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He's not quite used to Juliana just yet. Still adjusting to the way she talks, her very forward methods of conversation and distinct regional vernacular. A little bit over-eager, Larry notes, yet vaguely melancholy under all the initial pep.
She's responsive as if everything excites her — only until it doesn't, the wonder being comedically short-lived at the precipice of insipid reality. But she denotes that there's no time for dissatisfaction once the novelty wears off. Subsequently, she moves on with a lack of remorse, and tells him that everything starts at the forefront of incredible until the source is ascertained. Until the origin can be interpreted, making the result unexceptional with educated understanding.
It's initially interesting until we prove that it's not, right? And that means that everything is interesting, don't you think, Larry?
He can relate to that sentiment, albeit varyingly. Perhaps not so studiously, nor scientifically. Supposes this specific disparity between their dispositions is why he's incapable of acclimating to her sociable enthusiasm. Why he can't look her in the eye, why she smiles and he feels obtusely out of place no matter the setting.
Or maybe they're in the wrong context. Maybe her inherent sort of intensity, contradictory to his systematic monotony, is somehow beneficial. He's supposed to appreciate the otherworldly sort of things from time to time, to veer off the wall-trodden path, so to speak. Encounter novelty as it comes, acknowledge nuance, peculiarity. And it's easy, admittedly, to appreciate a sight and sound like Juliana.
She says his tie is cute, then hands him a coffee. Same tie he wears every day, but this morning she's bolder. He holds the door open with a typical sense of propriety, muttering something offhanded about the start of their shift. And she laughs as if he'd told a joke. As if they were friends.
That would be the extent of their morning interaction, save the painful strain within Larry's chest, which had felt like the threat of stroke. And maybe he does a stretch or two throughout the day, cautiously aware of the impact her vivacity might have on his health. Then ironically lights a cigarette to think, avoiding her on his self-designated lunch.
His blood feels out of hand in some ways; partly from her scrutiny, partly because he puts down half a pack a day. Mostly because he's a mess.
But so is she, really.
Juliana is potentially compulsive, he learns, after her first week reviewing the data collected from area zero. And walking into her make-shift office in his boardroom is an introduction to stereotypical obsession, with notes and diagrams hung along the walls, lines indicative of connections and theoreticals tied to push-pins and staples. Old information aligns to new data alongside photos she'd taken during her time in the crater, reflective of dated records from the original research teams. Useless tidbits he'd documented ages ago that she references with keen repetition.
Still she smiles when she sees him, grins wider when he asks for her to elaborate on the groundwork of her theories. Because it's interesting, he admits, in a way that's far more perplexing than it is satisfying.
She spends half an hour deconstructing the processes of her work, that severe intensity making her dramatic, making her unbelievably impressive. Then she asks him for specific sets of data he might have stored away ten years prior. And he clears his throat of the coarseness scratching up from his trachea before mumbling an agreement.
Geeta told him to give her anything she'd request — Larry doubts he could ever deny her, regardless.
He asks why she doesn't just organize the mess of information digitally. She tells him she can't connect any dots that way; no visuals, no tangible learning. And it reminds him of Sada in an ephemeral, inexplicable sort of respect — parallel to her irrational idiosyncrasies.
But any actual similarities are scarce, overall. Juliana claims a more ethical objective, aiming to assist in negating the environmental effects of the crater. Inhibiting the release of invasive species while utilizing the pharmaceutical benefits of terastalized plant life. She has no interest in the supposed paradox, no desire to persist with the professor's blunders.
Sada had fueled her own obsession with technological advancement, both primitive and modern. Juliana is motivated by the preservation of what actively exists. She lives in the present, in the ever-elongating sense of now.
Larry can respect that. And finds that he likes the smaller pieces he knows of her — her ideals, her compassion, her expansive ardor. But is still not sure how he feels looking at her as a whole. Has no idea who she is, why she's so plainly strong, why she's devoted her life to this contrite profession.
Not until their first official expedition into the zero lab, where he'd been directed to guide her through the mess she'd already previously endured. And La Primera makes their limitations and purpose excessively pellucid, a reminder of their contractual obligations in a brisk email the morning of, accompanied by a list of what Juliana is not supposed to know (yet somehow has full insight of).
The journey down is timely, save the elevator feeling uncannily slow. The geography is coded well into his memory despite the years away, epochal and second-nature. He smokes a cigarette as they walk from one research station to the next, with Juliana jogging to match his strides amid her sketching and documentations.
It's a discreet, easy sort of journey to their objective. Made seamless by the presence of his staraptor and the territorial trilling of koraidon at their front. Still, Larry recalls why he rarely wore wingtips in this hellscape. Then maybe he's reminded of his age when his feet ache before even halfway descending the lowest level. Geeta overestimated him for this, as usual.
