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Tony’s demise began on the day he and Chan were walking across the Space Force base side by side together, debating whether or not it would be possible to inflate a balloon in space.
“I’m telling you, according to the laws of physics, it’s possible. The outside pressure in space is near zero so it’s possible to inflate a balloon in space,” Chan insisted, glancing up at Tony to see if he understood Chan’s point.
Tony frowned and nodded, falling silent for a second before he reasoned, “Yeah, but what about gravity? Isn’t there no gravity in space? So, wouldn’t that mean you can’t inflate a balloon in space?”
Audibly groaning, Chan threw his hands up in the air exasperatedly and argued, “Gravity doesn’t have to do with this! Gravity affects the weight of an object, not the-“
Out of the blue, he paused mid-sentence and stopped walking. Tony halted immediately and turned towards Chan with a confused expression. Just as Tony was about to ask why the scientist stopped explaining, Chan stood on his tippy toes and carefully brushed a loose strand of Tony’s wavy hair back into place.
For some reason, Tony found the gesture incredibly endearing. As he fixed Tony’s hair, Chan’s face folded into an expression of concentration, and his tongue poked slightly out of his mouth as he stood on his tippy toes, making Tony’s heart melt.
“There we go. Now, as I was saying gravity affects the weight of the object, but what matters is whether the balloon can withstand the external pressure. And we know that a balloon filled with helium would be able to expand because the internal pressure would be greater than the external pressure” Chan continued casually before he glanced at Tony, who was still feeling soft from Chan’s gesture, expectantly, waiting for him to disagree.
Instead of fighting back, Tony decided to concede. “I guess that makes sense.”
Chan pumped his fists victoriously, and Tony smiled at how endearing Chan was when he was excited.
Tony thought about that moment later that evening when he was getting ready to go to bed. He was sitting on his bed, smiling as he took off his socks and thought about how gentle Chan’s touch had been. Then, he felt something coming up in his throat and instinctively coughed in his hand.
When his throat cleared, Tony stopped coughing and pulled away his hand to see a single pink, blood-stained flower petal in his palm.
At first, he was confused by the petal. He had heard of the Hanahaki flower disease but he never thought that he would ever be subjected to the painful effects of the deadly disease.
Later that night, Tony researched the Hanahaki disease, a disease caught by a person who’s in love with somebody who hasn’t confessed their love, in more depth. He found that the Hanahaki flower disease caused flowers to grow in his lungs and that if the person he loved didn’t say “I love you” soon after he got the disease, he would die coughing up flowers.
As life-threatening as the disease seemed, Tony tried to brush off his worries. He had an inkling of what had caused the disease, but he figured that if he just waited a week, his feelings for the person he loved would fade.
In fact, Tony continued to spend time with Chan, even though the flowers were particularly painful whenever he was around him. By the end of the first week, Tony’s cough had worsened and become prominent instead of disappearing like he hoped it would. He had to get used to hiding the petals that fell out of his mouth with every cough so he wouldn’t worry anybody.
Chan noticed his coughing and placed a hand on his back when Tony burst out into a coughing fit. “Dude, are you okay? Your cough is getting worse.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I-“ Tony elapsed into another fit of coughing before he hid the pink petals in his fist and hoarsely insisted, “I’m fine. It’s just a cold. It’ll pass.”
It wasn’t until Tony visited Chan in the laboratory that he discovered that it was for certain that Chan was the cause of his downfall. He was sitting next to Chan, watching him record some data about the plants he was observing when he noticed a small pot of pink flowers on Chan’s lab bench.
The flowers looked oddly familiar but Tony couldn’t place his finger on where he had seen them before. Pointing at the flowers, Tony questioned, “What kind of flowers are those? They kinda look like pom-poms.”
Chan lifted his eyes and the corners of his lips curled up into a smile as he informed, “Oh, those are carnations! They’re my favorite flowers.”
Tony glanced at the flowers again a second time and his heart dropped. He recognized the petals. They were the same petals that spilled out into his fingers, except they weren’t dripping with blood.
When Tony first researched the disease, he learned that the favorite flowers of the person he loved were the ones that grew in his lungs. So, finding out that Chan’s favorite flower had the same petals as the ones that Tony was coughing up was how Tony knew for certain that his feelings for Chan were the reason why he was suffering.
Even though Tony found out who he needed a confession from, he made no attempts to get Chan to end his misery. He continued to endure the horrible coughing, day after day, hoping to no avail that he would miraculously get better. Tony began carrying tissues with him everywhere in case he burst into a coughing fit, and those proved to be useful at a press conference he attended.
As usual, Tony was watching Naird answer the questions the nosy journalists threw at him, but, without a warning, Tony collapsed into coughs. He clutched at his side and coughed into his arm in an attempt to muffle the sounds of his hacking, but Naird noticed and shot him an irritated glare.
While Dr. Mallory answered a question, Naird took the chance to mouth ‘Get some air’ to Tony, who nodded and exited the room. The fresh air didn’t help make Tony’s coughing any better, and his coughing fit only stopped when he coughed up an entire carnation coated in bright gleaming blood.
For a moment, Tony stared at the flower in his hands, shocked that his condition had worsened to the point that he was starting to cough up entire flowers. Then, he tossed the flower into the nearest garbage bin, wiped his hands and mouth with one of his tissues, and returned to the press conference, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
As much as Tony tried to hide his symptoms, he was eventually caught red-handed, literally. Surprisingly, the first person to find out was Angela.
Tony was taking photos of Angela in her flight suit for the Instagram page, and, with his usual sassiness, he instructed her to pose. “Lift your head a little! You’re supposed to be flying to space, so maybe look in the direction of where you’re heading.”
“Shut up, Fuck Tony. I don’t think you even know what you’re talking about.” Angela rolled her eyes but begrudgingly complied with his instructions.
