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Steve didn’t know when exactly this pining had started exactly. Somewhere between Dumbdog’s hysterical laughter and the moments of banter Steve’s joking flirting with Dumbdog became a lot less joking, but where exactly he’d crossed that line was unknown.
He did, however, know when he first felt the tickle of his curse, though he hadn't known what it meant at the time.
It started when he first saw the clip when Dumbdog talked about their first meeting. It was late and he had stumbled across it when it randomly popped up on his YouTube recommended one night. With both headphones in, already tucked into bed, he watched as Dumbdog laughed at Him and him alone, complaining about how unfairly funny he was. Something in Steve’s chest fluttered and something in his throat scratched. It was terrifying and exciting all at once.
Those feelings only get worse over time.
The fluttering in his chest grew into something more substantial, little buds of attraction and want blooming into full flowers of love and desire. At the same time, the little scratches in his throat that appeared whenever he thought about Dumbdog and his stupid adorable laugh for too long grew into something more.
He brushed it off as a cold at first, just a sore throat from streaming too long too often. He resolved to take a couple days off streaming, to help his throat recover. Between how well his everything was doing, he could afford a couple days off here and there. And he was certain that a couple days off streaming was exactly what he needed.
He decided that on his first day away from streaming he deserved to go hiking. He hadn’t gotten very far up the trail when he saw the notification that Dumbdog was live. He debated the pros and cons of listening while he walked, and eventually the fuzzy feeling in his chest at the prospect of hearing Dumbdog talk won out.
He listened to the music play, feeling rather peaceful as he walked with Dumbdog’s stream in the background. Finally he heard the music pause Dumbdog’s voice spoke up.
“Hello? How’s everyone doing today? Hope everyone’s having a great day.” Steve started to zone in and out as Dumbdog took his time greeting his chat.
“Today we’ll be doing a bit of morning lobby among us. Hafu told me who was playing but I've already forgotten so I guess you’ll just have to wait until we get in the lobby.”
Steve laughed softly at that, but the laughter swiftly turned into something much worse. That ever present scratch in his throat grew as he began to cough. He couldn’t stop coughing. His throat hurt so badly, like thorns were digging into them. He felt like something sharp was trying to climb up his throat. He hacked and hacked until at last he hacked up the thing in his mouth into his hands. And then everything stopped. The scratch in his throat was still there, but it was much less severe, merely a tickle than an actual scratch now, and delicately in his palms sat a four petaled, light pink flower with a light green center.
Steve felt a bolt of horror go through him as he stared down at the innocent little flower. Hanahaki was a decently rare disease, but often cases of hanahaki were broadcasted and romanticized. There were very few people alive who didn’t know what coughing up flowers meant.
Steve stumbled over to a rock, glad that he was one of the only people hiking this trail today. He settled down and set the flower on his lap. He closed out of Dumbdog’s stream, the sound of his voice not as comforting as it was before. Instead he opened google and began trying to identify his flower.
A bitter laughter forced its way out of his mouth, just like the reason for his laughter had.
A dogwood flower .
It was a beautiful flower, but god could it be more on the nose? A dogwood flower for the dumbest dog he knew.
He scrolled down a bit until he found a website that gave some meaning to the flower. While it could represent purity and strength, it just as much stood as a sign of love for someone who might not reciprocate, and a show of regret over a situation outside of one’s control. How fucking perfect.
He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. What the hell was he going to do?
Everyone knew that there were only four ways to get rid of the flower. Surgery to remove it from your chest, falling out of love naturally, death, and getting the person who caused your flower to fall in love with you in return. On top of being incredibly dangerous and expensive, one of the most common side effects of the surgery was completely forgetting the person you fell in love with. If he just up and forgot Dumbdog, everyone would know what happened, there would be no way of hiding it. He didn’t want to forget Dumbdog, not after they’d become such amazing friends. In the same way, he couldn’t stand the idea of ruining his friendship with Dumbdog by asking for more from him. And since he wasn’t ready to die, his only option was to try and fall out of love with him.
And what a daunting task that was.
Over the next couple weeks Steve pulled back from Dumbdog as much as he could, leaning into every other friend he has. He flirted with everyone else, especially DK and 5up, as long as it wasn’t Dumbdog.
And that hurt. He wanted to be close to Dumbdog again, he wanted to laugh with him like he used to. But every time he got close to flirting with Dumbdog the cursed dogwood branches began to creep up his throat, forcing him to pull away and mute his mic so that he could cough them out.
