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Do you know when Hanahaki gets real complicated?
Kaminari Denki sure knew.
He was one of the unlucky bunch, one of the people who carried the latent gene for the disease somewhere in their DNA – from his mother’s side, as it happens – and he accepted it ever since she had explained it to him in early childhood. “Hanahaki,” she told him, “can be lethal. So if you ever, ever suspect you have it, Denki, tell me.”
Which he did. The first night he coughed up a clot of petals, dual-colored and wet, he spent staring at the wall of his dorm, silence occasionally broken by coughs of dry laughter, but the first morning he spent on the phone with her. She hadn’t been happy to be woken up before sunrise, of course, but he had a damn good reason.
And the rest was... history.
Kaminari knew that he had, in all technicality, three whole ways out of it. Either he refuses to do anything about it and lets the flowers slowly stuff his lungs full of repressed emotions and thorns, or he gets the surgery to remove the emotions and the flowers alike, or he manages to get his feelings returned.
Death, medical expenses, or an impossible feat. Peachy.
It’s not as if Kaminari Denki thought he wasn’t good looking. Or a completely terrible person. Or impossible to love. No, no – he knew his own value, and even though he was occasionally a complete disaster, there must have been people who were into that. The impossibility of the task didn’t come from that.
Hanahaki gets real complicated, Kaminari thought, when you manage to fall head over heels for two people at once.
Especially if the two said people were rather contently head over heels for each other and clearly weren’t looking for a third wheel.
Kaminari sighed tiredly, playing with the petals in his hands. Over the weeks they became much more defined, way harder to cough up, but easy to clean and store if you were into that kind of thing. He thought that if anything, Tokoyami might find it ironic that he keeps the things that kill him neatly pressed between the pages of a biology textbook he never opens.
He didn’t know much about flowers, so he couldn’t tell you what kind was growing in his lungs. He could, however, tell that as far as color combinations go, he could have fallen for better people. If his flowers were, say, blue and pink, or purple and white, or yellow and black (were there even black flowers?), his impending doom would have at least been aesthetically pleasing.
But no. As it stood, he was stuck dealing with orange and red.
Red for red hair and red eyes and red shirts and Red Riot. Red for sharp-toothed grins and loud encouragements and quips about manliness. Red for Kirishima Eijirou, because frankly, if you’ve never had at least a passing crush on Kirishima Eijirou, Kaminari would like to argue that you were either blind or just not into boys (and even those were questionable excuses).
Orange, then, for sparks of explosions and for hero costume designs. Orange for calloused palms, spicy food and constant swearing, for second-to-third best marks in the entire class and for fiery determination which, if determination could be seen, would be blinding. Orange for Bakugou Katsuki, who some may argue was harder to love, but who Kaminari found increasingly impossible not to fall for, insults and screaming be damned.
Yeah, red and orange didn’t really go together as far as color wheels were concerned. But hell if the flowers cared about color wheels. Hell if the real world cared about color wheels either, Kaminari thought sometimes, watching, only a little bitter, as Kirishima grabbed Bakugou’s hand and didn’t get a fistful of explosions in his face.
(Sometimes he also thought that it would look much better if they were to add some yellow to the mix. But what say did he have?)
In any case, he wasn’t planning to tell anyone else about this. Only his mum, only because she asked, so long ago, only because he needed someone to call when the scratching in his lungs got unbearable in the middle of the nights. But then, sometimes people weren’t really asking you to tell them things – they just barged into your head and your world and your room and demanded it.
Mainly your room.
“Mina, Jesus Christ!” Kaminari exclaimed as he entered his dorm one fine evening after just stepping out of the shower, in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Ashido was sitting on his bed, flipping resolutely through one of his textbooks, and Denki thought with delayed realization that he knew which textbook that was. “No one taught you to ask for people’s permission before you take their stuff?”
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding particularly apologetic. “I lost my book, and I figured it’s doubtful you’d be using yours.”
