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Awsten knows exactly what’s happening when the cough starts. Let’s just say… He has a history. He knows very well that he's part of the unlucky point five percent that has to deal with the threat of death if they fall in love. So he's not really worried about it. Once the first petals appear, he can start to figure out who it is this time. Then he can force himself to let go of those feelings. Just like he always does.
He's at home when the first petal appears, which is good, because the first one is always really bad. Awsten feels it land in his palm after a five minute cough session. It’s gooey, and more importantly, pink. Awsten sighs when he sees the familiar shade. Of course it's pink. Every time he thinks he got rid of them (and his feelings), they just come back full force. Awsten sighs as he flushes the gross petal down the toilet. At least he knows how to get an end to this: avoid Otto at all costs.
This plan goes great for all of about a week, when Otto calls him and Awsten can’t bring himself not to pick up.
“What’s up, dude?” he says right after accepting the call.
“Hey,” Otto says. Awsten hears him take a small breath. “Can I hang with you for a week or so? In LA?”
Awsten raises his eyebrows. “You, voluntarily coming to LA? Never thought I'd see the day.”
Otto chuckles briefly. “Yeah, me neither, but G- uhh, we're going through kind of a rough patch, with uhh, y'know, and we decided it might be good to put some distance between us.”
Awsten has the impulse to punch the air in celebration, but he holds it back. “Alright! You can crash at my place, obviously.”
Awsten can almost hear the smile in Otto's voice. “Thanks, man. I'm flying up tomorrow, hope that’s okay! The whole thing’s pretty last minute.”
Awsten clears his throat. Things must have gotten real bad for them to come to this, especially since tour is starting in two weeks. “Don’t worry about it, I'm always glad to have you here. I can pick you up if you want,” he says. His throat is getting itchy.
“Thanks. I'll call you after I land, okay?” Otto asks.
“Okay,” Awsten says, struggling to keep in a cough. “Gotta go now, see you tomorrow!”
He hangs up the phone before Otto can hear the cough that bursts out of him. He coughs until three pale pink petals land in his palm.
He doesn’t really think about his predicament until he's driving Otto to his place. Otto’s quiet for most of the trip, understandably. But then at one of the red lights he finally catches Awsten’s eye and gives him a tired smile.
Awsten ignores the itch in his throat. “You know what?” he says suddenly. “I'm gonna make sure you have the best week of your life here!”
Otto chuckles. “Oh yeah?”
“Yep!” The least Awsten can do is cheer his best friend up. And even if he can’t have Otto in the way he wants, he can still be his friend. Except here’s the thing. Being in love with Otto feels really nice. Too nice. More than worth the occasional petal. And Awsten’s been fighting it for years. Maybe it's just the possibility of Otto and Grace finally breaking up for good that’s making him feel different this time, but Awsten wants to allow himself this for a little bit, let himself be in love with Otto just for this week. He can withstand the flowers that long. It’s a little risky, with the tour coming up and all, but he’s done this dozens of times. Everything’s gonna be just fine.
Otto doesn’t go back to Houston before the tour. He even asks Geoff to pick up his tour bag for him. He'd never tell this to Otto, but Awsten’s so happy, he could fly. The only drawback is, he's still got the flowers. But it's alright, it's only a couple petals per day. He's fine. Otto hasn’t noticed, but then again, Awsten’s gotten really good at hiding his condition over the years.
The flight to the Berlin kind of sucks, but Awsten gets through it with a couple ‘bathroom' breaks. And maybe he's worse off than he thought, because he counts at least a dozen petals during the trip. It could also be the stress. Yeah, that sounds more reasonable, Awsten would have noticed by now if things were getting out of hand.
Truthfully, Awsten isn’t really paying much attention to it. Hiding the petals and his illness just becomes part of his routine. It's only when a round, pink-green flower bud falls into his palm that he realizes he's been distracted. He's been so busy with the tour and the fans and the songs that he's barely had any time to concentrate on doing the thing that would save his life in the long-run: falling out of love with Otto again. The bud honestly spooks him a little; he hasn’t gotten anything more than a petal since – a long time ago.
Sometimes things are easier said than done, though, Awsten thinks as he turns around to look at Otto mid-song that night, and the smile he gets in return nearly knocks the air out of his lungs.
As much fun as the touring is, Awsten's looking forward to flying back to the States. Maybe he can concentrate on not thinking about Otto better there.
The flight home is terrible, to say the least. Awsten spends most of it trying to hold back a cough, and by the time they land, he wants nothing more than to relieve his lungs of the petals suffocating them.
It feels good to be back home, though. Even just setting foot on the ground eases the pressure in his chest that has started to build up over the past week.
He’s got a week to rest before the first show of the Sad Summer Fest, and he could not be happier about it. Maybe things will finally get better now.
They don’t. Turns out not having Otto there doesn’t make things any easier, because Awsten just misses him now. So maybe when the soapy taste of flowers in his mouth mixes with a metallic one as he spits out a flower bud that’s just starting to open on his last day home, he shouldn’t be all that surprised.
Sad Summer rushes by with a mix of heat and music and people and Otto Otto Otto, and surprisingly his condition doesn’t get all that much worse. Red blotches stain the petals more and more often, but it's okay, it's fine, he's fine.