He had thought that it was bad when his chat had tricked him into seeing Dumbdog’s face reveal. He knew it was coming but was specifically intending to not look. He didn’t need another reason to stay in love with him. But his chat tricked him, told him to check out Dumbdog’s stream because he was playing geoguessr. He played off his shock and desire as best he could, quietly scolding his chat for showing him and pretending to try and and forget it, to keep visualizing him as a dog. He knew if he actually tried he would never actually be able to forget him, never be able to forget his handsome face.
Things came to a head with Hafu’s birthday celebration. Because he’d made the dual mistake of thinking Hafu hadn’t noticed the tension between him and Dumbdog, and letting her handle the rooming. And now, not only was he going to be seeing Dumbdog in person, he was going to be rooming with him. Stuck with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
It took two hours in Dumbdog’s company for the flowers to become unable to be ignored. They were a constant presence in the back of his throat, threatening to cause him to choke if he dared to let his thoughts linger on Dumbdog for too long. Which was harder than it should have been.
Steve loved to make his friends laugh, loved having their attention on him. But having Dumbdog’s attention was addictive and dangerous. Hearing Dumbdog wheeze and yelp at his jokes hurt in a way that was way too good. It made the branches of the Dogwood bush growing in his chest tighten around his lungs, leaving him short of breath and gasping, but it also made his heart soar and a smile creep involuntarily onto his face.
The coughing was getting increasingly harder to hide. He was lucky that the branches hadn’t actually torn up his lungs and throat too much yet, just compressed them, so he didn’t have to worry about coughing up blood yet. The flowers were for the most part easy to hide and discard, as dogwood were common decorative trees around the LA area. So long as he coughed them out undetected he was perfectly fine.
Curse his stupid caring friends for noticing his stifled coughing fits. Nobody had called him out on it directly yet, but he could see the worried looks they shot him. Could feel their eyes on him when he started coughing. It was only a matter of time before he got caught.
A couple days into their trip he slipped off to the bathroom to remove a flower from his mouth while they were out at a restaurant. The bathroom wasn’t the best, not private so anyone could walk in if he wasn’t careful, but it was the best he was going to get. He’d coughed the flower up because he’d been telling a story and turned slightly to catch Dumbdog giving him a look that could almost be described as fond if he didn’t know any better. He had been desperate to get the flower out of his mouth when he slipped away, and hadn’t noticed 5up following him.
Steve chucked the bundle of flowers that he’d coughed up into the trash and had begun to wash the taste out of his mouth at the sink when he heard a voice behind him.
“So that’s why you’ve been coughing so much.” 5up said, crossing his arms as he locked eyes with Steve in the mirror. Steve flinched back and turned to face 5up. He opened his mouth to deny it, to try and explain it away, but 5up stopped him before he could.
“Don’t insult my intelligence by denying this Steve. Who is it and what the hell are you doing to fix this?”
Steve looked away, not wanting to admit it to 5up. 5up looked him up and down and sighed, relenting a little.
“Fine, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. At least tell me how far along it is?”
Steve made the mistake of glancing up and saw 5up giving him a look that was equal parts disappointed and pleading. He gave in.
“It’s been 4 months since I coughed up my first full flower. My flower doesn’t have separate petals so there was no petal stage. Still no blood when I cough, even when I cough really hard.” Steve said, looking away from 5up’s face. He didn’t want to see the look on 5up’s face when he realized just how long he’s been hiding this.
5up stood in horrified silence for a moment before taking a step forward and grabbing Steve’s hand. Steve didn’t have it in him to pull away.
“Why did you hide this Steve? None of us would have judged you and we could have helped! You know we all would have been willing to help out, to make things easier on you!” 5up said, “You’ve been pulling away from us Steve, do you have any idea how worried we were? Dumbdog has been dming me on a weekly basis asking if I had any idea what--”
5up was cut off by flowers beginning to creep back up Steve’s throat at the mention of Dumbdog. He’d made him worried for him. He thought he’d been better at hiding than this.
Steve put his hands to his mouth, easily catching the dogwood flower from his mouth before 5up could really see it, a move that had been practiced to perfection over the past 4 months.
“Oh.” 5up said softly, and it was the most damning sound Steve had ever heard.
“I’m not gonna make him feel guilty for something neither of us can control. He doesn’t love me and that’s fine. I’ll fall out of love with him soon and then he can stop getting worried over me.” Steve said.
5up seemed lost for words for a minute before responding, “what makes you so sure he doesn’t love you back? Surely it couldn’t hurt to at least try.”
