Chapter Text
"I'm pretty sure it's my turn to make dinner."
Tanger ignores Sidney, bringing the throw blanket up and covering both of their heads with it and then tightening his arms around him. Very solidly on top of him already, Sidney's pretty sure that he couldn't get up right now even if he were to actually try.
His second recovery had been much harder than the first, but it ultimately hadn't taken all that much more time. He'd been cleared to come back for the playoffs, even, which had proven to make all the difference when they'd won.
He still can't fully believe it.
Now, halfway through the offseason and almost entirely back to normal, they've been trying to figure out how the four of them are going to work together. Including a rotation for who makes dinner each night.
"Faster you let me up, the sooner I'll be finished and able to sit back down."
"Flower and Geno can make dinner," Tanger mumbles, face buried in his shoulder. "You're busy."
"Yeah, I think Flower and Geno might be a while." They'd both vanished upstairs about twenty minutes ago. Sidney had kind of, a little, been hoping that Tanger would go up with them, but he'd joined him here on the couch and hasn't so much as shifted all that much since.
"We could join them," Tanger suggests, as if Sidney's supposed to believe that Tanger would let him up so that he can share him with the other two. He believes it even less when Tanger starts pressing open-mouthed kisses to his neck and throat.
"You could join them," Sidney counters, digging a knuckle into Tanger's side. "And then I'll have dinner in the oven when all of you come down."
It's not that Sidney doesn't enjoy sex—sex is great! It's just that he's a lot less ready to go at any given moment than any of his three boyfriends, and not nearly ready enough for all three of them. It had been a while before he'd been comfortable enough to explain it to Geno last year, but it had been much easier to be upfront with Flower and Tanger this time around.
Which has, interestingly, led to all three of them having sex with each other, when Sidney makes himself unavailable.
"No." As if he's not close enough for Sidney to know how interested he is in the proposition. "I am happy here."
"Okay, well, I still need to get up to make dinner." He digs his knuckle in deeper until Tanger yelps and rolls off of him, wedging into the space between Sidney and the back of the couch. He uses the opportunity to get up, even as Tanger reaches back out for him and complains in rapid French.
"Twenty minutes," Sidney promises, leaning down and kissing the corner of Tanger's pouty mouth. "I think you can survive that long."
"I cannot," Tanger laments, draping himself across the couch, the throw blanket slipping onto the floor. "I will die of loneliness while you are away, and then you will feel terrible guilt."
It actually only takes fifteen minutes, before he's sliding the pan into the oven and settling back onto the couch. Tanger, who did not die of loneliness while Sidney was in the kitchen, settles right back on top of him like he was never disturbed in the first place. Ten minutes after that, Geno and Flower make their way back downstairs, flushed and rumpled and perfectly content. Geno makes himself comfortable in the corner of the sectional, only briefly disturbing Sidney to get his head settled on his lap.
Flower, on the other hand, is forced to content himself with Sidney's feet resting in his lap, because Tanger refuses to move for him to get comfortable anywhere else.
"You know I'm going to have to get up again when the timer goes off, right?" Sidney asks, as everybody's breathing starts to get a little too even. "Or else dinner will burn."
"Flower can get it," Tanger mumbles. But judging from the way that Flower's thumb has gone completely still on Sidney's ankle, he doesn't think that Flower's getting up to do anything any time soon.
"We also can't eat like this."
"Eat later." Geno's fingers are still scratching idly at Sidney's scalp, but at a much slower pace than before. "Sleep now."
Sidney decides to leave it for now. There's enough time for a power nap, at any rate.
(Dinner gets a little crispy, but it's nothing worth complaining about.)
"You know," Flower drops down onto Sidney's lap, disturbing Tanger and Geno both where they sit on either side of him, "I have been wondering something."
"What's that?" Sidney asks, as he struggles to get himself comfortable in the mass of limbs. They had just found a good configuration when Flower came in.
"You say you do not know who the first flowers are for." He should have known that he'd have to elaborate on all that sooner or later. "And you were just waiting until they told you this, for you. But what was your plan if it was not Geno?"
"Yeah!" Tanger straightens up. "But the iris is for both of us, no? How would you know?"
Right. Tanger had still been at Walmart, buying wine and whiskey and terrible fake-maple syrup. "I was trying to figure it out," Sidney admits, "when Flower very helpfully told me that someone in love with him would be coughing up dandelions."
