Archive of Our Own

Five minutes before the conchords are scheduled to go onstage, Jemaine has yet to rid himself of a sore throat that's gotten progressively worse throughout the day. They talked to Murray about potentially rescheduling, but he was adamant that their performance at this bar had to be tonight, so… fine. They can manage. They've put together a setlist where Bret will do most of the singing, and they have a whole six-pack of water bottles on hand plus some emergency cough drops, and it's fine. It can't possibly be their worst gig, at any rate, given that they have their instruments and there are actually people in the audience.

Jemaine can almost convince himself that this won't be a complete disaster until he lowers his hand after a particularly bad bout of coughing and sees what it comes away covered in.

"Aw, flip," he mutters.

"What happened?" Bret asks, glancing up from tuning his guitar. "Did you cough up blood?"

"No, it's--"

"Did you lose a tooth?"

"No, but look at this." He holds out his hand to show Bret the long cream-coloured petals plastered to his palm. They're slick with saliva from being in his mouth, and he can still feel something lodged in the back of his throat, roughening his voice a little. "'S weird, huh?"

"Oh, huh." Bret's eyebrows raise as he leans over to inspect the flowers, and a pensive look falls over him. "That is weird. Really weird, man."

He looks like he wants to say more, but then it's time for them to go onstage. The first two songs go smoothly enough. Most of the audience loses interest pretty quickly, but Mel is at the front of the crowd cheering as hard as she can, and she's joined by a few ladies and gents with refined taste who nod their heads and/or tap their feet to the music.

Then during their third song of the evening, Bret does this sort of soulful ooh noise during the chorus, and suddenly Jemaine's vague congested feeling swells into something big enough to choke on. His backup singing gives out into a strangled wheeze. He doubles over, bass guitar swinging loose from its strap as he drops it to clutch at his throat.

Bret is startled by this, and mildly concerned, but more puzzled than anything. He diligently continues playing and tries to keep singing as well, but it trails off into a distracted mutter as he shoots his bandmate a side-eye, brow furrowed. He tries to mouth "What's going on?" but the sound is lost amid the startled murmurs the crowd has broken into, and Jemaine can't exactly answer the question when he's fighting for breath against something lodged in his throat. Finally his legs give out and he falls to his knees, knocking over his mic stand in the process. His falling mic stand crashes into Bret's, and Bret barely manages to leap out of the way in time to avoid being brought down as well. By now the audience is in a frenzy. Mel shrieks and runs off, as do several other people, a few of which proclaim they're going to call an ambulance.

After what feels like forever, the blockage comes loose and thuds moistly against the stage. It's a small bundle of tubular yellowish flowers, slick with saliva and what looks concerningly like blood. Jemaine only has a few moments to gasp at that before the choking sensation swells in him again.

By this point nobody is listening to Bret play his guitar anymore, least of all because the mic stands got knocked down, so he stops playing and instead crouches next to Jemaine. His hand hovers awkwardly around his back for a moment before he settles on giving him a couple quick pats.

"Hey, Jemaine, you feeling alright?"

"Not really," Jemaine gets out between bouts of coughing. "'M coughing up flowers."

"Right, yeah, that doesn't look fun." Bret's eyes flit around the bar, scanning for Murray--this feels like the kind of situation that could really use some management. He doesn't see their manager, though, so he gives his friend another anxious pat on the back and hopes for the best. "Hang in there, man."

In the first half of the performance, Murray got a call that he needed to run an errand and left the boys to their own devices, confident that the show was off to a good start and nothing would go wrong. Now, as he sneaks back into the bar to hear no music playing and the audience in a frenzy, he gets the impression that something may have gone wrong. Mel confirms it when she rushes up to him, frantic, and grabs his wrist to pull him through the crowd to the stage.

"Come quick! Oh, god, it's horrible, he… he's in so much pain, and…" Mel's pace slows, the urgency in her tone giving way to lust. "And he's gasping and working up a sweat and he just looks so sickly, like a little orphaned bird who needs to be tenderly nursed back to health."

By the time they reach the front of the crowd (which isn't particularly big, but they are worked into a stir, so there's a lot of bumping into people, which slows things down) Jemaine has stopped coughing and is now ravenously chugging from what he doesn't notice is actually Bret's water bottle. Bret might point out this mistake if he weren't distracted by Murray's approach.

"Well, what on earth's going on here, guys?" Murray exclaims, incredulous.

Bret points at Jemaine, then at the pile of damp petals. "A bunch of flowers just came out of Jemaine's mouth."

