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Jack being hates being sick, so the first time he coughs, he doesn't have thoughts of concern. He just thinks, for fucks sake.
A flu has ripped its way through all of Nikki's mortuary assistants in the past month, like a wildfire in a dry forest. Jack thinks they might all be wimps, students and recent graduates as they are. Hungover, probably, with a sniffle. He doesn't want to get the virus and find out how bad it is, though. More importantly, he doesn't want Nikki to get it.
"You'd think with them all wearing masks in here, they wouldn't catch anything from each other." Nikki sighs. She holds out her hand to him. "Can you pass me that little bio-specimen tube, please?"
"Little small or little tiny?" Jack asks, staring at the tray of plastic tubes and bottles in front of him. He really should learn the actual names of these things.
He's her assistant for the day, since Chris or Colin or whatever he's called phoned in sick this morning. No one seems to mind, because Callum-or-whatever is a bit shit at his job and Thomas has been looking for an excuse to get rid of him for months. Nikki is too nice to do it herself - is it Connor or Cameron? - because he hasn't done anything that violates any of her rules, but he is frequently late and often lazy.
This is why Jack only works with Clarissa. Her flaws are limited to insulting him for no reason.
"Little small." Nikki clarifies, so Jack picks up the right one for her because they speak their own language now. It's not like the one he has with Clarissa that developed from knowing each other for so many years - there's something unconscious about it. One day they just knew how to read each other, like a switch being flipped.
"Assistants wear masks in here, but they've probably got their tongues down each other's throats on a Friday night." Jack says as their fingers brush.
Nikki laughs, so sweet. "Is that something you know a lot about?"
"Not recently." He admits. His thoughts have been too occupied with daydreams of Nikki to date anyone else.
"That's a shame." She smirks.
Jacks smiles at her, then feels a tickle in his throat. He coughs, into his elbow through his mask. It won't go away, though, and it quickly turns into a coughing fit. Nikki pats him on the back until he feels something coming up his throat, into his mouth and out into his mask. The coughing stops then, and Jack feels the need to apologise to the corpse that Nikki was just cutting into for ruining its moment.
He excuses himself to go to the bathroom, taking off his mask balling it up in his fist as he goes. When he reaches the sink, he puts the mask down on the counter and a single purple petal flutters out.
"What the fuck?" Jack whispers.
"You okay in there?" Nikki calls from outside the door.
"Yeah, just give me a minute."
He stares at the petal, cradling it in his palm and running his thumb over it. Is that what he coughed up? Did he breathe this in at a crime scene? It has been a while since he went to an outdoor scene, though, and he doesn't remember any purple flowers at the indoor ones. Where did it come from?
There is another option, of course, but he doesn't entertain that. He does not have a lung disease, especially not one that rare. Jack stares at himself in the mirror for a moment. Everything is fine.
Jack steps out of the bathroom, and Nikki is there, leaning against the wall, waiting for him.
His chest tightens.
Get a grip, Hodgson.
The cough remains, but no more petals come up. Jack starts to think he imagined it, such a small thing thrown into the bin just as quickly as it came up. His chest only feels tight when he's at work, so he assumes it's something to do with air conditioning or chemicals and carries on.
No one notices there's anything wrong with him, except Clarissa, because she's a nosy so-and-so that he loves to death. At first she just side-eyes him when he stifles a cough. Then, he has another fit and doesn't get away from his desk fast enough before three little purple petals come tumbling out.
"Jack," Clarissa says, alarmed, "What on Earth is that?"
"Nothing." Jack tries to swipe the petals away, but she has quick hands.
"Did these come out of you?" She asks, studying the delicate purple leaf. He watches the gears turn in her head until it clicks. "Oh, Jack…"
"It's nothing." He insists. She gives him a withering look. "It's- it's not what you think it is."
"It bloody well is!" She exclaims. He stares down at his shoes. "You won't even admit it, which I bet is how you got into this situation in the first place."
"I'm fine, really."
"Who is it?" She asks gently, realising that her usual harsh approach isn't working. He shakes his head. "Come on, I can keep a secret."
Jack is about to speak when Nikki walks in and his throat closes up.
"What are you two conspiring about?" She asks playfully.
"Your birthday." Clarissa says quickly. "It's a surprise, get out."
"Oh, I hate surprises!" She complains, but hurries from the room with the file she came in for, a beautiful smile on her beautiful face.
As soon as she's gone, he coughs up two more petals.
"Oh, my God." Clarissa grins, connecting the dots. "That makes so much sense!"
"Don't tell her." Jack begs.
"If you don't, Jack, you're only going to keep getting sicker."
"It'll go away."
"People die from this, Jack! I've seen it happen more than once." She grips his arm so right that it might kill him first. "Please, just tell her."
"What if she says no?" He asks quietly.
He won't die if she says no, not of the infection, not at this stage. If he confesses to her now, he'll get better either way. But by telling her that he loves her, has been in love with her for years, he risks losing her as a friend. Nikki is the most brilliant woman he has ever met, like if Clarissa was turned up to eleven. She inspires him to be a better investigator, a better man. If she doesn't want to date him, fine, he completely understands that, but to not be by her side every day… he would rather choke to death on flowers. He would rather not exist at all.