Just as he lifted his phone to snap a photo, Tony doubled over coughing, unable to contain himself. Angela dropped her pose, too concerned about Tony to care about the photograph. “Tony! Are you okay?”
Tony’s coughs paused for a moment, and he hoarsely reassured, “Yeah, I’m oka-”
Before he could finish speaking, Tony started coughing again, covering his mouth with both hands to stifle his coughs, and Angela placed a hand on his back, her eyebrows knitting together with worry. Tony pulled his hands away from his mouth once he stopped coughing, and he was horrified to find that there were more blood-stained petals in his hands than ever.
Eyes widening at the sight of the glistening red petals, Angela gasped, “Is that...? Tony, do you have the-?”
“Hanahaki disease? Yeah, but it’s fine. I’ll get better soon. I just need some time,” Tony replied, his voice void of any emotion. Angela didn’t seem to believe him, and her eyes bore into him as he cleaned up the mess in his palms with tissues.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Tony focused on wiping the blood from his fingers instead of looking up at Angela and giving her the satisfaction of seeing his vulnerable expression that would give his answer away. However, Tony’s silence gave Angela the answer she was searching for, and she nodded, her suspicion confirmed. “You could just talk to him. I’m sure Chan’ll help you.”
Tony shook his head as he balled up his petals into a tissue and tossed it into the trash can next to his desk. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’ll all blow over. Now, where were we? Right, taking photos. Go back to your pose.”
Angela reluctantly obliged, and Tony hated he could see there was pity in her eyes even though she wore her widest grin for the photo.
The next person to find out was ironically Chan. Tony’s coughs were giving him a particularly hard time the day Chan found him, and Tony had to seek refuge in the bathroom. His coughing had gotten so bad that he hadn’t even bothered to close the door of the bathroom stall he had stumbled into. As he hunched over the toilet, hacking up the gory petals that stained the water a nasty shade of scarlet, Tony couldn’t hear the sounds of footsteps approaching over his loud coughs.
“Tony? What the fuck?”
Tony whipped around, covering his hand with the back of his mouth. Chan was standing in the doorway of the bathroom stall, staring at Tony in utter shock. Panicking, Tony flushed the toilet and hoped that the petals would disappear before Chan could see them, but it was clearly too late.
“Oh my god. Tony, are you okay?” Chan rushed over to Tony’s side and knelt next to him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulders.
“I- yeah. Maybe. Not really,” Tony admitted, his defenses finally crumbling. Something about Chan’s presence being so comforting made him want to spill all his feelings out.
“Who’s this dumbass who won’t confess their love? I’ll find them and beat them up for making you go through this,” Chan fiercely promised, and Tony had to hold back a chuckle as he imagined how Chan would react if he knew that he was said person.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure he doesn’t feel the same. I won’t force you to fight him,” Tony managed a small smile as he stood up and wiped the blood from his mouth with a tissue, wincing slightly at the sight of how much blood he had coughed up.
“Let’s get you back to your office. I think you need some rest.” Chan wrapped an arm around Tony’s waist to support him as they left the bathroom together.
Under normal circumstances, Tony would’ve been paranoid that people in the base would get the wrong idea when they saw him and Chan walking out of the bathroom together, but he was too weak from coughing to care about what people thought; he was just thankful that he could have somebody supporting him when he needed it the most.
Once Chan and Tony reached Tony’s office, Tony staggered over to his couch and collapsed, going limp as coughs began racking his body. Chan closed the office doors before crouching by Tony’s side, watching him anxiously. “Tony, I hate seeing you like this. Please just tell me who’s causing this and I’ll bring them over.”
Through his painful coughs, Tony groaned, “I can’t.”
“Is it Hannah?” Chan asked, and Tony shook his head in response before continuing to cough into his hands. Blood-stained petals started dropping into his hands, and Chan’s eyes widened, his alarm growing at the sight of the bloody petals. Out of panic, Chan began listing names, “Is it Angela? Is it Duncan? Is it that Russian dude? Is it your neighbor? Is it-?”
“It’s you!” Tony exclaimed before he lapsed into another coughing fit that was seemingly worse than the last. He was too occupied with trying to contain his coughs to notice that Chan’s mouth had fallen open in shock. Suddenly, Tony’s coughing escalated and Tony coughed up a complete, bloody carnation into the palm of his hand.
When he saw the carnation, Chan realized that Tony was telling the truth. Tony wasn’t even able to throw away the flower before he started coughing again, his coughs louder and more bloody than ever, reminding Chan that he didn’t have much time left. Chan, terrified that Tony was going to die in front of him without ever knowing how he felt, exclaimed, “I love you!”
Tony’s coughs were too noisy for him to have heard what Chan said but a few seconds after Chan had confessed, Tony’s coughing subsided and his throat started feeling better than he had in weeks. He could feel the flowers in his lungs shrinking, and Tony pushed himself up with what little strength he had.
“Why am I not dying? What did you say?” Tony frowned, staring at his blood-stained hands as if he was waiting for himself to cough out more blood. He cleaned up the blood on his hands and mouth with a tissue and glanced up to look at Chan, who still looked a little stunned.
“I said I love you,” Chan repeated, his voice a little softer than before.
“Oh, good. I love you too, in case you couldn’t tell from all the coughing and flowers and shit,” Tony replied, letting out a breath of relief, and Chan smiled, thankful to see Tony’s humor returning. “Also, I would kiss you but I’m pretty sure I would taste like blood so I’m not going to kiss you.”
“That’s okay.” Chan’s eyes met Tony’s, and they simply looked at each other with soft smiles on their faces. Chan placed a hand on top of Tony’s, and for that moment, that was more than enough for the both of them.