since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid

[irrigo]

(harmless) hanahaki meme

hanahaki (literally "vomiting flowers") is a fictional illness that began in japanese literature. most commonly, it happens in the case of unrequited love; flowers bloom in a person's lungs and their love suffocates them until it is either requited or they die. that's pretty angsty. instead, consider a world where hanahaki is a normalised inconvenience and it's never hurt anyone. flowers grow in your chest from the cultivation of love — for your friends, your family, your dog. and it's a feeling that wants to be known, so maybe you can't help spilling petals sometimes when you laugh, or sigh, or shout at someone. everyone knows what it means and it's something to be celebrated. you love. maybe you don't want to, though. maybe you chew on the petals and swallow them back, so that no one knows the feelings you're carrying around in your heart. but maybe that's not going to work forever, and sooner or later, you're going to cough those feelings up.

the short version ① hanahaki means your characters cough up flowers. plain and simple. ② it's caused by unspoken love, in any form, platonic or romantic; whether the love is requited has nothing to do with it. ③ the disease is not harmful in any way, and it's no more annoying than a persistent cough; it's treated as more symbolic magic realism here than concerned with the real life implications of coughing up flowers. ④ it's "cured" when a person expresses their love, whether the feeling is requited or not. ⑤ so basically, you can rp any everyday scenario... but now your character might have to deal with the minor nuisance of hacking up petals around the people they love. and those people are going to know what that means.

Comments

juno steel ( the penumbra podcast )

[iuno]

/sticks leggy out finally

[stilettoes]

[ maybe it shouldn't be as amusing as peter thinks it to be, but then again, tasting the slightly bitter petal sticking to his lip feels like permission. he reaches up with a hand and presses his finger to where it clings to his own mouth, smearing a little bit of color onto it as he pulls it off in the narrow space between the two of them, hand pressed into the warm fold between juno's coat and his shirt, feeling the barely there shudder of a breath that's holding something back.

peter only knows this because he feels it in himself just as badly, the bitter, macerated taste of something he's been trying to swallow for months. he clears his throat, the warmth of a hurried, impulsive kiss still lingering over his mouth as he looks down his glasses at juno, slightly crooked from the blunt force of all of it.

his fingers curl in the fabric of his shirt, nails grazing the solid space along his ribs, pulling him close as he holds out his hand so close to his mouth, as if to maybe beg it to open up. his own voice comes out hoarse, the soft gleam of white and pink is already spattering his tongue. ]

Is that for me? [ he asks, tugging softly. ] Open up.

Kuroko Tetsuya | Kuroko no Basket | OTA

[kurokosbasket]

Aoba Seragaki | DRAMAtical Murder | M/M

[bottombitch]

Wasn't sure which role you preferred, so I hope this is okay!

[kindandfluffy]

Sorry about that.

[Mito apologizes with a smile as he reemerges from the back area of his shop, now holding a tall glass of water in hand as he approaches his visitor again.] It seemed like your throat might be dry..? I couldn't help noticing how you've been clearing your throat a lot lately, Aoba-kun...

Here. [He takes the other male's hand into his own, handing the cold glass over in his usual 'gentle-yet-insistent' manner. It seemed like Aoba might have been trying to hide it, but Mito could tell that there was something causing him discomfort.] Drink it down slowly, okay?

Choromatsu | Osomatsu-san | OTA

[fappy_matsu]

Ardyn Izunia | FFXV [spoilers]

[scourgingstars]

[theairlock or lifeaftr CRAUs also available upon request]

Re: Ardyn Izunia | FFXV [spoilers]

[missleadingquestions]

[[THERE'S NO RNG FOR THESE So which u would you like to do most?]]

Amajiki Tamaki | My Hero Academia | OTA

[suneater_eater_eater]

[He may or may not have been actually eating flowers]

chara ( undertale )

[dreemurr]

hanzo shimada ( overwatch )

[kuyamu]

Re: hanzo shimada ( overwatch )

[itshighmoon]

Well, howdy.

Up for a thread with this fluffer?

viktor nikiforov ( yuri!!! on ice )

[heartmouthed]

ooc

[leaderofdorks]

If you don't mind cross-canon, I'd be happy to throw Akira your way (I can also age him up if his age - 17 - is an issue, no problem. <3 ) Or, I can fish out another muse or two that's of-age or older.

