Chapter Text
It was only a matter of time, if Sidney's being honest with himself. The cough has been bothering him for nearly two weeks, and even as it had persisted he'd started to wonder if it was really something as simple as hayfever and congestion draining back into his lungs. Now, with a handful of tiny pink and purple petals, he knows.
Or, well, he knows that he's in love with someone. It would be a much easier thing to do something about if he only knew who it was that the petals are for.
He has a few ideas. Three, to be exact. Three crushes that he'd thought that he was doing a pretty good job of squashing down, but it's fine that he hasn't. He'll figure it out, hopefully before the damage done is permanent, and then maybe it'll work out okay for him.
For now, though: practice.
He's gearing up and working on tying on his shoulder pads when his first suspect holds out a water bottle with the smile that always makes Sidney's heart stutter in his chest.
"I'm not trusting anything you're handing me," he says, maintaining a calm face in the wake of Marc-Andre Fleury's troublemaking grin. "Fool me once, you know?" He'd only given Flower the satisfaction once, last season, when what had been supposed to be water or Gatorade had turned out to be laced with vinegar. (The fact that Flower had circumvented that four separate times by enlisting other teammates is irrelevant—it's not Sidney's fault he's inclined to trust his team.)
"It's good for your throat," Flower tries, shaking the bottle. "You have that cough."
"What, tea with a bunch of salt?" He's not ruining his own day just to hear the other man giggle, no matter how much he loves the sound. "I'll pass."
Flower turns the bottle towards himself and shoots a jet into his own mouth. It doesn't escape Sidney's notice that he seems to bypass his own tongue and tastebuds in the process. "Harmless. I am only trying to be nice, no?"
"I, um—" Sidney breaks off with a cough. He feels the tiny petals come up, and hides them under his tongue until he can get away with spitting them out without any of the three suspects seeing. "I actually brought my own tea. But thank you."
Flower's face falls, and Sidney almost plays along with him just to put that smile back on his face, but whether the petals are for him or not, he doesn't want to deal with whatever nonsense he's cooked up for him.
"I will just leave this for you then," Flower says, bouncing back quickly and setting the bottle in Sidney's stall. "For when you are out of your tea."
"Thanks," he says again. Flower gives him another real smile, and Sidney's heart flutters in his chest.
He's just slipping on his practice jersey when his second suspect sneaks up behind him and snatches the questionable bottle from its spot and takes a long sip. Sidney waits for the gagging reaction to vinegar or salt or whatever, but all he hears is Evgeni Malkin say, "Cold peppermint tea. Not very good."
But Flower starts giggling, so he'd clearly done something to it.
"What? What did you do?" Geno calls across the locker room. "Do not run, what do you do to Sid's tea?"
Flower chirps back something in French, and the rest of the locker room fills with failed attempts at stifled laughter. Sidney turns his head to look, and finds himself face-to-face with Geno's electric blue teeth.
"What?" he tries again, as even Sidney can't resist laughing at his friend's expense.
"You got Flowered, Geno!" Jordan Staal calls across the room.
Geno grumbles something under his breath in Russian. Sidney smiles apologetically at him. "You didn't give me the chance to warn you. He was trying to get me to take it earlier."
"Is not your fault," Geno assures him with a smile of his own, bright blue teeth on full display. Sidney feels his heart give a jolt in spite of its ridiculousness.
There are too many smiles in this locker room that give him heart palpitations. Objectively.
He'd never considered himself a hopeless romantic until he'd developed matching crushes on two of his newest teammates.
Speaking of, suspect the third: "Blue is a good color on you, no?" Kris Letang asks, from Sidney's other side. His own grin, at least, is more a baring of his teeth than a real smile. Sidney's heart can continue on its normal rhythm.
Geno curses at Tanger in Russian as they leave Sidney to his own devices, making final adjustments to his gear before he leaves the locker room, spitting the petals out of his mouth as he passes a trashcan in the hall. He's startled by a voice behind him as he stares down at them, pink and purple standing out against the white and black clumps of tape and tissues.
