Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s Chimney, who brings it up first.

“At this point I don’t think I know how to do anything except be a dad,” he says, with a laugh, and it’s not the point of the conversation, fatherhood, only that Buck said that he’s been thinking about signing up for a sport at the local rec centre and if anyone would be willing to double up in pickleball with him, and Bobby said he and Athena already played tennis, and Hen said she didn’t believe in racket sports, and Chimney said, I would, but at this point I don’t think I know how do anything except be a dad, and Eddie:

Eddie stands at the kitchen, with his hands tight around a scalding cup of coffee, wearing the BEST DAD socks Carla and Christopher got him for Christmas, while Christopher goes to the park with his friends after school for the first time and then gets the bus home by himself and feeling weirdly, unexpectedly, unstitched by it all.

“It’s like,” Chimney continues, unaware of Eddie’s crisis, “ever since Jee was born my entire capacity has just been about being a father. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when she gets old enough to start doing things on her own.”

Bobby laughs warmly. “I think you’re a while away from that, Chim.”

Chimney points at him with his mug, coffee sloshing over the side and dripping to the counter below. “But I’m not! We finally managed to find a good carer who didn’t want to upend our spice cabinet or collect dust bunnies, which is good, but it’s like… every time she leaves in the morning with Jee, every time Jee just isn’t in my sight, I feel empty. Like I’m just counting down the minutes until I can see her again.”

Bobby’s smile comes a little kinder, now. “Well, I think that’s just being a father.”

“Not to shift the conversation,” Buck says, “but is that a yes to pickleball? I need to RSVP a player by tomorrow.”

“It’s a maybe,” says Chimney, and Buck nods, firing off a text on his phone. Probably to Connor, his pickleball opposition, who plays with his wife Kameron every Thursday and is now the reason Buck has started showing up for Thursday school runs in athleisure. Eddie’s fine about it all, obviously.

“I mean, I get it,” Hen says. “Karen took up crochet when Denny started going on playdates. We have so many scarves I don’t know what to do with them all.”

Eddie—thrums, a little. “How did you cope?” he says, and he means for it to come out teasing, but it ends up a little vulnerable. “With—with Denny doing things by himself?”

Hen snorts. “Fostering.”

Yeah. That’s not going to work.

“Is that why we all got hats last Christmas?” Chimney says.

“Yes,” Hen says, “which I’m sure you all still own and regularly wear, right?”

Chimney conspicuously slurps his coffee. Eddie says, “…Right.”

“I still have mine,” Buck offers. Eddie thinks that of everyone, Buck is the only one who means this: the Wilsons’ Christmas hats were thoughtful but a little ill-fitting, so to speak, and Eddie, who has never been much of a hat man, had tucked it away somewhere and promptly forgotten where. But Buck wears his hat still, keeps it on a hook on the back of his closet door with his scarf and pulls it out every time there’s a cold snap.

Anyway: “I still have mine,” Buck offers, and also, “Do you think maybe I should take up crochet?” and Chimney says, “If it means I don’t have to play pickleball with you, then yes,” and Buck hip-bumps him hard enough that he careers into the counter.

“You’re gonna have a great time with pickleball,” Buck says. “Eddie just won’t come because he’s allergic to sports involving rackets.”

“I’m a single dad,” Eddie says, with an eye-roll. “When am I meant to have time to fit in pickleball?”

Buck pouts at him a little, bottom lip red and biteable, but the conversation moves on, Chimney complaining that Buck’s oat milk creamer has congealed in his coffee and Buck immediately accusing him of refrigerating it wrong, like there is a wrong or right way to refrigerate things outside of putting it on a shelf, but Eddie is still caught a little behind. When am I meant to have time? had come out on instinct, because it was true—but probably not anymore. He didn’t have time to do things for himself when Christopher demanded his twenty-four-seven attention, when the only time he’d get for himself were the rare occasions he’d finish a shift during school hours—but that’s not the case now. Christopher is becoming independent: when he’s at home, he rarely needs Eddie around to help him with homework, or entertain him, because he’s old enough to learn to entertain himself with his books and his Switch. And that’s on the rare occasion he will be home, because he’s a popular, well-liked kid, who has broken the first barrier of going out with friends without Eddie there.

