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What’s the saying? Shane thinks bitterly as he crouches over the toilet, Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all?
Another wave of intense coughing wracks his body-- he hears the seeds rattling around in his lungs, he feels the tickle at the back of his throat. He clutches the toilet bowl like a lifeline.
Bull fucking shit .
He wretches and wretches, each movement sending a flare of pain throughout his chest, until finally, finally the blooms reach his mouth and he can reach in and pull . It’s agonizing. He tries not to scream as he grabs the roses and yanks, thorns scraping the inside of his trachea raw as the vines that are invading his lungs are pulled free.
Eventually he gets all of the plant out-- there were two, this time. Two red blooms stare up at Shane from inside the toilet; he can’t tell what’s rose petal and what's his own blood.
He feels vaguely sick, a funny, hollow sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach. All of this was futile, he knows that-- tomorrow the vines will be back and he will do this again. Eventually there will be more, too many for him to manage, and the thorns will puncture his lungs and he will die.
Shane loves and has loved, with his entire heart, and has lost in the worst way possible.
--
Shane Madej is dying, and it’s all Ryan Bergara’s fault.
Well, technically-- it’s Shane’s fault. He was the one who, foolishly, stupidly, had to go fall in love with his coworker. He didn't even get to enjoy the crush like a normal person, before; the realization of his love and the flowers came back to back.
He remembers the day in vivid technicolor. It was after they’d flown back in from the Sallie House, when he was back in LA and alone in his apartment. He’d had the worst cough for about two weeks, and an impending sense of doom had followed him like the plague.
The realization came first. It had happened in the airport, while they waited for a connecting flight and Ryan had fallen asleep. Shane had caught himself staring, and ducked his head in embarrassment. Sitting in an unfamiliar airport, Ryan asleep beside him, blush colored Shane’s cheeks as he realized he was in love with Ryan.
So when he was throwing up rose blooms that same day, he knew who they were for.
He remembered that first time, when he collapsed on the floor of his bathroom, coughing and gasping for air because he couldn’t fucking breathe. He’d ripped out the plant too fast and the thorns snagged in his throat, taking with it bits of gore as it left his body.
Shane isn’t sure he would have been more scared if he hadn’t realized what was going on. He was pretty damn horrified, despite the fact that he knew what the bloody flower on his bathroom floor meant.
Most people have heard of Hanahaki disease, usually from one of those ‘medical mysteries’ television shows. Most people watched it and learned about it and thought, wow, thank God that’s not me , before tucking the information away and eventually forgetting it.
A disease borne of unrequited love-- almost sounds romantic, but there’s nothing romantic about how flowers invade the victim's body, killing them slowly, until finally the plants puncture an organ or something equally important, and the victim dies.
Shane had been so scared, at first. He wasn’t ready to die, there was so much he still wanted to do-- he’d cried and he’d cried those first few days, missing work because he couldn’t force himself to get out of bed.
Ryan had texted him, of course, asking if he was alright. It made him want to scream, because Ryan’s kindness, Ryan’s friendship, Ryan was killing him and the other man was completely oblivious.
And yet-- he still found himself completely, helplessly in love with him.
A year later and that fact hasn’t changed. Shane doesn't think anything in the entire universe could change that fact-- sometimes he thinks that maybe he’ll stop loving Ryan, but then Ryan will smile or laugh and Shane will have to excuse himself to go heave up flower petals in the other room.
Shane can feel the end approaching, now, knows he only has another year if he’s lucky. And it still scares him, but the panic attacks and random sobbing fits that would overtake him in those first six months were gone, for the most part.
Sometimes he wonders if Ryan will miss him, but has to stop himself before that train of thought gets very far. All it does is make him upset.
--
They aren’t working on an Unsolved video that day, and instead Shane and the others trying to organize a new Test Friends video. It feels nice, being with Daysha and Jen and Maycie-- and of course, Ryan is there as well. If Shane closes his eyes, he can almost pretend that it’s two years ago, Unsolved hasn't taken off yet and he wasn’t in love with Ryan.