"You're going to need to tell the trainers."
Sidney looks up, finds Colby Armstrong standing near him and looking down into the garbage himself. "What?"
Army nods down at the petals. "It's either very easy to treat or it isn't," he explains. "They need to know, in case it isn't."
Sidney…hadn't actually considered that part.
Sure, he's considered that Flower or Geno or Tanger may not return his feelings, and that he'll have to get over whichever one of them it is if they don't, but it had somehow eluded him that if he can't manage that, the flowers will kill him.
Well, he can also get the plant removed, but it'll have him out for a while as he recovers from the lung surgery. And if he doesn't manage to get over whichever of the three crushes has grown into the plant, it will come back, more aggressive than before.
"I'll talk to them after practice," he says. "I'm sure that I'll be fine, though."
He makes it twenty minutes into practice before he's doubled over on the ice, unable to catch his breath after a coughing fit. There aren't many petals that come up, but breathing around the still-young plant is turning out to be easier said than done.
He's sent to the trainers' office after that. He waits until he gets there to spit the petals out—may as well make it easy to explain what the problem is, after all.
The trainer takes one look at him and sighs. "Have you told her, yet?"
Sidney can't help but make a face at the assumption that it's some random girl. Still, it's not worth coming out right now. "I…No, not yet." He sits down in the chair that's usually reserved for whatever poor player's gotten hurt enough to end up here. "I actually don't know who it is, to be honest. I've got a crush on a few people."
The trainer blinks at him. "Fucking Christ," he mutters. "You don't do anything by halves, do you, Kid?"
Sidney shrugs helplessly. "Not usually, no."
"And I take it telling all of them is out of the question?"
Sidney thinks about it—actually considers it, for the first time since he'd seen the petals the first time last night. Telling all three of them that he's got a crush that might be a love strong enough for the flowering disease, and seeing what happens. But if, say, Tanger feels the same, but the other two don't, and it turns out that the flowers are for Flower, then…what? Sidney gets a boyfriend, sure, but is it one who'd be willing to stay in a relationship built on a lie? Would Sidney want that?
"I'm worried about hurting the ones that this isn't for," he admits. "It's fine if I get it early into the next stage, right? The one where the flowers tell me who it is?"
"For the average person," the trainer agrees. "But every day you let the plant bloom, you're adding to your recovery time. It's got thorns, so your lungs are going to need to heal from that as well as the removal surgery."
Sidney hadn't considered that, either. "I don't even know how to tell any of them, yet." He's…kind of out, to the team. Sort of.
They know that he's not especially interested in women, at least, but everybody seems to have written that off as him being too focused on hockey for them. But he hasn't outright told anybody—much less the three that he has feelings for—that he's gay. So, he'll have to tell whichever one that he's gay and that he's in love with them. It's already a lot to figure out, even before trying to add in the angle of I have a crush on you but it might not be the reason for the flowers growing in my chest.
The trainer heaves a sigh like Sidney's trying his patience just by existing. "Guess you've got some time to figure it out."
Most likely suspect: Flower
He's known him the longest, and he's the one of the three that Sidney can communicate with best, because he's had the most time to learn English. And Sidney's started retaliating against some of Flower's pranks and colluding on others, so they've spent quite a bit of time together. More than enough for Sidney to fall in love with him.
Will probably think I'm joking
Which wouldn't be, like, great. First off, obviously Sidney's not joking. But he could be wrong.
He doesn't even know what his favorite type of flower is. Obviously, if it is him, there will be blue irises, but there would also be blue irises if it's Tanger. And Sidney doesn't even know Tanger's favorite flowers, either, while he's thinking about that.
He flips to a new page in his notebook. Step one: Tanger and Flower's favorite flowers
This is going to get confusing quickly.
