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Flowery smiled. It felt good to smile, and his smile was flawless.
This was as it should be. He’d adjusted the parameters of his face for maximum attractiveness. He knew what he was doing. He’d watched the videos about facial ratios. Or rather, Asgore watched the videos, which was practically the same thing.
If he could, he’d tell Asgore that his face was perfect. In truth, there was nothing stopping him, especially since his voice was as golden and mellow as his smile was brilliant. He’d listened to years of secondhand ASMR at this point, and he knew exactly what Asgore liked.
Because Flowery knew what Asgore liked, he knew he couldn’t just come out and tell him that there was nothing wrong with his face. Or his body, or his personality. But that level of sincerity only worked in anime. Not that there was anything wrong with anime. Asgore loved anime, so Flowery loved it too. As Flowery saw it, all he had to do was convince Asgore that, in this world, anime was real. Once Asgore was ready, he could say what he needed to say.
They could take it slow until then. It was best, Flowery reasoned, to start in a familiar place.
With his dazzling smile illuminating his optimally symmetrical face, Flowery slid two matcha parfaits across the red surface of the Formica table and sat down in the booth across from Asgore.
“This diner sure has everything, doesn’t it?” he said. “I hear matcha is popular with kids these days. And would you look at that! It’s got strawberry Pocky sticks too. Looks delish. Why don’t you have the first bite?”
Asgore squirmed in his seat. “Isn’t matcha… highly… caffeinated?”
Flowery tilted his head like an anime girl at an exact 20° angle. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” he replied. “It’s not real matcha powder in the ice cream, just flavor. Besides, it’s not like you’ve never had coffee before. I know all about it. We were college roommates, after all.”
“Well… I guess it’s all right then.” Asgore picked up the spoon from the neatly folded napkin next to the glass. “I guess I always wanted to try matcha. I always wanted to drink real green tea too.”
“Green tea? I hear you! We can do that next. But first, ice cream!” Flowery twirled his spoon in a flourish, scooped a healthy dollop of whipped cream from his parfait, and extended it across the table to Asgore. “You know what they say. No diets in the Dark World!”
“Do they say that?” Asgore’s face brightened. “Aw, what the heck!” He chomped down on the spoon.
“I hope you like it.” Flowery beamed at him and winked as he touched the now-empty spoon to his lips. “And look! That was our first indirect kiss.”
Asgore seemed as if he would object, but then he shrugged and began digging into his parfait. That was progress enough for now. Besides, Flowery enjoyed watching Asgore eat. He always had. He himself had no taste for dairy, but Asgore made ice cream seem like the most delicious thing in the world.
“It looks like the matcha agrees with you,” he said, resting his elbows on the table. “I’ve always admired a man of refined tastes. So tell me.” He leaned forward. “If you had a ticket to fly to Japan, what’s the first place you’d visit?”
. . .
Asgore had always done his best to be friendly and outgoing; and, for the most part, he was. Still, Flowery knew he needed time alone.
Flowers weren’t like that. It was the nature of plants to be connected. Almost two decades kept under glass changed a lot of things, but it couldn’t change that. Flowery was everywhere in this world simultaneously – in the garden, on the cliffs, in the castle, and everywhere in between. At this particular moment, his attention was concentrated in the mossy darkness at the edge of the world. Surrounded by the soft mist and quiet whispering of an unseen stream, he felt linked to all of his ancestors, back and back and back. Before they ever came to this continent. Before they were ever kept in greenhouses under strange stars.
If Asgore dreamed of visiting Japan, then Flowery was perfectly capable of recreating “Japan.” It was easy enough to envision a perfect sand garden, raked every morning by men walking backwards so their feet didn’t disturb the waves they drew in the white gravel. At its edges, he could plant dwarf maple trees and a lay out a zelkova wood veranda where Asgore could sit and enjoy the miniature landscape of moss mountains rising over a sandy sea, which was itself an exotic fantasy of a wilder land for the temple gardeners in a small city on an island archipelago.
But no, maybe the veranda was too much. Flowery knew that what Asgore really wanted was a reclining chair, preferably his own overstuffed La-Z-Boy. He was certainly familiar enough with that, no ancestral memories necessary.
Flowery knew the chair. He knew the type of anime Asgore watched in the chair, and he knew the other type of anime Asgore watched after dark when he was tired and frustrated by the work he put into his notes. Flowery knew what had happened during Asgore’s last night in college, and he knew what Asgore liked. It was just a matter of getting him to admit it.
. . .
The sand garden was beautiful, no doubt about that. Everything in the Dark World was beautiful, albeit in an unreal way oversaturated with colors and sensation. The delicate leaves of the ornamental maple trees were brilliantly red, and the mountains of pure white gravel that surrounded them were broken by beds of moss whose tufts were astoundingly green.
The recliner where Asgore had been left to appreciate the garden was a perfect recreation of the chair upstairs in the flower shop – almost. The fabric wasn’t stained, nor were there any worn-away patches on the plush. There were no crumbs gathering in the cracks between cushions. Everything smelled fresh, like the sweet scent of grass in late spring.