Then he opens them again and meets Ryan’s dark eyes, launching him back into the terrible present. He feels it start-- today had been so good , he’d barely had any problems-- with the pressure building in his chest. The seeds that rattle around in his lungs have gone quiet, but Shane knows that isn’t a good thing.
He doesn’t look at their faces as he runs to the bathroom--but he passes Sara on the way there, and sees the look of concern on hers. Hates to think that if she knew that look would be pity instead.
But he doesn’t think about that then. He can barely think about anything at all because he can’t breathe, everything feels like it's on fire as his lungs scream at the lack of oxygen, and he's coughing and coughing but all that comes up are petals. He wants to claw at his own throat, knowing the blooms are right there , and he could breathe if he could only get them out .
After what feels like forever, his hacking dislodges the flowers and he can rip them out. He doesn’t get up, even as he sucks in that precious oxygen; he’s not totally sure his legs would work.
“Shane?” Sara’s familiar voice enters the bathroom, and despite the sudden anxiety he has over her finding out, he can’t force himself to get up off of the floor. She rounds the corner and knows the moment she sees everything, the blood, the flowers, everything .
“Oh my God,” She mumbles, moving to help him up, “Shane, I-- what--”
“It’s called Hanahaki disease,” His voice is hoarse and miserable, and he stands shakily, “But it’s-- I’m--” The words I’m fine lodge in his throat and he can’t get them out, and before he knows it tears are welling up in his eyes and Sara is pulling him into a tight hug as he sobs.
They stand there like that, in the Buzzfeed office men's room, Shane crying and crying because there’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to tell Sara but he can’t find the words.
Finally he quiets-- he knows he must look like shit, eyes red-rimmed and mouth covered in blood. Sara looks up at him with that damned pity in her eyes and it makes Shane want to throw up all over again.
“Are you dying?” She asks, and Shane can’t do anything but nod, the lump in his throat blocking any attempt at speech. He sees the tears in her eyes and it just adds to the feeling of sickness that seems to be spreading throughout his entire body.
He moves away before Sara starts crying, going to clean up in the bathroom mirror. His reflection stares back at him with red eyes and bags so dark they almost look like bruises. Red blood is caked on his chapped lips.
He coughs again, a horrible hacking noise that lasts about five seconds and makes his mouth taste like metal, before turning on the faucet and trying to clean up his face, hands shaking all the while. He hears Sara sniffle behind him, and his heart aches.
Shane knows that when he finally dies, it will kill the people around him. All his friends, all of his family, will have to stare at his cold and lifeless body-- it makes him want to start sobbing again. They don’t deserve this. Sara doesn’t deserve it; Daysha, Jen, his mom and dad--everyone he loves, none of them deserve it.
Ryan doesn’t deserve it.
He feels sick again, and leaves the bathroom before Sara can ask him more questions. The group he was with is gathered outside of the bathroom, looking at him with worried expressions. Ryan’s eyebrows are furrowed and Shane catches the concerned look on his face.
They don’t know he’s sick. Shane’ll have to tell them one day, but right now he is shaken and in pain and he doesn’t want to see the pitying, sympathetic looks on their faces as he explains that he’s dying.
He doesn’t want to tell Ryan, specifically. Knows he’ll get the inevitable Who? Shane doesn’t want to tell anyone who’s the cause of the vines that are slowly choking the life from him-- it’s humiliating, and Shane would never want Ryan to blame himself for his death.
He pushes past his friends, pointedly not looking at anyone, and goes back to his desk, before gathering his belongings and leaving. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and the ever-present pain in his chest is flaring up again, and he just really wants to curl up in bed and be alone.
Shane hears Ryan calling his name as he’s pulling of of his parking spot. He ignores him.
--
Sara becomes the most informed person on Hanahaki Shane knows in the month after she learns about it. He knows she must spend hours upon hours reading about it online, in medical journals, looking for something, anything .
There is nothing, and he tries several times to tell her that. He tells her that her search is a lost cause-- he’s been looking for months, and has accepted the fact that there is no cure to what’s killing him. He wants to grab her by her shoulders and tell her to give it up, that what she’s looking for doesn’t exist and she’s only getting her hopes up.
