Terminal Hanahaki.

All cases of Hanahaki are terminal eventually. The term ‘terminal Hanahaki’ refers to those odd cases where even surgery isn’t enough to prevent the growth of the flowers where you love so deeply that you drown in it.

Taemin shows Kibum the petal at breakfast, and watches the colour drain from his face. “Do you know what flower this is?”

Kibum takes it carefully, as if he’s holding Taemin’s heart. Maybe he is. “It looks… I’m not an expert in flowers, but it looks like it’s from hydrangeas. I could be wrong. You should ask a florist.”

Taemin doesn’t have to wait for long before Kibum speaks again.

“Who are they for?”

He lies. “Jongin.”

Kibum pulls Taemin into his arms; Taemin falls into them easily, tucks his head into the crook of Kibum’s neck and inhales his warm scent. It feels like coming home.

“I’m so sorry baby,” Kibum whispers.

“Please don’t tell anyone.”

Kibum sighs. “Do you expect me to just stand back and watch?”

“I don’t want them to cut me open again,” Taemin says. There is a scar on his chest; thin and pale, where his skin was sewn together with an expert hand so that he’ll still look flawless on camera. Taemin would rather jump from a window than be restrained in a hospital bed once more.

~

Taemin moves into Kibum’s flat. There’s no point living at home if he’s going to be sleeping over every night anyway.

When he tells Jongin, Jongin grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks. “How are you going to get over him if you’re living with him?”

“Maybe he will fall for me,” Taemin insists. “I’m a good person, right? I’m not unlovable, right? Why does everyone assume that I’m going to die?”

“If he loved you, you wouldn’t have flowers growing in your lungs,” Jongin replies coldly.

And there’s nothing more to say.

~

“You should tell him,” Kibum says.

Taemin’s been keeping him up with his coughing, he knows. Kibum hasn’t said anything until now. Sometimes Taemin can hear him – hear his room door open, hear his footsteps padding over to the bathroom, hear him sigh just outside the door – but he’s never crossed the line before.

But today morning, there was blood on the petals and on the pillow.

“If I tell him, he’ll try to love me. And then he’ll blame himself when he can’t save me.” Taemin can’t break Kibum’s heart that way, not even if it means his death.

Kibum sighs heavily. He looks so burdened already and Taemin knows he’s made the right decision not to confess. “You won’t be able to hide it for much longer, you know. They’ll take you back to the hospital. They’ll keep cutting the flowers out of you as long as they think they can still make money off you.”

It’s the unavoidable destination of the road Taemin is on. He’s just not thinking about it for now.

“There… there is a way to hide it,” Kibum says then. “It’s all black market medication at this point, but you’ll be able to hide it.”

“What’s the catch?”

Kibum looks at him like he’s stupid. “The catch is that you ing die at the end of it and no one else will have known about it. The catch is that everyone thinks you’re fine and then you drop dead even though a simple surgery can fix this.”

“Can you really get it for me?”

Kibum nods, and then he laughs without any humour. “The things I do for you, Lee Taemin.”

The flowers in Taemin’s chest bloom, watered by Kibum’s love.