She got him there, alright. He sighed and gestured for her to turn away so he could pull on some boxers and a shirt.
“You got what you need then?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral and doing a pretty damn good job at it if he said so himself. “Almost gave me a heart attack, Jesus.”
“Well, sure,” Ashido shrugged. “I mean, I’ll take the book if you don’t mind. But – Denki, I didn’t know you were into herbariums.”
She turned the book over to prove her point. Dried petals, red and orange, infinitely familiar, flitted onto his bedsheets, and Denki thought, distractedly, that they will be a bitch to clean up later, let alone to stuff them back between the pages.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” he said. “They’re nice flowers.”
“I’d say,” Mina nodded quietly. She picked up one of the red petals, and it crumbled in her fingers. “What kind of flowers are they, Denki?”
Kaminari didn’t know much about flowers, goddamnit.
“Roses?” he guessed, haphazardly, but he knew it would be wrong before he even opened his mouth, because he liked to think he would have recognised something as common as roses long ago.
Mina choked on a laugh, and somehow it sounded anything but amused.
“Roses,” she repeated incredulously. “Really, Denki? Really?”
“Tulips?” he tried again. “Daffodils?”
“Daffo– have you ever seen a daffodil?” Ashido exclaimed. “These aren’t– whatever. Whatever! Who cares if you know what they are, Denki, where did they come from?”
“I–“
“Let me help you with the answer,” she hissed, and if he didn’t know better, Kaminari would have thought she was furious. “You’ve been coughing an awful lot lately, you know that? It’s not hard to notice. Even Aizawa-sensei was concerned about your health, let alone us!”
“Really?” Kaminari smiled awkwardly, trying to sweep the petals off his bed and onto the floor. They crumbled under his touch instead, broke into hundreds of dry shreds which smelled only vaguely of blood. “Well, I appreciate it, but there’s no need to worry. I’m–“
“If you say you’re okay, I will deck you,” Mina warned him, her eyes focused on the red-and-orange smears. “And then I’m gonna tie you up and wait for you to start coughing again.”
“Kinky,” Denki told her. She fixed him with a heavy gaze, and there was not a spark of amusement to it.
“Kaminari Denki, do you or do you not have Hanahaki?” she asked, not letting him look away. Her voice was surprisingly level, and yet somehow still brimming with emotion.
Denki sighed. He could, of course, say no, but it was one of those questions which weren’t really a question – it’s called rhetorical, he remembered, questions asked to make a statement rather than to actually get a response. He could say no, but she’d know that he was lying, and what would be, really, a point of that?
“Yeah,” he exhaled, crushing a petal in between his fingers and looking down at its remains melancholically. “Yeah, whatever.”
Mina’s shoulders sagged.
She nodded, then looked away, then suddenly rubbed her palms against her eyes violently, and Denki was left to watch in helpless confusion as she wiped her tears away on the fabric of her pajama shorts.
“Hey, hey, hey!” he exclaimed. “Don’t – don’t do that! It’s alright, Jesus. I’m fine, Mina. I mean, sure, the coughing is kind of annoying, but–“
“Are you gonna get the surgery?” Mina interrupted. She seemed almost hesitant to speak, and Denki closed his eyes for a brief moment, leaning back against the wall.
Was he gonna get the surgery?
On one hand, there was one side of him, the hopeless romantic who watched too many feel-good movies with his sister, which desperately wanted to say no. It wanted him to grasp at straws, to hang onto feelings which did nothing but choke him just because – just because.
But on the other hand, he was selfish. He wanted to graduate, he wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be adored by the public, and famous, and breathing properly again. There was a side of him which is pragmatic and sensible and sometimes even smart – and that side reminded him that saying no is not an option.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I will.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
“Good,” she whispered. “I mean, not... not good-good, but at least– at least you won’t– God, Denki, my aunt had it before, Hanahaki, and they barely managed to save her, because she refused to have it, the surgery, for so long, and she almost died, and you–“
“I’m not gonna die,” Kaminari promised her. “I want to live, Mina. If I don’t get over this whole... feelings thing, then I’ll have the surgery.”