At first, Sara had tried to keep him updated on what her search, would tell him new information when she had found it-- but all it did was make him sad and irritable, and every so often he would lose his patience and snap at her, telling her to let it go already. That her search is futile.
She stopped updating him, after a while.
Shane knows that she’s still searching, despite everything he’s tried telling her. One day she catches him on his lunch break, the bright and joyful look on her face that’s been missing the past two months returned in full force. She beckons him to sit down with her.
“There’s a cure,” Her smile is wide and her tone is so hopeful-- he narrows his eyes in suspicion, but motions for her to continue, “There’s this doctor in Spain who has figured out how to remove the flowers from the lungs of people with Hanahaki-- it’s all really experimental stuff, but it’s worked on every single patient so far. Shane, Shane you can live--”
“Stop,” Shane’s voice is shaking, his hands are shaking. He’s too jaded for this, he knows good and damn well that this is too good to be true, “There has to be some kind of catch.”
Her smile falters.
“There’s a… small catch, I guess, but it’s worth it, I promise,” She sounds slightly desperate now, her voice still cheerful but it sounding a little more forced, “When they remove the flowers, your romantic feelings towards whoever caused them in the first place will disappear. They’ll just be gone, and… there’s a 75% chance that all your memories of the person will disappear, too.”
There were a few beats of silence.
“Absolutely not,” Shane says, voice firm-- he’s thinking of Ryan, of his lovely voice and warm brown eyes, of his inquisitive nature, of his beautiful smiles, “Never in a million years.”
“Shane, please ,” Sara’s voice is wavering and she grasps Shane’s hand tight, “You don’t understand what you’re saying, you can’t-- I can’t lose you .”
I can’t lose Ryan , he wants to say. But he can’t. She doesn’t know.
“Stop,” He tells her, voice cracking; he feels tears threatening to spill, “Stop, Sara. I’m not doing the surgery. Not with a price like that. Don’t-- don’t try and convince me. Please.”
Sara looks like she wants to say more, but Shane abruptly stands up and leaves the break room. His head is spinning, and a familiar pressure is building up in his chest.
Some part of Shane knows that he should go through with the surgery, for his loved ones’ sake, but… but he is a selfish man. He wants-- no, needs to cling to the love, the person that’s killing him for as long as he can.
--
Shane tells Ryan he’s dying on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.
It started when they were halfway through a Postmortem shoot; they had been laughing about some joke from the episode when Shane’s ever-present cough came back with a vengeance. He hacked and choked until it started coming up red and he couldn’t breathe again. Ryan watched in horror as Shane bent over a trashcan and tore two bright red, fully grown roses out of his throat.
There’s no way to hide it, after that.
They turn off the cameras and Shane goes to lie down on one of the couches in the office. Every part of his body hurts, and he almost tells Ryan to go away when he hears him approaching.
But the scared, confused look on Ryan’s face is enough to stop him. He’s holding two mugs of tea and Shane’s heart pangs because of course he is-- he’s always so thoughtful and wonderful and Shane suddenly wants to start crying.
He doesn’t; he takes the mug and doesn’t shift away as Ryan settles down beside him. There’s a couple minutes of companionable silence, the only sound Shane sipping at his tea, before Ryan speaks up.
“Please tell me what’s going on,” he says, voice quiet.
Shane wants to say I will be dead within the next year . He wants to say the flowers in my lungs are there because of you. He wants to say I’m in love with you and it’s killing me .
“I’m sick,” He says instead, words barely above a whisper, “It’s… terminal. Incurable.”
There’s a hitch in Ryan’s breathing but Shane can’t look at him, he knows that if he looks over Ryan will be giving him those soft, sad eyes and Shane figures he would break down on the spot if he saw them.
“Shane…” Ryan is touching his arm and his voice is gentle, but Shane can hear the tremors in it. Shane’s skin is on fire where Ryan is touching him, but he knows Ryan has no idea. He’s so completely naive about what he does to Shane.
