Chapter Text
It’s in the middle of studying for their Transfiguration exam that Yoongi decides Jeongguk has the prettiest nose he’s ever seen. It is not, of course, the first time he’s admired the other boy’s nose—or the rest of his features, for that matter—but he supposes he’s never really thought about it before now. Maybe it’s because it’s the middle of December and Jeongguk always gets runny noses when the temperature drops too low, so he’s been wiping at it once in a while, which only serves to draw Yoongi’s attention to it again and again and—and he can’t help it, really, the admiration. Jeongguk’s nose is small, much like the rest of him, and cute, much like the rest of him, and looks altogether too kissable, much like—
“Yoongi,” and it’s only now that Yoongi realizes he’s been staring at Jeongguk’s nose for far too long, eyes snapping up to the other wizard’s wide eyes, which are staring back at him with an expression caught between amusement and frustration. “Have you even been listening to me for the past two minutes? If I have to explain this bit about human transfiguration one more time—”
“No, yeah, I was listening, Guk,” he says quickly, knowing that the unspoken threat at the end of Jeongguk’s sentence won’t be bodily harm or frustration, but… a very effective pout. Sometimes he wonders if Jeongguk realizes how manipulative he can be, only because he’s perfected the art of getting what he wants through looking like a lost puppy or crying, which might just be because Jeongguk cries at everything without meaning to and people feel bad.
Jeongguk levels him with a careful look, one that is likely meant to be intimidating, but with his massive hoodie (three sizes too big; it’s one of Yoongi’s) and his big, round glasses and his fluffy, freshly dyed black hair, he just looks… impossibly soft. Yoongi’s mouth feels a little dry, suddenly.
“Really?” asks Jeongguk.
“Yes,” says Yoongi.
There’s a moment, then, where they just stare at each other. It’s how it usually goes—Yoongi is a little stubborn and Jeongguk is a little eager, but they both know it doesn’t matter because in the end, Jeongguk is going to go over the bit about human transfiguration again. When they’d first met in first year, it had become obvious that while Yoongi was the one with the street smarts, Jeongguk was the one who excelled in school. It made sense, then, for them to fall into this routine: Yoongi is Jeongguk’s protector, Jeongguk is Yoongi’s tutor. And more, of course—they’re best friends to begin with, but Yoongi would flunk out of school if Jeongguk wasn’t there to teach him again and again, ever patient, ever willing; Jeongguk would lose his head if Yoongi wasn’t around to remind him where he’s put his books and quills and to keep him from blindly running into Digger’s alley after a stray cat.
He should be frustrated, he thinks. But he wants to protect Jeongguk, always has, always will. It makes his heart hurt.
And then he can’t help looking at Jeongguk’s nose again, the little curve downward at the tip and the tiny scar below his right nostril from the time he’d accidentally stabbed himself in the face with the sharp end of his quill in second year. Remembering the incident (and the subsequent two whole weeks Jeongguk had spent stuck to his side demanding comfort cuddles despite the fact that the healer had healed the injury within three minutes) causes his lips to quirk up—and then he knows he’s made a mistake.
“I knew it!” crows Jeongguk, his loud remark instantly met with a loud shh from the girl at the table beside theirs—they’re in the library, but both of them seem to have forgotten. Jeongguk has the good sense to apologize before he turns his gaze on Yoongi again. “I knew you weren’t paying attention,” much quieter this time. “Why do you keep staring at my nose?” He pats the tip of it, trying to get a look at it with crossed eyes that leave Yoongi’s heart in a state of utter distress. He allows himself a single moment of fondness, a single moment of reassurance that there is absolutely no one else in neither the wizarding nor muggle worlds that he could possibly be more endeared with before he reaches out and flicks Jeongguk’s forehead.
“‘Cause it’s so big that there’s nowhere else to look,” he says, to which Jeongguk does pout, and there’s a siren somewhere—maybe just in his head.
Jeongguk rubs his nose again, slinking back in his chair as he sulks. “Is not,” he mumbles, and Yoongi has to physically stop himself from cooing like the lovesick sixteen-year-old he is. It’s embarrassing. He’s the scariest student in their year, winning Hoseok’s dumb poll by a landslide for four years running. He won the duelling tournament last year. He could quite literally throw Jeon Jeongguk out of the library window if he wanted.
None of that really matters when he’s in love with the boy, though.