Navigating the caverns is tedious, but walking up the ramp to the zero lab is emotionally taxing. She's uneasy, her gait becomes guarded, less casual, more abrasive. She recalls koraidon to his ball, as if enforcing protection. And Larry admits that the feel of the place is different, somehow worse in its tragedy. Like the terrastalisation embedded in every facet of the facility reflects the most recent misfortune.
They find Sada's biological and botanical research buried, secluded in the recesses of old exploits. It's bound in fraying leather, worn badly on the edges. All in print for the sake of paranoid intention, undoubtedly somewhere else on a secure drive. Just a mesh between fact and theory, the pristine nature of written word devolving into impatient scrambles which toe the lines of safety and sanity.
Déjà vu, when he skims through sophisticated, egocentric obsession. The red flags from years prior, the signs of downfall which would eventually turn Geeta cautiously austere.
They would not make the mistakes of their predecessors — the collective effort ruined by unchecked ambition, forgotten with time.
But Juliana is starry-eyed as she thoroughly reads through the pages, as her finger follows lines of unfamiliar text, delicately tracing diagrams. It doesn't hold apparition in her eyes, it doesn't terrify her the way it should. None of it truly has, he realizes. Because she's been here before, and none of it had been her fault.
She shows him a document on the terastal phenomenon, with clustered lines detailing the physiological effects. Comparative between the species in the crater to those on the coasts. And she's awestruck by the statistics, by the genetic implications and Sada's messy notes in the margins.
"Are you a fan?" Of the professor's, he means. Asks because her wonder is electrifying. It grips into him as if he were young again, raking brutal fingers through the gaps of his ribs without reason.
"No," she says, clipped. But her excitement is hardly diminished, and her breathlessness is nearly infectious. "Not at all."
He remembers then, that she's endeared to Sada's son. That there is latent contempt in her motivations, resentful for the neglect, the abandonment resulting from scientific delusion. It's personal, in some ways, being empathetic in her heartache.
And it makes sense to him, suddenly — why she wants so badly to be a professor. Why she feels obligated to right their wrongs. She's endured the results, has seen provenance in the diaphanous fractals, the precarious origins which bleed into geographic reality. She's seen the crux of their verity, knows what makes it all supposedly interesting.
If everything is interesting, doesn't that mean nothing is interesting, Juliana?
"We should go," he mumbles instead, scrutinizing the way her fingertips run along the worn characters of a keyboard. "This place eventually starts to rot your senses."
She looks up at him from the pages, lips parting to hesitate on words he knows will be morose. "Is that what happened, then?"
To Sada? To the research team?
He has no answer, because she's a bit beyond him, clearly. Far from normal and exceedingly bizarre. She soars a bit further than he can manage, but he's still going to follow after. Partly because he's paid to, partly because he wants to.
That awareness triggers a single cough, as though it'd been dormant within his chest, waiting for a catalyst. Like a feather in his throat, dry and resulting in nothing when he covers the solitary outburst with the crook of his arm. But that was the extent of it, he supposes. As the need doesn't strike him again.
It's early morning, where everything's reticent in the lull before sunup. His gym is empty, his office is dark. She brings him a bocadillo and the usual coffee, knowing he'd skip morning meals until lunch. Then she sips her tea and goes red —beautifully— when he monotonously asks if she would want half.
They split breakfast and talk about the weather, and she asks all sorts of nonsense — his favorite color, favorite season, favorite liquor.
Normal things, Larry knows. Daily workplace interactions, none of which hold deeper significance. They have no reason to. Not unless she'd want them to. But that sounds like idealistic nonsense, and suddenly he doesn't know what the hell he's thinking about.
All he knows is that the League had given her just over a month to utilize Medali's resources. She has three more weeks, give or take, to produce something relevant enough to conclude her research program and validate her certifications. So after breakfast she holes back up in the boardroom, victim to a crowded intellect, with evolving hypotheses that cluster up her already frenetic awareness. And her innate desire to socialize bleeds into anxiety, because she's running out of time, she says.
She's desperate, he knows, to find something of substance. To make a breakthrough, to earn her coat. So he expends the resources he can, gives her the space she needs. Endures the highest volume of orchestral music, always amused when it resonates through the walls from her haven.
It's two weeks of inflexible focus, his normal routine speckled with her presence in his halls, in his lobby. She's in and around his office when details of particular relevance enlighten her, just to show him the phenomenon before that prefatory intrigue lessens with understanding. Sometimes he can hardly follow, others she’s succinct, easy to understand. Larry listens nonetheless, as if there's a benefit in retaining debatably useless factuals.
But Juliana is equitably transfixed on everything, regardless of the varying notability of each piece of information. So engrossed in her work and her unparalleled potential, inclusive despite her narrowed concentration. She still orders him coffee whenever she stops for tea. She'll hand him money and ask if he would bring her lunch. He'll leave it by her purse, never allows her to pay; subsequently, she never lets him hear the end of it.
She looks exhausted, and one morning he tells her so. She smugly jokes — says they match, then. He shuts up immediately.