Eddie at once feels enormously sad. His little boy is growing up. Eventually he’s going to be too cool to spend afternoons with him and Buck at the zoo, or the aquarium, or the beach, wanting to do those things with friends instead. And Eddie…

What is Eddie meant to do, then? For so long he’s just been Christopher’s father. Now he’s at the beginning of relinquishing that, at least a little, at least for a couple of hours a day where he’s not at work. He probably will have time for pickleball. He’ll have time for pickleball and watching TV that isn’t about cartoon trains and trying out new restaurants and going on more extreme, less CP-friendly hikes, but…

But he doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t know how to do that. As loathe as he is to admit it, he doesn’t know how to be his own person independent of Christopher.

But he’s going to have to.

Shit.

*

“Do you think I need hobbies?” Eddie says.

If Frank is thrown, he doesn’t show it. “Are you thinking about taking up a new hobby?”

“No,” Eddie says, and then, “yes,” and then he groans, putting his face into his hands. “I don’t know.”

Frank patiently waits while Eddie nervously unravels a loose thread of his sweater. He sits through three rotations before he says, “Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind, Eddie?”

“Christopher’s going out without me now,” Eddie says. “And I just—I realised that I don’t really know how to—exist. Without him around. Like, I don’t know how to be a person with purpose if my purpose isn’t being his father.”

“You’ll always be his father, Eddie.”

“Not actively. Not in the way I used to, where I was his hero and we used to spend time together. Now I have to—wrangle him, if I want to get him to do something with me. He’s already cancelled once on Friday movie night. Most days he comes home and goes straight to his room. I only ever see him at dinner now.”

“Ah,” Frank says, knowingly. “Growing up.”

Eddie both loves and hates that tone. It means he’s probably on the verge of an epiphany, except historically Frank’s epiphanies have thrown his life out of whack for years at a time. “Do you have kids?” he says.

“Two. Eighteen and twenty-two.”

Eddie tries to picture Christopher at twenty-two and feels a little nauseous. “How did you deal?”

Instead of answering, Frank says, “Are you wanting to pick up hobbies to expand your recreational horizons, or to distract yourself from figuring out—how did you put it—how to become a person with purpose?”

Eddie scowls at him. “Maybe I like pottery.”

Frank ignores this. Eddie decides this is fair; no one likes pottery. “When our oldest moved out to college, we went through an almost grieving process. It’s natural—the house has to adjust to the loss of a member. It felt extremely empty for the first few weeks. But they say when the first child leaves, all the dynamics in the family shift. Your relationship changes—with your spouse, with your other children. You have to take on new responsibilities, learn to fill the time that they used to fill. For the first time, my husband and I could prioritise our relationship. We took cooking classes; we made a list of restaurants we’d always wanted to visit; we planned day trips out to Laguna.”

Eddie’s face must be a little confused, because Frank puts his pen down.

“I’m saying, think what makes you happy, Eddie,” he says, kinder. “If that means experimenting with new hobbies for the next several months, then experiment. Try on different hats; see what sticks. Use this time to figure out who you are in the absence of your son.”

Eddie feels very small when he says, “What if I can’t?”

“Then take it one step at a time,” Frank says, gentle. “What is something you’ve always wanted to do? Something you’ve always put off because you never had the time or capabilities. We’ll start there.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment, thinking about it. What is something he wants to do? He always enjoyed playing baseball growing up—but that’s not what Frank is asking. He’s never been particularly interested in arts and crafts, and cooking, what he’s always wanted to get better at, he actually did get better at during his time working a nine-to-five at dispatch.

What else is there?