Which was a fancy way of saying that he might as well call in and book an appointment, because there was no way he was getting over it any time soon. Not with Kirishima and Bakugou living in the same building, not with seeing them every day, not with their movie nights and exhausted conversations about the fate of the universe after training exercises.
“Good,” Mina said again, leaning against his shoulder, pushing the textbook down onto the floor in a whirl of remaining petals. “God, Denki, I wish you’d tell me earlier. Not that I can really help, I guess, but maybe... maybe...” She shook her head. “Who is it?”
And that was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? Who is it. It’s not as if Kaminari could just tell her, not as if he could admit that he’s harboring this ridiculous, hopeless crush on two of his best friends who are very much in a relationship with each other and have been for the past couple of months. Mina would probably keep it a secret, but he didn’t think he could handle the pitying gazes.
“It’s not Jirou, is it?” Ashido asked again after his silence stretched out for far too long.
Kaminari scoffed. He thought it would have been easier if it were Jirou. He could have just reminded himself that he never even stood a chance there – hasn’t got the correct set of chromosomes and all that – and he’d probably get over it soon enough. Probably.
As it stood, however, both Bakugou and Eijirou were very much into boys.
But also very much into each other.
Did he mention yet that it’s real fucking complicated?
“Not Jirou,” he said. “Listen, Mina, do you mind... not?”
Not asking. Not about this.
Ashido sighed quietly and squeezed his hand again.
“Yeah, of course,” she nodded quietly. “I’m sorry for prying. It’s just – you know.”
“I know,” Kaminari echoed, then shook his head, sharp, determined, dripping water everywhere like a wet puppy since he hadn’t quite had a chance to dry his hair. “Thanks for your worry, Mina. But I promise I’ll be alright.”
“You better,” she chuckled hoarsely, pushing him aside with a squeal when the water droplets landed on her face and arms. “You still owe me one for that time we failed our finals.”
“Hey!” Kaminari exclaimed, rightfully offended. “That was your fault as much as it was mine!”
“Was not!” she laughed, picking the textbook up from the floor and shoving the rest of the petals in the bin – right where they, perhaps, belonged. Kaminari watched them with some strange, warped sense of nostalgia, but then, if the scratching in his throat was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be long until he replenished his supplies.
“Was too!”
Mina gave him a hug before she left, textbook in hand. He hugged her back, relaxing momentarily into her arms before she pulled away, tapping him on the nose with a smile and then waltzing towards the door.
“Can I tell the rest of the squad?” she asked, head tilted slightly to the side, before slipping out of his dorm.
“Please don’t.”
He didn’t elaborate. She – bless her soul – didn’t demand elaboration.
The door clicked shut. Kaminari sighed quietly and flopped onto the soft surface of the bed (on his stomach, for lying on his back was not an option unless he was actively looking to choke).
Then pushed himself up on his elbows and reached for his phone. His mum probably had the doctor for this thing on speed dial.
***
It turned out that having someone in school know about his predicament was more useful than he thought. Mina didn’t even need asking to cover for him if he had to slip away to the bathroom to get through another onslaught of petals. She made up excuses as easy as breathing, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away if they found themselves chatting to Bakugou and Kirishima and Sero (which was all too useful, since the presence of the former two seemed to have made the scratching worse), or distracted their teachers with loud chirping and obvious question to give him the chance to sneak out of the classroom doors, unnoticed. He thought that perhaps he should have told her earlier.
But then, of course, there was the matter of the worried looks she kept sending him when he suddenly stammered over his words, trying desperately to clear his throat without drawing too much attention. There was a matter of thoughtful expressions on her face as she looked around the classroom, her gaze stopping in order on Jirou, on Shinsou and even on Todoroki for some reason (not that Kaminari couldn’t see it, what with how many people have had a crush on him at one point or another, but it still appeared a ridiculous thought).
