Work Text:
The first petal appears when Shane burns his mouth on a slice of pizza.
It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. It’s just a normal meet-up, nothing they haven’t done a dozen times before. Boston has a game in Ottawa, and apparently Shane is in the area visiting his parents, and he texts Ilya before the game, what do you think about a bet?
What kind of bet? Ilya shoots back. He’s imagining a sexy Japanese bondage session, or maybe an hours-long marathon of mutual rimming.
If you win the game, I buy dinner, Shane texts. And if you lose, you buy.
The way it’s written, it almost sounds like he’s asking Ilya out on a date. He isn’t, of course. Obviously. Still, Ilya’s heart pounds in his throat as he responds, I know what I want for dinner, and it can’t be bought.
He only has a wait a moment before Shane replies with an eyeroll emoji and an of course we’re going to fuck but who’s going to buy pizza to eat in bed??
Ilya’s not disappointed, because he never thought Shane was asking him out, and if he’s especially ruthless with the puck during the game, there’s no particular reason for it. Boston wins 3-1, with two of the goals belonging to Ilya, and he’s still high on the roars of his teammates and the buzz of his fans when he shows up at the hotel room Shane rented and finds Shane waiting for him in bed, wearing nothing but a very flimsy pair of very short boxers.
And, well. Pizza is not the most important thing on Ilya’s mind.
By the time they’re done with rounds one and two, the pizza Shane got is already cold, so they fire up the oven to warm it—“You got a suite for me?” Ilya asks, and Shane smacks him on the shoulder; “It was all they had available on short notice, asshole,”— but while they’re waiting, they get distracted again, this time because they’re making out against the wall, and when they finally pull the pizza out of the oven, it’s so hot that Shane barely manages to touch his tongue to the crust before he’s hissing and throwing it down onto the counter.
“Hot,” he hisses, “hot, hot, hot!”
And, look, Ilya will admit it: Shane looks cute a lot of the time. Most of the time. All of the time, probably, depending on which part of Ilya’s anatomy you’re asking. But he looks especially cute now: with his hair all mussed from Ilya’s hands, wearing nothing but a stolen pair of Ilya’s sweats, fanning his hands in front of his mouth to try to cool off his pink tongue because he got so hungry from fucking that he didn’t have the patience to wait.
Ilya looks at him, and his stupid lovely face, and something surges in his chest, something hot and dark and vined that curls up to catch in the back of Ilya’s throat.
Ilya’s laugh—because how can he not laugh at Shane when he’s acting like this?—turns into a cough, and he twists away from the table to hack into his fist. He thinks, later, that it’s good his mother taught him proper manners, because if he hadn’t turned away, Shane would have seen it: the perfect red petal that falls out of Ilya’s mouth and into his hand.
Ilya stares down at it for several long, disbelieving moments.
“—you asshole,” Shane is saying, clearly thinking Ilya’s just laughed himself into a coughing fit. It wakes Ilya’s brain up just enough for him to fumble the petal away into the pocket of his workout shorts, where Shane can’t see it. “You eat this pizza and tell me you wouldn’t spit it out, too.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ilya says, because that’s what he’s expected to say, but his heart’s not in it. His heart’s going what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck as it catapults through a panicked obstacle course. “Russians can eat food at any temperature.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Sure, dickwad,” he says. “You go ahead and have a bite now then, yeah?”
“We can eat food at any temperature, that does not mean we want to,” Ilya says, and they’re off again, while Ilya tries very hard not to think about the bloody rose petal hidden in his pocket.
It’s not until later—once they’ve fucked again, and fooled around in the shower, and Shane has left for the night to head back to his parents’—that Ilya allows himself to pull the crumpled petal out of his pocket and consider it. He’s calmed down a bit, now—endorphins will do that to you—and he’s had more time to think. Sure, it could be—but, no. He probably just inhaled it earlier in the day without realizing it. Maybe it got stuck in his throat and the laughter shook it loose. It’s only a single petal: it’s possible. Rare, but certainly more likely than the alternative.
Ilya throws away the petal and tells himself the whole thing is behind him.
—
Except the whole thing is not behind him, because three days later, Shane sends him a text that says thinking about your cock with a picture of his rippling abs, and even though Ilya really appreciates the abs, all he can think about is the faint bruise blooming on Shane's ribs, and whether it hurts him very badly, and whether there's anything Ilya could do to make it hurt less, if he were there. He wants to be there, he realizes. He wants to be there for the rest of his life.
He has to duck out of the team weight room so he can cough up a fistful of petals.
So.
—
Nobody Ilya’s close to has ever had Hanahaki, but he’s heard stories. Most of the tales that get passed around are optimistic, featuring requited love and handholding at the altar and fat babies whose definitely-not-dead parents dress them up in teddy bear onesies. Of course those are the stories people talk about: who wants to talk about the alternative, the perusal of coffin catalogues so you can pick the perfect mahogany box to house your loved one’s bones?
From the onset of symptoms, patients usually survive between three and ten months, WebMD informs Ilya when he Googles it that evening. Many factors can affect the longevity of the patient, including their overall health status, their age and gender, and genetic factors which are not yet fully understood. For a better understanding of your particular prognosis, reach out to a doctor for advanced testing.
Reach out to a doctor. Yeah, right. There’s no fucking universe where Ilya’ll reach out to a doctor. That’s way too risky. He obviously can’t talk to any team medics about this, and even if he went to a private physician, he’s sure management would find out, and what would happen then? He might get benched; he might get kicked off the team entirely. And, look, if Ilya only has a few months left, that’s not ideal, but that’s a whole season—a whole fucking season he can spend out on the ice where he belongs, instead of trapped in a sick bed like some 18th-century consumptive.
It’s an easy call.
Anyway, Ilya already knows what the doctors will say: get this surgery, son, to which he’ll say, fuck off, grandpa, and he’ll end up exactly where he is now anyway. The whole thing will be a waste of time, and—oh, would you look at that—as of now, Ilya doesn’t exactly have all the time in the world. Three to ten months, he thinks to himself as he scrolls through Google image results of craggy rosebushes pulled from the corpses of sad, love-struck fools like him.
It’s not ideal, but what in Ilya’s life has been?
—
He comes up with a strategy, and that strategy comes down to one thing: subtlety.
Everyone knows there’s nothing you can do to stop Hanahaki, which means Ilya’s job now is simply to keep this under wraps. Pretend like nothing is wrong, keep up his normal routine, and show no hint of weakness to anyone who might want to exploit it.
