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howdoyoudothedew · 9 months ago

Text

Rated: T

Pairing: Guy Hamdon/Ben Tennyson

Word Count: ~4k

A/N: Written for @hanahaki4hanami and while it doesn't have vomiting one scene is definitely inspired by it

Flowers. It’s a little hard to tell with the way they glow, colours flashing between a scarlet red and aqua, and the feel of the petals between his fingers, somewhere between silk and a soft wood. But the smell, once you get past the bile and blood, and the shape of the petals makes it clear they’re flowers.

“Kelly, why am I spitting these up?” Guy asks from his seat on the table, kicking his legs absently. Kelly looks up from the Shemanual with something akin to worry in her eyes, her face pale. It doesn’t make him feel great. There are a lot of good things with being Shezow, but he’s found a lot of rough consequences too. He still remembers his brief attempt at a “dark and gritty” phase.

“Are you…” Kelly looks back down at the book, biting her lip. “In love?��

“In love?” Guy scoffs, laughing in disbelief. He hasn’t been in love in– ever, he thinks.

“Are you… sure?” Kelly asks, looking up at him and the stack of petals next to him again with a frown.

“... what does the book say?” Guy asks, feeling suspicious now. Kelly licks her lips, tasting the grape of her chapstick.

“It says when a Zow becomes trapped in unspoken love they start coughing up flowers. Till they confess or till it… kills them,” Kelly looks down. “The shemanual calls it hanahaki.”

“Oh,” Guy says. He stares at the petals next to him, watching them rotate between their two colours, taking in the shape of the petals. They glitter like sequins, they’re soft like silk behind the flaking red. After a few moments he begins to laugh. “Then I’m fine, because I’m not in love.”

“Guy…” Kelly says sadly.

“I’m not,” Guy repeats, looking at her. She sighs.

“Fine. Can you at least ask one of your alien buddies about them?” Guy opens his mouth, but she’s quick to speak over him. “They’re clearly not terrestrial and I’d like to know more about them, at least. It’d make me feel better.”

Guy sighs. “Alright, next time I see one of them, okay?”

“Thank you,” Kelly says, tone sarcastic but eyes sincere.

“Hey, do you know anything about flowers?” Shezow asks Diamondhead as he’s holding a shield up for them, stopping this stupid laser some smuck left firing.

“Flowers?” Diamondhead asks incredulously, looking back at her. “No, why?”

Shezow shakes her head. “No reason, just found some alien ones and my partner’s curious. I think she wants to see if she can make a cutting and grow more, but she needs to know more about them first and we don’t really know where to start looking.”

“So you ask the first big alien you see?” Diamondhead asks and Shezow shrugs.

“I’ll ask my si- sidekick and see what she says. She knows shit like that better than me,” Diamondhead says. It’s not the first time one of these aliens has nearly slipped on the word ‘sister’, and sometimes Shezow wonders what it means. Have they just not been doing the superhero gig for very long? Was their sister not a secret before? Or do they just trust Shezow enough that a part of them wants to tell her the secret, but the importance of a secret identity won out every time? Shezow’s chest tightens and she coughs, just slightly.

“Thanks, big guy.” Shezow winks. “Now I think it’s time to fight a little laser with laser.”

It wasn’t very hard to realize the ten aliens he fought with as Shezow occasionally were all one person. Maybe it would’ve been if Guy didn’t have his own– albeit much smaller– transformation, but it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together when one guy would run off and then another, different guy would show up several minutes later with the first nowhere in sight. There aren’t many aliens in Megadale. Not ones that look so obvious or fight crime, at least.

He sighs, looking at the petals he coughed up after Diamondhead left and tapping his fingers against the table. The shemanual has never been wrong before, but… Guy scrubs his hands over his face before he can consider the possible smudging of his eyeliner. The worst part is, given the flower, there’s only one possible answer if the shemanual is right and he’s pretty sure Kelly knows it.