Maybe if he tells it to himself enough times, it will be true.
Awsten knows he won’t see Otto for nearly a month after that. It's the perfect opportunity to make himself fall out of love, finally. He goes out, tries to meet new people, calls his friends more than usual, anything to distract himself. And it works – sort of. The petals don’t get any more red, and the flower buds don’t open any further. But things don’t actually get better. By the time he's landing in Canada for the MCR shows, the near constant metallic taste in his mouth is the exact same as it was at the beginning of the month. Still, that’s more progress than he's made all summer, and Awsten can appreciate small victories. These shows will only take a couple days, and then he will have another two months without Otto. It's all going to be okay.
This is what Awsten thinks as he approaches the dressing room, where he knows Otto already is. At least that’s what Otto texted him fifteen minutes ago. The closer he gets, the more clearly he hears the muffled sound of a single voice in the middle of a conversation. He slows to a halt in front of the door, which is cracked open ever so slightly.
“Yeah, okay,” Awsten hears Otto say. “That’s great. Thanks, Grace, that’s sweet of you.”
Awsten freezes, and there's a terrible pang in his chest. Fuck, they've gotten back together, haven’t they? The world tilts on its axis, and Awsten’s throat constricts, and he's running running running to the bathroom he saw on his way in. He slams the door behind himself, and sinks down against it. A cough explodes out of him with surprising force, and tears of struggle join those of heartbreak. He spits out flower after flower after flower, and just when he thinks they'll never stop, they finally do. He gasps for air and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. He just sits there for a few minutes, catching his breath. When he finally gathers enough strength to move, he gathers up the mess of pink flowers and blood from the floor and his lap, and flushes them down the toilet.
When he turns around, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He makes quite a gruesome sight, with dried tear stains on his cheeks, and a trail of blood from the corner of his mouth. He washes it all away as fast as he can.
He heads to sound check immediately after he's cleaned himself up. Otto isn’t there yet, probably talking to her, still. But as soon as Awsten steps on the stage, he feels another cough coming on, and he thinks no, not right now, not so soon, but his lungs don’t listen to him as can’t hold it back any longer, and the coughs explode out of him. It's not as bad as the one in the bathroom, but he still ends up with petals scattered all around his feet.
The crew around him are frozen when it's over, and Geoff stares at him with wide eyes.
“Don’t,” he warns, but Geoff seemingly doesn’t even hear it.
“How long were you planning to hide this?” he asks.
Awsten rolls his eyes. “There’s nothing to hide, I'm gonna make it go away, like I always have. It's not a cause to worry, I'm fine.”
Geoff’s eyebrows are drawn together in concern. “You don’t look fine, Awsten, you're coughing up almost whole flowers and a lot of blood. I know you've apparently got more experience with this, but this looks pretty worrying, and I think you should–“
“Yeah, you're right, I do have more experience. I'm not getting the surgery, and that’s the end of this discussion.” Getting the surgery would mean he could never get these feelings back, and as much as his love for Otto is an inconvenience, he… he doesn’t know who he would be without them anymore.
Geoff just sighs, but leaves it be. Fortunately he doesn’t bring it up for the rest of the shows, either, and Awsten’s more careful about being caught from then on.
The flight back home is miserable, to put it lightly. Halfway through the trip, he has to get escorted to a free row of seats, because he kept filling up his lap with camellias. He can feel the pitying eyes of the other passengers on him at all times, and he wants to cry.
Even the sigh of relief as he gets home is caught in his throat. The ferocity of the coughs surprises him as he doubles over with the force of them. His chest hurts with each one, and he almost feels as the vegetation detaches itself from his lungs. He spits up flower after flower, and when the coughing finally subsides, his eyes are filled with tears from the effort.
As he stares down at the mess of flora with blurred vision, he sees something that makes the blood freeze in his veins. He wipes away the moisture obscuring his eyesight, and crouches down. With a shaky hand, he pushes all the pink petals out of the way, and sure enough, there's something blue there. A morning glory. He doesn’t dare touch it, even through he wants to crush it, burn it, delete it from existence. But it wouldn’t make a difference now, it wouldn’t make its existence any less real. He's fucked. He's fucked. And Awsten begins to break down right then and there is the middle of his living room, because to him, the horrid blue thing isn’t just a flower.
It's a death sentence.
‘The start of phase 2 of the disease is marked by the first appearance of the second flower. It marks a key point in the progression of the illness: it can only be reversed by medical intervention from here on,’ Awsten reads on the poster in the waiting room for the millionth time today.
It's just not fair. He's been so careful all his life. He stopped himself from falling too hard a million times, but all it took was one slip and here he is at thirty, dying of a disease that killed most people like him when they were barely older than teenagers.
The only other person in the waiting room is a girl. She can’t be any older than 20. Awsten can see the dark lines of stems running up her throat from all the way where he's sitting; her respiratory system is now more plant than organ. She looks days away from death, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Awsten doesn’t want to think about how this is what he'll look like in a matter of months.
A nurse calls his name just then, and he gets up to ender Dr. Hendrikson’s office.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Knight,” the doctor greets him as he enters. Awsten just nods as a response.
