Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Rose Landry

Additional Tags:

Hanahaki Disease, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, tuna meltdown gives shane hanahaki oops, i can't say what else happens for spoiler reasons but rest assured it's so stupid, i am begging you not to take this fic seriously, Misunderstandings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, im such a masshole i almost gave my opinion about the specific town where i think ilyas house has to be, if you think about this fic for more than 2 seconds it falls apart which is why im not, Mentions of Cancer, Suicidal Thoughts, mostly show canon except I brought in the Sex Building because it's so funny to me

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-04 Words: 9,424 Chapters: 1/1

daisy chain

Summary

Shane goes back to his hotel after leaving Ilya's house, and he immediately spits up a flower petal.

Within a week, he has his mother schedule the surgery.

Can you get hanahaki from sex?, googled furtively from the floor of the hotel bathroom where Shane has been lying flat on his back in shock for the last three and a half minutes. 

Are you fucking stupid? That's the general gist of the answers he finds online. 

He drops his phone onto his chest and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

Hanahaki can only be caused by unrequited love. It has nothing to do with sex. You're in denial. 

That was one of the answers he found on reddit, in reply to some other naive moron who posted a similar question five years ago. It feels like he can still read that answer behind his eyelids. 

He picks up his phone and googles “unrequited”, even though he knows what it means, just in case it's one of those words that has like three different definitions depending on the context. 

It isn't, especially not when it comes to hanahaki. 

There isn't a mistake. There isn't some glitch. If Shane has hanahaki disease—and coughing a flower petal into the toilet bowl feels pretty conclusive—that means that he loves Ilya. 

It also means that Ilya doesn't love him back. 

He didn’t even realize he was in love with Ilya until three and a half minutes ago, so it feels like an extra kick in the gut to already know it’s hopeless.

This is the most mortifying moment of his entire fucking life. He'd figured that running out of Ilya's house in Ilya's clothes after Ilya was being too sweet to him would at least hover at the number one most humiliating thing that has ever happened to him for more than an hour, but no. He had to go back to his hotel room and start spitting up petals. 

And why did it have to be lilies? The petals are huge! Like sure, yes, it’s the obvious choice, but come on. 

He picks up his phone again, opens his thread with Lily. 

Sorry, he texts. He sends it before he can overthink it. I'm such an idiot. He’s not sure what he’s hoping will happen. Maybe he thinks Ilya will be a dick about the whole ‘running out after our weird-if-pleasant afternoon couch frottage’ thing, and it’ll cure his unrequited love immediately. 

(As if Shane doesn’t love it when Ilya’s a dick.)

His texts go from ‘sent’ to ‘read’ as Shane watches, but Ilya doesn't reply. 

Shane hesitates, drums his fingernails against the side of his phone. What’s the plan? Text: just to be clear, you don't love me, right? Like there's no way you secretly are super into me just like I'm apparently super into you and this whole hanahaki thing is just because I can’t imagine it and have tricked my heart into thinking it’s hopeless, right? 

He can't do that. He'd die of shame before the hanahaki even got him. 

So he puts his phone back down, and he closes his eyes, and he starts going through his options, because Shane Hollander apparently loves Ilya Rozanov a fatal amount, but he also loves plans. 

 

---

 

Shane has always been really good at thinking things through. Most people would say he thinks things through too much, and he knows they’re probably right. He’d get a lot more sleep and have a lot fewer panic attacks if he wasn’t constantly burdened by the knowledge that anything at all could happen at any time, which is impossible to plan for. But it's also true that he comes up with really good solutions to things that most people wouldn’t even register as problems.

Like buying an entire apartment building so no one can hear him getting fucked and enjoying it too much. Normal things like that.

He vaguely knows the options for hanahaki sufferers. It’s not something he’s given a lot of thought to, because he’s never known anyone who has it. It’s one of those things that you see more in movies than real life, and Shane always rolls his eyes and thinks privately that he’d never get caught with such an embarrassing ailment, because he would simply turn his feelings off. 

There’s the cleanest solution (immediate surgery to remove the growth in his lungs, which would also remove his feelings for Ilya), the worst case scenario (throwing himself at Ilya’s mercy and trying to make Ilya fall in love with him in some kind of zany romcom scenario), and several sort of off-the-wall ideas that mostly make it in there because he’s starting to spiral (getting his mom to set up an emergency season of The Bachelor so he can meet and fall in love with a woman in like twenty days before the hanahaki gets too bad). He’s leaning towards just fucking dying and leaving a stack of NDAs next to his body so no one has to find out how pathetic he is. 

He realizes pretty early on that any successful plan will involve roping in his mother, but that thought makes him want to throw up again, so he banishes it into the “Worst Case Scenario” column until he's spent a solid hour tossing and turning in bed without coming up with anything better, and then he has to reluctantly admit that he needs her. 

 

---

 

He calls and asks if they can meet at his apartment for a serious conversation the following weekend, when his parents are going to be in town to see his game anyway. He manages to ask, hopefully without sounding desperate or weird, if it can be just the two of them. He actually thinks that it would be easier to tell his dad everything, that his dad would probably even understand him better, but that's exactly why he doesn't want his dad there. He doesn't care about the emotional aspect of this. That was considered and then tossed away within the first hour of his initial panic. He doesn't care about his heart. He doesn’t care that hanahaki surgery is considered by most people to be a barbaric solution, something completely unnatural, something that makes you less of a whole person. He doesn’t care that every time he thinks about no longer caring about Ilya, he starts to gag on another fucking petal. He doesn't want to hear his dad so kindly say well maybe it's just a misunderstanding, bud! Have you tried talking to her? Because no. No, fuck that, no, there's no world where he calls Ilya up and says hey, so, apparently I'm dying of unrequited love for you. Any interest in trying very hard to love me back? 