Flower grumbles in French under his breath, and Sidney catches pissenlit and some uncomplimentary words, presumably for the English translation.
Sidney weaves his fingers through Flower's hair, scratches lightly at his scalp until the grumbling turns into soft and sleepy sighs. "Anyway," he continues, "figured if they weren't dandelions, then that would have to mean it was you."
"I had hoped," Flower admits, hands reaching out in search of Sidney's other hand (unfortunately, Geno has it, fingers tracing idly along the lines of his palm, the only sign that he's still awake at all), "that it would be me. It is selfish, and terrible, but I thought at least I would have you after you were well again."
"I think we all hoped it was us," Tanger points out, smacking Flower's hands down. "Clearly."
Sidney can't argue with that logic, sandwiched between Tanger and Geno and with Flower curled up on top of him. "Is that why you both refused to leave me and Geno alone at all?" He's no longer complaining, because it all worked out well enough for him in the end, but he definitely could have gotten over both of them without the near-death experience if they'd both given him some space.
"I will not allow Geno to have all of the fun." Tanger leans in impossibly closer, which does have the consequence that Sidney assumes is unintended of pushing him even deeper into Geno's side. "I knew that the flowers may not have been for me, but you are still my friend. I had hoped that you would still want me to be around."
"Of course I still wanted you around." He'd spent most of his time before the tulips arrived trying to figure out how to keep them around without letting the crushes increase in intensity. Obviously that had failed, but. Again, he's not complaining. "I was starting to worry Geno would kill you, though."
"He would not," Flower says, with a confidence that Sidney can't believe he feels. "It would have made you sad."
Nothing speaks to the validity of that statement, Sidney supposes, like the fact that Geno didn't hesitate to let both of the French Canadians into this space they'd started to build for themselves. There was no talking about it, no trying to figure out a way around it, none of the pushback that he'd been so afraid of throughout the whole ordeal.
"Guess you're just lucky that I like you so much, then."
The rhythm that they find in the offseason doesn't work quite so well, evidently, once the travel starts back up. It's a lot harder, with planes and buses and hotel rooms, to ration out Sidney's time with the other three. The compromise that they settle on, halfway through November, is that once a week, one of the three of them gets a few uninterrupted hours of Sidney all to himself.
At home, it's going out for dinner and wandering around the city, maybe seeing a movie or going to an arcade or something. But on the road, where the cities are a lot less familiar to them, it's mostly a few hours in one of their hotel rooms without having to worry about one of the others waltzing right in like they're meant to be there.
"I really need my own fucking room," Army grumbles, trading keys with Geno so that he at least has a room that he's allowed into while Geno's here. "Have fun, I guess."
Date nights with Geno are the same as they were last year, before Sidney was sick again. Curled together on one bed, watching whatever movie looked the most interesting, just existing in each other's space until they both fall asleep. It's not Sidney's favorite—he doesn't know that he has a favorite, even when he does sit down to actively think about it—but it's definitely the easiest. Flower always wants to do something, even if it's just wandering around downtown wherever and finding some hole in the wall place to get dinner. And while Tanger's also more inclined to a night in with room service, he's a lot chattier than Geno is. Which Sidney wouldn't have a problem with, if he didn't forget English halfway through the night as the warm contendedness fills him.
Sidney's working on learning Quebecois, but it's surprisingly slow going. Mostly because every time he tries to practice, neither Flower nor Tanger are interested in continuing any conversation in any meaningful way.
"You are thinking loud," Geno mumbles, about an hour into the movie that Sidney's not actually watching. "Everything is okay?"
"Everything's great." So great, he can't help but smile as he says it. "Just…thinking about how lucky I am, you know?" Lucky that things worked out, lucky that all three people he loves enough to cough up flowers for love him back, lucky that Geno accepted the development with the grace that he did.
"Is no luck," Geno corrects. "We are lucky, to have you."
Sidney feels so warm in a way that has nothing to do with the blankets and the fact that he's so tangled up with Geno. "We can all be lucky," he offers. "To have each other."
If Sidney had to have something to complain about, it would be that the higher concentration of Flower has led to a directly proportionately higher concentration of mischief.
Flower's giggling is one of his favorite sounds of all time. Always has been. But it's also incredibly ominous in moments like this one, a spoon of sugar hovering over his mug of coffee in their kitchen, the morning of a rare full day off.