Dr. Hendrikson adjusts his glasses. He's a formal-looking man, seemingly in his early fifties, with stubble and salt and pepper hair.
Awsten thinks about how he won’t ever have to worry about going grey anymore.
The doctor quizzes him on all the usual stuff. Symptoms, when they appeared, things like that. He performs some basic tests, then enters it all into a computer while Awsten fidgets with the seat anxiously.
Dr. Hendrikson clears his throat once he's finished. “Your symptoms and bodily functions match up perfectly with someone at the very start of the second phase. But I'm sure you knew that already.” Awsten nods. The doctor continues. “I am offering you the chance for an emergency removal surgery. You are aware of the side-effects, am I correct?”
Awsten nods. “I am. And I don’t want the surgery.”
“I assumed as such. Not many people do after the end of phase one,” says Dr. Hendrikson. Awsten almost laughs. Yeah, no wonder. Most people would probably rather die than lose the ability to feel any kind of love. Including him.
Awsten swallows. It’s better if he just gets to the point. “How long do I have?” he asks.
The doctor sighs. Not a good sign. “The exact length of time depends on the person. Before modern medicine, cases lasted 1-2 months after the appearance of the second flower. Nowadays, the average is closer to three times as much.”
So, six months if he’s lucky. Which he is usually not. Fuck. He's gonna have to make preparations. Fuck.
“I will prescribe you four things,” Dr. Hendrikson continues. “A long-term treatment that you will have to take twice a day before meals, a muscle relaxant that lasts approximately six hours, but will cause a build-up of flowers, a pill that will stop severe attacks if taken beforehand, and a pen with the same agent, in case you have to stop an attack after it’s already started. It functions similarly to an EpiPen. Do you have any questions?”
Awsten has a million. How can he hide this? How can he get ready? What does he need to do before his time is up? How can he come to terms with, with this – with knowing that he'll never find a gray hair, that he'll never get married, that he might not even make it to his next birthday? How is he supposed to just accept that he's going to slowly choke to death, and that he can’t do anything about it?
He shakes his head. “No, I understand.”
It would almost be easier if it could all just end right now, Awsten thinks as he leans over the toilet bowl and empties the contents of his stomach – perfumey flowers and bitter, acidic bile – into it. If it was only up to him, if there wasn’t a show in a month, there weren’t so many people who were counting on him – the fans, his friends, his family, Otto – he'd do it. He'd just let the flowers choke him to death now, while the pain is still bearable, but he has to be well enough to open for My Chem at the end of October. He already dreads that day. He'll have to take the muscle relaxant again, like he did today, and he never wants to do that again.
It had been so nice to feel normal for those couple hours, to shop for groceries without breaking into a fit of coughs, but the aftermath was not worth it. By the time it wore off, he could barely breathe, and the excess flowers that fell into his stomach still made their way our his mouth. It was easily the worst he'd ever felt in his life, but he couldn’t go more than half an hour without hacking up a flower, so he'd have to use it again eventually.
The thought that it’s only going to get worse from here terrifies him.
Still, time goes on, as it always does, and it's becoming more obvious to Awsten by the day that he should make a list of things to do in the next few months.
The worst days are when he thinks about the people he loves, how he's going to have to tell them. It would be too selfish not to. But when he thinks of Otto, his chest aches, and it's not solely the flowers' fault. Because even if he somehow gets himself to tell Otto about the disease, Awsten can never confess his feelings. He'd never put that on Otto, would never force a love he doesn’t really return on him, especially when… when he's already happy with someone else.
The fever comes in the first week of October, and with it an emergency visit at Dr. Hendrikson's. It's nothing abnormal, apparently, just his body uselessly trying to fight against itself, though the gloomy expression on the doctor's face tells Awsten that it's not a good sign.
“How long?” he asks when Dr. Hendrikson’s done explaining. He doesn’t need to specify what he's talking about.
The doctor sighs. “If the disease continues at a similar rate, you might have until the end of December. I'm sorry.”
Awsten lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Yeah, I'm sorry too,” is all he says.
The next day he does something he'd never thought he'd do, and shows up at the closest support group meeting.
The atmosphere is surprisingly cheerful, especially for a group of people who all know that they’re going to die in a few months. They have snacks and some water, and everyone settles into an organized chaos of conversations. He talks to Macy, the college freshman who fell hard and fast for her roommate and now won’t even get to finish her first semester. He has a conversation with Zig, who just coughed up his second flower a couple days ago and still has no idea what to do. But it's the conversation with Tina that sticks with him the most. She’s in her late thirties, one of the oldest ones there, and she had been standing by herself almost the whole time Awsten had been there before she approached him.
“These poor kids,” she says to him as a conversation starter, startling him out of his observation of the crowd. “Most of them won’t even get the chance to live life.”
Awsten just sighs, because what can he even say to that?
“And they'll believe it's their own fault, too. Cause that’s what so many of those fuckin' assholes that call themselves doctors tell them. That if they’re careful enough they can avoid it, like that isn’t total bullshit, like you can be careful about falling in love.” She coughs briefly, and spits out a cluster of small, white flowers – yarrow. Awsten takes a look at her sunken cheeks and baggy eyes and knows that she's even closer to the end than him.
