It starts with the scent. One day Luhan starts smelling a whole lot more like jasmine than he used to. It confuses the hell out of everyone, himself not excluded, and his boss gently suggests that while his new choice of cologne is "...pretty..." Luhan might tone down the amount a bit. (He is customer facing, after all.)

There's nothing Luhan can do about the aroma's strength though, because a few days after he starts to smell like jasmine he also starts to shed them. There are petals in his hair when he runs his fingers through it right after waking up. He finds them in his shower drain and under his bed sheets. They follow him in a trail from his apartment to the train and all the way to the cafe where he works part-time. Even the awful cough he never got rid of after his most recent cold has started to produce the stupid things. (At this point, his boss' suggestion is no less kind but also sees Luhan in the back room doing inventory, completely removed from the counter where he was once the main barista.)

"Yixing made me count the bags of coffee three times," Luhan complains feelingly to his boyfriend, pausing his pouting long enough to cough out the pieces of few white flowers. "And all because he lost count half way through!"

Sehun pats Luhan's hand but remains silent. He does that a lot, but Luhan's always so happy even just looking at his boyfriend that he can't even be upset by it.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Luhan keeps talking. He might be trying to fill the silence, but if that's the case it isn't a conscious effort. "Like, if I can't make coffee, why should I stay?"

"Then don't," Sehun mutters before taking a sip of his bubble tea. His gaze rests on something out the window and his hand on Luhan's is long since removed.

Luhan nods once. "You're right," he tells his boyfriend, trying to be cheerful despite the fact that he's thinking about quitting a job he loves yet Sehun isn't being particularly comforting. "I'm sure I can find something else to do. I've got a lot of skills!"

Sehun's long fingers pick a jasmine petal from off the top of the slice of chocolate cake they bought to share. (But actually Luhan's already eaten more than half of it; Sehun notices but let's him.) Taking a bite and chewing slowly as if contemplating an arduously difficult thought, Sehun finally pats Luhan on the hand again and says "This is good."

It's not what Luhan wants to hear, but he picked the cake and Sehun likes it; though simple, that's enough to get Luhan smiling again. His eyes crinkle beautifully at the edges and the sight briefly snatches Sehun's attention away  from the scenes outside. Luhan thinks the sudden awareness is nice and it makes him brave enough to question with feigned nonchalance, "So, Valentine's Day?"

"Huh?" Sehun, it turns out is only half listening. "Who's Valentine?"

Luhan rolls his eyes and chooses to giggle playfully instead of reacting a little less pleasantly. "Valentine's day, silly! Valentine's Day."

"Huh," Sehun repeats. "What about it?" He's forcing Luhan's hand and there's a sudden flurry of petals from all over the place. It's enough to prompt a request from the hostess that they kindly vacate their table for some waiting guests. (Other than the two of them and a lone woman at the ordering counter, the place is empty. As they leave Sehun calls out "Well you've just lost our business!" and the gesture does a lot to assuage Luhan's earlier disappointment. Especially when Sehun pulls a petal out from behind Luhan's ear and whispers sweetly "Besides, I love jasmine."

And I love you, Luhan thinks. For some reason, that makes him sad.)

A week into Luhan's unexplained sprouting of a garden filled with jasmine flowers, his boss runs out of inventory for him to inventory. Instead he calls Luhan into his office and they spend the next six hours of Luhan's shift surfing the Internet for answers.

"There's this fairy tale," Yixing offers, somewhere around hour three. "A girl is blessed with jewels and that sort of falling out of whenever she talks."

Luhan coughs loudly and nearly chokes on the plethora of petals filling his mouth. His silence is enough to shoot that theory down—for one thing, he doesn't have to talk for it to happen; for another, there are no precious stones in sight.

"Aha!" Luhan says, a couple hours later. They were just starting again after a break for coffee and muffins—courtesy of Minseok, Luhan's replacement—during which time Yixing was nice enough to console his employee by saying that the new guy's brew still had a ways to go. (Personally, Luhan isn't sure that's true—Minseok, as it turns out, makes some damn good coffee—but he appreciates the sentiment nevertheless.) "I've got a disease!" He reads a little further down the page and squints his skepticism. "Tape worm maybe?"

"Nah," Yixing disagrees. "My dad had that one time. Definitely no flowers involved."

At the bottom of the webpage are some pictures for reference and they both grimace at the sight. Luhan shudders; the movement shakes a few petals from his hair to rest distractingly in his eyebrows and Luhan, too lazy to just lift a hand and remove them, spends the next few moments twitching vigorously to make the petals fall. (Yixing doesn't notice, as far as Luhan can tell.)

"Disease though," Yixing muses, pulling at invisible hairs on his chin as if he has a Confucius-esque beard growing long there. "That reminds me of something I saw somewhere." He's tapping his chin now and muttering to himself under his breath; Luhan, who knows better than to disturb his easily distracted boss while Yixing is remembering hard like this, sits as quietly and patiently as he can.

His body convulses every once in a while as he suppresses a  jasmine-sprinkled cough and just as Luhan thinks he can't possibly take it anymore, Yixing shouts out "Hanahaki!"

