What would you use for such a simile?   Two peas in pod?  Something else?  I liked this use of petals to signify people crowding in.   Among others things it reminds me of a magnificent white peony we planted in our last garden (and will plant in our next?). 

… there were many listeners, leaning down out of the air, crowded together as close as the petals of a white peony …

See another simile for something being or coming close, this one from Christopher Logue’s muscular rendition of Homer. 

Source: Mary Webb, Precious Bane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 237

Photo credit: Robert1709 at pixabay