Work Text:
it started out innocently. with a slight tickle in his throat while he was in class.
he felt the uncomfortable itch at the back of his throat while diligently trying to look like he was listening but not really listening to his professor do a “historical no homo” yet again. it’s the first class he has to attend every week and he has an asshole for a professor. how lucky.
he wondered if he was getting sick, which, considering jimin forced him to take care of him while he was sick a few days ago (whining on and on about how “i would have done the same for you jungkookie” and “i have to stay in our room now, i can’t let yoongi get sick too so you have to take care of me” . in aegyo. with tissue strips up his nose. while throwing in a few coughs that he’s pretty sure was fake af) (and don’t get him wrong, he loves his hyung but. why), wouldn’t really be that surprising.
so he decided to ignore it, thinking to himself that if he truly gets sick, then he might be able to get excused from the boring ass lecture that he doesn’t know what he did in his past life to get subjected to. he knows that it’s awful to want to get sick and waste the hard-earned money that his parents are paying for his education but with a bigoted professor like the one in front of him, he thinks his parents will forgive his selfishness.
he quietly cleared his throat and continued to tune out his professor’s excuses about why “it was the practice back then, it was definitely not gay ...” about pretty much anything and everything, as if queerness was just invented during the 21st century.
ahhh, if he does get sick, taehyung will probably take care of him. he giggles a little at the thought and his professor throws him a look and raises an eyebrow at him so he straightens himself and goes back to pretending that he’s listening.
it will definitely be nice if taehyung takes care of him.
— was what he thought then but now that he has just been awoken by his violent coughing and is sitting up and is now staring at a tiny white petal (????????) in his hand which he’s pretty sure he just coughed up (??????????), he doesn’t think it’s lucky if he gets sick anymore.
then again maybe he’s just feverish. maybe he’s truly getting sick and this is him feverish. it doesn’t make sense and he doesn’t feel sick but it’s probably 2am and he’s tired and taehyung is sleepily trying to pat and rub his back (mostly just hitting random spots but hey at least he’s trying and that’s enough for jungkook honestly) so he just accepts his fate and falls back to sleep.
when he wakes up the next morning and he finds some more stray white petals on their bed it takes a fuckton of will to not scream his lungs out in fear and frustration so he doesn’t wake taehyung up.
he stares at the ceiling for a while, breathing in and out to calm himself down. then he disentangles himself from taehyung, making sure to switch his body with a pillow before taehyung’s eyebrow starts to furrow because he just needs something to hug when he’s asleep.
he couldn’t be bothered to throw the petals out so he leaves them on the bed and quietly gets dressed to go to his class for the day.
and just like he did when the slight tickle at the back of his throat first presented itself the day before, he decided he’s going to ignore the flower petal-coughing too. he’s really good at ignoring things anyway. and the flower petal-coughing is probably just temporary. it will probably go away soon enough.
it doesn’t.
he just progressively continues to cough up more and more flower petals. thankfully, and unbelievably, no one really notices that he’s coughing up flower petals during class. he should probably thank this particular professor for being much more interesting that students actually pay attention to them. maybe a basket of fruits, maybe a gift certificate, maybe a bouquet of flowers ... he snickers to himself and it makes him cough more.
it’s going to be a long day.
later that day when he comes home he finds taehyung on lying down on their couch. he doesn’t really open his eyes but he has a sleepy smile on his face and he greets jungkook with outstretched grabby hands ushering him to lie down with him.
he puts down his bag beside the coffee table and struggles to lie down with the little amount of space in the couch. they make do anyway.
he’s on his way to falling asleep when taehyung whispers, “yah, kookie, how did you know white orchids are my favorite?”
“huh?”
“the flowers on the bed”
huh. he stays quiet. so that’s what those are.
he can feel taehyung smiling. “thank you.”
and that makes him smile too.
it takes a few more days before he’s made aware of what the hell is actually going on with him.
he’s currently in yoongi’s makeshift studio recording his part for a song that the older has been working on in a while when he feels a cough coming and before he can stop himself he violently coughs up maple leaves.
“what the fuck?” it’s yoongi. voicing his own thoughts.
“jungkook, what the fuck have you been eating?” yoongi’s face looks so weirded out that if he had it in him, jungkook would have laughed. as it was, his throat hurts a bit so he doesn’t. “you should really stop listening to jimin. sometimes i think he throws in some random grass leaves when you ask him for smoothie recipes to be honest.”
“i didn’t fucking eat that—“
“language.”
“bullshit.”
yoongi doesn’t respond so he sits down on the floor and sighs. “i don’t even know where they’re coming from. i’ve been coughing up flower petals—white orchids, apparently—these past few days and now they’re maple leaves and I don’t fucking know what to do.”
he has his hands on his face when he hears yoongi ... laughing?
he looks up at him and scowls, “honestly, hyung, it’s not funny. i might die, you know. and i’m going to haunt you. and jimin. for the grass smoothie recipe and for all the times i walked in on you.”
“hanahaki huh?”
“what?”
“hanahaki. i think you have hanahaki.”