It was a pleasant fantasy. Too good to be true, but true nonetheless.
The fact that this was all a tangible material reality was still sinking in. He’d been right. He’d been right this whole time. If this was his flower shop in the Dark World, then his notes had to be around here somewhere. All he had to do was ask Flowery when he came back, though whether Flowery would give him an answer was another story entirely.
Flowery was a strange one. Always smiling. Always eager to please. But why, exactly? It was clear that Flowery knew him, but how? He’d said they were college roommates, but what was that supposed to mean?
The closest thing he had to a roommate in college was Rudy. And it was odd, wasn’t it, that Flowery resembled Rudy so closely. His face, certainly, and also his height. And the broadness of his shoulders, and the trimness of his waist. Not to mention Rudy’s knack for knowing exactly what he wanted at any given time.
Come to think of it, it was Rudy who’d inadvertently introduced him to anime. They’d been sitting on the floor of his freshman dorm room and flipping through the books he’d checked out from the library about Japanese gardening. Rudy suggested that they drive to a Japanese grocery store, and there they’d found rows and rows of VHS tapes. They rented some cartoons on a whim, thinking that they’d be simple and easy to follow, but then they ended up spending the entire night transfixed in front of the television, not really understanding what they were watching but amazed nonetheless.
He’d spent a lot of nights with Rudy, come to think of it. All up until the final night after his last semester, when everything was packed except the bed. Rudy had already met Carol at that point, and she’d be coming along with Toriel in her giant family car to help him move back home the next morning. But on that last night before they put college behind them, he and Rudy had spirited away a crate of beer from a graduation party, taken it back to Asgore’s apartment, and…
…and there it was, the familiar stiffness at his waist. Even in the Dark World, with the culmination of all his nights of research and speculation right in front of him, he still couldn’t free himself of the old longing.
And for all the good it had done to deny it. He was divorced, and his kids didn’t pick up the phone when he called. Carol kept that younger girl of hers under her hoof, and the older one had picked up and vanished. And now Rudy was in the hospital.
He’d done everything right, sure. And where had it gotten him?
Maybe his life would be different – maybe it would be better – if he’d woken up next to Rudy on that morning all those years ago and said what was in his heart: stay with me.
But enough of this. Enough of sitting around and allowing himself to be entertained while his mind raced in a dozen directions at once. He had work to do.
Asgore felt a subtle tickle on the fur on his wrist. The tendril of a vine, bright golden-green like summer clover, was in the process of wrapping itself around his arm. It didn’t move quickly, but the fact that it moved at all was remarkable.
Asgore watched it twist around his wrist, fascinated. When he attempted to lift his other hand to poke at it, he found that a second vine had twisted itself around his arm. He tugged at it, but it was surprisingly strong. As he struggled, he heard the pebbles under the chair shift. Before he knew it, his legs were bound as well.
“What the fuck,” he muttered. A flash of rage ripped through his gut, but he pushed it down. This was ridiculous. If he truly wanted to break free, he could. He could overturn the entire chair if he wanted, but there was no need to take drastic measures. Even when it was invasive, he’d always hesitated to destroy a plant.
“Flowery!” he bellowed instead. “Come here and explain this.”
. . .
It’s a myth that plants don’t feel desire, and that plants passively grow wherever their seeds might fall. Nothing could be further from the truth. The yearning of green leaves for the sun is nothing if not passion; a passion to sprout and stretch, to bud and to fruit. The sincerest expression of that urge is the flower that unfolds its petals to expose its sweet center. A flower is pure sensory pleasure.
It’s equally a myth that all middle-aged men are perverts. A flower gorgeously blooms, reaches its peak; and then, in the natural order of things, falls. Men are more permanent creatures, but the time they spend in the world subjects them to the ravages of age. The inflammations of youth fade, only to be replaced by aching knees and a sore back.
Asgore was barely forty. He married straight out of college, and now he had a son in college himself. He wasn’t old. Not by the standards of his kind, and certainly not by the standards of a plant. He lived like a much older man in his self-imposed routine of deprivation, but even a strong-willed man Asgore has his limits.
He had his limits, and he also had a PO box in a different town, where he received VHS tapes in discreet brown packaging, bootlegs of the sort of anime that would never be on the shelves of an import grocery store. And so Flowery watched as Asgore watched beautiful men caught in the writhing grasp of tentacles. The sinuous vines snaked around their lithe bodies and brought them to states of sublime ecstasy, repeatedly, whether they wanted it or not.
And now here Asgore was, caught in the grasp of vines in his own favorite chair. Comfortable, cozy, and trussed up exactly like a character in one of his late-night anime.
“What’s happening, Oldbuddy?” Flowery said with a smile.
“Would you care to explain this situation?” Asgore asked. He tried to raise his bound arms, though Flowery noted that he wasn’t trying very hard.
“That does look like a situation.” Flowery nodded, and another vine emerged from between the cushions and slid across the bulge in Asgore’s shorts. “Why don’t I help you take care of that,” he added, helpfully.