So he will tell his mom the barest details, and he will lay out the logic, and she will tell him that he's doing the right thing, or she'll give him a better option. That's what he needs right now. 

 

---

 

It's not that he doesn't stop to consider it, several times, the fact that his rivalry with Ilya has always made him a better player, and that that rivalry has always been mixed up in their relationship in a way that frightens him to think about. What if he has the surgery and finds out that his love of hockey is tied up in his love for Ilya Rozanov? What if he gets the surgery to save his life and career and suddenly finds himself playing mediocre hockey? Wouldn’t he be better off dead?

Will he still want to win against Boston so badly if there's not some kind of fucked up “if you win I make you come as much as you physically can but if I win you have to work hard to earn even a single orgasm” bet going on? Will he still look forward to every team-up with that anticipatory, almost nauseated desire to win every face-off, to score more goals, to win every game so Ilya will be furious and rough with him, but always in a way that hums in his blood afterward, because Ilya also is always so bizarrely pleased, whether he wins or not? Shane plays his best games against Boston for a reason, and he plays even better after playing Boston, because sex with Ilya gives him this boost of adrenaline and endorphins that has been taking longer and longer to fade. Like spending a few hours getting railed by Ilya is the same as ten dedicated yoga sessions, mentally. 

So what if he gets the surgery and all that goes away? Jesus, what if he gets the surgery and he never wants to have sex again? He’s never really been sexually attracted to anyone other than Ilya. Not in any immediate way. Vaguely aware that the other person is attractive, maybe, but never with any urgency to do anything about it. Ilya has been his dick’s North Star since he was a teenager, unfortunately, which means sex and love and hockey are all knotted together, tangled up. Will he still want to have sex with Ilya after the surgery? Will it be the same without the feelings? Will Ilya be able to tell the difference? 

Will Ilya like it better that way?

Just the thought of that makes him cough up another stupid petal, so obviously he needs to have the surgery, but it's terrifying, thinking about changing something so fundamental about himself. 

Maybe that’s embarrassing, too, to acknowledge it as fundamental. 

So maybe it will be a good thing, carving every single shred of desire out of himself, hollowing himself out like scooping the guts out of a pumpkin. If his feelings for Ilya are removed and he no longer wants to get fucked, that's a best case scenario. He can go out and find a woman and have very passionless sex with her for sixty years until they both die, and no one ever has to know that he ever desired anything else. 

 

---

 

“I need you to not freak out, because if you freak out, then I'm going to freak out,” he tells his mother, in his apartment. Yuna had looked at him oddly when he told her he wanted to get takeout and eat it in his living room together, because Yuna loves a discussion over lunch in a fancy restaurant almost as much as Shane hates it when people eat food on his couch. So she’s already on the defensive from the beginning, which is probably not the best way to start. He should have planned this better.

“Okay,” Yuna says slowly. She sits down, and she pats the cushion next to her. She has this determined look on her face that Shane is so happy to see, because he knows she'll get locked in once she hears what he has to say. She's going to take it seriously, and she's going to help him, and everything is going to be fine. 

“Okay,” he says. He sits next to her. He can't stop bouncing his leg, and she puts her hand on his knee firmly to ground him. 

“Honey, before you say anything, just know that there's nothing you can say that will make me love you any less, okay? I promise. Whatever it is, it's going to be all right.”

Oh god, why is she saying it like that? Does she know something? 

“I have hanahaki,” he blurts out, because this is bad enough without her playing a guessing game

Yuna leans back on the couch a little, eyes wide. Wasn't expecting that, then. Great. She definitely thinks he's gay, instead. Which he might not even be! 

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, and then, for some stupid reason, Shane's eyes are welling with tears. 

“No, stop, don't sweetheart me,” he says miserably. “We're going to fix it, right? It doesn't have to be a big deal.”

She looks horrified. He's said it wrong, maybe. She can be kind of intense about him, so she's probably thinking that there's a misunderstanding, because who couldn't love him? The biggest hurdle will probably be getting her past that. 

“Doesn't have to be a big deal? Sweetheart, it's fatal.”

“I know, but it doesn't have to be. That's why I need your help.”

She pulls herself together in the same way he does whenever he's spiraling but knows he has to stop. She grabs his hand and holds onto it tightly, and then he watches her transformation from Sad Mom Yuna to Determined Manager Yuna.

“Okay,” she says. “What are you thinking?”

“I get the surgery.”

Sad Mom Yuna peeks around Determined Manager Yuna for just a second, her face doing this thing where it starts to crumble before she shores it back up, but Shane pretends not to notice. 

“Okay. I hear you. I understand why you might…but have you thought this through completely? The surgery isn't a guarantee. It could make things worse, and you'll probably miss a lot of games, and there's always a possibility of exposure when you involve so many other people. And, Shane, it's a last resort. It will change you, to have your feelings removed. You read all these stories…”

“I know. I only started, uh, coughing up petals a week ago, and it hasn't gotten any worse, so from what I read online, that means it's a slow growth? I've probably had it for a while and just didn't even notice, so…I think I can wait out the rest of the season so I don't have to miss anything. And there’s yoga, and meditation, and a few herbal remedies that people have seen some success with? If I can stay on top of my fitness, I can make it through the season. I’ve planned it all out.” 

“Okay,” Yuna says, with a hysterical edge that makes him want to talk faster, to give her time to compose herself, because if she starts crying or if she objects too hard, he’s going to start crying too. 

“Obviously the biggest concern is information getting out. I don't want anyone to know. Id literally rather fucking die.”

