Work Text:
In retrospect, he should've seen it coming. His first thought when he realises isn't entirely coherent. He lets out a slightly hysterical laugh at the irony of it all.
Of course. Of course that, after nearly two years of worrrying about the great many diseases that affect humans almost exclusively, contemplating with nothing short of despair how vulnerable they are, how vulnerable he is, Tom would find himself in this pathetic position.
He doesn't know why that, of all things, is what crosses his mind. That it's ironic. So much energy wasted obsessing over Marco's physical wellbeing, only to in turn be afflicted by one ailment which is almost entirely unheard of in the human population.
Staring numbly at his palm, he laughs again, and feels a shudder run down his spine.
He's in love.
These are undoubtedly petals of the same origin as the ones he found on his pillow that morning, only then he had no reason to question it, no reaction but dismissal after a brief quizzical look.
He's in love.
They're red camellias, he notes silently, needlessly. Red. Red. Red.
He's going to die.
Sob-like chuckle rack his body with all the awareness he'd previously been lacking.
You're a flame in my heart.
There are no flames without air, and rare as the condition may be, he's not oblivious to the fate that awaits him.
The petals are so soft against the light purple of his skin... They don't seem harmful, or ominous, or anything like what he knows them to be. Doesn't matter, though, does it? He crushes them in his hand and carelessly tosses them aside. Hanahaki. Huh. Who cares. He's sure people have lived through it. Deadliness is often exaggerated, and seeing as he's yet to witness any of his fellow demons die from coughing up flowers (not that he's witnessed any of them coughing up flowers, but that's just a minor detail), he refuses to give up that easily. If Marco had fallen ill, he'd fight for him, against all odds. He can fight for himself. So that he can continue fighting for Marco.
Gods, he's so helplessly in love it's enough to make him sick.
Ignoring the painful truth of that notion, Tom turns on his heels as if he hadn't been about to cross a portal into the human world, barely hearing it close behind him as he strides towards a place he can't recall being in out of his own volition since... Ever: The Extensive Health Anomalies Library.
It really doesn't take him long to reach the conclusion that "extensive" is a bit of a hyperbole. And "anomalies" is a definite understatement.
He's read about colourful fungi inhabiting very unexpected places, vomit in a variety of textures and flavours, and limbs spontaneously falling off, sprouting up, starting to speak, or all three by the time he finds anything even remotely connected to flowers in one's lungs.
A part of him is a bit startled to be reminded of what's brought him here to start with. Amongst all the curious oddities his body and magic can apparently do, he'd sort of forgotten. Hanahaki seems to pale in comparison. At least, that's what he tells himself even as his fingers run over the beautiful, intricate illustration before he starts to read.
At first, it's all things he already knows. Love. Pure. Unrequited. Fatal.
Fatal.
Though he doesn't want to, he ends up reading the whole section on the symptoms and their progression, and if it isn't bad enough to anticipate death's arrival less than a sixth into his life expectancy, then what he finds there certainly is.
Over the next month, he will experience... Dizziness. Lack of energy. Muscle weakness. Trouble concentrating. Diminished lucidity.
That is, on top of being less and less able to breathe.
Imagining himself bedridden, literally ill with love, is not easy.
No, it's impossible. And it will not happen.
He closes the book resolutely, without even registering that he is yet to search for anything a tad more uplifting. There's no hurry, anyway, and he is suddenly tired. Too tired to read about cures that he can worry about later.
One month.
He checks the book out.
Things remain so much of the same that it's hard to be conscious of the little changes. Especially as they're changes to himself.
He's not sure the term "changes" is the correct one, as it is all so very familiar, but it's how he can think to describe all the differences when he does notice.
Now, dancing around hanahaki is annoying. Having something to hide puts so much distance between him and his friends. He hates lying to them, hates stuffing red petals in his pockets, saying no to plans and pretending not to notice their confusion. He hates being in love with Marco.
Alright, that's not true.
Dancing around hanahaki is completely infuriating.
Why does he even have to? He was in love with Star for a good portion of his life, and it was unrequited for most of it, but that hadn't warranted any sort of terminal fauna growth in his fucking lungs, had it?