His mind, unbidden, goes to the row of plants on the windowsill in the living room. It is Christopher and Buck’s pride of joy: a line of mismatching glass bottles, beer and soda and Buck’s gross kombucha bottles all stripped of their paper labels, scrubbed clean and housing a stemmy green plant, propagated from the hanging ivy in the hallway that Buck spent hours clumsily weaving together a macrame sling for. The windowsill is half stacked, expanding with every jam jar or Coke bottle that gets finished and left to soak overnight in the kitchen sink, Christopher and Buck giddily filling it the next day with water from the tap and plant food, snipping off another leaf from the ivy plant and twisting inside.

Growing up, Eddie’s mother always took pride in her garden, hours and hours spent on her knees trowelling the dirt or watering the flowers. The love was passed down from Abuela, Eddie knows, because when he was young he remembers Abuela joining her, fingers expertly, gently working the soil, a look of concentration on his mother’s face as she copied her own mother’s movements. As Eddie grew up, and Abuela got older, she would sit on a deck chair and watch, and it would be Eddie and his sisters in her place instead, clumsily copying their mother, skinning their knees on the flagstones when they would run too fast with the wheelbarrow.

Sophia and Adriana were passable enough that they kept the garden alive under Helena’s instruction, but it was as though Eddie had poisonous fingers. He could never work the soil the way they could; he’d sever roots with the trowel; he’d over-water plants and drown them; or conversely, under-water and come back to them shrivelled and keeled over. Eventually, Helena not-so-gently told him that it wasn’t his fault, that his abuelo also had a black thumb, but that maybe it would be better if he stuck to the hardier tasks like helping his dad with the gutters.

For eleven-year-old Eddie, this was no skin off his back, but it was something that always stayed in his mind, especially during his medic training when the fingers that would kill his mother’s hydrangeas learned to knit people back together. He thought about the phrase black thumb: would see a lot of real black thumbs in combat, from swelling gone wrong, necrosis, broken bones that never set, and then would look down at his own and remember using them to push soil over the roots of his mother’s new erigeron bush like kneading a sore muscle.

“I’ve always wanted to have a garden like my mother,” he admits.

Frank smiles, and the strange tight breath lodged in Eddie’s chest loosens, just a little. “Okay, then,” he says. “We’ll begin there.”

*

Eddie starts with tomatoes.

Does a cursory Google; finds that they’re easy to grow, unfussy about space and can be potted in windowsills. The next time he drops Christopher off to a classmate’s house, he takes the long way home and stops at a nursery on his way back, picks up seed packets, compost, and the liquid plant food that he knows Buck uses for the ivy and is running out of.

Then he sets off home with his haul to grow a fucking garden.

Buck arrives in the middle of the process, soil and seeds scattered across the countertop, Eddie’s hands braced either side of the mess and head stooped low as he frowns at his phones for guidance on how much he’s supposed to water them at first. He hears Buck before he sees them: the click of the front door, the squeak of the floorboards as he tromps in and kicks off his sneakers, a warbled, “Hey!” and then, quieter, “Oh shit—” as he presumably nearly drops whatever he’s carrying. More creaking floorboards, and the scuff of his socks as he pads in the kitchen.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” he says, and Eddie looks up; feels his face soften mostly on instinct as he takes him in, stood in the archway of the kitchen door, the flush to his cheeks, the brown paper bag he’s holding. He has his gym bag slung over one shoulder, Karen’s knit hat on his head. His big toe peeks out his sock; Eddie averts his eyes to the pot. “What are you doing?”

“Growing tomatoes,” Eddie says.

Buck takes this entirely in his stride. “Cool,” he says, and comes past, shoulders brushing as he moves towards the fridge. “Sorry I’m late—I stopped by the store, picked up the onions and leeks for the soup tonight on my way back.”