Awsten hums. “Yeah, I was careful for so fucking long, and look where that got me. Still dying of it, just at 30 instead of 17. Load of fucking good that did.”
She gives him a wry smile. “Hey, you must have done something good in those thirteen years though, right?” she asks.
Awsten grins briefly. “Guess I did, yeah. I'm just, I dunno, frustrated. It's the same person as it was all those years ago, and it almost feels like everything has been a waste of time. And I know I don’t really think that, but at the same time I'll be dead before the end of the year, and I haven’t even begun to process that. Hell, I haven’t even told most people, not my label, my management, not even my family.”
“I haven’t told my boss or my friends, either, and I have barely over a month left. I understand what it's like. They'd just ask a million questions, like how I've survived this long is the first place. They'll talk to me like I was always just condemned to live a short life and that I should be grateful that I even made it this far. It's like they totally forget that I'm just a regular human being who wants to live, not slowly choke to death on my own lungs. So fuck that, I'm not telling my employer, they wouldn’t have even hired my if they knew. If they have a hard time coping with my absence once I'm gone, well too fucking bad.”
Awsten sighs. If only he could do that. He takes a deep breath, preparing to speak, but it catches in his throat and suddenly he's doubling over with a cough. He doesn’t even bother hiding it, everyone is aware of why they’re here. He's not the first person to have a fit there, and nobody pays it special attention. It's not a spectacle, like it would be anywhere else. It’s probably Awsten’s favorite thing about the whole meet-up.
He hacks up four crumpled, blood-stained morning glories before he can breathe properly again. He lets them fall to the floor from his hands. They’re not the first flowers those wooden boards have seen today. He quickly grabs a tissue from his jacket's pocket, and wipes his mouth. The white paper is stained crimson when he pulls it away.
Awsten looks at Tina, her furrowed eyebrows, crossed arms, and the darkened vines running up her neck. She doesn’t say anything, but Awsten can see in her eyes that she understands.
They end up exchanging numbers after that. Just to have someone to talk to who understands.
Awsten spends the rest of the week running errands and making phone calls, for the first time since that day in September.
When Awsten wakes up on the day of the concert, his head is spinning and there’s a gradually browning stain on his pillow. He unlocks his phone to see a text from Otto, the small stutter in his heart sending a few stray pink petals out of his mouth. It just says that Otto has landed, and was sent fifteen minutes ago, and it should be alarming how much fondness Awsten feels just at seeing the heart-eyes emoji on his screen.
He goes about his routine as usual after he changes his pillow case, getting dressed, brushing his teeth, and taking his medicine before breakfast. But just as he places his plate in the sink, there’s a knock on his door.
Confused, he heads to it and opens it to reveal Otto. As soon as Awsten looks at him he feels a painful twisting sensation in his chest and he struggles with the effort to hold his cough back. “O-otto,” he stammers out. He shakes his head. “Sorry, you surprised me. Hey!” he recovers.
Otto is looking at him with slight concern. “Are you okay? You look a little pale,” he says.
Awsten holds back a wince. He didn’t think about that. “I'm fine, had a cold last week, so that’s probably it.” That sounds reasonable, right?
It seems to be, because the smile is back on Otto's face. Awsten’s heart flutters at the sight of it. He bites down on the inside of his cheek as he stops another cough. “The surprise was the point, by the way,” Otto says, rubbing his shoulder and looking down. “I thought it'd be nice to just hang out a bit. We haven’t really had the chance since like, May.”
Otto's right, but what he doesn’t know is that it was on purpose this once. Awsten’s kept his distance since then. While lot of good that did. Oh well, not much more damage can be done at this point, and Awsten should be allowed to enjoy these last couple days with Otto. “Yeah, these past few months have been a lot. Come on in, then!” He leads Otto to the kitchen. “You want some water or coffee or anything?” he asks.
“Actually, I'll have some coffee, if you’re offering. I had to wake up a four in the morning. I'll go to the bathroom first, though, if that’s okay.”
Awsten resists a sigh of relief. This is the perfect chance to take a muscle relaxant without Otto noticing. “Yeah, ‘course. I'll get started on the coffee then!”
As soon as Otto is out of his line of sight, Awsten rummages through the drawer he put all his anti-flower medication in. He couldn’t let anyone stumble across it in his bathroom medicine cabinet after all.
By the time Otto’s back, Awsten has even washed the glass he drank the water from to swallow the capsule, and the whirring coffee machine is steadily dripping the coffee into the pot. He grins at Otto.
“So um,” Otto starts, but he's cut off by a notification sound from Awsten’s phone. Awsten can see the sunflower emoji on the screen from where he's standing, and he smiles. Tina, then. Otto has an unreadable expression on his face. “Anyone I know?” he asks.
Awsten shakes his head, “No, her name's Tina. I met her two weeks ago, and we've kinda become friends since then. What were you about to say before?”
Otto shrugs it off. “Nothing important, really, it's just, thanks for the coffee.”
Awsten smiles at him. “Of course.” Otto bites down on his lower lip, and Awsten forces himself to look away. He wants to be the one biting those lips, and the urge to step closer is overwhelming, but he keeps his distance. It’s probably for the best.