Step one: Tanger and Flower's Fleury's favorite flowers
He can't only use one nickname and not the other. And, for that matter, should he be using their last names when he might be fatally in love with them?
Step one: Tanger Kris and Flower's Fleury's Marc-Andre's favorite flowers
Step two: Geno Evgeni's favorite flower (don't want him to feel left out)
Step two:
Well. Step two would be to continue to wait, wouldn't it? If he can't figure out how to explain this to all three of them, then it's just a matter of waiting for the flowers to tell him who it is. And then he tells him, and see what happens.
Step two: Try to figure it out before it gets worse
He doesn't like the idea of the scarring on his lungs taking him out for the rest of the season. Sure, it's only January, much too early to be thinking like that, but who's to say how long it'll be before the identifying flowers come? How bad does the plant have to get before then?
So. Prime suspect, Flower. Thinking that he's joking.
Fuck, Sidney has absolutely no idea how he's supposed to approach that.
Present him with the blooms? "I coughed these up. See, the iris is from Quebec and the other one is your favorite, so they're for you. I'm in love with you." God, that's fucked up, isn't it? And, at any rate, who's to say that Flower wouldn't assume that he'd just found the blooms himself, soaked them in a little water, and was just that committed to the joke.
God, what if Flower laughs at him?
He flips the notebook closed. It's not helping him, anyway.
"Are you…okay?"
Sidney wheezes his way through the aftermath of a coughing fit that has him doubled over in his seat on the plane. Tanger's beside him, a hand on his back trying to help him dislodge what he's hacking up. He gives him a thumbs-up with one hand, while the other wipes his face. He's coughed so hard that his eyes are more than a little watery.
"Are you lying to me?"
Sidney's thumbs-up turns into a wiggling hand. "I know what it is," he admits, straightening back up and slumping against the seat. "Pretty easy to take care of. It's just—" He breaks off with another coughing fit. There are so many petals under his tongue now that it's getting difficult to speak. "Gotta get worse first."
Tanger frowns at him, dark eyes full of confusion and concern. "Why do you mean?"
There's still not an easy way that he's figured out to explain it. "Um, it just…Some things are like that, I guess."
Tanger, thankfully, seems willing to leave it there. "But you will be able to fix it?"
Sidney nods. "It'll be easy," he says again. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be alright."
There's the Tanger smile that makes Sidney's heart stutter and race, right beside his lungs that are starting to feel the plant choking them. It hurts, aches in his chest like nothing else, but he wouldn't ever try to change anything.
Probably Flower, because Sidney's only known Tanger and Geno each for a few months, but he's never had a simple crush that felt like this, the way he feels when Tanger bumps his knee with his own and tries to chat with him as best he can, fighting through the language barrier because he thinks that Sidney is worth it.
"Maybe seeing beautiful LA will help you?" Tanger suggests, as Sidney's breathing starts to come a little easier. "The air, it is nice and clear?"
Sidney's not sure about that. If he wants clean air, he would go home. "Maybe. I don't know how good the dry desert air will be for me, though."
Nothing in LA—or the rest of California—will help him, of course. The only way this is solved on this roadtrip is if he starts coughing up the identifying flowers while they're there.
And he kind of, a little absurdly, would rather confess to whoever it is back at home. But he isn't stupid enough to put it off any longer than he has to.
"A little bit of time at sea must be nice, though, no?" Tanger nudges his arm. "We are having a day off, we can go to the beach. Bring Geno and Flower." He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, leaning in so close that Sidney's breath catches in a way that has nothing to do with the flowers in his chest. Or everything, maybe. "Throw Flower into the ocean."
Sidney laughs so hard that it disturbs the plant, leaving him coughing worse than the initial fit. Tanger rubs his back through it, and leans in against him when it's over. "You promise you will be alright?"
Sidney nods. Even if he has to confess his love in fucking Phoenix, he'll do it so that he'll be able to recover faster.