“Don't say that,” she blurts, and he nods. 

“I know, sorry. Sorry. Fuck, I'm just…it's so humiliating.”

“It's not humiliating, Shane, sweetheart,” Yuna says, rubbing her hand over his back as he finally leans forward, presses his face to his knees, tries to remember how to breathe like a normal person. His eyes burn with what want to be tears, but he can't let them fall, or he’ll never stop.

“It is. Fuck, of course it is. Everyone will know I'm not…that…that I’m not…” That I’m not worth loving? That my heart is broken? That I fell for someone extremely hot and extremely exciting and extremely not ready to do anything more than fucking with a boring Canadian loser who texts his parents goodnight every single night? He fumbles around, lost, unable to say what he wants to say. Unable to say the part of it that probably remains his deepest fear: if it comes out, Ilya will know. 

The thought of Ilya finding out is the most upsetting thing in the world. He can't fathom it. He thinks back to how gentle Ilya was with him, at his house. Soft and rumpled and making him fucking food. That version of Ilya won't be a dick about it. He’ll probably be the exact opposite. He'll look very sad and very embarrassed and will apologize very kindly for being too soft and making Shane love him. But there's also On Ice Ilya, and that motherfucker will laugh and laugh. 

Shane knows Ilya isn't going to laugh at him. He knows On Ice Ilya isn't real. Still, the thought of it. The thought of playing against him when Ilya knows…seeing that sparkle in Ilya’s eye that only comes out during games…it’s impossible. He’ll never be able to play against him again. Ilya will always win every battle between them, just by virtue of being the one who was able to control his heart. 

“Shane, sweetheart, I need you to breathe,” Yuna commands him, and he does, sucking in sharp breaths and counting with her until his panic lessens. 

“Sorry, I'm sorry,” he says when he feels like he’s back on steady ground. He banishes On Ice Ilya. He banishes even Soft Ilya. He doesn’t need to think about how Ilya will react to any of this, because Ilya will never find out. So it’s fine. 

“Who is she?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“Why not?” At Shane's miserable silence, Yuna sighs. “Sweetheart, you can tell me anything.”

“I really, really can't. Can't you just take my word for it that it's impossible?”

Yuna hesitates again, and she rubs his back again. 

“Shane, honey, I'm going to say something, and I want you to not be upset with me. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I'm sorry. But…Shane, is she, uh, not a she?”

Shane freezes, squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Fuck,” he says. Yuna’s arm moves faster, up and down his back, like she’s trying to bring warmth back to someone who has just been rescued from under the ice. That’s sort of what Shane feels like, actually. Like he was safely hidden in the frigid water where no one could see him, and suddenly he’s out in the sunlight and soaking wet and terrified. 

“Shane, it's okay. It's okay. Keep breathing. Sweetheart, I love you so much. So much. You're my perfect boy. I'm sorry if you felt like you couldn't tell me, but I…”

Great, so now they're both crying. 

 

---

 

Panic spiral and crying jags aside, he eventually convinces his mother that the only option is to have the flowers removed, because his affections aren't returned, and because he's not sure he would want them to be, anyway. He doesn’t want to make things more difficult for himself, and he doesn’t want to make them more difficult for Ilya, either. He wants to go back to only caring about hockey, the way he did when he was a teenager. He wants to care about winning, and brand deals, and being a good role model. Yuna looks a bit sick about it, still, but she agrees to follow his lead. He thinks maybe she plans on using the next few months to talk him out of it, but he doesn't mind that so much, because she tells him she'll schedule the surgery and make sure the NDAs are iron-clad, and he trusts her. 

When she leaves, he sits on the couch for a long time and thinks about the fact that she now knows he's at least a little gay. Which, to be fair, is really the most he knows about himself too. He could still like women. He just hasn't met the right one, yet, and Ilya is, well, Ilya. He's the best. He's been Shane's closest competition for years. Maybe it makes sense that Shane fell in love with him. It doesn't have to mean Shane's gay. Maybe he's just really into talented people. Maybe his standards are just crazy high.

 

---

 

He meets Rose Landry, has a really fun evening talking with Rose Landry, and convinces himself that he’s about to turn over a new, heterosexual leaf. She’s pretty and perfect and kind and she makes him laugh. Boom. What more do you need? 

They go out to a fancy restaurant his mother recommended, but then he coughs up a flower petal right in the middle of their appetizers, so unsurprisingly the ‘date’ thing fizzles out quick. Shane has gotten so good at excusing himself and getting rid of the shameful evidence quietly when he feels it coming up, but this one sneaks up on him, falls out of his mouth without warning when he’s mid-conversation. Rose gapes at it, and Shane idly thinks that this has to be scientific evidence that it’s impossible to die of humiliation, because if it was possible, he would have died three times over in this month alone. 

“Holy shit,” Rose says. Shane scoops it up, curls his fingers around it, crushes it in his hand, like he can make it disappear.  

“I'm sorry, oh my god.”

“No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't know…”

“I have a surgery scheduled for after the season,” he says. It feels good to say it aloud, like it always does, because it’s a concrete plan, except then Rose looks horrified. He doesn’t know why he keeps expecting people to understand his thought process when he says these things to them. He knows that the general opinion of hanahaki surgery isn’t great, though he thinks that’s easy to say when you’re not the one dying. 

“You're getting it removed?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it's not possible, and I don't want to die, so.”

“It's not possible? I find that hard to believe. You're like the sweetest person I've ever met.”

“You're the sweetest person. I'm such an asshole. I was trying…I don't know. I like you a lot. I had so much fun the other night, and I thought…”

“You thought, what, a single date would cure the mystery flower illness that science still doesn't understand?” Rose teases. “If it was that easy, they wouldn't need to rip your emotions out of you to fix it.”