Eddie’s a little distracted by the packing of the soil; mostly distracted by Buck, a line of heat at his back. “Did you remember—”

“Yeah, I got the garlic.” A cool wave, as Buck opens the fridge. Over his shoulder, he continues, “Plus some pink ladies, they were on sale for only seventy cents. One’s kinda dinged but we can probably cut it off, I think it’s just surface bruising.”

Eddie bites down a smile. “Is this because you want to make that apple tart Rahim made on Bake Off last week?”

“…No,” Buck says, and Eddie does smile, then, because they’re both faced away and he knows Buck can’t see. “But if I hypothetically did want to, someone on Reddit did just upload their closest approximation at the recipe, so it’s not like I’d be flying blind.”

“Mm.” It’s indulgent, but maybe everything is, around Buck. He gently pats down the last of the compost over the seeds, and then turns to wash his hands in the sink; finds Buck already leaning against the counter beside it, hat off, hair a little rumpled and curling, watching as he switches the tap on. Eddie counts to three in his head before Buck carefully knocks their elbows together, where their aligning tattoos sit.

“What’s with the tomatoes?” he says.

Eddie shrugs. “Just wanted a project.”

It’s not untrue; granted, he probably wouldn’t have done it without Frank politely strong-arming him, but he did want a project. He doesn’t tell Buck that, though, not because he wouldn’t understand, because he would—because if anyone knows therapy homework, it’s Buck—but because, for now, he wants to keep this one to himself. Wants to quietly fill in the pieces of who he is in the absence of his son amongst the weeds with dirt on his knees and beneath his nails like he’s eleven again and do it, at least while the tomatoes are still pushing shoots through the ground, on his own.

(Besides—it’s not like Buck won’t be on his knees beside him, humming in the sunshine with a smudge of soil at the end of his nose. There doesn’t have to be justification for Buck to be there; he just will.

It’s been a recent topic of conversation, in therapy, Buck and his help: even more recent, Eddie understanding there are no parameters or expectations, no shame in leaning on it, not with Buck. He thinks there’ll always be a knee-jerk instinct to reject help, with him; remnants from his father that even therapy struggles to dislodge. But through it all, Buck has always remained; Eddie never has to earn his presence. He’s just there, buying groceries and caulking cracks in the bathroom and cleaning the kitchen.)

“Okay,” says Buck, but he nudges their elbows together once more, skin warm from the coat he’s just taken off: like maybe he knows, without Eddie having to say anything. “What kind are you growing?”

“Heirloom. The guy at the store said they were, uh...” Eddie checks the front of the seed packet. “Determinate.”

Buck frowns. “What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. I think that they’ll grow into a bush.”

“Oh,” says Buck, and they both look down at the tray. It looks kinda pathetic, little plastic slots of damp soil carefully patted over a neat two seeds per section, and Eddie can feel himself begin to prickle with something like embarrassment when Buck says, “So what I’m hearing is lots of pizza parties in our future,” and then he bumps the apple he’s holding against the inside of his elbow, catching it with the other hand.

Eddie blinks. “What?”

“Tomato sauce,” Buck says. “Bush means more, right?”

“I think indeterminate means more,” Eddie says, because the seller had said a lot of things about tomatoes and Eddie had only taken in about half—something about vine tomatoes producing a bigger yield?—but Buck looks so proud of himself he doesn’t push the matter when he smiles guilelessly at him. “Stop throwing the apples, you’re going to bruise them even more.”

Buck does it once more—toss in the air, ricochet off the soft skin on the inside of his elbow, and then catch in the same hand—before the next toss is obediently in the direction of the fruit bowl. Eddie winces as it lands with a heavy thud—another bruise, no doubt—but he can’t help the reluctant smile when Buck mutters, “Kobe” to himself and then does a triumphant shuffle across the kitchen to the cupboards, opening one of them no doubt in search of one of his gross flax protein bars.

“How was the pickleball?” Eddie says, amused.

“Mm!” Buck turns around, teeth around the wrapper of his bar as he wrestles it open. Eddie politely averts his gaze from his pink mouth. “Good, actually. Once Chim stopped complaining that it was less cool tennis we whipped Connor and Kam’s asses.”