Murray's brow furrows. "They came out of his mouth? What is that, some sort of reverse sword-swallowing? Jemaine, you can't be putting on a circus act in the middle of a gig!"

"I don't think it was a circus act," Bret mutters, but he checks with Jemaine anyway: "Was that an act you were putting on just now, with the flowers coming out of your mouth?"

Jemaine shakes his head and starts to say "No, definitely not an act, I'm suffering from a very real illness that I have no control over," but doesn't even get past the first syllable before Murray cuts him off.

"It's unprofessional, is what it is, guys. How would you like it if… if you were at the barber and partway through he started giving you a massage?"

"I think I'd like that quite a lot, actually."

"Yeah, you could really save some money that way on massages."

That's not the response Murray hoped for. He crosses his arms with a disappointed huff. "Well, you wouldn't like if he gave the massage with his scissors, would you? No, you wouldn't," he goes on before the guys can interject. "You'd be horribly cut up. That's what you're doing to your audience when you behave like this. Now, who do you think is going to clean that up?"

Despite the many helpful suggestions they offer for who could clean up the pile of floral leavings, Murray's question proves rhetorical. Jemaine heaves a heavy sigh as he wads up a clump of flowers in a paper towel and drops it in a trash bin. Beside him, Bret squirts a bit of unlabeled chemical cleaning fluid on the stage and scrubs at it with a rag.

Bret doesn't like plants as much as he does animals, and he can't identify most of them by species like he can with mold, but these flowers are familiar. They must be native to New Zealand, because he's seen them before in the wild. Bret's just about to ask if Jemaine can remember their name when Mel pops up, planting her elbows on the stage with her hands tucked under her chin.

"Hey, guys…"  She pauses for the guys to mumble their reluctant greetings to her, then locks onto her target with barely concealed glee. "So, Jemaine, I couldn't help but notice you seem kind of sick with a mysterious illness that makes you cough up flowers. Gosh, that's really horrible. You must be in so much pain…"

She reaches out to touch his arm. He leans away.

"I'm mostly fine right now, actually--"

"You know," she sighs emphatically, "It sounds a lot like hanahaki disease, where flowers start growing in the lungs of someone who's in love."

Now that's new information. A little suspicious, coming from Mel, but…

"What, just, like, anyone who's in love?" Bret asks.

"No, silly!" She bats at his arm with a grin, and then her attention snaps back to Jemaine, who (unnoticed by Bret) has completely blanched at the mention of love. "It's when you're repressing your love, and you feel like it's unrequited… you wouldn't happen to feel that way about anyone, do you, Jemaine?" She bats her eyes conspicuously. "Because you know, depending on who it is, it might be more requited than you think."

"Hm. Okay, yes, that--that's very interesting, thank you, Mel."

Jemaine casts a nervous glance over at Bret, whose expression is hard to read--he looks contemplative, but he could very well be daydreaming about something only tangentially related. He'll just have to make sure to convince him that Mel is crazy (well, they both know that much, but crazy for bringing up this specific completely ridiculous thing) later that night, once they get home.

Jemaine passes out almost as soon as they get in the door. Bret thinks he hears him muttering in his sleep about Mel being crazy, but that's something they both know already, so it's not exactly news worth dwelling on. That stuff about the hanahaki disease was interesting, though. He'll have to look into it and see if it's true.

The next morning, Jemaine is completely out of commission. They have a band meeting scheduled for that afternoon, but by 11:45 it's obvious that Jemaine won't be able to go.

"You know, this reminds me of something," Bret muses over his morning tea while Jemaine is hunched over the kitchen sink. "Do you remember the cat book?"

"Vaguely. Did the cats cough up flowers?"

"No, but the cats would get a cough, and they'd have to eat flowers to feel better."

"Mm, well, that's not much like my problem at all," Jemaine points out. "Sort of the opposite of my problem, really."

"Yeah, but it's still similar, with the coughing. And I've been rereading it lately, so it's been on my mind."

Jemaine shrugs as if to say fair enough, and then promptly flings himself back over the sink to cough up another bundle of petals. Once the latest crop has cleared out, he grabs a handful and slumps to the floor with a sigh. "You think I'd feel better if I tried eating these?"

Bret purses his lips and squints, mulling it over for a second, then shakes his head. "Nah, I don't think so. Pretty sure it only works on cats."

"Right. Yeah, it was just a thought. Not really a good one."

And quite possibly one he only got because he's mildly feverish. Or is he? He doesn't actually know. He'll have to ask someone who knows more about the symptoms of hanahaki--someone who isn't Mel, because he does not want to know what she thinks of all this.

