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Despite what doctors may be saying about Hanahaki, Adrian could've sworn that he felt plants starting to grow in his chest for the first time when he was twelve years old, it didn’t matter what everybody was saying that Hanahaki cannot affect anyone below eighteen - something about hormones and maturity of the brain and shit - and that Adrian himself didn’t cough up his first leaf until he was twenty-one and had first couple team-ups with Peacemaker. Yes, he may have been lacking most of the normal human emotions and processed a small amount of them that he actually had pretty differently, but Andrian knew he loved Christopher Smith almost from the first time he met him.
It was nice, knowing that sometimes he could feel like a normal people did. And not just any feeling, a good one. Adrian had several of what were considered not-so-good ones, and while he didn’t really get what all of the fuss was about - be happy he had any emotions at all, people! - it was good to know he had some range. And the unrequited part, well… He wasn’t exactly surprised, really. Surprised that he was capable of loving anyone at all - yes, absolutely, even at twelve, he knew he was different, enough people (and doctors) around him told him that, and what he was wrong in the head and what he wasn't built for a lot of things, including love. Chances of him being loved in return were cosmically fucking minuscule, especially because of who he loved.
Chris was amazing, incredibly cool, and most likely the best person on the whole fucking planet. And Adrian was… Adrian. While he didn’t understand why so many people had some kind of problem with him, he knew he wasn’t enough for someone like Peacemaker. Even if he was fucking badass as Vigilante, he still most likely wasn’t cool or amazing enough. And as just Adrian Chase, he definitely wasn’t any of these things, and he stupidly wanted to be valued not only as Vigilante, but as Adrian, but knew it was much harder.
As Vigilante, he managed to build a friendship with Chris - something that Adrian had desperately wanted since he was a kid, but could never achieve as himself. And, well, while he was honest that he didn’t tell Chris his identity for so many years because he wanted to protect him, Andrian also suspected that knowing would change how Chris was seeing him, and he kinda hated the thought. After all, Vigilante was Peacemaker's best friend - Adrian Chase wasn’t. But when the big reveal happened (accompanied by fucking torture), things didn’t really change, at least Adrian thought so. Adrian still had Chris’s friendship, and it was enough.
It was, despite what fucking doctors had to say. Adrian would know better; he lived with it for ten fucking years. It was mostly okay. Berable. He had slightly less lung capacity than he should have, and sometimes felt out of breath, but breathing exercises and asthma inhalers helped. Periodically, he would cough up a leaf or two, dark green, starfish-shaped, and scratchy. Usually accompanied by a little bit of blood and bile, but nothing too harsh. Honestly, compared to the damage he would sustain while being Vigilante, it was basically nothing. And Adrian always healed fast.
Well, it wasn’t without some hiccups, sometimes Adrian had flare-ups, because he was kinda good at making Chris mad, even if he rarely understood what exactly he did, and in turn that made him feel even more hopeless than usual, or in the very rare instances, Andrian himself got mad at Chris (the. fucking. torture). Adrian would feel it then, a heavy weight behind his sternum, squeezing his lungs and other organs. Leaves would come up in bunches of tree and more, covered in blood.
But it never lasted long. When it was Chris who got mad, Adrian would back up for a bit, let him cool off, soothing his motherfucking plant parasite with painkillers and inhalers, and next time they would see each other, things usually would return to normal. And if Adrian was mad (hurt, usually hurt, but mad was easier to justify to himself or Chris), he could never hold onto it for long, moving past it usually even before Chris would notice something was amiss. Because how could he stay mad at him? It was Chris. Chris was the best part of Adrian’s life, probably almost the only good part - almost, because being Vigilante was also fucking cool, but not cooler than having Chris as the best friend.
So, all has been good. Great, even, since Peacemaker returned from prison much earlier than his sentence made sure of. For four years, Adrian waited, and hoped, and collected various appliances for after, and if he also secretly tried to find out how prisons worked so he could stage a prison break for Chris, it was only his business. Yes, it was illegal and against his morals, but it was Chris; he would do anything and would put aside his principles for Chris in a heartbeat. And they shouldn't have arrested and imprisoned him in the first place! Surprisingly, in all that time, his Hanahaki didn't flare up, probably because he knew that Cris didn’t leave him of his own volition, if he did have any choice, he wouldn’t leave Andrian behind.
Anyway, all good. Adrian did what was important and what he fucking loved as Vigilante; he was by Peacemaker’s side, and he was well acclimated to his Hanahaki, and it didn’t even hurt that bad. And when it did, it was okay. Bearable. Not the worst. And he was as happy as he ever could be, because he got as much in life as he could rationally hope for. It would be stupid to want anything else when he knew it wasn’t possible for him. So, all was good.