Then it's gradual, a shift in the way she looks at him, something delicate with certainty, like fondness. She starts to tug on his sleeve with casual insistence, saves a folder of research she'd think he'd find interesting. And he still can't adjust, can't get a grip on the impending sense of reciprocity. Realization that maybe he's fond of her, too.
He develops a cough which persists only in early mornings, and wonders if it's the change of the season. He’s getting old, he reasons.
Still they go back to the crater the week preceding — old or not, he's her designated escort, she says. And she needs more samples, more data, more always. Insatiable, still, as if that same tendency had not driven the first project to violent extinction. He buries the thought, instead follows her around and points her in the right directions. Juliana goes on from there, and he trails at her heels with a cigarette off his mouth, pretending she might need him.
She gathers selective stalks of herbs from the caverns, notating their botanical families in her journal. He monitors as she measures and trims florals along the cliffsides, then draws water into vials for bacterial analysis. Three hours of collection and assessment, with amazed bouts of random dialogue in-between, before he insists it's time to depart.
They double check her inventory at the gate before the descent back to Medali. With samples spread in numeric order across the largest table, individually isolated and tagged. Her notes and memorandums look like sporadic nonsense, whereas her journals mimic incisive art. He reads them as he waits, overly cautious as he turns the pages, as he bypasses an applin bookmark he knows she'd swiped from Hassel.
"Can I keep using your boardroom?" She asks, still sorting through sterilized herb cuttings, marking bags of shards chipped from crystalline caves. "Even if the League won't fund me?"
He turns a page in her most recent journal, with sketched depictions of herbal anatomy and corresponding notations. Mutters through the quiet, attention following her careful script. "You can have an office there, if you'd want it."
Then halfway through, all formal analysis with varying suppositions, he feels as if he's falling. Comparable to a shortness of breath, her notes having expounded upon small suggestions he'd made offhandedly in the past, each dated and credited to his person. And it's bold of him to notice, as he quickly skims through one page from another, that his name is the only one in her cluttered margins.
He snaps it closed, clears his throat, then adjusts his tie. The abruptness urges attention, where she looks up from her place beside him while pondering a thought. Then grins, her shoulder playfully bumping his arm, the vibrant color of her sweater contrasting against his suit jacket. She's warm, a redolence of florals. "Can it be near yours?"
He huffs something within the realm of a laugh. Tells her then, "Whatever you want." And means it, wholly.
From there it starts, somehow, without clear rationale. The initial dry cough from early mornings would persist, being exacerbated roughly at the very base of his lungs. But is henceforth accompanied by an inconstant fever, indicative of common illness that would fluctuate day to day. Inconspicuously mild, initially, to the extent that he held no immediate concern. Gave it no attention after that careless exchange. Because why would he?
She'd leaned into him, hands still busy, cheek to arm, burning hot. Mumbled an exhausted thank you near the linen against his skin. His throat had been coarse, his lungs had ached. Yet he'd decided, then, that they are friends, after all.
When Juliana succeeds, Larry is the first one she tells. On the fifth day of the fourth week she strides into his office, where he sees her in the pristine coat, adorned with an id badge. She smiles despite that underlying melancholy, still making her intense, still bittersweet. Then exhales dramatically, relieved, as if to say it's finally over.
He stands from his chair, rounds his desk, just to acknowledge her up close. She laughs, light, when he carefully pinches at the badge hanging off her breast pocket, scrutinizing the stoic photo above her full name and title. Lead Research Associate of Naranja Phytology.
He'd received the email that morning — notice that she and her work are now fully endorsed by the League and Academy. Just a doctorate away from officially filling Sada's shoes, from acquiring the authority to instigate change. She'll be leaving Medali, he's sure.
She hugs him, a cheek to his chest, her fingertips pressing firm to his back. And Arceus, she's still warm, and his lungs still persistently ache. Like something's weighing down his breath, like his capacity for oxygen is notably diminished. His hand comes up, settles delicately between her shoulder blades as he reciprocates the gesture. Inconstant palpitations, this worsening sense of predilection that makes his pulse turn rapid.
Juliana smiles against his tie, bittersweet, before he barely mumbles a monotonous congratulations.
She says she'll bring him lunch, this time. She owes him, supposedly. He's not sure for what.
His lungs worsen, indescribable in the discomfort. He pops a painkiller, the occasional lozenge. Assumes it's just a cold, partially validated by the infrequent fever. Juliana offers an herbal blend of tea, insisting he cut the coffee and the cigarettes. But those habits are a bit too established, he thinks. He reassures her he will, then doesn't.
He's busy, he reasons.
Larry designates an office for the occasions she'll be in Medali, orders a nameplate for the door because she's earned the recognition.