“I know,” Shane admits miserably. “I'm just…afraid.”

“Of the surgery?” 

“Of what I'll be like after. I don't think I've ever known a time when I didn't feel, like, strongly. About this person. I’m afraid there’s too much of me tied up in it already.”

Rose looks at him consideringly. 

“Okay,” she says. “Why don't you tell me about them.”

Them, Shane notices. Maybe he should be embarrassed that Rose has clocked him this quickly, but the truth is that it's kind of nice. 

 

---

 

Okay, so dating the literal perfect woman didn't work out, but at least Shane has a new friend, and at least he doesn't seem to be getting too much worse. The petal falling out of his mouth mid-conversation makes him paranoid it's going to happen again, so he keeps his mouth firmly shut on the ice the next time they play Boston, and he hopes for the best. 

The first time he sees Ilya since he ran out on him, he can feel his chest surging, physical movement in his lungs causing him to swallow back bile, but he does swallow it back, and he forces himself to be normal. He tells himself that he's relieved when Ilya doesn't chirp him, barely looks at him, because it means that he doesn't have to open his mouth and risk exposing himself. 

But the longer the game goes on, the more annoyed he gets. Ilya avoids him. Ilya doesn't look at him. Ilya checks him into the boards so hard at one point that he gags and almost coughs something up, and he only swallows it back with extreme difficulty, and it's so obvious that Ilya looks at him finally with concern, mutters an apology that sounds like a question. That only makes it worse. 

They both play brutal games. Ilya spends a good amount of time in the penalty box, and Shane has to resort to scrappiness a few times against a fired-up Boston defense. Ilya scores two more goals than Shane, but Shane's team still pulls out the win, and Shane is doing, like, sex math in his head trying to work out the equation of what exactly that would mean for Ilya's mood if they were going to fuck tonight, but of course they're not going to fuck tonight, because Ilya still hasn't responded to his messages. 

Except, like. 

Well. 

If this is going to be one of the last chances…

He feels an embarrassing flush come over him as he picks up his phone in the locker room and opens Lily's thread. 

Then, before he can talk himself out of it: 782.

He thinks Ilya won't respond. He thinks he'll just have to swallow the mortification of reaching out and being denied, and then he'll feel better about his decision to have the surgery, and then everything will go back to normal, just like he planned.

Ilya texts back a thumbs up emoji, which could mean anything. 

 

---

 

But then Ilya knocks on his door, late that night, and Shane is so excited that he immediately coughs up a petal that he hides in one of the drawers of the nightstand before rushing to the door. He's nervous that Ilya is going to want to talk about the time Shane fled his house, maybe, or at least check in, make sure they're okay, or maybe mock him for the Rose date that went minorly viral so he and Rose both had to put out statements about them being “just good friends” like they hadn’t met two nights earlier, but Ilya grabs his face and kisses him in a desperate way that has Shane half-hard already, like a conditioned response, because he loves when Ilya is like this. 

I'm going to miss this so much, he thinks, but of course that isn't true. He won't miss it. That's the whole point. 

He kisses Ilya back just as hard, and he grabs his hair, scratches at his shoulder when he grips onto it. Ilya moans into his mouth the way he always does when Shane is a little rough, and then he's slamming Shane up against the wall and it feels so much like when he slammed him against the boards earlier, and it’s so fucked up that Shane loves it this much. Ilya pulls at Shane's shirt, and Shane is fumbling with his pants, and it's crazy how easy this always is, when they get down to it. Shane never feels like this anywhere else. Even with hockey, the only thing in the world he loves as much as this, it's so much thinking, so much analysis of every second, so much tracking of every other player, anticipating what they'll do. With Ilya, both on the ice and off, he never knows exactly what Ilya is going to do, but it hardly ever seems to matter. Shane is just along for the ride. His head is so perfectly, beautifully quiet. 

Ilya tosses him back on the bed, and Shane looks up at him, and Ilya looks wrecked, almost angry, and Shane feels a twinge of something in his chest, except then Ilya grabs him by the thighs and pulls him further down the bed until his ass is hanging off it, and then he's falling to his knees in one swift move and taking Shane into his mouth, and Shane's entire body turns white hot, just a throbbing vessel of need need need. He coughs up two petals, but Ilya is busy, and doesn’t see them, and Shane shoves them under the pillow with a violent rage. Not now. Not now. He grabs Ilya's hair again, and Ilya does this thing where he leans into it, encourages it without words as his tongue wraps around Shane's cock, and so Shane pulls harder with one hand but with his other he pets Ilya's curls, because he wants to, because he wants to be gentle, too. 

Ilya isn't gentle. It's like he's trying to suck Shane's soul through his dick, and then he pulls off abruptly with this disgusting sound, just as Shane was starting to get close, and Shane could fucking kill him for a second. Ilya takes his time despite—or probably because of—Shane’s eager desperation, the way Shane tugs at him, tries to get him closer. He crawls up Shane’s body, mouths a line of kisses up his stomach, bites into his neck, kisses his lips like he wants to leave marks, and Shane is too fucking gone to even care. His chest hitches once, and he thinks please don’t ruin this for me, and he swallows down the petal, but he can taste it, and the pollen tickles the back of his throat. 

He rolls over on top of Ilya, pins him down. Ilya's fingers are already grazing over his ass, and Shane nods, slurs something encouraging, wraps his fingers around Ilya's cock. Ilya makes this punched-out noise that Shane loves, and Shane kisses him for it, like he wants to absorb that sound into himself. 