“The flowers are supposed to represent the person you love in some way,” she’d said before he left. Guy gathers up the flowers a little rougher than he needs to and throws them in the container with all the rest. Since they don’t know what they are exactly, they haven’t been able to throw them out or even burn them. Just because they’re fine in his body, doesn’t mean they’d be okay when introduced to other conditions. Or so Kelly said. Personally, Guy thinks if they grew inside him they should be perfectly safe even if they’re alien. Maybe they even only look like the alien flowers they represent, but are much closer biologically to something from earth.

But what’s he know? Science is his worst subject.

It’s stupid anyhow, whatever this is. Guy’s never been in love before and he’s not in love now. Especially with some boy he only kinda knows who turns into ten, admittedly really cool, different aliens. If he was, he’d know it.

“Hey! Shezow!” Diamondhead calls, running up to him. Shezow turns and nearly laughs at the dents Diamondhead is leaving in the sidewalk. “I have the info on those flowers you wanted!” He stops in front of him with a wide smile, holding out a pile of pages held together with a paperclip with print Shezow is sure is too neat to be his. Too neat to be Diamondhead’s, at least. One of the other alien forms could’ve written it, or his human form, or one of his partners. The idea the boy behind Diamondhead could’ve taken the time to handwrite multiple pages of information on an alien flower for him makes him flush. He swallows down the swirl of flowers.

“Thanks,” Shezow says, keeping his eyes on the packet as he takes it from him.

“Sure thing!” Diamondhead smiles at him. “Anything for my favourite super-powered sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Shezow repeats, looking up at him. “Excuse you, you’re the sidekick here.”

Diamondhead snorts, but it’s fond and amused. It’s an old joke between friends, not distaste like he got from those assholes when he was just starting and considered joining a bigger team. He’s still glad he’d decided against it in the end. And glad he tried, if just to force the old heroes too stuck in their ways to see past themselves to actually look at other heroes for a change. Shezow folds the papers to store them in an empty pouch on his utility belt.

Later, he throws up the petals he’d swallowed down.

“This is a dangerous place right now, you know.” Guy jolts at the hissing voice and looks up into XLR8’s visor. He showed up out of nowhere, right as Guy was about to transform. Though it’s not very surprising. It’s more XLR8’s thing than any of the others to show up suddenly, completely silent. She curls her hand into a fist, hiding her ring, despite knowing no one else who’s noticed it has ever connected the dots so the idea of XLR8 being able to is a little silly. But she also knows he’s a good hero. She won’t risk it.

“Is it?” Guy asks, coughing as she nearly uses her Shezow voice on instinct. If XLR8 notices the slight way her voice warbles, she can’t tell.

“Well yeah,” he gestures out of the alley, to where the villain of the week is making a giant mess of the road. Without a doubt, her dad will be complaining about it during dinner. Though he’s started to complain less, between the years of living in Megadale and Shezow starting to do the best she can to keep the damage to a minimum during the fight as well as helping fix things after. “There’s a villain right there, you can’t seriously tell me you missed it.”

Guy shrugs. “There are a lot of villains here. If I hid or whatever everytime one popped up, I’d never get to do anything.” Even with the visor, she feels like she knows the exact expression XLR8 is making. Eyes narrowed, staring at her like he thinks she’s a little off-kilter but unable to say anything because she’s not exactly wrong. “Aren’t you supposed to protect me, anyway?”

XLR8 snorts. It’s a noise he’s made before and it makes Guy just as curious as it has every other time he’s made it. As far as Guy can tell, XLR8 has no nose. How can you snort without a nose? He picks her up, dashing off before one of the androids spots them in their little alleyway. It’s always a little dizzying to travel by someone else’s super speed.

“You’re not gonna fight them?” Guy asks once she’s put down. They’re far away from the action now, though she can still hear it.

“I’m waiting for my partner. She’s later than she usually is,” XLR8 says, looking around.

“Can’t you do it without her?” Guy asks, feeling her heart pound. He has to be talking about her. In all the time they’ve worked together, whenever he talks about the people he works with he calls them his sidekicks, so it has to be her.

“Yeah, but this is her city and it’d feel weird,” XLR8 says. The petals shift in her chest as she breathes.

