Dangerous Fellows (Imagines)

harry - hanahaki

Harry couldn't have been blamed for it. He couldn't have been blamed for feeling. He couldn't have been blamed for fearing. He couldn't have been blamed for keeping quiet. He couldn't have been blamed for falling.

None of it was his fault.

Truthfully, he wouldn't have probably even realized he loved her if not for that dreadful rose petal he had coughed up that morning.

He stared wide-eyed into his sink. At first, there was only a drop of blood he ended up spitting from a coughing fit. Then, his throat scratched and burned. And then, he felt something strange in his mouth - the rose petal he was staring at for a good five minutes now.

No. No, no.

This cannot be real.

He slowly and disbelievingly raised his hand to his mouth. There wasn't any more lump in his throat, no scratching, no need to caugh. He could swallow just right, without feeling anything in it. Yet he knew, despite not being able to feel anything, that there was a blooming flower inside his stomach. What the petal was suggesting simply couldn't be denied.

Even after rinsing his mouth with water, he could still feel the aftertaste of blood on his tongue and teeth.

Well, there was at least one good thing coming out from this - he knew what he was feeling now, at least. Heck, but the reason was only a faint attempt to try calming him down. He knew there was nothing good about the situation.

There was no doubt the unrequited love was going to kill him in a slow, painful death. As if he wasn't already suffering enough even without the flowers and thorns, as if simply the fact the girl didn't love him back wasn't torture enough. Did he have to suffer because he had feelings, because he was human? Did he really need to die because of the mistake of choosing the wrong person?

Harry shook his head in a rapid motion. He shouldn't think like that. There were still ways to stop it from evolving and fully developing into a poisonous rose bush which would strangle him from inside, grow all the way up his throat.

At least my skeleton will look nice, with the roses tangles all in between, he gloomily thought.

He had heard lots of cases of people who got the infamous hanahaki disease. Although it was rare when people were able to prevent themselves from dying because they could stop loving the person, or perhaps the person started loving them in the meantime, he wasn't sure if any of that would happen to him.

The girl would definitely not start loving him back - she did have a boyfriend, whom she loved and who loved her back.

And well, Harry didn't think he had the strength to face his feelings and forget them.

Once he got onto this path, it was hard to change the direction of where his feet were taking him.

He didn't think that path would ever change. His feet weren't strong enough to carry him against the flow.

~~~

Harry never spoke of the feelings. Before, he had simply thought he loved her like a friend loves a friend, or like a brother loves a sister. He had never imagined it was a different kind of love, like a boy loves a girl, though. Maybe he was too blind to see it. Maybe it was because it was all so new to him, because he had never loved anyone before. Or maybe, and he feared that was actually the case, but he was too scared and ashamed to admit it, maybe he knew, but didn't let those feelings come up to the surface, rather suppressing them.

Perhaps if he would've told her something, talked to her, even if he wouldn't be sure what kind of love it was that he felt, they maybe would've been able to work things out. To discover their actual feelings. Perhaps if he had told her something, they would be together now, instead of watching her fall in love with another boy that wasn't him.