Chapter Text
Beomgyu falls in love like this:
1.
He sits on a bench, alone in the hall. He stares at the grey wall in front of him, tries not to be bothered by the noise coming from the door beside him, tries to think of a way to approach the other trainees without being awkward, because that's apparently something he isn't even able to do, now.
The door opens, and a tall figure walks out. "Why are you sitting alone in the hallway? Come hang out with us!" the tall trainee says, grinning shyly and holding out a hand for Beomgyu to take.
Beomgyu takes it. The hand is warm.
2.
Soon after, he learns that the trainee's name is Soobin.
He thinks that it's a very tender name—the way 'Soobin' rolls off his tongue feels like the bright comfort of a hug.
Soobin grins when Beomgyu tells him as much, ears reddening and bumping his shoulder against Beomgyu's. "Beomgyu-ssi, I'm so flattered!"
Beomgyu laughs.
3.
They train.
They train, and they train, and they train, trying to improve their singing, and their dance, and their rap, grappling to reach the pinnacle they are all there to achieve—debuting and becoming part of a successful idol group.
Beomgyu builds a circle of friends around himself, bit by bit, and finds happiness in the feeling of camaraderie that slips in between the cracks of the competition that is their life.
And it's there, in that fateful practice room, that Beomgyu gets closer to Soobin; closer and closer, until it reaches the moment Beomgyu first breaks out into a fluster when Soobin calls his name, so, so sweetly, as if it were honey on his tongue.
He'd been seventeen, then.
4.
They debut.
The spotlight burns down upon them as it finally sinks in—after years of training, they're finally here, sitting on the stage, their heads lowered, ready to perform their song for all the world to see.
Beomgyu steals a look at Soobin as the cameras start rolling and morse code starts playing. The leader is shaking, but somehow, Beomgyu draws strength from him anyway.
5.
Time passes.
It slips through Beomgyu's fingers like fine sand, never contained, and suddenly, they're on their sixth comeback, and he seems to have fallen desperately in love, and with his own member, at that.
He doesn't know when it happened.
Did it happen back when they were still trainees, desperately trying to reach for that fateful spotlight and debut? Did it happen when they were still rookies, the spotlight they sought now trained upon them, like the stern gazes of all of their spectators? Or did it happen only recently, now that they're three years in and still going strong, now that they have grown used to the spotlight and it is no longer as terrifying as it had been?
He doesn't know.
Never fall in love with your own group member.
(There is one thing that Beomgyu knows, though: No one can find out about his feelings. No one. Not even Soobin.)
6.
A petal, bright yellow and bloody.
—
220130, 13:34
Beomgyu doubles over the sink, coughing violently. His throat itches, burns, as if something had made its way into his throat and stayed there, cutting off his breath.
Every effort to cough out the offending object only worsens the burn, makes it spread from his chest up to the base of his throat, and tears spring to Beomgyu's eyes from the pain. Each cough only seems to make it worse, but it's the only thing he can do to alleviate the pain.
It feels like hours pass by him, just like that, doubled over the sink in agony as he covers his mouth, squeezes his eyes shut, and lets out a guttural scream that he tries not to let echo around the bathroom, which seems to push past and out the thing lodged in his throat.
It's accompanied by the taste of metal and salt, and when Beomgyu removes the hand covering his mouth, the itch and burn beginning to fade into something more easily manageable but not disappearing, he finds his hand stained bright crimson—blood, blood, blood—and a single yellow petal, sitting innocently in the middle of it all.
The petal is bright yellow, stained with blood, and about as big as a teaspoon's head. It's slightly curled at the edges, as if it had been freshly picked from its flower. Beomgyu recognizes which flower it's likely from, and how could he not, when he'd had a photoshoot with them just the other day, albeit a different color?
Yellow rose. Flower of friendship, and occasionally, jealousy. Just friends.
He stares at the petal in horror, not even realizing that blood is dripping from his mouth and he's doubling over in a coughing fit once again.
At that moment, it felt as if the world had been reduced only to him and the petal, taunting him with its bright color.
A creak snaps Beomgyu out of his reverie. The door to his side swings open, and a blonde-haired figure stands on the threshold. "I heard a scream. Gyu, are you okay-" Soobin pauses. Ah, he's definitely seen the blood, and—and the petal.