Ilya usually takes this part pretty slow, slower than Shane would like, and he always laughs when it makes Shane feral with annoyance and need and hunger, and he likes to tease him. Today, though, he's quick about it, his fingers entering Shane eagerly, like he can't wait either, and suddenly he's flipping Shane onto his stomach and pulling his ass up, and then he's in him, and Shane has to push his face into the pillow to swallow back his sounds and the flowers that will surely follow. 

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” he manages to say, and Ilya is murmuring something that might be Russian but possibly is English and Shane is just fucked too stupid to understand it. He doesn't think he could say anything else if he wanted to. Everything is building so sharply, so quickly within him. He knows he's going to come like this, without Ilya even touching him, and he fucking loves it, loves that Ilya can do this to him. How the fuck is he supposed to give this up?

When he does come, it's almost a surprise. Like it sneaks up on him, and he's louder than he would like when he does, and he sinks forward, and Ilya is on him, chest to his back, and then Ilya is coming too, and kissing his shoulder blades, and running his hands along Shane's back, squeezing his waist, still talking. Shane’s ears are ringing, and his entire body is trembling, and Ilya kisses and kisses and kisses him, still desperate, before he finally pulls out. 

He's as considerate as he always is. He neatly disposes of the condom, and he gets a wet towel, and he wipes Shane off, and Shane is trying to catch his eyes, but Ilya won't really look at him, and it's only then that Shane feels a little cold. He remembers the warmth of the way Ilya had looked at him in his house, and the softness of his skin when Shane had rested against him, and this is different, more removed, and it makes Shane feel like he's dying. Ilya doesn't even lie back down afterward. He's sitting up on the bed, looking down at Shane, and there is something so awful in his eyes. Shane doesn't know what it is. 

“Okay?” Ilya asks. Shane nods. “Okay. I will go.”

Wait, no, Shane wants to say. Don't. Please stay. We won't have many more chances like this.

But, “okay”, he says instead, and Ilya leaves.

 

---

 

Shane texts Ilya when he finds out that they're going to be playing on the same team for All Stars for the first time. He hasn't texted him since that night in the hotel, but only because he couldn't think of a good enough reason. He's used to Ilya doing the work, reaching out, but Ilya hasn't, since Boston, and it's not like Shane can blame him. He has been feeling more desperate, though. He can feel the clock winding down. The petals are coming faster, and the other day, he coughed up a cluster of them with a small stem at the end, and he knows what that means. He has been dutifully reporting all changes in his symptoms to his mother, who has been sending them on to the doctor, who thanks her and says that he’s still not terribly worried yet. 

(Shane has only met his future surgeon once, because the doctor wanted to do an in-person consult to make sure that Shane wasn’t being pressured or anything. Shane felt like a fraud the entire time, and found it difficult to answer all of the doctor’s probing questions, because he found himself lying about half of them. Sure, maybe he should try to see if Ilya will talk to him about it first. Sure, maybe he should try some other stuff before going for the nuclear option, but also: no!)

As the day gets closer, it seems stupider and stupider not to try to talk to Ilya, but he can’t. He just can’t bring himself to do it. So he texts about fucking All Stars instead, and maybe that’s going to be the gateway text. Maybe he’ll naturally find a way to bring up the fact that he’s dying of love for his fuckbuddy of almost a decade using All Stars as a springboard. 

Ilya texts him back, says im not playing.

“Oh, fuck you, come on,” Shane whines. He almost throws his phone across the room to stop himself from responding, but he doesn’t want to give up just yet. He was counting on All Stars. There would be so many opportunities to fuck, and they’re running out of time! 

Why not? Our first time ever playing together. Don’t be a fucking asshole.

Sick, is all Ilya says. Shane frowns. Calls him. Ilya doesn't pick up. 

“Fuck you,” Shane says aloud. 

So what if you're sick now? It's not for two weeks.

Ilya doesn't respond. 

 

---

 

The Raiders announce that Ilya is going to be out for an indefinite amount of time due to an illness. 

Shane calls him. Ilya doesn't pick up. 

Shane texts him. Ilya doesn't respond. 

Shane chews on his fingernails and coughs up flowers and texts his mother every time he does, except the first time he sees blood on the petal he leaves that detail out. He's afraid that he might have to move the surgery up, but he really wants to at least make it through the season, because it will be easier to hide it, then. His surgeon writes him a prescription for something that should help. He can’t take it on game days, because it makes him feel fuzzy and unmotivated, and he’s terrified that it’s mimicking what he’ll feel when the surgery is done, so he tries not to take them unless he’s feeling really bad. He scrolls through pages and pages on reddit of people talking about the effects of hanahaki surgery, and he feels better and then worse and then better again. He texts Ilya, and Ilya doesn't respond. Cliff Marleau is pictured out at a Boston club drinking heavily and ranting with a few other teammates, his eyes redrimmed, and Shane coughs up a handful of bloody petals and doesn't tell his mother. He calls Ilya, and Ilya doesn't pick up.

He pulls out of All Stars, citing illness as well, and he tells his mom to move the surgery up, since it's a good time to do it, and apparently the recovery isn't too bad. He shouldn't even miss any games. It’s a good plan. A solid plan. A plan he hates.

“Honey, please at least consider talking to him,” she whispers on the phone. 

“I can't,” he says honestly. “He won't answer my texts. And I don't want him to know. I think it would kill me if he knew how pathetic I was.”

“It's not pathetic to be in love, Shane,” she tells him firmly, but Shane knows she wouldn't say that if she knew the whole story. 

 

---

 

A week before his surgery, Shane experiences what he can only describe as a complete breakdown. He has never felt so out of control in his entire life. 

