lol so im cross posting this from ao3 (im KiriKay over there) bc catoptromancy is going to take too long to finish and i was feeling benevolent. i forgot how counter intuitive ffn is compared to ao3 in formatting :y anyway disfruten

Otoya was prone to the idiot in love stereotype. He couldn't help that there was just so much to love in the world; everything was just so wonderful even when it wasn't.

Coughing up flowers was practically a scientific fact of Otoya's life.

But love could gladly kill Otoya slowly if he got to look into it's eyes, smile, and get a glimmer of amusement in return.

"You always love the most difficult ones," the older woman who ran the orphanage says one day, as a much younger Otoya is sweeping up a cluster of decaying petals, mouth tasting metallic instead of floral. "You silly boy."

Otoya blushes, bright as his mused hair, and doesn't quite meet her eye. She clicks her tongue softly and picks up a fully bloomed pink petunia from a nearby chair gently, and Otoya speeds up his sweeping.

". . . They always need it the most." he whispers after a moment.

She looks at him as he sweeps, eyes darting between the mysterious but clean split in his lip and the mess of petals coating the floor, and sighs softly. She kisses the top of his head as she passes by to leave.

"You're a good boy, Otoya." she finally says with an unbearably soft tone; Otoya struggles not to cry. "Whoever will have you will have to deserve the kindness in your heart, though. Don't let just anyone into your lungs, silly boy."

Otoya chokes on his tears finally, trying to scrub them away. She tutts, wrapping her frail arms around Otoya and holding him close as hiccups against get shoulders. Soon, Otoya would hit his growth spurt and wouldn't fit against her anymore, a grandmother growing weaker by the day, but it was important that she taught him about his worth now.

And it wasn't like Otoya became any less loving; he just realized a certain carefulness was due when it came to dealing hanahaki. People feared being the cause of someone's untimely death, or forcing them to go into surgery and feel numbness for much too long. Fear could lead to anger, and anger was not fun to deal with.

So Otoya learned. An idiot in love he was, but no more an idiot than the next scorned heart.

Haruka is wonderful.

She's talented, and beautiful, and strong in ways Otoya knows means so much more. Her knack for holding their little group together is a sincere love for everything they do, for music as a whole, and it's no wonder Otoya starts coughing up tulip petals almost a week after he's met her.

They're an illustrious sunset, yellow bleeding to orange bleeding to red. Not that Otoya had seen ugly flower petals before, but they were usually solid colored; most were nothing like the cacophony of hues pouring from between his cheeks now.

He decides to keep them.

Flattening them out between paper towels, the few books he keeps starts to become suspiciously fat as the pages are stuffed. Tokiya doesn't seem to notice much, though, so Otoya doesn't worry about that, although he does worry about Tokiya's late night stints. He's almost never in the dorm, and when he is, he's undeniably tired and in a bad mood. Some part whispers that maybe he was just always going to be in a bad mood, Otoya, stop being a pest.

It's a little easier to ignore the late nights the week after the thought gets to him.

He tells grandma about her.

When Tomochika mysteriously starts weaving hydrangeas into her stylishly thin braids, and Haruka has a bright green gladiolus behind her ear the same day, Otoya's chest constricts. He can practically feel roots unfurling into his trachea, scratching his voice and watering his eyes.

He'd seen the scene enough times to know.

He feigns sickness, and decides to wallow in his broken heart between heaving coughs for a day before getting back up and over it. It was going to be alright in the end, because Tomochika was a sentinel to Haruka's heart; she took care of Haruka when Starish failed to, and held her hand through her anxieties, and while Otoya wished it were him in her stead, he could never hate her for loving Haruka the way he did.

Tokiya walks in just as he's peeling a single stubborn tulip petal off his tongue, dropping it into the nearby trash can.

"Ah," Tokiya says solemnly, and Otoya feels himself heat up.

"I-Ichinose!" he squeaks out, quickly sitting up and kicking the metal can to the side quickly. "I didn't expect you to be back so soon! Uh, I'm, I'm feeling a little under the weather, sorry!"

Tokiya ignores him in favor of going to their little kitchen, bumping around in there for a few minutes. Otoya awkwardly stuffs the can under his bed and tries to find something to do. His books are a bust for now, and moving to his desk to do school work seemed like too much effort. He ends up grabbing his laptop and bunching up in a corner of his bed, chest and throat aching unkindly.

A few minutes of flicking through videos later, a cough pushes a wilting tulip bulb past Otoya's lips.

"Ittoki," Tokiya says as he returns, a mug in hand, and Otoya tries to hide the bulb as best he can. "Try this. It'll help with the scratching."

Otoya takes the mug hesitantly, and Tokiya goes back to grab something off his desk. Taking a sip, it tastes like lemon and honey and an array of other things too slight for Otoya to name; it does the job though, softening the blow of his wheezing.

"Thank you." Otoya manages as Tokiya leaves, and Tokiya doesn't respond but Otoya feels a little brighter.

