Adventuretimefantic's drafts and oneshots

So this is life? | Homicipher (Mr Crawling)

Fandom: Homicipher
Ship: Mr crawling x reader
Oneshot/unfinished story: oneshot
Synopsis: after so long in the other world, Mr Crawling has a lot to learn about the human world. Including the concept of life.

When you returned from the hellscape that was the other world, all you wanted to do was collapse into bed. And you did, after a much needed shower, you passed out. Only waking up the next morning to the ghost you'd bought home poking you awake, worried because you were sleeping so long. After the much needed energy replenishment of sleep, you finally checked the time and date, and to your horror, it'd been a month. You were gone for a whole month. Unsurprisingly all your food had gone bad in that time, and your poor houseplants had died, aside from the lucky bamboo that was in a bottle of water, that had gotten quite big.

Looks like you were starting your plant collection over again then...

After the more pressing issue that was re-stocking your food, you hit up the garden centre for new saplings and came home with an armful of small pots. Your resident ghost however, seemed to have never seen a plant before, because he was full of questions. That made sense though, the other world was all concrete and basically nothing else. No sunlight either, nothing could grow there.

"This plant" you began, sitting across from Crawling by the back door where you kept your plants to get them sunlight.

"What do?" He asked, watching you scoop out a sprout from its sale pot and place it into a bigger one.

"Get big" you replied, there wasn't really a word for grow in his language as far as you knew.

He watched you pat the soil down around the roots, confused as to what about it would make the leaves get bigger.

"Cover p-pl-ant, make big?" He asked, attempting to replicate the word you'd just introduced him to.

"Soil" you explained, pointing to the potting mix "plant consume soil and water, get big"

That seemed to make some sense to him, by consuming something, it would get bigger. Humans did that, they ate food to grow strong. So a plant is similar, it eats the soil and drinks the water to grow strong.

"Get big slow, continue consume to get big" you explained.

Plants grew pretty slowly, you could sit there and watch it all day and it wouldn't look any different. This also seemed to make sense to Crawling. The plants got bigger slowly as long as they consumed the soil and water.

"Why have?" He asked, now wondering if there was a point to this.

"Fun, look pretty. Some plant human consume" you replied.

So it was for fun and for food? Interesting, this was how humans made their food then? That and eating other beings as meat, it seemed. You picked up the label on the sale pot, that showed a picture of the flowers fully grown and in bloom.

"This one get big, become this- flower" you explained.

Oh! Now he understood why humans liked them other than food. It was pretty! Colourful and made nice shapes! He'd never see something like this in the other world.

"Pretty! Pretty!" He smiled.

"We wait, feed plant. Turn into flower!" You replied.

Now he was looking forward to watching it grow. Even if it grew slowly, he could wait. It would be worth it to see the pretty flowers! From that day on, you'd wake up, have breakfast, then water your plants. And each time, Mr Crawling would examine them to see if they'd gotten any bigger. When the buds started coming in, you explained that it was basically a baby flower and it'd open up when it was ready. And of course, when it finally did open, he was quite happy with it. It smelled nice, it looked pretty and it was kind of satisfying to see it grow over time. Eventually though, it began to wilt, which upset him.

"Why flower hurt?" He asked, assuming it looked like that because it was injured like how a person will hunch over in pain.

"Dying" you replied.

"No die! Recover?"

"Flower die, new flower grow back"

He was silent a moment, processing that. It could regenerate, but only after it dies? It didn't heal, but be... reborn so to speak.

"No pain, flower no feel pain" you assured.

That gave him a little comfort at least, pain isn't nice. He still wasn't too happy about the flower wilting, but at least it would come back. Eventually, the flower dropped off the stem. Decaying into the soil. But not long after, a new bud appeared just as you said. And he got to watch it all over again.

Something about it was interesting to him. In his world, there wasn't really a permanent death. Things regenerated or came back to life pretty quickly. But here, if a human died, that was it. They didn't come back. But it seemed that plants, given they have the soil and water, would always come back eventually. Kind of like how things worked in his world. You die, you come back. Except unlike in his world, where things were all grey and dark, save for the red or blood stains... flowers were pretty. They were bright, soft, smelled nice. And he liked that you took such good care of them, like you took such good care of him.

Turn out, Mr Crawling likes flowers... especially the ones that he can eat.