“That’s nice of you,” Guy says and XLR8 laughs, the sound crackling like tv static before he runs off. Guy watches him go. Once he’s out of sight, she transforms.

“Where were you?” Kelly asks quietly once Shezow is by her side.

“XLR8 caught me before I could transform, so I had to make a detour,” Shezow says, refusing to look at her sister. It didn’t help that she’d had to cough up more petals before she could even transform. The flowers were starting to get annoying, scraping against her insides. Kelly tilts her head and Shezow moves to join XLR8 before Kelly can connect any dots. Before she can see Kelly connect the dots. It wouldn’t be the full picture, anyway. Because if Shezow really is in love with XLR8, then she’s also in love with multiple other boys. And as far as she knows Kelly still thinks all the aliens are different people.

“You’re in love with him,” Kelly says.

No I’m not, Guy wants to say, but “which one do you mean?:” slips out instead. He wants to bash his head into the counter. It’s cruel of her to confront him on this when he hasn’t even had his breakfast.

“I don’t know. All of them?” Kelly shrugs. “I have a theory about them, but I haven’t really been able to confirm it yet.”

“What’s your theory?” Guy asks, hoping to distract her away from whatever her original intent was.

“I think all the aliens might actually be one, shapeshifting alien,” Kelly says quietly, like a conspiracy. Despite the fact they’re in the She-Lair. “We never see them all together, even when multiple of them help you in the same day. And none of them ever stick around despite helping you.”

I wouldn’t say that… Guy thinks, remembering several times he’s hung out with one of them after they’ve saved the city. Playing in the park with Wildmutt or getting a fizzy burp with Four Arms… He doesn’t say anything, though. It’d only give Kelly more fuel.

“So you think they’re all the same person?” Guy asks

“Yeah. But like I said, it’s just a theory.”

“A game theory, thanks for watching,” Guy mumbles around his spoon and Kelly gives him a flat look.

“Can’t you be serious about this, at least?” Kelly asks. “You know, since it’ll kill you eventually.”

“See, the key word there is eventually.” Guy hops up onto the counter. “And if I’m even in love, instead of this being some other weird flower disease.”

“Another weird flower disease,” Kelly says flatly.

“Yeah! I work with aliens constantly, a magic ring’s messed with my dna, who knows what I could’ve caught that a normal human wouldn’t?” Guy says. Kelly sighs. “Maybe it’s not a Shezow thing.”

“But what if it is?” Kelly asks.

“Then I’m fine,” Guy says, hoping off the counter, and taking Kelly’s hands in his. “Because I’m not in love.”

Kelly, like any sister, is lovely, helpful, and a major pain in the ass. She doesn’t drop it, which leads to him being out more. He can’t take it to Maz, because Maz is on Kelly’s side. So he only has one friend to turn to. Or, ten friends.

The sun is bright enough to glitter off Diamondhead in rainbows. It’s something Guy would’ve said looks dumb, back when he was twelve and only just starting out as Shezow. And only just learning about himself. Now, he just thinks it looks cool and kind of pretty, the way the colours paint the sidewalk and grass. “So what’s up, Zow? You don’t usually call.”

He doesn’t. He should, probably, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know where their base is, or when they’re in the area, so he’s never bothered before. “My sister’s being a nuisance,” she says and Diamondhead nods. “I know she doesn’t mean to be, she’s just worried, but I’ve told her she doesn’t have to be. And now she’s dragged my best friend into it, too.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Diamondhead pouts, and Shezow laughs.

“One of them,” she says with a smile. Diamondhead looks at her like he knows she’s not just talking about the friends he has as Guy Hamdon, but he doesn’t say anything. She wonders if he would’ve as Greymatter.

“So you want me to distract you?” Diamondhead asks.

“It’d be nice,” Shezow sighs. Diamondhead mimes cracking his knuckles.

“That I can do,” Diamondhead says with a wide smile, and Shezow smiles back.