No point in confessing his love if he's only going to turn around and die, right?
Sidney spends most of his time in the hotel room in bed, hugging the small trashcan to his chest as he spits flower petals into it. Army watches him with some kind of mix of dismay, irritation, and fascination.
"Is it somebody on the team?" he asks softly.
Sidney looks up at him sharply. "What?"
"I'm not…" He shrugs. "Some random girl, there's no reason you wouldn't tell her. Hell, some random guy, there's no reason. It's somebody that you spend a lot of time with, but aren't sure that you should tell. Right?"
Sidney is saved from having to answer when he's overtaken by another coughing fit. It's a comfort that Armstrong seems to have no real problem with the idea that he may be gay, but he hadn't exactly planned on having this conversation with anyone right now.
"I'm sorry, Kid," Army says, and he does seem like he means it. "But we kind of need you here, and I don't know how much good you'll be to us dead."
"It's not that," he admits, hating how coarse his voice sounds and how much it burns his throat to speak. "It's…I don't actually know, who it is."
Army blinks, once, twice, three times. Frowns. Opens his mouth, pauses, closes it. Opens it again. "You don't know?"
"I have some ideas." He doesn't want him to think that he doesn't know, like, that he's in love with anybody, or anything. He knows what love feels like, it's just that all three of his crushes feel very similar in terms of intensity. "But I don't know exactly which of them all this is for."
"Well, that's…" Army's frown deepens. "Is it someone on the team? Or, like, one of them, I guess?"
"It…It might be." Definitely is. "You won't tell anyone, right?"
Army shakes his head. "Not my place to, Kid."
Sidney nods, before he turns back into his trashcan and spits out a few more flowers. Whole sprigs of them, now, not just tiny petals. It's much more painful, unfortunately. "God, this sucks." He leans back against the headboard, head tilted back in an attempt to get a little more air down his throat.
"I mean, you're choking to death on a plant in your chest," Army points out. "Did you think it'd be fun?"
Sidney glares over at him without turning his head. "This isn't going to kill me," he argues. "I'll say something as soon as I know which one it is."
Armstrong holds his hands up in surrender. "I'm just saying. That's what it is, it's choking to death slowly."
Sidney's done a lot of research on this, in what little free time he has. He's healthy, has no preexisting conditions, and isn't going to let it get far enough to be irreversible. It's not until he starts coughing up pale blue forget-me-nots that it starts to look like something he could die from. "It's only choking to death if I'm too stupid to tell him."
If it is Flower, Sidney's going to have to cough up irises and whatever his favorite is in front of him, and probably show him the underside of his tongue first so that he doesn't accuse him of hiding them beforehand like he's performing some stupid magic trick. Nothing would have to change. It'd be easiest, if it was Flower, he thinks. Even if he doesn't reciprocate, he'd be willing to give it a chance, and Sidney's pretty sure that nothing would change. Except that the plant in his chest would be gone.
Tanger, he can probably just tell him. Tanger will believe him, he's sure, but he's less sure that Tanger returns any of his feelings. He'd either let him down easy or, like Flower, give it a shot. And, well. Sidney can handle it. Tanger's defense, he can manage to distance himself enough to get over him properly, and it'll be fine. It'll be weird, he writes, but we'll manage.
Geno…He's not sure, with Geno. He doesn't think that Geno would react poorly, or anything. He'd so quickly become Sidney's best friend, on the team and in the city and quite possibly ever, Sidney can't imagine that a confession of love would ruin that. But he'd also feel so bad, if he were to know that Sidney's so in love with him that it could, potentially, kill him, and he can't do anything about it. Even if he were to return Sidney's feelings, he'd feel terrible that Sidney's been in this pain and discomfort at all over him.
This isn't your fault
You don't have to apologize
It isn't even THAT bad
Okay, that last one is definitely a lie. This has been absolutely awful.
