Work Text:
Blooming Thorns in His Throat
The first petal came up with his morning coffee.
Seto Kaiba stared at the delicate pink thing floating in his espresso, its edges slightly wilted from the heat. He plucked it out with precise fingers, holding it up to the light of his penthouse window. It was small, absurdly fragile—nothing like the pristine, controlled environment he cultivated in every aspect of his life.
"Strange," he muttered, flicking it into the trash.
By the third day, he couldn't ignore it anymore. The coughing fits were brief but violent, tearing through his chest like something inside him was trying to claw its way out. Each time, his hand came away with petals—soft, curling things that shouldn’t have been there at all. He kept them in a drawer in his office, hidden beneath stacks of contracts and blueprints, as if burying them deep enough would erase the problem entirely.
The doctor’s office smelled like antiseptic and something faintly floral—probably the wilting bouquet on the receptionist’s desk. Kaiba sat stiff-backed in the examination room, gloved fingers tapping impatiently against his thigh. The diagnosis had been quick. Efficient. No-nonsense, just the way he preferred things.
"You’re familiar with Hanahaki Disease, I assume," the doctor said, adjusting his glasses.
Kaiba’s jaw tightened. Of course he was. A rare condition where unrequited love manifested as flowers growing in the lungs, choking the victim from the inside out. Romantic nonsense for weak-minded fools. And yet—here he was.
"You have two options," the doctor continued, sliding a pamphlet across the table. "Surgical removal of the flowers, which will also erase the feelings causing them. Or..."
The pamphlet sat untouched between them, its glossy surface catching the sterile overhead light. Kaiba didn’t need to read it to know what the second option was. *Confess.* As if he’d ever debase himself like that.
His driver took the long route back to KaibaCorp headquarters—a subtle act of mercy, though Kaiba would never acknowledge it. The city blurred past the tinted windows, neon signs smearing into streaks of color. He pressed a gloved hand to his ribs, where a thorned vine seemed to twist deeper with every breath.
Mokuba was waiting in his office, perched on the edge of the desk with a stack of quarterly reports. "You look like hell," he said, and Kaiba almost laughed. The kid had no idea.
"Board meeting got rescheduled," Mokuba continued, sliding the papers toward him. "Something about Tanaka’s yacht catching fire?"
Kaiba swiped the reports from Mokuba's hands without glancing at them. The motion sent another petal tickling at the back of his throat—this one sharper, edged with the faint bitterness of something not yet fully bloomed. He swallowed hard. "Tanaka's yacht is irrelevant. What's the status of the Neo-Duel City project?"
Mokuba's eyebrows shot up. "You're avoiding something. Is this about the—"
"I'm not avoiding anything." The lie tasted like rosewater and blood. Kaiba turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where Domino City sprawled beneath him in geometric perfection. Down there, somewhere, Yuugi Mutou was probably laughing with his friends over some inane card game, blissfully unaware of the vines tightening around Kaiba's lungs. The thought made his ribs ache.
Mokuba exhaled sharply behind him. "You're doing that thing where you pretend you're fine when you're obviously—"
The pain hit like a white-hot spike driven through his temple. Kaiba barely had time to register the wet *pop* before his vision on the left side bloomed into a riot of color—not blood-red, but a nauseating swirl of pinks and greens. Something warm and fibrous slithered against his cheekbone.
Mokuba’s scream was the first thing that registered. "Seto—your *eye*—!"
Kaiba reached up on instinct, fingers brushing against petals where his eye should have been. The sensation was obscenely soft, like touching the inside of a freshly split fruit. His knees buckled. Mokuba caught him by the shoulders, shouting something about an ambulance, but the words dissolved into static. Kaiba’s remaining eye fixed on the ceiling—on the precise grid of fluorescent lights—as if anchoring himself to geometry could undo the horror unfurling in his skull.
The ER was a blur of shouted orders and cold metal. Hands forced his head back against the gurney; someone pried his fingers away from the ruin of his eye socket. "Jesus Christ," a nurse muttered, "it’s *rooted*—" The rest was lost to the shrill beep of monitors. Kaiba’s vision tunneled. He distantly recognized the scent of antiseptic and something cloyingly sweet—like crushed rose stems mixed with hospital bleach.
Mokuba’s voice cut through the haze, high and frantic. "You have to *fix him*!"
A surgeon leaned into Kaiba’s remaining line of sight, her mask doing nothing to hide the grimace beneath it. "Mr. Kaiba, we need to stabilize the spread before—"
Kaiba laughed. The sound was wet, jagged, tearing at the vines in his throat. "Before I sprout daisies out of my ears?" His fingers twitched toward the IV line—he’d rip it out himself if they didn’t stop talking. The surgeon exchanged a look with the anesthesiologist.
Mokuba grabbed his wrist. "Stop being an *idiot* for five seconds!" His little brother’s nails bit into his skin. "They’re trying to *help* you!"