"We'll deal with that if it happens." Clarissa pats his shoulder. "Don't let me lose you like this."
"I won't." Jack says, but it isn't a promise he thinks he can keep.
"Jack, can you help Nikki with this autopsy?" Thomas asks. "Craig called in sick again."
It's a week later, and Jack still hasn't done anything about his sickness. His chest isn't just tight anymore - it hurts. If he focuses on it, he thinks he can feel the vines growing up his bronchi, digging their thorns into his throat.
"Who's Craig?" Jack asks, coughing a little.
"That useless assistant of hers. I tell you, he calls in one more time, I'm getting rid of him." Thomas shakes his head disapprovingly.
"Chance would be a fine thing." Jack coughs through the whole sentence.
Thomas frowns. "You should get that cough checked out. It sounds nasty."
"I will." Jack lies.
He has been avoiding Clarissa all week. This morning before work, he coughed up a purple flower bud. It helped him identify the species - Clemantis.
He finds Nikki in the mortuary, standing next to a body bag. It looks strange, lumpy and inhuman. For a moment, he just stares at it, trying to puzzle out what it is. After so many years in this job he has seen thousands of bodies in plenty of odd positions, but something about this doesn't look right, as though it has extra limbs somehow.
Slowly, Nikki opens the body bag. Inside is a mass of little pink flowers growing from a web of thorns and stems, protruding from the bloody remains of the man's chest. He looks around Jack's age, unshaven, hair cut short. His eyes and mouth are closed, peaceful, his body now the fertiliser for a beautiful garden.
"Hanahaki Disease." Nikki explains, taking Jack's fear for fascination. "First seen in Japan in the 1990s, I think. People don't really die of it anymore, there's so much awareness of and treatments for it now."
"Yeah." Jack rasps. He knows all this; he was stupid enough to type his symptoms into Google. "Except this did kill him."
"Maybe." Nikki shrugs. "I haven't done my autopsy yet, I can't jump to conclusions."
His chest tightens painfully. She is so committed to what she does, to her integrity. It draws him infinitely to her.
This will not go away. Jack is destined to become a garden too.
He excuses himself for long enough to throw up a long, twisting vine in the bathroom, then goes back to help Nikki do what she does best.
"Jack." Nikki says, standing over his desk right as he's about to leave for the day.
"Hm?" He can barely talk, the ever-growing flowers finally reaching his voice box.
He has considered telling her, honestly he has. But if she says no, it will devastate him. He will have to get a new job, find new friends, change his identity. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but he would rather Nikki not know and remain his friend than not be in his life at all.
It's killing him, literally, but that's mostly inconsequential to him. Nikki is always more important.
"I was wondering if you wanted to come and have dinner with me?"She asks. "Basically, I have a new lasagna recipe that I want to try-"
"And I'm your guinea pig?" Jack asks weakly, smiling a little.
"Something like that." She smiles, gorgeous. "So? Would you like to be my test subject?"
God, yes, Jack thinks, but instead he chokes out, "As long as you don't cut me open to see what it looks like in my stomach afterwards."
"I'm a pathologist, not Hannibal Lecter." Nikki laughs.
Jack is not well enough to operate a vehicle, so Nikki drives them both back to her house. It's a lovely place - Jack is in the wrong line of work, his salary couldn't pay for this.
He would love to live here, with her. That will never be possible. He chokes a little.
Get a grip, Hodgson.
She sits him down at her kitchen island and starts chattering away as she cooks, about a research paper she's writing. He doesn't really understand everything she's saying, but he reads every single one of her papers without fail. If it goes over his head, then he can just ask her to explain and hear her beautiful voice again.
He smiles softly at her. His chest tightens.
This coughing fit is violent. Nikki is at his side immediately, trying to help, but he pushes her away. He doesn't want her to see this, because then he'll have to explain it to her, and that will blow his entire life up.
A blooming clemantis drops onto Nikki's pristine tile floor, then another. A string of blood-tinged saliva follows, and then it's over as soon as it began.
Except it isn't over.
"Jack…" Nikki whispers, sitting down on the stool next to his. "Is that…"
"Surprise." He says with weak mock excitement.
"Who is it?" She demands, "I'll find her - or him, who cares - and I swear, I will-"
"Calm down." He chokes.
"I will not calm down! Seriously, I'll-"
"You." He admits, because the cat is well and truly out of the bag now. "It's always been you."
Nikki goes silent for the longest moment of Jack's life. He can't look at her, can't face whatever truth is on her face.
She stands up and holds out her hand to him. "We're going to the hospital."
"There's no cure." Jack says mournfully.
"There is. I was reading about it after that autopsy we did."
"I'm too far gone." Jack points at the flowers, in full bloom and soaked in blood. "It's irreversible now."
"It isn't if I love you." Nikki says, determined.
"You don't love me."
"Jack, oh my God, don't be stupid." Nikki takes Jack's face in her hands and strokes his cheek bones with her thumbs. "I do love you. I love you so much that I'm going to drive you to the hospital and get you on the medication you need to get better even though I am so mad at you for keeping this from me until you got this ill."
Jack's chest tightens. No flowers come up.
"I love you too, Doctor Alexander." He whispers. "So much that I'm letting you get away with calling me stupid."
Nikki laughs and tugs him up. "Come on, lets get you better."
And he does.