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They say it’s not a disease at all, but a move; a very rare one, used only by the Mythical Pokemon Shaymin. They say it’s used, involuntarily, when one person has so much overwhelming love in their heart for another that it becomes tangible, physical. Physical enough to allow seeds to sprout, to allow stems to send their delicate roots through the pathways of the lover’s arteries and push fine, velvet-soft petals into the tissue of one’s lungs. There’s something about longing for someone else that makes organs malleable enough to host a flourishing colony.
They say it kills you, if you let it stay long enough. They’re wrong—it doesn’t kill you. It can be dangerous, if you choke on a petal at the wrong time, but it never grows big enough to kill you. It just continues to survive, sometimes subtler and sometimes stronger, always kept there by the self-regulated and temperate host it’s rooted itself in. Some people go their whole lives with it. For some, it fades away. Some get the plants surgically removed; it’s not a pretty process, but it does happen. They say the removals aren’t permanent, though.
Well, no matter what they say, the fact of the matter is that Archie’s been coughing up flowers.
He had first felt the itch in his throat after they nearly died, after he’d found himself standing helplessly in the Seafloor Cavern as Maxie nearly ended the world. After those children, they were so young, had helped pull him back from the edge of madness and offered, once Groudon was once again buried deep underground, to forgive them both. He’d helped a shaking Maxie stand, tried to keep him steady and assure him he’d be all right the second they got him to a hospital. He’d felt the shortness of breath, and heard an unusual hoarseness to his words, although it wasn’t hard at the time to chalk it up to the stress of the circumstance. Nobody had asked questions.
When Archie had gone up Mount Pyre to return the Blue Orb he’d taken for safekeeping, though, he’d found Maxie there too, and it had become even more of a struggle to breathe. Maxie had smiled wanly and set the Red Orb down on its pedestal and said a quiet, stunted apology in the way that only a man unused to apologizing would say it, and after they’d gone their separate ways Archie had really begun to cough for the first time.
They had been tiny at first; the petals of young flowers, hardly out of their buds. Archie had found himself standing in his room in the Aqua Hideout, seated at his desk, five or six little pale whitish-pink fragments resting in the center of his palm. At the time, he hadn’t realized what it meant.
How things have changed.
As the months pass, so do the flowers. He and Maxie meet semi-frequently to discuss their new projects and the actions they’re taking to make Hoenn a better place (for real, this time). After every meeting, Archie is left wheezing behind closed doors, spitting mouthfuls of petals he doesn’t recognize flecked with blood into the trash or the sink or wherever he’s managed to make it on time. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s agonizing. Sometimes he just feels numb.
Archie internally curses himself after every time it happens. In the moment, it scares him; immediately afterwards, it makes him feel ridiculous. Why this? Why Maxie, for crying out loud? All they did was talk. Maxie didn’t even feel the same way back.
So why the flowers?
His questions, posed to nobody, aren’t answered, of course.
One evening Archie’s busy gagging up what seems to be a whole, fully-grown flower head. It’s blocking his airway, and breathing around it is an agonizing trial on its own as his body convulses and does its utmost to expel it. He’s just managed to spit its slimy and bloody mass out into the toilet before his PokeNav goes off from the next room over.
Wiping his mouth on the back of one hand, Archie goes to answer it, and tries not to sound like absolute death on the phone.
“Hello,” he rasps, immediately failing. He clears his throat and tries that again. “Hello?”
“Archie,” says Maxie, because oh, of course it’s Maxie. It’s not really a greeting, but it’s as close to one as Maxie gets. “Are you occupied?”
“Not really,” Archie lies, pinning the PokeNav between his ear and his shoulder. Hands freed, he grabs a tissue from the box on his desk and scrubs a splatter of blood and leaves from his glove. “Why, you need something?”
“I’m going to Mount Pyre for a walk.” A long while ago, right after returning the Orbs, the two of them agreed always to accompany the other to the mountain graveyard, for any reason. Just in case the temptation arose again. Archie knows without a doubt he can’t stand the thought of trying to take the Blue Orb a second time—not after the tirade of nightmares and the knowledge of what had happened to Maxie—but Maxie had insisted, maybe for his own sake.
Even thinking of Maxie, thinking of how he’d posed the idea without meeting Archie’s eyes, is enough to cause another few petals to bubble up in Archie’s throat. He tries inconspicuously to clear it.