The ceiling lights flickered. Kaiba’s vision pulsed—not darkness, but an invasive, *living* color, seeping from his ruined eye socket into his veins. He could *feel* them now, the roots threading through his optic nerve, tendrils whispering against his skull. *Pathetic,* some part of him sneered. *Reduced to this.* Another part—smaller, desperate—wondered if Yuugi had ever coughed up petals for *him.*
The surgeon snapped her gloves on. "We’re prepping for extraction. Given the ocular involvement, we may need to—"
"No." Kaiba’s voice cut through the beeping machines. He pushed himself up on one elbow, ignoring the way Mokuba yelped. The flower in his eye socket trembled, its petals brushing his cheekbone. "No surgery."
Mokuba’s grip went slack. "You *have* to—"
"I *don’t*." Kaiba’s remaining eye locked onto his brother’s. The words tasted like crushed stems. He barely had time to register Mokuba’s horrified expression before his chest convulsed—not the usual dry, controlled cough, but a full-body heave that sent him doubling over the gurney’s edge. Something thick and wet surged up his throat, tearing at the vines coiled inside him.
The first bloom hit the sterile floor with a sound like wet paper. A blue rose, its petals splayed wide and trembling, dark as ink at the edges where blood seeped into the crevices. Kaiba gagged, fingers clawing at his own collar as another wave hit—this one sharper, brighter. A cluster of daffodils spilled from his lips, their trumpet-shaped heads smeared with saliva and something darker. They landed half-crushed beneath his trembling hands, stems still connected by thin, glistening tendrils of tissue.
Mokuba made a sound like a wounded animal. "Seto—"
Kaiba didn’t answer. His vision swam, the single remaining eye struggling to focus on the grotesque garden pooling at his feet. Blue roses—his company’s logo, his personal emblem, now dripping from his mouth like a sick joke. And daffodils. *Daffodils.* His stomach twisted. He knew what they meant. Had looked it up weeks ago in a moment of weakness, buried deep in his browser history where no one would find it. *Unrequited love. New beginnings.* The irony was almost poetic.
The surgeon recoiled. "We need to—"
"No." Kaiba wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing petals and bile across his skin. His ribs ached where the roots pulsed, as if the flowers inside him were laughing. "No surgery. No confession. *No.*" He said it like he was ordering a subordinate to scrap a failing project—like this was just another variable to control. But his voice cracked on the last syllable, and Mokuba flinched as if struck.
The nurse reached for his arm. "Mr. Kaiba, if you don’t—"
He jerked away, sending another spray of petals scattering across the tiles. One landed on Mokuba’s shoe—a single blue rose, its stem still twitching faintly. Kaiba watched his little brother stare at it, watching the exact moment comprehension dawned in those wide, too-young eyes.
Blue roses. KaibaCorp’s signature. His *pride*.
And now they were *vomiting*
The second bloom hit the floor before Kaiba could choke it back—this one a full, unbroken blue rose, its petals unfurling like a slow-motion explosion. It landed with a wet slap beside the first, stem still attached to a thin, glistening strand of something that definitely wasn't saliva. Mokuba made a sound like a kicked dog, scrambling back until his shoulders hit the crash cart.
Kaiba barely noticed. His vision tunneled, the clinical white of the hospital walls dissolving into a nauseating swirl of color as another wave of petals clawed up his throat. These weren't the delicate, curling things from earlier—these were *whole flowers*, stems and all, tearing through his esophagus with barbed insistence. A daffodil burst from his lips, its trumpet head smearing yellow pollen across his chin before tumbling onto the gurney.
The surgeon swore, grabbing for a suction tube. "His airway's—"
Kaiba knocked the instrument away with a violence that sent monitors screeching. His fingers—usually so precise around duel disks and contract pens—clawed at his own collar, ripping the fabric open to reveal a lattice of angry red lines spiderwebbing across his chest. Beneath the skin, something *moved*.
The third bloom tore through him like a betrayal. Kaiba barely had time to register the wet, fibrous sensation before his body convulsed forward, ribs cracking against the gurney’s rail as a thicket of blue roses erupted from his mouth. They weren’t delicate anymore—these were savage things, stems barbed with thorns that shredded his throat on their way out. Blood flecked the petals as they hit the floor, their sapphire hues darkening to near-black where his life seeped into them.
Mokuba screamed. A nurse lunged for the crash cart as Kaiba’s body jackknifed, ribs cracking against the gurney with a sound like splintering wood. The surgeon was shouting—something about airway obstruction, something about cardiac arrest—but Kaiba barely heard her. His remaining eye rolled toward the doorway, where the silhouette of Yuugi Mutou stood frozen, his sneakers squeaking against the hospital floor.
Yuugi’s hands clutched a crumpled paper bag—probably some stupid trinket or snack he’d brought for moral support. His eyes widened as they locked onto Kaiba’s ruined face, onto the grotesque tangle of flowers spewing onto the floor. For one suspended moment, Kaiba thought he saw understanding flicker there. Then Yuugi took a step forward, his voice cracking open like an overripe fruit: "Kaiba—"
Another convulsion tore through Kaiba’s chest. He barely registered the sting of the IV ripping free from his arm as his body spasmed forward, vomiting another torrent of roses onto Yuugi’s shoes. The petals landed with a wet slap, their blue-black sheen smeared with saliva and blood. Mokuba was sobbing now, fingers twisted in the back of Kaiba’s hospital gown as if he could physically tether him to this world.