"I think you mean Miyazaki," Luhan corrects, trying to be gentle despite his suddenly crushed hopes.

But Yixing is adamant and he shakes his head so firmly that Luhan almost expects petals to start falling off him. "Hanahaki," he reiterates. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he looks up the term; once the page has loaded Yixing glances toward Luhan's waiting face then reads aloud "The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the afflicted coughs up flower petals when he suffers unrequited feelings."

This makes sense to Luhan, but only sort of. "I have a boyfriend?" He reminds his boss, tone clearly puzzled. "And I've got the cough, yeah, but these freaking flowers are coming from bloody well everywhere else too."

"Maybe yours is a special case," Yixing coos. He's trying to be helpful but Luhan's pretty sure his boss' words are only making his anxiety worse.

"That's comforting," he deadpans drily. (Again, Yixing is oblivious to the sarcasm—at least as far as Luhan can tell.)

"Isn't it?" Yixing smiles at his employee and claps Luhan on the back so hard that a flurry of petals burst into the air.

"No," Luhan whispers after Yixing returns his attention to the computer, "it's really not."

Luhan doesn't share any of his findings with Sehun when they meet that afternoon for their standing Tuesday date. It's bubble tea and chocolate cake again—but obviously somewhere else this time—except Luhan's too busy mulling over potential culprits for luring him into an unrequited love and he doesn't eat a single bite of the dessert. Sehun doesn't either. Instead he pats Luhan's hand like always, walks Luhan home like always, and kisses his boyfriend's cheek goodbye exactly like he always does. None of it is new or different than any of their other interactions and usually Luhan might not care, but this day he does.

Sehun's halfway down the block before Luhan realizes the obvious and shouts out a desperate "Wait! Come back!" His boyfriend doesn't turn around or return to him, but Sehun stops at least and Luhan runs himself breathless trying to get to him as quickly as possible.

"It's you," he whimpers, chest heaving and eyes suddenly heavy with unshed tears when he takes in the neat line of jasmine petals still falling to the ground behind him. "Do you even love me?"

If Sehun's surprised by the question he doesn't show it. Come to think of it, Luhan isn't sure his boyfriend ever shows emotion. Why should right now, this moment in which Luhan is questioning the integrity of the very best thing in his life, be any different?

The answer is that is shouldn't. Luhan knows this, but still he's heartbroken when Sehun stoically responds "Namsan Tower, Sunday, 3 o'clock," before walking away.

Luhan cries as Sehun leaves. He cries when Sehun doesn't turn back to look at him. He cries climbing the stairs into his building, and he cries into the ramen he eats for dinner that night. After a time, when his tears have dried up and his body can't cry anymore, Luhan heaves jasmine petals into his toilet like an alcoholic after a binge. When he doesn't go into work the next morning, Yixing comes to him instead and rubs Luhan's back softly until he finally, finally falls into an exhausted sleep.

"I'm not going," he tells Yixing Thursday morning. Luhan woke up feeling refreshed but no less broken, and infinitely relieved to see that his boss--friend had stuck around. "You can't make me," he adds childishly, to which Yixing rolls his eyes.

"I'm not going to make you do anything," Yixing informs Luhan quite crossly. "But your house is starting to smell like the macabre combination of a mortuary and a Bath & Bodyworks store. You've got to do something about that, at least."

A cursory glance around him from where he's hunched over in the center of his bed reveals to Luhan that his room has somehow been completely taken over by the jasmine. (It must have happened while he slept. Frankly he's shocked the stupid flower petals didn't fly up his nose as he breathed and suffocate him.)

"Fine," he compromises, crossing his arms like a petulant child but receiving a dimpled smile of approval from his boss anyway. "But I'm going to be late on purpose and nothing you can say can change my mind."

"You shouldn't punish someone for who they do—or don't—love," Yixing shares sagely. He shoots Luhan a look before standing up from his seat at the foot of the bed. "I'm calling out for breakfast," he adds. "I'd cook but all you have in your fridge is coffee grounds and–"

"And iced jasmine green tea," Luhan finishes for him. "The irony."

"I think the word you want is ironing," Yixing corrects loftily, completely destroying his image as the wise philosopher from a few minutes earlier. It makes Luhan laugh, and then laugh even more when Yixing makes a face like he doesn't understand why what he's just said is so funny. (Luhan still isn't sure if Yixing said it wrong on purpose just to make him laugh. Either way, he isn't sure he cares.)

In the end Luhan is early. He's got a compulsive personality that makes him a spectacular barista and latte artist, as well as an attentive boyfriend, but it also disallows him from being late, even when he wants to. It turns out that such a personality left him fixated on Sunday looming as the potential—probable—end of his and Sehun's relationship, and not as Valentine's Day. (Which it is.)

"You came." Luhan doesn't think Sehun's surprised by this, but again, with his boyfriend it's almost kind of impossible to tell.

"What do you want?" Luhan practically spits out, flower petals falling everywhere in a shower of white. It isn't fair, Luhan thinks, that the physical expression of his emotional pain is so beautiful. Jasmine was even his favorite, once. (It's that which makes this...disease...particularly hard for Luhan to swallow.)

