Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Shane Hollander & Rose Landry Friendship, Hanahaki Disease, Non-Terminal Hanahaki Disease, Hopeful Ending, Idiots in Love, Shane Hollander Is Bad at Feelings, Canon Compliant, well ignoring the Hanahaki but y'know, Podfic Available, Compulsive Heteronormativity, Internalized Homophobia

Language:

English

Series:

Part 14 of [challenge] Heated Rivalry Febuwhump 2026

Collections:

febuwhump 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-14 Words: 1,393 Chapters: 1/1

a weed called love

Summary

Shane’s throat is scratchy, particularly when he has to face Ilya Rozanov. Surely, that is just coincidence.

Notes

For Day 14: Hanahaki

I’m a huge fan on non-terminal/chronic Hanahaki and aaah we’ll see if I come back to a few more because so many good versions of that. I love them.

Shane feels the tickle in his throat in the lead-up to the draft.

Just nerves, he tells himself, because the alternative is that he’s either getting sick, which would be a shame, or… well. It’s just nerves, he’s pretty sure.

He starts coughing somewhere between getting drafted second – and even though he’s picked by the Metros, it still stings, to come second today of all days – and Ilya fucking Rozanov joining him at the treadmills, and isn’t that a joy? Rozanov, the whole reason he’s down here, who bested him once already today.

And, thanks to the persistent scratch in Shane’s throat, bests him again. He sinks to the floor, coughs uselessly, and heaves in gasping breaths around it.

Rozanov tumbles off the treadmill moments after Shane, even more graceless, like he’d only been waiting for Shane to fail. He probably had.

When Shane coughs again, Rozanov holds his water bottle out. His fingers are hot when they brush Shane’s, and the sweat on them should gross him out but doesn’t. Shane squirts water into his mouth, grateful for the brief relief from coughing.

The itch subsides over the next few days, and Shane mentally marks it off as just another stress symptom.

He gets sick off of the CCM-photoshoot with Rozanov; a mild cold that takes a couple of days to subside. It’s not bad enough to keep him from training; if it had, he and Rozanov would have had a word.

The scratching returns intermittently throughout the season, though it never gets bad enough to really impede Shane’s gameplay; and really, what guy doesn’t feel under the weather every once in a while?

Shane tears it up on the ice regardless, neck-and-neck with Rozanov, whose cocky demeanour and skill to back it up are a constant irritation. Playing Boston is electric in a way Shane finds hard to put into words, because the League is, well, leagues better than all the competition he’d faced in juniors. But playing Rozanov… maybe he’s buying into the media narrative around them, or maybe there’s a thrill to having someone who’s his age and can keep up, not because he’s more experienced but because he’s just that fucking good… it’s heady. Addicting.

And so Shane skates his heart out until his lungs burn, his throat scratchy, and gulps down Gatorade like it’s going out of style.

Shane gets another sore throat in the days before the All-Star Game, which makes sense, because he and Rozanov are once again in the limelight. Cameras and microphones have been on Shane for years now, are on him almost every post-game media scrum, but it’s still big in a way Shane could do without. It’s an honour, of course, and really fucking exciting, to be playing on his first All-Star Team (the first of many, hopefully), but the whole media circus drives home quite clearly why a lot of players are glad enough to skip it every year.

But Rozanov is also there, on Team Europe, and so it’s easy to sink into their rivalry, let the competition sing through his blood. Show him up in the shot accuracy contest. Deke around him on the ice. Race after him on a break-away that would have seen Shane’s teammates benched in a real game but makes the crowd cheer here, because all that matters here is entertainment.

“How was your first All-Star Game? I imagine pretty satisfying to get two points out there,” a reporter asks him afterwards, and Shane can feel himself grin, more genuine than he’d usually show the cameras.

“It was amazing,” he says in full honesty, because it was. He should have hated it. But it’s also the most fun he’s had playing in a while, stupid as it sounds; no pressure on the ice as they played for the fun of it.