That’s why, after Ilya realizes what’s happening, he doesn’t change his schedule at all. He keeps going to practices and games and sponsor events exactly as often as he used to. He keeps eating protein-rich foods to fuel his muscular recovery, and he keeps going on morning jogs to maintain his cardiovascular fitness. He keeps going out twice a week with his teammates, and he keeps getting trashed in the club and grinding up against very hot girls in very slinky dresses, and he keeps finding an excuse not to go home with them because when he should be thinking of their tits all he’s thinking of is Shane Hollander’s long, blunt fingers and wide, kissable lips.
It’s fine. He’s fine.
In the spirit of maintaining his usual habits, the next time Shane is in Boston, Ilya invites him over. Boston wins over Montreal—“Just barely,” Shane insists, as Ilya sucks kisses down his chest—and Ilya blows Shane before he fucks him. By the time he comes for the second time, he’s practically incoherent, a babbling mess where he’s writhing on Ilya’s cock.
Ilya’s chest feels tight in a way that’s not just exertion, but he waits until after Shane has finished and Ilya has wiped him off with a wet washcloth to sneak away to the kitchen for water. As soon as he’s in the clear, he’s bending over the sink and hacking up a wet handful of flower petals, which he immediately shoves down that great North American indulgence, the garbage disposal. Then, he climbs back upstairs and takes one look at Shane lying languorously in Ilya’s bed, and he has to come up with another excuse to disappear so he can hack up a few more.
In love with Shane Hollander. It’s fine. It’s so totally fine that Ilya is not even going to give it another moment’s thought.
—
In February, Ilya finds himself in Montreal on Valentine’s Day weekend for a Nike brand ambassador event. Because he’s being normal, he texts Shane an eggplant emoji and the address to his hotel.
Because Shane has not gotten the memo that they are being normal, he texts back, I'd really rather have you in my bed tonight.
Except when Ilya shows up, he finds that Shane has redecorated since he was last there. There’s a colorful rug on the living room floor, and pictures of Shane and his family on the walls, and hanging over the mantle, an Olympic silver medal.
There’s also a bowl of strawberries on the kitchen counter, alongside a can of whipped cream and a bowl of chocolate sauce.
If Ilya’s eyebrows shot up any higher they would crawl off his face and join his hairline. Shane sees his expression and hastily explains, “I was at the grocery store and I saw the strawberries were on sale, and I’ve seen, you know, people use the other stuff, for, like…”
“Hollander,” Ilya says. “Are you asking me to lick chocolate off your body?”
Shane squeezes his eyes shut, freckled cheeks pink as if the blush has been painted on. “Yes,” he says.
It’s a miracle Ilya doesn’t cough up a flower then and there.
Afterwards, when they’re lounging on the bed getting their breath back, Ilya stroking casually up and down Shane’s side, Shane says, “Thanks for not making fun of me.”
Ilya must make a face, because Shane adds, “For the chocolate thing. I know it’s silly, but,” he shrugs, pink again. “I’ve just always wondered.”
“Just like you used to wonder about getting fucked, yes?” Ilya says, and Shane rolls his eyes and shoves him away.
“You’re such an asshole,” he complains, rising from the bed and stretching in a very distracting manner. “I try to be nice to you for three seconds, and this is what I get?”
Ilya hums, watching the pull of his hamstrings. “You know what they say. Trust the scorpion, and you will get stung.”
Shane tilts his head, considering him with a peculiar expression on his face, something Ilya can’t identify. “I don’t think you’re a scorpion,” he says.
Ilya smirks. “No?” he says. “What am I? Wolf? Bear?”
“No,” Shane says, still looking at him in that strange way. “I would say you’re more like a dog.”
That’s a real surprise. “What?”
“A husky,” Shane decides. “You know, you talk a lot, but you’re not as vicious as you’d like others to believe.”
Ilya blinks. He has a horrible twisting feeling in his stomach, like Shane has just slit open his belly and pulled out his insides. “That’s—I’m not a dog.”
It comes out softer than he means it to, and Shane must notice, because his smile falters. “I was just joking,” he says uncertainly. “You can be whatever you want to be.”
Ilya clears his throat. A bad decision, because it only makes him more aware of the blooms frothing to be set free. “No, I know,” he says. “Ignore me, am just tired. I am going to get in the shower. Do you want to join me?”
Shane hesitates. “If you’re sure.”
Ilya rolls his eyes, trying to summon his usual bravado. “I know it is hard decision, to have hot naked man in my shower or not, but I think I am sure.”
“Okay,” Shane agrees, but he’s softer than usual with Ilya the rest of the night, washing Ilya’s back slow and thorough as he presses kisses to the nape of his neck.
Later, as Ilya lays in his starched hotel bed, smelling Shane’s shampoo on his own skin, he coughs up his first full bloom: a perfect red rose which he hides in his hotel room’s mini fridge so he doesn’t have to look at it.
If the maid finds it the next day, he’s sure she’ll just assume it was a gift for Valentine’s Day.
—
After that, the flowers get much worse.
What used to be only one or two petals turns into a veritable cascade of blooms that he coughs up more or less continuously throughout the day. All it takes is the slightest reminder—of Shane, of roses, of the concept of love in general—and Ilya can feel them crawling up his throat.
The pain is annoying, but it’s not worse than anything Ilya regularly puts himself through voluntarily in the gym. The real problem is how fucking indiscreet it is.
He eats breakfast, and he coughs up flowers. He drives to the rink, and he coughs up flowers. He can scarcely make it through a five-minute shower in the locker rooms before he’s hacking some fresh bloom.
Of course, they’re Hollander’s flowers: no wonder they’re annoying.
The one thing Ilya has going for him is that nobody would ever suspect him of hiding a tragic, unrequited love. Fuck, his teammates would probably suspect him of a secret doping habit before they’d guess the truth. It’s enough to let him get away with the random coughing fits and constantly raspy throat.
“I think it’s from smoking,” Ilya tells Hammersmith one day. Hammersmith, a former smoker himself, hums sympathetically and thwacks Ilya on the back. Ilya has to swallow hard around a petal that lodges in the back of his throat.
“That stuff’ll kill you,” Hammersmith says. “You should really quit, you know?”
“Yeah, I’m trying,” Ilya says, instead of fuck off, dickwad, but this is better. This gives him an excuse.
He briefly tries to train himself out of thinking of Shane, but he gives it up as hopeless within a few days. Every technique he tries is centered around meditation or yogic tendencies or something else equally stupid, and the problem is that all those mindfulness schticks invariably make Ilya think of Shane.
He does make one concession: he stops watching Shane’s games on TV. Ilya used to love the opportunity to watch Shane play, to learn from him—and to spot his weaknesses, so he has something to tease him about later. But now, every time Shane glides gracefully around the ice, every time he sinks an impressive shot or claps a rookie on the back after a successful save, Ilya’s chest burns.
