Arthur wasn't complaining about the pain by any means, he never would, but… he had to admit the combination of severe long-term anemia and the pressures (not the good kind) of running an incredibly busy flower shop by himself while barely knowing the difference between dahlias and orchids had been making it harder (not in the good way) to care for the plant and himself. Especially when the former sometimes came with attractive and domineering customers asking him if he was okay and trying to help him and the latter always came with seething anger and jealousy towards the masses of customers who dared to show interest in his love. He refused to hire on any help for that reason, even though those weird teenagers who loitered outside the shop sometimes had applied to do so at one point a length of time ago that he could barely approximate through the blood loss induced haziness; he absolutely refused to let anyone else grow close to his plant. Not again. It wouldn't even be getting blood from others again if he could help it; he'd try it out on meat from Skid Row's only decent deli first. That seemed like less of a transgression of their connection somehow, not getting another sapient creature involved, although it and his failure to provide enough blood to avoid this outcome still stung (and not in the good way.)
Arthur walked through the front door of the shop, Schmendricks' bag in hand, and struggled to process the absolute horror of what he was seeing for a moment. His plant was attacking Orin, the crush he had abandoned for it, and he hadn't been involved in this like with Mushnik! Suddenly regaining his ability to move from it (which was surprisingly not a travesty like it would normally be), Arthur charged towards them… it and him… as quickly as he could with so little blood in his body, aggressively pulling at Orin's legs as hard as he could and eventually succeeding in freeing him from its clutches but not his heart from the dejection burning unsexily in his chest. More adrenaline than he had experienced since that first bite from his love allowed him to carry Orin out of the store, and he stared at him for a moment in slowly growing, agonizing (not in the good way) horror as he watched his head tilt back in death, in that la petite mort from his love that he craved, that had been stolen from him by it and this stupid otter! Angrily, Arthur unceremoniously dumped him on the ground, rushing back into the shop and towards the plant and picking up his ax on the way.
"How FUCKING dare you after we're formed SUCH a bond and I haven't cheated on YOU once! Not ONCE!" He swung at the plant's head with each especially emphasized word, failing to make any kind of headway into penetrating it much to his frustration, and was about to sink from it back into dejection when it happened. The plant wrapped a long, thick, hard tentacle around his arms, preventing him from hitting it again even if he had wanted to and causing him to drop the ax. It clattered against the floor, hard, as he hardened from his love slowly and oh so forcefully pulling him into its mouth and against those immensely pleasurable and sharp teeth. Blinding, glorious pain coursed through him as he surrendered to the plant's penetration all along his body, leaning into it in sheer bliss, and he moaned harder than he ever had as they came together as one, their connection finally complete in the ecstasy of la petite mort at long last.