But he doubts she'll utilize the space often, and the day the boardroom is packed up, (her research and devices moved officially to Naranja) he stands in the doorway to assess the change. Empty walls, clean table, and a well-swept wood floor. As if she'd never been there to start, save the dusty smears of prior notes staining the whiteboard. Her handwriting lingers like apparition on the surface, and he recalls the way she loops her f's, nearly illegible.
Then that infrequent cough distracts him, until it progresses to a fit in his open palm. Intensifying until he's off balance, a hand splayed to the table's surface for support as he recoils. Painful until there's something dislodged from the depth of a lung, fluttering like infestation along the walls of his chest, up into his throat.
He coughs until it's expelled. Until there are rose petals sitting damp in his rigid hand, having crossed the walls of his mouth, his tongue. An acidic taste of flora, the way cheap perfume smells, lingering throughout his throat, the scent of it embedded into now traumatic memory.
His hand is shaking, he realizes. This is not normal. He feels it again, a foreign affliction when he inhales deep; comparable to a fungus blooming in his bronchi, spreading like the itch of lethal sickness. He abruptly stands straight, adjusts his tie with his unburdened hand, then clears his throat to dispel the panic, the nerves. It works against him, as if there are a dozen within his chest.
Larry accepts, then, that he never had a cold.
He's fully aware that it's likely terminal. And he's overheard some talk of this affliction prior, imbued by a perilous blend of superstition and factual testimony. But it takes one internet search, coupled with two recent academic publications from the Academy's library, to develop a definitive understanding of his circumstance.
It's going to kill him, probably. And he's not even really certain for who.
He runs through his options on the walk home after his shift, where he lights a cigarette and struggles to keep the residuals in his lungs. Larry suppresses the coughing until it aches, because he won't quit smoking for this, of all things.
He goes to Miriam (Rhyme and Rika's only recommendation, despite having no doctorate, no League qualifications). Who cries her heart out for fifteen minutes before she can formulate a coherent answer. Then provides him two different textbooks on the matter, and encourages the very idealistic resolution of reciprocity.
You have to try, she insists. You can't make assumptions. The catalyst could love you, but your mind and body don't know.
Miriam still hasn't changed, he thinks. Far from pragmatic, as painfully innocuous as she was when they were young. But she's terrifyingly serious —despite her crying, despite the trembling of her lithe hands around the books— when she asks him who.
It's grossly comedic, he's aware, given he doesn't have an answer. Because he doesn't necessarily know who. But thinks of Juliana despite himself, immediately concluding that the prospect is entirely unlikely. Given that he knows he's a realist, and having any sort of amorous sentiment for someone of her age and magnitude would be the pursuit of an impractical idealist — perspective rose-tinted and foolishly optimistic.
Miriam asks him what kind of flowers, claiming the growth will emulate what his endeared prefers. He tells her it doesn't matter (partly because that's stupidly absurd).
Instead he inquires on the possibility of surgical removal. His life wouldn't change, he assumes. Then she reservedly explains the repercussions, the step-by-step process of specialist referrals and potential clinical trials. The possibility of emotional deficiency, the inability to sufficiently reciprocate, the indefinitely reduced oxygen capacity.
But the concept itself feels wrong in some existential, emotional way. And the success rate is abysmally low (if anything Miriam has studied is even fractionally accurate), to the extent that he might as well risk the natural outcome.
She recommends a list of medications, readily available at any pharmacy or Chansey Supply. Urges him to stop smoking, cut back the caffeine — as if he'd not been told before. She cries again, handing off the books, pages marked for his convenience. He poorly comforts her with typical weariness, tired in realizing that this probably should be the other way around. He doesn't actually mind, though.
Larry decides to ignore the issue. Wait and see, he supposes. A lack of decision, which is arguably a decision in and of itself. He's lived his entire life with awareness of consequences, and figures no sense in changing now.
The whole thing is an exhausting inconvenience.
But it would be improper, he asserts, to forcibly efface the sentiment which had apparently come naturally. Or, he considers, it's simply a fluke. And if that's the case (in his mind, more sensible than anything else), then he has no direction or resolution.
Regardless, he has no expectations of reciprocity.
Juliana's office in Medali is full within the month, contradictory to his original pessimistic assumption. It's less of an office, more of a lab, and debatably a garden. Shelves of hydroponics, controlled environments, terrariums and tanks to emulate ideal ecosystems for herb growth. It smells like perfumes, botanicals and pharmaceuticals.
He may or may not loiter there, regardless if she's in or not, as the air of the medicinals is soothing on his lungs.
Larry asks why she stays. She says she likes Medali, supposedly, given its distance to area zero — likes his gym, the peace, the quiet. But that's absolute nonsense, he knows, because her music carries down the halls to the damn elevator. And if she's not talking to herself amid research with manic revelation, then she's talking to him about anything and everything despite his incessant cough.
She keeps giving him tea for it, he lies and says it helps.
Juliana shows him two newly evolved species of flora from the crater. Names them after her mother and Clavell before they're formally documented as her first achievements in the field. Already they have medicinal capacity, already she's expounding on their potency and production costs.