He reads Twitter recaps, overwrought, wildly incorrect things from fat armchair pundits who have no idea what they’re talking about. When teammates or reporters ask him if he saw something from a game, a highlight or penalty or particularly bad on-ice tussle, he rolls his eyes and says, “I have better things to do than watch second-rate players,” and hopes the bravado covers up the way his breath trembles.
—
At the end of the month, Montreal plays the Newark Presidents and Boston plays the New York Admirals, and Ilya takes a late-night train into New Jersey to show up on Shane’s doorstep.
“Get in,” Shane hisses, snatching him through the door.
“Bossy,” Ilya says, smirking. Sometimes he thinks that Shane is warming up to him, to the idea that it might not be the worst thing in the world to associate himself with Ilya, and then he does something like this.
“There’s no good reason for you to be here,” Shane argues, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that, terribly unfairly, simply shows off the bulk of his biceps. He’s been gaining more muscle, lately, thickening out in a way that Ilya sometimes doesn’t notice until he sees a picture of Shane from when he was an eighteen-year-old rookie and looked like an awkward little beanpole. Well, okay, he was muscular even then, but it was nothing compared to how he looks now.
“Maybe I have friends on your team,” Ilya says. “Maybe I have friends on the Presidents.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “As if anyone would believe that you have friends.”
He kisses Ilya before he can protest, and it’s good, of course it’s good: Shane falls to his knees without Ilya even asking and brings him off with a blowjob against the hotel door. Then Ilya follows him into bed and fingers him until he comes, and then, because they’re both hard again, they rut against each other, sloppily, occasionally stroking each other’s cocks, Shane’s mouth attached to Ilya’s neck like a vampire.
“See you in San Francisco?” Ilya says, as he’s leaving.
Shane rolls his eyes. “You wish, asshole,” he says, and shuts the door in Ilya’s face.
And, look. Look. Ilya knows that this is their thing, this back-and-forth, these insults as foreplay. He likes it. He does. It’s just that Shane—he’s not a very good liar. And it’s easy for Ilya to tell, when they do this, that he means what he says. That he really does think Ilya is an asshole. That he really does think it’s impossible for Ilya to have real friends. That he really can’t fathom why anyone would want to spend time with him.
Ask your loved one how they feel, every Hanahaki forum says. It’s fucking everywhere, this advice, like the cancer warnings on North American cigarette boxes. WARNING: If you do not tell your loved one how you feel, you could DIE like an IDIOT, completely UNNECESSARILY, because they might actually LOVE YOU BACK!
It’s a nice thought. Really, it is, but Ilya’s not dumb. He knows how Shane feels about him, and he knows it’s impossible that Shane loves him back. He also knows if he tells Shane what’s going on—if he tells Shane what this thing is doing to him—then Shane will rear back from him. He’ll refuse to keep meeting up. He’ll refuse to keep texting him. He’ll demand that Ilya get the surgery.
And Ilya’s not sure if he’d be able to say no, if Shane asked. So he doesn’t give him the opportunity to ask.
—
At first, the limitations on Ilya’s breathing from the flowers are minimal. He has a little less stamina for really long runs, finds himself a little more red-faced after games, but nothing he can’t make up for easily enough.
As the weeks pass, though, Ilya knows his coping mechanisms aren’t cutting it any more. His lungs can only do so much adapting: Ilya finds himself winded on plays he never would have been winded on before, tired earlier than he has any right to be.
After Ilya gets outraced by a defenseman in Boston’s game against Phoenix, Coach LeClaire pulls Ilya aside and asks if something’s wrong.
“No,” Ilya says. “Well, yes, feel like shit today, but is probably just small bug.”
Coach LeClaire frowns. “You should have told me.”
“Sorry, coach,” Ilya says, affecting earnestness as best as possible. What would Shane do? “It didn’t feel that bad until the game was starting.”
“Well, rest up,” LeClaire says. “And if you’re still feeling off Monday, let me know, and you’ll take the day.” He raises a hand to forestall any protests from Ilya, who’s already opening his mouth to argue. “One game off won’t kill you, Roz, and it’s not a good example to the kids, to be playing sick.”
Ilya swallows hard. “Right,” he says, “Will do, thank you, Coach.”
He works extra hard the next few practices, and LeClaire lets him play Monday’s game. Ilya has no obvious problems—he gets a goal himself, and an assist to Marly—and the topic, for the moment, is dropped.
Ilya works faster, lifts harder, trains longer. He cuts out junk food, starts drinking green smoothies, takes massive multivitamins to supplement what’s he’s losing every day through the Hanahaki’s constant bloom. His body won’t be able to keep up forever, but Ilya just wants to make it to the end of the season. He starts taking long baths every day after practice, soaking for hours in the hot water. He joins Vesely on his Sunday long runs, looping through Boston’s hills and chilly bayfront trails.
He calls Svetlana, who’s back at home in Russia, and she catches him coughing. “You have got to stop smoking,” she chides him, exasperated and entertained in equal measures.
Ilya sighs. “I know,” he says, fingering the long-disused lighter in his pocket.
—
The next time they’re in the same city, Ilya texts Shane, Want me to make your fantasies come true? I’ll get the chocolate.
Shane doesn’t respond for a long time, and when he does, his reply makes Ilya’s heart sink.
Sorry, he’s texted. Already got plans.
Ilya sends back a pouty emoji and a quick your loss, baby, but that evening, sitting in his hotel room and eating dry room-service chicken, he can’t help but wonder who it is Shane’s with, and what it is he’s doing. Is it a sexy supermodel who booked a hotel room just like this one, where she and Shane are lying together, sprawled against the white pillows, eating chocolate covered strawberries off each others’ tight abs? Maybe it’s a muscular bear from the local gay bar, who bought Shane one of the disgusting beers he drinks instead of vodka, then took him home and fucked him bent over the couch, the one Shane always worries about getting come stains out of.
Or maybe, Ilya thinks darkly, it’s neither of those. Maybe it’s a guy Shane has been seeing for a long time. Someone he met through a friend, someone who laughs at his jokes and doesn’t relentlessly mock him for his Canadianism, someone who understands hockey without making it their whole life, someone who cleans his shower grout on the weekends and has fucked Shane enough times to know exactly the right way to twist his hips to get him to cry out on his cock, someone Shane really loves.
The thought should make Ilya angry. It should make him seethe with jealousy. It should make him want to call Shane up and demand to know who he thinks can fuck him better than Ilya can.
Instead all Ilya feels is very, very tired.