"Alright, band meeting… Jemaine?"

Murray stares for a beat too long at the empty chair across from him until Bret shifts in his seat and mutters, "He's not here. He's home sick."

"Ah! Yes, I see." Murray scribbles that down in his notepad, then glances back up with a puzzled frown. "Home sick? What's he come down with?"

"The, um, the flower sickness. The one where you cough up flowers."

"Ah. At it again with the flowers, is he?" Murray sighs and shakes his head with the air of a disapproving parent. "Well, I hate to tell you this, Bret, but you've been bamboozled."

"Oh yeah? How so?"

"Jemaine's not sick at all," Murray declares. "He's just using that as a ruse so he can stay home and practice his magic act! At this rate he'll be running off to join a travelling circus next. You'd better keep an eye on him, Bret, to make sure that doesn't happen."

"…It's not an act," says Bret, gaze dropping to his lap where his hands fidget anxiously. "Jemaine's really sick. I think it might be really, really bad."

Murray gives him a sympathetic grimace. "See, that's the problem with you, Bret--" Bret frowns at that-- "You're so naive. Well, if Jemaine is out, then I suppose I'll have to cancel your gig for tonight."

Bret leans forward, eyes immediately wide. "We have another gig?"

"Well, you had another gig booked, yes." Murray's already bent over his notepad poised to scribble something out.

"Two nights in a row?"

"You guys are always complaining about not enough gigs, aren't you? So I thought, alright then, how about two gig nights in a row? That's bound to turn things around."

"Aw, thanks, Murray," Bret says with a smile.

"Well, no, don't thank me now. I'm cancelling the gig, remember? Because your bandmate's run off to join the circus."

"He hasn't joined the circus," Bret insists. "And he's not going to."

"No?" Murray challenges, eyebrows raised. "Then where is he?"

"He's at home having a sleep. And eating some soup."

At least that's what he assumes Jemaine is doing. The soup part is a bit of a wild guess since Bret doesn't know if they've actually got any soup mix in their cupboards, but Jemaine does seem to really be sick, and Bret can't imagine that in his condition he's getting up to anything else.

"Ah!" says Murray. "We never finished roll call, did we? Okay, Jemaine's absent… Bret?"

Jemaine half-stumbles into the pawn shop wearing a disposable face mask, glasses fogged. In a flagrant feat of missing the point, he tugs the mask down upon entering the enclosed space and gasps to catch his breath. He took some cold medicine earlier and it may have been expired but at least it's gotten the taste of flowers out of his mouth for a while. He staggers over to the counter and collapses across it. A couple stray petals stuck to the roof of his mouth shake loose and flutter onto the counter at the impact.

"Woah, dude," Dave remarks. "You look gnarly. What's up?"

"Mel says it's called hanahaki." Jemaine doesn't like the look Dave gets when he says that word. "Did you know anything about that?"

"Oh, man, do I ever know about hanahaki. I've had dozens of chicks, man, I'm talking hundreds, coming to me saying they're waking up every day in a bed of roses that sprouted from their lungs. They're obsessed with me." He lays a hand across his chest as he speaks. "And listen, I've got plenty of room in my pants, but my heart has limited floor space, okay? I can go to town on these ladies, and they can spit up tulips and shit while they're sucking me off, you know, give my junk a nice floral garnish. But if I don't return their romantic feelings then it's over for them."

Ah. So Mel was right about the unrequited romantic feelings part of it. That's… unfortunate, considering he hasn't met any women lately, so there's really only one person his unrequited love could be for. Jemaine manages to peel himself off the counter and discreetly brushes away the stray petals so Dave can't notice them and ask with a knowing gleam in his eye why he wants to know. But humiliating as the prospect of getting teased is (especially if Dave were to bring up Bret, even jokingly--) that's not the only thing to worry about here.

"'Over for them'? What does that mean?"

"It means they die, dude. I've got chicks literally dropping like flies over me and what am I supposed to do, compensate their families? No way. That's why I always say, just get the surgery. That way feelings are off the table and we can skip right to the action."

The hanahaki hasn't affected his stomach at all, but suddenly Jemaine feels queasy. "…The surgery?" he asks, weakly latching on to the one potentially encouraging part of what Dave is saying.

"Yeah, it's this procedure where you get all your emotions cut out," he says, casual tone unchanged like he hasn't just introduced something earth-shattering to the equation. "If you ever start hacking up petals, you wanna get that shit scooped out fast before your lungs start to hemorrhage."

