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fallinnflower · 6 years

Text

drift away

joshua x reader (angst, non-idol!au, hanahaki!au)

a/n: tw, mention of blood

Two years. They say that’s the expiration date for most relationships. You thought you were past that, a year and a half past that, because you still woke up every morning just as happy to see him beside you as the first time.

And you don’t notice anything changing, not really. He talks to you the same way, he isn’t on his phone suspiciously, he doesn’t go out more often than before — it’s just him, your boyfriend, as he’s always been. You like to think that the increased comfort level between you is just a sign that you’re both in for the long haul of domestic life.

But then the unthinkable happens.

Everyone knows about Hanahaki Disease, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a stigma surrounding it, and so when you first feel the unnatural clawing feeling in your chest you try desperately to convince yourself it’s nothing. And it must be, you think, when it dims after a few days. Just a phantom itch, a cold that passed through as the seasons changed, because you’re still in love with the same person.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. You’re confident of this, comfortable with your lot in life, and as the summer continues to wear into the fall you find yourself thinking about the future.

You’ve never had Hanahaki. It took you a long time to develop feelings for someone, and the disease only comes with strong emotions; you have to be in love, or close to it, to contract it.

The itching sensation returns in the midst of fall. You’re at work when you feel it, first a scratching in your chest and then a burning, as you excuse yourself from a debriefing meeting when you can’t seem to stop coughing. Bent over the sink, you see a thin spray of blood leave your lips, and look into your own reflected, tired eyes.

It isn’t Hanahaki, you tell yourself. It can’t be. It must be something else. You’ll work through it, you’ll go see a doctor and you’ll get a prescription and everything will be fine.

You have Joshua Hong, the love of your life, by your side, you note, smiling. It will be alright.

The doctor takes blood tests and examines your throat. Your boyfriend couldn’t get the time off work to come with you, and you said it was fine, but there’s something in the set of the doctor’s mouth that is making you anxious.

“Wait here,” he says. You sit, staring down at your phone and praying for a text.

You had sent one before your appointment, a simple ‘wish me luck!’, but there hasn’t been a reply.

You remember when he used to reply to every text within moments.

You think he just knows that you know he’s by your side, and that’s enough. It’s as you try to convince yourself of this truth that the doctor re-enters with a nurse, and both of their faces are pinched—

“We need to schedule an x-ray.”

The next few minutes pass in a blur. You go to the front desk, and the receptionist makes calls and helps you schedule the appointment. There’s a consultation tomorrow morning, and then they’ll schedule the x-ray with you.

You can hear your heartbeat in your ears the whole time, imagining the sickness spreading inside you, the mysterious illness that could be plaguing your lungs. Is it terminal? How will you tell him about this? How do you tell the love of your life you might be dying—? You don’t.

You don’t say a word. You go to work and you don’t tell him about the x-ray, about the doctor’s pinched face; you sit beside him on the couch that night watching the evening news with a cup of tea cradled between your hands, and you don’t say a word.

After all, what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, right?

Cancer. That’s the word on your mind as you trudge through the days. Cancer.

It’s the only thing it can be, you’re sure, these strange pains in your chest that make you cough up blood. What else could worry the doctor so much? What else could make his face so drawn?

During the x-ray, you close your eyes and imagine your boyfriend’s face, and you feel a little bit better, more at ease.

That is until they sit you down in a dark room to show you the results, and what you see is a blue-white root system in your left lung.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Hanahaki Disease—“

You don’t hear the rest of his words, unable to control the tears spilling down your cheeks. You cry until your face is numb, because Hanahaki means only one thing.

The doctor sends you home with a thick packet of papers; information about surgery and rehabilitation, the survival rate, painkiller options for the short term. But all you can think of is the reason for the illness, and the fact that it doesn’t make sense. You’ve been in love with the same person for over three years, you’re happy, you’ve been imagining getting married and your life is almost unbelievably good—

But somehow, there’s a flower planted from unrequited love in your chest.

They say it’s too early to tell what the flower is, making it difficult to gauge what level of pain you will experience. For now, they’ve told you to take over the counter painkillers, and call when it gets worse.

Because it will get worse, they say.

You drive yourself crazy, that day, calling out of work and going home just to stand under the showerhead with lukewarm water spilling all down your face. It’s possible that you’re crying, but you just can’t tell anymore; you feel numb and alone and confused. Everything is wrong.

You hide the packet of papers in your sock drawer, and try not to think about it.

The leaves come out first, spilling into the toilet bowl sometime after midnight.

You’ve just flushed them down when your boyfriend comes to the bathroom. He lingers at the threshold, looking exhausted,

“Are you okay?” You nod,

“Must’ve eaten something that didn’t agree with me.” It’s his turn to nod, and you watch him from where you’re still seated on the bathroom floor.

Come in, you think. Come sit with me, talk to me, rub my back like you used to—

“I’ll get you some water.”