There was a matter of how hard it was to stare at either Kirishima or Bakugou unnoticed now, since Mina was strangely transfixed on trying to figure out who was it exactly that would have had Denki knocking at death’s door in a month or two. But then, perhaps that was for the better – the less he stared, the less he felt like throwing up a mess of orange and red – red from both petals and his own blood.
“Okay, I give up,” she declared one evening of a particularly warm Friday, bursting into his room. “I give up, and I gotta ask before you get – before you get the thing. Who’re you into?”
She didn’t use the word “love”, or the word “surgery”, and Kaminari was grateful. They felt too finite, even considering the actual, strangling air of finality of the entire situation. He gave her a heavy glance.
“Forget it, Mina.”
“I just – I just can’t figure it out. I mean, you’re having your appointment in what, a week, and I want to at least know... I mean, before you...“
A week and three days, not that Kaminari was counting. Not that he was trembling in anticipation and fear at the same time, not that he couldn’t wait to breathe again, without his lungs aching with pricks and cuts, but not that he was scared, too scared of what it would be like, to look at Kaminari or Bakugou again and not to feel... anything. Not that he was scared of forgetting.
A week and three days and eight hours. Not, in the grand scheme of things, too long.
“I know it’s meant to be tied to colors or something,” Mina continued as he tried feverishly to weigh the consequences of telling and not-telling her – It’s not as if I can’t trust her, after all – “but yours is dual-colored anyways, and the only person I can think of for that is Todoroki-san, but I know you can’t be into Todoroki-san, because it would make no sense, and besides, yours are red and orange, and he doesn’t have anything to do with orange, and– Wait.”
Kaminari raised his eyebrows at her, because he was cool like that, and also because he was not about to let himself wrap his arms around his shoulders – that would look utterly pathetic.
Mina blinked, once, twice, then exhaled.
“You absolute fucking morons,” she said, flatly. And then, grabbing his arm and yanking him up to his feet: “Come on.”
“Hey!” he complained, trying to free himself from her grasp. “Hey, Mina, no, what the fuck, what are you–“
“I am sorting out your bullshit!” she hissed, loudly, and now she was furious, somehow, and frantically enthusiastic, as he shoved him into the elevator and pushed the ground floor button. “Jesus Christ, Denki, you stubborn assholes, all of you!”
“Mina–“
“Nope,” she interrupted, tapping her foot nervously on the floor, her fingers still clutched around his forearm. “Nope, you do not get to complain about this. Finally!”
The elevator doors dinged and slid open, and she pulled him out, through the common room and deeper into the corridors. He sort of gave up on struggling – when she wanted to, Ashido could be freakishly strong – but when she slammed open another door and pushed him inside one of the so-called study areas, he came to regret his decision immediately.
Kirishima looked up from a notebook where he was scribbling down some maths formulas. Bakugou glowered.
“The fuck do you two want?” he mumbled, arms crossed across his chest. Kaminari tried to stammer out an excuse, something that wouldn’t seem too suspicious given the circumstances, but Mina didn’t let him.
“I wasn’t gonna interfere, but this is fucking urgent, so sort it out now, or so help me god, I’m locking you in a closet! All of you!” she fumed, somehow managing to stare all three of them down at the same time. “Talk for once, you morons!”
Bakugou opened his mouth in righteous fury to argue about the name-calling, but Mina didn’t stick around to listen. She slammed the door closed, and then, judging by the footsteps, stormed off back down the corridor in a huff, as if she had any reason to be the one angry here. Kaminari gave the closed door a confused glance.
“Um,” he said, “sorry about that.”
“Yeah, you better be,” Katsuki grumbled, leaning back against his chair. “The fuck’s she on about anyways?”
“Oh – nothing,” Kaminari shook his head awkwardly. “She’s just being dramatic – well, you know how Mina is. It’s nothing important, really, I–“
“You finally gonna tell us that the two of you are dating?” Bakugou interrupted. Kirishima swatted at his arm with a frown and muttered something about playing nice.
Kaminari... blanked.