The lump in Shane’s throat makes it difficult for him to speak, so instead of replying he just shakes his head. He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore right now. Ryan, thankfully, seems to understand and doesn’t press; he just moves closer to Shane so that he can hug him.
Shane leans into the touch, heart catching in his throat when he hears Ryan start to cry. They don’t say much after that.
--
Ryan spends the most time with Shane, more than even Sara. Even when they’re not working on Unsolved, Ryan’s usually not far. Shane tries not to get his hopes up with fantasies of Ryan suddenly confessing his love, the flowers disintegrating as Shane’s love becomes requited. He knows it’s not going to happen, but that doesn’t stop his brain from hoping.
He can feel the end fast approaching, and he tries not to let the fear overtake him. Tries not to think about how he’s weak almost all the time, how every time he manages to get one flower out another appears. How he’s going to die, and it’s going to be soon.
It’s not all bad, though. One day, Ryan surprised him by pulling him aside as they were getting off of work and telling him they were going to get dinner together, and going to a local fair afterwards. Shane had no say in the matter, and he let Ryan drag him to some fifties diner in south LA.
It’s easy to forget about everything when you’re sitting with the man you love, laughing and eating greasy food together. Despite Shane knowing it’s not a date, it feels like a date, and for a moment Shane lets himself pretend that he’s not sick and Ryan likes him back. Ryan even insists on paying the check, despite Shane’s protest.
He wants to grab Ryan’s hand as they leave the restaurant, interlock their fingers together-- he doesn’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop the aching desire within him.
They go to the fair nearby and it’s the most lighthearted Shane has felt in two years. He doesn’t cough once the entire time.
They ride the old, rickety rides that feel like they’re going to fall apart at any moment, they play arcade games (Ryan wins Shane a stuffed bear), Shane eats his weight in funnel cake. It’s fun, and amazing and everything Shane has ever wanted.
They get onto the ferris wheel, and as it turns, Shane’s terrible brain is quick to point out how romantic it would be if they were dating. We aren’t , he reminds himself, averting his eyes as Ryan smiles at him, we never will be.
After they leave, the car ride back to Shane’s apartment is somber. As the giddiness of their evening fades, he feels the sobering reality settle back down upon them like a weight. Neither of them know what to say, so they just allow suffocating silence to fill the car.
Shane doesn't get out immediately when Ryan stops the car in front of his apartment complex. He’s at a loss for words; what is he supposed to say? Thank you for the nice time tonight, but I’m still dying ? And then suddenly--
Suddenly he’s crying and he can’t stop, sobs wracking his body and tears streaming down his face. Ryan holds his hand and whispers pleasant things that aren’t true and don’t mean anything-- You’re okay, it’s all going to be okay . It only makes Shane cry harder.
He doesn’t want to leave this, doesn’t want to leave Ryan or anyone else behind. He’s so scared to be without them, to be alone. To die.
Slowly, he gathers himself. Regains his composure and wipes his face with his sleeve. Ryan pulls him into a hug and Shane thinks that his face might be a little wet, too.
Ryan asks if Shane wants him to stay over for the night. Shane tells him no, he’s fine for the night. He gets out of the car and tells Ryan goodnight and thank you, and then Ryan is gone.
Shane makes no move to go inside, and instead stands alone, watching the car go. After Ryan is out of sight entirely, Shane takes a deep breath and disappears into the apartment complex.
--
Shane Madej dies the next Friday morning.
911 was called by a neighbor after he collapsed on the floor of the hallway coughing up blood and rose petals; his heart stopped in the ambulance.
He is buried two weeks from that day, in an ornate coffin, underneath a cherry tree. He is in a suit, a couple of red roses tucked lovingly into the breast pocket.
Ryan cries when he hears the news, he cries every single day before the funeral, and he cries and cries and cries during the service and the burial. Seeing Shane’s dead body, knowing Shane would hate the suit and the roses, breaks something inside of him.
And when he coughs up violet petals that night, he knows exactly who they’re for.