"…What, like right away?"

"I mean, as soon as you can afford it. Which, y'know, if you need a little extra cash you can always pawn some of your lame junk here and who knows, I might give you more than it's worth since it's for lifesaving treatment and all. Just don't get used to it."

"…No, I think that might be pretty terrible for us, actually," Jemaine decides after thinking it over for a moment.

"Yeah? How come?"

"Well, Bret and I write our own songs, and sometimes those songs are based on things we're feeling," he explains, suddenly feeling a little awkward for having to explain this. "So not having any feelings to draw on would be bad for our creative process."

"Hey, suit yourself, man. You artistic types can't compete with the rationality of a real businessman. Just know that if it was me who had hanahaki, I'd be ditching my emotions like that." Dave snaps his fingers for emphasis. "Anyway, I've got a business to run, and we don't pawn regurgitated bouquets here. Good luck getting your shit sorted, man."

There's a note of real concern in his voice at the end there, which is almost sweet, but not sweet enough to drown out the sickly bitter taste the conversation leaves in Jemaine's mouth as he trudges home. At least it's something to distract from the taste of flowers.

With a bit of negotiation, Bret manages to convince Murray not to cancel their scheduled gig. He digs out the old tape Jemaine briefly used when he thought Bret was going to quit the band, dusts it off, and luckily it still plays smoothly. Unfortunately the tape was designed to fill in for Bret, not Jemaine, so instead Bret has to fill in for Jemaine while the tape fills in for Bret. Still, it's not their worst performance. Bret would say it just beats out the one from the night before, mainly because nobody drops to their knees choking on flowers this time.

It's lonely, though. He tries to deepen his voice a bit to sound more like Jemaine, and he tries to deepen his guitar playing too, but that doesn't really work. It's just him paired up with a prerecorded echo of his own voice. And by the end of the night, when Murray comes to congratulate him on a successful solo performance and the potential start of his solo career (just in case Jemaine ends up joining the circus after all), he finds that his lungs feel heavy, like something inside is weighing them down.

Mel approaches him while he's walking home. She hands him a ziploc bag full of pressed and dried flowers that Jemaine coughed up the night before, and whatever creepy comments she makes about it don't really register with Bret because as soon as she pulls out the flowers he's just staring at them, mind playing over the events of the past two days and trying to weave together some mental tapestry where this will all make sense.

The next week passes in a haze. Jemaine splits his time between the bed, the couch, and the nearest available concave surface. The bundles of flowers he spits up are getting bigger and now there's blood and stringy bits mixed in. And that's only on day three. If he has hanahaki for much longer, who knows how bad things will get?

Well. He knows. Bret doesn't, yet. Jemaine doesn't really plan on telling him, which probably isn't a good move all things considered. But scary as the thought of dying a slow, painful, and possibly preventable death is, he really doesn't want to seem too gay. He's had his close calls with seeming gay before, and this hanahaki thing just might be the final straw if Bret finds out. (Final straw to what, exactly, he doesn't know, but a rush of dread overtakes him whenever he lets his mind wander onto the topic.)

Bret only makes two non-work-related trips during this time. He goes to the grocery store to pick up some necessary items (including soup mix, because mentioning it in passing to Murray the other day has got him craving soup now, and he supposes Jemaine can have some too if he wants) but gets distracted passing by a flower shop on the way home. The timing lines up so well that it feels like it means something, so he goes inside and spends hours comparing every type of flower in the shop to the samples Mel gave him. Nothing matches, and at the end of the day he's kicked out for checking for matching flowers behind the counter and inside the register. He just wanted to be thorough.

His second trip is to the library. He doesn't go there much--the last time was for a particularly ill-fated gig--but he figures some research is in order. He checks out a book on native flowers of New Zealand. It's only about thirty pages long and was in the children's section, but it's got a nice hardcover and some good illustrations. After an afternoon spent leisurely flipping through it on one side of the living room couch while Jemaine lays next to him swaddled in a blanket, he thinks he's got an answer.

"Tecomanthe speciosa," he reads aloud from the book, speaking drawn-out and carefully the way a snooty plant professor might. "Also known as the three kings vine. I think that's what you've got."

Jemaine only answers with a vague hum of indifference. Even that small vocalization triggers a stuttering cough. He scrambles to drag the trash bin he's been keeping nearby at all times over before he can spit flowers all over the floor, while Bret flips to the next page of his book and starts reading about different types of orchids. There's some really interesting stuff in there.

