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It’s during finals when it takes root, as he’s slowly answering questions with Morgana’s prompting. It comes intrusively and without regard for his own thoughts, much like Akechi’s own entrance into his life.
‘Crow.’
It’s nothing more than a single smudge of ink on paper, but it claws away until he can’t ignore it anymore, even hours later. The word stamps across his heart and lungs, spiderwebbing in thickets that sit in the hollows of his throat. He coughs, and blood splatters across the pages of his book. Frail black petals pasted together with red fall into his lap.
Life really hated him.
Akira wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his blazer and snaps his book shut, trapping the flowers in between the words. Relief floods his system when he notices Morgana asleep, dropping the tense line of his spine with a weary sigh. There’s something shameful about falling in love, especially with dead boys.
*
“You don’t sound so good, man,” Ryuji says, when he’s sent into a coughing fit for the third time that day. Blood blooms like roses against white tissue.
“I’m fine,” he manages to lie between coughs from the other side of a bathroom stall. “Just a cold.” Because this was nothing, nothing more than a passing feeling that would die soon.
(Hopefully.)
*
He goes to Tae, on account of Morgana’s insistent yowling about a leader needing to be at peak performance for his team. Akira forces him out during the exam, only feeling slightly guilty at the betrayed look on Morgana’s face.
“It’s Hanahaki,” he says, watching Tae pause her writing and rifle through her desk for examination gloves.
“And you waited this long to treat it?” She asks, raising an eyebrow and reprimanding him with a pointed look.
“It’s only been two weeks,” he refutes, eyes downcasting bashfully. His defense sounds weak, even to him.
“Two weeks can make the difference between curing it and dying.” She pulls a flashlight out of her coat and taps his lips with a tongue depressor. “Open.”
He obliges, fighting back the urge to cough at the very discussion. After rooting around for an uncomfortable minute, she retracts her hands and peels the vinyl off, tossing it haphazardly into the trash.
“What flowers?”
“Roses.” She frowns at that, scribbling down another note.
“Any pain or blood?”
“Both.”
Frown deepening, she sighs and mutters a word of fatigued disconcert. Her pen taps rhythmically against the clipboard, syncing with the tick of the clock.
A countdown, Akira thinks, watching Tae’s eyebrows knit together.
“From here, you have two treatment options: medication, or surgery to remove it. The medication is a tablet taken orally once in the morning, but it’s not a cure. I can also prescribe a cough suppressant if it begins to hurt too much.” Akira thought It already hurt too much, but it wouldn’t work on that kind of pain.
She glances away, voice losing her usual sarcastic drawl, leaving just the softness. “With this type of flower, the thorns make it so it can’t be removed without major damage, unless it’s caught early and they haven’t developed. After development, the surgery has a mortality rate of ninety-eight percent.”
Being told you’re going to die doesn’t register like Akira thought it would. He should be sad—desperate, even, but he just feels numb. Like he's already dead.
Bury me with your secrets—and I’ll keep them if you join me, Akechi whispers sweetly.
“How much longer?” His voice is hoarse enough to feel like an admittance of weakness. He clears it lightly, waiting for the taste of blood to disperse.
“...A month, at best. Let me get you the medication.” Thankfully, she doesn’t ask who the flowers were for, and Akira couldn’t be more glad that he’s friends with Tae.
“Report to me if it gets worse or you experience any side effects,” she says, stern, and shuts the door behind him. He leaves with his life’s deadline and bouquets stinging his lungs.
A week passes and the flowers grow violently, sapping away the little energy he has left in December. As they grow, his own apathy grows with it—feeding each other in a spiraling agreement. Shido’s palace draws out more and more ragged wheezes, and more and more concerned looks.
He makes a break for Leblanc as soon as they’re out. Better to not prolong their torment.
Passing the threshold, Akira realizes as soon as he sees him that he’s hallucinating. But it doesn’t make it any less perturbing.
His bag falls with a solid thud, Morgana along with it.
“Hey! What gives?” His tone is scathing, though the look he gives Akira is full of worry. Akechi smiles at him from the counter.
Akira doesn’t realize he’s backing away until his back hits the door, jarring the bell lightly. It snaps him out of his stupor, ringing barely making it through the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. He lets out a wheezing breath and flowers rub his throat raw.
“Akira? Akira!” Morgana shouts. He drops to the floor, hacking coughs uncontrollable like unwanted feelings.
Akira swears he can hear Akechi’s footsteps approaching him, swears he can feel light, gloved fingers on the back of his head, but whatever it was is gone by the time Akira looks up. The roses subside for the moment.
His head jerks to face Morgana. “You can’t tell them,” he rasps, abusing his leader voice as much as possible.
“Why not? Are you worried I’ll be mad because it’s Lady Ann?”
Akira wishes it was Ann. Everything would be inconceivably more simple if it was.
“I’m sure she’ll like you back,” Morgana consoles, and to his credit, he only looks marginally downtrodden. Akira wonders how Morgana even knew about Hanahaki and what it meant, being so unbelievably dense and all.
“I’ll deal with it myself,” he deflects, because it’s much better than divulging he was going to die.
Morgana gives him an unsure look. “Okay…” he agrees, “But if it gets worse, I’m telling Makoto!”
It might kill him prematurely if she found out. The disappointment on their faces—the disgust, the embarrassment. He knew that look all too well to be able to bear it from his friends.
The thesis question is: why can he feel hallucinations?
Akechi stays downstairs, like he’s tethered to the spot. It’s ridiculous that Akira could ever believe in ghosts, but he doesn’t mention it to Tae anyway.
The roots dig their way through his throat, like Akechi’s hands are around his neck. It’s strangely intimate.
