花 (flowers). - izuocha one-shot.
prompt: reverse hanahaki au.
details: one-sided/unrequited izuocha in an au where hanahaki exists, but its reversed. | angst, of course. | 868 words.
etc: unrolled twitter thread, may contain mistakes. | please feel free to expand on this, esp since its an open ending. | chars may be ooc, i dont study them much
Reverse hanahaki! AU where you'd get hanahaki if someone has an unrequited crush on you and has accepted the fact that it's unrequited.
Uraraka obviously knows that Deku currently has no interest in romance, or anything aside of his goal of being a hero for that matter. When she first realised she had a crush on Midoriya, she tried to deny it. Maybe it was just because she spent a lot of time with him. Maybe it's because he's one of her first, close friends in UA. Maybe, maybe.
But even after a while, the feelings never faded away and she had one too many girl talks about it. She learned to accept it, bashfully accepting the teasings of the girls (in private, of course) and living with the feeling.
She learned how to control herself, separating her feelings for him and hero training well, and continued acting the same way she always did with him. No one suspected a thing.
Loving Izuku, to her, was a feeling she wouldn't want to trade for anything else. The warmth his smile gives her, the fuzzy feeling as she sees him improve every day, the flutter of her heart and warming of her cheeks when he stands a little too close - he made her happy.
All was well, until one day when Izuku started having coughing fits in class. With autumn slowly approaching, it was waved off as a simple seasonal cold. But his coughing fits got worse and it started affecting his training.
Uraraka watched as Izuku ran out of the room, hands over his mouth as he coughed endlessly. Her heart hurts. It hurts seeing Izuku in pain. It was one of the downsides of loving izuku: the poor boy gets hurt too frequently.
But as bad as broken bones were, Izuku's mysterious coughing fits that had only kept worsening hurts more. She knew it wasn't a normal cold. No common cold lasts for this long, or continually worsens even with proper treatment.
Plus, Mr. Aizawa had told the class that Izuku's coughs were not contagious but added that Izuku may be running to the restroom often because of it. It raised many questions, but his instruction was enough to shut them up.
"He will tell you if he wants to, respect his privacy."
"Hey uh... if you guys want to know what it is I'll tell you after dinner later. Just to assure you that this coughing, as bad as it is, is definitely not contagious. I don't want anyone to be worried about catching diseases or anything," Izuku had announced after class.
Now, with worry running through every cell in her, Uraraka sat with the rest of the class listening to Izuku.
Izuku looked nervous, fidgeting as he looked across the room to see if everyone's there.
Slowly, he explained, "I have Hanahaki."
The class looked at him with a shared confused expression. They have never heard of this illness before.
"What's that?" Kirishima asked.
"It's a condition where flowers grow in my lungs because someone has an unrequited crush on me."
Uraraka froze up momentarily. She felt Momo's gentle taps on her fingers, bringing her back to reality and quickly composed herself. The rest of the class explodes in a variety of reactions - questions, theories, all that.
"That's really bad," kaminari said, "If the flowers fill your lungs, won't you like... die?"
Uraraka held her breath as she saw izuku laugh. For the first time, izuku's laugh terrified her. It was no happy laugh, no.
Izuku sadly laughed and softly muttered, "Yeah, I might."
The world around her crashed.
Her feelings might kill Izuku. It's all her fault.
"I..is there any way to recover?" she hesitantly questioned, stammering.
Izuku nodded, "Either i love them back genuinely or they stop loving me, again, genuinely, or they start denying their feelings."
Izuku paused for a second as the rest of the class processed the information, "Just in case that person is in this room now, I hope you won't blame yourself. It's not your fault."
Uraraka's heart clenched. Oh, Deku. Ever so selfless Deku.
As the class started going their own ways (Iida dispersed them as soon as the clock struck 10), Uraraka walked to her room with a million questions in her head.
She sat on her bed, staring at the wall. she needed to do something. She can't just keep quiet about it. The clock on her desk flashed midnight. Uraraka could not fall asleep. Quickly, she grabbed her phone and walked out to Izuku's room.
On the other side of the door, she heard the faint, suppressed sounds of coughing. The bottled up guilt in her exploded. And then, tears fell.
Uraraka knocked on Izuku's door, trying her best to calm herself down before he opened it. She heard the shuffling on the other side as Izuku called out, "Hold on."
The door opened and Izuku looked like a mess. Watery eyes as red as the faint stains of blood on his t-shirt, his tired smile. Izuku looked so broken.
Uraraka's knees weakened as she sobbed out, "It's me. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry for putting you in this pain."