Bret wakes up one day with a scratchy throat. He stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, where he gargles water over a sink that still has a few stray blood-crusted tecomanthe petals stuck to it. When he spits the water out, something comes out with it. He's got the water running and it gets whisked down the drain before he can get a good look, but it looked red, and that's a bad sign. He doesn't want anything red coming out of his mouth when all he did was gargle.

When he comes back into the bedroom, he stands at the foot of Jemaine's bed and jostles his friend awake. "Jemaine, wake up."

"Mmmngh?" Jemaine rolls over, blinking blearily up at Bret. "What?"

"I think you've given me your hanahaki."

Jemaine freezes at that, expression going so blank that for one scary moment Bret wonders if he's passed out or even died. Then he blinks, clears his throat (a scratchy sound these days, which Bret still isn't used to, and it makes him involuntarily cringe) and forcefully shakes his head.

"Couldn't have. It doesn't work like that."

Bret's brow crinkles. "How do you know that?"

"I, ah, well--we'd have spread it to other people by now, wouldn't we?"

"Oh yeah," Bret says, nodding. "Yeah, I guess we would've given it to Murray, and probably Mel, and maybe some other people."

"Yes, so… it can't be airborne, now, can it?"

That's fair enough reasoning. "D'you think Mel is right, then?" he wonders. "About it being unrequited love?"

"Nah," Jemaine lies. "I mean--have you met any girls lately, Bret?"

"Not for a while. You?"

"Well, I… yes." Jemaine's gaze flits away and his shoulders hunch defensively, and Bret is pretty sure he's lying. "Yes, I met someone just before I got sick. A beautiful woman. With big breasts."

"So you do think it's spread by love, then."

"N--well, maybe. But you don't have it."

"I think I do have it. My throat's sore."

"That could be anything. Doesn't have to be hanahaki. 'S probably just a cold."

Bret presses his lips together and shakes his head. "Nah, I'm pretty sure it's hanahaki."

This argument carries on until Jemaine raises his voice too loud and breaks into another coughing fit, at which point Bret has to help drag him out of bed so he can stagger to the sink. The sound the clumps of flowers make when they hit the basin is thicker and wetter than ever, sopping with bloody tissue. Bret lingers, leaning against the doorframe, and watches in case he has to step in.

"Maybe it's my mold farm," Bret suggests. "Could be some mutated spores infecting our lungs."

Between rough gasping coughs, Jemaine manages to glance up at Bret and shake his head. "'S not that."

"Well, it could be."

"Stop blaming things on your mold farm, Bret. I've told you I haven't got a problem with it."

"Yeah?" Bret crosses his arms, suddenly defensive. "But you never give me any positive feedback on it."

(The aggression is misplaced, because a lack of positive feedback on his mold cultivation skills isn't his real problem with the way Jemaine is carrying on in this conversation--like he knows some important information he's not letting on. Still, it would be nice to get some positive feedback on something, since neither of them ever get any for their music.)

"I…" Jemaine blinks, unsure of how to respond to that. A compliment, he supposes--that's what Bret is asking for, isn't it, and it's been well established that compliments aren't gay. "I like your mold farm. I like that you have hobbies like that, I suppose," he adds, a smile creeping onto his face. "Like the weaving, and the sign twirling--"

"Wouldn't call the sign twirling a hobby," Bret mutters. "It's more of a job. I wouldn't do it if I didn't get paid."

"Might be better if you had a few less hobbies, so we could focus more on the band," Jemaine continues without acknowledging that remark. "But otherwise, yes, I like… I like that about you."

Now it's Bret's turn to be unsure how to respond. His friend's charitable words make something sort of twist inside him and it's not a bad feeling, really more of a good one if anything, but something about this mystery feeling makes his chest squeeze tight with anxiety. It must be hanahaki, he decides. Those mutated spores have taken root.

Speak of the devil, Bret gets called in a day later for an unexpected shift of his job. The guy who was supposed to do it cancelled at the last minute to go to an appointment, or maybe got hit by a truck; Bret's too preoccupied to focus on his boss's explanation. In a turn of events so on-the-nose it really feels like some higher power has a hand in all this, he has to stand outside the flower shop he explored and got subsequently kicked out of earlier that week, wearing a green bodysuit with a big sunflower-shaped headpiece.

There's not much to say about the job. It goes fine, although being away from the apartment when Jemaine is in such a bad state makes him antsy. He imagines coming home to find his friend sprawled out on the living room floor or in bed or crumpled over the sink, unmoving. The thought makes him shudder each time it creeps into his mind.