Rin Tohsaka | Fate/

[erbe]

[steelmyself]

Any preferences for starter scenarios?

elizabeth comstock ( bioshock infinite )

[compatibilism]

Nicole "Nikki" Geiszler l Rule!63 Pacific Rim

[ppdckscience]

(M/F and would adore a Hermann for cliche reasons!)

yoite ( nabari no ou )

[quietuses]

woah! going for some frustrated family jamming... if that's all right with you.

[griper]

[Yukimi's habit of grinding his teeth is largely a private one, and it's largely private because he's more frequently just running his mouth instead. No reason to internalize your tension if you can be a loud jackass; he's aware of this in himself, even if he tells people to shut up when they point it out.

But there's always a time and a place for internalizing your shit—namely, when that shit makes you uncomfortable, and you're angry for its discomfort, the prickly-nerved embarrassment of it. When Yukimi thinks, Geeze, geeze, you gotta be kidding me with this crap, rearing back from his own feelings, that is the time and place for internalizing. And it's what makes him grind his teeth.

Lately he's getting petals in his molars. A mouth full of potpourri, ground up finely enough for some floral tea bag, something like that... It pisses him off. When he sees the kid—you know, the kid, heaped on him and planting roots that both of them are unwilling to deal with—he, more and more frequently, feels this thick draw of irritation running down his rib cage, slow, like sap. The kinetic energy of frustration is like its own sun, the aggravating kind that shines directly in one's eyes, which must be what provides photosynthesis for all these damn plants. Asters and hydrangeas... bushels of blooms in cool colors, whenever he sees Yoite in his periphery and thinks about cooking him dinner. The flowers make him lose his appetite. The resignation he feels drives him away from the stove. When he boils water for cider, he gets cherry blossoms caught under his tongue, which drives him crazy. He's boiling water less and less.

Kazuho laughed at him at first, until she realized it was a real thing that was actually happening to him. That was not supposed to happen here. These words don't come out of her mouth, but the brush strokes of them are clear in the muscles around her mouth, the dip of her eyebrows, and the wondering in her eyes. He says back, with a taut brow and the slump of his shoulders, Shut up! You're telling me! As if he weren't enough of a pain in my ass!

It was never supposed to be that Yukimi would walk past a sulking kid, clear his throat, and grind, and grind, and grind his teeth. It was never supposed to be that Yukimi would look at such a strange and all alone boy and think, Just stay put. Just stay still, right here, like you've got plenty of time. You're not even grown yet. Is it really so bad? A cluttered apartment, awkward cohabitation, and enough food to go around? Can't you just stay put instead of running off and dying?

He's sitting at his computer, now, his back to Yoite, as is most comfortable. His word processor document is unsubstantial, and he can tell it's gonna stay that way for a while. Every time he clears his throat, it's just more of the damn flowers, but he's trying hard not to actually cough—he tries to tone it down by drinking from his mug of cider. But it turns out the mug is empty, probably been sitting there for a good two days now, because he makes cider less and less, because he boils water less and less, because all these flowers are just so...]

Ahh, [he says, a little soft, while he stares down to the bottom of that empty mug. When he sets it down, he sets it down hard, and then he slumps into his chair hard, too.] Ahhh. [Now he clucks his tongue. His hand scritches through his own hair, a bit frantic. Now, loud jackass:] Aaahhh! Come on! This ain't funny!

[He does this sometimes, of course, if something on the Internet or in the news pisses him off. Not exactly uncommon. More unique is the floodgate open now that he's unclenched his teeth: he coughs, then really hacks, somehow managing to sound ornery about it.

Looks like today's menu is a mouthful of freesia. Yukimi hunches over in his seat, trying surreptitiously to pluck and drop flowers into the disappointing mug.]

Man, [he says tightly, turned staunchly away,] Kazuho said, like, Nyquil or something. Gotta pick that up.

[It's stupid to even pretend, but he doesn't feel like he'll be okay if he has to acknowledge this for real.]

kouichi aizawa ( nabari no ou )

[undesirabowl]

Gladiolus Amicitia | FFXV | OTA

[leatherdaddy]

[noctass]

[ So. Coughing up flowers is giving him a brain aneurysm. Not a real one, the sort that'd drop him dead in his tracks, but the sort of metaphorical trauma that has him stopping at each and every gas stop to hurl petals into the trash bin and then some. Spitting them out alone is a profoundly awful hassle, made worse when he's not entirely willing to order Specs to pull over every couple of hours to regurgitate his body mass in plant matter on the side of the road. But the crowning pinnacle to the terribleness of this all has to be the taste that wells up each and every time, like Noctis makes it a concerted habit to pull up clods of grass and haphazardly shove them in his mouth at will when even Iggy's martyring patience won't get him to touch salad with a ten-foot pole.

