Chapter Text
Mingi was sick.
That was all anyone would tell him and it was driving him mad.
Yunho knows that he might not really be allowed to be privy to every single thing Mingi does because they were exes but they were still best friends. His best friend was sick enough to be dodging his calls, avoiding their hangouts, to suddenly be locking himself in his home. All that and no one was telling him what was wrong.
It was driving him mad.
Yunho wanted to know what was so wrong with Mingi that he was sick for weeks so here he was, in front of Mingi’s door with soup in hand that was too salty and spicy because it was the only way the man would eat it when he was sick. He just had to get Mingi to open the damn door.
“Mingi! I know you’re in there!” The knocks were echoing in the hallway and Yunho was half afraid the neighbors would come out and assume he was coming as an ex to drown Mingi in soup. “Open the door!”
When he didn’t even hear a rustle Yunho walked down a floor, to the end of the hallway, and searched below the decorative potted plant where he found the emergency key. Right where it’s always been for years.
Yunho goes back and knocks viciously again, giving Mingi one last chance to open the door himself. “Mingi! Open this door right now!” When he doesn’t hear anything inside he opens the door himself and walks in just in time to hear retching. “Mingi?” Leaving the soup by the door and kicking off his shoes haphazardly, Yunho dashes to the bedroom to see Mingi’s back, bowed over a wastebasket.
“Mingi!” Running over, desperate to help or offer comfort or do something, Yunho almost misses the way Mingi flinches right before shuddering and leaning over his trashcan to retch again. To spit up flowers. It freezes Yunho before he gathers himself enough to kneel slowly by his best friend's side and rub a soft hand up and down his back.
“Yunho,” Mingi says, spitting out petals caught between his teeth and Yunho stares at the blood caught on the pink petals.
“I'm here. You're going to be fine,” Yunho says, forcing himself to be steady. He doesn't expect Mingi to shiver, shove a hand out to push Yunho away roughly, before spitting more petals out, and glaring.
“Leave.”
The fear that was traveling in waves ices up into fear. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says, harsher than he means to. Eyeing the blooding petals in the trash Yunho breathes in deep and tries not to flinch at the smell of flowers. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
Mingi folds himself over, pushing the wastebasket away, shoving his face between his knees and Yunho feels Mingi’s back tense under his hand. “Yunho, please, just leave me alone.” It comes out painful in every single way. Hoarse, scratchy, and breaking in a way that Yunho can hear proves that Mingi doesn’t actually mean it. “I’ll be fine, just… just leave me alone.”
Yunho shoves at the trash full of flowers with his free hand, “does this look fine to you?” Mingi continues to stare at the floor, breathing slow and even, and Yunho feels his anger grow to hide his immense worry. Weeks of wondering what was wrong fueling him. “Does anyone even know? Did you even get checked out? Who,” and Yunho almost doesn’t want to ask but he has to, “who is this for?”
“Yunho.” Mingi says and he means, leave it alone.
“Mingi.”
“Yunho.”
Feeling his lips thin in irritation he takes purposefully deep breaths. “Fine. Don’t tell me who, but does anyone know? Did you get this checked?”
Mingi looks over, staring at Yunho, and Yunho spots the moment Mingi loses the fight. The moment he can tell Yunho isn’t budging. Feels the silent sigh under his hand still on Mingi’s back. “Yes and yes.”
Everyone.
Everyone else knew, Yunho realises in that one second. Yunho was the only one not realizing his best friend was dying and everyone was—
No. He’ll deal with that later. He has to deal with it later because Mingi lurches and Yunho just barely brings the nearly-full wastebasket under him in time to catch the cascade of petals.
“Mingi, please, who is it?” Yunho begs when Mingi finishes and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
“What does it matter? What would you even do?” Mingi pushes the full trash away from him again and Yunho reaches to unwrap the bag, tie it up, and walk over to the bathroom for the extra bags to replace it. Walks the apartment like his second home and tries not to let it hurt. Uses the time to cool down. “Would you make friends with them until you can convince them to fall in love with me?” Mingi calls after him sardonically.
Yunho comes back with a fresh basket and hauls Mingi to his feet, guiding him to the bed. “I don’t know, but if I know who it is, at least I can do something instead of just watching you die.” What Yunho doesn’t say: I don’t think I can watch you die and not do it too.
“You don’t have to watch me die.”
Throwing the trashcan down Yunho just barely stops himself from grabbing Mingi and shaking him. “You can’t even tell me you’re not going to die? Do you even plan on doing anything about this? Confessing? Getting surgery? Something?” Mingi’s silence answers him enough. Yunho can’t imagine a life without Mingi. There can’t be a life without Mingi.
There has to be something.
He has to do something.
Something.
