Mineta One Shots

Lover (ShojiNeta)

This piece has been posted on Wattpad already, but the first one shot deserves love.
Pairing: Shoji/Mineta, Class 1-A & Mineta
Rating: Teen and up
Tags: Hanahaki Disease, Mineta Minoru has hanahaki disease, angst, angst and feels, angst without a happy ending, feels, hurt/comfort, Kaminari Denki and Mineta Minoru friendship, unrequited love, one-sided attraction

Summary:

Where Mineta was short, Shoji was tall. Where Mineta was despised, Shoji was loved. Where Mineta was weak, Shoji was strong.

In all mediums, he should hate Shoji, but he couldn't.

As he choked on petals and coughed up stems, he knew things would never change. Mineta, despite all his faults, was one cursed thing.

He was a lover.

—✿—

In where a boy can never stop loving the world and the world can never love the boy.

—————————

Ever since he could remember, the Mineta household had three rules.

Behave.

Don't cuss.

And lastly, never, under any circumstances, fall in love.

Mineta remembered being held in his mother's arms, the way her dark eyes and pale skin seemed so beautiful, despite the sickness they foretold. He remembered her shaking hands as she caressed his face and whispered with a scratchy throat to never love.

He didn't understand, his parents loved each other, why was it a bad thing? It wasn't until many years later that he realized his mother was a lover. She loved and she loved, and his father was the only that had ever returned it.

Mineta had many memories of watching his mother cough up blood, of seeing her get countless operations to remove the branches of love that squeezed the life and air from her.

Mineta didn't think love was too beautiful after that.

His mother had eventually succumbed to her sicknesses, something that was crushing no matter how prepared you were.

Minoru was only seven when he coughed up his first petal. It was a daisy for a girl in his second grade class. She was nice and shared her pencils with him.

He had run to his father, tears in his eyes as he held a soggy petal in a shaking fist and asked if he was going to die too.

That was the first and only time his father had hit him, a crime of passion and rage as his only child made the same foolish errors that cost him his wife. His father then fell to his knees and held him, whispering that he was sorry.

He got his first surgery after that, by then hibiscus had started to grow as well, for the sweet man that fed the birds every day outside the house. These would be the first of many.

Waking up and seeing those people again was strange. He felt nothing for them, worse than strangers. His mouth didn't tilt up in a smile when they were funny and his eyes didn't water when they felt sad. They were just people.

Mineta hated the long pink scar that went down his chest, hated the way the other kids poked it and adults stared. He only wore shirts that went past his collarbones, though he remembered how his mother's scar he gradually crept up and over until her chest was healed mincemeat.

The cycle repeated every few years, a flower cropping up and needing removed. He felt bad about costing his dad so much, but no matter how hard he tried, Mineta just couldn't stop loving.