Chapter Text
when yoongi coughs up the first petal, he really should have seen it coming. he should have known there was no way the younger man returned his feelings in the same way. well, he always kind of knew, but now that the evidence was damning, there in the form of a pretty red rose petal in his hands and a burning in his throat, he couldn’t kid himself into hoping any longer. he couldn’t kid himself that when jungkook said “i love you" he meant it like yoongi did. that all the touches and glances his way were for him only. that he didn’t do the same for all the members. that it wasn’t just admiration and brotherly love.
yoongi discards the petal, mentally scoffing that of all the flowers it could have been, it had to be a red rose, the most cliché flower of love. although he supposes it’s better than coughing up sunflower petals, than seeing the bright, happy yellow cascade into his hands, mocking him while his lungs and heart scream in agony. at least the red rose feels somewhat melancholy.
he manages to hide it for a week or so, continuing on with life as normal, acting as though nothing is wrong. he’s doing okay, the others don’t suspect anything - at least he doesn’t think so. not yet, at least.
seokjin is the first to find out. it’s not really surprising that he is, given that yoongi and seokjin are roommates. it was only a matter of time before he saw the petals before yoongi could hide them, before he finally understood why yoongi has had such bad coughing fits recently and rushed to the bathroom so often.
he doesn’t say anything at first for which yoongi is grateful. seokjin just holds yoongi gently, rubbing his back as he struggles to cough out the petals clogging his throat.
“who…?” seokjin starts to ask.
yoongi simply smiles sadly.
namjoon and hoseok find out next. they are revising a track together in the studio when yoongi suddenly has another coughing fit. it doesn’t stop. he falls to the floor, desperately trying to remove the roses but he can barely breathe, he can barely see. one or two petals fall out of his mouth, covered in blood and saliva. finally, yoongi coughs out the entire rose that was blocking his airways, panting, blood dripping from his mouth and the rose. hoseok and namjoon are already at his side, but there’s not much they can do. yoongi tries to breathe evenly but despite his best efforts his breaths come out shallow and jagged. each one feels like he's swallowing daggers. he wishes he could just stop breathing, wishes everything would stop. he leans back into namjoon and hoseok’s supporting arms and squeezes his eyes shut, exhausted and in oh so much pain.
“why didn’t you tell us?” namjoon asks, concern, fear, worry, sadness all evident in his voice and eyes.
yoongi shakes his head. “this isn’t one of those problems where we can just, talk it out and it’ll be fixed. this is -"
yoongi doubles over as he begins hacking up roses again, his eyes tearing up. his lungs feel like their being torn up from the inside. he supposes they are. he looks at the nearly perfectly intact rose in his hand, wet from his bodily fluids. The lone petals were giving way more and more to full roses like this one, sometimes attached to a stem, sometimes not. the stems were the worst, the thorns dragging along the walls of his throat creating nasty gashes in their wake that made it hurt to breathe even after they were out.
“yoongi…” namjoon is at a loss for what to do. yoongi feels bad for him, bad for all of them. they didn’t ask for yoongi to fall in love with jungkook and get this stupid disease because of course his love is one-sided, and of course his immune system was weak enough that the disease could take hold. none of them asked for this. he wishes he would just die already, let the rest of bangtan continue with their lives and continue schedules as normal.
he feels like he’s being strangled constantly, like the roses have wound their way around his neck and are slowly tightening. this isn’t to do with the hanahaki disease, though, he knows because he felt this before it took root. although it’s far worse now. he feels like he’s being strangled, like his throat is constricting, and he doesn’t know why. maybe it’s the weight of keeping his love for jungkook secret - but really it’s not so secret if anyone but looked for it. but that’s beside the point. every so often he feels like he’s being strangled, and every so often he tries to help the invisible vice in it's mission.
he really does just want to strangle himself sometimes. he says as much to namjoon in a moment of weakness - or was it bravery? he wants to, and he tries to, but never very hard. he’s never committed to doing it.
yoongi’s not sure how he expected namjoon to react, but it wasn’t this. namjoon is calm, simply states that it’s okay and that everyone is here for him. that they’ll figure this out. that he can talk to him, to any of them. yoongi feels tears prick at his eyes. his chest hurts, it feels tight, his throat feels tight. why can’t he just die?
he thinks about it a lot, now more than ever. he’s going to die anyway, why not just speed up the process?
he doesn’t know what stops him from doing so. maybe it’s because for the moment he can still see jungkook. he can still see his sweet smiles, hear his beautiful laughter. he knows for certain now that jungkook doesn’t love him back the way he wants him to, but that doesn’t mean he can’t pretend for the short time he has left.
no, it’s more than just that. he wants to die, but he also doesn’t. he doesn’t want to hurt the members, but he’s hurting them when he’s alive and he’d be hurting them if he died.
it’s okay. we’re all here for you.
yoongi doesn’t even know what to think anymore. he just wants this to end. he just wishes he'd never even existed.
yoongi is in his studio when jungkook finally finds out. he’s at his computer, still staring at the track he’s been working on as if staring will fix the cacophony of a song he created, when what feels like an entire rose bush decides it wants to take a trip along yoongi’s respiratory tract. the next thing yoongi registers is the frantic beeping of someone hastily typing in the password to his studio, and then he blacks out.