It's just that he was looking forward to All Stars so much. He had a plan. He had it set in his mind as the last time he and Ilya were going to get to be together. It was going to be perfect. It was going to mean something to him, and then he could go on living and he wouldn't need to carry this awful, shitty burden anymore. Logically, he knows it doesn't matter that they won't get that last time. Shane won't give a fuck in four days. He only gives a fuck now because a plant is growing in his lungs and trying to kill him. 

But he does give a fuck now. 

I'm booking a flight to Boston and I'm coming to your fucking house he texts Ilya. 

Ilya calls. 

“You're such an asshole,” Shane tells him. 

“Do not come to my house, Hollander.”

“You sound like shit.”

“Did you not believe me when I said I am sick? Fuck off.”

“What's ‘sick’? Like you clearly don't just have a cold. What's wrong? Is it serious?” 

“Ugh, what do you care, Hollander?”

Ilya hangs up. Shane calls him back. Ilya doesn’t pick up. 

Shane buys a ticket to Boston and sends Ilya a screenshot. Ilya texts back a thumbs up. Shane chooses to interpret that as permission. 

 

---

 

There are plenty of valid reasons for Shane to travel to Boston on an off-week, so he gets his mom to schedule a meeting with a representative from one of his brands. They've been trying to meet with him to discuss an upcoming ad campaign, and he's been putting it off for months, and his mother is clearly surprised about the sudden change of heart, especially when he asks to handle it alone, but she schedules it anyway. 

So he goes to his stupid lunch meeting, and he spends some time at Boston Children's as part of that brand deal, meeting with sick kids in a wing of the hospital that the company funded, and by the time he's ready to drive the twenty-five minutes outside Boston to get to Ilya's house, he's wound himself up into a tight ball of anxious resentment, wondering if maybe Ilya has cancer or something, wondering if anyone is taking care of him or if he's just trying to ride it out on his own. He thinks of those weird, sad pictures of Marleau, and he thinks of the way Ilya's voice had sounded so hoarse and wrecked on the phone, and he thinks of the first time he ever met Ilya, smoking outside the building. God, does Ilya have fucking lung cancer?

It takes more like forty-five minutes to get to Ilya's house because of the traffic. He doesn't bother to text Ilya that he's on his way, which might be the rudest thing he's ever done, but he's so angry for some reason. Angry that he cares and angry that he won't care in a week and angry that any of this has happened to him when it was just supposed to be casual. 

He parks his rented car in the driveway, and he gets out, and he stomps up to the front door and pounds on it with a closed fist until Ilya finally opens it, looking incandescently pissed off in a way that complements Shane's fury perfectly. 

“Oh my god,” Ilya groans when he registers who he’s looking at. “I thought it was a fucking joke.”

“Why would I joke about that? I sent you a screenshot,” Shane hisses as he pushes his way in and slams the door. Ilya doesn't have any neighbors close by, and the driveway is like half a mile long, but he's still paranoid about being recognized, even out here, and he can tell that Ilya thinks it's pathetic from the way he rolls his eyes. He's not wearing a shirt, and he's wearing black sweatpants, just like last time, and it's almost like he has been frozen in time here, waiting for Shane to come back. 

Except, no, it’s not like he’s been frozen in time at all. He looks different. It hasn't even been all that long since that night in the hotel room, but Ilya looks shrunken, miserable. There are giant purple bruises under his eyes, and he's pale, and Shane can see that he's thinner.

“It's fucking lung cancer, isn't it,” he says, voice grim. Ilya barks a laugh, and he leans back against the wall, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looks genuinely amused, like he doesn't realize how terrible he looks. He’s got this bizarre, ironic attachment to him. He doesn’t look or sound like himself at all. Shane wants to shake him, but he doesn't. He just takes off his coat and hangs it on one of the empty hooks. When he turns around, Ilya is smiling at him in that weird, body-snatched way. 

“Sure, lung cancer,” he says. “Maybe you should suck my dick about it.”

“Don't be a fucking asshole,” Shane says, but then he's on his knees anyway like two seconds later, because he's insane, and he grabs Ilya's sweatpants and yanks them down, and Ilya is laughing again, but in this way that's so shaky with incredulous want that it makes Shane want him more.

This is the last time I'll want to suck his dick, he thinks mournfully, and it seems impossible. Is medical science really so advanced it can remove a desire this achingly desperate? Surely not. They can't even cure lung cancer! 

Shane bruised his knee last game, and he hisses uncomfortably when he leans on it weird, but he adjusts, and shifts closer, and Ilya is holding onto him, and his hand squeezes Shane's shoulder, like a comfort, like he's noticed. Ilya’s knees are already starting to buckle a little, fingers moving up to run through Shane's hair, and Shane is so hard, already, just from this. He's still wearing his fucking shoes. How does Ilya make him act this way? This just isn’t normal behavior.

Ilya comes with a shout after not very much time at all, sounding just as surprised as Shane feels, and Shane is left with a fuzzy, savagely pleased pride when he swallows it down, when he stands up and sees the way Ilya is looking at him, like he's something special. Sure, it's apparently not enough, but it’s also not nothing.

In the hazy seconds after, he thinks, maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I can just tell him. He certainly likes what I can do for him. Maybe he can change his mind. Maybe I can convince him that I’m enough, if I’m good enough, if I’m what he needs. If I let him do whatever he wants to me. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya says, wrecked. He shoves his hands back into his pockets again instead of touching shane, and he moves into the house. Shane lines his shoes up neatly next to the front door, only shaking a little, before he follows.

Ilya collapses on the couch, and his hands are pressed to his face, and Shane looks around the living room, assessing. It’s not the fetid den of illness he was half-fearing. It looks as nice as it did the last time Shane was here. It makes his chest hurt to be back here at all. The coffee table is covered in tissues, the small wastebasket next to it overflowing. Shane can see red stains on some, and his heart lurches, and his chest spasms. 

