flower husbands oneshots! (requests closed)

red winter (not strictly flower husbands) 🥀

The sky dripped with crimson on the day the world ended, ash and snow falling from the sky in the same whirlwinds of frost and blood depicted on the Red King's banner. Within minutes, the snow was already feet deep, and every lake was thickly frozen over with frost.

Grian couldn't believe just how cold the desert could get. He missed the days when it was just him and Scar in their little piece of the map, the two of them against the world. Now Scar was dead, felled by the cruel axe of the Red King during a brutal battle for their lives, and the desert was cold. It didn't make sense, but there was no time to dwell on that. Grian had been one of the few lucky people who attacked Dogwarts and had made it out alive; and if he knew Red King Ren at all, then that wouldn't be the case for long.

With chattering teeth, he scoured the ruins of Monopoly Mountain, throwing any items that he deemed useful into the bag slung around his shoulders. It was below freezing now and even his bones seemed to be turning to ice, each breath he took hanging just a little bit longer in the frosty air. Once he could wait no longer, Grian turned to run—but stopped abruptly in the doorway.

He looked back into what once was their home. The pages of reputation Scar had built up to scam people with. The heaps of  TNT that they had grinded for hours to obtain, and then use on their unsuspecting enemies. The laughs and jokes and fire and a forgiveness that Grian was sure he didn't deserve, but received regardless. A promise that he'd stay forever, till hell froze over. All this and more, things he would never get to say now.

Maybe they had been the villains of the story.
But he would do it all again.

Goodbye, my friend, Grian thought. Echoing from a distant forest came the faint howling of wolves.

————————

Scott didn't pay much attention to the world ending.

He hadn't been paying much attention to anything, really, lately.

Jimmy was gone, and the frost had killed off the last of the flowers.

He welcomed death with open arms.

————————

As the world fell apart around him, Martyn didn't know quite how to feel. This was what he wanted, what they all wanted. They had worked for this for months and it was finally here. The day the Red King rose to power. This was good. This was right.

But then why was it all so wrong?

They wanted blood, didn't they? They wanted power? They wanted their enemies' heads on a silver platter, and they wanted to win, to claim this blood-soaked victory as their own? That was the goal, the entire time, and he had stood with Ren through it all. Through the death, through the fire, claiming life after life in the name of Dogwarts. The names of all the people he had killed were etched into his brain, always on his tongue, repeated in his sleep, and gods damn him if he ever forgot even one of them. He'd apologized every day, with every breath, only kept sane by the knowledge that it would all be worth it, in the end.

Now looking out at all the destruction wrought by his own hand, he had to wonder... was it really worth it?

"It won't be like this forever." Ren said beside him, as if he could read Martyn's thoughts. "Just long enough. Just long enough to make sure we're safe. That's always been the goal, laddie. Since the beginning."

Martyn wasn't so sure what to think anymore. How long was long enough? How much chaos could be dealt until they were finally, finally safe? Had they crossed the barrier already?

You could kill him, a voice whispered in the back of his head. Quickly, while his back is turned. Do it now, while there's still time. Save the world. Become the king.

Fix everything.

And he knew he could. It was probably even the right thing to do. Ren—no, the Red King— had ultimately caused this, after all. All this pain, the death, the godsforsaken cold. Martyn thought of the houses and castles and walls, everything that had been built from the ground up, and thought of them crumbling away in the howling wind. As the temperature continued to plummet, Martyn's hand itched to unsheath his sword more and more and end this accursed winter once and for all with just one strike.

But he didn't.

Of course he didn't.

The man standing in front of him, his long dark hair tied into a knot beneath a bloodstained crown, seemingly unbothered by the biting cold, was his King. And Martyn was his Hand.

He loved him. Ren had taken him in under his wing when no one else would, had protected him from a world that hated him and given him the chance to become something greater. When everything and everyone he knew was falling into pieces around him, Ren had been there. And that was why Martyn knew, no matter how twisted his savior had become, he couldn't do it.

Maybe it would be better to kill him. But deep down inside, it was clear that in this life and the next and the next that this was always how it was going to end. The two of them, remaining, fighting, together, even when everything else came crashing down around them.

The King and his Hand. Like it was always meant to be.

Until hell froze over.