he wakes in jungkook’s arms, the sight of his furrowed eyebrows, bottom lip tucked between his teeth filling his view.
yoongi bursts into tears, and no matter how much he wants to, he can’t seem to stop. jungkook pulls him close to him, which helps, but also makes it all the worse. yoongi clings to him like it’s the last time he’ll ever hold him, because it just might be, and cries his heart out. he’s vaguely aware that jungkook’s shirt is soaked through with his tears and snot, but jungkook doesn’t complain, only rubs one hand soothingly up and down yoongi’s back and cards the other through his hair.
when yoongi’s tears finally dry, he notices the mess they are currently sitting in. roses and petals litter the floor in a carpet of red, so much so that it is hard to even see the floor. there’s blood, too, adding to the red red red all around them. yoongi looks at jungkook and sees red there too, swimming in his eyes.
“why are you crying?” he asks him hoarsely, and immediately realises how stupid that must sound given that he had just cried into jungkook’s chest for a good twenty minutes at least.
“who… why didn’t you… are you, okay?” jungkook shakes his head immediately after asking the question. “never mind, that’s a dumb question. of course you’re not.”
yoongi tries his best to smile. “it doesn’t matter. i’ll be fine.”
“no you won’t, you’re dying!” jungkook cries. “i wish there was something i could do. please. i don’t want you to die.”
yoongi almost laughs. something he could do. but how can he say that jungkook is the reason he is dying? it’s not jungkook’s fault, it’s yoongi’s. jungkook didn’t ask for yoongi to fall in love with him. it’s not jungkook’s fault that yoongi fell for his passion and dedication, his talent and his looks, his doe eyes and sweet voice and bunny smiles and his oh so adorable laughter. yoongi doesn’t blame jungkook for not loving him back either. he knows jungkook does love him and that’s enough. it’s no one’s fault that jungkook’s love is not romantic.
“just, stay with me please. that’s what you can do.” yoongi’s voice is weak and hoarse. “stay with me.”
yoongi’s not sure exactly when taehyung and jimin find out, but it must not have been long after jungkook did. it had become harder and harder to control it, harder to hide it, to suppress the coughs, until petals could be found all over their house. petals that yoongi missed, or was too weak to clean up. yoongi could barely eat, could barely breathe. he stopped being able to go to dance practices, could barely talk, let alone rap. the only ones who don’t know about his disease now are the fans.
the fans.
yoongi wonders what they would think. he wonders.
“yoongi, you know they’ve successfully treated a few people with hanahaki now?”
yoongi nods weakly.
“so, don’t you want to at least try? we could get this removed and you could live.”
the desperation is clear in seokjin’s voice, in all of their voices, but either the flowers have got to yoongi’s brain, or he really doesn’t have any will to live anymore. the thing is, yoongi and seokjin have been to the doctors. they gave yoongi a maximum of two weeks to decide what he wanted to do before there would be nothing left he could do. even better, was that the doctors had said the way in which the flowers had taken root inside yoongi was unusual, so the already risky surgery would have an even lower chance of success. trust yoongi’s luck to get an already rare disease in an even more rare form. maybe the universe just wants him to die.
so yoongi has to decide whether he wants to wait and see if his love will be reciprocated, thus causing the flowers to die on their own, or if he wants to try the surgery. there’s an extremely slim chance the surgery will work, and if it does, he won’t even remember jungkook, and might never love at all again. what is the point in living if he doesn’t even know bangtan’s maknae? what is the point of living if he will never love? how will he make music the same without that part of him? and what is his life without music and jungkook? and if it doesn’t work, then he’ll die anyway.
bangtan doesn’t need him anyway. they have namjoon and hoseok as amazing producers and rappers, and both are probably better than he is anyway. yoongi’s vocal was never a match for any of the other members, neither is his dance. the vocal line are all producing and writing more and more now as well, so really there is no need for yoongi. he can just live his last few days in pretend bliss. pretend that he can’t feel his lungs being shredded up from the inside out, pretend that his heart isn’t constantly clenched painfully in his chest, pretend that when jungkook looks at him like that and holds his hand, it’s because he loves him back the same way, pretend that everything is okay. and then he’ll die with roses in his mouth, lungs, heart, and the rest of bangtan won’t have to deal with all this inconvenience he’s causing, and can carry on with their lives. jungkook can find the person he truly loves and be happy with them. seokjin doesn’t have to deal with another night waking up to yoongi’s sniffling, only for yoongi to refuse to tell him why he’s crying. he will finally get to sleep at night, without yoongi sobbing or hacking up flowers and keeping him up. they’ll finally be able to return to normal rehearsals and schedules, and carry on writing their songs.
“at least tell us who it is, who you love?” yoongi hears someone ask him. he can’t tell who it is. the voice sounds far away and muffled. his vision is blurry so he can’t tell who is there with him. he thinks, he’s almost dead anyway, what does he have to lose?
“jungkook,” he whispers, a small smile on his lips despite his pain. “i am in love with jungkook.”
and then all goes black.