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English
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Published:
2025-06-03
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1,502
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1/1
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26
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helianthus

Summary:

Honami places the vase down on the table before her, and Kanade sinks to her elbows to bask in the light, so warm it’s almost like Honami runs her hands across Kanade’s shoulders before she turns away toward the sink. Time passes. For the first time in a while, Kanade lets it go without grabbing hold.

They’re just like her. She’s always… bringing me light.

Honami brings Kanade flowers.

Notes:

The common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a species from the daisy family, Asteraceae. Young sunflowers orient themselves in the direction of the sun; at dawn, the head of the flower faces east, and it follows the sun west throughout the day.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Honami brought her sunflowers.

It's not something that should have stuck out to Kanade, really—hell, it's not even the first time Honami’s brought her flowers—but she's been feeling a little… off lately. Like when she takes off her headphones every sound is just a little too loud, every sensation just a touch too sharp. She keeps having to turn the brightness down on all her monitors, as if her DAW interfaces aren't already set to dark.

It started when Mafuyu returned to her parents’ house, if she's honest with herself about it. It had felt good, for a while there. Not easy. It was never easy for the two of them, but maybe they got the closest they’d ever been before. And Kanade had been able to let it all fall into the background of her work again the way she used to, only bringing up the things that bothered her when she went looking for them, for answers to put into her music.

Just work. Just the comfortable space between them, and her goal bright in her vision, and it had felt so good to be driving towards it as mindlessly as she could, knowing she had another person in the house to lean on when she needed to. And that when Mafuyu needed her in return, then she was right here, waiting.

Kanade has no idea if Mafuyu needs her anymore, where she is.

The dread is there, the feeling that passes for certainty that it'll all go wrong and there'll be nothing she can do to stop it, all over again. But for now, all she can do is wait. For now, the house is empty. And somehow Kanade doesn't know what to do with herself.

As if she hasn't had enough practice.

Anyway, all that must be why she didn’t notice when Honami arrived, for the first time since, and with a bigger bundle than usual in tow. Kanade had fallen immediately into a grateful autopilot, grasping for whatever simulacrum of their old routine, and assumed Honami had, too, with the way she set to work right away.

It’s only minutes later, sat at their—her—slim kitchen table, that she realises Honami has been talking. For how long, she doesn’t know. Guilt sweeps cloying and dark over her like a blanket, fills her ears until she can’t hear no matter how much she strains. It’s not fair for Honami (possibly the nicest person in the world) not to be listened to.

“Sorry, Mochizuki-san, what were you saying?”

Honami turns from the kitchen cupboards, hands full of packaged noodles, and just as Kanade wishes she wouldn’t, she smiles. All completely unadorned, genuine grace, the same as she always is.

“Oh! Nothing important, it’s alright. Are you feeling okay?” The concern, too, is just as obvious as it always is.

“Please,” Kanade says. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Really, it’s nothing, I was just telling you about these.” And she swings back around with the vase that had been hidden behind her, something she’d found long ago in a cabinet Kanade had never bothered to open, filled anew with flowers.

Sunflowers. The shock of their once-sunlit petals feels neon orange in the cool grey of her kitchen.

“Oh,” falls out of Kanade before she can realise.

“Right?” says Honami. “They were so beautiful I just couldn’t walk away without them.”

And they really are. Every petal unfurled and reaching, even the asymmetrical ones exquisite, and so richly golden-yellow that they seem to gild Honami’s face with reflected light, a glow that sears the backs of Kanade’s eyelids even when she blinks.

Honami places the vase down on the table before her, and Kanade sinks to her elbows to bask in the light, so warm it’s almost like Honami runs her hands across Kanade’s shoulders before she turns away toward the sink. Time passes. For the first time in a while, Kanade lets it go without grabbing hold.

They’re just like her. She’s always… bringing me light.

That nearly brings her out of her reverie. Kanade isn’t sure when she last noticed her own feelings, outside what they mean for Mafuyu. Maybe not in a long time, since the concept is so foreign she might as well not have had them at all.

And yet, there it is—something budding, unfurling newly yellow and soft, pushing through a crack in the bleached-white bone of the cocoon she’s made for herself.

Unbidden, she lifts her head from her arms, looks back at Honami and actually sees her. Even with her back turned, she never wonders what Honami is feeling; she remains open, all soft shapes, cheeks apple-round where she can just see them past her shoulder and her hair that glows in the afternoon light streaming through the window. Caramel, and open arms, and warmth.