"What did you do?" Sidney asks, refusing to tip the spoon into the mug.
"Who says I have done anything?" Flower asks him, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hand. "Maybe I am only happy this morning."
Sidney smells bullshit. "Am I about to put something that is not sugar into my coffee?"
"What would you do something like this for?" Flower asks him. "Are you trying to have less sugar?"
Sidney dumps the spoonful of maybe-not-sugar back into the bowl. Some granules stick to the spoon. He doesn't even have to try it to confirm any of his suspicions, because Flower is already pouting at him, clearly put out to have been foiled so completely.
"Keep a straight face," Sidney offers as he retrieves the bigger container of sugar, "and I won't tell Tanger or Geno when they come down."
(Flower fails completely at keeping a straight face, but the other two are both so tired that neither of them notice, anyway.
It was salt, in the bowl.)
Sidney takes a long sip from his own mug, as Tanger splutters and coughs up coffee all over the table and Geno swears in an incomprehensible string of Russian. "I think it's fine," he says, his words broken up with his own giggles.
Tanger looks at him like he's committed the worst betrayal. "You are in on this?"
"In on what?" he tries, but half of it comes out as a wheeze and the other half is drowned out by Flower's laughter beside him. "Is something wrong with your coffee?"
"You know what is wrong with my coffee," Tanger grumbles, dumping it into the sink and rinsing the cup. "Why would you do this to me?"
Geno, instead of dumping his own coffee, reaches and steals Sidney's out of his hand. Sidney thinks about stopping him, but it's almost empty, anyway. "Bad liar," he says, after he drains the rest of the cup. "We are not fool."
"You are a little bit fools," Flower coos, leaning into Sidney's side.
"I think he meant fooled," Sidney whispers, as Geno scowls and grumbles in Russian. "You know, it's not my fault you didn't notice him giggling like a maniac while you were spooning salt into your coffees."
He'd forgotten, a little, how much fun it is to be a menace with the three of them.
The longer Sidney spends in the league, the more years he spends on national teams, the more accustomed he gets to other people having a crush on him. The first time it happens, he expects Geno, at least, to react with jealous irritation, or even some kind of smug satisfaction because they cannot have you. But the only response that he gets, every time, is three different variations on "Well, of course someone else has a crush on you. Everybody should."
It's no different when Sidney gets back to the hotel that he's being put up in while filming some bizarre promotional material with the league's newest 1OA: Nathan MacKinnon.
"Kid definitely has a crush on me," he says, climbing into the bed that's definitely not meant to hold four grown men. "Which is making it hard for them to get any good takes for these commercials."
What had been promised to be a two-day affair is shaping up to be considerably longer. Sidney will be surprised if they're out of here before the end of the week, which wouldn't bother him so much if it weren't for the fact that they're supposed to be visiting Tanger's family when they're done here.
There's a very limited amount of time in the offseason, and they're trying to make the most of it. But everybody had agreed that this would be a good idea, for Sidney, for the kid, for the NHL. And two days isn't very long, so he'd agreed to the request when it had come in.
"He has good taste," Tanger mumbles, drawing Sidney closer to him. "Do you think tomorrow will be easier?"
"I don't know," he admits. "He's also a little starstruck, I think?" It's taken him a while to figure out how to differentiate the two, but he's starting to feel like he's getting there. "We definitely didn't get through half of what they wanted to do, so I don't think that we'll finish tomorrow, even if it is."
"We'll figure it out," Flower assures him. "Just focus on the shooting and we will get it later, no?"
"Keep eye on him," Geno adds. "If you have more of these things, might have bigger problem than crush."
Sidney has to crane his neck to be able to see him past where Flower has his face buried into his shoulder. "You know, I don't think I'm going to be seeing enough of him for that to be a problem."
It's not until the next offseason, with another round of promotional materials that feel a lot more intensive, that Sidney's words come back to bite him.
They're taking a break from the seemingly endless promos the first time that Sidney hears the poor kid let out a deep-chested cough. His first instinct, of course, is to assume that if it is a plant in his chest, it's probably another teammate, or a nice girl back in Denver.
"Sounds rough," he says, careful to keep his voice neutral. He's very familiar, by now, the best way to approach somebody who may or may not be coughing up flowers. "You gonna be okay?"