Ergo, Geeta asks if he'd want to help facilitate the developing research team. Rejuvenated potential, fueled by the guarantee of monetary benefit. And again the déjà vu — all inane repetition. Fifteen or so years ago, precisely the same, unraveling as it had with opportunity and promise. But this time is different. This time they have Juliana, immune to self-serving neurosis.
So he says he'll consider it, that he'd need time to decide. He's sick, he clarifies. And Geeta assesses him, austere scrutiny falling directly to the wastebasket by his desk, filled with petals and blood. She leans forward in the guest seat while reaching, graceful as she always is, purposeful in lithe motions.
For a moment, as her attention pulls at his focus with demand, he dismally wonders if it's somehow her.
Then a gloved hand, with every ounce of her frigid formality, sets a supportive touch to his own upon the desk. And he feels nothing —as expected— and remembers distinctly that Geeta hates the smell of roses.
She reminds him of his medical leave, a gentle squeeze upon his fingers with reasurance. Tells him not to waste away so soon; not to make assumptions. And that meeting is brief, leaving him alone in his office, where he pulls the wastebasket out of sight.
Rika texts him — says she's in Medali, wants to meet for lunch. Larry knows when she's in the building, her low inflection carrying from only one door over. He can hear her well, better once he's in the hall, approaching Juliana's office where she's bound to loiter.
He idles casually in the open doorway, a shoulder to the frame, with the intent to ask if they should order food or make the short walk. But abruptly loses his words, flooded with immediate nausea at the sight of roses bundled loose at the center of attention. Excessively vermillion, just a few shades lighter than what occupies his chest, and broad in their efflorescence, the sense of choking somewhat phantom in his throat.
"But just roses? And from who?" Rika's hip is set against Juliana's desk as their conversation persists, where she pulls a stem from the vase to observantly twist between lithe fingers. Her tone laced with suggestion, a slanted smile seeking answers.
Larry admits —just roses— is wholly appropriate given the state of her lab. Overabundant in the abnormal, all species specific to the crater, developed and dependant on the chemical imbalances of terastalization. Severe in appearance and eccentricity, equally invasive, to the extent that they are grown isolated behind monitored glass.
He wonders, then, who would assume her to be impressed by roses. When her profession has exposed her to the most grandiose variance of botanicals in the modern world, each with profound singularity.
Juliana waves a dismissive hand, focus running briefly through the accompanying card before returning to her work. "A friend from college."
Rika's attention narrows, an expression of peculiar doubt scrutinizing the bouquet as she sniffs at the flower in hand. Her brow arches, legs crossing at the ankles as she shifts her weight. The question is evident, suspicious that a friend would send red roses.
He feels sick in the moment, a firm fist over his mouth briefly as if he'd cough up a lung. But swallows to refrain from interruption despite the oscillations in his abdominal, the spasmodic twisting of his stomach up to his throat. Still the discomfort is secondary to his questions, his sudden bout of frustration — who has the audacity to court someone like Juliana?
"Arven knows they're my favorite," she clarifies. "That's all."
Her favorite. He's reminded of her notes. How he'd felt at the time, the ineffable sensation of falling. Accompanied by a baseless overhang of imminence, as if he'd been at the precipice of realization, only just now stepping forward. Juliana likes roses, and he'd never once thought to ask.
You can't make assumptions, Miriam had said.
"Pretty basic, aren't they, kiddo? Overused for sure." Rika huffs something alike to a laugh, nicks her finger on a thorn, then sets the stem begrudgingly back in its proper place. "I'd take you for orchids, maybe something native to the crater."
Things that grow in impossible places. Something anomalous she might have discovered herself.
Juliana scoffs, playfully offended, still never once looking up from her work. "Roses are beautifully cultivated and perfectly evolved. They easily acclimate as well."
Rika sets the dot of blood on her index to her mouth, eyeing the speck after. "Compared to literally any other flower?"
"They're naturally simplistic, and I think that makes them lovely." Then she rifles through her desk drawer for a stray bandaid, unused after the last papercut.
But stops when she sees Larry in her peripheral, idled in the doorway. His scrutiny narrowed on the bouquet, so engrossed that he doesn't even glance to her direction.
She says his name in greeting, then he finally looks up. And that's all it takes, awareness striking with brutal awakening. The way she's regarding him, temperate altruism, with the sun from the window varying the brown of her eyes. A vice on his heart, impeding that swift pulse, making him anxious. Like something comes up from his diaphragm to coil between ribs and tissue until it settles further to his trachea.
The hand idled on his tie is quick to stifle a cough. Rika glances over at the interruption, fingertips dragging at the bandaid offered on the table's surface.
"All that smoking finally catching up to you?" Rika asks, half-serious, as if she herself has never smoked a day in her life.
He clears his throat, Juliana's attention unsettling his nerves, feathering his lungs. He never looks away — neither does she. "Probably."
