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The first time it happens Hongjoong ferries himself to the local hospital and has the tiny stems removed from his lungs before they can really take root. The procedure is quick and the recovery lasts for only two days in the hospital before he’s allowed to go back home where he responds to his sunbae’s confused text messages over his absence with something like resigned numbness. There’s a vase on his nightstand holding a bouquet of wilted cornflowers and get well soon cards strewn across his desk.
Hongjoong honestly laughs at the irony.
Hanahaki. An unfortunate side effect of unrequited love and a rare genetic defect Hongjoong unfortunately inherited from his mother. It affects less than 1% of the global population and it is a thorn in Hongjoong’s side, almost literally. Branches and roots and the curling tendrils of flowers somehow manifest in the soft tissue in sufferer's lungs, though easily removable if caught in time, that can and will choke out the unfortunate person who can't get them removed. If by some miracle the person it was directed towards returns their affection then the roots dissolve to replace the tissue torn up in their wake with scar tissue that fades over time as if nothing had happened, a clean slate. His mother keeps the dried and faded gerbera daisy she coughed out over his father in a glass dome on their mantle like some kind of prize. He hates the reminder of it, but seeing the ugly mangled stem and the frozen petals helps to keep him from allowing himself to wonder what it would be like to let the disease run its course.
For the most part he’s careful. He doesn’t try to think too hard about the people he admires, carefully holds himself back from hanging out one on one with someone he could potentially find himself emotionally invested in; carefully guards his heart from the threat of being crushed under the weight of rose petals or dandelion fluff or, worse, choking on the bitter slide of spider lily tendrils getting bogged down by blood and saliva in his mouth.
When he joins KQ, he accepts an offer from management to pay for rounds of near constant medication meant to kill the bloom of potential flowers. It kills the potential for emotional availability too, but that’s just as well when he’s entering an industry where it’s seen as bad form to be tied down.
It’s fine.
His throat tingles when he meets Yunho for the first time and he swallows half his prescription in one go as a measure of self-defense. He does it again when Mingi joins them. Again when he’s left alone with Eden for more than an hour and the starstruck wonder threatens to turn into something other than admiration for a teacher.
He visits the hospital twice in two years: once to get rid of a potential branch that had begun to poke into his ribs for Seonghwa and a second to remove a collection of sprouting roots he thinks might be Maddox’s doing. It hurts to lose that potential love connection, but better for everyone in the long run. He’s only ever wanted to be Maddox’s friend and Seonghwa has—well.
Seonghwa has half the team wrapped around his fingers. Seonghwa has options and Hongjoong isn’t fearless enough to think he’d be the one to stand at the top of that list. He’s not sure he really wants to if he’s honest, not when he’s seen his roommate half-naked struggling to put a sweater over his head and ending up with it somehow stuck in one of the armholes.
“You are so uncool,” Hongjoong laughs at him while directing Seonghwa’s head back to the right opening. “What does San see in you, honestly?”
“I have no idea,” Seonghwa faux sobs. “Must be my glowing personality.”
Hongjoong snorts. Seonghwa smacks him in the ribs and leaves their room to run full tilt at Yunho and San’s open doorway, followed closely by the sound of San’s happy shrieking laughter and Yunho’s groan of disgust.
Hongjoong pokes his head into the hallway just in time to see Yunho closing the door with a grimace.
“Need to escape?”
“Please,” Yunho whines. “They’re so gross and I can only handle so much, you know?”
Hongjoong laughs. “Grab Mingi and I’ll treat you guys to ice cream.” Yunho visibly brightens. “I could use you two for a guide.”
Yunho’s face scrunches up adorably, cheeks going round as he playfully hisses, “Aw man, work? That’s no fun! We should go to the arcade instead.”
“Do you want me to pay?”
“I meant—” Yunho pokes his own cheeks, “—it would be very kind of hyungnim to buy us treats.”
“Then no bitching when I make you sing for an hour or two,” Hongjoong says tartly.