When he makes it back to the apartment, it's dark out and his sore throat is worse. There's a persistent tickle urging him to cough, and so he does, into his elbow like a respectable adult. When he lowers his arm there are a few curved red petals stuck to his sleeve. He eyes them, gears turning in his head, before peeling them off one by one and heading into the bedroom.

For the second time in as many days, Jemaine is woken up by Bret shaking him. He scowls and tries to bat his friend away with a wave of his hand, but Bret is undeterred. He sticks a handful of something that might be flower petals right into Jemaine's personal space bubble with a smirk.

"See, I told you I had hanahaki."

Those words flip a switch in Jemaine's mind. He sits up, fumbling for his glasses on the nightstand and then the switch to turn the lamp on. Once he can see properly, he takes a closer look, and… yes, those are definitely slightly crumpled red petals in his hand. Unconsciously holding his breath, he brushes his fingertips over the petals. They have a slight film covering them, but no blood--at least not yet.

"Those came out of your mouth?" he mutters incredulously. "Really?"

"Yeah, so…" Bret shifts, face scrunching up with discomfort. "Dunno if you should be putting your hand all over them. It's a little bit like sticking your fingers in my mouth."

"Ah. Yes." Cheeks heating, Jemaine retracts his hand and wipes it off on his pajama bottoms. Then something occurs to him and he has to painfully swallow down a fresh growth of tecomanthe speciosa before he can ask: "So you--did you meet a girl while you were out holding a sign, then?"

It's a perfectly valid question--that very thing happened before, after all--but Bret has to shake his head. "No, nobody." Honestly, even if a pretty lady had come by while he was wearing that sunflower costume, he's not sure he even would have noticed, because… "I was mostly thinking about you."

"…What?"

"Just… your illness, you know." Bret ducks his head, cheeks heating, which is probably a symptom of hanahaki. "I was a bit worried, because--remember how I brought up the cat book?" Jemaine doesn't reply, but raises his eyebrows as if to say, yes, go on. "Well, the cats, um." Bret swallows hard, folding his hands at his waist and fidgeting with the petals clasped within. "When they get sick, if they don't eat enough plants on time, they don't always make it."

"Ah. Yes, I remember that bit," Jemaine remarks. "I remember you crying for weeks when one of your favourite cats died."

Bret nods, a bittersweet smile crossing his face at the memory. Even now, remembering the tragic fate of the fictional feral cat brings a tear to his eye. But that was also one of the first times Jemaine had managed to lift his spirits when he was depressed.

Jemaine, for his part, is silently grateful for this literary diversion, because it holds him back from saying what he's thinking, which is "So you were thinking about me and then you got hanahaki?" He doesn't want to be presumptuous here, he really doesn't, but… suddenly his own lungs feel a whole lot lighter.

"I think I've got it."

"Got what?"

"These flowers." Bret holds up some of the more intact red blossoms he's coughed up throughout the day in his cupped hand and shakes them lightly, and with his other hand taps the page of his library book. He's reading at the dining room table over a cup of medicinal tea while Jemaine, who suddenly seems to be feeling a lot better, plucks at his bass on the couch. "Looks like kakabeak, or Clianthus. Also known as parrot's beak."

"Oh, parrot's beak, that's fitting," Jemaine remarks with a nod to Bret's shirt--he's wearing the one with the parrot on it. Bret looks down, sees the shirt, and smiles.

"Aw, yeah, you're right." He glances back down at the book and scans the next line. "Oh, and they're also called lobster claws."

"Lotta names for one flower."

"Well, it's a pretty cool flower. See, Jemaine, it's got a hooked shape."

Bret holds up the book and twists around to show his friend the illustration. Jemaine spares it a halfhearted glance, nods, and then looks back down at his bass. He's not getting anywhere with songwriting today. A lot went through his head when he thought he might be creeping close to death (mostly about Bret, but he could change that if he turned it into a song, make it all about a pretty lady) but he didn't write any of it down, and now he can't remember any of the great lyrics that popped in his head over the past week. Maybe now that Bret's sick too he'll come up with something.

Satisfied by his newfound floral knowledge (maybe he can take up gardening once this is all over) Bret sets the book facedown so he doesn't lose his page and goes to take a sip of tea. A bit of it goes down the wrong pipe. He sputters, which triggers a bout of hanahaki. Flowers start making their way up his throat while there's still hot tea trying to make its way down and he chokes, losing his grip on the cup in the process.