“hyung, i don’t have time for your jokes. so honestly, if you’re trying to prank me –“ yoongi just rolls his eyes at him before continuing.
“hanahaki is a disease caused by one-sided love. in your case, it’s probably taehyung.” he can feel his face blushing and he bites his lip as he looks down willing himself to calm down. yoongi just reaches for his shoulder, patting him. “it’s fine, kid. we know.”
we? that makes him look up.
“who’s we?”
“literally everyone.” everyone? yoongi probably sees the panic in his face and adds, “except taehyung, probably. aish, that kid.”
“anyway, hanahaki is a disease where you cough up flowers because of one-sided love. there isn’t really much study on this because it’s really rare? and people who get hanahaki don’t really talk much about it, especially since they think people will think they’re lying or that they’re pathetic.” he nods in understanding before he pauses.
“wait, then how do you know so much about this?”
yoongi just smiles at him before he gets it. “you had it?!” jungkook asks in disbelief. “but jimin looks at you like you hung the stars you can’t tell me that that was one-sided, hyung.”
he sees yoongi’s cheeks pink as he smiles a little to himself. “well, hanahaki doesn’t mean that the person you’re in love with doesn’t love you back or that they will never love you back. it’s just that you’re not together or you haven’t told each other. so it might be that you think it’s one-sided but it might actually not be.”
“for example, jimin and i were both coughing up flowers. it’s good that we realized that we were coughing up each other’s favorite flowers though.”
“do you know how hard it was to hide that you’re coughing up sunflower petals?” yoongi is making a face but he sounds so damn fond and jungkook finds himself laughing a little at the image of yoongi coughing up sunflower petals, of all things. “at least jimin was just coughing up magnolias.”
“what about namjoon-hyung and seokjin-hyung though, did they have it too?”
“ah that was a worse scenario. that got to the point where they were both throwing up the flowers because of a misunderstanding.”
“what do you mean? shouldn’t it have gone the same way as you and jimin? they’d both realize they were coughing up each other’s favorite flowers?”
“well, namjoon was definitely throwing up pink peonies, but he saw seokjin throwing up and he thought he saw him throwing up cat’s ear and that’s hoseok’s favorite flower.”
“seokjin-hyung was in love with hoseok-hyung?!” he’s pretty sure his eyes are so wide right now and he probably looks ridiculous but he can’t really bring himself to care.
yoongi waves a hand, “no no. but namjoon’s favorite flower is dandelion and that. is unbelievably similar to cat’s ear.”
yoongi’s quietly laughing to himself now and it’s silent between the two of them for a while. both of them has acknowledged that they won’t be getting anything done with the track today before he pipes up, “then what’s with the maple leaves?”
yoongi who has been quietly laughing gasps and is now laughing out loud with his hands on his face. when he finally calms down he fixes jungkook with a faux-serious look. “you should probably pray that he doesn’t meet a seaweed any time soon.”
“fuck.”
“yep.” is all yoongi says before turning back to his equipment.
fuck.
he spends the next few days researching about hanahaki. which means that he has been randomly asking people about it and some were helpful and some thought he was fucking with them and the others decided that they would fuck with jungkook instead. but with the few people who were very helpful to him – thank you librarian and cafeteria lady – apparently, hanahaki isn’t really limited to flowers. it’s just that it has to be the plant that the person you’re in love with finds the most beautiful, and for most people that means flowers. except taehyung isn’t like most people. and jungkook really doesn’t mind.
after a week, he still doesn’t mind.
everyone finds out that he has hanahaki though.
it’s pretty hard not to notice when hoseok finds him practically lying on the bathroom floor, hugging the toilet, retching. hoseok frantically looks for seokjin which, because he’s frantic, ends up with him making everyone worried and following him.
when they all finally get to the bathroom they find the floor littered with an assortment of plants ranging from lily of the valley to succulents to venus flytraps (which he can literally see hoseok visibly gagging at and he’d fight him if he weren’t already so weak).
“kookie.” taehyung’s voice sends everyone into silence. he’s barely standing in the crowded bathroom but it’s almost as if everyone has decided to make way for them to look at each other. everyone’s holding their breath when he continues. “do you know what red tulips mean?”
declaration of love. “of course, those are my favorite.”
taehyung slowly smiles at him and what he says next makes everyone breathe a sigh of relief.
“good. because i’ve coughed up so many of them.”
later that night when everyone has cleared out and has given their standard teasing requirement (seokjin and hoseok congratulating them while throwing in safe sex reminders, namjoon jokingly starting to give a speech on the beauty of the concept of hanahaki before seokjin pinches him and he just throws his hand up in surrender, laughing, jimin and yoongi calling them disgusting before genuinely smiling and congratulating them) and they’re both lying in bed, taehyung holding him (which he finds, isn’t really that much of a difference to how they’ve always been), taehyung speaks up.
“i almost liked seaweed.”
silence.
“you made me throw up venus flytraps.”
he hears an indignant huff from taehyung. “hey, you made me cough up tulips too. i was just stealthy enough.”
“okay, tae, i love you –“
“i love you too”
“—but you still made me throw up venus flytraps.”