Maxie’s been saying something else, though, and pauses. “Yes?”
“Sorry, nothing. What time?”
To his surprise, Maxie doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of attentiveness. “As soon as the opportunity presents itself, preferably. Twenty minutes?”
Twenty minutes is enough time to choke up as many flowers as possible, so he won’t spend every second of their meeting feeling like he needs to vomit. Archie nods, although Maxie can’t see it. “Sounds good. Need me to bring anything?”
“Hm. An outfit that doesn’t smell like seawater.”
“Hah! I’ll scrounge one up, if you find one that doesn’t smell like singed dirt.”
Archie can hear the exasperatedly fond eyeroll, and it makes his chest seize up. “Consider this a concession. I’ll see you shortly.”
“See you, Maxie-boy.” The well-worn nickname rolls off his tongue with ease, but as soon as the PokeNav’s been turned off, he only has the time to take one or two shallow breaths before he’s slumped over his desk again, coughing up a flurry of red petals and blood and feelings he can’t put into words.
Thank God this damnable thing isn’t fatal, or he’d be a dead man.
Fifteen minutes and a Crobat ride later, Archie’s standing before the entrance of Mount Pyre. The Aqua Hideout is closer to the graveyard than Maxie’s, and Maxie is never a single minute early or late, so Archie has a little while to himself. There isn’t much to do out here aside from look at the graves, though, and Archie’s had enough morbidity in his life for a while, so he just leans against one of the larger rocks on the mountainside and watches the grass.
Flowers don’t grow around here naturally. There are a couple gravestones that have had some planted around them, but for some reason they don’t spread. Some superstitious folk whisper that it’s because the flowers are scared of the spirits, that being around so much ghostly energy kills them.
If that’s so, Archie has double the reason to come by here as often as possible.
He isn’t upset that he loves Maxie. That’s not it in the slightest; if he’s honest with himself, that’s why he hasn’t gotten the flowers removed. He loves loving Maxie. He just wishes that he was free to love Maxie without his chest burning every time he thinks about him, wishes to be able to brush their knuckles together on walks without feeling the roots woven through his lungs and feeding on his breath clench a little tighter. He wishes that he was free to love Maxie without bleeding for it.
And he knows that, if Maxie were to admit to reciprocating his feelings, it would all go away, but the chances of that happening are phenomenally minute. Maxie isn’t- Maxie doesn’t. Archie cares for him too much to confess his feelings and reveal his flowers and unwillingly force Maxie to admit to feeling a way he doesn’t, just to placate Archie’s disease. It would be a cruel thing to do.
But he can’t shake the feeling that maybe he ought to, anyway. Best-case scenario, Maxie really does return his feelings. The problem is, the worst-case scenario is most in line with Maxie’s personality, and that would entail Maxie scoffing at his archnemesis’ plight, brushing him off, and never speaking to him again.
That’s Maxie’s old personality, a hopeful part of him argues. He’s changed since then. And it’s true, at least partially—the Maxie who has been working on fixing the damage he’d unwillingly done isn’t the same Maxie who caused it. Still stoic and smug, yes, but more… considerate. More willing to talk with Archie about matters that aren’t Pokemon, or climate, or battle-related. In a subtle way, he’s more of a person than an antagonist, now.
So maybe Archie can afford to give a little bit of an ear to that little hopeful part of him.
There’s a rushing of feathered wings, and a handsome Talonflame descends from the sky, a familiar redhead’s wrists firmly grasped in its claws. Not a second early nor a second late, Maxie touches down gracefully a few meters away and calls the Pokemon back into its ball. Archie has to clear his throat into a palm—doing his best to hide the singular small petal that flutters from his lips to land in it—and goes to greet him.
“Archie,” Maxie says again, this time in person. He inclines his head briefly in salutation.
“Hey.” Archie nods at the Pokeball. “New acquisition?”
“Very. He’s a rehabilitation effort, but couldn’t be released into the wild due to a… due to an emotional issue.”
Archie snorts. “You mean you and him got too attached.”
“Correction— he got too attached to me.” Maxie folds his arms and huffs. “ I am a professional, who would never let myself grow too close to a temporary foster Pokemon.”
