Work Text:
The first petal had been silver. A delicate shard of moonlight that glistened in the shadows of Douma’s room. He had dismissed it with a flick of his hand, much as he would a stray feather or a speck of dust. It didn’t matter, he thought. Just a meaningless piece of something. He wasn’t even sure where it came from—wasn’t it ridiculous for a demon, a perfect being, to fall ill?
Yet, as the days passed, the petals became more persistent. They would flutter from his lips during sermons, interrupting his false smiles and empty laughter. He could taste them now, bitter and metallic, a strange echo of something he couldn’t name.
Douma thought it was amusing at first. “How strange!” he mused aloud to his followers, twirling a petal between his fingers. “Perhaps even I am not immune to the whims of the world.” His cult members, ever-adoring, fretted over his health, but he reassured them with his usual grin. “I’m perfectly fine. These little things? They’re nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing.
It was Kokushibo who noticed the first sign of true weakness.
“You reek of blood,” Kokushibo remarked one evening, his deep voice slicing through the silence. They were gathered in the Infinite Castle, summoned by Muzan for reasons neither of them cared to understand. Kokushibo’s six eyes fixed on Douma with unerring precision, as though he could dissect him with a glance.
Douma tilted his head, a lazy smile curling his lips. “Do I, Kokushibo-dono? How embarrassing! I must have overindulged.”
Kokushibo’s expression didn’t change, but his gaze lingered on the faint stain at the corner of Douma’s mouth. The blood there was too bright, too fresh. It wasn’t from prey—it was his own.
“You’re deteriorating,” Kokushibo said flatly. “What is it?”
“Hmm…” Douma pressed a finger to his lips, as if in thought. “I wouldn’t call it deterioration, exactly. More like…a little quirk!” He chuckled, light and airy, though his voice hitched for the briefest moment. “Don’t worry, Kokushibo-dono. I wouldn’t dream of troubling you with my…condition.”
The truth was, Douma didn’t know what was happening to him. He couldn’t explain the heaviness in his chest, the tightness that made it harder to breathe as the days turned into weeks. The petals grew in number, their edges sharper, their colors more vibrant—silver, white, streaks of deep red. They clawed their way up his throat in fits of coughing that left him doubled over, laughing weakly through the pain.
It was absurd, wasn’t it? He couldn’t feel emotions. Love, longing, despair—those were human things, beneath him. And yet…
Every time he thought of Kokushibo, another petal would come.
Kokushibo was the opposite of Douma in every way. Where Douma was bright and cheerful, Kokushibo was cold and stoic. He spoke little, his words weighted with purpose. He carried himself with the gravity of someone who had lived for centuries, each step deliberate, each glance piercing.
Douma found it fascinating. He had always enjoyed poking at Kokushibo, testing the limits of his patience with teasing remarks and playful jabs. He loved the way Kokushibo would glare at him, the faint flicker of irritation that crossed his face.
But it wasn’t just amusement anymore.
Douma began to notice the finer details—the way Kokushibo’s hair glimmered like polished obsidian under the moonlight, the low timbre of his voice that sent shivers through Douma’s spine. He found himself drawn to Kokushibo in ways he didn’t understand, his thoughts lingering on him even when they were apart.
And the petals kept coming.
Douma didn’t tell anyone, of course. He couldn’t admit weakness, not even to himself. He tried to ignore the pain, to drown it in his usual routine of indulgence and mockery. But it was getting harder to maintain the facade. The petals weren’t enough anymore—whole flowers were beginning to bloom, their stems tangled in his throat, their roots burrowing into his lungs.
It hurt.
For the first time in his existence, Douma felt genuine, excruciating pain. He wanted to laugh at the irony of it. A demon brought low by something as ridiculous as unrequited love.
He couldn’t tell Kokushibo. He didn’t even understand what he felt for the man—what was love to someone like him? He didn’t have the words, the capacity to explain it. And even if he did, he knew what Kokushibo’s reaction would be.
Kokushibo didn’t care for him.
Kokushibo was loyal only to Muzan, driven by an unrelenting desire for strength. Douma was just a nuisance, an irritant that Kokushibo tolerated out of necessity.
And yet…
The night Douma died, it was quiet.
He had hidden his condition as long as he could, but the flowers had overtaken him. His body was a ruin, his chest hollowed out by the relentless growth. He was alone in his temple when it happened, his followers long gone. He didn’t want them to see him like this—weak, broken, dying.
Even as he was dying, his last thoughts were Kokushibo.
When Kokushibo found him, the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. The room was filled with them—silver chrysanthemums, white lilies, crimson camellias. They spilled from Douma’s mouth, their petals stained with blood, their beauty cruel and unyielding.
Kokushibo stared at the scene, his six eyes unblinking. For a moment, he felt…something. A strange, unfamiliar ache in his chest. He didn’t understand it.
Douma had always been a fool, always loud and insufferable. And yet, standing here now, Kokushibo couldn’t deny the emptiness that settled over him like a shadow.
He knelt beside Douma’s body, his hand brushing against the cold skin. The flowers crumbled beneath his touch, their edges sharp enough to draw blood.
For the first time in centuries, Kokushibo felt fragile.
The petals came three days later.
It started with a single, silver fragment. Kokushibo dismissed it as nothing, but it didn’t stop. More followed, each one sharper, brighter, more vivid. He ignored the tightness in his chest, the way his breaths grew shallow, the way the taste of blood lingered on his tongue.
He didn’t understand.
He thought of Douma, of his infuriating laughter, his endless teasing, his false smiles. He thought of the way Douma had looked at him, as though he were something more than the sum of his parts. As though he were worth something.
And then it hit him.
He had loved Douma.
He hadn’t realized it until it was too late. Until the flowers began to bloom within him, their roots entwined with the fragments of his heart.
Kokushibo didn’t fight it. He let the flowers take him, their beauty consuming him from the inside out.
It was only fitting, he thought, as the petals claimed him.
After all, he had lost the one person who had truly seen him.
And in the quiet, he whispered the truth he had never allowed himself to speak.
“I loved you, too.”