MacKinnon glances over at him, shifty in a way that Sidney manages to recognize even though he never actually looked at any of his boyfriends quite like that.
"I, um…" He coughs again, clearing his throat first before it seems to devolve into something worse. Sidney's very familiar. "I need to talk to you about something, actually."
It's probably best to pretend that he doesn't already know what it is that Nate needs to talk to him about. "Want to wait until after we're done here?" he offers, knowing that this is not exactly a private place for them to have this conversation.
Nate nods. "Yeah, that's…Yeah."
They manage to get through all the promo material, slower than anybody would like because Nate has to keep duck away to hack up petals. At the end, Sidney waits very patiently for him to finish getting ready to leave, texting his partners ahead of time to let them know that he's going to be getting back ot the hotel a little late.
Geno: You see enough of him to be a problem?
Sidney deserves that.
Sid: Ok, well, he does have a potentially terminal illness, so let's not make fun of him maybe?
Flower: Nobody is making fun of MacKinnon
Flower: We are making fun of you
Tanger: Have you thought about being harder to fall in love with?
Sid: Do you think this is on purpose???
Nate joins him out near the parking lot, hands in his pockets and shoulders set in a way that clearly indicates that he's not very much looking forward to the conversation ahead of him. Sidney very much relates.
"Ready?" he asks, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
Nate's shoulders hike up, but he nods anyway as he follows Sidney wordlessly towards the street. Their hotel is so close to where they've been filming, neither of them appear to have bothered with a rental car.
"Do you want to grab something to eat?" There's a lot of small diners and cafes around here. Surely, one of them will be a good place to let the poor kid down easy. "I know I'm starving, after all that."
"Yeah," Nate mumbles. "Sounds good."
It only takes about ten minutes of wandering around to find some hole in the wall place that looks promising enough. Even better, it's got enough people that they don't have to worry about being completely overheard without being so crowded that they have to worry about being recognized and interrupted. They find a table tucked away in the corner, and Sidney sets his hands on the table and waits.
It takes a while, but he knows how this part goes. Finally, after they've put their orders in and Nate's drained half of the hot green tea that he'd asked for, he sets the mug down and asks, "Have you…ever known anybody who had that flowering disease?"
"Yeah." This will probably be easiest if he's fully transparent. "I've had it. It's rough."
"You—oh." Nate shifts in his seat, the vinyl squeaking. "Did it…work out?"
Sidney nods. "It did. I was lucky, though. I let it go too far. I was lucky that I survived, never mind that I recovered well enough to start playing again."
"Well, it's not…I'm not that bad," Nate assures him. "I only just started coughing up flowers a month ago."
Sidney doesn't know if he's supposed to ask, or if he should let Nate get there himself. He knows that he hadn't appreciated Geno asking him who it was for, but he also hadn't had a sure answer for him at the time. What he settles on is, "What kinds of flowers are they?"
Nate's cheeks go red. "I don't know for sure," he admits, "but I think the yellow one is something called tickseed? And there's this pink hibiscus. Basically means this all-consuming love at first sight, which…yeah. Yeah, that sounds right, you know?"
Sidney has to remind himself that there's no way he could have known, last summer. "Mine meant young love and first love," he admits. "But I actually didn't know who it was for until the second pair of flowers showed up."
Nate's eyes go wide. "You didn't know?"
Sidney shrugs. "Sounds like you do, at least?"
The shift is immediate, even apart from the red that floods Nate's entire face and neck. He almost seems to turtle, his shoulders coming up as he leans back in the bench. "Did you have to tell somebody who was already dating somebody?"
Sidney hadn't considered how hard it would be, for somebody to have to tell him. "No, I didn't." Then, because he really doesn't know how else to help him feel more comfortable, "But I did have to figure out how to tell my own boyfriend that I'd gotten it again, for somebody different."
It seems to serve as the distraction it was meant to. "How'd you do that?"
Sidney makes a face that seems like a cross between a grimace and a self-deprecating smile. "I didn't. He found me hunched over the toilet, coughing up forget-me-nots." The waitress comes back with their food, setting it down along with another mug of tea for Nate. "I know how hard this is," he tries, once she's left them alone again. "But the biggest thing I learned is that nobody's going to be mad at you just because you fell in love with somebody."