Mingi joins them at the door, gently bobbing up and down on his heels excitedly. “I’m going to get the biggest bucket of mint chocolate they are legally allowed to sell me.”
“You’re going to order something within my budget or you’re not getting anything.” Hongjoong reaches up to pinch the pouting jut of Mingi’s mouth as Yunho snickers into a fist. “Bleed my wallet dry and I won’t let you hang out in my studio anymore.”
“No,” Mingi cries long and drawn out, “I’ll be good, I promise!” He squeezes his fingers together in the approximate size of a cone. “Only one scoop, I swear.”
Because his life is lousy with giants, Mingi and Yunho think it’s hilarious to stand on either side of him and grab both of his hands in their grips when crossing streets.
“For your protection,” Yunho says brightly.
Mingi swings their hands together and adds, “Because you’re so small,” as if Hongjoong isn’t a respectable 172cm and taller than 9/10ths of the staff.
“I hate both of you,” Hongjoong mutters and is ignored completely, Yunho and Mingi singing the latest Chungha single off-key into his ears. He flexes his hands in their grips and wonders what it would be like to hold them like this all the time and not just when Yunho or Mingi are feeling particularly mean about his height.
His throat itches.
Shit.
Hongjoong freezes just outside the ice cream parlor and knows his face has gone pale, sweat beading on his hairline and upper lip in his sudden panic. Yunho’s eyebrows furrow in concern first, Mingi looking at him curiously without relaxing his grip.
“Hyung? Are you okay?” Yunho waves a hand in front of his face. “Hello?”
“I-I’m fine,” Hongjoong stutters, ripping his hands out of their grips and clutching them to his chest to press against the irritating itch he can feel threading its way down his esophagus and into the space behind his ribs. “I just—I just remembered there’s something I need to take care of back home. Raincheck?”
Mingi looks betrayed, glancing between Hongjoong and the windows covered in frozen yogurt advertisements.
Yunho frowns. “Is it something serious? We’ll head back with you.”
“No, no, I said I’d treat you so you guys should go and order whatever you want. Here—” Hongjoong hastily digs for his wallet with shaking hands and passes his card off without allowing his and Yunho’s fingers to touch out of fear. “Just give that back the next time you see me. I need to—I just have to—bye!”
Hongjoong bolts.
“Hyung!” Mingi calls after him.
He ignores the sound of them yelling after him in favor of trying to estimate just how many pills he’s got left at home and shakily trying to remember if he’d missed a dose somewhere down the line. Did he forget to refill after their latest tour? Maybe he forgot to take his medicine between all nighters and the gap is catching up to him?
His throat closes up. Hongjoong veers off course to a nearby side alley and coughs so hard he starts retching, one hand cupped over his mouth to catch the sludge of saliva and blood and—
He’d been so careful, when had they had the time to get this far?
Hongjoong stares down at the red and pink petals in his hand and tries not to laugh.
-------------------
The doctor reads his chart twice and flips through the black and white x-rays three times before he drops the folder to a small desk. “You say symptoms appeared two days ago?”
Hongjoong sits on the uncomfortable exam table covered by crinkling paper and nods, ashamed of himself, adding a quiet, “Yes.”
The man sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and rubbing the indentations left there by the nose pads. “Is there no way for you to avoid the persons responsible? Perhaps out of sight, out of mind?”
Hongjoong shakes his head. It would be impossible considering he lives with whoever is making his chest constrict like this—Mingi is constantly in his orbit because of their time spent writing lyrics in the studio and Yunho is almost always in and out at the same time, bullying them into eating and dragging Hongjoong away from the same workspace when it’s been three days and Hongjoong’s eyes are on the verge of drying out of their sockets. With a sinking feeling he can feel in his fingertips, Hongjoong knows he can’t get whichever one it is out of his system the easy way.
