#//the buttercups thing is mostly just a leftover joke from when I first started making p3rma st@rter c@lls on an old blog

[truly-quirkless-a]

Type: Permanent (will not result in a starter) Muses: Both Status: Open (Permanently) Selectivity: None

By interacting with this post, you say that you are alright with me potentially...

Going into your inbox at random to send stuff from Toshi/Fin, whether prompted or unprompted.

Write starters and tag you in them if I so desire.

Respond to your open starters (fear me).

Screech into your DMs about our muses.

Leave you random buttercups.

[crimsondomingo]

Day 20: Hanahaki

For my July AU a Day Challenge 

(Let me mention that I had never heard of this before, but I really love where I took it. Big thanks to @a-redharlequin for the help on this one! You are the best!)

“Are you trying to tell me you’re gay?”

“No. Well, yes, but… I mean a real faerie.”

Cisco laughed.

“I’m serious!”

“Sure, dude. I mean, that whole throwing up flowers thing is a neat magic trick and all, but I’m not an idiot. What’s the joke?”

In frustration, Barry tore his shirt over his head.

“Whoa, man, are you gay for me, coz I love you but…” Cisco trailed as Barry turned around to show off the wing pattered tattoos on his back that slowly began to unfurl into 3D, expanding until they were an impressive size clearly large enough to lift Barry, and delicately edged in the colors of a scarlet marigold.

“Holy shit. Can I touch them?”

“No.” Barry spun around before Cisco could get any close. “They’re sensitive.”

“Sensitive like…” He bobbed an eyebrow suggestively.

“Yes, that kind of sensitive.” Shifting his shoulder blades, Barry started to put them away.

“Wait! I want to see how they go back.”

Appreciating that Cisco was at least more curious than panicked, Barry turned around again so he could watch the way the wings shrank and folded in to lay flat against Barry’s back, then shimmer into place until they merely appeared like tattoos again.

“This is sick,” Cisco said while Barry put his shirt back on. “You’re really a faerie? Wait, like Tinkerbell, nice if a bit moody fairy, or steal children, trick people out of their names and souls for fun creepy kind of faerie?”

“The second one.” Barry glanced away. Then saw how Cisco’s eyes widened. “That’s why I left! I’m not like that. I wanted to be better, so I left to live among humans.”

“Among humans…” Cisco repeated, the full breadth of this finally hitting him. He paced a little around Barry’s apartment before slumping onto the sofa. “Do you have, like, magic powers?”

“Sort of.” Barry shrugged, sitting in the armchair opposite him. “I’m a faerie of springtime.”

“Which means…?”

“My clan is tied to new life and new beginnings.”

“Like how all the births you’ve helped with have zero complications?” It had sort of become a joke among the nurses and orderlies that Barry was a good luck charm, especially with births. “You really are lucky!”

“Fae always have a lot of luck, but with anything tied to our clans, we have an inordinate amount of it, so it would be pretty impossible for anything to go wrong when I assist a birth. I can also generally heal, but if I use my powers too much, people might suspect, so I try to only stick to the luck part. And I can also do this…” He held out his palm to show Cisco how he could also create life, but only springtime plants and flowers.

Cisco accepted the daffodil Barry handed him.

“Sweet. Wait, so why are you throwing up flowers?”

“That’s what I need your help with, or maybe some advice. It’s a curse. It happens when we fall in love.”

“Uhhh…” Cisco set the flower on the coffee table.

“Not with you.”

“Cool.” Cisco relaxed. “Cool. You’re just, like, my best friend, so it would be weird. But wait, falling in love makes you throw up flowers. That’s sucks.”

“It’s specific to falling in love with humans, especially if they don’t love us back. It’s considered a sign of weakness. It’s one thing if we fall in love after getting a human under our thrall first, but the other way around…” Oh no. Barry felt the purge coming again, but still, he could do nothing against it as he spewed a smattered of flower buds onto the coffee table. His apartment was covered in them.

Cisco grimaced, leaning further away now that he knew this wasn’t a trick.

“They’re not wet or anything,” Barry tried to defend himself. They were perfectly lovely, salvageable, and sweet-smelling flowers.

“Still, dude. Gross. But okay, moving on. Who is it?”

Glancing away as he pulled a stray petal from his mouth, Barry said very softly, “Len.”

“Len? Wait…Detective Snart? With the spine injury? Who…despite being shot and having a prognosis of never walking again, made a miraculous recovery—dude.”

“I couldn’t help myself! He’s…he’s amazing.” Before Barry had been able to stop himself once he got to know Len better, he’d poured every ounce of healing magic he had into the man until it was almost as if he’d never been shot in the back.

