Ch.1
An illness born from unrequited love. The person's throat will fill up with flowers until they cough them up. The only way to cure it is if the love is returned, or to cut out the flowers out. This will also remove the feelings.
Madara was twenty-eight years old and two months fresh from peace when he coughed up his first rose. It crawled out of his mouth, the thorns pricking his tongue and drawing blood, and he had to leave immediately. Inuzuka Ashi, who he'd been talking to, made a noise of offense when he stood up, but Madara paid her no mind as he fled.
Once he was alone, he pulled the rose out and tore it apart. The thorns stabbed through his gloves but he didn't care – he shredded it until it was nothing but green pulp and flecks of red.
When he came back to Ashi, she was considerably colder, but he was in no state of mind to care. He couldn't stop thinking about that rose, about the blood still in his mouth.
Hashirama invited him to dinner. Madara accepted.
It was a mistake.
He fought the urge all through dinner, as if sheer stubbornness would keep the flowers at bay. But their petals tickled his throat and he felt them blooming inside him, unstoppable in their growth, and he excused himself so he could gag in the bathroom.
Four lilies spilled from his mouth, with snowy white petals and delicate green stems. Madara angrily yanked them out of the sink and flushed them down the toilet. His mouth ached and burned the entire time; when Hashirama asked him if he didn't like the food, he simply shook his head and continued to pick at his plate.
When he got home, he discovered that his tongue was swollen. Whatever those flowers were, they'd been toxic.
The third time, he had no place to hide. In the office, he cut himself off in the middle of a lecture with a harsh, rattling cough that made Hashirama straighten in alarm. "Madara –!"
"I'm fine, leave it –" he contradicted himself with another cough that scratched his ribs on the way out. Tiny petals scattered from his lips and onto his lap. Madara felt his face growing hot. He didn't know which was choking him more – the petals or the mortification.
He bent over, ignoring Hashirama coming to him, and coughed until a red chrysanthemum dropped into his cupped hand. Another followed it, equally red, and Madara wanted to die.
"…oh," Hashirama breathed next to his ear. He put his hand on his shoulder.
Madara twitched back, crushing the flowers. "This doesn't concern you," he snapped. He had no other place to put the flowers, so he shoved them into his pocket. "Get back to what you were doing, Hashirama. The food surplus for winter –"
"I feel them growing inside you," Hashirama said, and there was a strange unreadability to his tone.
Madara chose to see it as pity, and he bristled. "If all you want to do is waste my time, then I'll leave," he growled, standing. He felt more flowers unfolding in the dark spaces of his chest, their blooms tickling the base of his throat, and it was too much, all of it overwhelming. He yanked himself free of Hashirama. "Don't mention this to anyone," he warned him, his eyes narrowed.
"Madara," Hashirama began, his hands spread out in a gesture of peace, "please, don't –"
"This doesn't concern you!" Madara almost shouted, holding the flowers so tightly that he felt his hand grow damp from the squashed chrysanthemums. "Leave it. Now."
He stormed out of there, his steps thundering, trailing bruised petals on his way out. At home, he coughed and coughed until his floor was a bouquet of red chrysanthemums, and he burned them all.
"You should tell them," Hashirama said later, two weeks after the incident in his office. He sat in Madara's home in the Uchiha compound, his expression so determinedly amicable that Madara wanted to cut his smile off.
"There is nothing to say," Madara rumbled, scowling. He'd let Hashirama in because he'd thought this would be a village matter. Clearly, it wasn't.
"Madara, it's the most easily treated disease in existence, all you need to do is –"
"It's so simple, is it?" he sneered, his grip on his cup tightening. "You're so juvenile, Hashirama –"
"I don't understand why you're so determined to suffer –"
"It's not your place to understand!" Madara hissed at him. He stood up but there was no place to retreat to this time. He turned around and walked into his garden, trying to banish Hashirama's damnably earnest face from his memory. Why did he have to try so hard? Why couldn't he ever just learn to stop, to give up, to leave things alone?
"I don't want to see you in pain," Hashirama said from behind him and Madara almost screamed. Hashirama was insufferable, he was awful, he was everything that he hated, because he never gave up, he never stopped, he just kept coming with his fucking peace and his fucking kindness and Madara wanted to claw him out, out.
He heaved. The flowers came up thickly this time, yellow and gold, and they sprouted uncontrollably until he gagged them out, stems and all. It was honeysuckle this time. Madara stepped on them, grounding down, until he felt Hashirama gently grab his shoulders.
He froze.
"Being loved by you is an honor," he said. "You don't need to hide it like this. Whoever it is, I'm sure they'd reciprocate it."
The ugly, blooming sensation he associated with the sickness curled through him again. Hashirama didn't move. The heat of his hands burned through his clothes, through his skin, and Madara breathed hard, shaking, staring at the pile of broken flowers under his feet.
Being loved by you is an honor.
He was going to burst into flames, he could feel it. His chakra was surging through him like a forest fire and his heart was squeezing, contracting so hard that he was sure it would split open right there.
"…you don't know anything," he said, his voice ragged. "You don't understand anything. I'm not going to explain it to you. Just… just go. Leave me."
After a long silence, Hashirama finally sighed and acquiesced. Madara listened to his fading footsteps, burning, shaking, dying.
