Work Text:
Simon had always liked flowers.
They were delicate. Tiny little tissue-paper petals, thin stems, clingy roots. Fragile. Useless.
But beautiful. And his mother had pricked her thumb on the thorn of a rose, so fragile is something of a debatable word in certain cases. Though he had tried to avoid stepping on the small weeds that grew outside their apartment, all the same.
His father would have been a heliconia – tough, sturdy, but beautiful. Stretching towards the sky. Towards something he could never reach. His mother was more of a forget me not. Something lovely and bright, later lingering at the back of his mind, pressed between broken glass and a tarnished frame.
John was a morning glory. Blooming at the brightest hour, and poisonous, too.
After, when Simon was chosen, once he realized that no amount of crushed burdock or comfrey or dandelion should comfort him, once he had been uprooted and replanted: he didn’t watch the sidewalk for tiny shoots reaching through the cracks. He forgot the feel of tiny petals clinging to his fingertip. He flinched at the smell of roses.
(reflex)
And then he met Kieren.
And knew.
If Kieren were to be a flower, anything at all, he’d be a poppy. Something vibrant and beautiful, rough against summer grass, something seasonal and rare and undeniably there. Something that shakes at the slightest touch.
Sometimes, Simon wants to mouth at his neck for days, until he’s melted into his mouth, until they take each other in and don’t spit out.
At the core, he is opium, addictive and sweet. Innocent. Not meant to be chewed up and swallowed and exhaled. So sweet. It’s almost cloying. So addictive, Simon starts to crumble when he hasn’t touched him in too long. His taste lingers on Simon’s tongue.
Addicts say – Simon knows – that once you’re exposed to opium, you don’t forget it. It’s impossible to misplace. And it’s true. Kieren leaves fingerprints, one that feel like home and ache when he isn’t curved into Simon’s side.
If Kieren is a poppy, then Simon is honeysuckle. Sweet, too, at the very center, at the very end, and only a little lethal to those that live.
They make quite a pair.
Simon can’t sleep until Kieren is tucked away next to him, can’t breathe steady unless it’s out to Kieren’s in. He suspects this might be a problem, if the fact that he is a hopelessly co-dependent romantic wasn’t mutual. Even so, sometimes Kieren shies away from his touch, probably remembering stitches underneath his fingers or the metallic air from the depths of a cave or too many people slipping through his hands.
Simon’s caught around his little finger, that’s what’s different.
And they change each other. Somehow, their roots have entangled, spliced; they’re leaning into the sun and can feel it warm their backs.
It’s a miracle. It’s life.
(the first time simon’s stomach growls, kieren laughs for hours, until they can both feel the ache in their ribs, and simon understands the yawning inside of him, the tangle of vines that leads all the way up to his heart and his jaw. for once, it isn’t choking him. it simply is, and when kieren kisses him, long and deep, simon’s mouth is left sticky and tasting like pollen.)
(who knew he’d get so enamored with a boy that leans their foreheads together and is obsessed with draco malfoy and wears studded, leather jackets on off days and breathes him in deep like he’s oxygen instead of carbon monoxide?)
(eventually, they buy a tiny flower-box for under the windows of amy’s old bungalow, once their hearts are steady and their blood sings in their veins and she’s back from wherever she went, smiling and laughing and making their bed for them in the morning. they don’t grow seeds, just water the dirt and wait until spring. they wait, and turn their faces to the sky, and see what will emerge)
//end.