—
Around St. Patrick’s Day, Sveltana comes into town. Ilya makes it all of two hours with her hovering around his space before she catches him spluttering roses.
“Oh, God,” she says, reeling back from the petals as if they’re contagious. “It’s not me, is it?”
Ilya wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You wish.”
“No, I do not wish,” Svetlana says. “Then I would be responsible for the death of the second-best player in the NHL.”
Ilya whirls. “Second best?”
Svetlana shrugs. “You have been playing like shit for at least a month,” she says. “And now I see why.”
“I have not been playing like shit,” Ilya defends, even though he knows she’s right. He has been shit.
“Shit for you, at least,” Svetlana says. “You will not get the surgery?”
“No,” Ilya says, and Svetlana nods, curtly, unsurprised. That’s one thing he’s always liked about Svetlana: she understands him in a way that most others don’t. Maybe it’s because she’s Russian, or maybe it’s just because she’s known him such a long time.
“You should write a will,” she says. “Come on, I will let you beat me at Mario Kart, as condolences.
“I don’t need your fucking pity,” Ilya says. “And I already wrote a will.”
She just hums and doesn’t reply, already booting up the PlayStation. A picture of indifference, except that night when they go to bed, she curls up behind Ilya under the duvet, presses her forehead to the nape of his neck and wraps her arm around his chest. He lets her, settling his hand on top of hers as he listens to her cry.
—
Eventually Ilya does call a lawyer. Before forty-eight hours are out, he has a signed and notarized will leaving everything he owns to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Of course he would have preferred a Russian foundation, but what is that English phrase? Beggars cannot choose.
—
The season marches onward. Ilya’s performance on the ice isn’t the best it’s ever been, but it’s not his worst showing either. It helps that Boston has so many rooks this year, people Ilya can pass the puck to with the excuse of helping them get good practice under their belts.
The Bears are doing—fine. Better than last year, worse than the year before that. Ilya thinks about the Stanley Cup with his name on it, thinks of the update to his Wikipedia page saying Two-time NHL champion right below the bit about his tragic premature death from unrequited love.
Sometimes the flowers catch strangely, in his chest. Like they’ve gotten hooked on a rib or a muscle.
“Rozanov!” a coach yells, when Ilya turns wrong out of a pivot and something flares hot and ugly under his sternum. He nearly trips over his own skates overcompensating. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get it together!”
If only I could, Ilya thinks.
—
More than once, Shane almost sees the flowers while they’re fucking, when a particularly hard thrust loosens a petal in Ilya’s throat, or when Shane arches his back or groans or does something else so unbearably sexy that Ilya’s chest thrums and pulses and his love grows a little bit more.
To keep Shane from noticing, Ilya starts taking Shane exclusively on his stomach and knees. Once, Shane tries to ride Ilya, and Ilya has to come up with some excuse about a sore tailbone so he can get Shane onto his knees, but he’s pretty sure Shane doesn’t notice. It’s good that he’s careful: at the end of March, Shane and Ilya meet up to fuck in Boston and Ilya ends up spitting a petal right onto Shane’s beautiful, freckled back. Luckily, Shane is so deep into it that he doesn’t notice, and Ilya is able to brush the petal off the bed onto the carpet, where it waits until Shane has showered and redressed and left for the night, and Ilya can retrieve it, take it to the bathroom, flush it away.
—
“—Rozanov’s as weak as I’ve ever seen him, his backhands are sloppy and his instincts are dulled—“
“—he just doesn’t have the bloodlust that we used to see in him—“
“—there was a time when I couldn’t fathom putting Rozanov anywhere below third in the league, but honestly, Johnnie, with the way things are going right now, he’d be lucky to get in my top ten—“
It’s a slump. Lots of athletes have slumps. It hasn’t been that long. Ilya can turn it around.
This is what his sympathetic fans say, the ones who placed Ilya on their fantasy team months ago and remain hopeful that he won’t let them down.
He wonders what they would say if they knew what was really going on.
—
It’s almost April when the team finds out.
It’s not Ilya’s fault, really. It just happens: one moment, he’s halfway through his prescribed weightlifting set for the day, and the next he’s bent over hacking up a long-stemmed rose covered in blood and spit.
Management has a frantic conversation, and then Ilya is shoved into a room with half a dozen medical professionals he doesn’t know, plus Dr. Tremblay, the official team doctor. Ilya lets them palpate his wrist, listen to his heartbeat, scan his lungs. The flowers on the X-ray look like a seething mass of stormclouds filling his lungs.
“Ilya,” Tremblay says, after all the extraneous people have left and it’s just him and Ilya and Marly, for some reason, because apparently someone thinks that because he has the A, and because he and Ilya are friendly, he’ll be able to comfort him, or something. Like Ilya didn’t already know what was happening to him, and what it meant.
“You understand I have to bench you,” Tremblay says, and Ilya whips his head up.
“I do not understand,” he says icily.
Tremblay sighs. He’s a young guy, probably only in his thirties if Ilya had to guess, but being the physician of professional athletes seems like it’s done a number on him. He’s got more grey hair than George Clooney.
“You’re worth too much to this team for us to risk your health on the ice,” Tremblay says.
Of course. Millions of dollars, Boston pays for its athletes. And hockey is a risky sport. Sending an injured player out onto the ice—it’s a liability.
But—“Let me ask you something,” Ily says. “You saw my scan. How long do you think I can live with this?”
Tremblay blinks at him, startled, and says nothing.
“Three months,” Ilya says. “If I am lucky. Maybe less. I have researched, yes? This will be my last hockey season.” He leans forward, propping his elbows on his thighs. “Which means how long I live is no longer your concern. It is of no value to this team. Either you play me now, and you don’t have me next year, or you don’t play me now, and you don’t have me next year. There is no difference.”
“Jesus Christ, Ilya,” Marly says from the other side of the room. He’s gone very, very pale. “Why are you talking like this is a death sentence? You can get the surgery.”
Ilya shakes his head, looking down at his palms. He wonders if they know the Hanahaki surgery is illegal in Russia. That even just having this conversation back home would have him closely watched by everyone around him for weeks, searching for any suspicious improvements, changes in the flowers spouting from his lungs. Ilya knew a girl, once, who was struck with Hanahaki. Her situation was hopeless: love for a famous actor she’d never met. She’d gone to South Korea to have the surgery. It saved her life, but she was never able to return home afterwards. Too many people knew what she did, the crime too easy to prove. All it took was a single CT scan of beautiful, empty lungs to earn a conviction.
“I will not do the surgery,” Ilya says. “And you cannot force me. This is law in America, yes?”
“Yes,” Tremblay says quietly.