He and Rozanov are tapped for another media appearance, and it’s no wonder that after all this talking and asking and socialising, Shane’s throat is a little dry. He sips his water, answers question, and doesn’t cough until they’re clear of the media room.

They keep hooking up, him and Rozanov, even though it’s reckless and stupid. Shane knows it’s reckless and stupid. Still, he can’t seem to stop himself. Rozanov texts him, and he answers after the barest hesitations; Rozanov looks at him and Shane already has a hotel room booked for them. It doesn’t make sense. Shane is used to being disciplined and strict, and yet that goes out the window the moment he thinks about Rozanov.

So they keep hooking up, and Shane’s throat keeps itching, but it doesn’t really impact anything that matters: Rozanov wins a Cup. Shane answers by winning two Cups, back-to-back.

“Everything alright, Hollsy?” Hayden asks him that summer as they’re ramping up training before the on-ice stuff starts. “You’ve been coughing an awful lot.”

Shane frowns. “It’s nothing. Just, I don’t know. Allergies, I think. I’ve always had it.”

“You sure? Because it sounds like, y’know. Flowery.”

The words actually stop Shane short. “No,” he says, through a surge of panic. “No, that – it’s allergies, I – I’d know if it wasn’t.”

“Dude, I’m just saying – you kinda sound like I did when Jacks n’ me were being stupid.”

“It’s not.” It can’t be. Hayden had been pining after Jackie and too chicken to say anything; there is nothing like that going on in Shane’s life. And he’s been coughing for years at this point; he’d have clued in if it was Hanahaki-related, wouldn’t he?

“So it’s not… related to Lily?”

Ice water sluices down Shane’s back. “What? No, there – there is no Lily, I’m –”

“Woah, chill. I believe you.”

Hayden doesn’t sound like it, but there’s nothing Shane can really say to that, so he pivots and starts up his run again, just fast enough that there’s no breath to talk.

Shane doesn’t know how he makes it back to the hotel room he shares with Hayden after fleeing Ilya’s Boston house, but the next thing he becomes aware of is being in the shower, doubled over as he’s coughing and coughing and coughing, until he finally dislodges the thing in his throat and spits out –

A flower. He stares at it, barely even seeing the petals (blue, like Ilya’s eyes–) through the panic greying out his vision. No. No, it can’t be, can’t – he and Ilya – and it should be Rozanov, it can’t be Ilya, how did he allow it to become Ilya? – can’t be anything, because Shane can’t be gay, but – that’s what the flower is implying, isn’t it?

Shane coughs again, dry and normal, and watches his fist close around the petals.

No, it must be his body telling him that he should man up and end this thing, that he should grow up and get himself a girlfriend. It has to be. It can’t be anything else. It can’t.

He flushes the flower down the toilet and very pointedly ignores Hayden’s look when he slides under the blankets. It’s just another reminder that he has to be normal.

Shane tells Rose he loves her, and promptly has to excuse himself to the bathroom to cough up another flower.

Shane kisses his way down Rose’s body and has to swallow, near convulsively, against the urge to cough, or at least clear his throat.

Shane watches Ilya make out with a girl in a club in Montreal, and promptly coughs up what feels like an entire bouquet.

Shane sits across from Rose in a dark, private restaurant, listens to her come out for him, and for the first time in weeks feels like he can breathe.

It’s not even a surprise when she looks at him and says, “Your body has been telling you the same thing, hasn’t it?”

Shane drops his gaze, shrugs. “I… wasn’t sure what it was telling me,” he finally says.

That it wanted him to be normal. He can’t shake the feeling that that would be the wrong thing to tell Rose.

She smiles. “If you ever want to brainstorm about that – hit me up, yes?”

“I will.”

Ilya appears at the All-Star Game like an old friend. So does the scratching in Shane’s throat.

But this time, he knows what he has to do – come clean.

He takes a breath, and invites Ilya back to his room.

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[Podfic of] a weed called love by vexbatch pods (vexbatch)