He knows it's not the same.
Because with Marco, his love is such an intensely inexorable and natural presence that he doesn't even notice it until it has grown past the point of feelings and well into the realm of certain, impending doom. Still, the fact remains.
He loves him so much it hurts. He loves him so much he's dying.
It's not fair. He's barely reached a level of acceptable maturity and already he's being made to carry this insurmountable burden.
So the anger is a familiar a change, a returning difference, and when Star asks him why, he can't help but think of how tiring it is to constantly ask himself the same thing, never to come up with any answers.
They're all in Marco's room, a place he realises now he should have worked harder at avoiding. The three of them don't belong together anymore, probably never even did. The notion of his love being pure almost makes him laugh. It's what's tearing them apart.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows she's merely asking why he won't be around again this weekend, which in her mind doesn't justify the narrowing of his eyes and clenching of his fists.
"We're worried about you," she tries to explain. Her feet stop dangling where they had been, just off the side of the bed, and she turns her head in his direction. "You haven't been yourself lately."
The tone of her voice and look in her eyes are almost enough to appease him, except his brain latches onto the words in a way it shouldn't, and reminds him of how much he doesn't want Marco or her or anyone else to be worried. How he's changed and un-changed, to the point where his old self feels more like a stranger to them than the new person they had helped him become. How much he's losing.
He looks at them and barks, "Will you just leave me alone!"
Alone to suffer. To die. To suffer because he's dying, and will be alone soon regardless of whether or not he wants to be.
"Okay, what is wrong with you?" It's Marco who asks, sitting up, and Tom's resolve immediately falters.
"Nothing," he declares with a half-hearted shrug. "I didn't think I wasn't allowed to want to go home."
The glare his words are met with makes him want to retreat his fallacy. He's sure he looks stupid standing there, in the middle of the room, as he had actually been about to leave but is now suddenly glued to his spot.
"Tell me."
He can't. He shouldn't. He's so angry.
"I'm in loveー" He stops midsentence, immediately regretting it the second that word makes it past his lips.
Star and Marco share a look, and he promptly forgets whatever explanation he had been about to give, clamping a hand over his mouth in what he hopes is misinterpreted as surprise that he's said that much.
They're immediately next to him, fussing over the new discovery like he hadn't just yelled at them with more animosity than he had expressed towards anyone in the past years. He keeps his hand balled, fingers tight around fragile petals, snaps and swats and curses his way out of the focus of their interest.
Then, he leaves.
He's angry. And alone. And red camellia petals look just as pretty when they're being drowned in tears.
That night, he finally does find it in him to retrieve the book he'd nestled conspicuously between his videogames.
As he reads about the sufferer's love being reciprocated, instead of it filling his mind with daydreamt scenarios, his eyes linger on the words "only cure" until his vision becomes blurry.
His shoulders slump, his chest aches, and his throat contracts around nothing.
Before he can think to stop himself, ashes are all that's left of the leather-bound volume.
The smoke enters his nostrils and he remembers things he should've forgotten by now, wonders if Marco remembers them as well. He coughs, angrily and freely, stomps the petals on his floor like he's putting out a fire.
In bed, he clutches at his chest and takes big, indulgent gulps of air. He's scared. He's in love, and it's killing him, and he's so scared.
He worries he'll start to cry again, but his tears have dried.
Instead, he falls asleep.
He sees Marco. They're lying together in a bed that belongs to neither of them, wrapped up in a white sheet and around each other. He distantly notes that they're not fully dressed, but it doesn't seem to matter.
Tom reaches up to nestle a silky brown strand behind his ear, and he laughs, a laugh that feels too pained, too final. He's interrupted by heaving which produces petals. The same camellias that have been rising up and out of Tom's throat.
His eyes don't even widen, as if he had known, as if it's not surprising. At the sight of Marco's distress, his own lungs produce a handful of fragrant petals.
They smile sadly towards each other, united by a bond too grim to be desirable. Marco sighs out that he wants people to wear red at his funeral.