Fed up with this illness, the only real option left is the process of elimination, like correlating whether or not it's his childhood affections for Luna that have him hacking up petals when Umbra comes by, or if it's one of the guys that has him suffering through bouts of extreme cognitive dissonance. As if he doesn't know what any of this means, compelled to heave up blossom after blossom whether or not he figures out the perpetrator (hah).

But standing before Gladio, resisting the urge to vomit up that wrinkled tulip swimming up his throat, Noct's been at his wit's end for a while. No point in subtlety when everyone and their mother knows. ]

Gladio. [ Ignore how absolutely squashed his voice sounds as he dejectedly harrumphs into his hand, flinging the latest clump of petals he's amassed in his mouth down. ] You have to fix this.

[ Noct's tired, and he's cranky, and he's been pretty much over this lovelorn sickness since their road trip began, but the wet, drippy flowers piled up at his feet beg to differ. ]

kaworu nagisa ( neon genesis evangelion )

[commendaces]

[jailbirds]

[ a stupid little girl who should have died might have thought, once, that Hanahaki was a good thing. it was pretty. it meant nice things, like that someone really cared about her, and that meant everything, didn't it? but Minatsuki knows better. her mother coughed up flowers and it didn't stop the bitch from leaving that stupid little girl to die when it came time to save herself.

older and wiser, Minatsuki fucking hates the stuff. she likes her garden because she grows it, with care and effort, with control; she knows which flowers need what kind of soil, and water, and sunlight. the roots that grow inside of her don't bend to her hand under any circumstances, and the best she can do for it is swallow them whole. it pisses her off that they've started to bloom again now, after such a long time. she knows that she's changed (a lot, more than she ever thought possible) but — it still feels like too much. she doesn't want to be this vulnerable.

which is a problem when she comes by Kaworu's apartment, opens it with a key he gave her, and he's got petals on his floor. Minatsuki freezes in the doorway. she hiccups, a strange little choked sound, the result of her swallowing back a flower as soon as it reaches her throat, struck just by Kaworu and flowers. and then she snaps into motion again, bending down to take her shoes off like nothing happened. ]

Gross. [ she's always quite vocal about how much disdain she has for Hanahaki and its symptoms, like that might kill off her own. ] Are you going to clean that up or what?

Ignis Scientia | FFXV

[discutio]

[scuse the dust, voicetesting! pre- or post-chapter 9 is fine, don't mind the limited icons]

[missleadingquestions]

[Things can be easier when you have an assistant, especially one who is very apt at note-taking and very attentive. Some things can also be more difficult, like when that assistant is a teasing piece of shit who would notice any inconvenient traits, such as a sudden onset of regurgitated flowers. As Maya perches on the hood of the car, she pores over her notes in a little book and decides she's going to bother Ignis, since he's closest; the others are nearby, but distracted with doing what is likely only an excuse to waste time in the end. She flips a page in her notebook to see where she's pinned a flower, fingers brushing the paper below it.]

So, you guys and coughing up flowers-- is that usual?

[Her child life was distinctly less filled with flowers, okay.]

nazuna nito | ensemble stars!

[pyonpyon]

katsuki yuuri | yuri!!! on ice | ota

[wonts]

gently deposits this... airport scene... hello....

[heartmouthed]

[ Out of all the flowers he'd never given, the edelweiss had been his favorite one.

He wasn't sure when they had come; they were hardy and imperfect things, looking always for the sun. He remembers stories of the Snow Queen, whose first tears had drawn them up from the emptiness that had been her heart. In all his travels, he once wondered what would compel a person to seek them out on those high mountaintops. What would have allowed them to pit themselves against the frost? Love, itself a concept, had become gradually remote.

For twenty seven years, Viktor had never permitted himself his flowers. He did not hate them, he did not resent them -- no, it was that he had never given himself the time.

There had always been something else: the ice, the media, the medals. There had always been choreographies and conditioning, nights spent running his routines again and again through his head until he could see them clearly with his eyes closed. There had always been commissioning music, which he tried to fill with the sounds of something more beautiful than the withering garden inside his chest. Eventually, there had not even been that.