He's an idiot. In denial, thinking he'd be smarter than he inherently is. Of course, it was always Juliana.
Roses taste awful. Their stems are bitter, pollen is grainy. The thorns and abrasive leaves trail red lines through his esophagus, he knows. Larry endures another month before the medication is ineffective, where sleep is infrequent and uncomfortable. Always an itch in his throat, pain in his lungs which feels thick from fluttering congestion.
He hasn't seen Juliana in two weeks, but thinks of her always. Considers that his attempt at distance has exacerbated his symptoms, as the last three days have been intolerable hell.
He'd like to discuss this with her if given the opportunity. He craves their discussions, her complex narratives and one-sided strings of continual thought. Would now like to fervently contend her drastically incorrect perception of the world. Denote that this specific circumstance was interesting in its novelty, its abruptness, but did not lose that novelty upon understanding its origins and purpose.
So it must be the most interesting of anything — right, Juliana?
And he would tell her that the catalyst of this illness makes it that much more exceptional, being that she is profound enough to have unknowingly incited it.
But she receives roses from Sada's son, and has pursued an entire career in light of her friend's grief. And Larry assumes the obvious, because he's seen the kid in her office, and his fascination with the medicinal properties of her work rivals her own excessive passion.
He's making assumptions, again. Can't bring himself to overcome the tendency.
Of course it's ironic that Juliana would indirectly kill him, given her ambitions and research revolve around the health and wellbeing of everything. She adores him, undoubtedly, though in no way to assuage the bouts of heartache, the physical repercussions. He knows when he's beat, he supposes. But he's not willing to give this up, either.
There's an abrasive scrape of endless longing that drags through his sensibilities. Inexorable crawling of adoration, constricting his throat and focus as the coughing becomes so severe his equilibrium shifts. He'd like to kiss her just once. He'd like to rip out his fucking lungs.
Hasn't smoked a cigarette in two weeks because he physically can't.
He struggles while readying for work. Forgets to shave, misplaces his belt. Is frustrated when he can't figure out the knot on his tie, and yanks it from his neck with temperamental frustration. And that winds him, for fucks sake, until he's coughing again, with gratuitous amounts of blood and petals. Until his hands are full and his shirt is ruined, because of course he can't just die a normal death, that would be far too ideal.
The steam of the bathroom becomes oppressive and his sink is full of flowers, so obstructed that the blood won't fully drain. Red and water in lines dribbling from the edges, tapping at the tile floor.
He needs space — restricts his team to each individual ball, the concern of his altaria urging ivory down too close for comfort. Then hurriedly crosses his living room to the kitchen, abruptly retching into a hand towel. All red with stems, with thorns and the soft curl of flora. Blossoms in delicate viridity, broken at the sepals, steeped in whatever continuously saturates his lungs.
He gags a full rose, unfurling from the crowding of his throat, red on red, a spiral in its natural sequence. Ridiculous, how unoriginal Juliana is. Having discovered two new species of delicate, pellucid angiosperms, and this is what she has him vomit. The poké-mart sell out on St. Valentine's day. All thorns and astringent, overused fragrance.
But they're hers, Larry reasons. So he reveres them, regardless. And he knows it's absurd to carefully rinse them in the tap while gradually catching his breath, motivated by an odd sense of admiration for the romanticism. And inanely wonders if they would take to water despite the lack of stems. He's seen her do it before, with clippings of herbs from the crater. She's shown him the onset of roots to vegetation he'd assumed destitute, planted pieces of perennials and made something whole.
Ah. He's going insane. Par for the course.
He must look a mess, roses cradled in trembling hands, bent over the kitchen sink. Water running high to rinse away the red he spits viciously from his mouth, spraying the porcelain through flexed fingers. It's overwhelming, this sense of suffocation. An unnatural feeling of drowning in his own cells, complicit to the yearning, the heat beneath his skin so scalding it warms at aching bones.
There's a knock at his door. There's been knocking at his door. He vomits another, one hand abandoning his sentimentality to brace firmly against the sink edge. Juliana calls his name. And Arceus the sound itches at his chest, like she's run her fingers down the inner partitions of his ribcage.
He shouldn't let her in. His hand is full, another bout of petals from his trachea, pouring from his esophagus and tongue. His name again, more frenetic, now, on the verge of a panicked demand. She threatens, with conspicuous trepidation, to break down his front door. And with her team, her ability, he's fully aware that it's possible.
So he forcibly swallows what's left, inhales heavy with desperation before abandoning the flowers half-rinsed in the basin (because he's losing his mind). Turns off the faucet, then wipes at his jaw with the towel in a rush, swiping a wrist across his mouth as insurance.
She says his name again, summons the abnormal palpitations of his heartache. He makes it to the entryway, a bracing hand to the wall, running the other correctively through graying hair. Then opens the door to find her nervous at his stoop, abruptly looking up to meet his impassive attention. She's seraphic in her blouse and stockings, creme and powder orange.