Later, Yoongi will look back and decide that this is the moment—the moment it all starts. It’s no secret to himself—to everyone but Jeongguk, apparently—that he’s been in love with his best friend for the better part of a year, in like for much, much longer. But it’s only then that he feels the first twinge of discomfort in his chest, like something is taking root in his lungs. Like something is growing. For only a moment, it hurts to breathe, and then Jeongguk is slinking so low in his chair that his knees bump against Yoongi’s and he is pulled from his thoughts, from the strange pressure in his chest.
He turns to Jeongguk, then, rolling his eyes. “I was just kidding, bunny,” he says, reaching out to poke Jeongguk’s nose. “You have a very pretty nose, if you must know. Sometimes I simply find myself unable to comprehend how someone can have such a beautiful nose and thus I must admire it as often as possible—”
By then, of course, Jeongguk is giggling, the pout gone as he leans his head against the back of the chair and shakes with his laughter. For a moment, Yoongi can’t join in—what would Jeongguk do if he knew that Yoongi wasn’t exaggerating, like he always thinks he is? The thing is, he’s tried. When he’d first started declaring his love in more romantic terms, it was Jeongguk who thought he was joking. And maybe Yoongi didn’t correct him, but he thinks of it as self-defense. If Jeongguk isn’t going to love him back, it’s better this way.
He doesn’t mind pining, he thinks. It’s good to have Jeongguk close, even if he isn’t close enough.
Jeongguk ends up explaining the bit about human transfiguration again, along with the rest of their study guide, and Yoongi doesn’t retain much of it. He tries, like he always does. And he fails, like he always does. He’s too busy staring at the other boy, too busy wishing there was a spell that would allow him to think, and for Jeongguk to simply know—I love you, I love you, I love you.
The first thing Yoongi registers when he wakes the next morning to the sound of one of his dormmates humming the latest Celestina Warbeck single is the discomfort in his chest, increased tenfold from the evening before in the library. He takes a moment to simply lay there and stare at the top of his four-poster bed, to catch his breath as though he’s been running through the night, through his dreams—by the time his dormmate gets to the second chorus, the pain has subsided enough for Yoongi to sit up. It’s worrisome, perhaps, but he blames it on snoring or a night terror he hadn’t realized he’d had.
What’s more important is the Transfiguration exam that he’s meant to write today. For the first (but not the last) time, he curses himself for not paying enough attention to Jeongguk’s tutoring the night before, but it’s too late now as he goes about his morning routine in the safety of the Hufflepuff dorm. (He notes, with a vague sense of frustration, that Jeongguk’s bed is already empty and neatly made, because the other boy rises as early as the birds he find himself so drawn to and he’s probably been studying for the past hour as though he won’t get at least an E without it.)
The morning passes without incident (other than Jeongguk spilling orange juice all over his robes at breakfast, which really isn’t so much of an incident anymore as much of an accidental weekly tradition) and although he finds himself growing nervous for the exam, it isn’t his own nerves that he ends up quelling as the sixth years wait outside the Transfiguration classroom.
For all of his stupid enthusiasm and optimism and general bunny-like qualities, Jeongguk is awfully good at sending himself into downward spirals moments before exams, or public speaking, or classes in Care of Magical Creatures wherein they’re meant to deal with any animal larger than a niffler. He’s pacing in the corridor when Yoongi arrives, thumbnail bitten down to the cuticle thanks to his silly habits.
Any worries Yoongi might have had about his own lack of studying is instantly forgotten as he reaches Jeongguk and clamps a hand down on his shoulder, effectively halting the pacing, and turns the smaller boy toward him.
“I know what you’re thinking, Gukkie, and you need to stop,” he says firmly, eying Jeongguk as the other boy stares up at him. He looks a little lost, but then again, he always does unless Yoongi is there to take him by the hand and guide him. “You’ve been studying for like, three days longer than everyone else in this class and you know that you know all of this stuff.”
Jeongguk worries at his bottom lip. “But what if I don’t?” he asks quietly.
Short of smacking the boy upside the head to get him to come to his senses, Yoongi pulls him into his chest for a hug. He bends his head lower, lower, so that only Jeongguk can hear what he says.
“Remember last year—” he begins, and he can already feel Jeongguk nodding—how could any of them forget the dreaded OWL year, the long nights spent in the library or the dorm in order to cram in one more lesson, one more studying session?