Ilya claps his hands on his knees. “So.” He pushes himself to his feet. “I will keep playing. You will keep helping me manage symptoms as best as possible. And then.” He shrugs. “What will happen will happen.”
“Ilya.” Tremblay sighs. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sign off on this. Knowing the condition you’re in, and the situations you’ll get into on the rink, there’s too big a risk—“
Ilya waves a hand and heads for the door. “Talk to management,” he says. “Tell them what I told you. They know. I am still the best player on this team, you know. They would be fools to bench me now. And—look on the bright side. I have no family left. If I die, there is no one to sue you.”
—
Her hears back from the team two days later. It’s official: he’s cleared to play, though approval is conditional on regular check-ups with the team doctor, and can be rescinded at any time.
He drinks himself into a stupor as a celebration. That night, he dreams of Shane’s hands in his chest, twining vines around his ribs like a sculptor shaping clay.
—
One night, Ilya is up at two in the morning unable to sleep when his phone rings.
At first, he assumes it’s someone from back home who forgot how time zones work. But when he looks at the caller I.D., it’s Shane.
“Hollander?” Ilya says. Is something wrong? he wants to ask, but that would make it seem like he cared.
“Hey, Rozanov,” Shane says. His voice is soft, like he hasn’t spoken in a while. “I—I’m sorry to call you in the middle of the night, were you sleeping?”
“Look what time it is, what do you think?”
“Right,” Shane says. “Right, sorry. I just—“
Ilya waits, but there’s nothing else coming. “Yes?”
A long, crackling silence. “I was thinking of you, and I just—I just wanted to call and check in with you, I guess.”
Ilya feels like conversation is being had in another language, another language he doesn’t speak. French, maybe. “Well, I am here,” he says. “Sleeping.”
Shane sighs into the phone. “Right,” he says. “Sorry, this was—I’ll talk to you later,” and he hangs up the phone before Ilya can say anything else.
It’s not until the next morning that he looks at his calendar and realizes that it’s the anniversary of his mother’s death. He’s been so preoccupied with his own impending doom that he didn’t even remember. Guiltily, he schedules for last-minute flowers to be left on her grave back in Russia. Normally, he’d also schedule a donation to some kind of charity in her name, but he’s already restructured his will so that everything he has is donated when he dies; it doesn’t seem worth it to separate out a chunk now.
As Ilya drives into work, he can’t help but wonder how Shane knew. Irina’s death date isn’t a secret, but it isn’t very well publicized either. Shane would have to have dug deep on some very specific websites to find it. He would have had to try very hard.
—
Ilya wonders, often, about what his mother would think of Shane if she could meet him.
In his dreams, she would love him. His kindness, his generosity, his determination—these are all traits that Ilya remembers in his mother. He can see them together so easily, heads bent together over a plate of vatrushka, discussing hockey prospects or the best time of year to trim the apple trees.
Of course, Ilya knows this vision is a fantasy. His mother grew up in Soviet Russia; she undoubtedly would have felt the same way about queer people as Ilya’s father did.
How Shane would have felt about Irina—that’s easier to imagine. He would respect her, right from the start, even though she didn’t get a lot of respect in her life. Ilya can picture the exact way Shane would look at her, that carefully cataloguing gaze he gives everyone when he first meets them. Quiet and assessing, so that, when he does finally speak, he knows just the right thing to say.
“Moms deserve more respect,” Shane had said to Ilya once, after a video of him meet-and-greeting some hockey kids’ moms had gone viral. Ilya was teasing him about it. “Moms do, like, everything. We’d be lost without them.”
“Yes,” Ilya had said, a rare moment of agreement, and the love in his heart had bloomed, and bloomed, and bloomed.
—
“Fuck,” Shane moans, as Ilya spears into him. “Right there, right there, right—“
Ilya presses kisses across Shane’s back, featherlight, and says nothing, because he’s not sure what will come out of his mouth if he tries to speak. Shane is an ancient beauty spread beneath him, all warm hard beautiful skin, and Ilya feels so full of love that he understands why it has to happen this way, why it has to come spilling out of him, why it can’t content itself with living in a space as small and sheltered as his lonely little heart.
—
“I just don’t understand why you won’t get surgery,” Marly says.
Ilya’s bent over in the penalty box, gasping around a throat full of flowers after a ten-minute scrimmage triggered a bout of coughing. He spits on the ground to clear the blood out of his mouth.
“None of your fucking business,” he says, wiping his face with the back of his glove.
“Who do you think is gonna get the C when you die?” Marly says. “That makes it my fucking business.”
Ilya glares at him. “You should be happy, then. Congratulations.”
Marly shakes his head, turning to look over at the ice, where three of their rookies are stumbling through a line-up together. They need a lot of work, Ilya knows. He had hoped to have more time with them, but—well, the others will have to manage without him.
“It’s going to kill you,” he says. “You’re letting it kill you. I just don’t understand what could be worth that.”
Grunting, Ilya pushes himself to his feet. He aches all over, but then he always aches all over, now. Like without enough oxygen his body is always playing catch-up with recovery. The injuries are stacking up faster than ever before.
“Luckily, you do not have to understand,” Ilya says, because how could he possibly explain it? Of course he knows he’s not in Russia now. He could get the surgery. Most people would. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to return home at the end of it, but it’s better to live a long life in America than to die a young man on Russian soil.
But if Ilya got the surgery, he wouldn’t live a long life in America. He wouldn’t. It would be some other person, the person he was before he fell in love with Shane Hollander. The cocky nineteen-year-old who thought he could fuck a hot rival two or three times a year and never think about it again, the arrogant little shit who was terrified telling anyone anything about himself lest they hurt him with it, the dumb little boy who still shied away when his father raised his voice—
That person is gone. The person Ilya is now—he can’t claim to be an unbiased observer. But he likes to think he’s better, now, than he was before he loved Shane. If Ilya loses that love, he’s not sure he won’t lose himself right along with it.
It’s an obvious decision. Perhaps the most obvious decision he’s ever made.
And, hey: when Ilya was a kid, he always loved the idea of being a martyr. Someone who sacrificed a lot, endured a lot of pain, but earned respect and honor, a man of principles.
A martyr for love wasn’t quite what he had in mind, but it’s better than nothing.
—
“Rozanov,” Shane says, hesitating in the doorway.
It’s the middle of night and Shane is leaving Ilya’s hotel room after a good fuck-fest, just like he always does. Montreal beat Boston today, in overtime. Ilya didn’t score a single goal. He didn’t even assist.
“Hollander,” Ilya echoes, just to be a dick, but Shane doesn’t roll his eyes or bite back the way he usually would.