Yuugi didn’t flinch. He dropped to his knees beside the gurney, heedless of the gore soaking into his jeans, and grabbed Kaiba’s wrist. His fingers—always so warm, so stupidly alive—pressed against the frantic pulse point like he was counting cards. "You *idiot*," he whispered, his voice raw with something Kaiba refused to name.
Kaiba tried to snarl, but his throat was too full of petals. His remaining eye burned with the effort of keeping Yuugi in focus—those ridiculous bangs, that soft, stupidly earnest expression—but his vision kept fracturing into prismatic shards. He barely registered the anesthesiologist counting backward from ten, barely felt the cold bite of the IV as the drugs flooded his veins. His last thought before the dark swallowed him whole was disgustingly poetic: *I never even got to beat you properly.*
The first thing Kaiba noticed when he woke up was the absence of pain. Not the dull, medicated kind—the kind that came with actual *emptiness*, like someone had scooped out his insides with clinical precision. His fingers twitched toward his ribs, where the vines had been, and found only smooth bandages beneath his hospital gown.
"Don’t move." Mokuba’s voice was hoarse, like he’d been crying. Again. Kaiba turned his head—slowly, carefully—and found his little brother slumped in a chair beside the bed, dark circles bruising the unders of his eyes. "They had to... dig pretty deep." He gestured vaguely toward Kaiba’s chest. "There were roots wrapped around your aorta."
Kaiba exhaled. The air felt thin, flavorless. No petals. No blood. Just sterile hospital oxygen. "How long?"
"Twelve hours." Mokuba’s fingers tightened around the armrests. "They said if they’d waited any longer—" His voice cracked. Kaiba looked away.
The door creaked open. Yuugi hovered in the threshold, clutching a paper cup of vending machine coffee like a lifeline. His eyes darted between Kaiba’s face and the heart monitor, as if checking for damage. "You’re... awake."
Kaiba’s lips curled. Or tried to. The muscles felt stiff, unfamiliar. "Disappointed?"
Yuugi’s grip tightened around the cup. Coffee sloshed over the rim, splattering his sneakers. "No. I just—" He swallowed hard. "I didn’t know."
The words hung between them, stupidly obvious. Kaiba wanted to laugh. Of course Yuugi didn't know. He’d made sure of it—buried the evidence beneath board meetings and stock reports, choked down petals until his ribs ached. Now the truth sat in the sterile air between them, stinking of antiseptic and crushed stems.
Mokuba stood abruptly, chair scraping against linoleum. "I’ll, uh—give you two a minute." He shot Kaiba a look—part warning, part plea—before slipping out the door.
Yuugi inched forward. The coffee cup trembled in his hands. "Kaiba, I—"
"Don’t." Kaiba’s voice was flat. Empty. Like the hollow space where the flowers had been. "It’s handled."
Yuugi’s fingers tightened around the cup. Steam curled between them, ghostly in the sterile light. "It’s *not* handled. You—" His voice hitched. "You could’ve *died*."
Kaiba turned his head toward the window. Dawn painted the city in muted gold, softening the sharp edges of KaibaCorp tower. "I didn’t."
Silence. Then—a wet *crack* as Yuugi crushed the cup in his fist. Coffee splattered across the floor like a bloodstain. "Why didn’t you *tell* me?" His voice was raw, stripped down to something Kaiba couldn’t name. "All those duels, all those times you—" He made a choking noise. "Was it *always* like this?"
Kaiba’s pulse jumped. The monitors betrayed him with a quickening beep. *Yes.* Every duel, every snide remark, every stolen glance—petals clogging his throat, roots wrapping around his ribs. He’d carved them out himself with sheer willpower, sutured the wounds with arrogance. And it had *worked*. Until it didn’t.
Yuugi stepped closer. His shadow fell across Kaiba’s chest—where the surgeon’s scalpel had cut away the garden festering beneath his ribs. "I would’ve—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I didn’t *know*."
Kaiba laughed. The sound scraped against his empty lungs. "Would it have changed anything?"
Yuugi flinched. That was enough to answer.
The door hissed open. The surgeon entered, her scrubs pristine despite the carnage of twelve hours prior. "Mr. Kaiba." Her gaze flicked to Yuugi, then back. "The procedure was successful. No residual root structures." She hesitated. "The... emotional side effects may take time to manifest."
Kaiba's fingers twitched against the sheets. He knew what she wasn't saying—that the absence would feel like amputation. That he'd wake up reaching for something no longer there.
Yuugi stepped forward. "Can I—" He swallowed. "Can we talk alone?"
The surgeon nodded and left. The door clicked shut with finality.
Silence pooled between them, thick with unsaid things. Yuugi's fingers curled and uncurled at his sides. Kaiba watched the motion with clinical detachment. Once, that nervous fidget would've sent petals tickling up his throat. Now—nothing.
"You didn't have to do this," Yuugi said softly.
Kaiba's lips twitched. "I did."
"But if you'd just—"
"*What*?" The word tore free, sharper than Kaiba intended. He gestured to his bandaged chest. "Confessed? Begged? Spilled my guts like some lovesick fool?" His laugh was a dry rasp. "You'd have pitied me. That would've been worse than death."