Once the relaxant takes effect, Awsten almost forgets about the flowers. If it weren’t for the now near-constant pain in his chest, he could so easily put the thought behind him when he's with Otto. He's almost forgotten how easy their friendship is, even with the slight tension Awsten has forced between them.
Time flies by when you’re having fun, though, and it’s all too soon that they’re arriving at the venue. Awsten’s stomach is in knots just looking at the sheer size of it. Otto squeezes Awsten’s shoulder as they step inside.
One way or another, they get separated as they navigate through all the people buzzing about, and Awsten arrives at their dressing room alone. Geoff is already inside when Awsten enters, and he feels a slight tingle in his throat just as he looks at his bandmate. That’s not a good sign. It's an even worse sign when he feels a wave of nausea hit him before Geoff can even say hi. Fortunately a bathroom opens right from the room, and Awsten rushes towards it, dropping his bag on the floor. He can hear Geoff call out his name, and the sounds of footsteps behind him, but it’s not like he can do anything about it. He can’t even close the stall's door behind himself before he's emptying flowers and bile into the toilet. Bitter mixes with metallic on his tongue, and he feels a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face. When the vomiting finally subsides, he sits down leaning his back against the wall of the stall, and takes a couple deep breaths. Before he can even register what’s happening, Geoff is pushing a glass of water into his hands. Awsten takes a couple careful sips while avoiding eye contact.
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” Geoff says. So they’re talking about it.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” is all Awsten says.
Geoff runs his hands down his face. Worry creases his forehead. “Awsten, you have to get them removed.”
Awsten shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Geoff takes a deep breath. He looks tired. “I know you don’t want to lose your feelings of love, but it can’t be worse than dying! Lots of people live totally normal and happy lives post-surgery. And we'd understand, all your friends and family would love you the same even if you couldn’t return those feelings. You know that, right?”
Awsten closes his eyes for a couple seconds and takes a deep breath. “Look, Geoff, I don’t want to fight about this. I know some people can live like that, but I couldn’t. If I couldn’t feel love, I wouldn’t even be me anymore, I think. I can’t do it, I won’t. I've made up my mind about this ages ago.”
Geoff's face crumbles. “So you'll just let yourself die? Leave your friends and the band and the fans behind?”
Awsten launches himself at Geoff, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in his neck. Geoff hugs him back.
“I'm sorry,” Awsten starts, then swallows. “I'm sorry I haven’t been a very good friend to you the past couple years.”
Geoff tightens his embrace. “You’re talking like you’re saying goodbye already,” he says, voice breaking at the end.
Awsten purses his lips. “That’s because I am. This might be one of the last times we see each other.”
Geoff pulls away at that, eyebrows drawn together. “What?”
Awsten looks down. “I'm not even gonna make it until my next birthday.,” he says.
Geoff is silent for some time. “But that’s…” he trails off.
“Three months away, I know. Honestly I'm lucky if I make it until Christmas.”
Geoff envelopes Awsten in a hug once more. “Shit,” he chokes out.
Awsten smiles despite himself. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Now come on, we've got a show to play.”
Geoff sniffles. “Can you even sing like this?” he asks.
“Yeah, I don’t throw up like that all the time. It's a muscle relaxant, makes me stop coughing but it has some side-effects. I'm gonna take another in a sec, just before it wears off completely. It kinda sucks, but Otto surprised me in the morning, so I had to take an extra one.”
Geoff pulls away finally, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Are you ever going to tell him?” So he knows. Awsten isn’t exactly surprised.
Awsten shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that to him. He'd feel like it's his fault that I'm gonna die.”
Geoff looks stricken. “He deserves to know that you’re dying at least, doesn’t he?”
Awsten sighs. “Look, I just really don’t want him to figure it all out. I know he doesn’t return my feelings, and I don’t want him to force those emotions on himself just to save me.”
“How are you so sure that he doesn’t love you back?” Geoff asks. “I've known you guys for ages, and I know Otto cares about you a whole damn lot.”
Awsten looks away. “I have my reasons.”
Geoff stands up with a deep breath. “Okay. As much as I think you're wrong, I respect your decisions. I just wish they wouldn’t lead to your death.”
Awsten smiles, then gets up as well. “That means a lot to me. Thank you.”
Geoff just nods, then leaves the bathroom. And Awsten is alone with his thoughts again.
The show goes off without any incidents, somehow. As Awsten walks offstage, he thinks about how this was the last show he'll ever play. It breaks his heart, but hey, at least he went out with a bang.
Geoff and him talk a lot more from then on. Who knew all Awsten needed to restore their friendship to its old glory was to be dying.
Awsten's constantly aware that he's going to die. It's hard to forget about something like that. But the first time he actually fears for his life is five days after the last show. He's walking home from the grocery store, when suddenly he can’t breathe. He drops all his bags as he doubles over with coughs that shake his whole body, and he tries to take a breath through them, but he can’t. It's a terrifying realization, and it mixes with the embarrassment coiling in the pit of his stomach at being in public. The fear wins out in the end, though, and suddenly he doesn’t really care about the strangers who stare at the flowers that tumble out of his mouth.
He tries to reach for the bag containing his medication – this is the exact situation he needs the injection pen for. But tears are obscuring his vision, and he can’t see where it is, and he thinks yep, he's going to choke to death right here on his sidewalk, when he hears a voice suddenly.