Love at first sight, Jesus. Sidney's never going to live this down.
Nate nods slowly, like he's digesting that. "Okay, but what if…What if their boyfriend is a very big person who would have too many opportunities to absolutely flatten me if he had a reason?"
Geno would never. Sidney decides that playing dumb isn't going to get them anywhere. "He won't. Neither of them will. They'd probably get it, to be honest with you."
They're probably still making fun of him in their text thread, in fact.
"I still have to say it, though," Nate mumbles, "don't I?"
Sidney…doesn't know. He doesn't know what happens when the feelings aren't requited, because he's never had to figure that out.
"I think it might make it a little easier to get over him," Sidney offers. "I failed pretty bad at getting over my crushes, once I knew they weren't the ones I was in love with, because they wouldn't give me any kind of space to. So I think that you should at least tell him, so that he can do whatever you need him to while you try to move on."
"Okay, but…" Nate breaks off to cough, a handful of petals spilling onto the tabletop. Once he's quieted down, "I just feel like he maybe already knows?"
"You're going to tell him what you need to get over him without telling him that you're in love with him?"
"And I have to get over him?" Even after all of this, there's still a little bit of hope in Nate's eyes. His voice.
Sidney feels terrible. "You do," he says gently. "I'm sorry."
Nate shakes his head, blinking his eyes rapidly. "You don't—I get it. You're so…You're just really cool, you know? And then you were, like, super patient, last year, when I kept fucking up. And I was so sure that you would snap, when it went more than twice as long as it was supposed to, but you didn't. And then you agreed to do this all again, and you offered to meet up when we played during the season, and I just…" He turtles again, seeming to suddenly realize how much he'd just revealed. "I understand."
Sidney isn't entirely certain that he does, but doesn't know what else he can say that won't make things worse for the poor kid.
"You're a great guy, Nate," he tries. He has to try. "You're gonna be right for somebody."
"Just not you."
Sidney gives him his most apologetic smile. "Not me. I am sorry."
By the time Sidney gets back to the hotel room, he expects that the other three will have gotten all the chirping him about his role in Nate's predicament out of their system. It's been nearly two hours, and his phone had stopped buzzing in his pocket over half an hour ago.
But the moment he walks in, he's greeted with a very smug Geno, leaning against the desk as he waits for him with his arms folded across his chest. "How was date?"
Sidney gives him a half-hearted glare as he toes his shoes off. "You know it wasn't like that," he says, kicking his shoes against the wall and stepping further into the room. "You're all lucky you didn't have to turn me down. That was awful."
He knows, obviously, that Nate has it worse than he does right now. Hacking up petals was definitely worse than sitting across the table from some poor kid telling him that he was in love with him. But. Having to contend with the fact that Nate was in danger of dying because Sidney doesn't feel the same way was hardly painless.
"It is like I said," Tanger says with a shrug, moving over on the bed to make room for Sidney to climb in beside him, "you are too easy to fall in love with."
He'd felt annoyed when Tanger had said it before Sidney had left the shooting location, but there's an extra layer of something unidentifiable now that he knows that the only thing that he could have done differently, apparently, would have been being an asshole. What's he supposed to do, brush off rookies that look up to him? Nate's got enough pressure on him from being a 1OA (which Sidney's very familiar with), Sidney's not going to make it harder for him during promo material, too.
"I'm not going to be a complete dick for no reason," he defends himself.
"It works for Tanger, no?" Flower coos, stupidly putting his face within range of Tanger's reach.
Sure enough, he finds himself whacked in the face before he gets shoved backward off the bed. Tanger snaps an irritable string of swears in French, before drawing Sidney in closer.
Flower climbs in next to him, burying his face into Sidney's shoulder and whining, "You see? Tanger is terrible, and you love him still."
"You called him a dick," Sidney points out. "And God only knows what kind of bullshit you pulled while I was gone." He shifts so that he can thread his fingers through Flower's hair and press a messy kiss to his temple. "But I still love you, too." He looks over at Geno, who's stepping away from the desk and climbing into the pile, finding space somehow to curl up with them. "And you, even though you're making fun of me for putting the poor kid into this position."
He's so in love with them that even after a few years, it makes him feel a little stupid.
He hopes that Nate manages to find something like this, somebody who loves him as much as he loves them, somebody so perfect for him that it's not at all difficult to imagine having this forever.