But things wouldn’t fucking stay the same, wouldn’t they? No matter how much Adrian enjoyed the status quo as it was, or maybe because of it. Universe is a fucking bich and probably loved fucking with people in general and with Adrian specifically.
Everybody always told him that he was shit at reading people’s clues, so it’s no wonder that he understood that things went astray when that shitshow was well underway, but when he was looking back, it was clear that shit started stirring with those motherfucking Butterflies. Not that understanding earlier would change things, but Adrian could not stop thinking that maybe if he did, said something, did something, proved in some way to Chris that Adrian was worthy to keep around, may be considered as some kind of friend, even if not second-BFF-after-Eagly.
It was totally okay to be considered a less close friend than Eagly, Eagly was amazing! Adrian himself considered him his second-best friend after Chris. But more and more, Chris would in passing mention talks and hangouts with Adebayo, and once Adrian overheard him on the phone calling her his best friend (not even second-after-Eagly). At the time, Adrian was sure that he had misheard it somehow or misunderstood, but now he knew it was exactly as it seemed.
Chris was nicer to Economos, no longer calling him names - well, most of the time - and included him when he mentioned his friends. Adrian doubted more and more that he himself was included in that category, and couldn’t recall Chris calling him one recently. If ever. But he for sure had to do that in the past, right? And okay, Adrian himself called John every day when he was away, but he was under no illusion that for John it was more than just a brief reprise from boredom. (Didn’t matter what those calls meant for Adrian, some days a fucking lifeline, and that Economos picked up every day, no way John saw him as anything more than a nuance.)
And of course, there was Harcourt, badass, smart, cool Harcourt. Chris made no secret that he wanted to fuck her - he wasn’t shy about saying it outright, and also Adrian saw countless times how he looked at hot women he wanted to fuck, some of which he later got to fuck for real. A couple of times with Andrian, not like it mattered. (It mattered, of course it fucking mattered, it happened four times, it was technically Vigilante, not Adrian, since it was before the face reveal, he could recall every minuscule detail about Chris but he probably couldn’t recognize any of the girls, and every brief accidental touch between two of them was burnt into his skin and memory, only touch that felt like that, felt good…)
No, Chris wanting to fuck Harcourt wasn’t the issue, but he wanted more than that, something bigger, more permanent, committed. And this - this was hard. As far as Adrian knew, and he knew Cris’s life very well, his longest relationship was a month in tenth grade; he seemed not to want to repeat even that brief experience, and he never even hinted at wanting something more than this. And it unexpectedly hurt. Maybe because before anything serious with Chris wasn’t possible for anyone, no matter what that anyone wanted, and now Adrian knew it was possible, just not for him. (Never for him, big fucking surprise.)
After the showdown with Butterflies and the Cow, both Harcourt and Adrian stayed in the same hospital, but Chris spent all his time only at Harcourt's bedside or in the waiting room closest to hers, two floors down from Adrian’s. He very vaguely remembered seeing him several hours after being admitted, full to his gills with painkillers, even if he said to the nurses he could tough it up and go without, but after that - nothing. Well, at least for two days, because after that he flees from the window of his room - after all, he didn’t give them his real name, and it’s not like he has insurance under his real name anyway, and he feels almost fine, and he has to work so he wouldn't be fired. (And less time spent in the hospital meant less opportunity for Chris not to come see him and for Adrian to hurt. He hurts anyway.)
But it made sense, Harcourt was damaged more and healed slowly, so it was okay, or will be. So after they saved the world, and Chris was finally free from his shit-for-nothing dad, Adrian thought that things would be better, or at least stay the same. But even Adrian, with all of his fucked-up sense of the people’s behavior, eventually clocked that Cris grew distant, very, very distant. Yes, Chris now had other friends besides Eagly and Adrian, but even that cannot be an explanation for how little time they now spent together.