“Fall in love with me.” It comes out before he can even really process it himself but even as he says it he feels it settle in his chest. “Fall in love with me.” He says again, more firmly, and walks to kneel in front of Mingi’s sitting form who stares at him blankly. “I know, I know, we ended things and we weren’t right for each other back then,” Yunho says even as he registers that ‘back then’ was only last year but he rushes on before Mingi can point it out, “but you know me and I know you and I can’t lose you.”
“Yunho…” A hand comes up, hesitantly, before resting on Yunho’s hair and just resting there. Yunho lowers his head to bury his face in Mingi’s knees.
“I can’t lose you, Mingi. I know we broke up but we can do it right this time, I can do right by you this time. Whoever it is that you’re in love with? Forget them. Just fall in love with me.”
“You don’t love me like that.”
“I’ve loved you for as long as I've known you.” Yunho confesses, gripping Mingi’s shins so hard he might bruise. Wills the flowers to recede. Wills it to be enough.
“You don’t love me like that anymore.”
The bark of laughter comes out of him before he can bite it back. Mingi is so blind. Yunho has walked around for a year with a hole carved out of him, bleeding, because he lost Mingi in a way he’s wanted since he was in highschool. He’s been in love with Mingi for as long as they’ve known each other and Yunho doesn’t think he’ll ever stop. “Mingi,” he says, carefully even, “I will always love you. Fall in love with me.”
The hand in his hair falls to push his shoulder and Yunho lets himself fall away from Mingi and watches as he lunges for the empty trash to fill it with more flowers. Yunho thinks he spies flower buds coming up next to those petals. Anxiety and fear locks his limbs in place and he sits there watching his friend spit up flowers willing them all to stop.
“Mingi,” Yunho croaks out when the man stops heaving, “please. I can’t lose you.”
“Okay.”
Yunho crawls closer, hesitantly. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” Mingi laughs into the trash and rustles the petals with his breath. “Yeah, okay.” There’s an ugly sort of hitching breath that comes out of Mingi that Yunho wants to reach out and chase away. He doesn’t. “Sure, Yunho, whatever you want.”
“I love you.” Reaching out now Yunho tries to grab Mingi’s hand and infuse as much of the truth into his words. “I love you.”
“Okay.” Mingi sounds tired and he brushes Yunho off to stand and slip under his covers.
Staring at the rise and fall of the sheets Yunho gathers himself. “I have soup. You should… you should eat something.” He remembers the spice and stares at the blood on the petals in the trash. “I’ll order something else. The spice.” He’s already reaching for his phone when Mingi sighs.
“Just give me the soup.”
“It’s too spicy, it’ll hurt you.”
Mingi laughs and coughs harshly. Yunho goes to him, sits at the edge of the bed and moves his bangs away from his face. “I have flowers in my lungs, Yunho, just give me the soup.”
Yunho opens UberEats and lays next to Mingi to show him options. “No, I refuse to hurt you. Now what do you want? That pho place down the street is open today.” After a long silence Yunho looks over to see Mingi staring at him and shakes the phone at him. “Pho? Or something else?”
“Pho is fine,” Mingi sighs out and Yunho smiles in victory, swiftly ordering their food. “Is this your plan? Wine and dine me while confessing?” Said like that in that tone—tired and defeated—Yunho doesn’t see a future succeeding and Mingi must not either. Yunho doesn’t know how long Mingi has but this is supposed to be falling in love not falling into bed with your old ex. So really…
“Yes.” He tries not to sound too nervous or unsure but he also knows, remembers, that Mingi is actually the type who likes that sort of thing. The wining and dining. That he enjoyed the little things just as much as he enjoyed the big stuff. So Yunho tracks their food order and firms his resolve. “Yes, I do plan on doing that. Is there a problem?”
Yunho startles when Mingi’s hand comes and pushes the phone away. “You aren’t worried about that not working? We didn’t work out once, Yunho… what makes you think you can feed me into loving you?”
“Because I know you.”
“Not everything about me.”
And it sits heavy between them, the floral scent that hangs in Mingi’s breath. The person that Mingi loves that Yunho doesn’t know. Despite all that, Yunho reaches to grab Mingi’s hand in his. “I don’t care. I know you best and I will always want to know everything about you, even the parts that hurt.” Even the parts that don’t belong to me. “I love you.”
“Okay.” Mingi pulls his hand away, crawls over Yunho to tip over the bed, scrambles to the trash can, and throws up more flowers. He laughs a bit manically between long bouts and Yunho slides off the bed to go by his side carefully. “Okay,” he says again a bit weaker, “whatever you want, Yunho.”
“I want you to fall in love with me.” Yunho says, forehead resting in the middle of Mingi’s back. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it but he thinks he can almost hear the wheeze and flutter in Mingi’s lungs when Mingi laughs again with his ear so close. “Stop laughing and start falling in love, asshole,” Yunho says with no heat.