“Do you need any help, sir?” it asks.
He nods vigorously, then points at the bags with one hand, and makes a stabbing motion on his thigh with the other. Luckily the owner of the voice seems to understand what he's getting at, because he feels the pen being pushed into his hand a couple seconds later. He glances at it. Green end down, pink end down, just like a flower, he recalls, then slams it down on his outer thigh. The effect is almost instantaneous, and within the next two minutes he stops coughing entirely.
He looks up to thank whoever helped him, seeing an older lady with gray hair and a concerned expression. “Thank you for helping me,” he says.
She waves a hand around. “Nonsense, it was basic human decency. Besides, I'm a retired doctor, it would be cruel of me to ignore you when I knew exactly how to help you.”
Awsten smiles at her. “Still, you probably just saved my life. I can’t not be thankful for that.”
The corners of her mouth turn up a little at that, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she grabs a tissue from her handbag, and hands it to him. Awsten accepts it with a grateful smile, then takes out his phone to see where the blood is. He flinches when he sees it has dripped all the way down his chin and on his shirt. He wipes away what he can with the tissue. He mentally notes down to wash his shirt with cold water when he gets home.
The old lady has already left when he's done, disappeared into the ever-changing crowd of pedestrians. She saved him, and he didn’t even get her name.
He discovers what exactly made him choke like that when he wakes up with a flower having grown out of his mouth the next morning. Awsten's alert within seconds, and he rushes to the bathroom to take a closer look at it. He inspects it in the mirror, and sure enough, even as he moves it around, he can feel it going all the way down into his chest. He tugs upon it once, which is a mistake, because it sends a violent pulse of stabbing pain through his whole body that’s so bad he almost passes out on the spot. At least he knows what not to do now.
Out of any other solutions, he grabs a pair of nail clippers and cuts the flower off from as far back as he can. It falls down into the sink, and Awsten stares at it. It looks so innocent now, that it's hard to believe it caused him so much pain the day before. The intricate spiral pattern of the petals would be almost beautiful, if it wasn’t stained by mucus and dried blood.
Awsten doesn’t know what comes over him when he opens the tap, and washes the stains off of it. Once it's clean, he takes it to the kitchen, and fills an empty glass with water in place of a vase. He puts the flower in it, leaves it on the counter, and goes on with his day like nothing happened.
As November approaches, Tina texts him less and less, and on the last day of the first week of the month she just sends one word: peach. He calls her as soon as he sees it, because he knows exactly what it means. She got her third flower: the rose. The third flower is always a rose, that’s why he's always had such a distaste for them. She's now in the last phase, the one where only a confession can save you. Her voice is scratchy, and his throat starts to hurt after speaking way more than he has in a while, but they both know it's the last time they'll hear each other’s voices. She has about two, maybe three weeks left, and she'll probably spend the last one bedridden and half-delirious from oxygen-depravation.
She hopes she'll make it to Thanksgiving, to spend some time with her parents one last time. In response, he tells her about how he hopes he'll live to see Christmas, because he didn’t prepare for the previous year's one to be his last. Then he makes her swear to send at least one text every morning as long as she can. She promises.
He doesn’t cry until the call ends; it wouldn’t have been fair to her. He's not the one who will die before the end of the month.
Awsten discovers the first dark line running up his throat later that same day. It’s his body mimicking the stems in his respiratory system, the blue-brown streak a tell-tale sign to the world that he has barely any time left to live. He walks away from the mirror and changes the water in the makeshift vase that at all times holds more and more flowers. He's growing them faster than they wilt.
Tina stops texting him two days before Thanksgiving.
He can’t come up with an excuse not to go back home for Thanksgiving, and that’s how he finds himself getting off the plane the day before with a ball of anxiety in his stomach. He knows his family is gonna freak when they see him, and the guilt he feels for not telling them sooner is overwhelming.
He's relieved when no one stared at him on the way out of the airport, though he shouldn’t be all that surprised. He hides the faux-vines with a scarf, and the warmth of it is welcome too. His fever is near constant now, and he feels cold all the time.
Gracie's the one who picks him up, and it takes her a single look to figure out that something’s very wrong. He doesn’t explain it to her until they've parked in the driveway, and she hugs him so tight that Awsten can practically feel his ribs crack.
Once inside, he has to take his scarf off, and as soon as his mom sees him she rushes over to wrap her arms around him. She cries into his shoulder, while his dad goes outside for some ‘alone time'. They all know him too well to try and convince him to get the surgery.
He stays longer than he intended, because Geoff asks him to catch up. He visits Awsten three days after Thanksgiving.
“You look terrible,” is the first thing he says when Awsten opens the door.
Awsten grimaces. “Nice to see you too, Geoff.” It's not that he isn’t aware he looks like death warmed over. He sees his baggy eyes, sunken cheeks, and sickly pale complexion in the mirror every day. But it still sucks to be reminded of just how easy it is for everyone to see how sick he is.
Geoff cringes. “Sorry, it’s just such a huge difference from last time. It's good to see you, though. I've been worried.”
Awsten rolls his eyes fondly. He could tell, from just how often Geoff texts him. “Well come on in, then,” he says.