Aware that he might not be there for it, Tom just nods and closes his eyes. He has something to say, something important, but when he opens his mouth, it's Love Sentence that comes out, certainly not in his own voice, and then his eyes open and he is alone with his own camellias and his own pain.
Star and Marco are together.
They don't say anything, but he guesses, and although he doesn't say anything either, it becomes more and more obvious. Hidden glances. Comforting, reassuring touches. The three of them used to be together all the time, and with Tom extracting himself from the picture, it's really not that surprising.
Still, it probably would have happened either way. While yes, he still hates emptying his pockets and sleeves when he gets home, and misses them terribly even when they're there, he doesn't blame his absence, or his love, or his hanahaki for anything. Anymore.
He's a bit too immersed in trying to find some (other) cure. And he wishes.
If he doesn't die, he'll be the best uncle their children could ever have dreamt of.
He'll take them out and play with them, and tell them everything they need to know, but be sensible to leave out what would be too much information. He'll playfully gag and pretend to be as disgusted by their parents' loving affections as kids often are.
He will be in every wedding photo.
He will let Marco beat him at human sports.
He will forever value the ability to make plans five years from now, a year from now. A week from now.
He won't ever get angry or jealous or let bitterness overtake him.
If he can only see Marco's happy, beaming smile. Even if it's not directed at him.
He wishes with all his might that somehow, that will come to pass.
Every little petal crushes that wish a bit more, but he holds onto the idea more firmly than he's holding on to whatever he can still get from life.
He will remember the children's birthdays. Their wedding anniversary.
He, he'll be the party planner or consultant or anything that he can be besides dead. He's good now, and he wants the chance to be better.
At night, Marco spills flowers behind his eyelids and disappears with his alarm clock. That's a secret, as is everything else.
Sometimes, he misses Brian so much.
Misses being a petulant child who would never have got into an ordeal quite like this one.
Who would never love someone so wholly.
He shakes off the feeling despite wanting to hold onto it and believe it enough to feel differently about everything.
If he lives, he'll never allow himself to become that child again.
Whoever finds it in them to love him, he'll do his best to love back, and make them happy and give them a family that will be nothing like his own. To be a father who will be nothing like his own.
He's engaged in research during the day.
At the weekends, he lets himself call Marco under the pretense of whining about how busy he is.
He wonders when he'll hear the news, if it'll be thoughtlessly mentioned amidst anecdotes about life on the other side of the mirror.
"... And then Star told her we'd be busy." Marco's voice shows his relief, and he wonders why his ears chose that moment to pick listening back up.
He has no notion of context or background for what he's being told, so he just hums in agreement through the muffling of his hands. His throat itches, burns, but nothing is released from his lugs by the time he lowers them back to his lap and breathes in ever so slowly, swallowing around a lodged, tender softness.
"Are you okay? You've been doing that a lot lately."
Dodging the question, Tom questions, "Doing what?"
Marco holds up his own hands against his mouth and shuts his eyes tightly in what looks like a painful, pained way.
White sheets flash in the back of his mind like a mistimed memory, eyes flitting up guiltily to take in how the expression is eased out of the human's face. He looks away when worry takes its place.
"You look pale."
Does he? "Terrible lighting."
"Have you got a cold or something?"
"Demons do not get the common cold, Marco," he tells him, jokingly supercilious.
They cough up flowers because stupid humans don't love them back.
"Ah," the other nods, pretending to be enlightened. "Like idiots."
Tom smiles.
Like idiots.
Marco smiles back.
There is another cure. It can rid him of the flowers, normalise his life span. Estinguish all the feelings he's never wanted in the first place.
Oddly enough, it's presented to him by his parents. Who knew that the only copy of The Guide to Magic Ailments for Desperate Souls would be missed. Or that his library records were, in fact, existent.
He'd left a hanahaki-shaped trail which led them straight back to, "You should have listened to us and kept out of the human world." in a way that makes him sour about how easy it had been to sneak behind their back with portals and calls. Their efforts to remedy things now are just too little too late.
He is going to die.
He'll never get to meet Star and Marco's children. They'll have to hear stories about and not from him.
