Begonias

Chapter Five|Diagnosis

Authors note, since dream will be coughing up blood quite a bit, it's just going to be an ongoing trigger warning.

Dream wasn't stupid. He knew how to Google shit.

He swished salt water around in his mouth to get rid of the copper taste of the blood, and as he spit it out the liquid was pink.

He poured himself a glass of soda, the cold carbonated beverage stinging on its way down his throat. He typed in 'coughing up flowers' on Google, because that was the most identifying symptom he had. And then it popped up.

Hanahaki disease symptoms..

Dream choked on his soda. He'd heard of Hanahaki, what fanfiction reading kid hadn't? The shit was a make believe disease, or at least he thought it was. There was no way it was a thing. A disease from unrequited love? It just didn't work out scientifically.

But then he saw articles that weren't about fanfiction. Ones that didn't even mention the word Hanahaki.

Virus invades plant pollen, causing plants to become parasitic to human hosts...

Dream quickly tapped on the search results, opening up a very official looking website.

This virus is not contagious until the very end of it's lifespan, which also happens to be the end of the lifespan of anyone harboring it. The only known cure is surgical removal, and a vaccine is in its early stages..

Dream was quick to look up the prices of the vaccine, and he blanched at the price of it. It was over a million dollars. He moved back to the website, hoping for an answer.

Research shows that dopamine is fatal to the virus, and is the main composition of the vaccine.

And then dream googled dopamine. He scoured the internet for answers, a way out. But none of them were good ones. All of the answers he found were long term things, and he couldn't afford that, this virus had time working against him. His research shows that in one and a half to two months he'll be hospitalized, and in three, dead.

And then he searched dopamine itself.

Dopamine, also known as the love hormone, is a naturally occurring chemical that is released by the brain when two people are in love.

Dream wanted to stab himself in the throat. Him being with someone and being in love with them was the only cure.

And George was the only one he could ever love.

---

Dream had an idea that would end up proving to be useful to him on his 'way to recovery'. Just the thought of having to see George and even possibly coughing up literal blood in front of him made his heart rate spike. So as barely an afterthought, he carries a black wash cloth with him wherever he goes.

As he walked through the buzzing isles of his local grocery store, he ended up needing the last minute decision.

As he pulled down his facemask and coughed into the cloth, he ended up clearing out the whole isle. With the pandemic going on, hearing him cough violently spiked fear in others, covered or not.

He folded the cloth over the few tiny petals he coughed up, putting it carefully back in the pocket of his jeans, his mouth tasting foul for the rest of the shopping trip.

---

When Dream got home, he rinsed out the washcloth, watching the pink petals slip off of it before, as a random idea, he grabbed one and rinsed it, putting it on a white paper towel.

He continued to wash the cloth with dish soap until the water ran clear instead of red. He wrung it out as best as he could before he stared at the petal for awhile.

It almost definitely came from a beautiful flower, from how the dainty pink petal looked. The thing that was killing him from the inside looked harmless, like somthing you'd stop to take a picture of if you happened to pass by it on an afternoon stroll. He shook his head from the sheer irony of it, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He grabbed his phone, scrolling through Reddit until he found a flower lovers group. He took a photo and posted it, asking anyone if they knew where the flower was from. Lied and said something about how his son had given him a single petal and he was thinking about growing a plant, because it looked beautiful. It was to strike empathy, to get more people to answer.

And then he left it so that he could start on editing his video.

---

Dream cracked his knuckles, leaning back in his chair until his back cracked too. He was in his office room, the room he recorded and edited videos in. He had just finished editing his video, and after thinking about it for awhile, he scheduled it to go up tommorow.

It was time to do something he was dreading. It was time to check his messages.

When he opened up discord, the first thing he noticed was fourty three messages from George. And so, tiredly, he started reading them.

George
Dream? Are you there?
Dream I swear if you're ignoring me over something so petty.
Your stream just flooded into mine, it's like you did a raid.
They all seemed worried about you. Are you okay?
Seriously Dream, everyone's freaking out. I don't know what to do.
Sapnap tells me it's fine but I don't believe him.
Something about this happening before? I still don't get it, what happened? Are you okay?

There were a lot of messages like this. He scrolled to the very bottom.

George
If this is because you seriously think I don't love you, then you're wrong. I care about you more than I should, honestly. I don't know what I'd do without you.
You know what, I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say it on stream and I'm not gonna be afraid of it. You want to know why?

Because you're my best friend and I love you, Dream.

Dream didn't get to the toilet in time to catch the gore. There would always be a blood stain on his carpet, because if all George sees is a friend, it would be back-breakingly hard to get him to see Dream as anything else.

And dream was going to die.