“Okay, so tell me what's wrong,” he says, and he sits down. He doesn't want to be so far away that Ilya takes it personally, but he also doesn't want to be too close, so he's awkwardly half a cushion away. Ilya looks over at him, and of course Shane is thinking about the last time, the time that ruined everything, because it made him realize just how deeply he wants to be here, just like this, with Ilya, every fucking day. Like all the time. It's horrifying, the way wanting has gotten through his every defense. It was like a disease long before the hanahaki set in.

“You seemed so sure it's lung cancer,” Ilya laughs, and then he coughs, and then he grimaces. And maybe Shane's an idiot for not noticing so far, given everything, but he knows exactly what that face means. He knows how it feels to swallow a crumpled-up, blood-and-spit soaked piece of flower. It's disgusting. 

“Holy shit,” Shane says. Ilya cuts an annoyed look over at him. “Holy shit, it's hanahaki.”

“I think lung cancer is better,” Ilya mutters, but he doesn't deny it. Just looks away, clenching his jaw, bouncing his leg nervously. 

“Okay. Who is it? Sorry, that's…nosy.” 

“Oh my god, Hollander,” Ilya says disbelievingly. He moves like he's going to stand up, but Shane scoots closer, grabs his knee. 

“Come on, just…it can't be that bad. Just tell me. We'll figure it out.”

“You are…there is apparently nothing to figure out.”

“Of course there is. There's the surgery, and actually, Boston has one of the foremost experts in…”

“No,” Ilya says shortly. “No surgery. I told team already. I won't do it.”

“What? Ilya, come on. It's fatal.”

Ilya looks at him sharply. Looks away again.

“Yes.” 

Ilya does this thing sometimes that he thinks Shane can't see through. Shane can, of course. He just pretends not to because it feels impolite to call him on it. Ilya will pretend at indifference or ambivalence, and he will do this little shrug, and Shane has learned to tell that when Ilya does that little shrug when he’s trying to sound dismissive, it means it's something that he actually cares about a shitload. He's not as good at pretending not to be afraid as he thinks he is. 

“And you're just going to, what, choke to death slowly for months?” 

Ilya looks at him like he doesn't understand the question, but Shane knows he does. Knows he just doesn't want to answer it. 

“I am not talking about this with you,” Ilya says suddenly. “We can fuck, you can go, we can do whatever, but we're not talking about it.”

“I’m not just going to let you kill yourself over this.” 

“Let me?” Ilya asks, and he barks a laugh that's too shaky to be real. He stands up, jerks away from Shane, disgust curling his lip. “Let me. Like you have a say?”

That hurts. Tickles Shane’s chest a little in a way that reminds him that it’s probably dangerous to be here, loving Ilya silently, while Ilya suffers. Pretty soon they’re both going to be coughing up flowers at each other. It’s so stupid, too. They’re in a fucking daisy chain of hanahaki, apparently. Shane’s in love with Ilya and Ilya is in love with some probably perfect Swedish model or something. Ilya has clearly been dealing with symptoms longer, to look so sick. Was that why he was being so nice to Shane that day? Was he trying to see if he could move on from his doomed love, and Shane was there and convenient? 

“I don't want you to die,” he says simply, because everything else he could say would be too much. 

“Okay, well. It's not really up to you.”

“The surgery really isn't that bad. Apparently the recovery time is like less than…”

“Drop it, Hollander.”

“But you've already missed two weeks! And you look like shit, and it's clearly advancing.”

“I don't need you to tell me this.”

“Okay, well, somebody has to. You're the second best hockey player in the world and you're dying of a treatable illness for no reason.”

“No reason,” Ilya repeats, scoffing. And there’s something about the way he says it that rankles Shane. Like Shane can’t possibly know anything about love. Like Shane can't understand that love can kill you. Like it's so impossible to believe that Shane understands how terrifying it is to face down the removal of the thing that has made your heart feel so full for so many years. But what other choice is there? Dying for a doomed love is fucking stupid, and Ilya can't. He just can't.

“My surgery is in a week,” he says. He regrets it the second he says it, because now he knows the truth will all come out, but maybe that’s not the world-ending disaster he’s been fearing. He doesn't think Ilya is really in a position to mock him about it, and maybe it will make Ilya consider the surgery, if he sees it from a different angle.

“What?” Ilya asks. He sits back down, heavily, looking at Shane in the way that strips Shane naked, but not in the way he wants. Maybe this would be easier if they were naked, actually. Things usually are, with them. 

“Yeah. That's how I know about the doctor at MGH. She's like, number two in the world. The guy I'm scheduled with is pretty good, too, apparently. My mom picked him out.”

“You're just going to cut it out? Let them take it from you?” Ilya asks, baffled. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I don't want to die of a broken heart in my twenties?” Shane offers, and he's trying, he really is, to be normal about this, but of course now he feels like he's going to cry, and Ilya is going to keep looking at him in this confused, uncomprehending way, and maybe Shane is just feeling sensitive, but the way Ilya is looking at him right now feels so much like disbelief, like the thought of Shane being capable of love at all is frying Ilya's senses, and it hurts. Of course it does. Shane thought he was so obvious, all this time, but apparently not. 

“Who?” Ilya finally asks, suspicious in a way that doesn’t register at first. Shane thinks he won't tell him, because why would he? But Ilya looks so pathetic sitting there, so wasted, and he's apparently prepared to die for something that Shane isn't, and Shane doesn't want him to die, and he wants to get through to him before he literally can’t care anymore. 