Instead, he bites his lip, brow furrowed. “Are you, like—okay?”
Ilya blinks. “What?”
“Not like that,” Shane says, though Ilya has no idea what that is. “I just mean—you seem tired. Sick, maybe.”
“Wow,” Ilya says. “What a way to complement a man’s sexual prowess.”
Shane huffs, tilting his head back. His Adam’s apple gleams in the low lights of the city that shine in through the window. “Why do you have to make this so difficult?” he asks the ceiling. “I’m just asking out of, like, friendly concern. You seem…off.”
“Well, thank you for your friendly concern,” Ilya says around the tightness in his chest. “Next time you think I look bad, just tell me up front yes? Then I don’t have to waste precious energy railing you through the mattress.”
Shane glares. “Ass,” he says. “I don’t know why I even bother.” But he ducks in to kiss Ilya one more time before he goes, so quick it’s almost absentminded.
It’s a good thing Ilya has almost gotten used to the pain of the roses scraping their way out of his throat, or seeing Shane would be much harder.
—
It’s Ilya’s fault, when it finally happens.
He’s been so careful about being slammed against the boards during games. Over the last few weeks, he’s found that even the slightest pressure to his chest has flowers exploding out of his throat, and more than once during practice he’s found himself doubled over and vomiting blooms onto the ice. His teammates have rallied around him, finding new ways to protect him from pressure on the ice, because even with this disease, Ilya is still the best forward in Boston, if not, any longer, the NHL.
But tonight, they’re playing Tampa, the biggest team of asshats Ilya has ever laid his eyes on, and even as he bites his tongue at their chirping, he can tell it won’t last. They keep calling Ilya’s teammates cocksuckers, babies, pussies, and yeah, Ilya knows they don’t mean it towards him in particular, but no, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear.
In the end, it falls apart when Ilya is lining up for a face off against Erikson. Erikson is Tampa’s newest forward and possibly the biggest asshole on the team, and he waits until the ref has gotten distracted by something on the sideline before he leans down and says, “I’m going to snap you in two, just like I did Hollander.”
The mention of Shane is enough to make Ilya pause. “Excuse me?”
Erikson smirks. “You know, that prissy little faggot who keeps beating you for MVP?”
Ilya sees red.
He stands up and decks Erikson before he can think better of it—before he can think anything at all, other than fuck you fuck you fuck you—but Erikson is a big guy, and he’s ready for it. He hardly wobbles before he’s coming back at Ilya with his own walloping shove, and—
Look. Before this whole thing, Ilya could have taken a push like that, no problem. He wouldn’t even have flinched, would have just used the opportunity to knee the other guy in the balls.
But right now, his lung capacity is diminished. His muscles are weak. He’s dizzy from the skating he’s already done. And that shove is enough to send him tipping backward and slamming down onto the ice, hard, which in turn is enough to send flowers tumbling loose in his lungs.
Ilya only just manages to flip over onto his stomach before a veritable bouquet is pouring out of his throat.
He gasps and gags for a long time, unaware of anything going on around him, only aware of the black haze around his vision and the choking sensation in his throat. When he does come back to himself, it takes him a long moment to realize how quiet the whole stadium has gotten. He glances up, quick, but just as fast returns his gaze to the ice, because he doesn’t want to look at the faces of the stunned audience, the horrified looks worn by the teammates who hadn’t known about Ilya’s condition, the blank expression on Erikson’s own dumb, fat face.
With a shaking hand, Ilya reaches up and wipes the blood from the back of his mouth. “Nakhuy takuyu zhizn,” he mumbles, then shoves himself to his feet so he can stumble off the glaring pink ice.
—
He turns his phone off as soon as he gets away from the medics.
He knows management will want to talk to him. His agent will want to talk to him. The team doctor, his teammates, about a million fucking reporters. He doesn’t want to talk to any of them. He wants to go the fuck to sleep.
He only just manages to avoid decking the EMTs, who are checking him over with clucking tongues like they can do anything at all to manage his condition. Why do you bother? Ilya wants to yell at them as they press a stethoscope to his chest, eyes widening when they hear how occluded his breath is. I am going to die anyway. You can’t stop it. Who do you think you’re helping right now?
Reluctantly, they let him go, because he’s right: there’s nothing they can do to help him, and they can’t force him to get a removal done. Ilya slips into the locker room before any of the team management notices the medics have freed him, and he’s changed and on the road headed home before anyone can stop him.
At home, he takes a hot shower, scrubbing the last of the blood from his chin. Afterwards, he wraps a towel around his waist and examines at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t look good. Shane was right—he looks sick. The muscles he was once so proud of are still there, but they’ve withered, especially around his chest, where for the first time in a long time, he can see his ribs when he stretches. He has dark circles under his eyes, and even fresh out of the shower, his skin looks ashen and grey.
Looking at himself this closely, he finally admits it to himself: he really is dying. There is no way out of this one. He bares his teeth at himself and examines the blood-red staining. He’s rinsed his mouth out three times, but it’s still there.
He wonders, for the first time, what it will feel like, to die from this. Will he keep withering, until he’s a little scrawny husk, and only then die? A sad little crawling end? Or will he manage to die with a little bit of dignity, before he’s truly gone to shit: a sudden collapse during hockey practice, an explosive hemorrhage?
He rubs his chest and tries to imagine the flowers growing in there, curling into the shape of his lungs. A lovely little parasite.
—
Ilya wakes up with a start to the sound of the doorbell.
He blinks around himself, hazily recollecting himself. He’s in his living room, the lights off, the TV playing highlights from women’s volleyball on mute in the background. It’s just after two in the morning. He must have fallen asleep on the couch. It’s been nicer than his bed, recently; he can prop himself up against the arm, so he can breath a little bit better.
He groans, rubbing his face, as the doorbell chimes again. It’s probably Svetlana, come to chew him out for his stupidity and force-feed him buckwheat porridge. Worst case scenario, it’s a reporter, come to interrogate him about his unrequited love. In any case, Ilya isn’t interested, so he lays in the darkness and lets the door ring, hoping that eventually whoever it is will assume he isn’t home.
But then the rings turn into knocks, heavy and aggressive, and then he hears a voice he did not expect. “Ilya!” Shane calls from the other side of the door. “I know you’re here. Open up now!”
Ilya doesn’t really want to see Shane right now, except in the way he always wants to see Shane, but he gets up anyway, because he knows how Shane is about conspicuously waiting outside. “Welcome in,” Ilya says dryly as Shane charges past him into the house. He tries to say that, anyway. His throat is still raw from all the coughing, and what comes out is less language and more a terrible, froglike rasp.