Yuugi's hands clenched. "You don't know that."
"I *do*." Kaiba watched a droplet of spilled coffee trace the tile grout. "This was the optimal solution. Clean. Efficient." His fingers skimmed the IV line. "No messy variables."
A monitor beeped. Yuugi exhaled through his nose—the same measured breath he took before a risky play. "You're wrong."
Kaiba stilled.
"I wouldn't have pitied you." Yuugi stepped into the space between bed and window, backlit by dawn until his shadow swallowed Kaiba's torso whole. "I'd have been *furious* you waited until flowers were coming out of your *eye*
The first petal was warm against his lips.
Kaiba didn’t register it at first—too caught in the dizzying press of Yuugi’s mouth, the impossible heat of his hands fisting in the front of his hospital gown. It wasn’t gentle. Yuugi kissed like he dueled: all in, no hesitation, like he could rewrite reality through sheer stubbornness. His teeth caught Kaiba’s lower lip, and Kaiba gasped—
—and the petals fluttered between them, pink and trembling.
Yuugi broke the kiss first, his breath ragged. "What the *hell*?"
Kaiba touched his own lips, expecting blood. Instead, his fingers came away with a single cherry blossom petal, its edges delicate as tissue paper. It shouldn’t have been there. The surgeon had scraped him clean. And yet—
A cough tore through him, sudden and violent. Yuugi grabbed his shoulders as Kaiba doubled over, his body convulsing. But this wasn’t the wet, choking horror from before—this was dry, almost *productive*, like his lungs were turning themselves inside out to expel something. Another petal flew from his lips, then another, scattering across the hospital sheets like confetti.
The monitors screamed. Mokuba burst through the door, white-faced. "What’s—"
Yuugi didn’t answer. His fingers dug into Kaiba’s shoulders as another cough wracked him—this one deeper, rattling, as if something was *unwinding* inside his chest. Kaiba gagged, his vision spotting, and then—
A single, perfect blue rose tumbled onto his lap. Its stem was clean, unbroken, free of blood or tissue. The petals unfurled slowly, catching the morning light like stained glass. Beneath it lay a scattering of cherry blossoms, their pink edges soft against the sterile white sheets.
Silence. Then Mokuba whispered, "What the *fuck*?"
Kaiba stared at the flowers. His fingers—steady now, unnaturally so—brushed the rose’s petals. They felt real. Solid. *Separate* from him. His ribs ached, but it was a distant thing, like remembering pain rather than feeling it. He exhaled, waiting for the familiar tickle of petals in his throat. Nothing came.
Yuugi’s hand hovered near his cheek, trembling. "Kaiba—"
The surgeon burst in, her stethoscope swinging wildly. She took one look at the flowers on the sheets and froze. "This is—" Her fingers fluttered near his wrist, checking his pulse. "Impossible."
Kaiba swatted her away. "Explain."
"I can’t." She reached for his bandages, peeling them back with clinical precision. The skin beneath was smooth, unmarked—no trace of the angry red vines that had mapped his chest hours earlier. Her breath caught. "The roots *regressed*."
Mokuba made a sound like a deflating balloon. "You mean—"
"They’re gone." The surgeon traced the clean line of Kaiba’s sternum, as if expecting petals to erupt beneath her fingertips. "Completely."
Yuugi’s fingers tightened around Kaiba’s wrist—not to check his pulse, but to *confirm* He was still there. His thumb pressed into the delicate skin beneath Kaiba’s palm, where the veins branched like roots. "But how?"
The surgeon shook her head, her gaze flicking to the scattered blossoms on the sheets. "Medically? I have no explanation." She hesitated, then added, quieter: "Emotionally? I think you already know."
Kaiba’s fingers twitched. The blue rose lay heavy in his lap, its petals unnaturally vibrant against the sterile white. He wanted to fling it away—to deny the impossible hope curling in his chest—but his hand refused to obey.
Yuugi exhaled sharply. Then, with the same reckless determination he’d once used to summon Exodia, he grabbed Kaiba’s face and kissed him again—harder this time, his lips insistent against Kaiba’s startled gasp. Another cough rattled through Kaiba’s ribs, but this time, when he pulled back, no petals followed. Just Yuugi’s breath, warm and unsteady against his mouth.
"You *idiot*," Yuugi whispered, his voice cracking. "You absolute *moron*." His hands shook where they cradled Kaiba’s jaw, thumbs brushing the hollows beneath his eyes—one still bandaged, the other wide with something perilously close to disbelief. "Did you really think I wouldn’t—" He stopped, swallowing. "That I *couldn’t*—"
Kaiba’s pulse thundered in his ears. The monitors shrieked in protest, but he barely heard them. Somewhere beyond the chaos, Mokuba made a strangled noise and dragged the gawking surgeon out of the room. The door clicked shut. Silence pooled between them, thick with unsaid things.
Yuugi’s fingers traced the edge of Kaiba’s bandages, ghosting over the place where thorns had once breached skin. "You *vomited flowers*," he said, like he still couldn’t believe it. "Flowers with *my name* on them."