Yes, Chris was still on his pacifistic bullshit of no-kill rule, but Adrian was willing to be accommodating of this, at least on some of his Vigilante patrols, but Chris didn’t want to listen, refusing to go out as Peacemaker (at least with Vigilante). Maybe he thought they would end up slipping and killing their opponents anyway, which, okay, is possible. But he also didn’t want to go out in the woods to shoot shit, and that somehow stung (hurt) more. Adrian tried to hang out with Chris as Adrian, which they didn’t do before for oblivious reasons, with some success, but it was few and far between, and sometimes kinda awkward, at least he thought so. (Was afraid of that, even though he saw Chris and Peacemaker as one person, and his friend, Chris saw Vigilante as his friend, and still not Adrian. )
He didn’t know what to do; he was shit at emotions and all that stuff, even his own, let alone someone else's. Andrian didn’t understand people. (He thought he understood Chris.) In a different situation, he probably would have gone to Chris for an explanation of someone else’s confusing emotions and maybe advice; he definitely was better at this stuff than Adrian, but, well, he definitely could not do it this time. So he ended up asking Economos during one of the daily calls, despite that their acquaintance probably didn’t include emotional openness or any of that stuff at all, and John probably didn’t want to have that kind of talk with him, but Adrian really didn’t have anyone else to turn to. So he ended up telling John, blurted it out, really, probably rushed and not totally comprehensive, and not all of it, of course, not even close, but about distance, and wanting to do something for Chris, but not knowing what.
John, bless him any gods that may or may not exist, took it all in like a champ. He honestly said that he was not really all that great at emotions himself, but tried to help. Said what Chris was probably still fucked up after his dad - both killing him and everything that was before that, when he was still alive - and maybe even shitshow with Waller Sr. and Corto Maltese. And unfortunately, there wasn’t much possible for Adrian to do, just make sure Chris knew he was there for him, give him space, and wait. But it was still some plan of action, and Adrian was very grateful, which he repeatedly and verbosely told John, and did exactly as he advised - he hoped Chris knew that he was there for him, but tried to tell him anyway, and forced himself to step back, and waited.
His chest ached, his breath became shallow and uneven, he started periodically coughing because of the feeling of something tickling the end of his throat, his fucking leafs came up soaked in blood, the taste of which lingered in his mouth, but Adrian waited. He was pretty good at waiting, if he said so himself. He waited four years; he was ready to wait forty if Chris ended up serving a full sentence (but probably would organize a prison break before that), and he could manage to wait some time for Chris to get better. (Even if he desperately wished that Chris would rely on him, confide in him, trust him. ) He bought specialized Hanahaki inhalers and lozenges, which were way more expensive but more effective, and waited.
Then Chris called him for help, and while lack of invitation to the orgy stung - yes, he wasn’t very enthusiastic about sex with strangers, it actually made his skin crawl, but he was always very on board with sex that included Chris in any capacity - the fact that Chris choose Adrian to help him dispose the body of his-alternate-reality-self overrode any grievances he may have had. Hell yeah, Adrian was the best for that kind of task, and Chris acknowledged that and trusted him with this. He didn’t remember when he felt that good. And then it was the whole gang reunion, and the party, and things started to seem good for the first time in a long time.
But Adrian shouldn’t forget that nothing good lasts forever, not for him, and this little blip of happiness wasn’t the exception. Maybe if he remembered that, Chris’s unexpected and abrupt departure into another dimension wouldn’t be such a devastating shock for him. Sitting on the couch, listening to Adebayo reading Chris’s explanation, he was kind of numb, but not really, because in place of numbness, it was hurt, it was pain, all over and especially in his chest. (Chris didn’t mention Adrian in his letter, not even to berate, to accuse of being one of the reasons for his departure, to tell him he wasn’t enough. Adrian wasn’t worth even a single thought in Chris’s mind.)
He couldn’t hold back tears when Leota was kind enough to check up on him and hold him for a bit. Adrian cried only five times in his life, and all of them over Chris - when he was a kid and Chris decisively told him Adrian never gonna be his friend, when he cough up first leaf and understood what it meant, when he found out that Chris had got locked up in prison and supposed to be here for forty years, when he tried to kill Chris’s father and made it all worse, and now.
But while it wasn’t the first time, this time Adrian was feeling dread, like something was snapping, inevitably breaking, and it hurt so much more. And it hurt not only Adrian’s emotions, but physically too. Sitting alone after Leota left, he was dumbly staring at the bedroom walls and concentrating on the pain in his chest. It was agonizing; he never felt anything like that, not from ten years of Hanahaki, not from any other damage he sustained through his life. Gunshot and stab wounds, broken bones and dislocated joints, burns, a damned chopped-off pinky toe, and a lot more - nothing of it compared. A fucking thing inside of him was rapidly growing, carving space for itself around and seemed to inside of his organs. And in some way, even worse than pain was the sense of something moving inside of him, plant shoots shifting and stretching out like something alive. When Adrian put his hand under his sternum, where his ribs made way to the flesh, he could feel vines wiggling under his skin, like some fucking chestburster from fucking Alien movie.