Yoongi had done his fair share of stressing, but Jeongguk had quite literally worried himself sick, falling ill just a week before they were set to sit their OWLs. The healer in the hospital wing had firmly ordered him to rest, take a break, drink some damn water once in a while. She’d banned textbooks from the hospital wing, where she’d kept him for two days to ensure that he didn’t slip right back into the illness as soon as she’d healed him. (Jeongguk had cried that first night, clinging to Yoongi’s hand even though he’d turned himself the other way because he thought it was embarrassing. It wasn’t the first time Yoongi saw him cry, but it was the first time either of them had truly acknowledged why he was crying, and Yoongi just sat there and rubbed his thumb over Jeongguk’s hand and let him cry and wished there was more, more, more—)
But Jeongguk had done fine—done better than fine, really, even if Yoongi knows he’s still disappointed over the lack of Outstanding marks. The handful of E’s and A’s had certainly been better than the two failing grades Yoongi himself had gotten. The point is, Yoongi had cried that first night, too, after he’d gone back to the Hufflepuff dorm and thought about how stupid his best friend could be, how sick and alone he was in the hospital wing all because he thought that if he did well enough on his OWLs, he could prove himself worthy of—of everything, of love, of happiness.
And Jeongguk isn’t worrying himself sick now, he knows, but it’s the reminder. Neither of them wants to go through it again.
In lieu of continuing with the thought, knowing that Jeongguk is already thinking about it, Yoongi just holds him a little tighter. He gains the satisfaction of feeling the other boy raise his arms and hug him back, burying his head in Yoongi’s chest and drinking in all of the comfort and safety and home of that embrace.
Yoongi’s chest tightens a bit, the same feeling from this morning and the library last night, but he blames it on the little sniffing sound he hears come from Jeongguk, and he pulls back so he can card his hair through Jeongguk’s fringe and look him in the eye. He raises an eyebrow—are you okay?
Jeongguk tries to grin, gives a tiny nod—I am, I will be.
For all of Yoongi’s fretting about Jeongguk, he knows that the other boy will do well on the exam. And although he’s not so sure about himself, it doesn’t matter because, not but ten minutes into it, he finds himself having a coughing fit.
Yoongi quickly excuses himself from the classroom, coughing his way into the corridor and moving further away so not to disturb the students still sitting the exam; it feels like there’s something sitting on his chest, a tightness he pinpoints to his lungs and no matter how much he coughs, he can’t get rid of it. It hurts—the discomfort as much as his throat, which begins to grow raw as he coughs and coughs, and he thinks he might just cough to the point of vomiting (right there in the middle of the bloody hallway, which he doubts the professors nor the house elves would be particularly fond of) when he finally feels the pressure disappear.
It’s only because it seems to move up, though, one, two, three more harsh coughs before something physically heaves up his throat and into his mouth and then onto the ground where he’s practically doubled over, hands on his knees.
It takes him almost a full minute to catch his breath, the force of the coughing fit leaving him almost drained. He wipes at his eyes. He rubs at his throat. Then, after he’s certain he isn’t going to start coughing again, he looks down at what he’s coughed up. Yoongi leans down and picks the object up, eyebrows furrowing as he holds the little thing in his hand.
It’s a flower petal.
He’d recognize it anywhere—a jasmine flower petal. Yoongi knows his flowers, knowledge leftover from his days of helping his mother in her little flower shop when he had been younger. He knows, too, that jasmines are Jeongguk’s favourite flower, something about how small and delicate they are, something about the smell. Something about the tea. Yoongi used to weave jasmine flower crowns for him as often as he could, always convincing an older student to conjure the flowers for him because jasmines aren’t native to Britain, but he’d do anything to put that smile on Jeongguk’s face.
And maybe… maybe he should think it’s strange that he’s coughed up a jasmine petal. It is strange—but it’s one petal. Maybe he’d somehow managed to swallow it, maybe it’s a weird magical effect he doesn’t understand. All he knows is that his chest feels fine now, and he needs to finish his exam, so he tucks the petal into the pocket of his robes before returning to the classroom. He thinks nothing of it. It’s just one petal.
It isn’t just one petal.
The discomfort doesn’t return for long enough that Yoongi almost forgets about it—and the coughing and the petal—long enough for him to find out that he’d gotten an A on the Transfiguration exam, which is enough to make him happy but enough to make Jeongguk tug at his ear (which he does all of the time, regardless of his mood) and tell him that he better actually pay attention the next time they study together. Yoongi can’t promise anything, not with Jeongguk’s fringe growing long enough to cover his eyebrows and get into his eyes, which makes him look even softer than usual—long enough for other exams to pass by, for several Quidditch games spent huddling with his fellow Hufflepuffs for warmth to pass by, for days and weeks and an entire month to pass by.
