I Hate Eggs

“You’ve always been the more dramatic one.” A small smile curled at the corners of her mouth, and he was helpless to copy. She always somehow knew exactly what he needed to hear, which was why she was the only person to know about his flowery affliction. After they had realized the petals were changing every so often, she had even returned to him with a book on flowers and their meanings. He’s nearly memorized the thing by now.

It’s not like he could have hidden it from her forever either. Not when, after every time Billy Hargrove dropped off his little sister to hang out with the other kids, Steve would run to the back and cough up a handful of petals.

“Steve, seriously though? You have to talk to him before this gets any worse. It’s already been almost two months.”

“And what’s talking going to do Robin? Kill me faster when he inevitably rejects me because he’s straight? Great. Perfect plan.”

Before she could explain why it was so important for him to talk to Billy, there was the obnoxious ‘ding’ of the bell out front. Steve straightened up and shot Robin another look and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

“Steve, I know you’re avoi-” The swinging door cut off the rest of whatever Robin was going to say, but Steve would almost rather hear the end of her rant than face what was ahead, because the person who had rung the stupid bell was none other than Billy.

Of course.

He gulped, already feeling the flutter of petals in his trachea, and stepped forward.

“Back again, Hargrove? Couldn’t resist me?”

“Yeah, yeah Harrington. Keep it in your pants. I just forgot that Heather had asked me to pick her up a scoop of chocolate.”

“Oh,” Steve tried to mask the surprise in his voice, he had never heard Billy mention a girl named Heather. “Heather? She, like, your friend or something?” He tried to play it off, and began preparing the scoop of chocolate.

Billy gave him an odd look, possibly from the strain in his voice as he fought back what was sure to be a cascade of flowers, or from the weirdness of Steve asking him a semi-personal question.

“Yeah, or something,” he muttered, taking the ice cream as soon as Steve held it out, and paying for it with a five-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” he said as he rushed off, probably to deliver the ice cream to his girlfriend.

The thought of the word made the petals multiply, and he rushed to the backroom and knelt over the bucket once again. Dutifully, Robin retook her position of rubbing between his shoulder blades and whispering soft words of encouragement. It wasn’t until he had filled the bucket halfway that he noticed small drops of blood speckling the yellow petals of the hyacinths. Fuck.

Billy

He barely made it to the mall’s bathroom before he was coughing up those damned petals. This time they had turned small and white, almost like the orange blossoms he had seen back in California, but too small.

It didn’t matter anyway, what mattered was that it had been a whole month and he still had no idea why he was coughing up petals. All he knew for sure was that every so often they would change, and it seemed to happen mostly after he interacted with Harri- Steve. He was Steve now, or Pretty Boy, or Bambi that one time when they were both high off their asses at the Quarry, when Billy hadn’t been able to stop staring at those big, brown eyes and thinking of Disney fairytale bullshit.

Finally finished coughing up flowers, he stood up and flushed the toilet. He took a step towards the sink and felt something squishy under his boot. He looked down, and saw the ice cream cone he had gone back to the stupid ass ice cream place smashed on the dirty tile.

“Fuck. God fucking fucked me.”

He didn’t want to go back to that shit hole for a third time, he’d just suffer Heather’s wrath when he got to work. He walked over to the paper towel dispenser and cleaned off as much of the ice cream as he could. Then he threw away the soggy mess and walked out of the bathroom.

He drove like a bat out of hell to the Hawkins public pool, ignoring every speed limit sign he saw and blasting his radio to drown out thoughts of petals and Disney movies. He arrived ten minutes late to his shift, but Heather wasn’t nearly as insufferable as he had thought she’d be. Instead of demanding to know where her ice cream was, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Are those…flower petals in your hair?” Fuck.

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Flower Meanings:

Wild Roses- Pleasure and Pain. Red Carnations- My heart aches for you. Candytuft- Indifference Yellow Hyacinths- Jealousy Mock Oranges- Deceit

Also, my prompts are open! Feel free to send anything in!