And... how she feels about Mafuyu isn’t gone—the primal need to wrap herself around and inside her, her strange duty to shield Mafuyu from herself when all Kanade has ever done is hurt people, their shared mire of impossible, endless darkness—it's all still there, but…

But there is room for a ‘but’, now. The way she sees things has shifted, by the tiniest angle, in a way that makes it all look new and foreign: wiped clean and sparkling.

Suddenly she doesn’t look out the window and think immediately of how it’ll exhaust her the moment she goes out there. She sees Honami’s world. Warm and open to her. Something that might treat her gently, like she deserves that, even with the way she is.

“Honami,” she chokes, less than eloquently, and she only realises she’s been staring for far too long when her view of Honami’s back wavers, dissolving spottily into tears.

“Hmm?” comes her voice, and as Kanade hurriedly scrubs the water from her eyes she’s vaguely aware of Honami turning and coming closer. Hands land in front of her on the table, not close enough to touch her without permission, and still wet from the sink. “Yoisaki-san, are you alright?”

There is water seeping into the wood grain of the table. Kanade doesn’t move. She just stares down at the perfect little half-moon circles at the bed of Honami’s nails, as something warm wells up in her throat.

Despite her own reflexes—despite never deserving any of this, and paralysed by the knowledge that she can only bring disaster to whatever she touches—Kanade feels a want, so strongly that she can’t bear to bury it with all the others, can’t even begin to ignore it, to try and see past its glow.

Her vision clears. She reaches out a hand to touch, and with no forethought to guide her, curls a hand around where Honami’s is planted, moisture be damned.

“Thank you.” And Kanade looks up, for once in her life, spine straightening as Honami’s grey-blue gaze is there to meet her.

“I—Goodness, for what?” Honami frets, seemingly unconscious in how she reaches out with her other hand to close Kanade’s in, warm on all sides. Something sweeps around Kanade’s battered heart in tandem; soft cloth to hold all the pieces together, securely tied closed.

Kanade’s smiling. Why is she smiling? She can’t bring herself to care. “You always bring light into my life.”

“I… do?” Even to Kanade, it’s obvious Honami is not exactly sure what to do with this. But her grip is steady.

“Thank you for the flowers.”

Honami softens. It’s what she’s best at. “Of course. Kanade.” The syllables fall hush out of her, like gifts of their own accord. Kanade squeezes her hand before she even knows she’s doing it. “I hope they can bring you some light even after I leave.”

Don’t, is Kanade’s first impulse. Stay.

It’s an old, desperate longing freshly hot in the face of her new perspective, something she’s determined to think is new because of the situation with Mafuyu, even if she knows that it has been there quietly all along, and knows (despite every shred of logic) that Honami would find a way to say yes, if she could.

Instead, she settles for something close enough.

“You called me Kanade,” she smiles. Honami flushes red, bright like the flowers, warm like her hands.

“I—You! Yoisaki-san!” she splutters. “You did it first!!”

“Oh…? Did I?”

“Yes,” says Honami, almost indignant. “My goodness. Is that alright?”

Kanade parrots back, “Of course,” in the same cadence as before, and Honami’s face splits into a smile, so honest up-close like this it’s almost blinding.

Eventually Honami returns to the dishes and the groceries, and Kanade hovers, not wanting to leave her to it as usual—whatever their usual even is. Somehow, she can’t even remember it. There’s something warm there between them that lingers, something that, despite everything, maybe Kanade is allowed to keep, without promising to burn it as fuel toward her impossible destination.

Even when Honami leaves, the kitchen never goes cold.

Notes:

EVERYONE CLAP AND CHEER FOR MY BELOVED FRIEND VYN'S BIRTHDAY YAAAY WAHOOO YIPPEEEE
this fic was inspired by the official movie photocards featuring honakana + sunflowers! i was flipping back through our server convos abt honakana and found it and almost immediately words just started pouring out of me. the power of women and flowers, man.
VYN IF YOU'RE THERE. HI. MWAH. i wuv you!!! and i really hope this scratched the honakana itch for you ♡ i'm so glad you not only dragged me into this fandom (and now have to put up with my tiering slang... gomen...) but brought me to see how sweet they can be together, despite everything Going On for both of them (all three of them, eventually.) the power of love might not save them but good god! it'll help at least!!
(and shout outs to leona for the quick beta read!! tysmmmmm)