Kaiba’s breath hitched. He’d never said it aloud. Never *needed* to—the petals had spoken for him, in a language too visceral to deny. And now Yuugi was here, smelling like cheap hospital coffee and the citrus shampoo he’d used since they were teenagers, his eyes too bright, too *knowing*.
A cough tickled Kaiba’s throat—dry now, empty. He braced for petals that didn’t come. Yuugi watched his throat work, his own breath stuttering in response. "All those duels," he murmured. "All those times you called me worthless. Was it *always*—?"
"Yes." The word tore free before Kaiba could stop it. He expected shame to follow, but there was only a strange, weightless relief—like exhaling after years of holding his breath. "Every damn time."
Yuugi made a wounded sound. His fingers curled into Kaiba’s hospital gown, twisting the fabric tight. "You *hate* losing."
Kaiba scoffed. His pulse jumped under Yuugi’s knuckles. "And you cheat."
Yuugi’s laugh was wet, uneven. He pressed their foreheads together, his bangs tickling Kaiba’s bandages. "I don’t," he whispered. "I just—" His breath hitched. "I never knew the stakes."
Silence pooled between them, thick with the weight of years wasted. Kaiba stared at the blue rose in his lap—its petals flawless, its stem unbroken. A lie given form. His fingers twitched toward it, then stilled.
Yuugi caught his wrist. His palm was warm against Kaiba’s pulse. "Don’t." He lifted Kaiba’s hand to his own chest, pressing it flat over his heartbeat. "This is real." His ribs expanded under Kaiba’s fingers, alive and unburdened. "Feel that?"
Kaiba swallowed. Yuugi’s heart thrummed against his palm—steady, insistent, nothing like the choked stutter of his own before the surgery. His thumb brushed the dip of Yuugi’s collarbone, tracing the proof of life beneath skin.
A petal fluttered between them.
Not from Kaiba’s lips—Yuugi exhaled it, soft as a sigh, pink as dawn. It landed on Kaiba’s bandaged chest, quivering with each breath.
Kaiba went rigid. "You—"
Yuugi laughed—a bright, startled sound that sent another cherry blossom tumbling from his mouth. He clapped a hand over his lips, eyes widening behind his fingers. "Oh."
The monitors screamed. Kaiba grabbed Yuugi’s wrist hard enough to bruise. "Explain."
Yuugi’s pulse jumped under Kaiba’s grip. His lips parted—not to speak, but to release another petal. This one curled delicately against Kaiba’s thumb, its edges translucent in the sterile light. "I think," Yuugi said slowly, "I’m an idiot."
Kaiba’s nails bit into Yuugi’s skin. "Elaborate."
"You kept choking on flowers." Yuugi pressed their joined hands to his sternum, where Kaiba could feel the faint, frantic flutter beneath his ribs. "And I kept choking on words." Another petal escaped with his exhale, catching Kaiba's bandages.
The door burst open. Mokuba skidded to a halt, his sneakers squeaking against linoleum. His gaze darted between the scattered blossoms and their tangled hands. "What the—?"
Yuugi coughed—a dry, sheepish sound that produced no petals, only color high on his cheeks. Kaiba didn’t release his wrist. The heartbeat beneath his fingers was too rapid, too *alive*, syncing with the erratic beep of the monitors.
The surgeon edged into the room, her stethoscope dangling like a noose. "Mr. Mutou." Her voice was carefully neutral. "Are you experiencing—"
"Respiratory distress?" Kaiba’s grip tightened. "Congestive floral expulsion?" His thumb pressed into Yuugi’s pulse point, measuring the flutter. "Or just terminal stupidity?"
Yuugi exhaled a laugh. A single cherry blossom landed on Kaiba’s knee, its stem still attached to a glistening thread of something unmistakably organic. Mokuba made a strangled noise.
The surgeon sighed and reached for her clipboard. "I’ll add another bed."
---
The petals tasted like cherry syrup—too sweet, too *alive*—when Yuugi exhaled them against Kaiba’s mouth. They clung to his lips, sticky with something that wasn’t quite saliva, before fluttering onto the sterile sheets between them. Kaiba stared at the pink smears left behind, his fingers tightening around Yuugi’s wrist hard enough to feel the rabbit-quick pulse beneath skin.
"You," Kaiba said, very slowly, "are an *idiot*."
Yuugi laughed—a wet, breathless sound that sent another petal tumbling from his lips. It landed on Kaiba’s bandaged chest, quivering with each ragged inhale. "Yeah," he admitted, thumb brushing the edge of Kaiba’s gauze where the surgeon’s scalpel had carved out the roots. "But I’m *your* idiot."
The monitors shrieked. Mokuba, hovering near the door with the wide-eyed horror of a teenager witnessing something irreparably traumatic, made a sound like a stepped-on cat.
Kaiba ignored them. His fingers—still weak from surgery, still trembling with the aftershocks of near-death—dug into Yuugi’s wrist hard enough to leave crescent moons in his skin. "Prove it."
Yuugi blinked. A cherry blossom petal clung stubbornly to his lower lip. "What?"
