#ygorarepairweek2022

   It was a violent nausea and he didn’t even make it to the bathroom before he started to vomit. His stomach wretched as his eyes went wide as this awful, horrible feeling coursed through him and he was helpless to it. He gripped onto the edge of his bed as he opened his mouth, not to bile but flowers. So many flowers. He was choking on their petals. Their leaves and stems growing upwards and outwards, scratching him and making him bleed, making him actually want to vomit.

   Roboppy, bless the cleaner robot’s plastic chassis, heard Yusaku in his distress and turned a light on, racing to his master and Ai not too far in tow, worried for his partner as well. They stared up at Yusaku, worried and pained, and Yusaku just stared blankly in return of their concerned gazes. He hung out over the edge of his bed, drooling. His stomach felt like rot. But at least he was done.

   And at least his eyes weren’t fooling him.

   He had vomited up two different kinds of flowers. He was used to the sickness of flowers but it had only ever been one species. Two was… different. Unusual. He didn’t trust what he saw as it was outside his poor, pathetic sphere of normalcy. 

   He was used to expelling petals of blue and soft, green leaves. He was used to that. He was not used to the waxy feeling of large petals which bloomed in his mouth and tried to choke him as Yusaku coughed and hacked up his guts to spit them out onto the ground.

   The clumps looked disgusting on his hard wood floor. They looked dead and dying, shrivelled up from being watered with stomach acid but he could still make out the correct colour of the petals. The shapes of them. Cornflowers and magnolias. Yusaku wasn’t a romantic so he didn’t know what they meant in the language of flowers or anything like that. But he was in love, unfortunately, so he could name one species - the cornflowers, and who they represented, Ryoken - but the magnolias remained a mystery.

   Yusaku collapsed back down into his bed. He sunk into its poor quality and he closed his eyes. He told Roboppy to turn the lights off and for Ai to not worry about anything. This was fine. Normal. And he went back to sleep, trying hard not to think of either cornflowers or magnolias but the feeling of them growing inside of him throbbed.

   They throbbed hard.

   And Spectre was trying to purge because flowers throbbed inside of him too and though didn’t know it, he was why Yusaku was vomiting at the same hour as him. Suburbs and seas apart.

   Spectre was thinking way too hard. That was his problem. Where Yusaku was trying to ignore the problem, Spectre was trying to fix it but that was making it worse but he refused to acknowledge that he was making it worse. He just wanted it gone. All because he was vomiting wisteria. 

   On accident at first but now he was trying to induce it on purpose.

   Spectre had been… studying, at first. The Extra Link. He wanted to play a duel in which he was able to create his own with his beloved Sunavalon monsters. That would be the peak of beauty, of expertise of Link Summoning. He was head over heels in love with the concept of it. The Extra Link was most beautiful thing he had seen. Revolver and Playmaker’s duel, ergo, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and it excited him from the very bottom of his soul. That, of course, had unfortunate implications.

   The tendrils of wisteria which poured out of his mouth as he rewatched again and again, not just how Revolver duelled but how Playmaker duelled, proved that.

   Spectre refused to acknowledge the possibility that he may have… untoward feelings for Playmaker. For Fujiki Yusaku. It just did not make sense to him. He was steadfast in his love and loyalty to Ryoken, so why on Earth was he now vomiting wisteria? A flower which was most certainly not poignant to his master.

   Thus, Spectre did the only thing which seemed logical to him. He put his fingers in his mouth and he tried to vomit up all these flowers until there was nothing left and he could confidently announce that he had no feelings for Yusaku. But the more he struggled to remove them, the more he panicked and the more he panicked, the stronger his feelings apparently became.

   So strong that they would cause Yusaku misery in the form of magnolias. So strong that they would cause Ryoken misery in the form of magnolias.

   Ryoken was not a stranger to the immense depths of Spectre’s feelings. He had been sick with flowers many a-time because Spectre simply burgeoned with love for him. Love that Ryoken felt guilty to be the object of but even he thought this felt different to stints in the past where he had begun to expunge magnolias from inside himself.

   There was no purity to the magnolias that he had vomited. Not after they had been stained with awful feelings and stomach acid but Ryoken mulled them over all the same. Waxed poetic about them, held them in his hand and he didn’t even think to discard them because he knew they were Spectre’s flowers. He was vomiting on Spectre’s behalf.

   He just didn’t know why. Ryoken could theorise but until he heard the reason why from Spectre’s very own mouth, that’s all they would be. Theories and speculations. So, he held onto those flowers and made the hard decision to confront Spectre later.

