A Bouquet From A Man Who Never Loved Me

Nine

(lmfao I'm out of fan art so no feature this month)

The car was quiet. That comfortably boring quiet, settling throughout the car. The sound of wind rushing around the car and the occasional car disrupting it, was the only thing to hear. Matt, to the left, was out cold. His camera held limply in his hand, teetering on his knee and daring itself to fall to the floor of the car. Fitz on the right was absently scrolling through messages and emails, flagging some here and there to later forward to Ryan.
Swagger drummed his fingers against his leg anxiously. If he was being honest with himself, he didn't exactly know why he was anxious, it was just something that had come over him. He shifted and pulled his own phone from his back pocket, turning between his fingers a couple times before pressing on the power button. Once the screen lit up with the time, and recognized his face correctly, he opened Twitter. He knew he shouldn't have. Twitter was addictive, and in all the wrong ways. They had discussed it multiple times amongst themselves. Even Fitz agreed.....
No don't think of him. He scolded himself, feeling the familiar theft of air in his lungs as the bundle of stems and petals grew a little bit more. The brunet shook his head slightly and let out a heavy exhale. Tapping his dimmed screen before his phone fell asleep, he resumed scrolling through the dark toned app. It was the usual in his notifications. Dozens of replies, mentions, art, you name it. But one particular tweet mentioning his username caught his attention. He had never seen this user before. Usually he'd be able to recognize the profile picture or some sort of pattern amongst the hundreds upon hundreds of people vying for his attention in some way, shape, or form. Hesitantly, he pressed lightly on the tweet.

Keurig Machine Broke☕️ @emotionalbaggageclaim mentioned you in a tweet: "Coworker told me that @SwaggerSouls was at our minibar on flight 3570 with @goodguyfitz. I don't know who it is, but he left something behind on the flight."

His heart nearly stopped as he opened the picture attached to the tweet. Short, candy red fingernails wrapped around an almost empty whisky glass. Inside was the golden brown liquid around the bottom rim, pooled on one side. In the middle was a limp pink flower, petals stained and streaked with a dark red. Blue and yellow flowers, smaller than the pink one, dangling against the lower side of the short glass.
He had never felt such terror from such a tweet. Sure he had gotten thirst tweets and threats. But those were, to him, just annoyances. Nothing more. This tweet had him shaking. The whole world was going to know. They were going to find out he had a garden in his chest. He wanted to throw his phone out of the car, scream, get so high he would never come down, but his shaking hand had only dropped his phone to the floor of the car.

Against Fitz's knee.

The tall man, now pulled from his email adventure, by an odd sort of pain, took a glance at his shorter friend. Blue eyes widening as he did a double take, he tucked his own phone away and reached out for his friend, now shaking slightly.
"Swagger, mate, are you okay?" Ryan asked from the front. The shorter man jammed between his two taller companions, covered his mouth with his hand, loosely combing his fingers through his beard. He exhaled heavily and nodded.
"Yeah, no worries, Ryan." He replied. His voice cracked as he spoke, but he attempted to cover it by clearing his throat. Ryan didn't follow through with any kind of conversation. Fitz, though, swiveled so his back was against the door, legs tucked one under another. Placing a large hand on Swagger's shoulder, he leaned forward.
       "You sure, bud? You're looking awfully pale. Did you see one of those weirdly controversial A.I. articles on reddit again? Or is it...?"  His voice fell to a low whisper as he trailed off.
      "I'm fine, I swear, dude. It's no big deal. I'm just tired." The smaller man replied rather quickly, brushing off Fitz's larger hand from his shoulder. He didn't want Fitz to make a bigger deal of his disease than he already had.
      Feeling sick to his stomach, he bent down to grab for his phone. Fitz must've thought he was about to throw up, as he replaced his hand on Swagger's shoulder, squeezing it gently. This gesture got caught in his throat, and his body began to convulse.
      For the love of God, he thought, not now, of all times. He already gave away so much information to Fitz involuntarily, he couldn't fucking afford to give any more. He slammed a hand to his mouth to muffle his choked coughing as he fumbled around for his phone more frantically on the floor.
      Fitz pulled Swagger back up, and the shorter man turned away from him. Fitz began to panic, no one else seemed to hear the two in the car...Matt was passed out, so was Sam...Ryan was the only one awake, paying attention to the road in front of him (as he should be). He felt like he had gotten punched. In the gut. He was worried, beyond belief. It was the second time today and probably the fifth or sixth time in the past few days.
      Fitz's worry turned to anger. The more and more he thought. The more it transformed itself into a swirling ball of anger.
      Whoever was doing this to his friend, whoever was hurting him like this was a coward. An idiot. Swagger didn't deserve this whatsoever.
      If he ever found out who was behind this disease, he'd kill them.

Oof this was rushed, I wanted to at least get it out before November...apologies for errors and mistakes!