"*Prove it.*" Kaiba’s voice cracked on the demand, raw from hours of petals shredding his throat. He gestured sharply to the carnage around them—the scattered blooms on the sheets, the blood-specked roses in the biohazard bin, the hollow ache where his ribs had been full of roots. "This isn’t—" He stopped, swallowing. "I won’t survive it twice."
Yuugi’s breath hitched. Another petal escaped, fluttering onto Kaiba’s knee. For a suspended moment, they both stared at it—pink and perfect and *separate*, not rooted in lung tissue but born from something softer. Then Yuugi surged forward, his free hand tangling in Kaiba’s hospital gown as he kissed him again—not gentle, not careful, *devouring*.
Kaiba gasped against his mouth. No petals this time—just the slick heat of Yuugi’s tongue tracing the seam of his lips, the bitten-off noise Yuugi made when Kaiba’s teeth caught his lower lip. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the monitors. Distantly, he registered Mokuba fleeing the room with a sound like a dying seagull.
Yuugi pulled back just far enough to speak, their breaths mingling. "Is this proof enough?" His thumb brushed the hollow of Kaiba’s throat—where the surgeon’s incision had been, where the last stubborn root had clung to his trachea. "Or do you need—" Another kiss, deeper, messy with pent-up years. A cherry blossom smeared between their chins. "*More?*"
Kaiba’s hands shook where they gripped Yuugi’s hips. He wanted to *bite*, to *claim*, to press Yuugi into the mattress until he couldn’t breathe without tasting him. Instead, his fingers flexed against Yuugi’s waistband, tracing the divot of his hipbone through denim. "You’re *late*," he snarled, voice wrecked.
Yuugi laughed—bright and startled—and another flurry of petals escaped his lips, dusting Kaiba’s chest. "Yeah," he admitted, nose bumping Kaiba’s bandages. "Guess I was." His fingers curled into Kaiba’s gown, twisting the fabric tight. "But I’m here now."
Kaiba exhaled sharply. The absence of petals in his throat still felt foreign, like missing a step on a staircase. He traced the curve of Yuugi’s jaw with his thumb, catching a stray petal clinging to his chin. "You’re *covered* in them," he muttered, as if that explained the tightness in his chest.
Yuugi grinned, unrepentant. "Your fault." He pressed closer, heedless of the IV lines tangling between them. The heart monitor’s beeps accelerated into a frantic staccato as Yuugi’s knee slid onto the mattress, his weight dipping the hospital bed with a creak. "You made me *bloom*," he whispered against Kaiba’s mouth, and the absurdity of it—the sheer, ridiculous *romance*—sent a shudder down Kaiba’s spine.
The surgeon cleared her throat from the doorway. "Gentlemen." Her tone was drier than the biohazard bin full of Kaiba’s discarded petals. "This is a *recovery* room."
Kaiba didn’t pull away. "Then recover elsewhere," he said into Yuugi’s collarbone, inhaling the citrus-shampoo scent of him like it was oxygen. Yuugi’s pulse jumped under his lips, quick and alive.
Mokuba’s groan echoed from the hallway. "I’m *never* unseeing that."
Yuugi laughed—bright, unguarded—and a shower of cherry blossoms rained onto Kaiba’s bandages. Kaiba caught one midair, crushing it in his fist. The petal left a sticky streak across his palm, pink as dawn, pink as Yuugi’s mouth when he gasped Kaiba’s name into the sterile hospital air.
Two months later, the petals still came—but now they clung to Yuugi’s hair when he rolled out of bed, dusted the bathroom sink when he brushed his teeth, floated into Mokuba’s cereal when he wasn’t looking. Kaiba found them everywhere: tangled in his tie after Yuugi kissed him goodbye, pressed between the pages of his contracts like illicit bookmarks, stuck to the soles of his shoes when he tracked them through the penthouse. They were *persistent*.
Mokuba threw a handful at Kaiba’s head one Tuesday morning. "You *infected* him," he accused, watching a petal flutter onto Kaiba’s coffee. "Like a *virus*."
Kaiba sipped his coffee, petals and all. "It’s symbiotic," he said, which was medical nonsense, but Yuugi beamed at him from across the breakfast bar like he’d recited poetry.
Their shared bedroom smelled like cherry blossoms and antiseptic. Kaiba kept the curtains open at night so the city lights could trace the scars on Yuugi’s chest—thin, silvery lines where the roots had surfaced before his confession. Yuugi traced them too, sometimes, his fingers lingering where Kaiba’s ribs had once ached with unspoken things.
"I can feel them," Yuugi admitted one night, his palm flat over Kaiba’s heartbeat. "When I’m not paying attention—like my lungs forget they’re supposed to be empty." His breath hitched, and a petal escaped, sticking to Kaiba’s collarbone.
Kaiba plucked it off, held it up to the light. "Efficient," he lied. The petal trembled in his grip, translucent pink.
Yuugi laughed—a sound that still sent something sharp and sweet through Kaiba’s chest—and kissed him until they both forgot which petals belonged to whom.
---
Mokuba started a tally on the fridge. Every time Yuugi sneezed blossoms onto the kitchen tiles, he added another tick in red marker. By week six, the entire freezer door was covered.
