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thekristen999 · 2 days

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"picking a leaf/flower petal out of their hair, or brushing dirt off of their face" for bucktommy or buddie? 👀

everything’s growing in our garden

buck/eddie | 2k | read on ao3

It’s a Saturday afternoon and Eddie is muddy-kneed and sweaty in his backyard, grass stains all down his jeans and freshly-dug dirt clinging to multiple senses—gritty between his fingers, scent mellow and earthy, in through his nose and settling soft on the back of his tongue.

The fact that it’s a Saturday afternoon on his day off is only relevant when presented with the combination of factors that find him alone in his garden today. First, he’s a dad to a teenager who has much less embarrassing things to do than hang out with his father on a weekend. Second, his two closest friends are dating each other. Third, Eddie’s not dating anybody.

So here he is, carefully planting winter squashes in the stretch of soil he’s just worked, because this is a new phase of life for him and things are changing for the different. They’ll be okay, he’ll be okay, he just doesn’t want to—get left behind. Stagnate. Hence, gardening. Maybe a little on the nose in terms of growth metaphors, but hey, he’s doing it, and that’s what counts. He thinks.

He spent a few weeks struggling to put a name to the new anxiety, or anxiety-adjacent twist in his stomach that made itself known after Buck came out to him. Not that night—that night was surprise and joy and this almost debilitating tidal wave of love he tried to wrap Buck up in when he strode across the loft into that hug.

But the next day, when Buck texted him that Tommy agreed to meet for coffee and talk? Something uncomfortable wrapped itself around Eddie’s insides, a python-grip of pressure, and it’s only gotten tighter since.

He entertained the idea that this time around maybe it was him who was jealous, his friend and his best friend dating each other and having less time for him. Except that’s not anywhere close to true—sure, his Saturday afternoons are a little emptier, but neither Buck nor Tommy have lessened the time they spend with Eddie on the whole. There’s still Muay Thai and basketball, there’s still homemade dinners and beers and movies on the couch. There’s nothing to be jealous of—he still has them both in the same capacity he always has.

Which is when he plucked at whatever tendril of envy had him in knots, following it back to the root. Watching Buck blush like a teenager in the face of Tommy’s earnest smooth-talking. Tommy absently reaching for Buck’s hand and intertwining their fingers when he drops by the station while they’re on shift. The way Buck seems to unconsciously sway into Tommy’s orbit, like a Great Dane who’s forgotten they’re too big for lap-sitting.

Maybe the thing Eddie was envious of, then, is less the replacement of a friend and more the lack of any of this, any of the easy affection, in his own relationship. Marisol was nice, kind, fine, but Eddie—he doesn’t regret ending things because he so badly wants to believe in more than fine for himself.

Marisol had looked almost relieved that she didn’t have to pull the ripcord on their relationship herself, confirming Eddie’s inkling that there was pretty much no coming back after he asked her to move out not one day post-moving-in. It’s a memory that’s going to make him wince for several years at least.

He ended up naming the ache, yanking off the mask like a Scooby-Doo villain reveal to look it in the eye. Oh, he’d thought, smoothing away a smear of soot on Buck’s nose, realisation just late enough that his hands remained steady in their obliviousness. This is the easy affection, isn’t it.

Buck’s nose crinkled with amusement and the knot in Eddie’s stomach loosened for half a second before coiling tight again, uncaring of his revelation. And, he supposes, that’s fair, because it’s not like this knowledge changes anything. Eddie can’t believe in the Universe because that’s a quick jaunt to feeling personally victimised by all of it, this singularly unbearable tragedy of timing in particular.

He's not surprised it took Buck to make him realise he’s—not straight. He hasn’t even let himself think about it, not really. The fact that it’s Buck is enough to anchor him from the alarm of a sexuality crisis. Nothing about loving Buck could ever be that scary. Still, the rest of it remains only in the recesses of his mind. He’s—on his way. He just doesn’t think he can struggle through a—a complete identity overhaul at the same time he’s struggling to make his peace with the fact that Tommy makes Buck really happy, and Eddie can’t ever be someone who puts that at risk. That Eddie’s lost Buck before he even realised he wanted him this much at all.

So. Things are changing, things are different, and Eddie has to keep moving. He still has Buck and Tommy in the same capacity he always has. He just has to come to terms with wanting more and not being able to ask for it. Letting yourself want is a slippery slope, because believing you can want and believing you can have are two different things. He’s allowed to want, but he’s not allowed to have. For now, he digs his hands into the soil, deliberate and reaching. In four months, he’ll have winter squashes. Buck will teach him that delicious soup recipe they tried last year. Eddie won’t be stuck in this moment forever.

The backdoor squeaks something awful when Buck slides it open jerkily. Eddie looks up, surprised.

“Hey,” he says, scratching at his nose. “What’re you doing here? Thought you had a lunch date.”

“I did,” Buck nods, flopping himself down on the lawn beside Eddie. “Finished early. I texted you, but I guess your phone’s inside.” He eyes Eddie’s dirt-streaked hands. “Thought I’d come see what you’re up to anyway.”

“Gardening,” Eddie tells him helpfully, and he grins.

“And here I thought you were just playing in the mud.”

Eddie flicks the dirt on his hands at Buck. He just beams up at Eddie, afternoon sun washing him the kind of golden that makes Eddie’s breath catch a little.

“What’re you planting?”

“Squash,” Eddie says, shaking the brightly coloured packet of seeds at him. “How’s Tommy?”

Buck blinks at him. “You saw him, like, two days ago.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Eddie says, sinking his hands into the raked soil for something to do. “Like—how’s dating him going?”