His doctor eyes him sympathetically over the rim of his glasses. “I see.” He rolls forward in the squeaky office chair the practice keeps in this tiny exam room and pats gently at Hongjoong’s knee. “I’m sorry to say, but you are at a stage that even surgery cannot fix. If I were to go in and remove everything associated with your particular affliction, you would be left with perhaps less than 5% lung function and be chained to a respirator for the rest of your life and that's if everything goes perfectly on the operating table.”
He won’t be getting rid of them the hard way either, it seems.
“So what am I supposed to do?” Hongjoong plaintively asks. “The pills somehow haven’t stopped it and I can’t just avoid them forever until it goes away.”
"My advice?" The doctor grimly rolls his lips between his teeth. “Find a new profession. Cut contact as soon as possible.”
“I just told you I can’t,” Hongjoong growls. “I literally cannot do either of those things.”
“And supposing you can’t find a way to convince whoever it is causing your reaction to love you in return?” The man pins him to the table with a look so sad Hongjoong briefly wonders how many times he’s had to have this conversation. “Then you need to start getting your affairs in order. If they truly do not return your affection, your body is going to slowly suffocate itself until the branches completely encapsulate your respiratory system.” He yanks the x-rays out from the folder and holds them up to the light for Hongjoong to see the roots winding up both sides of his chest, thickening at their bases. "You have twin branches. Two people. This will happen fast if you do not find a way to make it stop. As your doctor, I am telling you to stay away until you can forget them."
“Oh,” Hongjoong says, numb, and then, “I see.”
Dazed, he goes home with a new script of potentially higher dosage meds meant to help slow the spread and a merciful list of painkillers for when they inevitably stop working.
-------------------
He doesn’t tell management because he can’t, not if he wants to keep his career. He doesn’t tell his family or his friends and he definitely doesn’t tell the group. Like clockwork, he takes his meds every 8 hours and pretends the brain fog and fatigue are just aftereffects of staying up too late working on music while everyone else is asleep. He does his best to make an excuse to leave any given room when the itch in his throat turns into a hacking cough, his body trying to reject the petals floating in his lungs.
Jongho is the first to notice.
Hongjoong is sluggishly making his way out of the last stall in the bathroom at the broadcast station to get to the nearest sink. Blood still clings around his mouth where he’d smeared it trying to dab away the evidence. Unfortunately, Jongho is also propped up against the sink with his arms crossed, mouth tense and face pale.
“Hyung.”
He brushes Jongho off to gulp a palmful of water. The tap is lukewarm and tastes metallic, but it's a balm to the ache in his mouth and the cuts on his tongue.
“Hyung.”
He slams his hands against the lip of the metal basin. “What, Jongho?”
“Don’t you fucking what Jongho me, why are you in here coughing so hard you puke?” Jongho presses a trembling hand to Hongjoong’s cheek. “Why is there blood on your chin?”
Hongjoong bats him away. “Don’t worry about it. I must have just cut myself shaving this morning.”
“You and I both know that isn’t from a shaving cut since you don’t even need to shave. And even if it was, it wouldn't still be bleeding now.” Jongho grips at his shoulders hard. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” Hongjoong says helplessly. They have less than twenty minutes before broadcast and he needs to get his makeup retouched. “Jongho, please, just drop it—”
“Are you sick?” Jongho shakes him lightly. “Do you have a stomach ulcer? Whatever it is, we can help! You don’t have to—”
“Flowers.”
Jongho, caught offguard, stumbles. “What?”
Hongjoong closes his eyes and tips his chin painfully up at the ceiling. “I have fucking flowers in my lungs. There’s nothing you can really do to make them go away so just—just leave me alone. I can handle it myself.”
They stand silently under the fluorescent lighting for what feels like a small eternity. Hongjoong counts tiles while Jongho’s fingers flex and tighten on his shoulders.
Finally Jongho, raspy with poorly contained anger, asks, “Who is it? Who are they for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Jongho says acidly. “Who is it, hyung? Who’s doing this to you?”
Hongjoong sighs, gently peeling Jongho’s fingers out of his shirt before they can rip the expensive material. Jongho allows it only so he can fist Hongjoong’s hands between his own palms.
“Please,” he says.