“Liar.” Archie elbows him good-naturedly, and Maxie does something unusual—he chuckles, bringing a hand to his mouth in an effort to obscure it and maintain his decorum. “C’mon, Maxie-boy, let’s head up.”
Neither of the two former rivals feel much like walking through the graveyard itself, so they take the winding path up the side of the mountain instead. So long as Archie doesn’t focus on too many of the finer details that comprise Maxie’s person—like the slight turn of his lip that balances his smile right on the cusp of wicked and kind, or the way his right thumb worries at his left wrist where they rest behind his back, or the defined angle in his eyebrow—he can almost walk the whole way without feeling the sharp prickle of petals in his windpipe.
Problem is, now that he’s told himself not to think about it, now he’s thinking about it.
Archie looks away while Maxie’s lost in the middle of a monologue and swallows convulsively, petals sticking in the back of his mouth. It hurts like hell to try and force them down, but he absolutely refuses to let Maxie notice. He’s not going to burden him with the knowledge that he’s literally making Archie lovesick.
They reach the far end of Mount Pyre’s summit, where the swirling mist just starts to thicken. The Orbs are still up at the very top, and neither of them really want to go look at them, so Archie redirects their path down along the lower edge to take in the view. Hoenn spreads itself out far below them, an infinitely unfolding landscape of water and trees and people, all in carefully balanced harmony. How could they ever have wanted to skew this?
Archie finally risks another look at Maxie, and only then does he realize that something is wrong.
It’s possible to notice a lot about how Maxie is doing by getting a good look at his resting expression. One would think that someone as grounded and stoic as the Magma Leader himself would be hard to read, and for most people, it’s true. However, Archie’s been around him for long enough at this point to know when he’s ill at ease. It had been obscured earlier while Maxie had been talking, but now, with the fog and altitude hiding the two of them from the rest of the world, there’s a distance between them that’s a step or two wider than normal, something in his eyes eating at him that wasn’t there before.
Archie hesitates.
“Max,” he says abruptly, and Maxie glances over at him, that trace of uneasiness gone in an instant. “Yes?”
Maybe I just imagined it, he thinks, although he knows he didn’t. “Nothing.”
Maxie gives a beleaguered sigh in that way he does when he’s pretending he’s more annoyed than he is. “Very well, then. I’m not surprised the Great Maxie renders you speechless.”
Archie laughs around a swelling fountain of affection in his chest. “I figure the Great Maxie has his work cut out for him when it comes to being humbler.”
“Nonsense. I am humble.”
“Define ‘humble’, O Great Maxie.”
“Well, you’re certainly not doing anything to avoid bolstering my ego.”
They keep going back and forth. It feels incredibly, indescribably good to fall back into this easy banter. It’s a familiar reminder of how they’d been able to talk before they left Team Rocket, in their earliest days of companionship when neither of them had yet thrown themselves into reckless schemes to change the world. It’s a beautiful thought, to be like they once were.
Vaguely, in passing, his mind flits back to those days, and he wonders if he had loved Maxie even then, and he has to stop talking at the end of a sentence to bite back a flower.
In the brief lull in their conversation, Archie lets his eyes flit across Maxie’s face, and catches that distinct unease again. Maxie's lips are pressed into a tight line, brow ever so slightly creased, like he's trying to remember a word on the tip of his tongue. Archie musters his courage a second time.
"Maxie, is there something wrong?"
Maxie looks surprised—not in the way that implies he was feeling fine, but in the way that implies he thought he was hiding it satisfactorily. "What gives you that impression?"
Archie sighs under his breath, eyes soft with concern. "You're an open book once ye figure out how to read it, Max."
The Magma Leader doesn't respond for several seconds, eyes flicking away from his face and out at the landscape.
"No," he says quietly. "Nothing's wrong."
"All right." It's not enough of an answer, something is still wrong, but Archie doesn't press. Instead, he looks out to where Maxie’s gaze goes, and a smirk draws up a corner of his lip. “Nice view, huh? Love seeing all the fog.”
Maxie snorts, blessedly willing to let the awkwardness slide away. “It’s the only thing to see.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious. What else will I learn today? Mount Pyre’s made of rocks?”
It’s a small joke, but it gets another one of those unusual laughs out of him, and it takes him a bit to recover. “Oh, the things I could tell you about the stone formations here. A natural wonder, truly.”
“Natural to wonder how it’s interesting to anybody, that is.”