Maybe it’s the days he spends hanging out with the different forms his alien friend takes that does him in. But he feels good around the aliens, feels happy and distracted, and he needs the distraction. Wants the distraction with Kelly, Maz, and even Sheila breathing down his neck. So he ignores the tickling of his chest, the painful squeeze of his ribcage, holding in the petals and flowers until he has no choice but to speed away to cough them up. They always look worried when he comes back, despite Shezow making sure to wipe away any spit or blood. To make sure there is no evidence of this disease which isn’t a sign of love, slowly twisting his running thoughts into knots around his lungs and heart.

It’s what kills him, except it doesn’t, because he is Shezow and if it did Kelly would find a way to kill him herself instead.

Four Arms catches him as he stumbles, coughs wracking painfully up his throat, too sudden and powerful for him to hold down. When the heaving starts, the petals and flowers forcing their way up and out, Four Arms scrambles before holding his hair back. It makes him want to smile. Then the stems squeeze more painfully, making him gasp and choke.

“Shezow?” Four Arms asks, worry dripping from his voice. Shezow wants to reassure him, wants to tell him she’s fine, but the flowers are more insistent. They don’t want to stop. She coughs until her lungs are on fire, until her throat feels like she ate seven bags of super-spicy nachos. And then she coughs past it. Flowers and blood and spit lay on the ground in front of Shezow, blurred by tears. Then it’s done. Shezow sits there for several long minutes, breathing slow through a burning throat, until she registers Four Arms with one hand still holding back her hair and another rubbing her back as he makes soft sounds, like he’s done this before.

It is quite possibly the stupidest moment to have the sudden realization that Kelly might just be right.

She scrubs her arm across her eyes, the cloth of the gloves brushing away the tears.

“Are those the flowers you asked Diamondhead about two months ago?” Four Arms asks, looking over her shoulder. Shezow swallows once, twice, feeling the burn of acid in her throat.

“Yeah.” Her voice croaks. She doesn’t risk clearing her throat.

“Why’d you spit them up?” He asks.

“It’s a Shezow thing,” Shezow answers, doing her best to smile. Four Arms raises an eyebrow.

“Are you dying?” Four Arms asks quietly. Shezow wants to say no. Thinks she should say maybe, since it’s closer to the truth, and ends up saying “Naybe” instead. It makes Four Arms snort, at least. The petals in her chest flutter at the sound. She clears her throat on instinct. Regrets it immediately.

“I should head out.” She stands up, feeling rocky in a way she hasn’t since she traded in her high heels for hightops.

“Wait!” Four Arms quickly moves to standing as well, holding out all four of his hands. He gestures to himself with two of them. “Maybe I should take you back or something.”

“Thanks, but I’m a big girl. I can make it back to my lair on my own, I promise,” Shezow says.

She leaves behind the flowers, too busy running to think about them. Even if she wasn’t, she’s not sure she wouldn’t have left them there anyway despite what Kelly would say, leaving them behind like evidence of guilt.

“I’m in love with all of them,” Guy admits to Kelly once he’s back in the She-lair, catching her and Sheila off guard and interrupting their conversation. Kelly stares at him for several seconds before jumping to her feet.

“Guy! You look-” Kelly breaks off, mouth open, just staring more.

“Like she-it?” Guy says, laughing bitterly.

“I think I just coughed up about three entire bouquets. You know, maybe I should get into the flower arranging business.”

“Guy.” Kelly’s using her serious tone and Guy’s shoulders droop.

“Can we not do this right now? I’m feeling pretty tired actually,” Guy says. It doesn’t take much work for him to sound pathetic. He feels pathetic. He feels like he just got run over by a steam engine. Kelly frowns.

“What happened?” She asks, tone gentled, and Guy isn’t sure if it’s better or worse. Guy shrugs, because he doesn’t want to admit she’s right when already she knows she is. “How bad was it?”

“Remember that bad I ate? The one you told me not to?” Guy asks. Kelly hisses between her teeth.

“That’s bad.”

“Yeah.” Guy sighs. He doesn’t really know what else to do. Usually Kelly is the one with all the bigger-picture ideas. And the only solution he knows is one he really doesn’t want to do.

It’s also the one he knows Kelly will give.

“You going to tell them?” Kelly asks.