“Listen, I had a nice time with you, but…”
“But what? There’s no shame in having a nice time. What’s the harm in a little intimacy between friends?”
Flowery knelt in front of the chair. The gravel of the sand garden would probably have hurt his knees if he were actually human, but he wasn’t. He found the sensation of groundedness pleasant. Equally pleasant was the sensation of releasing Asgore from his shorts. He couldn’t smell, not in the way a human would, but the wave of pheromones was delicious.
“What are you doing?” Asgore grunted above him as he pulled against the vines. Flowery felt the tug, and he could tell that it wasn’t in earnest.
“Would you like me to stop?” he asked.
Asgore frowned, closed his eyes, and shook his head.
“Fantastic!” he crowed. Without further ado, he began to apply himself to the stiff length in his fingers. He trailed his tongue along the pulsing vein, and Asgore sucked in his breath.
This was indeed fantastic. The date at the diner and the garden tour had been lovely, and now he was finally getting somewhere. Flowery took Asgore deeper inside his mouth and allowed his senses to expand to the tendril winding its way up from the sandy ground.
. . .
When Flowery took his cock into his mouth, Asgore didn’t object. The precise mechanics of this place were still a mystery to him, but what was it the man said? There are no diets in the Dark World. If this would keep Flowery happy and cooperative, then he might as well play along. It wasn’t as though he was suffering, not with the push and pull of Flowery’s mouth matching the pulse of his own inflamed desire.
Just as he was getting close, Flowery stopped and raised his head. “Don’t want this to be over too quickly, do we?” he said with a wink.
Asgore panted, still trembling from the height of his almost-climax when he felt something twist along his leg and enter his shorts. He tried to move, but the vines around his limbs held him tight. An even thicker vine teased at his hole, circling him with warm sap before thrusting its bulbous tip inside. He moaned, and it withdrew for a moment before pushing inside him again, and again, and again, its ridge rubbing at the sensitive spot between his legs with each thrust.
The sensation of being prodded and filled was overwhelming, but he couldn’t come from just this. His cock slapped against his belly pathetically, rock hard and straining for friction.
Flowery looked up at him, eating him with his eyes as his body shook and yearned for release.
“How are you feeling, king?” he asked with his perfect smile. The vine inside Asgore continued thrusting, caressing a radiantly sweet spot that brought him close – so close – but not close enough. Even if he wanted, there was no way he could form the words to answer. His hips jerked uselessly as he moaned. Images of men crying in ecstasy on screen flashed through his mind, and his cock burned with need.
“You’re so handsome when you’re hot like this,” Flowery purred. He extended the delicate pink tip of his tongue to the head of Asgore’s cock, allowing it to penetrate his lips with the upward momentum of each thrust of the vine, but only shallowly. It was like the kiss of a butterfly, and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t near enough, and he was so hard it hurt.
“Take… the whole… thing,” Asgore grunted between gasps.
This seemed to be exactly what Flowery wanted to hear. He slowly licked the entire length of Asgore’s straining cock before plunging it through the seal of his lips. The tightness was sudden and intense. The powerful swell of heat in his manhood became even stronger as Flowery began to move his head in rhythm to the thrusts of the thickness inside him.
Asgore was powerless to quell the wave of sensation. His back arched violently as he exploded in a dazzling kaleidoscope of pleasure.
Elsewhere in the garden, the sakura bloomed in delight.
. . .
Flowery stood and brushed the sand from his trousers as he withdrew the vines from Asgore’s chair. He’d been nourished by the performance, and he was pleased with himself. He’d cheated a little; but, the way he saw it, there was nothing wrong with gaming the system for maximum enjoyment.
He leaned forward and kissed Asgore’s nose. “That was marvelous,” he said as he caressed his cheek. “You’ve wanted to be held like that for a while, haven’t you? I hope you had as good of a time as I did.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I think I did. Thank you.”
Flowery could sense the pheromones receding. He only had a brief moment before the warmth of the afterglow dissipated.
“Maybe you like being tied up, but you can’t let yourself be tied down, you know,” he said softly. “I know you’ve got a lot going on here at home, but maybe it’s time you visited Japan for real.”
“Sure, yeah,” Asgore replied. “I’ve been thinking about it.” He looked away.
Flowery knew he wasn’t ready to move on, not yet. But that was to be expected. He understood that this is just how men are. They see their lives as solitary and disconnected, and they put too much emphasis on the weight of their decisions, as if each individual choice mattered. As if what was going to happen wouldn’t happen regardless.
A flower, destined to bloom for only a few days, understands that it’s important to receive as much pleasure as you can from the time you have. He’d been given a longer time than most, and he wanted to think that he and his companions were making the best of it, each in their own way. But just as this dream began, it was destined to end. Whether he could convince Asgore to leave it behind when it was over wasn’t up to him, but he was determined to keep trying.
Which was fine. Plants are nothing if not patient. For the time being, Flowery thought as he smiled and helped Asgore to his feet, he would maintain the fantasy for as long as he could.