He flips to another page, one with all sorts of scratched out attempts at figuring out how to tell all three of them. He doesn't know how long it'll be until the next set of flowers come, but he's no longer that keen on waiting if he can avoid it.
I've kind of got a crush on all three of you
I could be in love with any of you
I'm coughing up flowers and I know it's one of you but I don't know which
I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner
"What are you even working on, over there?"
Sidney flips his notebook closed. "Nothing too important."
Army raises a single eyebrow. "Certainly seems important, as serious as you're taking it."
He tucks the notebook back into his bag. "I take everything seriously." He knows perfectly well what everybody else says about him. "You gonna come with us to the beach? Tanger wants to try and throw Flower into the ocean, we could use as many sets of hands as possible."
Army shrugs. "Yeah, sounds fun."
Almost as if summoned, there's a knock on their door. Tanger, collecting the two of them on his way down to the lobby to meet up with whoever else he's managed to talk into joining him at the beach in the beginning of February.
"Flower is refusing to join us," Tanger says, grabbing Sidney by the arm and dragging him down the hall. "So you must convince him, or else there is no point."
"Why do I have to be the one to convince him?" Sidney asks with a laugh, but he doesn't fight to escape Tanger's hold. "I don't think he'll trust me, after he swapped out my pants last week." An identical pair of suit slacks, but two sizes too small. "I'm pretty sure he's expecting some kind of revenge."
"No, he will go if you ask." Tanger shoots him a grin, and Sidney feels his heart stutter as it always does. "Surely you have noticed this."
He stops abruptly to pound on another door. A few seconds later, Geno opens it, eyeing the both of them curiously. "You are really going to beach?"
Tanger nudges Sidney, like it's his job to convince Geno, too. And he opens his mouth to try, but ends up doubled over coughing, instead.
The sprig of lavender won't fit under his tongue, this time. And, well. At least it's one less thing he'll have to explain, when he tells whoever it is.
He spits out some extra stray petals, then bends down to pick them all up off the carpet. "Tanger thinks it'll help," he offers, shoving the blooms into his pocket and studiously refusing to look at either of them. "And, I don't know. It might be fun."
Tanger's hand is still on Sidney's arm. Even through the fabric of his hoodie, the point of contact feels charged and molten. "It is flowers?" he asks softly. "This whole time?"
Deep breaths get caught on the plant. Sidney takes a few shallow ones, instead. "Yeah. I…Yeah."
"You are not telling her?" Geno asks, reaching out for Sidney's other arm. "Girl is for, you are not telling her?"
Sidney's hand, still in his pocket, clenches into a fist and crushes the petals he'd shoved in there. "I haven't had the chance," he explains. "It's…I will. Soon." It has to be soon, doesn't it? "I'll say something soon."
"When we are home," Geno says firmly. "This…This sickness, is deadly. You need to tell her."
"I will," Sidney snaps. Immediately, he feels awful. "I will," he says again, more soft. "I promise."
He looks up, and is immediately reminded why he's been trying not to do that. Geno's even more upset than he'd expected, so distraught that Sidney almost checks that the flowers aren't blue, and that he hadn't somehow managed to bypass the second stage entirely. And Tanger, beside him, not much better.
Sidney lied to him, kind of, on the plane. He can see the way that Tanger's connecting those pieces, and he almost tells him the truth right here. Would, if it weren't for the fact that he's not entirely certain that it would be better.
"Can we—" More petals work their way up. "We still gonna toss Flower into the ocean?"
Everything still feels delicate and cracked, but Geno and Tanger both seem more than willing to set it aside and take the distraction where it's offered.
Flower's room is a few doors down. Tanger slaps it with an open palm until it opens, and then reaches up and tries to smack Flower in the face after it does.
Flower curses at him in amused French, reaching up and grabbing his wrist. "It is too cold for the beach, no?"
Tanger nudges Sidney again, exactly the same as when they were standing in front of Geno. "We're only in LA once a year," he tries, voice still rough around the plant. "And you said you'd take me last season, but it was raining."
