BathWater AU

I decided on the name Bathwater for it from the phrase "Don't toss the baby out with the bathwater", basically, don't toss something important or good out just to get rid of one small part thats unwanted. Which basically ends up happening here.

This AU takes place right after the season 6 episode "Gone" and everyone comes back from their National No SpongeBob Day celebrations. Learning that everyone finds him that annoying and irritating that they needed nearly a month away from him was heartbreaking.

To Spongebob, he only wanted to make them happy, but finding out his attempts often did the opposite is devastating, for a number of reasons.

Devastating enough to give him Hanahaki disease. A very severe case that leaves him with 72 hours to decide what to do with it.

[I'm using Hanahaki disease in a platonic love sense for this AU for anyone confused.]

He decides to get the flowers removed, and along with that, his ability to love his friends. If his love for them is what irritates and drives them away, then, in his own reasoning, getting rid of his love for them will make them happy, like he always wanted to do.

Everyone will win.

Cutting/impact injuries are the easiest, that basically comes down to literally pulling themselves back together and merging. A healthy sponge, e.g: SpongeBob, can recover from this quickly, in seconds, or minutes at the worst.

I know this feels like an obvious one but traumatic brain injuries are the hardest for sponges to recover from. I know we've see SpongeBobs brain exposed and removed, but I dont believe we've seen it actually damaged, and its stayed intact. It'll take a long time (typically a year to several years) to heal, but they can survive some pretty intense TBIs that would take out other species.

But besides that

Difficult to kill doesnt mean impossible.

Chemicals? It all has to do with their own filtering abilities working against them when exposed to certain ones, more enters their systems initially compared to others, thats one strike. If its certain kinds of chemicals, it can take a long time for it to be filtered back out, leaving it to do some pretty harsh damage that takes them a long time to heal from, especially if its something that inhibits their cells ability to divide and replace themselves. If you can expose them to something really nasty you can disrupt their ability to merge themselves back together, hit or cut them, and they wont be able to come back from that, at least not right away.