Cisco eventually relaxed again. “But he doesn’t love you back, huh?”

“Not yet. He doesn’t know me well enough. He doesn’t trust or open up to people easily. At least I know he likes me.”

“Yeah? He said so?”

“No, but I’m throwing up buttercups.” Barry flicked some of the petals across the table. “It means he finds me attractive.”

“Neat,” Cisco said, though his grimace said the opposite. “So what’s the problem, other than petals everywhere?”

“The problem is it’s going to keep getting worse. It started an hour apart, now it’s every twenty minutes, and it’ll keep shrinking if I don’t tell him how I feel, until it’s just constant, can’t stop, and then it kills me.”

“Kills you?!”

“I’m doomed.” Barry buried his face in his hands.

“Come on, man,” Cisco patted his back, “you’re not doomed. You just have to tell him how you feel.”

“I can’t,” Barry moaned into his hands. “If he rejects me, the same thing happens.”

“You choke on flowers and die? Shit. How long do you have?”

“Only another twenty-four hours at most.” Barry lifted up. “It’s not enough.”

“Well your curse hasn’t met me,” Cisco said firmly. “I’ll be your wingman. Hehe, even though you’re more my wingman, coz you have…” He cleared his throat when Barry looked at him miserably. “Sorry, this is serious.”

“Len checks out today. What am I gonna do?”

“You woo him, that’s what! I’m not gonna let you drown in flower petals, man. Snart’s the reserved type, that’s all, he’s just guarding his heart. But if he knows you like him, he’ll open up. If you can’t tell him straight-out, then you have to show him how much you care. Take him out to lunch. Invite him back to your place.”

“I’m not gonna sleep with him.”

“Not even to save your life? But you don’t have to sleep with him, I just meant spend as much time with him as possible so it clicks and he realizes how amazing you are. And if all else fails, maybe telling him as a last-ditch effort will push him over the edge.”

“I guess.” Barry sighed. Cisco was right. It was the only choice he had left.

Both of them had the day off, but Cisco, being amazing, promised to keep his cell phone on him if Barry needed help, while Barry headed in plainclothes to the hospital to intercept Len before he checked out.

He looked gorgeous as always, more so than Barry had ever seen him since for once he was dressed in normal clothes—dark jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, leather jacket. Needing a cane for a while in no way diminished the view. In fact, it suited him well with his generally dramatic presence.

“Can I treat you to lunch?” Barry said before Len had even managed a greeting. “I’m off today, and you’re leaving, and I don’t want to miss the chance to…well.” He felt his face grow hot. He was a mostly immortal being who’d seen nations fall and met thousands of humans over his lifetime, but this man still reduced him to a fumbling child.

Len was just so…everything, and when he smirked in response, Barry felt weak in the knees.

“You’re on, Barry. Didn’t think you were the fraternizing type.”

“I’ve been known to be full of surprises.”

It sucked to have to duck away every twenty minutes to spew flowers, but during one such dash to the bathroom, Barry called Cisco.

“I think it’s working. I’m throwing up carnations now.”

“Yay?”

“Carnations mean fascination and new love, Cisco. He likes me.” Barry could hardly keep the smile from stretching his face, even as he spit leftover petals into the toilet.

“Congrats, man! Now, don’t let him go. Invite him back to your place so you can tell him how you feel.”

Barry was terrified, but he was also dying, so getting over his insecurities was the least of his problems. And amazingly enough, Len said yes.

“Something important to tell me?”

“Yeah. Not bad. I mean, I hope it’s not bad.”

When they arrived though, Barry felt another purge coming and excused himself to the bathroom.

“Sorry, nervous stomach.”

“Nervous of little ‘ol me.” Len grinned. Oh he was beautiful.

“I’ll be right back.” Barry ducked off. The flowers he spit up were still carnations, but Barry had hope that this would work—confessing to Len that he loved him, knowing that eventually he also had to admit he was fae. Maybe Len would react as well as Cisco had. There was always a chance.

Stepping back out into the living room to take the plunge, Barry instantly froze. Len had swiped a handful of peanut M&Ms from the bowl on Barry’s end table and was popping them into his mouth, eating them.

Barry buying Len lunch at a restaurant was one thing, but anything Barry had bought and brought to his home to just be his was, well, his. And the rules about humans eating fae food were very specific.

“Sorry, what a terrible house guest. They’re just a weakness of mine,” Len said.

Barry could only stare.

“Barry? Are you okay?”

Taking a breath, Barry wished Cisco was there to help him soften the blows he had coming, because he had no idea how to make this sound less terrifying. “I have several things I need to tell you, and at this point, I’m not sure which one is going to freak you out more.”