Maxie has that expression on his face, that ridiculous grin everybody makes when someone else has just made a pun that’s better than it has any right to be and they’re torn between irritation and grudging admiration. “I don’t know whether to laugh or throw you off this mountain.”
“Hey, the joke was right there!”
“Just like this very tempting cliff,” Maxie says in a subtle singsong.
“You can try to pick me up. Go on, I’ll wait.”
This time, when Maxie laughs, Archie’s really concerned. It was a little odd before, with the stoic Maxie laughing at the smallest of jokes, but Archie’s sentence isn’t even laugh-worthy at all, not to mention there’s a weird strain in the way Maxie’s been doing it that bothers him something fierce.
It just doesn’t sound right.
It’s not that Archie’s complaining—of course he isn’t complaining, Maxie’s laugh is a rare gift, and it’s so beautiful—but something eats at him about it. It’s a little too short, too concussive, too freely employed. Something is off, and getting worse.
This time, however, Archie isn’t left wondering what it is, because Maxie’s amusement trails on a couple syllables too long and his eyes widen, and it hits him that Maxie hasn’t been laughing.
He’s coughing.
Archie opens his mouth to say something, but Maxie sharply turns away from him, raising his hand to his mouth again (so that was why he’d done it before) and the coughs worsen until he’s wheezing painfully into his fist. Denied the opportunity to help, Archie has no choice but to stand there and look on as Maxie struggles to regain his breath.
Archie has not drawn the conclusion laid out plainly in front of him. He’s too scared to even dare to hope. All the confidence of the man who had tried to awaken a god of the ocean is gone when it comes to matters like this.
But despite it all, despite the sheer impossibility of it being true, Maxie raises his head again, looking drained, and his palm is overflowing with tiny blossoms, so pale, so delicately blue.
The Aqua Leader doesn't have the time to react before Maxie's gasps turn to laughs again, although bitter, and eaten through with sorrow. He sounds like he sounded back when he'd first lost control over Groudon and seen Hoenn lie desolate when he lets the petals fall and says, "I suppose the jig is up, hm?"
Archie doesn't respond. He can't. All this time—the same petals that have been holding his chest hostage—they're in his, too. And for who knows how long? Who knows how many nights he's spent, sleepless, spitting out flowers?
"I'm sorry," Maxie is saying, with a raw kind of honesty in his voice Archie can’t recall ever having witnessed before, and in his daze Archie only half hears it. "I didn't intend to tell you. It isn't something anyone should be burdened with. I see now that trying to hide it was... illogical."
He's about to go on, but he hesitates, because Archie's silence is stretching on worryingly long and they both know it. Archie isn't an easy guy to render speechless, yet here he is, staring into Maxie's eyes with the widest and most completely awestruck expression he's had on his face since childhood (or at least since the last time he's seen a baby Carvanha). The worried look that's slowly falling into place on Maxie, however, shows how much the other man has tragically misinterpreted it.
"Maxie," Archie manages to whisper.
And then he's hit with an attack on his respiratory system harder than he's ever had before, burying his face in the crook of one elbow and gasping and choking around the mouthfuls of petals that all force themselves up from his lungs like they've been waiting for this moment. The roots holding him prisoner are constricted more painfully tight than they’ve ever been, and flowers replace his every inhale and every exhale; petals red like Groudon, like molten rock, like the colour of Maxie’s voice. His vision blurs with tears around the onslaught.
It takes a good part of a minute for the attack to finally begin receding again. Archie is buckled over his knees, dizzy, and it takes him the rest of said minute to straighten up again.
"I, uh," he says faintly between swallows and pants, swiping the back of one hand over his bloodied lips. "If it's any consolation, I didn't intend to do that either."
It's a faint attempt at humour, but looking back up, Archie is surprised (an understatement; it feels like his heart has just dropped out through his stomach) to see that Maxie has gone ashen.
“I’m- I’m sorry.” Maxie’s apologizing again; his hand is back to his mouth, but there are no flowers. “Archie, I- would never have called you out here if I had known you didn’t- I’m so sorry.”
Now that didn’t make any sense.
It starts to, though, when Maxie swallows and continues in a different tone, something closer to his normal overly scientific one, albeit a little softer around the edges. “Who is it for? I can’t picture it being Matt, what with your whole brotherhood dynamic, although perhaps you feel differently for him than he does for you… Shelly, perhaps—ah, but Shelly is already in a relationship, isn’t she?”