Beomgyu's head snaps to the side, his eyes widening. "Hyung, I can explain-"
He's interrupted by a cough, and another petal falls from his lips and lands on the floor. Soobin's eyes follow the trajectory of the petal as it floats down, down, down and eventually falls by Beomgyu's feet, stained with blood. It feels like a condemnation.
"What the hell?" Soobin asks, his gaze darting to Beomgyu's eyes, which are still looking at him in horror. "Beomgyu?"
"I-" Beomgyu starts, his breath beginning to quicken. He turns away from Soobin. Another petal falls from his lips. "I- I can- I can explain, hyung- I-"
"Slow down," Soobin says, walking towards him, frowning. "It's fine, okay? We'll tell our manager and sort it all out. Everything's fine." Gently, he places his hand on Beomgyu's shoulder, rubbing circles into his back, all the while eyeing the blood staining the porcelain sink.
"Don't- don't tell anyone else, please," Beomgyu blurts out. The words had slipped from his mouth without warning but he raises his head, looks at Soobin pleadingly. "I don't- I know that they should know but I-"
"Is one of them-"
Fuck.
Beomgyu doesn't answer, opening the faucet and washing off the blood on his hands. "Hyung, I-" he starts, scrubbing his skin, but Soobin cuts him off.
"It's fine," he says. "I won't." He steps away, giving Beomgyu more room, and waits for him to fix himself up, to try and look like nothing just happened before continuing, "It's out of my control if a group briefing happens, though. Or if they find out on their own. We do live together, Gyu."
Beomgyu takes a steadying breath. It's fine. "That's fine, hyung," he says, now facing Soobin. It has to be. "Thank you."
"We're friends, aren't we?" Soobin says, clapping Beomgyu's back. Fuck.
"I know," Beomgyu says. Soobin smiles at him, as if to tell him that everything will be fine. But nothing's fine.
"I'll be cheering you on, okay?" Soobin tells him. "Just figure everything out before it's too late."
"Still, thank you, hyung," Beomgyu says. Hesitantly, he smiles back.
"It's fine, Gyu, really." Soobin tugs on Beomgyu's hand, leading him out of the bathroom. "We should probably get out of here, though."
Fuck.
220130, 14:09
Ring. Ring. Ring.
"Hello, Youngwook-nim," Soobin says, turning his phone to loudspeaker. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," their manager responds. "What's the matter?"
"Can you come back to the dorms?" Beomgyu asks. He chokes through the words, hesitant. "There's something we need to tell you."
"Alright," Youngwook says. "I'm on the way."
"Thank you," Soobin responds, hanging up.
They're currently in Beomgyu's room, sitting on opposite sides of his bed. They're using Soobin's phone for the call, Beomgyu eyeing the screen warily.
He knows that they need to do this, if he doesn't want everything to go to shit, but it doesn't feel right. The petals are the manifestation of his innermost feelings, as painful as they are. It's personal, and Beomgyu doesn't look forward to seeing the company higher-ups discuss what to do about it as if it weren't the culmination of years' worth of feelings he's mistakenly let fester, as if the petals don't feel like pulling his heart clean out of his chest and baring it for all the world to see.
Beomgyu comforts himself with a reminder that the other members are either in the living room or in their respective rooms—that even if Soobin has already found out, he doesn't know that he's the focus of Beomgyu's feelings, thinking that it's any one of the other members, and if everything goes right for once, he won't find out, and none of the other members will know he even has Hanahaki.
"...So," Soobin begins, breaking Beomgyu out of the reverie he'd found himself in. "How are you feeling?"
"Honestly, pretty shit," Beomgyu answers, fiddling with his fingers. He interlocks and unlocks and intertwines them, unable to meet Soobin's eyes. "I don't- The tour's coming up soon."
"I'm sorry," Soobin says. "We'll sort it out, even if it's the last thing I do. I swear."
"Hyung," Beomgyu starts, raising his head. "It's fine." He smiles. It feels brittle, disintegrating at the edges, but he maintains it. "None of it's your fault."