Flower sighs, some put-upon thing. "Yes, I did say that. But I will not be swimming. It is much too cold for that." He drops Tanger's hand and lets himself be dragged out of his hotel room, joining the rest of them on their trek to the elevator.
The worst thing, Sidney thinks, bundled in-between Geno and Tanger and with Flower's hand on his back, if he were to tell them all the truth now, before the flowers get worse, is that he can only be in love with one of them. He has a crush on all of them, but there's only one of them that the flowers are for.
In a perfect world, where all three of them could love him back, that's only going to hurt the other two.
Sidney is damp, chilly, and covered in sand.
Worth it, of course. But it's hard to walk back to the hotel with a soaking-wet French Canadian goalie draped over him.
"I am cold," Flower says, for the hundredth time. "And this is your fault. You must keep me warm, or else I will freeze to death in this terrible city."
It's not even that cold outside. And they'd been nice enough to tear Flower's hoodie off before they'd tossed him in, so it would be dry when he put it back on. "It was Tanger's idea," he reminds him. Tanger makes a sound behind them, clearly unhappy to be tossed so unceremoniously under the bus. "And LA isn't that bad."
"Horrible," Flower laments. "I was happy to stay in my hotel room, and you come in talking of broken promises and so I must come to the beach, and you thank me by helping to murder me."
Sidney wraps his own arms around Flower, because that's clearly what he wants. Couple of baby penguins, huddling for warmth. "We can probably find somewhere to get you some hot chocolate, or something. Warm you right up."
Flower hums, right before he slips his icy hands under Sidney's shirt. Sidney leaps back with a yelp. "We should have left you there!" He has to raise his voice to be heard over Flower's giggling.
Flower reaches out and puts his hands into the pockets of Sidney's jacket, maneuvering himself so that he's behind him with his arms around him. "You would never," he coos, hooking his chin over Sidney's shoulder. The proximity makes Sidney's breath catch, makes his heart hammer hard in his chest. "You need me, no?"
"If you're so cold," he says, stumbling as he tries to walk with Flower so solidly attached to him, "shouldn't you be running back to the hotel?"
"I am warmer now," Flower argues. "You are in quite a hurry to—"
Sidney interrupts him with a coughing fit, stepping away and staggering to a nearby trashcan, hunching over it as he chokes up mouthful after mouthful of pink and purple petals.
Secret's fully out, then—the group of people that Tanger had recruited to his toss Flower into the Pacific Ocean plan weren't that far ahead of him and Flower and have come back to crowd around him. He can hear Armstrong, quietly telling people to back up, give him space.
The coughing stops, for now, Sidney catching his breath with rasping wheezes. He doesn't look at any specific person, because he doesn't know which of them would be safe to look up at.
Can't handle the devastated way that Geno and Tanger had looked at him in the hotel's hallway again. Definitely can't handle the same thing from Flower.
"Alright," he says, straightening up and looking at a building behind everybody gathered around him. "Let's get back, yeah?"
It's a lot more subdued, than the first part of the walk. But most of the team seems willing to give him space, at Army's gentle prodding. Although, Sidney kind of wishes that they wouldn't—not when it leaves him alone with all three of the men that he might be coughing up flower petals over.
"We should order food, when we are back," Tanger says, moving to stand in front of the group and turning around, walking backward so that he can face them. "Room service. Make our nutrition people mad at us."
Flower asks Tanger something in rapid French, and Tanger responds with a shrug and something that sounds like a negative. Sidney can't follow the conversation and he doesn't have the energy to try. Finally, Tanger says something with a nod, points off in a random direction, and says, "I'm going to go buy some things. Help you with your throat. See you later."
"Oh…Okay," Sidney watches him run off. "I have stuff," he admits, turning back around and checking the street signs they pass. They're close to the hotel, he's pretty sure, and laying down without having to pretend that he's not exhausted. "Cough drops and throat spray and whatever."