Hanging out with Geoff is fun, even though he looks ten seconds away from calling an ambulance every time Awsten so much as clears his throat. But hanging out with Geoff also makes Awsten miss Otto, and the times when the three of them hung out together all the time. It’s not good, because thinking about Otto makes his chest hurt even more, but the pain of the distance Awsten's put between the two of them hurts so much worse. He calls Otto so much less often than he used to, that Otto has got to have noticed by now. He hasn’t said anything, though.
It's the worst part of the whole ordeal, Awsten thinks. Well, okay, dying is pretty bad, but all Awsten's ever wanted was to be close to Otto in whatever way possible, and now he can’t even have that. He really would have been content to be Otto's friend and nothing more for the rest of his life, and now he has a month left to live and he can’t even let himself talk to Otto too often. It makes his heart ache worse than anything else.
The days seem to rush by when you've got an expiration date, and before Awsten knows, the first week of December is already coming to an end. The sky is clear, but it's cold outside, especially for LA. Awsten shivers under the blankets as he stares out the window.
It's a pretty generic cough he lets out, to be honest, but what lands in his palm is far from usual. He stares at the velvety, light purple petal, then lets it drop down onto his lap. He doesn’t feel, well, anything really. He's made his peace with dying by now.
Things get much worse much quicker, after that. He starts a second and then a third makeshift vase in the next three days. The roses are beautiful, and he hates them with a passion. On the fourth day he throws up, and for the first time it's not a side-effect of the medication. There's almost more red in what lands in the kitchen sink than pink, blue, and purple combined.
He can actually feel the flowers growing and shifting in his lungs now. He's a little horrified when he realizes that’s what the feeling is, but hey, it's not like he'll have to endure it for much longer. The thorns are tearing his lungs apart all too fast. By the end of the week, the pain has increased tenfold, and Awsten gets winded after mere minutes of walking.
A week after the first rose petal, he can’t even make it to the closest sink or toilet in the morning, he just collapses onto his hands and knees and vomits blood and flowers all over his bedroom floor. He feels a sharp, sudden pain on his left side as he struggles to get up. He just stumbles back into his bed, and falls asleep again afterwards.
The days start to blend together after that. What stands out, though, is that one of the times he feels that strange pain in his side again, he touches it, only for the hand to come away covered in something wet. When he looks down at the spot he'd touched, even he gets a little nauseous – there is a hole in his chest, and from it there’s a rosebud peeking out. If he were a little more conscious, he would have probably freaked out from the sight of it. As it is now, he just feels so tired that he falls asleep within a couple minutes.
All his carefully constructed plans go to shit the next morning, when he wakes up to a knock on his door. He gives a weak attempt to try and get up, but he can barely even sit up. He falls back down just as he hears a voice that makes ice run through his veins.
“Awsten? I know you've been avoiding me, but let me in, please, I'm worried about you!” The voice is unmistakably Otto's, and a couple tears roll down Awsten’s cheeks at the sound of it. In his feverish state, he can’t even bring himself to worry about Otto finding out. He's just missed his voice.
The tears he cries taste like rainwater.
A rustling sound comes from the direction of the door, and it opens within a couple seconds. He almost forgot, he gave Otto a spare key.
“Woah,” is the noise that follows it. “It smells like a flower shop in here, what the hell… Awsten, are you here?”
Awsten attempts to call out, but his voice is barely above a whisper.
“Sorry for barging in like this, I was just worried, cause you haven’t picked up any of my calls for days. Or Geoff's. Or Travis'. And that’s not like you.” The voice gets closer and closer. “All I wanted to ask is if you want to spend Christmas together. Since, you kn-“ Otto cuts himself off as the door swings open to reveal him standing there.
Awsten feels the flowers grow in his chest as he looks at Otto. He turns his head to the side to cough.
Otto rushes over to him frantically. “Awsten! Awsten, holy shit, are you– I'm calling 911.”
Awsten spits out a rose on his pillow, along with some blood. Otto looks terrified, and Awsten can’t bear to look at him. “Wouldn’t be a point,” he mumbles.
Otto shakes his head. “I don’t care, I can’t just stand here and do nothing.” Sure enough, he does as he said he would. He speaks to the operator for a couple minutes, then moves to sit down at Awsten’s side. He doesn’t say anything as he grabs a tissue from the end table, then cups Awsten’s cheek with his left hand, and wipes the blood around Awsten’s mouth and chin away. He only loses his composure once he's finished. A small sob breaks free from him, and he turns away from Awsten. “I just wanted to see you. I didn’t want to watch you die,” he says. “Christmas is in four days and seeing you now, I don’t even know if you'll still be alive by then.”
Awsten states at the side of Otto's face. “Shouldn’t you be spending Christmas with Grace?” he asks.
Otto turns his head to look at him again, confused. “What?”
Awsten looks down. “I know you got back together. I heard you talking on the phone at the first My Chem show.”
Otto’s face clears up. “Oh, no, no, that’s not what we were talking about. I was in the process of moving out, and she offered to move my stuff to my new place while I was away.”
There's a painful twinge in Awsten’s chest, and his side hurts like hell. “Oh. Tina always did say I should have talked to you about that.” He sighs. “I miss her.”