Seeing this, Jemaine scrambles to his feet and moves faster than he has in his life to catch the cup before it can shatter--they are not going through another cup fiasco on his watch. He dives, arms outstretched, under the table with his knees skidding against the floor and barely manages to snag the falling cup. The sigh of relief he lets out is drowned out by the harshly unpleasant noise of Bret coughing. He can't even tell if it's hanahaki this time or if it's just the tea doing him in, but either way, it sounds wretched. He doesn't even want to look. He stays crouched under the table, holding the cup in sweaty hands, while his friend's legs knock against his back as he spasms like an epileptic dog.

Bret's vision is blurring. Hot tea dribbles out of his mouth and pools on the table, accompanied by flower petals, but not enough--there's too many still stuck in his throat, too many parrot beaks and lobster claws, and he can't summon the strength to expel them all. His body jerks, and he can feel his knees slamming up against something under the table, and then a warm hand wraps around his leg and holds it steady.

"Easy there, Bret. Let me just… here…"

Gingerly, grimacing all the while, Jemaine extricates himself from under the table and sets the cup down at a safe distance. Then he crouches next to Bret, putting his hands on his shoulders to steady him--steady both of them, really--and takes a deep breath, which is something Bret is unable to do at the moment. He really doesn't want to have to do this. He couldn't bring himself to when it was his own life on the line. But now that it's Bret… well, he still doesn't want to seem too gay. But he really doesn't want Bret to meet the fate of all of Dave's supposed unrequited suitors. Which, come to think of it, it is possible that Dave could have been slightly exaggerating…

"Bret? Can you hear me, Bret?" No response other than further choked wheezing, but that doesn't necessarily indicate anything. Jemaine remembers all too well how hard it is to talk around a mouthful of flowers. "Listen, about this hanahaki. I think Mel wasn't that far off about what causes it. In fact, I think she was exactly right, actually. And I think the repressed love that gave me hanahaki was, um, well, there's a possibility that it might have been for you."

Bret's eyes are wide and wild with mortal dread. It doesn't really help that Jemaine is up close in his personal space, expression grim, lips moving in words Bret can't make out over his own pulse slamming in his ears. The flowers in his throat just keep getting bigger. He can feel them swelling up when Jemaine speaks, pushing against his windpipe, blooming one after another in a bouquet more vibrant than anything they were selling at that flower shop the other day, but nobody can see it because it's all trapped inside him and--

Jemaine squeezes tighter at his shoulders. It jerks Bret back to attention before he can pass out. But he still can't breathe and his senses are still blurring and he still can't make out what Jemaine is saying to him with an increasingly desperate look on his face. Given all this, Bret's not sure if he's hallucinating when Jemaine, with a look of great reluctance, wrenches his eyes shut and leans in with his lips slightly parted.

That's when Bret passes out. His eyes roll back in his head the instant before Jemaine slams their lips together, and he goes limp in his friend's arms.

And then, seconds later--giving Jemaine just enough time to go through a few stages of grief in fast-forward--he jerks awake again with a gasp. He sits up, panting, and frantically pats himself down. A few stray kakabeak petals drift to the floor, and he catches a few more when he swipes his tongue carefully around the inside of his mouth, but that's it. There's nothing jamming his throat, no heavy sensation in his lungs. He's cured.

His gaze flits to Jemaine, who's backed away as though thrown by telekinesis and now has his back pressed against the fridge, whole body tense and breathing heavily. His face is flushed, and as the colour creeps back into Bret's face, he finds his own cheeks burning a little hotter than average too. And his heart is fluttering. And…

"Did you just kiss me?" he asks, not entirely sure what emotion he's feeling. Surprise, definitely. Probably should be some disgust in there, right? Though oddly, it feels more positive than that. Sort of exciting, almost.

"I… it was a CPR technique. Saved your life," Jemaine adds, which is technically true even though the part before it isn't, nor is the next bit. "I read about it in a hanahaki… treatment… manual."

Bret gives him a doubtful squint. "Didn't think you had one of those."

"Mmn, yes, well… it just came in the mail today."

"Can I read it?"

"No, don't think so. It's in another language."

Bret stops and thinks for a minute. He knows Jemaine is making things up to save face, and he doesn't blame him, because if he really did kiss him just now that would be weird, and unexpected, and probably a bit gay. He'd probably try to deny it too, if it was the other way around. But now that he thinks about it, really thinks about their relationship and some of the turns it's taken… it's not exactly out of left field, is it? In fact, it kind of makes sense. And the more Bret thinks about it, the more he realizes he might not mind so much--this might be something he wants, even. The thudding of his heart when he leans toward Jemaine sure beats choking on flowers, anyway.