Juliana scrutinizes his countenance, his uncharacteristically chaotic disposition. Seething visceral concern, displaced apprehension. He's self-conscious, then. Half-buttoned shirt, no belt, no shoes. Unshaved, disheveled, visibly dying at this point, he assumes, having no opportunity to glance in the mirror.
Her lips part on a thought, then press to a line. She looks like perfection, and he wonders if he'd already died in his sleep.
Larry rasps her name in greeting, throat coarse, breath strained. Up with the facade, the insistence of normalcy despite the abundance of contradictory evidence.
How late is he running? That she'd shown up at his home?
"You weren't at the gym…I thought I'd bring something," she hesitates, hands violently trembling about a tote bag. Undoubtedly full of tea and remedy with naive intent to soothe the irreparable.
He turns briefly away to cough behind the door, into an unsteady hand. Mutters gravely, unintelligible thanks, suddenly terrified to reach out in acceptance as she presents the bag uneasily.
"I'm worried," her voice breaks, ruined at the state of him. Shocked by the new severity of his affliction, enough to pull the tote back to her chest. "I miss seeing—...I just miss you."
And it feels as if she'd wrapped his larynx about her wrist and pulled, saying that. With the fondness she's held for him exposed by readable fear.
"I'm fine," he insists, as he has been for months. Acting like it's nothing, presenting the excuse that he's old and he smokes and the air is colder this time of year. The shit she'd never bought, patient with misplaced confidence that he'd confide in her eventually.
She's glassy-eyed suddenly, because her heart bleeds for the world, he knows.
"You don't look fine," she accuses.
He clears his throat, feels something vile drifting loose from the base of his lungs. "I am."
She eyes the blood smeared on his wrist, staining the cuff of his shirt. An overspray of red barely visible in how it dusts the fabric across his chest. She wonders why he's not in a hospital. But he'd have no intention of being cooped up in a sterile room, preferring to suffer through the consequences, she knows.
Then she sees the edge of his kitchen sink through the hall, towel stained red partially off the edge. She pushes past him, dropping the tote, his arm coming up to stop her as he mutters her name in warning. But she's brutal with insistence, manuvering out of reach, slipping fluidly from her loafers with each stride until she stands in his kitchen, attention spanning across the wasteland of his home.
He closes the door, defeated. It smells like copper, like perfume and fresh clippings of herbs. Her own medicinals and the cologne she's gotten far too used to in the space of his office. There are petals on the counters, residuals of blood. Florets on the tiled floor, species indistinguishable while seeped the way they are.
Her fingertips settle against the various bottles of bleach on his counter, accompanied by overused sponges and rags. As if he could keep up with the cleaning — some depraved attempt to pretend this is amendable. Inane to think this was within his realm of control, like everything else.
Her breathing is off, and she seems significantly smaller while mumbling over her shoulder. "Tell me who."
Of course she knows what would cause this. He'd expect her to know all about it.
And he's leaned against the kitchen entry, a hand over his eyes with an attempt at composure. Exhausted by his own heartbeat, heard with unnerving clarity at the base of his skull. "It doesn't matter."
She's never angry —he's rarely seen it— but Arceus is it gorgeous on her. Raw and visceral, heavy with the way that natural intensity makes her severe. Radiant with fluster when she turns to confront him and raises her voice. "It does!"
Her steps eat the distance before taking an urgent grip of his sleeve, firm to examine the stains, the visible symptoms. Two fingers to his neck, measuring temperature and pulse. But she's crying, he realizes, when he's finally past the reticent admiration of her outrage. Now she's terrified, evident by the shaking of her limbs, so severe she can't steady her ministrations.
And he's pitiful in his vulnerability, with profound lapse of judgment, as his hand comes up to trace the soft outline of her face, hesitating until he's bold enough to wipe at the fragility spilling along the soft curvature of her cheek.
Then she laughs this painful, broken little thing — tied directly to his sensibilities by the nerves splayed through his anatomy. Short of breath when her lungs constrict, a sob being fractured by a tremorous inhale through her gritting teeth.
"How?" She asks through persistent tears, the hand monitoring his pulse failing in its perseverance, until she's gripping at his collar, holding him close. She sets her forehead to his chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of his button up, his hold easing about her waist to keep her steady, to expend some semblance of comfort. "How do they not love you?"
His jaw is taught, a muscle working notably as he struggles to swallow.
"I could give anyone a thousand reasons," she breathes, a vilified mess, always has been — spiraling, bartering with circumstance. Worse now than with her work, as she might when she doesn't eat, when the pressure proves too much. He can see her thinking, overturning every available possibility. She looks to him, reddened and with gravity. "I'll fix this, Larry."
Ironic. Bittersweet. He can't properly formulate a response, not while she's teary. Distress uninhibited against his chest, with a desperation he's never seen from her before.