Akira sips a cup of coffee and they’re momentarily appeased, drinking it down. Good, but a little sweet for his tastes.
“Please stop haunting me,” he says, tilting his head back to stare at Akechi. Akira can see him hanging over the seat and for a split second, it reminds him of Arsene. An unfamiliar teardrop arcs across Akira’s cheek.
“Would you die for me?” Akechi’s voice is as clear as the day he died.
Akira blinks, slow. His face isn’t quite solemn, though it’s still devoid of any real feeling.
“Of course,” he says, because he has no choice in it. Either way, he has no life to give, even if it’s due.
Akira doesn’t know if it’s love, doesn’t even know if he wants it to be. Most of the time it feels like nothing more than a messy jumble of virose thoughts and curious obsession. Despite that, it tangles contentedly in the gaps of his ribcage, filling it slowly and consuming tissue with indulgence. It twists and twists and twists until it's rooted around his heart and he can no longer remove it without dying.
There’s part of him that doesn’t mind it, and he supposes that the disease was self-inflicted in the end.
(He knows it can’t last at least, because flowers always wilt away.)
“Who are you talking to?” Futaba’s voice rings from the stairs, poking her head halfway through the doorway.
He hums, contemplative, and places the empty cup in the sink.
“No one,” he replies, rubbing at his neck to clear the harshness in his voice and all the things left unsaid.
As another week goes by, he can feel it consuming, digging needled teeth into his capillaries and drinking his life away—
—He’s opening a book, grabbing it out his bag without reading the title. Pressed petals colored over with dark dried blood tumble from the novel—
(Robin Hood.)
—And he can’t breathe anymore, just chokes and chokes and chokes on bitterness and regret. His heart contracts, and it’s the last sign of living left.
*
He dies.
*
In a place between dreams and reality, Akechi perches on Igor’s desk, legs crossed. Thousands of thoughts crash through Akira’s mind. What comes out of his mouth is:
“You’re dead—you’re not real.” He stumbles over his words and curses his resolve, gone the moment he saw this sick phantasmagoria. Akechi laughs his soft TV humor, and for a moment Akira allows himself to wish.
“I am dead,” he states, nodding sagely and crushing Akira’s hope in one quick motion. “You’ll have to decide if I’m real or not.”
His hands are open, palms upwards and inviting. And since Akira was so, so tired of being strong, he closes the distance between them. It’s weakness that gives him the ability to cautiously tug off Akechi’s gloves and feel the distinctly living skin underneath. Akira claws it close, crushing their hands over his heart. He knows he doesn’t have a heart-beat, but the vindictive reminder is just what he needs to let go of his last streaks of hatred. The problem is Akira can no longer tell what’s left of him without it.
One hand comes to rest against Akira’s cheek tenderly, the other tangling in his hair. Delusory warmth bleeds through, trumped only by the hot tears that run down Akechi’s knuckles.
Akira’s expression remains empty, but his voice cracks with emotion. “You were never this gentle.” Trepidation rings in his head, the white of Akechi’s costume looking all too seraphic.
“You never needed it. Not from me.” Akechi brushes against the mottled, tired skin under his eye, leaving Akira feeling vulnerable without his mask.
He can’t stop crying and it’s pathetic.
“...Because I fell in love anyways.”
His verbal surrender is painful—hurt through acknowledging, through knowing what it meant in the end. He wraps himself around Akechi’s waist, digging his fingers into the stiff cloth and lean muscle.
“Because you fell in love anyway,” Akechi agrees, returning the inelegant hug. Bones jut uncomfortably into Akira’s arms, but he can’t seem to care.
“...Do you regret dying?” It’s whispered into the air, as if any louder would break the illusion. Akechi doesn’t stop the tender gestures—so alien to Akira, to both of them, but just as comforting.
“Dying at eighteen isn’t the most pleasant,” Akechi says, convincing half-truths with euphemisms. His voice is soft like velvet and black as pitch. “But I don’t regret what I did.”
Died for you, is implied.
The need to speak builds in Akira’s chest until he can’t hold it back—because it never healed right, just stayed festering until the skin necrotized around it.
“I’m sorry.” The words are heavy in his mouth, clumsy and tactless. It’s more like begging for atonement than an apology.
Akechi’s expression contorts into something darker, looking much more like him. “Don’t.” His tone drops, edging like an overbalanced scale.
Akira’s teeth dig into his lip, catching another regret on the tip of his tongue. Akechi sighs and pats the space next to him. Absolution takes the form of their fingers laced together.
“I was jealous,” he confesses, tilting his head to rest on Akira’s shoulder. Akechi doesn’t have to clarify of what.
Despite the heat, Akira shivers under his touch.
“You could have had it too, if you let yourself,” he says, soothing as sweet nothings and just as meaningless. Akechi smiles anyway.
“I don’t think I could have.”
Akira doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he stays silent. He’s contemplated this moment, this unearthing of vulnerability and what it would be like to have Akechi back. In daydreams, he always had more responses ready.
“I assume I should pardon you,” Akechi says, nonchalantly as if it was just a simple goodbye and not their final farewell. The velvet room was a prison, after all.
Akira’s eyes widen as Akechi steals a first and final kiss, sealing any protest away at the touch of his lips.
“I love you.”
Flowers wilt and Akira swears he can feel his heartstrings snap.
“Wait—”
Not yet. Please don’t go.
He’s interrupted by petals before he can speak, his feelings surging through like a broken dam. It says more than enough, but they don’t magically get their happy endings. Maybe they don’t deserve it, still.
Akira wakes up and finds his tears have already dried under the harsh fluorescents of Tae’s clinic.