"You've still got hanahaki, though, haven't you?" he says, trying to keep a playful smirk off his face as he scooches over to corner his friend against the fridge.

"A little bit, yeah," Jemaine answers hesitantly. He's not entirely sure what direction things are taking now, and with the uncertainty comes the familiar press of tecomanthe speciosa against his windpipe.

"Well…" And now Bret can't hold back his smirk as he raises a hand to cup the side of Jemaine's face. "Maybe I could use your CPR technique to suck it out of you."

Ah. Yes, okay, now Jemaine thinks he knows where things are going, and he likes that. He likes the direction things are headed, and he can admit that now, and when he gives a stiff jerky nod he immediately feels the release of pressure in his throat. Bret's eyes flutter halfway shut, and he leans in, and when their lips meet there are no flower petals getting in the way.

"Item one: reverse flower-swallowing. Look, guys, I'm really sorry for giving you such a hard time about it. I've just heard about this rock-and-roll group, they're quite popular, and look at this." Murray slides a photo of a tattooed rock star pretending to swallow a sword onstage and taps on it emphatically. "There's a market for these kinds of stunts. It draws attention. Maybe not exclusively positive attention, and not entirely because of the artists' talent, but--well, Jemaine, I'm sure you remember how your first flower performance whipped the crowd at that bar into a frenzy."

"Mm. Yes, but, we can't actually do that, Murray," Jemaine interrupts him, shifting awkwardly in his seat. Murray can't see it this from his angle, but he and Bret are holding hands just to try it out. "You see, we're not coughing up flowers anymore."

"No? Why not? Did you use up all your flower props? I'm sure you could find more if you…"

"No, he means the source of the flowers has stopped," says Bret. "He had hanahaki, and then he gave it to me--"

"Wouldn't really say I gave it to you."

"Well, technically I had it because of you, so."

"Yes, but then technically I also had it because of you, and mine developed first, so really--"

Throughout this exchange, Murray's gaze flits back and forth between them with a deepening crease in his brow. Before their quarrel over semantics can carry on, he interrupts with an incredulous exclamation.

"Why didn't you tell me it was hanahaki, guys? I could have given you advice! Remember, I had hanahaki not that long ago."

Bret and Jemaine exchange a glance; this is news to them. "Did you?"

"Of course! You remember when I fell in love with my coworker, and when she left I came down with hanahaki."

Bret hesitantly shakes his head. "No…"

"I remember you wanted to write a song about her," says Jemaine.

"Yes, but after that--you don't remember when I started coughing flowers?" All he gets in response is more blank stares. Murray shakes his head in disbelief. "It lasted for weeks--I had to go to the hospital! You don't remember?"

They don't, but now they're mildly curious--the operative word being mildly.

"How'd you manage to stay alive, then, if you had hanahaki?" Jemaine wonders. He leans forward and drops his voice a little so Bret is ostensibly out of earshot, adding: "Did you get the surgery?"

"What surgery?" Bret asks.

"What--yes, of course I had surgery done! You should remember this part--it put me in terrible debt."

"But you've still got emotions."

"Yes, and you're riling them up as we speak with all your insensitive questions," Murray retorts. "I'm not going to tell you my entire medical history, Jemaine, especially since you can't be bothered to remember it."

A few minutes later, when they're walking to the bus stop on the way home, Bret stops and turns to give Jemaine an accusatory look. "What was all that back there about a surgery that could cure hanahaki?"

"Mmn, yes, that. I chose not to get it."

"Well, maybe I would have chosen to get it if I'd known it was an option."

"But you wouldn't have any emotions then," Jemaine points out. "We couldn't go out together."

He adjusts his grip on Bret's hand as he says this, and Bret has to admit he makes a good point. He is glad he can still feel things. He shrugs, a bit bashful, and sticks his other hand in his pocket.

"Still, it would have been nice to weigh my options."

Jemaine gives a noncommittal grumble in response, which isn't exactly an apology. Bret continues to pout until Jemaine presses a quick kiss to his temple, which is slightly more apology-adjacent, and they carry on. Jemaine adds under his breath as they continue walking, "We probably couldn't afford it anyway."

One nice thing about the hanahaki, though, that neither of them will say aloud (at least not outside the context of a song, which has the plausible deniability of certain events being exaggerated) is how strangely comforting it was to briefly be surrounded by the flora of their home country again. It figures, really, that their feelings for each other would manifest in a way that feels like home. Well, aside from the violent coughing.

-End-