But she pulls away from him abruptly, leaving patient arms, pivoting back to his entryway with intention and urgency. Grabs her bag from the floor before emptying it gracelessly along the granite of the kitchen counter. Then rifles through his cabinets, his drawers, accumulating towels and utensils and whatever she deems imperative for reckless, impractical treatment. She said she'd fix this.
"Why do you like roses, Juliana?" He asks, exhausted, a hand over his mouth at the threat of a cough.
"A lot of reasons," she says, preoccupied by her work. Always.
"Tell me." He sounds desperate, now, to just hear her voice.
She could go on for hours, list innumerable reasons. How roses are soft and classic, with a substantial cultural history across continents. How they've evolved a natural defense to dissuade herbivores. To the extent that roserades emulate their visuals. The petals follow the fibonacci sequence. They're structured to be consistent. They're romantic — a thousand reasons.
He coughs and it's violent, the seize of it trembling through to his core. His hand stays firm against his mouth, to insist it refrain despite the ache and the coarseness. And it sounds like he's actively losing breath, the baritone roughly deep, the inhale low and grave and winded.
It makes her panic, urges unnecessary haste as she tries to formulate a plan, anything to alleviate the pain. Because he's not actively dying in front of her, she knows. But it feels like he's slipping, like they both sit on the precipice of something. With blood on her hands from the towels, red on her blouse from the counter. All of it culminates into hysteria, into frenzy. Fierce and insuppressible — only until she sees roses sitting in his sink.
They're wholly visible, unfurled, having been rinsed of the impeding cells. Opressively red, ineffably gorgeous. The best specimens she's ever seen. Now she idles with the observation, her heartbeat so severe she can feel it in the tips of her fingers. Juliana looks back to him, then, his hand parting from a bleeding mouth, thorns and petals staining in his palm.
"I just do," she breathes. But is shaking, increasingly broken as she continuously cries. Struggling to finish through the excruciating variance of her tone. "I don't need a reason."
Larry eases to the counter, disposing what's left in his palm into the sink. Then briefly runs the faucet, a futile attempt at rinsing his hand in the tap, still partly red after drying. Juliana looks up from her reeling, this deeply affectional sensation alike to something being pulled from beneath her feet. Then finds him so close, his hand pressed to her back, pulling her again to his chest to console. Where she's calm, forehead against his pectoral, attempting to blink away the vicious heartache.
He wonders, only in the aftermath of her mania, if she loves him. Holds her regardless, the touch at her back easing up past her neck to thread tenderly through tangled hair.
"I'm so stupid," she mutters, alike to apology, grief substantial.
Her glassy focus flutters upwards, with a gentle hand to his stubbled cheek, the other splaying against his chest where she can feel the palpations, feel the labored inhales. A terrifying strain on his sensibilities when she eases him down until there is no distance, until her lips firmly find his mouth and all she tastes are roses.
Cheap supply store perfume. Overwhelming until the blood emboldens on her tongue, on her senses.
She incites a lack of restraint, then. The way his grip abruptly firms in her hair, the way he kisses her rough, motivated by seemingly historic longing. It's something desperate, something messy. Her lower back pressed to the counter's edge, her heart aligned to his wounded lungs. There is clarity, then, at the reciprocity, the way she stays against him, with fingertips following the arteries in his neck. How distinctly she overpowers the tang of metal and the astringency of florals.
There's blood on her lips when she parts for air, when she softly confesses that she loves him.
There's something wrong with both of them, with how he thumbs at the color until it smears to her cheek. How Juliana lays a hand to his abdomen, eases his back to the nearest wall, urging him gently down until he's breathless on the tile floor. Simultaneously sets herself carefully in his lap, skirt hiked to her hip as she settles, thin veneer of fabric pooling. With breath along his jaw, hands working slowly past the partially unbuttoned hem of his shirt, fingers ghosting upwards through the hair of his chest.
And he inhales for the first time, uninhibited, when her lips press languidly to his throat, preceding dentitions at his fluttering pulse.
His touch travels up her thighs, feathering beneath her blouse until she's bare. Then proceeds reverently slow about her waist, blunt nails leaving lines, trailing feverish along her ribs to her exposed collar. Until he cradles her face gently in still bloodied hands, as if he'd press porcelain to his mouth, then, with how cautiously he indulges. Swallowing thick, without impedance, before lowering to press his lips to hers with tender, faultless candor.
She tells him she loves him, again in sincere repetition against his mouth. And he believes her, wholly, through the mess they've made, through the results and repercussions.
Juliana smiles, relieved, for once not laced with melancholy. Realizes that this was the precipice, this unwavering conviction, faultless reciprocation.
Larry says that he loves her, muttered earnestly in the crook of her neck. His name off her mouth, resolute sincerity. She commits with the intent of permanence, knowing his admission is indisputable fact.
He breathes her in, and tastes nothing of roses.
Fin.