Nothing for five weeks. And then, all at once, Yoongi wakes on a Saturday morning unable to breathe, feeling like something is clogging his lungs, his throat, and he stumbles out of bed wheezing, wheezing, chest tightening and heart pounding as he runs for the bathroom even though he doesn’t know what he’ll find there that might help.
Like last time, he starts coughing. Unlike last time, the result is almost immediate—while the pain in his chest doesn’t alleviate, the first petal falls from his mouth within the first few coughs. Unlike last time, they don’t stop.
Yoongi coughs and coughs, and the flower petals fall out of his mouth in what seems like endless waves—he knows there are only a handful or two, but it hurts, it hurts, and he feels as though he might choke on the petals as they get stuck in his mouth, afraid blood will start coming up with the petals too. It doesn’t, which doesn’t comfort him much when he gives a particularly harsh cough and finds part of a stem scraping up his throat and falling into the sink along with the white petals.
Finally, with the stem, it seems he has coughed up whatever was caught in his lungs, and Yoongi finds that he can breathe. He slumps against the sink, breathing in raggedly, ignoring the rawness of his throat in favour of just breathing, just letting his heart calm from its racing state. Somewhere in the middle of it all, he feels a hand against his back, rubbing in slow, comforting circles. Somewhere in the middle of it all, he realizes that although most of the pain has come up with the petals, the discomfort and pressure on his chest is still there.
The hand on his back slides up to his neck, massaging it, and then slightly into his hair, always soothing, always comforting. Yoongi doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that it’s Jeongguk’s—he would know that hand anywhere, small and bony and gentle as it smooths down the hair at the nape of his neck and moves down to his back again. The action makes him want to cry, suddenly, for reasons he doesn’t want to address—something about Jeongguk always knowing what he needs, which is why the other wizard doesn’t say anything, not yet. It’s not the first time Jeongguk has found him in a compromising situation, huddled over a toilet or crying at the foot of his bed.
Yoongi focuses on the hand, lets it ground him, bring him back. His chest hurts.
Jeongguk doesn’t ask about the flower petals, just brings him to the hospital wing with one arm around his waist and the other hand curled in the crook of his elbow. Yoongi insists that he doesn’t need help walking, but his breathing is laboured even now and he could never deny Jeongguk something when he has that look in his eyes—pure concern, worry. He might go so far as to call it love, maybe more than the platonic kind they’ve been proclaiming for each other for over five years, but that thought makes his chest hurt more, and not because there still seems to be something stuck in his lungs.
It’s a Saturday, which means they have no classes and thus Jeongguk insists on waiting with him outside of the hospital wing for a healer to be able to take a look at him, refusing to let go of him for a single moment. He’s practically sitting in Yoongi’s lap as they wait, but neither of them speak—he’s not sure what they would say. It’s clear that Jeongguk is worried, terrified, even, like he is of many things, but this is different from kelpies or muggle clowns or fireworks.
Yoongi keeps his eyes trained firmly on the ground if only so he doesn’t see the way Jeongguk looks at him and mistaken it for something it isn’t.
The healer almost has to physically pry Jeongguk off of him when they part, refusing to let the other boy into the Hospital Wing with him, and Yoongi does look at him, then, at those big, sad eyes and the pout on his lips. “I’ll be fine, bunny,” he tells the other wizard. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Go work on that essay I know you’ve been dying to finish.” That makes Jeongguk pout harder, and he laughs before saying, “Or go watch some birds. Tell me about them when I get back.”
He imagines that he’ll be in the hospital wing for an hour at most—the healer, an older woman with worry lines he can only guess come from the ridiculous injuries she has to deal with due to the stupidity of the general Hogwarts population, will take a magical x-ray of his chest, figure out why he’s been coughing up flower petals, give him a potion as a quick fix. That’s how it always works.
But one hour becomes two, and two becomes four, and then she’s telling him that he’ll need to stay in the hospital wing for the night so that she can continue her examinations the next day. Jeongguk visits him, that stupid pout on his lips when he reminds Yoongi that he had promised it would be quick, that they would spend the afternoon on the grounds with sandwiches from the kitchens. Yoongi apologizes by holding Jeongguk’s hand, threading their fingers together and ignoring the pain in his chest—from both the strange illness and the reminder that this can never be real. For now, it’s enough. Yoongi doesn’t want to admit that he’s a little scared, because if the healer hasn’t been able to heal him in one day, what’s wrong with him?
