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They taste disgusting.
Sapnap wrinkles his nose at the once white flowers, stained crimson, lining the porcelain.
George leans over, and Sapnap can tell he’s trying to hold back a grimace. “What the hell?”
“It was like… perfume. In my throat. I just wanted to get it out,” Sapnap says, but his voice sounds raw and coated with venom.
He’s kneeling over the toilet. George is trying to be supportive, but they both know what this means.
Hanahaki disease. Flowers in his throat. Vines twisting in his veins. His heart, rotting.
They both know who it’s for, but neither of them say anything.
Sapnap tries to wash down the petals clogging his throat with water.
When he sleeps that night, his dreams are tinged green.
-
“Do you have tuberculosis or something? It feels like you’ve been coughing for weeks,” Dream says. Sapnap avoids his eyes.
“I think it’s just a bad cold. You should probably stay away from me if you don't wanna get sick.”
“Dude, it’s fine. I have a perfect immune system, remember?” Dream grins at him. Sapnap thinks he might burn.
“I mean, if you really wanna risk it, that’s fine, I guess.”
“I do,” Dream says, and Sapnap feels the vines slice into his purple, purple heart.
-
“Have you even considered telling him?” George asks. The sky is pink. Sapnap wishes Dream was here to see it.
“Why would I?” Sapnap asks.
“I don’t know, maybe so you don’t die, or something,” George says drily. Sapnap thinks there might be some concern in George’s tone, but he’s too exhausted to care.
“I’d probably still die if I told him,” Sapnap says. “He’ll just feel worse about it when I do.”
George is silent for a while. “Don’t you think he could love you back?”
Sapnap says nothing.
“Sapnap?”
“I’m not you, George,” he whispers, and the clouds are lilac now, deepening in the night. Sapnap feels a wave of nausea roll over him.
“He’s not…” George starts, but he trails off, and the lavender clouds swallow his words.
“What did you think was the problem?” Sapnap asks, and he hates how jealous he sounds, he hates it he hates it he hates it but how can he feel anything but overwhelming envy when he’s dying because he doesn’t have the one thing that George does?
“I just thought it was because… because he didn’t know. I thought - I thought if you told him, then maybe things would be better. I don’t even… I don’t even know why you think that,” George says, but they both know he’s lying.
“You do,” Sapnap says, and then he leans over, and white flower petals spill from his tongue and onto the pavement.
-
After three months of this, the taste of the petals shifts. Sickly sweet. Perfume, left in the sun for too long, swirling in his throat, filling up his lungs. The petals take on a more viscous form when he retches and they land on the floor. They look sort of like slugs, he thinks.
How romantic.
George says that the flowers are probably rotting. Sapnap thinks this is unnecessarily cruel. If he has to be cursed with a terminal disease because he fell in love with the wrong person, shouldn’t the flowers at least stay fresh?
His skin is also starting to sag. A disease of the heart, it’s called, but Sapnap discovers that it really isn’t - it’s also decomposing his physical body. The bags under his eyes turn violet. If he’s in a good mood (which isn’t often), Sapnap sometimes thinks this makes his eyes pop.
He doesn’t go out much, anymore.
He just stays inside, and waits for his body to rot into the ground.
-
“You look terrible, dude.”
So sue him. Sapnap had missed Dream, and he supposes this is what he gets for asking for too much.
“Well, I think you look very dashing today,” Sapnap says, hoping that will be enough to distract Dream.
Of course it isn’t. “Thanks, but seriously. What’s wrong with you?”
Sapnap looks at Dream. “Dream, I’m gonna be honest with you for a second, okay?” Dream’s eyes widen, but he nods. “I’m not doing well right now. Honestly, things are looking pretty bad. But I kinda really don’t wanna talk about it. I came to see you because I wanted you to distract me, so please, just distract me. Tell me something that will make me forget about it.”
Dream stares at Sapnap, searching. Sapnap hopes he never finds anything. “Okay, um. Do you wanna hear about something kind of stupid I did the other day?”
“Sure, Dream. Tell me about it.”