"You’re *worse* then he was," Mokuba announced, watching Yuugi cough a whole daisy into his cereal bowl.
Yuugi wiped milk from his chin. "At least mine don’t have thorns."
Kaiba didn’t look up from his tablet. "Your pollen triggers my allergies."
The penthouse smelled permanently of spring—cloying and unnatural for November. KaibaCorp’s board members had stopped commenting on the petals clinging to Kaiba’s suits after the third emergency meeting interrupted by Yuugi phoning from the bathroom, choking on peonies. The tabloids, however, remained relentless.
*ROMANCE IN BLOOM: KAIBACORP HEIR’S SHOCKING FLORAL AFFAIR!* screamed one headline above a photo of Yuugi mid-sneeze, cherry blossoms exploding from his nostrils like shrapnel.
Kaiba burned the magazine in the kitchen sink. Yuugi laughed so hard he vomited violets into the trash can.
Mokuba had taken to wearing a medical mask indoors. "It’s like living inside a goddamn greeting card," he grumbled, plucking a lily from his hair before flopping onto the couch. The cushions exhaled a cloud of pollen. Somewhere beneath the floral avalanche, the TV played a duel rerun—Kaiba’s younger self sneering at Yuugi across a battlefield of cards.
Yuugi, currently folded into Kaiba’s lap like an overgrown housecat, made a wounded noise. "You were such a *jerk*," he mumbled around a mouthful of Kaiba’s tie. His breath stirred the petals nesting in Kaiba’s collar.
Kaiba flicked his forehead. "You cheated."
"I *innovated*Yuugi corrected, then coughed a daisy directly onto Kaiba’s financial reports. The blossom landed neatly atop a pie chart, its yellow center obscuring quarterly losses.
Mokuba, sprawled across the opposite couch with a surgical mask dangling from one ear, groaned. "If you two start *duel-flirting* again, I’m moving out."
Kaiba ignored him, thumbing the petal stuck to Yuugi’s lower lip. It came away smeared with something iridescent—not quite saliva, not quite nectar. Yuugi’s tongue darted out to chase the residue, and Kaiba’s pulse jumped. Two months post-surgery, his body still reacted like Yuugi’s proximity was a cardiac event.
The penthouse bore evidence of their symbiosis: cherry blossoms preserved in resin paperweights on Kaiba’s desk, violets pressed between the pages of Yuugi’s duel theory books, Mokuba’s increasingly desperate sticky notes (*DO NOT SNEEZE NEAR THE TOASTER*) plastered across every appliance. Kaiba’s old hospital bills—itemized down to the last cent—lay buried beneath a drift of peonies on the coffee table.
Yuugi shifted, his knee bumping the stack. Petals cascaded onto the rug. "You kept these?" He plucked a receipt, squinting at the surgeon’s illegible notes. "*Emergency thoracotomy*," he read aloud, voice wavering. His fingers trembled against the paper.
Kaiba snatched it back. "Tax deductions." The lie tasted bitter. He’d memorized every line item—the cost of each extracted root, the pharmacy charges for post-op painkillers, the exorbitant fee for biohazard disposal of *organic floral matter*. Numbers were easier than the way Yuugi’s breath hitched when he saw the scars.
Mokuba stomped past with an armful of laundry, glaring at the petals clinging to his socks. "Your *pollen* ruined my hoodie," he accused, shaking a pink-stained sleeve at Yuugi. "It looks like I murdered a unicorn."
Yuugi coughed apologetically. A daisy tumbled into his palm. "Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. He tucked the flower behind Kaiba’s ear with deliberate tenderness, grinning when Kaiba scowled.
Kaiba left it there. The petals were softer now—no thorns, no blood—but their persistence unsettled him. Yuugi’s condition should've been resolved after confession. Instead, he bloomed with reckless abundance, his lungs producing flora like a living greenhouse. The surgeon had no explanations, only increasingly concerned frowns and referrals to specialists who whispered *medical anomaly* behind clipboards.
Kaiba plucked the daisy from his hair. It left pollen on his fingers, glittering under the kitchen lights. "You’re defective," he informed Yuugi, who laughed and kissed his knuckles, leaving cherry blossom smudges on his skin.
The penthouse smelled perpetually of spring. Kaiba’s allergies had escalated to apocalyptic proportions—he went through antihistamines like breath mints, his pockets perpetually stuffed with tissues. Yuugi’s apologies were insincere at best; he’d taken to sneezing directly into Kaiba’s tie just to watch his nostrils flare.
Mokuba slammed the washing machine shut. "I’m moving out," he announced for the twelfth time that week. "Somewhere *sterile*. Like Antarctica."
Kaiba didn’t look up from his tablet. "You’d miss us."
"*Miss* you?" Mokuba yanked open the dryer, releasing a storm of petals clinging stubbornly to his school uniform. "I’m *drowning* in your fucking—*floral byproducts*!"
Yuugi, upside-down on the couch with his hair brushing the pollen-dusted carpet, grinned. "It’s romantic."
"It’s *biological warfare*." Mokuba shook his sock violently. A peony dislodged and hit Kaiba square between the eyes.