Suddenly, a cough bursts out of his chest with a bloody petal, and Soobin bursts into action. "Do you have any towels?" he asks, rifling through Beomgyu's closet.
"Bottom—" A cough. "—Bottom drawer," Beomgyu gasps out. But speaking only draws out more coughs, scratching at his throat until he feels like he's going to vomit.
The yellow petals settle on his sheets, staining the white bright crimson. Fuck, he's going to have to change his bedsheets later. Beomgyu wipes his mouth with a hand, feeling numb in the face of it all.
Ah, yes, because this is a very normal day for Choi Beomgyu. He wakes up and coughs out bloody petals while Soobin rifles through his drawers in search of a towel. It happens everyday. Very normal. It's been happening since he was a kid, you know.
Despite himself, a giggle slips past Beomgyu's lips. It's funny, really. In a specific mental state.
Soobin drops down in front of Beomgyu, concern plain on his face as he takes Beomgyu's hand and wipes the blood from it, gently, gently, gently, as if he were as fragile as glass. In place of petals, a sob gets caught in Beomgyu's throat.
"You don't have to!" he exclaims, snatching the towel from Soobin's hands and hurriedly wiping the blood on his mouth. "You don't have to."
The rush settles down into an awkward silence, neither party knowing how to move the conversation forward without accidentally stepping on landmines.
Soobin opens his mouth. "I want to, though," he says, words slowly rolling off his tongue. It's a belated response, uttered once Beomgyu's words had been let soak in silence, but it makes Beomgyu's heart hurt all the same.
"Let me take care of you," Soobin says, reaching over and taking Beomgyu's hand in his own. His voice almost sounds like he's pleading. "You're my friend, Gyu."
And- huh.
Friend.
And all at once, Beomgyu is harshly pulled out of the fantasy he found himself building in his head, accompanied by bright yellow petals curling in on themselves and bright red blood against porcelain sinks.
Friend. It's a nice thing to be. Especially in the industry they're in, where friendship can be easily faked for the cameras and people you can trust can be considered a luxury. The fact that Soobin can call him a friend this earnestly makes him happy—and Beomgyu really does mean that—but it hurts.
Never fall in love with your own group member.
Yellow rose. Just friends.
He'd let himself freefall straight down to love, and that's completely on him. He let his feelings fester, never bothering to tamp them down, knowing full well they would never be requited, and flowers grew in his lungs. He ignored unspoken boundaries and unspoken rules and let himself fall for his own group member, because apparently, love really does make one stupid.
His throat is dry when he utters, hurrying, "Youngwook-nim's probably waiting for us outside. We should get out of here."
The towel slips from his hands as he opens the door and walks out, not looking back.
Soobin watches Beomgyu go, wondering what he did wrong, and follows after him, a question lingering at the tip of his tongue.
220130, 14:32
"When did this start?" Youngwook asks.
They're in the dorm's patio, sitting around a table, the chairs they have littered around the patio arranged around it like a circle. Youngwook has a piece of paper and a pen out, to take notes for the report he's inevitably going to have to file. Beomgyu's looking up at the sky, watching the clouds and trying his best to just— ignore the situation.
(He knows that this has to be done, yes, for a myriad of reasons both known and unknown to him, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.)
"Today," Beomgyu says slowly, struggling to pull every syllable from his mouth. The words cling to his tongue, heavy and bitter and thick. "It began today."
"I found him in the bathroom," Soobin adds. Youngwook turns to him. "I was passing by when I heard a muffled scream. When I came in, he'd just coughed up a petal."
"Was this your first petal, Beomgyu-ssi?" Youngwook asks.
"Uh, yeah," he responds, watching as Youngwook scribbles something down. Beomgyu eyes the pen in their manager's hand, wondering if he could take it and throw it away, consequences be damned. No, he shakes himself out of it, that won't lead anywhere.
But Youngwook must've sensed Beomgyu's apprehension, because he tells him, "Don't worry, Beomgyu-ssi. This isn't an interrogation. I'm just trying to understand the situation so we can deal with it properly."
Soobin seems to have noticed, too, because he intertwines his fingers with Beomgyu's and gives the younger a reassuring smile, as if to tell him "Everything will be fine."