“It is less cool tennis,” Eddie says, only so Buck will sneer at him and spray flaxseed all over the kitchen floor when he finally gets the wrapping open. “Do you think he’s gonna come again?”

“You know, I think so. He got really into it near the end, and it’s a fun change of routine from lifting weights at the station gym.”

Eddie can’t disagree. On one hand, lifting weights gives Buck those delicious bunchy arms. On the other, pickleball has toned his calves in a way that makes Eddie’s mouth go a little dry whenever he wears shorts. It’s lose-lose either way.

He presses his hands to the edge countertop so they don’t reach out to touch the edge of Buck’s workout singlet where it is dark with sweat. “It’s nice that you and Connor got back in touch,” he says, instead of that.

Buck’s face does something kinda complicated at that, but before Eddie can dwell on it he’s taking another bite of his protein bar. “Yeah, it’s been good to see him again.”

Eddie frowns at him, but doesn’t push. “Are he and Kameron living here permanently?”

“I think so—Pasadena, I’m pretty sure. Apparently the schools are good there.”

Ah. That must explain the odd expression. It’s the one thing they don’t really talk about, Buck’s craving for a family: Eddie thinks Buck’s mostly just quietly embarrassed about how hungry he is to be loved, how desperately he aches to settle down and have a child, that bringing it up would only leave him humiliated and hurting. He sees the way his face twists sometimes, when he holds Jee; the careful way he strokes a hand through Christopher’s hair, which Christopher still allows even now he’s started shrugging off Eddie.

Anyway, Eddie knows that seeing people his age begin to settle down can awaken whatever yearns deep within Buck that he tries his hardest to hide. It would explain the strange look of almost sadness that had crossed his face at the mention of Connor and Kameron’s kids.

“That’s pretty close,” Eddie says, to steer the conversation away from whatever is making Buck look wistful, all of a sudden. “You’d think they’d try and get out of pickleball range.”

It works: Buck barks out a laugh, throws a pumpkin seed from his bar at Eddie that Eddie ducks, laughing. “Fuck you! I’ll have you know it’s the fastest growing sport across America.”

“Like mould,” says Eddie.

“I’ll get you into it, Diaz, mark my words. Any day now you’ll be pickling with me.” Buck finishes the rest of his bar, catching the end of it in his mouth and crumpling the wrapper in one hand. “Okay, water your tomatoes, they’re gonna shrivel. I’ll start chopping the veggies for the soup.”

He side-steps him, touching a hand to his back as he reaches for the knife block, and there’s a lump in Eddie’s throat, all of a sudden. “Okay,” is all he can say, around it, and reaches for the new watering can.

He waters the tomatoes.

*

It’s the first cloudless day of April that shoots first break soil. Eddie gets up early, as he always does, shuffles into the kitchen to make the strongest blackest coffee his Hildy will produce to keep him awake behind the wheel for Christopher’s school run, and then over the rim of his mug—something misshapen and a little chipped at the handle that Christopher brought home from his third-grade grade pottery club—he catches sight of a flash of green from the tray on the windowsill.

He's over in an instant. Sure enough: the beginning of shoots. A handful of bright green buds breaking up through the tight push of the soil, about eight in total, and Eddie had planted fifteen, so that means that over half have sprouted. He didn’t overwater them; he didn’t leave them to die of thirst.

Holy shit.

He’s so preoccupied by them, experimentally touching the tip of his finger to their tops to reassure himself they’re real and alive, he barely notices the creak of floorboards behind him until Christopher says, “Dad?”

“Chris, look,” Eddie says. “Come, quick.”

He can almost hear Christopher’s dubious frown as he makes his way over. “Are there foxes?”

“No, look.”

Christopher comes to a stop beside him, and Eddie eagerly points out the green shoots. When he glances over, Christopher doesn’t seem very impressed.