And Hongjoong, tired and in pain and feeling sorry for himself, droops in Jongho’s grasp. “It’s Mingi,” he admits. Before Jongho can puff himself up to go find him, Hongjoong adds, “And Yunho. A rare two-for-one deal.”
Jongho’s jaw twitches with the grind of his teeth. “So let’s go tell them. Right now.”
“And say what, exactly?” Hongjoong wearily shakes off Jongho’s grip. “Hi guys, sorry to bother you with my rare disorder, but if you could both love me at the same time that would be just swell.” The thought is so hilarious Hongjoong honestly can’t stop the little self-deprecating giggle that escapes his mouth. “Fuck, man, if that actually worked I would have tried it by now. You can’t guilt trip someone into loving you by force.”
“We’ll think of something,” Jongho says, his voice tinged with panic and desperation. “We’ll—I’ll find a way to get them to notice you.”
He’s such a good boy. Hongjoong fondly squeezes Jongho’s cheeks between his fingers and smiles. “You’ll do no such thing. Come on, we have a show to do and I still need to get my makeup redone.” Jongho opens his mouth. Hongjoong viciously squeezes his jaw until Jongho wheezes a pained breath through the tight pucker of his lips. “And do not, I repeat, do not tell anyone of what happened here. Are we clear?”
Jongho glares at him.
Hongjoong glares back. “Are we clear , Jongho?”
“We’re clear,” Jongho manages, barely, and slaps Hongjoong’s hands away to work the painful cramp in his jaw. “We’re fucking crystal.”
“Good.”
-------------------
It becomes his worst kept secret in a matter of weeks. Seonghwa catches him retching into the tiny trash can in their room, which means San becomes privy to the problem nigh instantly by association, and it spreads through the dorm like a virus. Somehow Yunho and Mingi are left out of the loop despite Wooyoung bursting into tears any time they make eye contact and the evil eye Jongho gives them at dinner.
Tonight it’s just himself and Mingi working through the list of placeholder lyrics and backing tracks for the latest round of album potentials.
Mingi lounges on his back in the middle of the floor, glasses perched over the tip of his nose smacking a balled up wad of rejects from hand to hand. “Do you ever get the feeling everyone knows something you don’t?”
“Nope,” Hongjoong denies. “Not once.”
“Huh.” Mingi rolls until he can prop his legs up and over Hongjoong’s lap. “That’s weird because yesterday Yeosang wouldn’t share his chicken and then called me an asshole.”
Hongjoong only barely resists the urge to slap a hand to his face. He’d told them to be discreet, not to act like toddlers just because he was suffering from a fucked up terminal version of a crush.
“He was probably just pissy because you tried to take his food.” Hongjoong rubs soothingly over the curve of Mingi’s kneecaps. “Don’t think too much about it.” The crumbled ball of rejected lyrics hits him in the nose. “Hey!”
“Something is going on and I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” Mingi declares. “Does it have to do with Yunho?”
Hongjoong freezes. “What?”
“Because we’re—” Mingi pauses, mouth pursed, and squints into the middle distance while tapping his feet together out of nervous habit. “Dunno if it’s called dating, but we’re, like, something . Did he tell Yeosang and now Yeosang is jealous because he’s still pining after Seonghwa?”
He manages a wheezing, “You and Yunho?”
"Yes?" Mingi’s feet stop. “I—I thought he told you first? He always tells you everything first!”
Hongjoong shakes his head. “He didn’t. Not this time.”
“Oh.” Mingi’s eyes widen as a flush works its way over his cheeks and down his neck. “Is that, uh, I mean—it’s okay right? You’re not mad?” His breath hitches. “Please say it’s okay.”
“Of course it’s fine, Mingi-yah. And why would I be mad?” Hongjoong laughs over the internal sound of his heart breaking. “I’m happy for you guys. Always. Your happiness is my happiness.”
Mingi looks at him. His eyes are wide and sparkling, his mouth popped open so the edge of his teeth are just barely visible through the gap. Hongjoong tells himself it’s okay to notice just this once; a last eyeful of someone he’s going to have to cut out of his life entirely.