Otto’s eyebrows are drawn together. “What happened?”
Awsten holds back his tears. “She died a month ago.”
Otto's eyes widen comically large. “What? How?”
“Same thing as me. We met in a support group and became friends cause we were the two oldest people there,” Awsten says.
Otto looks confused. “But then… then who are you in love with?”
Awsten looks away. “No, no, I can’t. Don’t want you to feel guilty,” he mumbles, only half-aware of what he’s saying.
Otto is staring at him. “Guilty?” he says quietly, when suddenly there’s realization on his face, that instantly turns into one of despair. “Don’t tell me it's me. Please don’t tell me this is all my fault.”
Awsten is a little hazy on how exactly Otto figured it out, but he shakes his head. “’S not your fault. It's my fault.”
Otto lurches forward and grabs Awsten’s shoulders. “How long? Awsten tell me how long you’ve felt like this!”
Awsten's throat constricts. He pushes back the blanket and pulls his shirt up to reveal the rose growing from his side. Otto looks absolutely horrified at the sight, but then Awsten speaks up. “Violet rose. It means love at first sight. Not constantly, or anything, but this is why it’s my fault. I let it get out of hand this time. But not your fault, never your fault.”
“God, Awsten,” Otto says through a sob. “How can you not know? How could you never see how I feel about you?”
Awsten shakes his head. “No, this is exactly what I didn’t want, I didn’t want you to force these feelings on yourself.” He lets out the cough he's been unconsciously holding back, pink and blue and purple and red and red and red staining his sheets and his shirt, and then Otto’s shirt too when he pulls Awsten into a hug.
“This is not that,” Otto mumbles into Awsten’s shirt. “I love you, Aws, I have for a while. I'm sorry for not noticing you felt the same way.” Otto pulls away from the hug, and leans his forehead against Awsten’s.
Awsten just stares at him. He's kind of just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Otto keeps smiling at him so warmly that he stops waiting and tilts his head ever so slightly, pressing his lips against Otto's. He must taste like the most awful mix of blood, flowers, and morning breath, but he feels Otto smile into the kiss anyway. The kiss doesn’t last very long, because Awsten’s out of breath after only a couple seconds, but their faces stay close to each other afterwards. Otto’s bright smile and happy tears are the last thing Awsten sees before he feels a cough coming on and he blacks out.
The first thing Awsten registers as he drifts into consciousness is that his mouth is dry as fuck. He lifts his hand up to rub his eyes before opening them.
He's a little confused when he looks around, distinctly remembering being in his own bed, but it only takes him a couple seconds to register that he's in a hospital. The next thing he sees is a mess of curly, brown hair resting on a pair of interlocked arms on his bed. Context clues have him concluding that it has to be Otto. He lets out a deep, content sigh when he realizes. He's shocked by how deep the sigh is, actually, and that’s when he notices how easily he's breathing. He hasn’t breathed like this since… since May.
Otto begins to stir, and Awsten beams at him when he lifts his head.
“Your hair looks good,” is the first thing Awsten says to him.
Otto springs forward and wraps his arms around Awsten's shoulders with a teary laugh. “Thanks, I've been using more conditioner,” he says.
They stay like that for a long time before either of them speaks.
“Never do that again,” Otto finally says, still holding on to Awsten.
Awsten inhales the scent of Otto's hair, and tightens his arms around him. “I won’t, I promise.”
Otto pulls away, finally, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of Awsten’s mouth in the process. He crouches down next to the hospital bed so that he's eye level with Awsten. “If I hadn’t called an ambulance you might have died. The flowers withered and dried when we confessed, but you almost choked to death when you coughed out the remains.” He grabs for Awsten’s hand and laces their fingers together. He presses a kiss so gentle on Awsten’s knuckles, that it has Awsten blushing like a 15-year-old girl. “I can’t believe I never noticed.”
Awsten shakes his head. “It's not your fault, I was hiding it from you the whole time. And it's over, now.” He caresses the back of Otto's hand with his thumb.
Otto smiles at him. “You do know I'm never letting you out of my sight again, though, right?”
Awsten laughs. “Fair enough.”
Otto just stares at him with a fond look that has a million butterflies take off in Awsten’s stomach. “I'll call a nurse, let them know you’re awake. Plus Geoff and your parents are in the waiting room, I'm sure they’ll be relieved to know you’re okay, too.”
“How did they get here so quickly?”
The grin on Otto’s face falls a little. “You were out for a while, Aws. It's the 23rd now.”
Awsten blinks. “Oh.” He shrugs. “At least I didn’t miss Christmas,” he says with a small smile.
Otto chuckles. “No, you didn’t.”
Awsten reaches for Otto’s face with his free hand, cupping it around his cheek. “I love you,” he says.
Otto flushes slightly, then beams at him. “I love you too. We're doing this thing a little backwards, though, aren’t we.”
Awsten laughs. “Yeah, we are. But hey, one thing,” he starts, and Otto gives him a questioning look. “When you do take me out on a date, don’t bring me flowers as a gift,” Awsten says with a grin.
Otto sighs, and shakes his head fondly. “I hate you,” he says, then presses a kiss on Awsten’s lips. Awsten closes his eyes.
For the first time in a long, long while, he is truly happy.