“Oh,” Buck says, brow scrunching for the barest second before he nods. “Good. It’s—I really like him.”

“Good,” Eddie breathes, gut-snake squeezing and squeezing inside him.

They’re quiet for a minute, bird song and breeze winding around them, and then Buck asks, “Do you, uh. Do you talk to Tommy about me, too?”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks, studying the dirt before him.

“Like. Do you ask Tommy how things are going with dating me?”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “No. No, I don’t. Why?”

Buck shrugs, picking at stalks of grass. “Why not? We’re both your friends.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?” Buck sits up.

Eddie tips some more seeds into his palm before depositing them into the next hole. “No, it’s not. Buck, you—obviously it’s different.”

“But why?” Buck presses. “I know your friendship is, like, foundationed on macho men stereotypes, but c’mon. Neither of you are capable of not, I don’t know, talking about more sensitive stuff, I guess.”

Eddie sighs at the dirt.

“Why is it different?”

“It’s different ’cause it’s you,” Eddie says. He doesn’t need to look at Buck to know he’s slow-blinking in confusion.

“W-why? You don’t think you have to put up some kind of front—with Tommy?”

“Why is this bothering you so much? Do you want me to be talking to Tommy about you?”

He finally looks at Buck, his life-ruiningly pink mouth ajar in surprise.

“N-no. Just—I don’t know.”

He’s wearing the same hang-dog expression he had been when he’d bodied Eddie at the pick-up game, half-surprise, half-misery. Eddie sighs again.

“Are you—are you worrying about something between the two of you? Because I don’t have to be in the middle of it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me. That doesn’t mean I’m not on your side.”

“There’s no sides,” Buck shakes his head. “I wouldn’t make you pick anyway.”

Eddie groans and shoves Buck back down, flat on his back with big muddy handprints on his crisp blue shirt. “I’m always on your side, you idiot. Tommy’s great, but I’ve known the guy… what, two months? You’ve been my—for six years. You’ve been—it’s different.”

“Oh,” Buck grins, bright and broad, “is that why it’s different?”

Eddie ignores him. “Is there something going on, though? Did something happen?”

“No,” Buck shakes his head, sobering a little. “Not really. I really like him, I just—I don’t know if there’s… a future, you know? We’re both having fun, but I-I just don’t know how to have that conversation with him yet. Or… if he’s on the same page and it’s all okay.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He turns the trowel over in his hands. “How come—what makes you think there’s no future with him?”

“There could be,” Buck amends. “I just—there could be something else.” He glances at Eddie and hurriedly adds, “I think there’s already… I think… you know?”

“No,” Eddie says truthfully. “But you know, which is all that matters.”

Buck exhales softly. “Right. I’m just—I think I know what it’s supposed to look like. And Tommy is fucking—wonderful. I just—he’s not what my ending looks like.”

He looks up, meeting Eddie’s eyes, and there’s something in there just as vulnerable as the night he quietly told Eddie it was a date. Eddie doesn’t know how to translate it, bowled over by the wave of frustration at not being fluent in every one of Buck’s languages.

Except—he might still be, because all that’s there is this—expectation, a weighty, desperate hope for understanding. Like Buck’s waiting. And behind that, the steadiness of the safest place Eddie’s ever known.

“It’s different for me, with you and Tommy,” Eddie begins, “because it’s you. I can—I can listen to you talk about dating other people because—I know that, I’m used to that. But—listening to Tommy talk about what it’s like dating you? When I’m just—too late—”

He doesn’t know if he cuts himself off or if he’s interrupted by Buck’s ragged inhale. Either way, he’s silent, filling up the next little hole with soil.

“Eddie—”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have—” Eddie mumbles. “I can’t—Buck—”

Buck sits back up and grabs him by his shoulders, turning him so they’re face-to-face. “Eddie.”

“I can’t,” Eddie says again, voice hoarse with emotion. “I’m—I haven’t even begun unpacking it, Buck.”

“Okay,” Buck nods. “Okay. I’m not asking for anything. Just—do you mean it? That’s all I need from you. Tell me if you mean it, Eddie, please—” His chest is heaving like he’s run ten blocks and not just been sprawled on Eddie’s lawn in the afternoon sun.

And the thing is, Buck asks for so little. He thinks he does the opposite, but everyone who’s ever loved Buck knows: Buck asks for so little. And he deserves the entire fucking world. So Eddie can spare one terrifying truth.

“There could be something else,” he echoes Buck’s earlier words. “And it’s—it’s already… it could be a really good fucking ending. I’m… I need some time to… but I think it could the right ending. For us.”

Buck swallows audibly, eyes bright when he ducks his head and nods. “S’much time as you need.”

Something in Eddie relaxes, stops constricting, takes a deep, gulping breath. He blinks quickly to stave off whatever emotion this is, sinking his hands into the last mound of dirt.

“They’ll be ready by September,” he tells Buck, a little thickly.

“September,” Buck nods. “Good month. Summer end. We can make soup.”

Eddie turns to him. “Not too long away?”

“Nah,” Buck says, hand coming up to cup Eddie’s face. Eddie freezes, but Buck’s just using the pad of his thumb to oh-so-gently brush away a smudge of dirt on Eddie’s cheek. He keeps holding Eddie’s face for a moment more before dropping his hand, shifting to examine Eddie’s neatly planted rows of squash seeds. “Besides. They’re, uh. Worth waiting for.”

“I hope so,” Eddie says softly.

Buck nudges his shoulder against Eddie’s, companionable and cross-legged beside each other in the grass. “I know so.”

#oh this was really nice #they need to talk more #and they will #fic rec #love the image of eddie in the garden

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