He tells grandma about how sweet Tomochika and Haruka are together.

The tulips fade with time, slowly retreating and withering safely away, and if anyone notices Otoya clear his throat more often, they only think he's fighting off the last of a particularly stubborn cold.

If he gets particularly noisy, Tokiya tosses a teabag on the kitchen counter. When Otoya makes it, it doesn't come out quite the same, but it's good for him anyway. He decides he needs to thank Tokiya soon, somehow; maybe he'd sing for him when he got a little too stressed to hide, or buy him a new set of teas to try.

The mottled blue and white hyacinths come as a surprise. Otoya coughs out a single, belligerent petal in the shower as he pops open a bottle of shampoo. It hits the floor with a flutter, ripping under the stream of water and swirling down the drain. He's. . . not really sure who's flowers those were in the moment, since his second year at Shining Academy was proving stressful to his memory; he had been so wrapped up in his work that he had stopped really paying any modicum of attention to his personal life.

Then he notices that the bottle he grabbed wasn't his, but Tokiya's. It smell cool, slightly minty and light, and when Otoya gets a second whiff he chokes on more petals.

Oh. Oh.

The worst part of Otoya's life had been when his grandmother died, when he was 14 and not naïve enough. Not his biological one, of course, though he'd be sad for her too; no, the old woman who ran the orphanage, who everyone called grandma whether they liked it or not. He had been undeniably close to her.

Whenever she needed any kind of help, Otoya would immediately step in without hesitation. She'd teach him things and he'd do anything in his power to get it right, even little things like folding sheets or sealing envelopes. In the end, Otoya had slowly taken over as an emotional guardian for the younger kids when she could no longer stay all day in peace, or run around after the younger ones in their endless haste; she had taught him to hone what patience he had, and then she let him go.

Around a week before she died (suddenly, peacefully, asleep like she'd wake up any moment), she sat Otoya down for a talk. He wonders now if she knew her time was running short.

"You'd visit me every day if I asked you to, wouldn't you?" she said, smiling and accentuating her crows feet shamelessly.

"Of course I would!" Otoya had replied indignantly. "You're important to me!"

"I knew you'd say that silly boy," she laughed, ruffling his hair; Otoya had leaned down to make it easier on her. "But that's not what I want. I want you to visit me when you need me."

"And I'll visit you when you need me, too."

She had smiled and pet his cheek fondly before waving him off.

"Go go, I think I hear Aki causing trouble again."

Her daughter had been tearful during the funeral. She had hugged Otoya the tightest she could, promising everything would be okay; Otoya knew it would be, eventually, but it wasn't okay now.

He'd keep on, though, because he knew that you had to keep promises you made to the people you love the most.

He visited her grave every day before leaving for Shining Academy. He still managed to make trips over on occasion, when life became to heavy for his shoulders alone.

This one felt like the most important one so far though.

He sits in front of her tombstone, delicately placing a bouquet of white lilies in front of himself. He's quiet for a few moments, thoughts slowly coming together from their mix. It was like unsmearing paint somehow, lining up each color into a cohesive rainbow.

"I'm in love, again," he says ruefully, smile shy. "But it feels different this time. The flowers aren't growing so fast I can't breathe. They're. . . They're slow, and my chest doesn't feel like it's weighed down."

His hand hovers over his heart hesitantly, unsure for a moment; like everything Tokiya had made him feel, the flowers were a meticulous thing that slowly found its place in Otoya's life. They creeped at the edges of his lungs, steadily unfurling into dazzling star shapes.

"I think this one will kill me." Otoya says finally, voice low. "I can't imagine pulling them out of me."

The tulip petals find their way into a mason jar, beautiful and stiff, hidden among the clutter of Otoya's half of the room. He replaces their place in the books with small white or blue, taking longer to fill up the pages.

Living with Tokiya makes things hard. Otoya wants to confess, but he knows better than to put Tokiya in a difficult spot. Not that people didn't have relationships under Shining Saotome's nose, but Tokiya cared so much about doing things right that Otoya couldn't submit him to any uncomfortable situations.

Love was agonizing during dance practice, but Otoya already knew that.

Dance practice with Tokiya made it more painful.

There was a creeping suspicion among the Starish boys that Otoya was getting sick or something, considering he was wheezing regularly when he used to not be out of breath until the very end, and he coughed a few times between sets. Otoya tried to be inconspicuous, but subtlety was Tokiya's strong point, not his.

"Are you okay Ittoki?" Natsuki asks worriedly midway through practice.

"Ikki," Ren says, draping his arm over Otoya's shoulders. "If you're feeling sick, you can tell us."

"I guess I don't feel so great," Otoya admits sheepishly. "But I don't feel bad enough to stop practice!"

"You can't push yourself too much," Masato chides kindly. "You need to take care of yourself to be able to work your best."

There's a hum of agreement around the room and Otoya knows he's beat- even Syo is agreeing, as if he were a paragon of self care.

"I'll make sure he takes care of himself." Tokiya says, teasing, and Otoya coughs weakly.