Archie listens dumbly for a second or two more before realizing Maxie is serious. He saw Archie gag up flowers right in front of him in response to his own accidental reveal, and his assumption was- he was so set in his belief that Archie couldn’t return his feelings that his first reaction was to-
God, Maxie is a damned idiot.
“Maxie,” Archie says again, softly, then louder when it’s evident the Magma leader hasn’t heard him. “Maxie!”
Maxie finally, blessedly, shuts up.
“It’s you,” Archie whispers, unable to help a shaky smile. He can’t believe he’s doing this. He can’t believe any of this is real. “Of course it’s you, you rock-loving idiot, I love you.”
He watches Maxie’s expression go from ashamed, to stunned, to slack-jawed starstruck. It’s an expression Archie could never get tired of, not for a million years. He can see the world in his eyes, can see the ocean, can see the galaxy. Against all odds, there is such beauty in him. And somewhere along the way, Maxie has begun to see it in Archie, too.
But of course, Maxie’s not the kind of person who would wear such a heartfelt look for so long, and within moments he’s reorganized himself, clearing his throat and straightening his glasses, although the red flush to his face hasn’t changed. “I, ah. I… wholeheartedly… hm. I don’t know how to say this.”
“Simple is better,” Archie advises.
“…I love you too, Archie.” It’s like the words have thrown a floodgate wide open, and all of a sudden Maxie can’t stop talking, going so far as to take a step closer. From this distance, the smears of blood right below his lower lip are evident, despite how he’s tried to wipe them away. “I- I don’t know for how long. Perhaps longer than I’ve had any right to. As I mentioned before, I avoided confessing—I didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge that my wellbeing might have unwillingly rested in your hands. I see now that I should have taken that initiative.”
Archie almost wants to laugh. Deep down, they’re so similar. “I know what you mean. For months—maybe longer—I’ve been thinking about how I could try and tell you, but if you didn’t feel the same way back-”
“-you’d have to live with it,” Maxie says along with him, nodding faintly. He smiles. “Good grief, we’re both fools, aren’t we.”
“We really are.” Archie feels his lips turn upwards at the corners to match Maxie’s. “It’s a match made in heaven. Two broken-down, world-ending fools. And there’s nobody I’d rather love.”
Maxie’s never been this red in the face before. He tries to start a sentence a few times, and fails, and eventually allows himself a vague muttered “I suppose so”.
Archie just smiles. Both of them are hopeless.
It fades, though, as he thinks of a question. “Oh- Max. Why didn’t you get them removed?”
Maxie blinks, startled. “What do you mean?”
“The flowers. I figured that- well, you’ve always been the kind of guy who’ll take the shortest path to the easiest and most effective solution. If you really were so sure I didn’t… you know, feel the same way, you could have just had them taken out.”
Maxie looks vaguely insulted, but only vaguely. “And lose my feelings for you? No. Perhaps it’s sentimental, but for lack of better phrasing, I- I like … hm.” He stumbles here, unused to and surprised by the emotional honesty for the second time today, and so he redirects himself, schooling his expression back into something neutral and manageable. He straightens his glasses, although they aren’t crooked. “I only would have removed the plants if I believed the feelings I was experiencing were… a mistake, or something I disliked. I may have had moments of irritation—with the plants, that is, I’m sure you relate—but I enjoy loving you. It feels… comfortable. Secure.” He meets his eyes. “You’re an easy person to fall in love with, Archie.”
Archie swears he can feel his pupils turn into little hearts. It takes a lot of willpower not to go and kiss Maxie right this second.
He’s saved the trouble, though, when Maxie says the utterly unexpected.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Maxie,” Archie says, voice hoarse, “you had fucking better.”
Maxie laughs—a real laugh, a beautiful, real laugh that sounds so perfectly like him—and leans in.
As their lips meet, Archie feels the flowers in his chest die.
He doesn’t need them anymore. His longing is at last being poured out, and the flowers no longer have a place to plant their roots; he is putting his love into the world and feeling it flow back to him. The two of them no longer have to keep their flowers contained within their own chests. It can be a thing they share.
New buds gently raise their heads from the grass around them, outside their bodies, and bloom.