He wakes the next morning to a handful of new people to examine him. The healer explains that they’re from St. Mungo’s—a medical researcher, a healer from the Magical Bugs and General Ailments ward, someone who specializes in the Emergency ward. It’s the first time he feels real fear about it all, the first time he wonders if maybe coughing up flowers isn’t just some weird magical effect of something he’d eaten or been in contact with.
In the middle of their tests, the coughing starts again. Yoongi supposes he should be glad that it happens in the vicinity of the medical team, a chance for them to examine the symptoms properly, but their worried and confused expressions do nothing to quell the rising fear in him—or the pain in his chest that won’t quite leave anymore.
He spends the rest of the day in the Hospital Wing. And the next, excused from his classes and other responsibilities.
Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, the team from St. Mungo’s bids him farewell. There’s something about the way they look at him—with pity, like he’s an anomaly—that leaves him with an uneasy feeling in his gut, and he turns to see the Hogwarts healer watching him carefully with a book in her hands.
“Mr. Min,” she says, and there’s that pity again—“We need to have a very serious talk.”
Yoongi swallows tightly. He nods.
The healer sits at the foot of his bed, and it feels like… like she’s about to sign his death certificate.
“We believe we have found the illness that seems to be ailing you,” she says, and—it should be a good thing, he thinks; if they know what’s wrong with him, they can heal him. Except there’s a sad tilt to her lips, a sort of desperation in her eyes that he imagines she never wants to feel when it comes to a patient. Yoongi is all too aware of the pain in his chest.
She opens the book she’s holding, flipping until she finds the page she wants, and then she hands it to him. “It’s called Hanahaki Disease,” she tells him softly, and Yoongi stares down at the pages—there’s a drawing of flower petals in the lower right-hand corner, information that swims before him. He’s never heard of the illness before, and somehow, he can’t bear to read about it.
“It’s characterized by strong feelings of pain, particularly in the chest,” she continues, “as well as the regurgitation of flower petals, most commonly by coughing them up, as they grow in the lungs. As you may have noticed, the illness starts out in… gentler ways, with some chest pain and a petal or two here and there. But it gets worse.”
It’s ominous, and he finally pulls his eyes away from the words can be fatal on the page so that he can look at her. “How much worse?” he whispers.
The healer seems to hesitate, likely not comfortable having this conversation with a sixteen-year-old, but they both know it has to happen. “If the illness is not treated, it will end in death,” she says and Yoongi sucks in a breath. It’s different hearing it from her. The will in the sentence leaves him cold.
Then—“What are the treatments?” he asks, because there is one. He needs it. He’s a sixth year, hasn’t even sat his NEWTs yet. He and Jeongguk planned so much for after graduation—they’re going to travel for a few months, spend nights wandering around Paris and Rome and Venice, stare at the stars and eat local delicacies, lose themselves in adventure before they have to come back to real life and go to university or start their careers, start their lives, and the idea of Yoongi’s ending now, before all of that… he can’t—he—
“Mr. Min, what you must understand about Hanahaki Disease,” the healer is saying, “is that it is not caused by any genetic or viral or bacteria means. There is no potion to fix this, because—” She seems to hesitate now, and Yoongi is holding his breath again—“Mr. Min, Hanahaki Disease is caused solely by unrequited love.”
For a moment, he just stares at her. She stares back.
And then—“Oh,” he whispers, turning his eyes back to the page of the book in his lap. The flowers in the drawing are cherry blossoms, he notes, and he thinks about the jasmine flowers he has been coughing up. All at once, it makes sense—if the illness is caused by unrequited love, and he’s been coughing up his best friend’s favourite flower, then… his unrequited love is Jeongguk.
Although he’s known since the beginning that his feelings for Jeongguk have been one-sided, something about this makes it real. It feels… final. Despite the rebuffs, the jokes, Yoongi has still been able to hope that Jeongguk feels the same, even if he doesn’t realize or can’t admit it. He’s been able to believe that by now, his feelings might be returned at least somewhat, that Jeongguk just doesn’t know it because he’s always been a bit daft, but—but the flowers can’t mean anything else. Yoongi’s lovesickness has turned quite literal, and Jeongguk doesn’t love him back.
Jeongguk doesn’t love him back.