Without looking at Shane, Ilya turns into the kitchen and puts his electric kettle on to boil. It’s only after he’s gotten out the mugs and the tea, pouring a little bit of sugar into one of the cups, that he turns to look at Shane. And—
Jesus, if Ilya looks like shit, then he’s not sure how to describe Shane. His face is bright red and splotchy; he’s clearly been crying, and his hair is all mucked up like he’s been running his fingers through it.
“What’s wrong?” Ilya asks.
Shane huffs, disbelieving. “What’s wrong?” he demands. “You just collapsed on the ice during a game and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”
Ilya turns back to the electric kettle, as if by supervising it he can make it boil faster. “It was not big deal.”
“Not a big deal,” Shane says. “Not a big deal, he says. What the fuck is wrong with you? You could have died.”
Ilya huffs, but the action sends him into a coughing fit, and he has to bend over for several long moments, elbow over his mouth. When he pulls it away, his blue sweatshirt is covered in wet, red blood. He tries to wipe it away with a dishtowel, but it’s not very effective. He really needs to start wearing all black.
“Fuck, Ilya,” Shane whispers, eyes glued to the bloodstains. Ilya busies himself pouring the hot water into the mugs so he doesn’t have to look at Shane’s face. “How long has this been going on?”
“A while,” Ilya says, because anything more specific would give him away.
“Do you—is there no hope?”
Ilya meets Shane’s eyes. Those caring, sincere eyes. Big as a fucking cow’s. He feels his chest spasm and he has to look away.
“No,” he says. “No hope.”
Shane sighs, a long, drawn-out thing, and buries his face in his hands. “Fuck,” he says. “When’s your surgery?”
Ilya twists the string of his teabag around his thumb, pulls tight until the skin bleaches white. “No surgery,” he says.
Shane’s head shoots up. “Excuse me?”
Ilya clenches his jaw. “You heard me, Hollander.”
There is a very long silence. “You’re fucking joking,” Shane says finally. “This is—I must be dreaming, because there is no fucking way this is real. You’ve got fucking Hanahaki and you’re—you’re not treating it? You’re just going to let it keep growing in your fucking lungs until it—it—“
“Until it kills me,” Ilya says, abruptly furious. He turns in one swift movement and dumps his almost-full mug down the kitchen sink. It’s not as satisfying as he’d hoped. “Yes, that is exactly what I am doing. And based on the most recent scans, I do not have very long left, so I must ask, do you actually have anything meaningful to say to me, or are you just wanting to waste my time?”
Shane gapes at him. There are actually tears in his eyes, which should maybe make Ilya feel soft and loving and sympathetic, but instead just pisses him off more. How dare he be upset when he’s the reason that Ilya is like this? Him and his stupid beautiful eyes and fuckable ass and generous heart and completely, unbearably lovable self?
How was Ilya supposed to resist? What was he supposed to do? From the moment he met Shane he was doomed to this fate, and now all he can do is try to live with it.
“Please,” Shane says, his voice cracking around the word. “Please, don’t do this.”
Ilya shakes his head, marching out towards his living room like there’s something there that will make him feel better, but there isn’t, and Shane just follows him anyway. “It’s not my choice, Hollander.”
“Yes it is,” Shane says. “Yes it is. You can get surgery, here. I know it’s different in Russia, but—“
Ilya scoffs. “Yes, I know I am in America now, I am not stupid. I could get the surgery, but I will not.”
“Why?” Shane demands. “Who could be worth your life?”
Ilya clenches his jaw and turns away.
“Please,” Shane says again, his voice softer now, and all of the sudden the fury melts from Ilya’s heart and softens back into love. He feels a stretching pressure in his chest as the flowers grow, and he breathes slowly and shallowly to keep from gasping. “Just tell me who is it. I can talk to them, I can—“
Ilya closes his eyes. “Hollander,” he croaks.
But Shane keeps going: “I don’t know why they don’t love you back, but we can change that. Nobody can resist you for long. And then you can get—you can get your love confession. And you’ll be okay. You’ll be back to normal, and you’ll go back to hockey, and, and—“
“Hollander,” Ilya says, stepping forward and grasping Shane’s chin in one hand. This beautiful face. Ilya has missed seeing it, since he got sick. He will miss it, when he’s gone, if he still exists in a form that can miss things. Ilya hopes he will. He doesn’t want this love to die with him. “Shane,” he tries, softer.
Shane’s eyes are big and black and gleaming in the dark room. Ilya sees the moment the realization hits him, those beautiful eyes going wide. “No,” Shane says, faintly, and Ilya drops his hand, lets Shane take a step back. “No,” Shane says again, sounding so goddamn horrified, and, okay, Ilya wasn’t expecting joy or anything, but he also didn’t expect Shane to act like Ilya was a fucking murderer. It stings, somehow. Despite everything. “It’s not—“
He cuts himself off, and Ilya watches him fumble for words, his hands trembling by his sides. Shane looks about ready to fall over, so it’s good when he slumps into the nearest armchair and buries his face in his hands. His shoulders shake. “What the fuck.”
Ilya swallows hard, tasting blood. His chest feels like a whirlpool in an ocean storm. “Now you see why I did not talk to you about this,” he says. “Look. It is middle of the night. I am tired. We can talk about this tomorrow—“
But Shane appears not to be listening to him, because when he raises his face from his hands, he’s laughing. A wet laugh, tears pouring down his cheeks, but a honest-to-god laugh. It’s baffling. It’s also beautiful. The flowers surge in Ilya’s throat faster than he can swallow them back, and he bends over, hacking.
“Fuck,” he hears faintly from above him. There are hands on his back, warm, callused hands, but Ilya can barely process them through the searing, hot pain in his chest. He drops to his knees, buries his fingers in the carpet. “Just try to breathe,” Shane is saying, “In and out, slowly, just like that.”
Ilya wants to tell Shane that a Hanahaki spasm is not like a panic attack—he can’t just decide to breathe, there’s a fucking plant lodged in his throat—but he can’t speak around the fountain of blooms, so he just sits there, coughing, while his vision goes hazy. Finally, the wave ebbs, and Ilya manages to sit back so he’s upright, breathing slowly through his nose as the world comes back into focus.
In front of Ilya, Shane is pale as a ghost, but there’s still something in his expression, almost like a smile. If only it lessened Ilya’s love for him, the knowledge that Shane is apparently enjoying Ilya’s tragic demise.
“Ilya,” Shane says, voice steady. “I love you.”
Ilya blinks. He wonders if this is a hallucination brought on by oxygen deprivation. But then a much more likely possibility occurs to him. “It does not work like that,” he says.
Shane tilts his head. “Like what?”