Mingi reaches for the hand closest to him, sniffing terribly like he’s on the verge of tears. “Hyung—”
“How about we call it a night?” Hongjoong squeezes their hands together briefly. “It’s almost three in the morning. I'm sure your Yunho is going to be worried about you wondering what's keeping you, mh?”
Mingi holds his hand the entire walk back to the dorms thanking him profusely for not disowning them and clings to his neck when Hongjoong tries to drop him at Yunho and San’s door.
“You’re the best,” Mingi whispers raggedly against his neck. “I love you, hyung. Lots.”
“Yeah.” Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut against the scalding pain ripping its way down his throat. “You too.”
-------------------
Early the next day before a meeting with management, Hongjoong runs downstairs to the employee only bathroom of the 7-Eleven and coughs up a collection of thorns to go along with the red and pink petals. Blood drips from his mouth and his nose to the dingy linoleum and Hongjoong thinks, ah.
-------------------
“What do you mean you’re leaving ?” Wooyoung asks tremulously. “Hyung, you’re our leader! You can’t leave us!”
“What he said.” San points at him menacingly. “You are contractually obligated to be with us until we’re all trading tapioca pudding in the nursing home cafeteria!”
He’s got the group clustered together in the living room sharing the old lumpy sectional. Jongho is white faced and furious. San and Wooyoung are clinging to each side of Yeosang, who looks as if he’s trying to decide between crying or throwing his shoes. Seonghwa has his hands clenched up on his knees, back ramrod straight and shoulders tight with poorly concealed anger. Yunho and Mingi—
Hongjoong refuses to look at Yunho and Mingi. Not after Yunho had started hiccuping cries into Mingi’s shirt and held tight to Mingi’s hands.
“I’m sorry,” Hongjoong tries, “But it’s for the best—”
“Fuck you,” Jongho seethes. “You’re only doing this because you wouldn’t listen to me three months ago. How bad is it now?”
He can see Yunho’s head swivel in his direction and cringes. “Jongho, we agreed not to—”
“How bad are the flowers now, Kim Hongjoong,” Jongho says coldly. “How long do you have?”
The room goes deathly quiet. He imagines he can hear the clock ticking in Wooyoung’s bedroom, the little drip-drip-drip of the faucet in the bathroom none of them have been able to fix in the almost three years they’ve been living in the dorm. Hongjoong hysterically wonders if they can hear the sound of the blood rushing in his ears, the rattle of his chest when he takes a tiny breath in and chokes on a petal folding across his airway.
Yunho is the first to break the silence with a confused, “Flowers?”
"Hyung has Hanahaki," Yeosang says through the clench of his teeth. "Which you would know if you weren't so busy choking yourself on Mingi's dick all the fucking time."
"Yeosang," Hongjoong says sharply. "Stop."
Yeosang's face twists up in a scowl and he folds his arms over his chest with a huff.
“What,” Yunho laughs in disbelief. “What the hell? Is this some kind of prank?” He unfolds from Mingi’s arms though keeps his fingers threaded through Mingi’s own. “Hongjoong-hyung, tell me this is just a sick joke.”
Hongjoong opens his mouth to explain, but is interrupted by a coughing fit so rough he ends up doubled over into his knees, collapsing in on himself trying to breathe. The episode seems to last longer than most and Jongho has to actually hold him up and keep his head tilted just right so the blood and spit and floral detritus don’t suffocate him.
When it’s over, when he’s got a bloodied nose and pink and red petals spilled across the carpet as his throat recovers from the onslaught, Hongjoong finally allows himself to look up at Yunho and Mingi’s ashen faces and smiles. “Sorry.”
Mingi has trails of tears rolling over his cheeks. “Who?”
“Classified,” Hongjoong rasps. Jongho’s hands tighten on his shoulders. “Just know it’s not going to get any better unless I leave for a while. Maybe for forever, I’m not sure.”