Steve rolled his eyes, “just because he’s a furry doesn’t mean he isn’t straight. Even if he wasn’t straight, why would he be into me? I know I'm wonderful but even I can accept when I'm not someone’s type.”
5up muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “you’d be surprised.” but Steve probably just didn’t hear him properly.
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want to tell yet, but please tell me once you start coughing blood. And please consider telling the others soon.. We were getting really worried.” 5up said, closing the distance between them to hug Steve, burying his face in Steve’s chest.
Steve stared down at his friend and was struck by how young 5up looked. He pushed 5up away, unable to take the guilt, and ruffled his hair.
“Fine, fine. I’ll tell them eventually, promise little guy.” 5up bristled at the nickname.
“I’m not that short! It’s not my fault I’m surrounded by giants!”
Steve grinned, “whatever you say little guy.”
5up glared at him playfully as he followed him back to the group. Steve now felt hyper aware of the group’s worried looks, especially the desperate one’s Dumbdog shot 5up. He was worrying them, he had to get rid of this stupid disease faster.
That thought spurred him to avoid Dumbdog even more than before. He would be blind if he didn’t see how much Dumbdog was becoming upset over this, but he couldn't stop, not when being near Dumbdog still made his chest tight.
The only time he couldn’t avoid Dumbdog was in their hotel room late at night. Dumbdog had tried to force awkward, stilted conversation the first two nights, but Steve barely responded and retired early, stifling another coughing fit. He woke up early the following morning gagging and nearly throwing up because one of the flowers had gotten stuck in his throat overnight. He didn’t stop doing it though, not when the alternative was letting Dumbdog see.
He couldn’t avoid Dumbdog forever. On one of their final nights in Vegas Hafu had a small party with way too much alcohol. And who was Steve to say no to some alcohol? He deserved the break.
He was fairly tipsy when 5up grabbed a bottle and called them into the center of the living room.
“Now that most of us” he said, shooting Dumbdog and David a playful glare, as they had both barely finished a single drink and were only slightly tipsy, “are sufficiently drunk let's do some truth or dare!”
Steve’s drunk brain saw absolutely nothing wrong with this and grabbed his drink. As he passed 5up, 5up gently shoved him down on the couch, practically on top of Dumbdog. Something in the back of Steve’s mind began to worry that perhaps 5up was scheming. The rest of his mind was preoccupied with how Dumbdog had grabbed him to keep him from falling over entirely. Dumbdog set Steve down right next to him. Steve’s drunk mind leaned into the touch happily, leaning against him. He took another drink as the game got going, letting the alcohol drown out the itching in his throat.
They played it so that you could refuse any truth or dare, you would just have to drink, and if the dare included two people, both could refuse and only one would have to drink to refuse. Which was nice, because Steve knew 5up was up to something.
The first couple rounds passed pretty normally, and were lots of chaotic fun. 5up hadn’t enacted any of his schemes so far. It was only a matter of time though.
“Steve, truth or dare!” 5up said, slightly flushed from the drinks he’s had.
Steve, though he had been choosing dares the rest of the game, knew 5up could do way too much damage with a dare, so he answered truth.
5up hummed but soon came up with a question, “What were your first genuine thoughts when you saw Dumbdog’s face reveal?”
“Pretty,” Steve’s drunk mind spoke the truth he’d been burying before he really knew what he was doing, but he soon caught up and played it off, “But definitely not a dog, very disappointing.”
“Aww you think I’m pretty Steve?” Dumbdog teased, throwing an arm around Steve. Steve took a small sip of his drink to chase away the sensation of creeping flowers in his throat.
“You know it baby~” Steve replied, flirting back with Dumbdog for the first time in months, which seemed to surprise Dumbdog more than anything else.
Still Dumbdog laughed at him, “You are so drunk Steve.”
The game kept going but slowly people began to catch on to 5up true intentions with the game, and it became a lot more dangerous for Steve as people continued to try and get him to slip up again. He was becoming increasingly drunk until his reasoning for not being near Dumbdog was left forgotten, and when Hafu, catching onto 5up’s intentions, dared him to sit in Dumbdog’s lap instead of next to him, he drunkenly scrambled up without much complaint.
Dumbdog grabbed his waist, trying to steady him, causing Steve to shiver in his arms. Steve turned to thank Dumbdog, but stopped as his drunk brain realized that they were a lot closer than he thought they were. Like, close enough to kiss without really moving. This fact stunned Steve into freezing, right there straddling Dumbdog’s lap.
