A/N: I wrote this some time again because of an anon on Tumblr requesting that I write something in the hanahaki disease AU. I had never heard of this AU before, so I Googled it and was intrigued, and this fic was the result.

The hanahaki disease AU involves someone suffering from unrequited love to grow roses in their lungs and cough up petals. One of the descriptions I read involved it eventually proving fatal unless the love became requited or the roses were surgically removed, which would remove the feelings of love. I mean, could you find a more me AU?

(And for those wondering, yes I did consider writing this as E/C, but the allure of Pharoga was too strong.)

"I'm dying, Daroga." It's been hours and the words still twist in Mohammed's mind, weaving their way through his brain. "Dying of love." And he thought, at the time and still thinks, that Erik was being dramatic. It is completely and wholly in his nature for him to say something like that, but no matter how Mohammed tries to downplay it to himself, he cannot shake the memory of how Erik looked, sitting there in the chair across from him. His face pale and drawn, lips tinged faintly blue. He kept his right hand pressed to his chest as if there were some pain deep in his lungs.

He looked, for all the world, like a consumptive.

But Erik is not a consumptive. If he were it would have been evident long before this.

It must simply be the strain of everything that's happened. The same as the pain deep in Mohammed's own right lung, that little focused point of pressure that makes it so very difficult to sleep. He is positive that his pain is from almost being drowned. Of course it is. How could it be anything else?

The almost-drowning causing the pain and the cough that catches in his throat when he tries to speak.

That night, long after Erik has left, Mohammed swallows a mouthful of laudanum. The laudanum will ease the pain and the cough both, and silence the turning wheel of his thoughts. Erik surely cannot be dying. He is being dramatic. And rest will take care of his own cough.

Rest does not take care of his own cough. It persists, day in and day out, roughening his voice, worrying Darius. "I will fetch a doctor," he insists, when a week and a half has passed since Erik's visit, "if you do not take it easy and go back to bed."

So Mohammed went back to bed, grumbling all the while, but the grumbling triggered the cough again and left him hunched over outside his bedroom, balancing himself with one hand on the frame of the door.

He tries not to think of Erik, of him and his prophecy of death. Instead he rests, under Darius' stern eye, though rest does little for the pain in his lungs and the laudanum fogs his mind so much that some nights he feels as if he is below the opera again, Erik casting a critical eye over him after pulling him from the lake.

He did not get pains in his chest after he almost drowned that time. So why this time?

He is too tired to turn the question over. And when the laudanum threatens to pull him down again, he lets it.

It is Darius who intercepts the messenger, three weeks after Erik's visit. Darius who brings him the letter, and the items. The black glove. The shoe buckle. The diary. These tokens of Christine Daaé whom Erik sent away to be with her beau. Mohammed stares at them where they lie on the blanket over his legs. Stares and traces one light finger over the shining buckle, then gently picks up the letter.

He does not have time to read it.

No sooner is it in his hand than a coughing fit wracks him, worse than any before. It feels as if there are razorblades in his chest, as if his lungs are being torn apart. He coughs and coughs and gasps and coughs, tastes iron and salt in the back of his throat and when he tries to swallow it he coughs again so that he is forced to spit, to spit the foul-tasting stuff over the items.

When the fit eventually passes, and he opens his eyes, he expects to see blood staining that shoe buckle, that glove, that diary. And his eyes are greeted by scarlet, but it is not the scarlet he expects.

Rose petals.

He coughed up rose petals.

Something nudges the back of his mind, some vague half-memory. A myth. An old story, whispered to him by his grandmother on a dark night by the fire when he was only a boy, about the perils of unreturned love. About rose bushes growing in the lungs of those fated to have their hearts torn apart. About coughing up scarlet petals.

He never believed it.

He has not thought of it in years.

But there are rose petals over Christine Daaé's possessions. Rose petals that have come from his lungs, that he coughed up.

Not Christine Daaé's possessions.

The most precious worldly goods of Erik.

His heart lurches.

The realization is almost more than he can bear.

He is up before he has time to think about it, up and dressed, his lungs burning so that he has to stop and cough again and there are more rose petals all over the floor. He is out the door before Darius has time to stop him, is rushing down the Rue de Rivoli, stopping every so often to gag.

The passersby surely think he is consumptive, but he does not have space in his brain to care. Every thought is of Erik, is for Erik, and nothing else matters, nothing, only getting to Erik.

Dying of love.

And he looked consumptive. Had a pain in his chest. Coughed several times.

It must be the same condition. The same cough.

Is Erik bringing up rose petals too?

(Is Erik coughing for Christine, or—or for someone else? And even in his own thoughts Mohammed cannot think that it may be for him.)

He is at the Garnier. He is slipping through the gate on the Rue Scribe. The damp of the tunnel makes his throat scratch but he has to keep going, has to get to Erik, and when he reaches the bank of the lake he has to stop to heave, a whole flurry of petals fluttering to the ground.

Into the boat. And the effort of rowing pulls on his chest muscles, makes him cough and gag and gasp for breath but he has to keep going, he can't stop now, he has to get to Erik, needs to know he's alive, needs to know—

Somehow, through some blessed miracle, he reaches the other shore. His legs shake as he climbs back out of the boat, and though he knows he should be anxious about entering that house, knows Erik would kill him if he caught him, if he had half a mind to, he pushes all such thoughts away. What matters now is ensuring Erik is still living. Nothing else.

So he swallows, and brushes the petals off his coat, straightens his collar, and braces himself to walk inside.

The house is silent. Quiet (he tries not to think dead). And for one dreadful, creeping moment that makes his stomach clench and his heart stall, Mohammed thinks that he might be too late.

Then he hears a cough from the parlour, and knows where he needs to go.

And it is easy then, so very easy to open the door and find Erik.

He does not need to look too hard. There Erik is, lying before him, sprawled on the black chaise. He is covered in petals that burn all the more scarlet for the contrast with his pale face, with his black suit, and his eyes are closed but he coughs again and they flicker open, and he turns his gaze weakly to Mohammed, and inhales sharply.

Mohammed will never know what it was that flowed through their locked gaze that day. It is one enchanted moment of pure understanding, like the tremor of a far-distant violin string in his ear, sharp and clear. The world sways, tilts, his knees buckling, and when it rights itself he has crossed the room, is kneeling beside the chaise, his fingers twined with Erik's.

Erik does not breathe a single word, his gaze flickering down for the briefest moment to Mohammed's lips. And in that moment, Mohammed knows what he must do.

He scoops Erik into his arms, his weight so very light, and cradling one hand behind his head, he leans down and presses his lips gently, so very gently, to Erik's.

Erik sighs into his mouth, brushes his lips with his tongue, and Mohammed whimpers and parts his lips. And they hold each other, simply hold each other, and kiss, and neither speaks but neither needs to. Not now. Not holding each other close.

It is a long time before they realize that they are not coughing any more.

A/N: If you enjoyed this somewhat unusual AU, please do review!