He ignores the sudden sting of tears in his eyes, looking back up to the healer and ignoring the way she’s looking at him, too, so that he can ask, “The treatment?” He has a funny feeling.
The healer’s hand comes down gently on his leg through the blanket. His chest feels impossibly tight. “There are two possible treatments for Hanahaki,” she begins. “The first is—less of a treatment, I suppose, as there’s nothing I can actively do for you. If… whoever it is that you love returns your love, you will be cured.”
(All Yoongi can think about now is the night before, when Jeongguk had visited like he did whenever he had a free moment; he’d waited until the healers had been otherwise occupied before he’d clambered onto the little bed with Yoongi, pressed himself chest to chest, legs tangling, so that they’d both fit. He’d pulled the blankets almost over his head, trying to stop his giggles so that the healers wouldn’t be alerted that something was wrong, and then he’d just… laid there, head tucked into the crook of Yoongi’s neck like Jeongguk is the one who needs comfort.
He is, though. Jeongguk has always been the more fragile out of the two of them, likely a product of their upbringing: Jeongguk, the youngest of two, coddled and spoiled and loved by his parents and his older brother; Yoongi, the only child of poor parents, living in danger and squalor for the majority of his life. They both feel the same things, but Yoongi has always been better at tucking it away if he needs to. Jeongguk, on the other hand, is all open wounds and vulnerability, and even if Yoongi is worried that he might be dying, he doesn’t think about it. If he thinks about it, Jeongguk will think about it. If Jeongguk thinks about it, he will call upon every angel and demon in both Heaven and Hell and demand they fix it, and Yoongi doesn’t want to put the poor healers through that. He doesn’t want to put his poor heart through that.
He isn’t sure how long they’d stayed like that, Jeongguk’s warm breath ghosting over his collarbones and neck, fingers curling into his shirt like he was afraid Yoongi would fade away if he didn’t hold on hard enough. Either way, it wasn’t enough.)
(All Yoongi can think about now is what he’d thought then—don’t you love me, don’t you love me, why don’t you love me—)
“The second treatment,” the healer is saying, “is a magical surgery to remove the flowers from your lungs.” Yoongi is about to speak, to tell her to put him under right then and there, when he sees the apprehension on her face. “It has a side effect, though,” she continues. “If we remove the flowers, it will… also, unfortunately, remove your feelings of love for this person and it is likely that you will never be able to love them again. This disease is extremely rare, but in past cases, there have been some... side effects that caused the patient to be unable to love at all, or even to lose their memory of the person they love.”
(All Yoongi can think about now is what he’d thought then—it’s okay, it’s okay, I can love you enough—)
Yoongi doesn’t ignore the tears this time, doesn’t bother stopping himself from sitting in that bed and crying. It should be embarrassing, but he will admit to the comfort of the healer’s hand on his leg and the hug that she gives him once he breaks down. He can’t—he doesn’t know what to do, how to feel. He can’t die, but even if there’s something so painful about loving Jeongguk, he could never willingly stop—but he can’t make Jeongguk love him back. He could never make Jeongguk do anything.
So he cries into the shoulder of the healer who holds him, who comforts him. He cries until he can’t breathe again, until he starts coughing, and the jasmine flowers seem to mock him as they fall onto the open book still in his lap. Can be fatal.
Later, after he’s woken from a tear-induced nap that leaves him more exhausted than anything, the healer tells him that the choice is his—he can ask for the surgery at any time, and she will personally assist the St. Mungo’s healers in the procedure. Or he can wait, hope that the person he loves will return the feelings before the flowers grow too greatly in his lungs. She tells him, too, that she recommends setting a time limit if he chooses the latter option, refusing to let him drive himself to death waiting for someone to return his feelings.
He tells her he understands. He already knows, even then, that he will wait. That he will do something about the way his heart skips a beat every time Jeongguk looks at him across the Hufflepuff house table. He gives himself two months, after which the healer predicts his condition will worsen to the point of impairment.
He can’t tell Jeongguk—he’s too afraid and sorrowful, too raw and vulnerable and desperate. Jeongguk would try to force himself into it, because he would do anything to make Yoongi happy, but he knows it won’t work. He doesn’t want to frighten Jeongguk more than he needs to, so he knows he will hold this close to his heart.
He can wait. He will wait. He’s waited for Jeongguk for years now, so he can wait two more months.
And if not—
He won’t think about it.
(He coughs up half of a flower that night. Jasmine, jasmine, Jeongguk.)