“Oh, insulting me is the way to my heart now?”
“Was there ever a time when it wasn’t?”
Mingi laughs, a bit lighter, and jerks backwards to knock Yunho who pokes Mingi’s side in retaliation. “Fuck you, too.”
“Not right now, Mings.” He says back reflexively because they've been best friends forever and boyfriends for years before they became this. “At least take me to a proper dinner first.”
“I've taken you to a hundred dinners.”
With a scoff Yunho helps Mingi back up. “I'm not a whore who you can buy out with old dinners.”
Laughing, lighter and wider in a way that makes Yunho reassured in turn, Mingi lays back down. “You are a whore.”
“That better be said with love.” It's half-joking and half-desperate. The pout on his face comes a half-second too late.
“Sure,” Mingi says, half-joking and half some other thing Yunho doesn’t know. So Yunho burrows under the covers and shoves his face into Mingi’s side like a dog in the way that makes him laugh. “Stop!” He says even as Yunho wraps his arms around Mingi’s waist and rubs his face even closer. “You’re a fucking menace!” Mingi says with a low growl that lets Yunho know he’s actually holding in a laugh.
“You love it,” he says into Mingi’s side and wills it to life. Makes the world listen. Love me, he thinks into Mingi’s body under his hands, give these flowers to me. Crawling up the covers to lay next to Mingi again Yunho fishes his phone out from where he’s laying on it and checks on their food before casually tossing out, “are you free tomorrow?”
“Maybe… why?”
Yunho carefully doesn’t look over as Mingi leans closer to also check on their food. Very carefully holds himself still as he considers his answer. “It’s just… been a while. Do you want to do something?” Yelping at the sudden pinch in his side Yunho can’t help looking over with a glare to meet a dead stare.
“I am actively throwing up flowers,” Mingi says exasperatedly. As if Yunho needs a reminder. As if Yunho could forget. “I’m not going anywhere with you and traumatizing random people.”
It was his turn to pinch Mingi back. “I didn’t mean out, asshole.”
“Right.”
Okay, so what if Yunho had meant out? Whatever. “I’m not an idiot!”
“Right.” Mingi says again with a smirk that seems too knowing.
“Oh shut up.” Yunho says far too fondly and goes for a shove that he aborts when Mingi turns his head to cough roughly into the crook of his elbow. It doesn’t last too long and when he checks he doesn’t spot any petals. Treading carefully, unsure if he’s allowed to joke about this or not but unwilling to let this constantly be something that raises both of their guards he shoves Mingi when he’s done coughing. “I said to shut up, not hack up your lung.” He says it slowly, watching Mingi’s face for how he reacts.
The laugh that bursts out of his best friend is a relief—on both their ends if the way Mingi leans into him is anything to show. “Oh I’m so sorry to disturb your delicate sensibilities.”
“Excused on account of being bed-bound,” he says with his nose raised obnoxiously high and with a nasally voice that sends Mingi giggling. “In exchange, however —”
“In exchange?” Mingi asks with laughter in his voice. “I thought I was excused?”
“However,” Yunho continues, completely ignoring the man who is trying to get under control in Yunho’s shoulder, “you must spend the day with me tomorrow.”
The dramatic gasp lets Yunho know Mingi is going to insult him. “Oh, I always knew being by your side was a punishment.”
Huffing, Yunho drags the cover off of both of them as he stands ignoring Mingi yelling in discontent and looms over the bed. “Here I am —”
“Breaking into my home.”
Yunho ignores Mingi. “— magnanimously buying you food —”
“Oh, breaking out the SAT words.”
“— and you insult me?” Dramatically turning on his heel he walks away. “Why I never.”
Yunho is just crossing from the bedroom to the living room when he hears Mingi sing out to him. “Baby come back! You can blame it all on me!”
“You’re going to have to do better than a Swiffer commercial to get my forgiveness!” Yunho calls back just as someone rings the doorbell. It’s their food when he opens the door and he sets it up easily on the table before going back to the bedroom. “Food is here! C’mon.”
Halfway through their pho Mingi states overly casually into his food, “I’m free. Tomorrow, I mean.”
Yunho just smiles and kicks him under the table. “Yeah, I got that when you started making a big deal over going out. I’ll come over around nine?”
“Maybe ten? And we can grab some lunch later?”
“Sure.” Yunho kicks Mingi again and takes his legs back before Mingi can kick him back but feels his chair shake when Mingi hits his chair instead and laughs at the wince on Mingi’s face. “Eat your food.”
The pho tastes just as good as always under the overwhelming scent of flowers that sits in the apartment.
