Summary: A short little thing I wrote where Blair has Hanahaki.
Blair should have expected it really. He should have realized what would happen when he decided to follow Jim around but he'd ignored the signs until that first petal had fallen into his cupped hands.
He'd stared at the velvety smooth piece of flower for several minutes before stuffing it into his pocket, forgetting about it until he was home again.
Suddenly the harshness of his breathing, the difficulty of doing so, the tickle that was constant at the back of his throat, it all made sense.
And Blair didn't have to wonder who, he knew, all he had to do now was wait, wait and find out what sort of flowers Jim made grow in his lungs.
He kept the first whole flower that spilled from his lips, thankful it happened at Rainer, in his office. He had carefully washed the splatters of blood from the petals with a bottle of water before using the bottle as a vase for the flower.
The first flower formed fully from Hanahaki never wilted, never died, not unless the love itself died or was removed.
Blair left the flower there, in his office, wondering idly if Jim would have been able to smell his blood on the petals.
Later he would think on how fitting it was that the first flower bloomed at Rainer, it was there after all that every thing had truly begun.
It should have been harder, harder to hide his disease from his Sentinel but maybe the flowers blooming inside him were so much a part of him that Jim didn't realize that they weren't meant to be there. That them being a part of him, growing in his lungs made them harder to notice.
It was almost harder convincing Simon and Joel that his cough was just a lingering symptom from an illness but he managed and ran after Jim, even when it almost hurt to breath, even when it did hurt to breath, and Blair wondered why he still would not trade his flowers away, not for anything.
Blair gave most of the whole flowers that fell from his lips to others. When he woke with flowers across his pillows and stuck in his throat, he'd carefully remove the ones caught in his throat. Then he'd gently wash the blood from them in the bathroom sink and on his way down to the station or to Rainer he'd look for people who looked down, sometimes keeping one or two for when he went to the station or met Jim at a crime scene, kept them for the victims they found there, dead or alive.
He'd offer most of his flowers away on his way to where ever he was heading, to the people who looked sad or lost, and he'd smile, delighted at the bewildered half smiles or the shy sweet ones, the ones that made his heart ache and his sparse breath catch. Eventually he'd only have two or three flowers, one of them always gifted to Rhonda at the Station and the rest for the victims Blair would encounter and sooth from Jim's abrasiveness.
Blair would sometimes even leave one flower on Jim's desk, always making sure that no one saw him leave it, though Blair knew that Rhonda knew he left it, the strange awkward smile that Jim had when he found them made the flowers in his lungs constrict and bloom further. But Blair felt that it was only right that he share the love that Jim made grow in his lungs with their tribe while he still could.
Blair had to share that love with their tribe, before Jim's flowers drowned him with that love.
A/N: So... well, I wanted to write a Hanahaki story, so I wrote the beginning and then the giving away of the flowers and thought that was such a Blair thing to do and then I made Blair have Hanahaki.
I may come back to this where Jim realizes that Blair has Hanahaki but I don't feel the story yet.
I know it may be a stretch that Jim doesn't know, but right now I'm thinking that he's either giving Blair privacy, or that he switched soap and well Blair gets injured while riding with him often so it's not really unusual for him to be smelling blood.