Beomgyu smiles back, and says, "I know."
"Good," the manager says. "Now, to move on, have you experienced trouble breathing or coughing before today? Only those two symptoms? I know you haven't tested positive of COVID, so it's probably fair to assume that if they happened, they were Hanahaki symptoms."
"I think so?" Beomgyu says, voice lilting into a question. Soobin still hasn't let go of his hand. "Yeah. I didn't know they were Hanahaki symptoms, though, and they happened infrequently enough, so I put them off of my mind."
"How long ago do you remember getting them?" Youngwook asks.
"Since last October, I think."
"Did you have feelings for the focus back then?"
"Yes."
"How long have you had feelings for the focus?"
"I'm honestly not sure," Beomgyu says, laughing nervously. "But at least a year."
Youngwook is trying to not overwhelm him, that much is obvious, asking Beomgyu questions at a sedate pace and giving him time to mull over his answers. And it works. Beomgyu begins to get used to the questions' pace, growing slightly more relaxed as time passes.
"And lastly… who might be the focus of your Hanahaki, Beomgyu-ssi?" Youngwook asks, and everything falls apart.
Ah. There it is. Just as he began to get used to the questions.
Suddenly, the tension's back, and more palpable than ever. Beomgyu freezes, because Soobin-hyung's here Soobin-hyung's here Soobin-hyung's here and he thinks the focus is one of the other members what am I going to say—
Soobin squeezes his hand, more and more worry trickling into his gaze the longer Beomgyu doesn't answer. "Beomgyu-ah?" he prompts, but Beomgyu doesn't respond.
"You don't have to answer, Beomgyu-ssi," Youngwook says, and Beomgyu deflates like a balloon at the words, crumpling onto the table. Soobin gently pats his back, trying to comfort the younger.
"I'll be going now, I think." The manager stands up. "Take care of yourselves, you two, and enjoy your day. We'll probably be going for an official diagnosis in a few days, Beomgyu-ssi," he says, walking back into the dorms, and (presumably) out of it, leaving Soobin and Beomgyu in the patio.
Soobin waves him goodbye, while waiting for Beomgyu to sit up again.
"See," he tells Beomgyu, "it went fine!"
"Nothing's fine, hyung," Beomgyu says. His voice is muffled by the wood, but Soobin understands him perfectly. "Nothing."
220203, 16:03
Dr. Park Shinye hands him his CT scan results— saying, "You definitely have Hanahaki Disease, if that hadn't already been obvious for you. Do you see these clumps?" She points at a few white spaces in the photo.
"Yes," Beomgyu answers.
"They're the flowers," she says, and there's something in her voice—a tremble, maybe?—that tells Beomgyu that whatever she's going to say next, it will not be good news. "Your illness is progressing quite rapidly, and I'll be frank, I estimate only around a month until they occupy the entirety of your lungs."
"I'm dying?" Beomgyu's eyes are wide, and his hands clutch the CT scan tightly, shaking. "Please just say it to me straight, uisa sonsaengnim."
"If nothing's done about your flowers? Yes, you'll die," the doctor says. "At this stage, I can only recommend that you try psychotherapy and see if that helps extend the time you have. After two weeks, come back to me for another scan, and we'll see if it helped, or if a thoracotomy is still urgently needed. However, if you don't want to let your illness progress any further than this, although I don't recommend it, you can schedule a procedure at your soonest convenience."
"What effects would a surgery have?" he asks, and the question tastes like ash on his tongue, slowly crumbling away with every word he says, until he's left with nothing. Is he really doing this?
"Due to the psychosomatic effects of Hanahaki on the body, it'll likely leave you unable to process love," she answers. "And not just romantic love, all love, including platonic and familial love. Although there have been cases where that didn't happen, and only feelings for the focus were removed, it's extremely unlikely. That is why I recommend trying psychotherapy first, no matter how little amount of sessions you'll be able to have, since the procedure would likely have massive consequences."
"Can I tell my manager first, before anything?"
"Go ahead."
220203, 17:23
"How did it go?" Soobin asks.
Soobin accosted him as soon as he crossed the threshold of the dorms, ushering Beomgyu into his room to talk.