   Spectre, of course, did not want to be confronted.

   Nor would Yusaku, as it would turn out.

   Ryoken could only assume. When Spectre made himself scarce, unable to bring himself to lie to Ryoken’s face directly, Ryoken found trace evidence of what had Spectre so upset. That subtle smear of wisteria that he didn’t quite rub out of his face, the bags under his eyes. Ryoken was thankful that the answer was so obvious. Maybe that was Spectre’s way of being truthful to him, maybe not but the underlying root of the problem had been exposed.

   So Ryoken reached out to Yusaku and Yusaku decided to be difficult. He tried to parse Ryoken out all the same as Spectre, but he found it so much easier to because they were somewhat distant to each other despite the chains they felt they had towards each other.

   It didn’t surprise Ryoken that both Yusaku and Spectre were content to stew in their floral misery. But he wasn’t. He wanted them to live well. He wanted them to sleep well. He wanted that for himself, as well. He wanted to take their hands and to sleep in the same bed as them both, to let flowers grow not inside them but around them. That made some part of his childhood heart very, very happy.

   What a pipe dream but it was something Ryoken decided he wanted to make happen. He knew it could happen. He had Spectre wrapped around his little finger, after all, and Yusaku was Yusaku. He was like a puppy, always looking for him. He could pretend to be cold but Ryoken knew where to find him.

   Naturally, it was by the Stardust Road at sunset, after a school day and Cafe Nagi was just about to close up.

   Yusaku wasn’t happy to see Ryoken. He especially wasn’t happy to see Spectre, either, who hovered at Ryoken’s heels. But he said hi and he even let Ryoken guide him to the fence so the three of them could look out over the water. Not at each other, just the orange sunglitter atop the navy blue waves of the ocean. It didn’t look like it was going to be the Stardust Road tonight but maybe they could be hopeful anyway.

   “Spectre has the sickness for you, you know.” Ryoken said idly.

   “Tell him to fuck off with it then.” Yusaku muttered.

   Spectre didn’t say anything even though he was right there. He was a little wounded by it but he was a ghost before he was a patient, he supposed.

   “Do you have the sickness for him or for me?” Ryoken asked. “I have it for him.”

   That made Spectre’s eyes go wide. Yusaku’s as well. Yusaku’s blank expression twisted slightly.

   “Magnolias?” Yusaku asked, frowning.

   “Yes.” Spectre replied.

   “I have it for you both then.” Yusaku confessed. His voice was breathy, like he didn’t want to admit it but the outright answer was foregone by now.

   Ryoken hummed thoughtfully, chewing on the revelation and savouring it. He had it for Spectre because Spectre had it for Yusaku and Yusaku had it for them both, presumably straightforwardly and now reversed as well. How intricate. How awful.

   Quiet followed. And Ryoken felt both their gazes on him from either side of him but he tried not to actually acknowledge them because they all needed to stew in this revelation of how interconnected their love sicknesses and flowers were. 

   Their eyes were needy. They both wanted to argue but neither wanted to hurt Ryoken’s feelings, so the unspoken compromise was silence. A silence which was uneasy and uncomfortable and allowed far too many thoughts to fester. Both Yusaku and Spectre wanted to be picked, to be picked over the other but they both had just enough respect for the other, apparently, to not be picked over the expense of.

   But their eyes. Blue and green were so different and yet so similar. Neither of them were ready to quite be in the other’s life as intimately as they perhaps wanted or were sick over but they needed to be, for Ryoken’s sake. If only it had happened well, well earlier, Ryoken thought.

   They were both in pain and so Ryoken could still see the hurt children inside them both, wearing gumboots and jackets. The little boy who wanted his mommy and the little boy who wanted to make friends. They would have gotten along just fine ten years ago, he was sure. He wished he could omit himself, be once again on the other side of the looking glass because their wants and needs and demands were too high for him. Their love terrified him, choked him, gagged him, but he had to be strong.

   For them, for he did love them both back. And the flowers in his mouth and in his stomach were proof of that. 

   “I have feelings for you both and I think, deep down, we all have feelings for each other.” Ryoken replied quietly, trying not to quake underneath the pressure that Yusaku and Spectre both exuded. “You both want the same things and as for what I want? I want to see you both happy. I hope you can accept that.”

   Spectre and Yusaku exchanged a look. It was tentative and Ryoken was worried that if he closed his eyes, they would break. Either on themselves or towards each other. They both thought the other was the most dislikeable person, an eccentric too indulged in their own selfishness. Instead, his words rang true.