Thank god these petals were small enough to swallow back.

"Okay, okay." Otoya eventually agrees.

"What a gentleman, Icchi." Ren purrs, and Tokiya rolls his eyes as he waves Otoya out the door.

He presses his hand against Otoya's back to push when he slows down, and Otoya feels the heat through his clothes. Everything about Tokiya was regal, even the shape of his palm, and Otoya kind of wants to throw up whole bush of hyacinths because he doesn't want Tokiya to stop touching him. Tokiya clears his throat, a little roughly, and pulls his hand away once Otoya keeps up a steadier pace.

"You should be honest if you're unwell," Tokiya says calmly. "Working to exhaustion is difficult to return from."

Tokiya's tone suggests he's remembering his own time as an idol, stressed and tired and empty, and Otoya wants to pull him back to reality.

"I'm sorry," Otoya blurts out, coughing hard enough to rattle his chest. "I didn't think about it!"

Tokiya blinks, shocked, and puts his hand on Otoya's shoulder to stop their trek. Otoya covers his mouth, trying to curl away from Tokiya's sharp gaze.

I don't want Tokiya to see.

But Otoya had never been good at hiding, and they had been living together for a year and a half, and life is cruel when a pale petal slips between his fingertips. Tokiya doesn't look quite shocked, but his eyes twitch wider and his lips purse.

"Ittoki," he sighs out gently, picking the blue off the spotless floor and guiding Otoya towards their dorm. "Keeping this up is dangerous."

God, Otoya kind of wants to cry his eyes out. Tokiya doesn't sound disappointed in him, which is a plus, but he does sound solemn. Dred rises from the depths of Otoya's stomach, because he can hear Tokiya's voice in his head, you need to get the operation, Ittoki, and it hurts.

I don't want to stop feeling this.

Tokiya guides Otoya into the room and onto Otoya's unmade bed. He goes to make tea, and Otoya can feel pressure build around his eyes uncomfortably. Leave it to Tokiya to berate and take care of Otoya all in the same breath.

He was good like that.

A small bundle of hyacinths push their way up his throat and out of his mouth- the first full flowers he'd coughed up so far for Tokiya. They leave Otoya wheezing faintly, and he carefully places them in the trash without looking.

When Tokiya hands Otoya the mug, he surprises him by sitting down. Otoya is grateful, of course, but the cough wasn't going away any time soon if Tokiya insisted on staying. The tea smells just like Otoya remembered from the first time, and tasted just as good; whatever Tokiya did was impossible for Otoya to replicate, and his heart squeezes faintly.

"I'll be okay if you want to go back to practice." Otoya tries weakly.

"Who is it?" Tokiya asks suddenly, surprising Otoya.

"Ah?"

"It seems to me your voice has been scratchy for a while," Tokiya continues, turning towards Otoya more. "So who is it?"

"That's- that's kind of embarrassing." Otoya squeaks out, face flushing. "You'll think I'm dumb because of how long it's been."

"I can't help but be curious. You're good at hiding them usually."

Otoya blushes more, trying desperately to hide his face into his mug instead; it's a valiant effort considering it was as big as his hand.

Honesty is the best policy, isn't it? Avoiding hadn't made things better.

"It's you," Otoya says, refusing to look up. There's a sharp breath to his side, so he scrambles. "But! But it's okay, because I know being here means a lot to you, so I'm not gonna put you at risk or anything, yeah?"

"All this time. . ." Tokiya murmurs absently, and he gently tugs away Otoya's only defense. Otoya let's him, like an idiot, because he's in love with those hands and that voice and the sighs all the same. "Otoya."

Tokiya's treacherous free hand tilts Otoya's chin up, and his heart too weak to be stubborn, which is good because Tokiya kisses him and Otoya would hate to miss that. It's languid and soft and chaste, and despite that Otoya feels an overwhelming, sparkling giddiness pour through him like a river as he kisses back.

"I have flowers for you." Tokiya admits when he pulls away, and Otoya manages to open his eyes to catch the tail end of a blush on his skin, and holy fuck Tokiya just kissed him and admitted to having flowers too and just, holy shit. "Hibiscus."

"Oh!" Otoya squeaks out, scrubbing his cheeks anxiously. "Oh, I- thank you?"

Tokiya's lips flutter up into a smile and Otoya's heart somehow manages to beat even faster. He might not survive the afternoon at this rate, but that was good, it was fine; he'd never had someone reciprocate in his bouts of love, so this was new and warm in every good way possible. Tokiya tries to pass the mug back, but Otoya pushes his hand down and leans in for another kiss; he's shy but not shy enough to stop himself. Tokiya laughs- not at his kiss, but at his impatience, and it was easy to tell he was so good, so kind deep down- and returns the kiss, only breaking off to put the mug on the nightstand.

Otoya will never admit to the whine he lets out. Never.

Otoya knew how to keep lovely little secrets, and for once, he had one he was willing to keep forever if it came down to it.