“What am I looking at?” he says.

Eddie frowns. “The—Chris, the shoots. Look. They’ve grown!”

Christopher casts another dutiful look at the tray.

“Isn’t it cool?” Eddie pushes.

“I guess,” Christopher says. “I thought that there were tomatoes.”

“Not yet. That’ll take another few months at least.”

Christopher gives him a hug. A little surprised, Eddie puts his arm around him to hold him close; it’s not often Christopher wants a hug these days, let alone instigates them. But then Christopher tells him kindly, “I’m happy you’re happy, Dad,” and Eddie realises it’s one of pity.

“Thanks, kiddo,” he says, anyway, a little put-out.

Christopher gives him one last sympathetic squeeze before he shuffles away in search of Pop-Tarts. Despite his son’s less than enthusiastic response, Eddie doesn’t move away from the sill; can’t tamp down the flicker of excitement in him as he surveys his eight new shoots. Touches a finger back to the new vulnerable bud of one.

He grew them. They’re alive and lasting under his care. In his mother’s garden, his seeds, marked by a carefully personalised popsicle stick labelled EDDIE in Sofia’s neatest print, would always be the ones left barren; the strip between his sisters’ own popsicle-stick-marked rows that remained dead and empty even as Sofia and Adriana’s sprouted watercress and lima beans—and now his tomatoes have broken ground.

He takes a picture of them, just for himself. Thinks, for a moment, about sending it to Buck, but doesn’t: wants to keep this to himself, at least at first. In a strange way, as he looks down at these tentative little shoots still new enough to die, he’s reminded, bizarrely, of when Shannon fell pregnant with Christopher. They’d been anxious about it ever since the condom split, Shannon chewing her nails further and further down with every day that passed and her period didn’t come, and then eventually the pregnancy test she took in the school bathroom, Eddie in the stall next to her because Shannon wanted moral support but didn’t want him to see the look on her face if it was positive. When it was positive. He’d heard the hitching sob, though.

They’d done three more, splurged $25.99 for the fourth to make absolute certain, and then snapped them all, flushed them down the toilets, and sat in silence on the closed lids touching sneakers beneath the stall separator trying to come to terms with it. Had agreed, the two of them, not to tell anyone, not until they were certain. “Complications can happen up to fourteen weeks,” Shannon had said, and Eddie remembers this complicated bile-like feeling that had raised in him, at the hope in her voice. “We’ll wait until then. We don’t want to stress out our parents unnecessarily.”

In a way, as Eddie looks down at these little tomato shoots, still vulnerable with breath, as damp as Christopher had been when Eddie had first laid eyes on him wet and tiny and screaming in Shannon’s arms, he’s reminded of that moment, the careful first moments where things were still tender and uncertain. Christopher was born on a warm evening in August; and now, on the first sunny day of spring, Eddie’s tomatoes have broken ground.

He smiles to himself, touches a finger to the tip of one for the last time, and then turns to leave.

There’s a kind of spring to his step when he arrives at the firehouse. Most of A-shift are already upstairs, so he takes the stairs two at a time with the box of pastries he picked up from the bakery on Bluebell, and Chimney, the only one facing him, grins a little as he approaches. “My, Diaz,” he says. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

“And has blueberry danishes,” Hen says, without even turning around. She snaps her fingers over her shoulder. “Bring them to me.”

“Please,” Eddie says, but does so anyway, sliding the box across the counter and then wrapping an arm around her shoulders from behind in a hug. Hen indulgently tolerates this for a few moments before briskly patting his hand. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she says, distracted. He obligingly unwraps his arm and peers over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“The crossword.” She reaches for a danish without even looking away from the paper in front of her. “I don’t suppose you’d know a seven-letter word for delight.”

“I wouldn’t,” Eddie says.

Chimney points at him, half a danish already in his mouth. “That’s what I said.”

“Useless, all of you,” Hen mutters.