Viktor Nikiforov, who began to swallow down the inconvenience of his emotions the day he turned seven, had finally drowned even the deepest roots that were left inside of him. And by the end of last season, his sacrifices had left nothing at all. That was was, until --

Now, outside of Fukuoka Airport, even his will cannot seem to stop the blooms from coming. For once, he doesn't want to. ]

I arranged for a ride back, [ Viktor rasps, raw with the itch of the bold, white flowers he'd given up in the quiet of the terminal. He'd hardly been able to tell Yuuri that he never wanted him to retire, that Yuuri's confession had sounded like a marriage proposal. Each breath was a flower caught up in his throat, each full and heavy upon his tongue.

They had been edelweiss, in their odd coats, each perfect and warm as he'd later gathered them up in his hands. Even now, he isn't certain there's not more within him waiting to come out. As tired as he is, as tired as Yuuri is, his being at Yuuri's side is enough to make his chest fill.

It hardly matters at all that for each point of contact they've kept since Yuuri arrived seems only to intensify it. But, Viktor's hand not caught up in Yuuri's is an impossibility, something too far flung to consider. Anything that Viktor could do or say would not be enough to smother it. Viktor's certain of it, as he keeps his eyes on Yuuri. The sounds of other weary travellers, of shuttles going to and from the airport, drift into the background.

There's nothing else. ] I thought it might be more relaxing.

[ True, but not entirely: Viktor had not wanted to share the space that they have now with anyone else. Not yet. ]

noctis ( ffxv ) ota

[callowed]

[pappio]

[ He knows the symptoms. Handled them enough when Iris tucked her hand to her face whenever Noctis came into her line of vision, watched it last and persist for months until it died right down to a gasp. Every once in a while, she tosses up petals, curling her fingers into a more refined fist, then swallowing them back without so much as a sound. Right back down the esophagus.

And that's the thing: Noct's got a savage look symptomatic of the same thing, sloe-dark eyes and a bad cough. It's not a common thing. Ignis figures Noct's coming down with the flu, and Prompto's shooting concerned, furtive glances the prince's way every five seconds. But he lets Noctis keep the peace until the other two members of their band are off in the drugstore for over-the-counter medication that'll treat what an elixir can't remotely inhibit when he speaks up. ]

So? How long you planning to hide it?

[ Sucker-punching Noct with the shock of cluing in to his flower-hacking syndrome doesn't have that much impact at all when he sounds like he's high-key dying, mottled and hoarse in the throat. The grip Gladio presses around the bones of one of Noct's shoulders in return is neither a vice nor a loose knot, but slack with concern. No sense in getting Noctis on the defensive, prickly to criticisms, when it's the last thing either of them need. ]

saber ( arthur pendragon. ) | fate/

[martyrium]

Akira Kurusu | Persona 5 | M/M, OTA for castmates

[leaderofdorks]

[Bring it? Would definitely like to have Akira be the afflicted one, but it's far from a requirement. <3 ]

Mutually unspoken?

[pursuitofbeauty]

[The tickle in his throat coincides with the start of allergy season, so he thinks nothing of it until the day he coughs a bluebell and a few carnation petals into his hand. He stares at them for a moment before he lets them fall to the ground.

It's everywhere, it happens to everyone, but for Yusuke it's just a distraction.

The flowers come more often over the next few weeks. They don't show up during heists, which is good, but once back in the real world he coughs them up into a handkerchief and tucks them away for later disposal.

In summer, they're joined by forget-me-nots and white egret flowers. Yusuke doesn't understand but he can't bring himself to be rid of them. Dozens of the blossoms lay in rows on his windowsill, drying. They only vanish when the wind catches them and carries them away.

The day a fresh forget-me-not drifts from the sill and sticks to Akira's cheek while Yusuke is sketching him, it all makes sense. That's the day the yellow camellia blossoms join the rest.

He can't say it. Akira is their leader, he doesn't need the complications of a relationship.]

Jimmy || On Doorstep || M/M pref (18+)

[pickpocketpunk]

[Either role]

H-HELLO..

[sesshouin]

"...What's that look for, Andersen?" Brows furrowed, she always regrets asking such a question, yet, she always does it anyway.

haru okumura | persona 5 | ota

[unsubservient]

( either role! platonic or romantic things are both a-okay. )