He doesn’t wait for a response from you, trudging away into the darkness of your shared apartment, and you can feel the need to cry in your temples, the pressure building. You squeeze your eyes shut, and think of nothing but the sound of his footsteps returning. It’s just too painful to bear.

At first, you can manage your symptoms. You keep a small trash bag beside your desk and cough into cheap tissues. You take that little bag to the company dumpster yourself to avoid anyone seeing it. You try every kind of tea you can think of to soothe the ache and itch in your throat, even asking Jihoon for help because he’s a singer and knows how to care for his throat, because it must be some glitch in the system, some mistake. Your body will realize this is wrong and fight it out. You’ll make it.

(But even as you tell yourself this, you can feel the way your hands begin to shake as time wears on; see the bags under your eyes resembling bruises, your fingers becoming bonier.)

You’ll make it.

It’s your birthday, and you’re sitting alone in a dark apartment hours after the sunset, waiting.

You haven’t heard from your boyfriend in a few hours, when he said he was going out for drinks with a friend (one of your many mutual friends who did wish you a happy birthday). You’re trying not to be sad, trying to be an adult, but he hasn’t forgotten your birthday in years — not since you’ve known him — and it hurts. It hurts, it hurts so bad, and that night you cough up your first full flower.

You laugh hysterically at it, because, well, isn’t it fitting that it’s the same flower he brought to you on your first date, beautiful and bright yellow. The tears ruin your makeup and you break a wine glass in the kitchen when you trip over the mat near the sink and knock it off the counter.

It signals the end of your night and your hoping, because the answers are all right in front of you:

You have only loved one person all these years.

You wait up for him, a single, small jonquil in your lap, still wearing your favorite dress with your hair done up but your makeup ruined. There’s no rehearsing it, no way to practice bearing the axe that will end the life you’ve known for these past few years, but you know it has to be done.

He stumbles in at half past one in the morning, a little tipsy and frantic, and your hands feel slightly numb by now, spinning the flower’s stem between your fingers. His footsteps echo even on the carpet as he weaves his way towards you.

“Baby—”

“I know,” you say, and speaking somehow hurts more than coughing up the flower. You don’t dare to look at him just now, because you can already feel a small itch in your chest.

“I’m sorry, baby, I don’t know how I forgot—”

“You don’t love me anymore,” you say, and you’re greeted by a heavy silence that drags a sob up out of your throat, though it sounds frighteningly like a laugh in the emptiness.

“I know. I have Hanahaki. I know.”

He notices the flower on your lap for the first time, and he falls to his knees in front of you, but still doesn’t say a word. In the past, he would not have hesitated to reach for your hands, to offer some warmth and reassurance — but in the time that’s passed you’ve realized that he no longer touches you as freely, and that the coldness you’ve felt seeping into you wasn’t from the changing seasons at all.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and when your eyes meet you feel both worse and better. There’s remorse there in his eyes, a tenderness but no real warmth, and it tells you everything you need to know: that he’s fallen out of love with you, and he regrets it, but that’s the way it is.

“Me, too,” you finally reply, both of your gazes dropping to the flower in your hands.

He never says ‘Happy Birthday’ — never says anything else, actually, just stands and retreats to the bedroom. You hear him call someone, hear him pack up a bag, and you hear him leave without any hesitation as you sit in the cold silence of an apartment where the now sole inhabitant may as well be dead.

In the morning, you call into work. Everything is just a bit too much right now, and you pull your phone out from under the pillow beside you on the empty side of the bed.

What now? > < I think we should break up < I’m sorry < I’m going to move in with Mingyu for now Alright > Thanks > Goodbye >

Your heart lurches at the mention of the familiar name; can you still claim those mutual friends as your own? It hurts. Everything hurts. You set your phone face down and trudge out of bed, your eyes puffy and sore, and pull the thick, white packet out of your sock drawer.

And with that, you collapse onto your knees, the tears rolling freely once more.

Not even a week later, you’ve had the surgery. Seungcheol comes to visit you in the hospital and you feel nothing, though you think maybe you should be happy that he still considers you a friend even without Josh. You stare blankly at him, and it feels disturbingly as though you don’t know him, despite the fact you’ve been friends for years. He sits on the edge of your bed and holds your hands, but for all the warmth they provide your skin, your chest feels cold and empty.

The pity in his gaze is a look you’re well accustomed to now, and the smile you fake feels as stiff as your neck had upon waking up from the surgery.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” There’s a pause, and you stare at him as though he’s the blank white hospital wall before you. He can see it, as though there’s a film over your eyes, and his frown deepens.

“Cheol,” you say, and he nods, squeezing your hands. “Never let me fall in love again.”

#seventeen scenarios #seventeen fanfiction #seventeen writing #seventeen texts #my writing #joshua scenarios #joshua hong

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