He doesn't think Sehun knows this about him, actually. That's why it's so unexpected when Sehun doesn't hit Luhan with the dreaded "Let's break up; I never loved you anyway," but pulls a bunch of half-crushed flowers out from behind his back. His expression is sheepish, like he thought the romantic gesture only halfway through before putting it into action, and Luhan is only partly sure of Sehun's sincerity in all this.

"Are you," he falters and when his face falls more petals do too, "Is this a joke?"

"You like jasmine," Sehun offers shyly.

Luhan doesn't say "I used to," just like Sehun doesn't say that he didn't actually know which flowers Luhan liked or that Yixing called him up and filled him in on Wednesday afternoon while Sehun's boyfriend slept his sadness away. (It probably didn't occur to Yixing that his friend might not like that particular type of flora anymore. Typical.) Instead, since Luhan doesn't know what to say, he stays as silent as Sehun always was on their dates and it's an unfortunate reminder right when Luhan thought things might be improving. (He doesn't pat Sehun on the hand though; he isn't that patronizing.)

"It's Valentine's Day," Sehun tries again. The effort is sweet and sort of pathetic at the same time; Luhan doesn't want it to melt him, but it does. "Happy Valentine's Day?"

"I forgot," Luhan whispers to himself, except Sehun somehow hears him and leans close to whisper back "I knew you would, so I didn't."

Luhan chokes and for a moment he thinks it's another round of violent jasmine petaling about to hit, but it's not. It's just his body physically overwhelmed by emotion, and for the first time in a long time there are no flowers in sight.

"Really?" He asks, voice small and tentative, unwilling to hope for something as too good to be true as Sehun loving him back. After all, Hanahaki disease results from unrequited, one-sided love. If that's what's making Luhan literally shed flower petals, Sehun's love must not exist. There is no other option.

Sehun nods, his eyes soft and shining with something that Luhan might recognize as love, if he weren't so actively looking for its absence. "Your boss, Yixing. He told me you were sick. That you've got this strange Japanese sounding illness right out of a manga." (Sehun and his manga/anime addiction; Luhan just doesn't get it.)

"Yeah," Luhan agrees. He tosses in—just to be petty—"It's a result of one-sided love; I'm sure Yixing didn't spare that detail."

Yixing didn't. In fact Sehun remembers Yixing outlining how long it took Luhan to fall into his exhaustion and how broken he was. He grimaces at the memory of his boyfriend's pain, but Luhan doesn't know the reason and just thinks his bitter words cut a little deeper than he meant them to.

"I'm sorry," his heart says. His eyes don't shed petals, they shed tears and it's less than a second before Sehun's dropping the proffered jasmine bouquet to the floor in order to wrap his long, strong arms around Luhan's smaller body.

"It isn't unrequited," Sehun kisses into his boyfriend's hair. "I love you. Truly I do."

"But the flowers?"

"Yixing told me it's enough that the person suffering merely thinks their love is one-sided. Which it isn't, by the way," he takes the time to point out before continuing his explanation. "It shows in a flower you love and ruins that because believing you aren't loved in return ruins the relationship in the same way." (Apparently if it's a flower you hate, that's the body's way of fighting against the one-sided love. In theory if a person sees something they dislike in association with something they really love, eventually one wins over the other, doesn't it?)

"And you bought me more jasmines?" Luhan shrieks, forgetting his hurt for a moment in his exasperation. There were moments he could really see the between the two of them; this was one of those times.

"They're your favorite!" Sehun defends himself indignantly, despite being mostly the one in the wrong. "I wanted you to know that I know that you love them."

"I love you!" Luhan shouts back, voice raised for some reason he doesn't quite understand.

"I know that too!" Sehun's also shouting and looks just as confused about it. "And I love you!"

Suddenly everything is quite and Luhan's eyes drop to look at the floor. "I think I knew that, once," he admits. "Maybe I forgot, I don't know."

"But now you know again," Sehun tells his boyfriend gently, a small smile on his usually straight face. The beauty of it takes Luhan's breath away.

"Now I know," Luhan agrees. There have been no jasmine petals anywhere near him for the past several minutes, but both Luhan and Sehun are too enthralled in one another to notice.

"I'm sorry I'm not the most demonstrative or verbal boyfriend you could ever want," Sehun apologizes after pulling Luhan back into his embrace and holding him there for a long moment. "But I promise to remind you every day how I feel. Because I really do love you, Lu."

Luhan pulls back a little from where he's pressed against Sehun's chest. He looks up to meet his boyfriend's gaze and brushes Sehun's bangs gently out of his eyes. (They're getting too long; Luhan makes a mental note to call up Mrs. Oh and ask her to give her son a haircut sometime soon. He knows his boyfriend certainly won't think to.) Sehun catches Luhan's hands as they trail down his face; "I love you" the caress says.

"I love you," Sehun's lips say, too, as they press and then move fervently against Luhan's. "Don't forget again."

Luhan doesn't promise that he won't, doesn't think he can promise that yet. But as he returns his boyfriend's kisses with equal passion that he hopes Sehun feels all the way to his toes, Luhan thinks that maybe just knowing, just then, is enough.

Happy Valentine's Day! <3