Over the years, Adrian grew accustomed to his Hanahaki, calmed by the stagnation of its state - middle inconvenience, bearable pain, constant, but not overtly dangerous reminder. But the thing about Hanahaki - it’s deadly, and there are only three options to get rid of it. You can have operation, which is pricey, not guaranteed success and possibly can fuck up you mentally, fall out of love or in love with someone else, but only if you had Hanahaki not for long and was kinda easy about love which was very rare among those who got it, or person whom you love returns your feelings and fall in love with you as well. Otherwise, you fucked - sooner or later, you will die, and death won’t be easy or pretty, despite what romance-inclined media wanted you to believe.
Now Adrian knew the score - broken heart and impending hurtful death. Well, he always knew that he would probably die for Peacemaker, didn’t quite imagine it would be this way, more like in the blaze of glory, but not like it changed the outcome. So, he gave himself the night to wallow in hurt, and funny thing, Hanahaki and thoughts about his soon-to-be death still hurt less than the notion that kicked off this whole thing, that Chris really didn’t give two fucks about him, but, well, he was stupid that way. And when the morning came and Adrian heard that others had a plan, that he half-suspected they would, he was ready to play it all off like everything was fine, with the help of the painkillers he borrowed from Harcourt’s bathroom. (He was planning to replace them later, if he would get enough of that “later”, which, fifty-fifty.) He was always told that he was a bad actor, but nobody said anything, so he was in the clear, probably helped by the fact that nobody really cared.
The whole trip to another dimension was like a blur of numbness and hurt. Meeting his other self was a bit of a distraction, but even that couldn’t divert his attention for long, especially since the other-Adrian clearly hadn’t had Hanahaki, which made Adrian feel kinda bad for him. Yes, other-him wasn’t in pain and under threat of imminent death, but he also didn’t have a chance to know and love Chris, good one at least, and it wasn't a trade that Adrian was willing to make, even now. There was something different in alter-Adrian, distant and harsh, that he couldn’t explain by just him living in the Nazi world, and the only thing that came to mind was that he didn’t experienced this hurt and love that Adrian himself did from and for Chris.
He ended up killing a bunch of Nazis and that dimension’s Chris’s father - which, good riddance - returned with all of them, Chris included, into their own dimension, helped with assholes from A.R.G.U.S. and another two tries of locking Chris up (which, what the fuck?!), tried to help persuade Chris into staying with them all, replaced Harcourt’s painkillers, and still didn’t die. It still hurt like motherfucker, especially since Chris wasn’t even mad with him for killing his other-dad, who apparently wasn’t bad - Adrian begged to differ, he heard from other-him some of the stuff “superheroes” of that world did - and while before it was a good thing, now he knew for Chris he didn’t worth any attention or emotions, even anger. In the past several days, Adrian read about Hanahaki more than he read about it in the past ten years, and not just stuff on the internet, but official shit from good-for-nothing doctors, and it seemed that it wasn’t normal, that amount of pain and plant expansion for so long without dying. Well, having Hanahaki at all for so long also wasn’t normal, but it wasn't either here nor there.
When vines permanently lodged themself at the back of his throat, Adrian knew he had to do something - good thing he had almost no gag reflex, but cough was frequent and permanent, and eating became absolute pain in the ass, as pushing anything non-liquid past them was almost impossible. He has to Marie-fucking-Kondo’d his life, leaving bare minimum, cause he hadn’t had strength for more - just enough shifts at Fennel fields to not to be fired and to get at least a little bit of money, only one or two patrols as Vigilante at week, to bring fear of justice to criminals at least so some extend and, well, it was last source of fun and pleasure left in his life. And Chris, of course, Chris, every time he needed something, Adrian would drop everything and go, no matter how exhausted he was, how even looking at him hurt - time which he didn’t spend with Chris hurt more. But he knew he couldn’t continue to live that way, so, despite that he hated doctors and medics and scientists with burning passion, three weeks after they wrapped up all the shit with A.R.G.U.S. and other dimensions, Adrian booked an appointment in a clinic that specialized in Hanahaki, a few towns over, under a false name, of course.
They took X-ray pictures, samples of his blood and Hanahaki vines, and thankfully didn’t make him wait until another appointment for results. But, as was previously established, nothing was easy for Adrian, so when medical workers there became overly excited and started in hushed tones discussing what clearly were his results, Adrian wasn’t even that surprised, just resigned to his fucked-up fate. Luckily, he had great hearing and also played dumb when he came in (he actually just didn’t want to give more information than was needed, and it was the easiest way), and he managed to overhear everything even before somebody returned to the room he was waiting to talk to him officially.