“You cannot lie about it,” Ilya says. “It only works if you mean it.”
Shane shakes his head, the smile growing. “You are so fucking stupid,” he says. “I mean it. One of the dumbest people on the face of the earth.” Before Ilya can protest, he leans in and kisses him, deep and long and yearning, heedless of the blood still coating Ilya’s lips.
When he pulls back it’s just far enough to press his forehead against Ilya’s, their noses are brushing. “You idiot,” he says again. “I just paid, like, three month’s salary for a last-minute private plane to fly me to Boston in the middle of the night. I’ve spent the last seven years thinking about you every fucking day. I have your blood in my mouth.” He shakes Ilya, lightly. “I fucking love you.”
Ilya blinks. “Oh,” he says, dumbly, and then he has to shove Shane away because another wave is coming.
It’s the longest coughing fit he’s ever had, but from the beginning, it feels different. It’s not that the flower is expanding in his lungs to try to find space; it’s that it’s detaching, trying to migrate out of his body. The roots scrape Ilya’s throat raw, the thorns get stuck in his mouth, and he almost blacks out from lack of oxygen, but Shane is there, his grip tight around Ilya’s waist and his face pressed into the back of Ilya’s head, and Ilya thinks of that through the searing pain.
Finally, it’s done. A fully grown rose bush with a dozen blooms sits, slick and red, on the carpet in front of Ilya’s folded knees. It has two perfect lobes, a curled vine that must have curled up Ilya’s throat. When, he reaches down to touch it, he finds it body-warm and pulsing with energy.
“Gross,” Shane says.
“Gross?” Ilya demands, whirling on him. “This is my love for you, Hollander!”
Shane tilts his head, smile so wide it looks like it’ll split his face. “Yeah,” he says, “But it’s pretty gross.”
Ilya is the one to break first, but soon they’re both laughing, so loud it’s almost hysterical, so that Ilya, still feeling pretty weak in the knees, leans into Shane so he can hold them both upright.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shane asks, when their giggles have finally tapered off. “I mean, really. You were going to die for this?”
Ilya strokes his thumb over Shane’s cheek, his beautiful freckles. “I couldn’t go back,” he says, and Shane’s expression melts.
“We’re not done talking about this,” Shane warns, but his hands are very gentle as he helps Ilya to his feet and guides him towards the couch. The couch is sizable, but not big enough for two grown men: they end up plastered together, Ilya lying on top of Shane as Shane’s hands skate up and down Ilya’s sides.
Shane frowns as he feels Ilya’s waist. “You’re so thin.”
Ilya closes his eyes. He hasn’t felt this good in ages. It’s like all the oxygen he’s been missing is getting him high, his brain bright and sparking, body full of life. Love pulsing through his chest like a heartbeat. “You can fatten me up,” he says, and Shane rewards him with a light slap on the ass.
“I love you,” he says
Ilya’s breath stutters, and Shane leans in and kisses his chin, his cheek, his forehead.
“I love you,” he says between each kiss. Tears on his cheeks now. Both of their cheeks, probably. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Ilya doesn’t think he’s dead. But if he was, he thinks this is where he would want to end up. So he supposes it doesn’t really matter in the end.
“My ugly little flower,” Ilya sighs, wrapping his arms around Shane’s neck, and doesn’t let go, even when Shane squawks, even when Shane tries to tickle his sides. He’s withstood a lot the last few months; he can withstand a little love.
—
BOSTON RAIDERS CAPTAIN COMMENTS ON APPARENT HANAHAKI DIAGNOSIS: “IT’S COOL NOW, GUYS”
March 27, 8:03 p.m. EST
By Comfort Adebayo, Senior Staff Writer
Ilya Rozanov, Captain and forward of the Boston Raiders, has reassured fans after a spill on the ice last week triggered an outpouring of concern for his health.
In Saturday’s home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Rozanov shocked the crowd when, after an altercation with another player, he fell to the ice and was seen profusely vomiting flowers. Coughing up foliage is the telltale sign of Hanahaki’s Disease, an affliction that strikes those whose love is unrequited and which causes flowers to grow in their lungs.
These flowers infect and fill the soft tissue of the chest, obstructing breathing and preventing proper oxygenation of the blood. If left untreated, Hanahaki disease is fatal in 100% of cases. The only medically-sanctioned treatment is the surgical removal of the flowers, which also removes the patients’ unrequited love.
Dr. Joan Hanson, a Hanahaki expert who does not treat Rozanov, told this publication in an interview last week that, based on the high number of blossoms Rozanov had evidently coughed up, “he likely has a very advanced case of the disease.” While Hanson was unwilling to speculate as to how long Rozanov had to live, other experts estimated less than a month.
Today, however, Rozanov appeared to discredit those estimates when he posted a picture on Instagram of himself and an unidentifiable figure in a snowy backyard. Though few details can be seen in the image, the pair appear to be embracing. Rozanov captioned the snapshot, “it’s cool now, guys 😎”. Within four hours of posting, the image had received more than 250,000 likes.
Fans online are speculating that the post proves Rozanov’s love is no longer unrequited, though others have claimed that Rozanov’s apparent health improvement is the result of a recent Hanahaki removal surgery. TMZ reported yesterday that Rozanov recently underwent an emergency radical flower removal procedure. We have not been able to confirm TMZ’s reporting.
While flower removal surgery is the only FDA-sanctioned treatment for Hanahaki disease, the procedure remains highly controversial, particularly amongst religious groups who claim it represents a defiance of God’s will.
Neither Ilya Rozanov nor the Boston Raiders have responded to our request for a comment.
—
Posted on Instagram, May 28, 2016, 11:47 a.m. EST
[Image ID: close-up image of two men’s hands entwined on what appears to be a marble countertop.]
realilyarozanov: because you guys can’t take a hint, no I did not get surgery, my boyfriend just kissed it all better. also I have boyfriend now. ok bye
rozanovsgirrll: oh my god I’m literally sobbing we’re all so happy for you
greenduckling96: can’t decide if this is incredibly romantic or… no it’s just incredibly romantic ❤️❤️❤️
hockeyhighlights01: Wow, I know things have been going downhill for Rozanov a while, but this is a new low. If it were me I’d let the flowers kill me tbh. Fucking faggot
realilyarozanov: @hockeyhighlights01 sorry what was that I can’t hear you over how spectacularly my boyfriend is sucking my dick right now
ilyasoup81: @realilyarozanov GET HIM KING
sarah.jenneson: @realilyarozanov just when I thought I couldn’t love you more
montrealsshane24: umm is it just me or does that second hand look kind of familiar???
hollanov69ing: @montrealsshane24 HOLY FUCK