“I don’t want to,” Guy whines, pouting at her. He’d bat his eyelashes, too, but he was still transformed and didn’t want to accidentally activate his wind winkers. There is not much pity to be had when your ‘pity me’ act is interrupted by near-bodily harm. Kelly pats his shoulder.

“Too bad.”

“Kelllyyyyy,” Guy whines. “Don’t make me.”

“Oh, I can’t make you do anything,” Kelly says and pokes him in the chest. “But your body can. Promise me you’ll say something before your stupidity actually does manage to kill you, yeah?”

Guy huffs out a breath, gently knocking her hand away. “Fine. Though just remember, technically you’re giving up any chance to take over being Shezow.”

“An incredible sacrifice on my part,” Kelly says drily.

If Guy is anything, it’s awkward. He wishes he still had the super empathy because at least then he seemed to know what to say, but now he can only rely on his own twisting tongue and pounding heart. The flowers choking up his throat don’t help. She rocks back on the heels of her white sneakers, looking up at Heatblast. “Did Four Arms tell you about me coughing up flowers in front of him?” Heatblast blinks at her. She holds onto the end of her gloves, arms crossed behind her back.

“Yeah.” He says slowly, giving her a searching look. His eyes flicker across her torso and limbs like she may fall apart into petals, right there in front of him. Maybe she will. Neither Kelly or she knows just how a Shezow dies to this, if the petals will choke her until the stems come out her throat like a vase or if they’ll simply expand outwards until she’s nothing but flowers and roots. The thought doesn’t push her like she wishes it did. Who knew it was this hard to just tell someone you kinda-sorta like them? (Maz. Maz probably knew.) “Hey said you might be dying?”

Shezow swallows, adam’s apple bobbing painfully. “I am.”

“Oh.” Heatblast’s fire crackles in the silence between them, and Shezow knows she really should say something, but she doesn’t know how.

“I have a secret?” Shezow says, voice turning up into a question instead of staying steady for a statement and she winces. Heatblast’s head tilts. “I know you’re all one alien. Person?”

Heatblast’s fire splutters. “W-whaaat? No we’re not, have you seen those other guys?”

“Yeah.” Shezow licks her lips, tastes the oddly waxy taste of her lipstick. Quieter, “I have another secret.”

Heatblast’s denials cut off. This time, he looks nervous. “Yeah…?”

“I think I like all of you. Uh. Like-like. The gross mushy kind. Except maybe not the mushy kind? I’ve never really… done this before, so I’m not sure, but definitely the romantic kind,” she rambles, looking at the ground. The sidewalk is cracked; a dandelion is popping through, bright and yellow. When she glances up, Heatblast’s mouth is agape.

“What.” There’s no inflection to his voice, but his flame’s gotten lighter. He’s blushing. Shezow feels her own face heat at the realization.

“Uh- Y-yeah,” Shezow says.

“Wh- what does this have to do with you… dying?” Heatblast asks. Shezow laughs, the sound strangled and high.

“Apparently when a Shezow falls in love, flowers grow in her lungs until she admits it!” She laughs again. It feels hysterical, like helium going to her head.

“Well that’s stupid.” Heatblast frowns. Shezow gives a flat smile and nods.

“She-yeah it is. A surprising amount of rules are bullshit. They really like ‘Zows to be honest with their feelings, or whatever,” Shezow says. Heatblast makes a noise Shezow recognizes as a snort, but sounds more like a flame spluttering.

“You don’t like it?” Heatblast asks with a smile.

“Yeah, sure, I love the feeling of flowers curling into my ribs. Feels great,” Shezow says drily. She takes a breath and finally realizes just how much oxygen fills her lungs. She didn’t even realize she was breathing smaller breaths before now. She takes another breath, just to feel it completely fill her lungs, the taste of flowers still tainting it. Each breath makes the air feel clearer.

“If it helps any, I think I have gross mushy romantic feelings for you, too,” Heatblast says. Shezow smiles.

“It might,” she says and Heatblast laughs. The sound makes her chest flutter— butterflies, not flowers. The relief makes her laugh as well.