Eddie gives her one last shoulder-squeeze, which she sighs about but leans into, even as she stays frowning over the rim of her glasses down at her crossword. Then, for the first time since coming in, Eddie looks at Buck, who is frowning down at a project of his own: something knotted and alarmingly blue tangled around two sticks.

“Oh, I didn’t realise I was disrupting the hobbyists,” Eddie says, amused.

Chimney grins even wider, shoves the other half of the danish in his mouth. “Buck’s started knitting.”

Still buried in his yarn, Buck snits, “It’s crochet, actually.”

Eddie is so very warmed. “What are you making?”

The direct address has Buck looking up for the first time, and when he sees who it is his face softens into something private and pleased. That’s been another thing Eddie’s been working on with Frank, understanding that he’s valuable beyond what he can offer and is worthy of taking up space despite what he has done, and it’s never been easier to believe then when Buck looks at him like that, like he’s just simply glad he’s here. “I’m trying to make a sweater,” he says. “Or a hat. Not sure yet.”

“Aren’t you… currently making it?”

“I’m letting the crochet hook lead me,” Buck says, and holds up something that looks like neither a sweater nor a hat but perhaps, generously, a scarf. Eddie says generously, because Chimney, who has none of the same reservations, says, “I thought that was one of your yarn balls.”

Buck looks down at it, dismayed. Hen, who has evidently given up on her crossword, says, “I think it’s nice you’ve gotten into crochet, Buck. Karen can probably give you some tips; she’s hidden projects all over the house so she’s never less than a few feet away from a crochet hook. The other day I found the bear she’s making Denny for his birthday in our ensuite.”

“What’s inspired this?” Eddie says. “I didn’t know you knitted.”

“It’s not knitting,” Buck says, mostly on instinct, and then shrugs. “I don’t know. I just… felt like I needed to broaden my horizons, is all.”

Eddie frowns. “Is this another ‘Age of Absolutely’ thing?”

Buck avoids eye contact, which means yeah, it is, and Eddie’s just glad Buck’s taken something from it other than alfalfa and whey protein shakes. (He says other than, because to his dismay, Buck is still drinking them.) “I just feel like I needed some new hobbies,” he says. “I mean, you’re growing tomatoes now.”

Chimney and Hen look at Eddie in interest. Eddie quickly deflects, “I don’t get what that has to do with crochet.”

“Also, didn’t we just play pickleball?” Chimney says. “Why do you need another hobby?”

“I’m trying to expand my horizons in everything,” says Buck. “You know, just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. I also subscribed to Poem of the Day and downloaded Duolingo,” he adds to Hen, whose eyebrows have risen over the frame of her glasses. “I’m learning Spanish.”

“Well, that’s good, Buck,” she says, after a pause.

Buck straightens a little, pleased at the approval. “Gracias.”

“Well, I think it’s great,” Chimney says. “It’s never too late to pick up new hobbies. Maddie’s trying to get me to come to yoga with her.”

Buck narrows his eyes at him. “Maddie does yoga on Thursdays.” Chimney conspicuously sips his coffee. “Chim! You need to keep pickling with me!”

“But you’re knitting now!” Chimney protests, and Buck says, “Crochet!” with all the indignation of a man who’s just been mortally insulted, and Hen’s eyes get that fiendish look in them as she looks back down at the crossword at the same time as Bobby approaches.

“Good morning, team,” he says amiably, and then, “Oh, who brought in pastries?”

“I did,” Eddie says. “They’re for everyone.”

“Oh, I really shouldn’t,” Bobby says, but his fingers are already inching toward the box. “Are they blueberry?”

“Turkish,” Hen exclaims, and everyone glances at her, alarmed, but her head is bowed as she triumphantly scrawls away at her crossword. “Seven-letter word for delight. Turkish. Oh, clever, clever, New York Times.”

“You loved pickleball,” Buck accuses Chimney.

Chimney sighs. “I know,” he says forlornly. “God help me, I did.”