"It is not that kind of help," Flower explains, bumping Sidney's shoulder with his own. "It is okay, no?"
Is it okay? If he's being honest, he doesn't actually know that for sure, anymore. Yeah, the hardest part of confessing—to whichever of them—has been handled already, the part where he has to explain that he's got hanahaki, but he's going to have to face whichever of the three of them and explain that the flowers are for them and that the reason he hadn't told them is because he hadn't known that they were the one that he's in love with.
"It will be," he says, anyway. "And thanks. For whatever it is, that you and Tanger are making for me."
They reach the hotel, and bundle into the elevator. It's so easy, to fall into step with both of them, slotted right in the middle. He's ushered away to the room that Tanger's sharing with Shorty, who appears to have disappeared off into a different room for the time being. Sidney hadn't noticed him give Flower his card key, but he knows better than to ask Flower how he does just about anything.
Geno bundles him onto the bed that seems to be Tanger's, stacking up pillows so that Sidney can recline comfortably against them. "You don't have to treat me like a child," he points out, although it is nice to know that his friends care about him enough to go to all this trouble. "It's still only two flowers, it's not that bad."
"Will get worse," Geno grumbles, settling in right beside him on the bed. Flower climbs up to curl up on Sidney's other side. "If you do not tell her soon, will only get worse."
It might be you. "I know."
"I used to think it would be nice, to have somebody sick for me," Flower muses. "As a boy. I did not understand, it is very painful." He sighs, a wistful little thing. Sidney's heart swells, unbearably fond. "Everytime somebody coughed, I hoped that there would be some pissenlit, there."
Sidney shifts, looking over at him curiously. "What are those?"
Flower frowns, that face that he makes when the English translation for a word is hovering just out of his reach. "They are the ones, they are yellow, and their seeds are…" He puffs out his cheek and blows.
Sidney laughs, just this side of too hard. When he gets the petals out, he leans back again and says, "Dandelions?"
Flower blows a raspberry. "Stupid name. What lion? Pissenlit makes much more sense."
"What is dandelion?" Geno asks, reaching over and grabbing the small trashcan for Sidney to throw away his petals.
"Pissenlit!" Flower corrects.
"They're the yellow wildflowers," Sidney explains. "The ones that are everywhere in the spring and summer. And the white puffballs of seeds. You make a wish and you blow on them."
Geno blinks at him. "Oduvanchik?"
Sidney shrugs. "I guess?" He doesn't exactly know exactly what the word that Geno just used means. "I'll point one out to you, the next time we see one. Just to make sure."
It's helpful information to have, at least. Sidney still hasn't figured out how to learn what he'd be coughing up for either of the French Canadians, and here's Flower conveniently telling him exactly what his favorite blooms are.
They put something on the TV, some stupid action movie marathon on AMC that none of them are really paying attention to. It's nearly an hour later that there's a knock on the door, Flower extricating himself to let Tanger into his own room. There's a short conversation in French, Tanger irritated about something. He mentions Talbot, but that's the only word that Sidney fully understands.
He sets a Walmart bag on the desk, pulling out an eclectic mix of items: a screw-top bottle of wine, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of syrup, an orange, and a jar of cinnamon sticks.
"What are you about to feed me?" he asks, eyeing the whole thing suspiciously.
"Caribou," Tanger explains simply, as he pulls out the final item—a mug with red and pink hearts all over it. "It is a warm drink from home, and very good for when you are sick. You will feel better in no time."
"It won't kill the plant," Flower adds, before Sidney gets the chance to protest. "But your throat, it will not hurt so much."
And, well. Even if it doesn't work—and he doubts that it'll work better than the lozenges and the numbing throat spray that he already has—it warms the rest of him, to know that Flower and Tanger wanted to try.
He's less worried than ever, that any of the three of them will react poorly, when it's finally time to tell them.