Yunho scrambles away from the couch and drops to his knees in front of Hongjoong’s bent figure, heedless of the sick probably soaking into the soft denim of his jeans. His palms are huge and warm where they cup his cheeks, big thumb swiping away the tears beading up along Hongjoong’s bottom lash line.
“Hongjoong-hyung,” Yunho whimpers, “Please, who is it? We’ll find a way to convince them, I know we can.”
Jongho snorts. Hongjoong weakly hits him in the stomach. “Don’t.”
“If he won’t, then I will,” Seonghwa interrupts and stands with his hands balled up into furious fists.
“Seonghwa, I'm begging you, please—”
“It’s you,” Seonghwa accuses while pointing at Yunho, who freezes in place. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes tight against the rolling wave of shame and guilt hitting him and hears Seonghwa swivel to Mingi’s direction yelling, “And you, too!”
A lot of things seem to happen all at once. There’s a lot of noise and the boys all begin to yell over each other, throwing accusations about who knew and who didn’t. He can hear Wooyoung crying. San and Seonghwa are trying to talk over each other at Mingi. Jongho lets go of him at one point and Hongjoong opens his eyes only to come face to face with Yunho who looks like he wants to puke.
Right.
“‘S not your fault,” Hongjoong dizzily mumbles. “I’m so sorry, all I wanted was for you guys to be happy.”
Another fit catches him and keeps him trapped in a cycle where he can’t seem to get enough air, can’t seem to breathe through the storm of petals and thorns and what feels like the entire stock of a florist rising up and out of his mouth. He thinks he feels Yunho’s hands trying to catch him around the waist to keep him steady, but he loses the physical connection to his body when the huge head of a multicolored daisy lodges in his windpipe.
-------------------
Hongjoong wakes up in an unfamiliar sterile room with a tube up his nose. He can hear beeping and the quiet murmur of someone speaking in the hall. A hospital then. He flexes his fingers and toes, goes through a mental rundown of his body parts to make sure they’re all in one piece before he tries to sit up and see what he’s working with.
His airway is...clear. Blessedly, amazingly root free and he sucks in a greedy lungful of oxygen expecting pain. When none comes, Hongjoong clutches at his throat expecting to feel stitches.
Nothing.
The curtain around his bed rattles and he looks up in time to see Yunho, disheveled and bleary-eyed, step through the gap with a paper cup of what smells like stale hospital coffee clenched in one fist, his phone in the other. Hongjoong opens his mouth and gets as far as, “What happ—”
“Oh god, you’re awake!” Yunho drops the coffee, cursing when the scalding liquid hits his shoes, and flails wildly for a second. “Hold on—just—oh my god, thank you for waking up you asshole.” He sniffs dangerously. “I’ll be right back. Fall asleep again and I will never forgive you.”
Hongjoong blinks at the curtain fluttering behind him as Yunho leaves just as suddenly as he’d arrived. His throat doesn’t burn. His chest feels clear. Hongjoong cups a hand to his face where a flush has crept up into his cheeks just from seeing Yunho for two seconds so obviously they didn’t remove the branches in his lungs. Right? There’d be no way for him to feel like this if they had.
He’s just peeking into the gap of the thin gown they’ve got him dressed in to check for surgical scars when the sound of feet stampeding through the quiet hall filters in through the open doorway.
Yunho reappears with Mingi in tow, both of them rumpled and red faced and clearly in need of a shower or three.
Hongjoong stares at them while his heart races. “What’s happening?”
“You’re an idiot is what’s happening,” Yunho says breathlessly. “Christ.”
“Uh,” Hongjoong says intelligently.
“You’ve been in a medically induced coma for a week,” Mingi informs him. His eyes are huge and wide and bloodshot as if he hasn’t slept since the incident in the dorms. He looks like a man possessed, like he’s starving and Hongjoong is somehow a feast laid out just asking to be devoured. “How’s your chest feeling?”