Dumbdog looked up at him with an exasperatedly fond look that made Steve’s heart clench and his throat hurt in a way that made him reach for his glass. Dumbdog’s hand grabbed him before he could.
“You’ve had enough to drink Steve.” Dumbdog murmured in a soft way only made the flowers crawl up his throat faster than before. Steve felt a flash of panic go through him as he realized that he was about to have a very severe coughing fit, one he could not afford to have here.
He tore himself out of Dumbdog’s hold, stumbling to his feet. “Bathroom.” was all he said before he ran, distinctly not in the direction of the bathroom. Some faint part of his brain heard 5up telling someone else something but it didn’t really register, not properly. He collapsed once he was outside on Hafu’s back porch and immediately began coughing loudly and harshly. He could feel an entire bundle of flowers pushing their way up his throat all at once, choking him a bit. It hurt so badly, and then something gave and a bunch of flowers flew out of his mouth. As well as something distinctly wet and metallic.
Steve coughed and choked as an entire bouquet worth of flowers that had been building up throughout the night were coughed up at once. Distantly he felt a comforting hand on his back, but didn’t have the mental space to process it at the moment. He figured, from what he’d heard, it was probably 5up.
“hi 5up,” Steve slurred, not looking back, instead remaining slumped on the ground, trying to alleviate the burning in his chest, “Than’s ‘or followin’ me. Think ’m coughin’ blood now.”
Steve’s vision began to go black, probably a combination of his drunkenness and the flowers that left him gasping for breath. He hurried a worried vision over him, but the only thing he could focus on were the bloodstained dogwood flowers in his lap. And then his vision went fully black and he passed out, slumping into the comforting hands around him.
When Steve awoke, it was to a loud, annoying, and constant beeping sound, and a gentle hand in his. He opened his eyes, expecting the beeping to just be his alarm, but he just saw white. He bolted up, but was stopped by a harsh pain in his chest.
“Hey hey!” a voice says to his left, “Stay lying down Steve, I’ll get a doctor.”
Steve blearily looked to his left and saw a very tired looking Dumbdog getting up. He held tighter to Dumbdog’s hand, wanting the comfort of his hand even if it made his chest hurt more. Dumbdog looked back at him sadly.
“I’ll be right back Steve, I've just got to let someone know that you’re awake, so that they can notify the others and get you properly checked out.”
Dumbdog slipped away, and true to his word, was only out for a minute before returning, slipping into the seat beside Steve’s bed.
“Wh--” Steve cleared his throat, “What happened last night? Why am I in the hospital?”
Dumbdog gave him an unreadable look, “What do you remember about last night?”
Steve went through his memories from last night but found nothing but some hazy memories of a drunken game of truth or dare, his last memory being admitting that he thought Dumbdog was pretty.
“Not much. I called you pretty.”
Dumbdog shook his head with a fond smile, but then got more serious, “You did a lot more than call me pretty. You ended up in my lap, but ran off to the backyard after only a moment. 5up told me to follow you. When I found you, you were coughing blood and flowers Steve. Then you passed out.”
Steve felt a bolt of horror go through him as he realized what was happening. He’d been found out and admitted to the hospital for his hanahaki. And since Dumbdog was here, obviously before visiting hours, which was only allowed in hanahaki case for the focus person of the disease so that a life saving confession could be made even if the patient woke up outside of visiting hours that meant….
“You know.” Steve said.
“You’re lucky you told 5up Steve. He’s the only reason we had any information about this, so that the doctors could take care of you properly. Why didn’t you tell any of us? Why didn’t you tell me ?” Dumbdog said, sounding absolutely heartbroken, “you’ve known for months, why is 5up the only one to know, why did you let it get this bad?”
“5up figured it out all on his own because he’s the most big brain of you all.” Steve said, trying to deflect the questions.
Dumbdog stared at him unreadably for a moment before reaching up and flicking Steve, “I can’t believe I fell in love with an idiot like you.”
Steve’s eyes went wide as he stared up at Dumbdog. He took a deep breath, his clearest one in months as the flowers began to clear from his airways. His chest felt light. He felt free.
“You- you’re in love with me?”
Dumbdog chuckled, “Yeah dumbass, that’s why I'm here, I thought that was pretty obvious.”
Steve let out a surprised laugh and was about to speak, when the doctor appeared. In the coming weeks would come many apologies to his friends for worrying them, and medication on top of medication for his internal bleeding from the flowers, and way too much coughing to get rid of the remaining flowers, but for now he had Dumbdog’s hand in his and his confession replaying in his head