The basic scoop of it was that Adrian did indeed heal fast. Metahumanly fast. And it healed enough of the damage inflicted by Hanahaki to his body that it was enough to keep him alive — in constant pain, wildly uncomfortable, but alive. His healing factor wasn’t the strongest; they didn’t know more specifically without more tests, which fuck no, so it just barely kept him from dying, not got rid of Hanahaki himself. And also seemed to make plants more tenacious - specimens that were taken from him weren't wilted as they should be after extraction from his body, and still looked kinda fresh after a couple of hours. But it also meant that an operation that could get him permanently rid of Hanahaki was most likely off the table - not like Adrian wanted it in the first place, too risky for his already not-so-normal brain, and very expensive. (And he wouldn’t feel anything about Chris, and there was a chance that he would forget him at all, and it was unacceptable. Even after everything.)
It seemed that those medical torturers won’t be able to do anything to really help him - inhalers, lozenges, and painkillers he was successfully buying on his own - and was overtly excited to study him more, his Hanahaki and his healing, he heard something about tests, and scientific papers, and grants, and fuck no. Adrian knew he didn’t trust doctors for a reason! So waiting until the lull in human traffic around and into his room, Adrian quietly fucked off through the open window — just second floor, it wasn’t even a challenge — and rode home.
After a bit of experiments of his own (really, nothing extreme, Adrian didn’t want to permanently maim himself, and even if that pain for a brief moment distracted him from the others hurts and pains) he found out that yes, he could heal faster that internet said average human should, bul slower than he remembered he healed before - probably because of constant healing from Hanahaki - and quickest way for him to heal was to sleep or fall unconscious for some time. It actually explained some of the traumas from before, like from the showdown with Butterflies - Adrian felt like shit, lost consciousness, slept for a couple of nights, and was well enough to jump from the window and go to work.
And most importantly, these experiments gave Adrian an idea of what to do with his Hanahaki, at least temporarily, because he might not be dying, but it was still a pain, literally and figuratively. He still couldn’t breathe properly or eat solids, and what felt like plant limbs trying to crawl from his throat into his mouth was gonna drive him insane. And maybe he should've thought it through more, dreaded this more, because this was gonna be painful and fucking gnarly, but Adrian wasn’t a fan of thinking staff through or dreading something, and he wasn’t gonna start now.
So on the same day that idea popped in his head, right before he was going to go to sleep (better chances of healing, if it didn’t outright end up killing him), he locked himself in the bathroom (easier to clean up the consequences). Adrian didn’t let himself hesitate, took as much of a deep breath as he could, showed his right hand as far in his mouth as his fingers would go - thank fuck for his subdued gag reflex - grabbed vines and branches that were nested at the back of his throat and pulled.
It took a couple of seconds, but with the sound and the disgustingly reminiscent feeling of the joints popping out of the sockets deep inside his chest - something that Adrian knew from inflicting and experiencing himself - he started pulling a tangled mass of plants from inside himself. He still almost gagged - from the feeling, from the pain, from the taste of blood, from just the thought of what he was doing to himself. Like Adrian was ripping off parts of himself, and in some sense, he probably was. It felt like it took forever, but probably around a minute later, he was done, throwing his harvest in the sink.
This shit smelled of fucking green juice, blood, and death. Among the twisted mass of ivy with which he was intimately familiar - he grew this fuckers inside himself for more than ten years - Adrian saw stiff branches strewn with thorns, with feathery leaves and delicate pink flowers. Well, that explained the new form of leaves and pink petals that he started seeing when he coughed up his foliage after Chris’s departure, and an ungodly increase of pain - this fucking thorns. And of course Adrian knew what they were - maybe not scientific names, but where he saw them and why they grew inside of him. Ivy was from clearing in the woods where he and Chris shot shit for so many years (he knew from the first leaf he spat), and thorny flowers were from the bushes which could be seen from the window of Chris’s trailer (he thought it was maybe wild roses, but what the fuck did he know).
Adrian knew that it was a temporary solution, like trying to fix a shot through the heart with a band-aid; he could swear he already could feel plants moving and growing again, but what the fuck else could he do? There was no magic solution, no fixing it - with operation out of question, only things left for him were to lie down and die, to which Adrian wasn’t exactly opposed, but if he toughed it up and lived, he could be useful for some time longer, useful to the world and to Chris. Well, living might be stretching it; his usefulness was questionable, he still was in pain and weak, and he would be lucky if he got more than a couple of days before he needed to do some more weeding. But maybe he still could do some good, maybe he still had something to offer Chris, so he would endure.
And the funny thing is, Adrian didn’t blame Chris or even regretted all of it. All the pain and hurt, broken body and even more broken heart, through hell and high water, it was all worth it for the opportunity to know Chris and to love him.
Loving Chris was always gonna be worth the hurt.