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you're going to miss me when i'm gone, minho thinks of saying, jokingly. just to watch the way jinki's eyes will probably curve into slits. but maybe he'll cry instead, he's been doing that a little more now, cry bitterly from his seat at the side of minho's hospital bed, sobs instead of laughter, rain-clouds instead of sunshine.
and minho thinks jinki will miss him, but perhaps not in the way minho wants him to. not in the way people miss a piece of their soul when it goes, the way people miss a lover. jinki is his best friend, his favourite hyung. but that's as far as it can go. as far as minho will push it. he has never been demanding, not even when it's his life on the line.
unrequited love is powerful, he's realised. a certain sort of strength is required to keep pouring love into a person with no prospect of anything being returned, nothing with the same kind of vivid intensity. platonic love, as beautiful as it can be, seems faded and dim under the want for something more. something different. the kind of love that sweeps away everything else, consumes you like a fire.
the flowers kill you eventually. the ones that grow in the pool of unrequited love in your chest. their roots twine around your lungs, crack your ribs. their thorns pierce your organs, tear wounds in your heart. their petals clog your throat, turn breathing into torture. you can go for surgery, pull the flowers out at their source, stop the feeling, stop the pain. but minho doesn't mind. he thinks pain means the feelings are real, means he's real.
and now he's dying.
"i wish you would tell me who it is," jinki is saying. "we could get them to come, convince you to take the surgery. or you could make them love you! you're easy to love."
and minho smiles up at him. "they don't love me," he says quietly, smile barely dimming, even as the words are accompanied by another harsh bout of coughing, sunflower petals and droplets of blood scattering across the white sheets. "i don't need them to."
"but you're dying, ming," jinki says solemnly.
"i know," minho says. and he smiles again, coughs again. watches jinki's eyes cloud with worry.
"who is this person, that you rather die than give up the feelings?"
it's a rhetorical question. by this point, jinki knows minho won't tell him, the secret held close to his chest, a guarded captive.
"is there anything you want me to take care of? after you-" the end of jinki's hesitant sentence is lost to minho's massive coughing fit. he can see specks of black in his vision now, and a strange sense of contentment falls over him, certainty of what comes next is nice.
minho can see the furrows deepen between jinki's brows through his failing vision, can see panic breaking over his gaze. he tries to smile again, reaches over to squeeze jinki's hand with what strength he has left. "just you," he says, with effort.
he thinks jinki doesn't hear him at first but then, understanding slowly flares in jinki's eyes, and sorrow so deep it could drown them both. jinki's mouth starts forming his name, and minho thinks he can see the sparkle of tears starting in the corner of his eyes.
and then the whole world goes black.