“Fine,” Hongjoong admits, still confused as hell glancing between the two of them trembling at the edge of his hospital bed. “Which is really weird considering I shouldn’t be able to breathe right now. What’s—what’s going on?”
“You collapsed in the dorm and Wooyoung had to pull a whole ass flower out of your throat.” Yunho rounds to the other side of the hospital bed to climb into the tiny space left between Hongjoong and the railing, curling up into Hongjoong’s side careful of the IV drip hooked to his arm and burying his mouth against Hongjoong’s shoulder. “He's the only one that had tiny enough fingers to reach in and grab it.”
Hongjoong looks to Mingi for a more thorough explanation. Mingi only grabs a chair and oozes across Hongjoong’s other side to rest his head against his chest. “You were breathing fine once it was out.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
Yunho is already asleep, breathing slow and even against his shoulder. Mingi smiles at him. “Are you sure?”
“I—” Hongjoong inhales hard through his nose. “Wait.”
Mingi smiles wider. “Hi.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Hongjoong stumbles as his face ignites with embarrassment, “But you two are—”
Mingi pinches his mouth shut with a pout. “Oh, so you can be in love with two people at once but we can’t? Double standard much?”
Hongjoong pulls Mingi’s hand away from his mouth and gazes in wonder at their hands tangling together on his chest. “Just because I got sick in front of you?”
“You can’t guilt trip someone into loving you, Hongjoong,” Mingi says mockingly. “We had actually gotten into a fight over our feelings about you when we got together because Yunho is really obvious when he has a crush—”
“He isn’t,” Hongjoong interrupts because he feels like this whole experience is getting away from him. “Neither are you.”
Mingi wrinkles his nose. “No, we really are, you’re just extremely oblivious or something. We made up a stupid excuse to hold your hands when we all went to get ice cream months ago, remember? Yunho kissed your knuckles while we were filming Idol Radio.”
“He kissed Wooyoung’s knuckles too,” Hongjoong has to remind him. “That was—that was just fanservice.”
Mingi observes him for a long moment before he starts giggling. “You’re so dumb, oh my god.”
“Hey, fuck you, I’m the one who’s been in a coma for a week.” Hongjoong wiggles his toes again just as a reminder they’re still there and this isn’t a coma dream, something his brain is trying to feed him as a mercy before it shuts down completely. “What was that about anyway?”
“Had to wait for your body to dissolve all the stuff in your lungs.” Mingi yawns. “You’ve kept us waiting for a long time. Meanie.”
“Sorry.” Hongjoong traces the fan of Yunho’s dark eyelashes with the tips of his free hand. “This—Just to be sure, this isn’t a dream is it? You actually like me?”
“Mhm,” Mingi hums, eyes closed. He slurs quietly, “Yunho does too.”
Hongjoong leans his cheek against Yunho’s head and rubs over Mingi’s slack fingers in his grip. “This is going to be hard, you know that, right?”
Eyes still closed trying to chase sleep, Mingi starts giggling. “I mean, I would hope so considering there’s three—”
“I meant emotionally,” Hongjoong hastily speaks over him. “Not—not the other way.”
“The other way is fully on the table though.” Mingi peeks an eye open and grins. “You should see first hand what Yunho can do with his tongue, hyung-ah.”
He shivers. “Later.”
They fall asleep together in a tangle until a nurse forces Yunho and Mingi to finally go home and shower, get some actual rest in actual beds while they wait for Hongjoong to be cleared to return home. Their schedules are going to be fucked while he recovers, but it’s worth it when Hongjoong returns home to see the smiling faces of his group, gets to endure Wooyoung’s merciless teasing and Seonghwa's offers to turn their room into a three person honeymoon suite. It’s worth it when Yunho and Mingi bring him up to the roof of the building to trade gentle unhurried kisses and stories until the sky bleeds early morning orange.
Someone thought to save his last flower and the dried and mangled daisy gets displayed prominently between Yunho’s Spiderman figure and Mingi’s favorite display microphone.
Hongjoong decides he doesn’t hate it as much as he thought he would.