Kaiba plucked it off his forehead with surgical precision. "Your melodrama is exhausting." He flicked the peony into Yuugi’s lap, where it joined the growing pile of blossoms spilling from Yuugi’s loose grip.
The petals never stopped.
Three years later, KaibaCorp’s annual gala smelled like cherry blossoms and champagne, the ballroom ceiling strung with garlands of preserved flowers—blue roses suspended in glass orbs, daffodils frozen mid-bloom in resin. Guests whispered about the extravagance, the *romance*, but Kaiba knew the truth: it was containment. Yuugi had sneezed during the venue tour, and the resulting floral explosion had required a professional cleanup crew.
Now, Yuugi stood at the center of the dance floor, grinning as a wisteria petal drifted from his cufflink onto Kaiba’s lapel. "You’re staring," he murmured, fingers brushing Kaiba’s wrist where the pulse jumped.
Kaiba didn’t deny it. He’d spent a decade memorizing the slope of Yuugi’s shoulders in a duel vest, the way his hair caught stage lights—but this, the easy press of Yuugi’s palm against his, the pollen dusting his eyelashes, still felt illicit. Like stolen data.
Mokuba, now taller and perpetually exasperated, materialized beside them with a plate of canapés. "If you two start making out, I’m setting the fire alarms off." He plucked a peony from Yuugi’s pocket, scowling. "These keep getting in the *dip*."
Yuugi laughed—a sound that sent petals spiraling from his sleeves—and Kaiba caught one midair, crushing it absently between his fingers. The stain left behind was pink as Yuugi’s mouth after too much wine, pink as the scars beneath their starched shirts where roots had once breached skin.
The surgeon had called it a miracle. The tabloids called it a fairy tale. Kaiba, who’d built empires on logic, now woke to petals in his coffee and Yuugi’s breath warm against his collarbone, his lungs humming with something that defied diagnosis.
"You’re *happy*Yuugi accused later, nose brushing Kaiba’s in the elevator up to their penthouse. A daisy escaped his lips, caught in Kaiba’s tie.
"Don’t be absurd," Kaiba said, and kissed him until the elevator dinged—their reflection in the polished doors a tangle of limbs and blossoms, Yuugi’s fingers threaded through Kaiba’s hair like vines seeking sunlight.
Mokuba was waiting with a fire extinguisher and a glare. "I *heard* that," he said, though the petals stuck to his shoes suggested he’d been eavesdropping in the hallway. Kaiba flicked a peony at his forehead.
Their bed grew flowers. Not metaphorically—actual blooms sprouted from the seams of Yuugi’s pillowcase, tiny white buds unfurling overnight. Kaiba woke to Yuugi sneezing chrysanthemums into his palm, their petals trembling with each breath.
"It’s *weird*," Yuugi admitted, plucking a lily from his own eyelashes.
Kaiba caught his wrist, pressing Yuugi’s palm flat over his sternum—where the scar tissue stretched thin over bone. "You’re alive," he said, which wasn’t an explanation, but Yuugi kissed him anyway, daisies crushed between their lips.
The tabloids gave up. The board members adapted. Mokuba moved out (but only to the penthouse next door, and only after installing industrial air filters). KaibaCorp’s R&D division quietly developed hypoallergenic pollen neutralizers, marketed discreetly as "seasonal relief."
Yuugi’s deck grew a new card—*Hanahaki Blossom*, a spell that scattered petals across the field whenever *Dark Magician* appeared. Kaiba banned it from tournament play. (He used it exclusively in private duels, where Yuugi’s laughter sent cherry blossoms spiraling into his lap.)
Decades later, when their hair grayed and their joints ached, the petals remained—persistent as Yuugi’s fingers laced through Kaiba’s in hospital beds, stubborn as Kaiba’s voice rasping *idiot* against Yuugi’s temple. The surgeon, now retired, sent annual cards with pressed flowers inside. *For research*, she wrote, though her handwriting wobbled with age.
Mokuba’s children decorated their school projects with pressed petals from *Uncle Yuugi’s magic sneezes*. Kaiba framed the ugliest one—a lopsided daisy glued crookedly to construction paper—and hung it in his office where the board could see.
The penthouse smelled perpetually of spring. Kaiba’s allergies never improved. Yuugi’s lungs never emptied. Their bed grew flowers—real ones now, roots threading through the mattress, vines curling around headboards. Kaiba stopped replacing the sheets. (They were always stained with pollen anyway.)
On their fiftieth anniversary, Yuugi coughed up an entire rose—roots intact, petals unfurled—and pressed it into Kaiba’s palm with a grin. "For you," he whispered, though his voice rasped from years of petals. "Since you never got one that wasn’t *vomit-flavored*."
Kaiba scoffed at the rose—its petals too perfect, its stem too green—and crushed it against Yuugi’s palm until the thorns pricked them both. Blood welled in the divots of their intertwined fingers, bright as the first petals Yuugi had ever coughed onto Kaiba’s hospital gown. "Sentimental fool," Kaiba muttered, but his thumb stroked the pulse in Yuugi’s wrist anyway, counting each beat like a duelist memorizing card draws.