Sasuke was ten when he coughed up a petal for the first time.
It was odd and he stared at the small stipule in his pale palm blankly.
In another world he might have asked Itachi what it meant but that wasn’t exactly an option anymore.
The little flower was light in his hand, so light that he might not have even noticed it was there if it weren’t for the uncomfortable dryness in his throat.
——-
Sasuke was still confused as to what the petals meant.
It hadn’t taken long for the small leaflets to turn into full fledged flowers, yellow honeysuckles that would burst from his lips and fill up his hands.
When they started to slip through the cracks of his fingers he found himself more often than not having to empty the unwanted flowers into his toilet.
The stems of the flowers slid up his throat and onto his tongue, the taste of sweet honey invading his mouth and forcing him to gag even more than needed.
He hated sweet things.
——-
Sasuke was grateful that the violent coughing fits only seemed to happen at night when he was alone.
For once he was thankful to live in a too big, too empty apartment.
A myriad of flowers expelled themselves from his mouth as he sat there, hunched over a garden growing in a toilet bowl with shaky legs and watery eyes.
Sickly sweet sap clung to the walls of his throat and the roof of his mouth as the vomiting finally stopped and gave way to mere dry heaves. Tremors wracked his body as he unsteadily stood up, making his way to the counter to sway from foot to foot as he scrubbed the inside of his mouth insistently.
The taste went away but the stickiness in his throat remained.
——-
He was assigned to Team Seven along with Sakura Haruno and Naruto Uzumaki.
Two people he couldn’t stand.
He sometimes wondered why the world hated him.
(He didn’t really hate Naruto, he was the one person who might be able to understand the cards life had dealt Sasuke-)
But then Naruto was charging towards Kakashi senselessly and soon Sasuke was planted firmly in the ground with nothing but a sliver of his neck and head exposed.
So scratch that, he did hate Naruto.
A honeysuckle fell from his lips and landed on the ground in front of him.
——-
Kakashi had left him, Sakura, and Naruto alone with the enticing chance of redemption on one condition:
To not feed the tied up Naruto any lunch.
Sasuke sat on the hard earth next to Naruto’s pole, poking at his lunch aimlessly while Sakura dug in to her’s. His eyes slid over to Naruto’s defeated frame and painfully swallowed down a flower that all of a sudden threatened to escape.
“Here.”
He held a bite of food up towards Naruto’s face, pointedly not looking at the blond.
“What?”
He bit his lip and glared at anywhere but the other boy. “I said here. Eat it.”
His heart sped up at the smile that graced Naruto’s face, one that had never been directed towards him before, and felt a tug at his gut that didn’t feel like hunger.
He hardly coughed up any petals that night.
——-
“Man, It’s no fair! How come all the girls like you, Sasuke?!”
He shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. Or care.”
Naruto brows furrowed in near comical distaste and Sasuke barely suppressed the smile that threatened to pull at his lips. “Come on! You’ve gotta be doing something!”
Sasuke shrugged again. “I’m just popular.”
Naruto rolled his eyes and dug his feet into the earth to halt the motion of the swing he sat on. “Can’t imagine why. I don’t get why any girl would be into you.”
His hand tightened around the pencil he was holding.
Something was poking at his chest.
“It’s so stupid. I wish Sakura looked at me the way she looks at you.”
He swallowed down something unpleasant rising in his throat and grit his teeth to stop the flow of petals he felt coming up from escaping.
“Geez. You’re so lame, Sasuke.”
He slammed his notebook shut, pencil snapping in two and splintering as he pushed himself up off the ground.
“Sasuke?”
Even if he wanted to reply he couldn’t, mouth nearly overflowing with the horrible honeysuckles that filled up his lungs and weighed down his rib cage.
He ran off before Naruto could stop him, hand clamped over his mouth as the flowers began to spill out.
It created a pretty, blood speckled trail of petals that led to his apartment, one that was gone by morning, blown away by the wind or cleaned up by some unknown entity.
He didn’t care much either way.
——-
A single geranium lay alone in the litter of honeysuckles.
He stared at it with the same dull wonder he had stared at the first petal with.
It seemed so long ago now.
The vivid yellow flower was dotted with the same blood that coated the other blossoms, and Sasuke thought the sight might have even been considered pretty if not for the significance of the red.
His lungs were bleeding.
What had started as a dull ache was now a sharp pain that flooded through his nervous system with every waking moment.
(Not that he slept much anymore, coughing fits waking him up at random in the middle of the night and sending him running to the bathroom as fast as he could.)
He was growing tired.
It was hard to see Naruto now. He had realized what (rather, who) the cause of the flowers must be when he found himself risking his life to save the blond, letting the dozens of needles pierce through his flesh just so they wouldn’t impact Naruto instead.
It’s not like the pain could compare to the sight of Naruto pining away after Sakura or the sharpness of thorns slowly climbing their way up his throat.
——-
His throat was raw and bleeding, thorns protruding out of his chest when Kabuto placed a hand on his back, telling him:
“I can fix it.”
He doesn’t remember ever agreeing to something so quickly.
——-
Seeing Naruto didn’t matter much anymore.
He couldn’t care less when he saw the blond grit his teeth or yell obscenities and promises at him, red chakra flaring to life as tears leaked out of his eyes and mouth ripped open to scream at him.
Until one day Sasuke caught the other’s fist seconds before it would have slammed into his face, Naruto’s maw stretching open unnecessarily wide but no cry leaving it for once.
Instead a wave of flushed and blood stained zinnias burst free.
His former friend doubled over, free hand clutching at his stomach while the other ripped itself from Sasuke’s grasp and clasped over his mouth in a futile attempt to stop the flow of flowers.
Sasuke looked down at the trembling boy and felt nothing but insipid distaste.
He wasn’t sure if it was from disgust or pity.
——-
Sasuke and Naruto woke up to dim morning light, worlds apart but both facing a single cyclamen resting on their cold pillow.