"It went fine, hyung," Beomgyu answers. He fiddles with Soobin's fingers, trying to preoccupy himself. I only have a month left. "I'm starting therapy next Saturday. Once a week."
"That's good, then," Soobin says. "Don't be scared, Gyu. It'll be fine." He grins. It's wide and silly and warm and it makes Beomgyu's heart pang as if it had been struck with a poisoned blade, because here Soobin is, sitting in front of him, trying to comfort him and tell him that everything will be fine, unknowing that he's only making Beomgyu fall deeper and deeper for him with every little thing that he does.
Love runs like poison through Beomgyu's heart, desperately trying to masquerade as blood. It sneaks into the crevices of his veins and arteries, urging the flowers to bloom, and—
Cough.
Beomgyu doubles over, a scream at the base of his throat. Broken gasps for air lie inbetween coughing and screaming—and is there a difference between them, now? Bright yellow flower petals, dyed red by blood, fly out of his mouth as if they were rain, overflowing from his hands and slipping through his fingers. They fall onto the bed as if they were a twisted version of an arrangement of rose petals for a couple about to spend their night together.
There are more petals than ever.
Soobin is at his side, rubbing circles into Beomgyu's back, warily eyeing the petals falling onto his bed and whispering subdued encouragements into his ears.
They stay like that, for a while—Beomgyu coughing the yellow flower petals out and Soobin trying his best to give the younger the barest hint of comfort he can offer.
"That was the worst it's ever been," Beomgyu mutters, once everything has been said and done. His voice is shaky and rough, still recovering from the onslaught of coughs that had just hit it.
Soobin hands him a towel. "I'll bring you to your room after you clean up. Take a rest, Gyu."
220205, 17:23
They're lounging around the van, on the way back to the dorms after recording a new To Do episode.
"You good, Beomgyu-hyung?" Kai asks him, turning so that he can see Beomgyu from his seat. "You ran a lot earlier."
Beomgyu sends him a thumbs up. "Yup-" Cough.
His hands immediately fly up to cover his mouth, already feeling the smooth texture of a petal on his tongue. There seems to be no blood accompanying it this time, luckily, but a yellow rose petal coming out of nowhere would still be enough to raise suspicion.
(And he'd been so lucky before then, too.)
Cough. Cough. Cough.
There may be no blood—thank god, because I would be dead if it got onto the seats, Beomgyu thinks, grimly hysterical—but the coughing doesn't stop, and the lack of blood only seems to vomiting out the petals hurt more, sticking and rubbing against his throat.
From beside Kai, Beomgyu can just feel Soobin's eyes widening in panic as the older visibly tenses in his seat. And it's deserved panic, too—Yeonjun and Taehyun have looked up from their phones, the three of them not in the know sitting there, frozen and staring at him, not knowing what to do about the fact that Beomgyu seems to be trying to hack his lungs out in the van.
And that would've been the end of it—should've been the end of it: Beomgyu would finish coughing and immediately wave it off to the members, petals clutched tight in his hands so they'd stay hidden; the members would be concerned, immediately asking him if he has any other symptoms, but they'd leave him alone after they get a PCR test and it comes out negative for him; he'd resolve the Hanahaki problem without their knowledge, and they'd only find out after it had already been done and dealt with.
(He didn't want them to know. He didn't want them to know. Because he knows they would find out everything else, somehow get him to vomit out the wretched tale of how he was dumb enough to break the rule of 'don't fall in love with your own group member,' gather all five of them and sit around a circle one of these nights and have a group meeting, because that was what they always did when something's bothering one of them, but this is the one problem they can't know—)
Never fall in love with your own group member.
But Beomgyu doesn't live in a world where everything goes perfectly for him.
No, he lives in a world where one of the petals sticks to his throat in just the exact wrong way and gets him to gag, lives in a world where he lifts his head just enough after it, reflexively recoiling, that the members get treated to the sight of the yellow petals in his palms, lives in a world where they've found out, fuck, they know—
(And he'd been so lucky before then, too.)
Beomgyu makes contact with Kai's wide, horrified eyes, and turns to Yeonjun and Taehyun, who both have an identical expression of horror on their faces.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, they know.