He won't be there for the wedding.
Won't be here five years from now, or a year from now. According to the doctor, maybe not even next week.
He can feel the roots each time he swallows, his voice is scratchy when he speaks, his head now constantly lowered. Getting up is such a struggle that he offers no protest to being put on bedrest.
Resting is not exactly what he does, but it isn't anything else that he can name, either.
He sees Marco every night, but when the object of his pure, selfless (Fatal) love shows up in his bedroom, he coughs long and hard.
An entire flower.
Marco picks it up, missing the way it makes Tom deflate, fall back onto the bed wearily. He doesn't miss the redness littering the covers, the pillows ー there are even petals on the floor.
"What does this mean?" He asks him.
Brown eyes are staring down at him, so earnest, so concerned, and for the first time, the words take shape in his weak, strained voice: "I'm going to die."
And, for the following days, he's sorry.
He's sorry when he sees the signs of crying on his two friends' faces. When he can't raise his hand or his voice to comfort them, can't do much other than try to breathe around firm roots and in-between the constant outflow of flowers.
They don't have to be sad, he thinks. They'll miss him as much as he's missed them the past weeks, but at least they'll have each other.
He'd had no one, but that's probably for the best. They'd miss him more if he'd been around all the time that he wasn't.
It's frustrating when his mind weakens as well, because whereas he used to spend hours listening to the echoes of Marco's voice when he's not around, now he can hardly remember what had been said.
Is he going to a party, or did he go already, or is he at one now?
No, there's no party. Marco is in no more of a mood for them than him.
The last time Star comes to visit, he tells her he wants people to wear red at his funeral.
Her grip on his hands is so tight and so warm, so well known, but still wrong.
She cries. So does Marco.
He doesn't.
At one point, he stops opening his eyes. He knows that worries his now singular visitor, but it's too much effort to keep them open with the world constantly spinning, and in any case, he knows he can't really give Marco a reason not to worry.
He'll be gone soon.
He tries to tell him that all the things the two of them don't get to experience together, he hopes Marco gets to live with Star. That they don't suffer too much or for too long. And more. So much more.
They deserve the world for putting up with him.
The Marco of his dreams comes so close to telling him who it is that he loves so fiercely, that he decides not to leave with that regret.
He hadn't asked, but Tom tells him. When he does, Marco squeezes his hand firmly and there's a rush of perfect tingling all over his body, and it's like breathing again.
But he will never breathe again.
His hand goes slack in Marco's, head lolling to the side.
His confession hangs in the air that can't make its way into his body.
I didn't know I loved you.
Nof that it could have made any difference.
He's found peace.
He dreams that Marco loves him as well, and the both of them can breathe again.
It occurs to him the next morning that he shouldn't have been able to dream. Or to wake up.
"Whaー" He's not alone, but there are no white sheets or - he swallows experimentally - or roots blocking his airways.
He can find the scattered evidence of hanahaki all over his room upon sitting up to have a look, but...
"You're up."
He is.
A chestnut gaze bores into his own, and he feels that same tingling all over everywhere.
He's not dead.
"Why?" He questions, though there's only one possible answer to that.
Marco huffs, adjusts his hair and looks at him very seriously before he says, "People can wear red at our wedding."
Tom laughs so hard he starts to cry.
He's allowed to.
To laugh. To cry. To breathe. To live.
He's allowed to love, with all his heart. He can hardly believe it, the shock almost as paralysing as when the emotion had represented a death sentence.
Star doesn't come round for another two weeks. She's not upset, but she does make a joke about keeping secrets that has both boys blushing.
She hugs them and smacks them across the head.
There are faint traces of tears in her eyes. He can only imagine how hard this whole thing must've been for her. As much as he values her friendship, he's never felt less deserving of it. Her smile says that she doesn't agree.
Marco's fingers lace with his, and she gives a light pat to their connected hands.
"I'm so happy for you guys."
The relief is still overwhelming, all-encompassing, has him giddy.
Notwithstanding, he's certain he'll have a much easier time coming to terms with this surprise than the last.
He won't be alone, after all.