“I… I kissed George,” Dream says. Sapnap keeps his eyes glued to the floor. There’s something rotten rising in his throat, there are vines in his veins and his lungs are full full full but he says nothing, what does he say? What can he even say to that? “And, and it was stupid. It was a mistake. He, um. He didn’t kiss me back. He just sort of like, stood there, and then when I realised he wasn’t kissing me back he kind of just looked at me and said, ‘I can’t do this,’ and then he left. And we haven’t talked in like two days. Sapnap, I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”
Sapnap wishes his lungs would fill, fill to the brim with rotten petals and broken stems, so he could just suffocate now so that he wouldn’t have to listen to anymore.
“I think… I think you should give him some time. He’ll come back to you eventually, Dream. You didn’t ruin anything. Don’t worry about it.”
Dream worries about it more, but Sapnap is barely listening. His ears are ringing and he wraps his arms around himself, hoping his body won’t collapse, hoping his throat won’t cave in on itself and hoping his skin won’t fall away like a curtain.
If his body rots away, what’s left?
The love, or him?
-
George tells him what happened the next day. It hurts even worse this time.
“Dream kissed me,” George says. Sapnap tries not to gag.
“He told me,” Sapnap says. His mouth tastes like disease.
George pales. “He did?”
“He did,” Sapnap echoes.
“Did - did he tell you I didn’t kiss him back?” George’s voice shakes, and Sapnap closes his eyes. His head hurts.
“He told me, George. Listen, you don’t have to do this, alright? I don’t care if you kiss him back or not. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“It - it doesn’t bother you? Why not?”
“God, George. Of course it bothers me. But how is it my business whether you kiss him or not? It doesn’t change anything.”
“How is it not your business?” George asks, and he sounds so desperate Sapnap wants to put his hand over George’s mouth so he doesn’t have to hear him speak anymore. “You’re in love with him.”
“So what? He doesn’t love me back. He loves you, so he kissed you. You should have kissed back. End of story.”
“I haven’t talked to him in three days, Sapnap,” George says quietly.
“You should talk to him.”
“And say what? Sorry for running away from you after you tried to kiss me, Sapnap is in love with you and also he’s dying so I didn’t want to kiss you back?” George asks, and when he looks at Sapnap, his expression is so full of anguish Sapnap looks away.
“Sorry for running away from you after you tried to kiss me, I wasn’t ready to face my feelings yet. Can we try again?”
“I don’t think I want to say that yet,” George whispers.
“Then don’t,” Sapnap says simply, and he’s trying not to snap. “Why did you even tell me if you aren’t gonna listen to anything I say?”
“I … I’m sorry,” George says, and he sounds miserable.
Welcome to the club, Sapnap thinks bitterly.
“So am I.”
-
“George told me you were dying. He said you’re not going to get better,” Dream says. Sapnap rolls over in his bed to face away from him. He doesn’t want Dream to see him like this. He thinks he could probably pull the skin away from his bones with his teeth.
“George is a liar,” Sapnap says, but the words sound frail and broken, and he knows there’s no way Dream believes him.
“I don’t think so,” Dream says, and his voice trembles. “Sapnap, why won’t you talk to me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sapnap gives up on pretending nothing is wrong. He wasn’t putting much effort into it, anyway. “Why would I tell you? So you can pity me and cry over it? I don’t want that, Dream.”
“It’s not for my pity. I - you should have told me because we’re friends, Sapnap. We’re supposed to tell each other stuff, dude. Especially important stuff.”
Dream loves him.
It’s not enough.
“Maybe I just didn’t think this was important. Or maybe I just wanted someone to act like things were okay,” he says, and he feels a tear slide onto his pillow.
“You should have told me,” Dream says, and the words congeal in the stale air of his bedroom.
He turns to face Dream, and pretends not to notice when he sees a grimace flash across his face. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Dream inhales. “I forgive you, I guess. I’d tell you not to do it again, but I don’t think this is going to be a regular occurrence.”
Sapnap smiles weakly. He’s going to vomit. “I love you.”
Dream smiles back, even weaker. “I know you do. I love you, too.”
He doesn’t.