Dating? Him and Mina?
“What, as if that wasn’t obvious,” Katsuki scoffed, interpreting his silence as a confession. “With how she keeps dragging you away somewhere and thinking we won’t notice. Jokes on her, because we ain’t fucking blind.”
Except, Denki thought incredulously, you really kinda are.
“Mina and I are definitely not dating,” he told them, and the fact that it was necessary to say that out loud was already baffling enough. Seriously, why the hell would they even think– “First of all, if we were, do you really think we wouldn’t have told you?”
“You’re... not?” Kirishima narrowed his eyes, finally joining the conversation. “I mean, we figured she might have wanted to keep it on the down low, considering how we– uh, whatever– but–“
Bakugou glared at him, and Eijirou pressed his hand over his mouth sheepishly, growing silent. Denki looked between the two of them for a long moment.
“How you what?” he asked. “And in any case – no way. Mina was just... she was expecting unreasonable things, I don’t even know what things or why, so, uh, I’m gonna leave you two to it and find her and tell her to–“
“No,” Bakugou interrupted, causing Denki to flinch at the harshness in his voice. “No, since you here anyways, might as well tell us what the fuck it is you want, or she wants, otherwise it would have been a complete waste of everyone’s time.”
“Katsuki,” Kirishima said, an exasperated little exhale, but above that – a reminder that Kaminari really, really had no place here right now. Bakugou flipped him off, his gaze still drilling holes in Denki.
“I don’t want anything,” Kaminari said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I told you already, Mina is just–“
“Raccoon Eyes isn’t ever just anything!” Katsuki threw his hands up in frustration. “Quit being a fucking pussy and just tell us what the hell–“
“Nothing!” Denki screamed. He didn’t quite mean to scream, of course, but he found himself doing it anyways, feeling the shivers run up his spine under the piercing yet suddenly startled gazes of two pairs of red eyes. “I told you, it’s nothing, it won’t be anything in a week or so, so why don’t you all just–!”
And then, in a twist of brilliant irony, and probably because he was an idiot who set to yelling with his lungs full of flowers, he felt himself choke.
“Why don’t we just what?” Bakugou asked, intense but quiet, unusually quiet, his hands curling into fists. “Why don’t we just what, Pikachu? Finish your sentences.”
“Kaminari?” Kirishima exclaimed, meanwhile. He sounded somewhat alarmed as Denki scrambled for the door helplessly, and then infinitely more alarmed when he bent over coughing, trying to his face and the petals and the blood, god, the blood in the palms of his hands. “Kaminari, what’s wrong?!”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Denki tried, stubbornly, but it came out more as another choked cough than coherent words as he gasped desperately for air. The petals filled his hands, and then overfilled them, and then flitted to the ground in a mockery of red and orange, hard not to notice against the white carpet of the study room. Kaminari thought, distractedly, that he should probably apologize to whomever will be stuck on cleaning duty.
Bakugou and Kirishima stared at them. Denki wiped his mouth with his sleeve, looking at the red smear on the light blue fabric, and gave them a crooked grin.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he repeated again. This time his words were hoarse but legible, and he figured it good enough – small blessings. “Just an inconvenience. I’m dealing with it.”
“An incon– Denki, that’s Hanahaki!” Kirishima exclaimed, up on his feet almost immediately. “It could kill you!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Kaminari scoffed, picking up, only barely, on the use of his given name. “As I’ve said, I’m dealing with it. There is no need for you to worry, so if I could just–“
“Which one?” Bakugou interrupted. Eijirou spun around to face him, and Denki tried to keep his gaze focused down on the floor, on the petals and the bloody stains. “Mina wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t one of us, Kaminari. So which one?”
Katsuki using his actual surname instead of another dumb nickname was in a way even more unsettling than the fierce worry in Kirishima’s eyes. What was the most unsettling were, of course, the implications of the questions, Bakugou’s insane logical ability to come to conclusions or even perhaps the ease with which this particular conclusion could have been reached by just about anyone – Ashido certainly did her best to make it obvious. What was the most unsettling was the fact that Kaminari was standing here, in a room with two of his best friends, and inadvertently confessing their love – yes, fuck it, love – for the two of them.
