near you.
And yet, you find them. Never too close to your salt-lined home, just tucked under a trash can or drifting through the breeze past your head. Honeysuckle, shimmering in the sunlight, its sweet aroma clashing viciously with New York filth. You always look away as fast as you can, pick up your pace as much as you dare without drawing suspicion.
The one time you see her is a glint, a flickering shadow at the corner of your eye. You shouldn't turn your head, but you do. She smiles from across the street, swipes fingers over her bloody mouth, bares her oversized teeth.
Missing you, honeysuckle, she says, each syllable punctuated by a floral burst. They sweep across the street, their scent making your gut churn. By the time you swipe them away, she's gone, as if she was never there at all.