it hurts. to move, to speak, to breathe. but he can't stop coughing, can't stop the crude sound echoing around the empty hotel room and racking his body. tears cling to his eyelashes, dropping with a sadistic rhythm down his cheek and onto the navy sheets, until little dark dots pepper the bed around his huddled figure. he's no longer sure how much time he's spent like this, all focus drained by the pain- both inside and out.

cough cough

hanahaki disease. the glare of his phone screen, where the diagnosis is neatly typed out, is too harsh in the darkness of the room. he can't avoid it, can't ignore it anymore. it's laughable, almost, and perhaps zayn would find it funnier if it didn't feel like the blood in his veins had been replaced with acid. this thing, this disease- it is the undeniable proof of the pathetic creature he has been reduced to over the course of five years. unpleasant as it is, it is not an entirely unwelcome, nor unexpected, surprise.

cough cough

another bout of coughing overtakes him, body bending in half and hands curled around his mouth as golden petals spill through, the aftertaste of sunshine and sorrow lingering on his lips. so beautiful, yet so deadly. zayn tucks them close to his chest, so tightly that some crush against his fingertips. the bright yellow darkens slightly, similar to the way his tears darken the placid covers of his bed. both are proof of his failure.

cough cough

he looks down at his phone again, at the website containing every detail of his wretchedness, but there is no point. it would be a blatant lie to say he hasn't memorised it, words seared into his brain. to have hanahaki means to be in love with someone who doesn't love you back, or at least not in the way you love them. it means unrequited love, and it is painful as the emotion. it takes its victims slowly, filling their lungs with plants. with flowers that fall apart and through your mouth, roots that wrap themselves around your lungs. it means that you will die the same way you fell in love, slowly but surely, each step full of wonder and pain until it suffocates you. there is a cure, of course, a surgery that would remove both your feelings for the person and the plants. and for the luckier ones, your love would be reciprocated and kill the disease.

cough cough

it was not romantic. it was not beautifully tragic. it was not the ardent illness that teens fantasized about and authors penned. it was pain, pure and simple. it was feeling your broken heart physically destroying you, to feel the emotional torment transform into something tangent. it was a curse, not a blessing, to fall so helplessly in love with someone that you couldn't save your own life in fear that it would erase the feelings you had for them.

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unfortunately, zayn was one of those people. one of these lovesick fools too cowardly to confess and too stubborn to forget. one of those hopeless romantics who would prefer death over a black hole in his heart where his beloved used to lay, over remembering the person you would once die for with nothing more than a strange detachment, a plastic and unnatural emotion replacing what had been there before.

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he refuses to forget that smile, the tilt of the lips that could both silence or frenzy an entire room. the eyes the hue of spring clover, bold and soft all at once, woven with silvery threads of strength. the rough voice, syllables drenched in his thick accent at an infuriatingly slow pace. the lazy days of video games on the bus, cross-legged with takeout in too small bunks, arms slung around waists and heads rested on laps as 'the notebook' played for the millionth time. the smell of special conditioner for curls, lingering cocoa and something else, coconut but not the overwhelmingly sweet artificial kind. the crazy days crammed with practicing and shrieking crowds and the urge to light a cigarette soothed by gangly limbs caressing the sharp bones of his hips and fistbumps that ended with intertwined fingers.

he refused to forget harry edward styles, because that would hurt more than death ever would.

cough cough