“I think it should be obvious who it is,” he says, and he doesn't even feel like he's going to die about it, so at least there's that. Ilya stares at him. Stares some more. Shane doesn’t look away. 

“Me?” Ilya asks. Points at himself grandly, like he thinks Shane is going to be like, oh no, wait, I was thinking of someone else. “That makes no sense.”

“Fuck you it doesn't make sense.” Shane leaps up from the couch, tension snapping, angry in a way that makes him wish they were on the ice so he'd have an excuse to fight. “Jesus fucking Christ. Who else would it be? You're unbelievable. Fucking ridiculous. You think I let anyone else fuck me? You think I would book a flight to fucking Boston for anyone else?”

Ilya is laughing, watching Shane pace. He tips his head back against the back of the couch, and he keeps laughing at the ceiling. 

“Shane, stop,” he says finally, interrupting. He reaches out a hand, but Shane stays standing where he is, arms across his chest, because he wants to be angry now. It's better than being scared. Ilya sighs and groans and gets up on his own, which makes Shane’s resolve flutter unhappily, because Ilya is so much worse off than him. He should have just gone to him. “Shane, it makes no sense because mine is for you.”

Shane frowns at him. Ilya approaches, puts his hands on Shane's shoulders. Is smiling at Shane like this is such a funny coincidence. 

“That makes no fucking sense,” Shane says. Ilya laughs helplessly. 

“Yes, exactly what I said before you started yelling at me. You are so cute when you're angry. Did you know that?” He's kissing Shane's neck, suddenly, and his temple, and his forehead, and Shane's mind is whirring, almost blank. 

“But you…how…but? The internet said unrequited love. The fucking surgeon said it! We can't give it to each other!”

“Eh, I think maybe we are both just fucking stupid,” Ilya says, in a tone of mocking regret that Shane wishes he hated more than he does. “When you left, I thought it was because I was…obvious. And then the first petal fell, and I thought I knew that you didn't feel the same. It happens sometimes, I guess. You convince yourself that there is no hope, and your body believes you. Marly tried to convince me to call ‘Jane’ and tell her, because he thought maybe it was a mental thing. I was probably working my way up to it. Calling you, I mean. It was harder than I expected.”

Sometimes, Shane falls into the trap of believing that Ilya is this world-weary, experienced Casanova who knows everything, and sometimes he remembers that they're the same age, and that Ilya is just as bad at expressing himself as Shane, but in different ways. 

“I went back to the hotel and threw up a lily petal,” Shane confesses. 

“Makes sense,” Ilya says. At Shane's withering look, he says, “Lily, I mean.”

“Whatever. What's yours?”

“Lilac,” Ilya replies easily. Smugly. “Internet says it means first love.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Shane groans. He rests his forehead against Ilya's chest, and Ilya laughs at him again. It's fond, though. Disbelieving. Sweet. He wraps his arms tighter around Shane. Holds him close. “Wait, we both got it on the same day? Why are you so much worse than me?”

“Ah, I guess I just love you more than you love me,” Ilya says sadly. It's not like Shane couldn't guess, already, considering the literal definition of hanahaki, but still, the word love coming from Ilya’s lips is heady, and only undercut by the horror of the rest of the sentence. Ilya laughs at his expression again, and he kisses him to keep him from protesting, because of course Shane wants to protest, wants to prove somehow that Ilya is wrong. “No, sorry, that was too mean. You will be so pleased about this: the doctor said it’s because I smoke. Lungs were more open to the disease. Congratulations.”

“I didn't even say anything!” 

“No, but I know you. You were thinking ‘oh I was right all along, smoking is so dangerous’.”

Ilya softens that pronouncement with a kiss, and Shane leans into it. 

“What happens now?” he asks finally. 

“We fuck, you go home, neither of us dies.”

“And that's it?”

“Well, we fuck more, later. As often as we can.”

“Ilya.”

“Ugh, fine. We talk. We admit we are in love. Then we fuck.”

“I guess that's a little better.”

“Oh please. You sucked my dick at the front door because you decided I had lung cancer. You came here to fuck.”

“Well yeah, obviously, but I thought it was going to be the last time because I was having it removed!”

Ilya grimaces again. 

“Don't remind me,” he says, and then he pulls Shane into a surprisingly warm, surprisingly gentle hug. Shane allows it for a long time. He can't believe Ilya would rather die than give up his love, even when he thought it was unrequited. Does Shane feel guilty about the fact that he wasn’t going to do the same? He thinks he might, even though he still thinks it would be stupid to die like that. Maybe he can tackle that feeling tomorrow. He's too tired to do it today. 

“I have to google it,” he says finally, mouth squashed into Ilya's shoulder. “Like, do we have to do anything? Or does it just go away on its own now that we know? Are we gonna be coughing up dead petals?”

“Shane, please be quiet. This is nice.”

Shane sighs. It is nice. It's nice to feel Ilya's arms around him. It's nice to know that they're definitely going to fuck just as soon as this hug is done, but since they have all day, and tomorrow, and the next few days before Shane has to head back, there's really no rush. 

It's nice that Ilya loves him. It's nice that he doesn't have to have that surgery. It's nice that Ilya isn't going to stupidly die in his mid-twenties of a broken heart. It's a little scary that he might have, if Shane hadn't been so desperate to see him that he did something so out of character, but that's the kind of thing he'll be having anxiety nightmares about for the next twenty years, so there's plenty of time for that later.

For now, he just lets it be nice. 

“I at least have to call my mom and get her to cancel the surgery,” he finally says. Ilya releases him immediately. 

“Yes, do that,” he says. “And then take off your clothes.”

“Yeah, okay,” Shane agrees easily. “Sounds like a plan.”