Yunho would like it to be known that the first thing he did not do when he went back home the night before was immediately call all his friends and accuse them of trying to keep Mingi from him. What he did not do was call them all and rant at them about no one telling him his best friend dying. What he did not do was call them and yell at them with an anger that none of them had seen in all the years of being friends.
That was more like the seventh thing he did.
Yunho would consider that a great amount of self-control.
Of course now he was standing in front of Mingi’s door and seething again because both Jongho and Wooyoung had messaged him to “be careful” with Mingi. As if he needed to be told how to act around his best friend. As if he hadn’t spent all night on how to best care for someone with flowers in their lungs. As if they weren’t the ones who hadn’t let Yunho be here from the start to learn how best to “be careful” with Mingi.
Regardless, Yunho knocks on the door and Mingi opens it looking only slightly wan.
“You’re early?”
Blinking down at his phone’s clock, Yunho raises the screen. “I’m a bit late, actually.” Looking closer Yunho can see the rumpled clothes, mussed hair, and tired eyes. “Did you just wake up?” He did, Yunho is sure of it even as he asks. Those clothes are the old clothes from college Mingi had stolen from him to sleep in and never given back. Mingi looks sleep-soft in them and Yunho resists the urge to gather him in his arms to take him back to bed.
“Sorry,” Mingi says, snapping Yunho out of his thoughts, “I didn’t realize it was so late.” Stepping aside for Yunho to come in he looks aside to cough in his elbow and Yunho spies a stray petal escaping that Mingi ignores. Yunho ignores it too.
‘Sometimes I just don’t want to acknowledge the fact that I’m sick.’ Someone had said in a forum when Yunho was researching. ‘I don’t want every conversation or every incident to be about my illness.’
Yunho looks away from the petal on the floor and takes off his shoes to walk further into the apartment.
When they reach the living room Yunho falters. Does he offer for Mingi to rest more or does he just go ahead and do what he planned for them? Mingi trails after him yawning and Yunho doesn’t know the right answer.
“Do you want to take a nap?” The words tumble over themselves, out before he can doubt himself, then realizes that might sound like he’s just sending Mingi to bed like a tired child and rushes to correct himself. “Together. Take a nap together.”
“That’s your great plan for today?” Mingi clearly tries to ask it incredulously but he can’t hide the smile twitching at the edges of his lips. “Take a nap?”
Breathing through the panic of possibly asking the wrong thing, stepping the wrong way, Yunho firms himself. “To be honest,” and it comes out embarrassed despite his efforts to sound confident, “I just thought we would play some games and catch up before I buy you some lunch and dinner. But a nap sounds good.”
“I didn’t know you to be so lazy, Yun.” Mingi says with a soft laugh that carries even as he turns to head to the bedroom.
Yunho drops his bag by the sofa and follows on soft socked feet. He takes a moment by the entryway to take in the sight of Mingi shuffling under the covers, leaving space for Yunho on the other side.
“Take your socks off and don’t complain about me being on your side.” Mingi says when Yunho opens his mouth. Yunho clicks his mouth shut quickly and eyes the trashcan next to the bed that is half-full by Mingi’s head.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” He tries for innocent even as he takes off his socks and tosses them aside to crawl over Mingi to get on the bed.
“Sure you weren’t.”
Yunho doesn’t bother to respond and ignores Mingi’s snickering like the bigger man that he is by tossing and turning around in the bed to get comfortable. It feels weird to be on the right side of the bed and be keeping a distance from Mingi.
Eventually Mingi seems to tire of the fact that Yunho can’t get comfortable and blindly reaches back until he grabs Yunho’s hand to yank and wrap it around his waist so that they’re spooning each other. Like this, with Yunho’s face buried in Mingi’s hair, it’s easier to dismiss the constant smell of flowers with Mingi’s shampoo and Yunho can’t help but bury his nose in.
“Sorry,” he mumbles into the mess of Mingi’s sleep mangled hair and hears him huff in response. Tightening his hold on Mingi he breathes in the smell of cheap shampoo and feels his heart wrap in thorns.
Love me, he wants to scream. Instead he tells Mingi he loves him again.
“Okay.” Mingi says the same as yesterday, and Yunho feels frustration rise inside himself before he lets it flow away, reminding himself to be patient.
“I love you.” Yunho says again instead of all the frustrated words that sound like begging he holds under his tongue. Drags Mingi closer. Wills the world to work miracles and make the flowers disappear.
Mingi sighs, drapes a hand over Yunho’s that rests on his chest. “Okay.”
They fall silent after that and Yunho slowly feels Mingi go lax in his arms with sleep, feeling it chase him too with his heavy eyelids.
‘Love me.’ Yunho thinks, breathing in Mingi’s hair that used to smell like Yunho. Breathing in the flowers that smell like his best friend’s lungs. ‘Love me one more time.’