He laughed. Clutched the petals at his hand, and then let them go, let the red and orange cover the wooden desk.
“Which one, Bakugou?” he said. “Wish that was how it worked. It would be easier if it were just one, wouldn’t it?”
They stared at the flowers in silence. The petals were more defined now, more defined than they ever have been, and it struck Kaminari that they could have perhaps belonged to an iris, one of those soft-petalled flowers his grandmother kept on her windowsill. He thought that he should ask Mina later if he’s right.
And also for an apology, maybe. Because, what a way to make things awkward.
“Oh,” Kirishima said quietly, to the right of him, and when he snapped his gaze back up, Denki realized suddenly that neither of them looked quite as upset by all this as they probably should have. “Oh. Good.”
And then, before he could ask just what exactly was good about this whole mess of a situation, Kirishima tugged him closer, making Denki stumble over his own feet, almost falling into his arms.
And kissed him.
Kissed him. Actually, properly kissed him, sharp teeth nibbling at the bottom of Kaminari’s lip, everything he had thought it would feel like and more, a sensation so momentarily overwhelming that he found himself frozen to the floor, dumbfounded, as if he had accidentally fried his brains again. There was a hand tangled in his hair, suddenly, and a body pressing against his, and he leaned forward almost on instinct, letting his lips part slightly, almost forgetting that his mouth must taste of blood and flower petals because that was the last thing that mattered, now.
Someone cleared their throat.
Kaminari stumbles backwards, against the closed door, almost pushing Kirishima away and hissing in pain as Eijirou managed to yank out a few strands of his hair.
Bakugou was standing up, his arms crossed, his eyebrows raised slightly. Denki felt like choking again.
“I–“ he managed, hands scrambling blindly for the door handle. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to– Kirishima, what the fuck, I mean – I mean Bakugou’s right here, and–“
“And Bakugou,” Katsuki interrupted in a teasing voice, way more amused than he had any right being, “wants in.”
And suddenly he was being kissed again, by a different pair of lips, more chapped and way less gentle, his shoulders pressed against the flimsy wooden door. Denki gasped, or tried gasping, breathless for once not because of the petals but because of lips and teeth and tongue, and Bakugou growled into his mouth, which had, frankly, no rights being this hot.
He leaned back after a long few seconds, licking his lips in a manner that was almost obscene.
“That’s a ‘we like you too’, Pikachu,” he smirked, as if that just now was not a comprehensive enough demonstration. “We’re going out for coffee tomorrow after lessons. You’re joining.”
“Katsuki, that’s not how you ask people out on dates,” Kirishima rolled his eyes, pushing a loose strand of hair being Kaminari’s ear. His fingers brushed against Denki’s temple, and he leaned into the touch, almost involuntary, his brain still trying to catch up to what exactly was going on.
“Well, he’s just gonna have to get used to it, ain’t he?” Bakugou smirked.
They turned their heads to look at Kaminari almost simultaneously, and he let himself slide down the wall, only slightly, leaning back in case his legs decide to refuse working completely. He took a breath – trembling and quiet, but deep for once in the last few months, deep and painless – and found himself smiling dumbly, mirrored both by Eijirou’s grin and the slight upturn to Katsuki’s lips (blink and you miss it).
“I’ll get used to it,” he promised, running his fingers through his hair and messing it right back up again. Katsuki scoffed.
“Damn right you will,” he said. “Now go wash your fucking mouth and come back here. Ain’t like we’re getting any more studying done today, are we, Shitty Hair?”
Kirishima laughed and stepped away from the door to allow it to be opened.
“I doubt it, man,” he said. And then: “Hey, making out is superior by all accounts.”
Denki – well, Denki really didn’t need to be told twice.
(Also, on second thought – he probably owed Mina a thank you now, huh?)