Bobby pauses, a little awkwardly, with a danish halfway to his mouth. “I feel like I have walked into the middle of something,” he says, which is the exact moment the firehouse alarm goes off, and Hen triumphantly slaps her pen down over her now-completed crossword. Eddie just laughs and claps Bobby’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

The call is fairly run-of-the-mill, just a woman locked out on her balcony, but the next couple of hours are bloated with a string of back-to-back calls, close enough together Eddie usually only manages time to go to bathroom before the alarm is going off again and they’re climbing back into the truck. By the time it reaches five, the calls have slowed down, and when they finally get back to the station Buck is disappearing in the direction of the showers after getting hosed down by a skunk, and Chimney takes off to call Maddie, probably about Buck getting hosed down by a skunk, so Eddie takes the brief reprieve to go to the blissfully peaceful upstairs, populated only by members of B-shift quietly reading or on their phones.

He's in the middle of making himself a cup of tea when Hen settles in beside him, her reusable keep cup in hand. Without even asking, he doles out hot water from the kettle into her cup, and then his his, and she makes a pleased affirmative sound as she hunts around for a teabag. It’s only in the last while that they’ve gotten a kettle; as the only tea-drinkers, Eddie and Hen had been petitioning for years for it. It only took Eddie’s breakdown for Bobby to cave, which makes the whole breakdown worth it.

“Long one, today,” she says.

Eddie laughs a little. “Twelve hours down, twelve to go.”

“Makes you wonder why we ever signed up.”

“Because sometimes Buck gets skunked and makes it all worth it?”

Hen laughs at that, loud enough one of B-shift scowl at her. “True, true.”

They lapse into contented silence as Eddie hunts around in the refrigerator for milk. When he emerges, Hen is leaning her hip against the sideboard, hands both around her keep cup as she holds it close to her chest, smile warm. “So,” she says. “How are you dealing?”

Eddie frowns a little. “Dealing with what?”

“The Christopher situation.”

He’s so surprised that for a second he can’t even speak. It must be evident across his face, because Hen smiles at him, kindly. “Eddie,” she says, “I have a kid too. I know what it’s like when they start leaving the nest.”

Of course—Denny’s only a couple of years older than Christopher. It probably wasn’t long ago Hen was having this exact problem: only, Hen also has a wife and does still-life drawing every Sunday morning, so her problem was probably more solely about the empty-nest of it instead of being accompanied by an identity crisis. Eddie winces a little as he closes the refrigerator. “Honestly?” he says. “It’s been hard.”

Hen smiles, sympathetically. “I’ve been there.”

“I just don’t know what to do with myself now that he’s not around as much. I have so much free time to fill.”

“Maybe you should take Buck up on pickleball,” she says, and despite himself Eddie snorts so loudly the same B-shift firefighter passively clicks his tongue. “Yeah, as soon as I said it I regretted it. But maybe…”

Eddie frowns, a little suspicious. Hen’s looking at him kinda guilelessly, like this is why she’d asked at all, which typically never bodes well for Eddie. “Maybe what?”

“I don’t want to push you into anything,” she begins, which only makes Eddie more suspicious, “but I just remembered what we talked about, a while ago, about you thinking about maybe putting yourself back in the dating pool.”

“I did say that,” Eddie says, warily.

Hen smiles at him apologetically. “If it means anything, this was Karen’s idea.” That does not, in fact, mean anything, because Eddie thought he and Karen were closer than this. He is bringing this up at their next wine night. “But one of her colleagues Maggie broke up with her partner a few months ago and has just redownloaded Tinder.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Are you telling me to get Tinder?”

Hen elbows him. “I’m telling you, Karen has a friend who is both cute and single, and I thought it might be nice if you guys got in touch.”

It’s instinctual, to shrug this away; say, I’m not really looking to date, like has been the line since he woke up to Shannon’s side of the bed empty and cold. Ana had been mostly accidental, an, oh, I guess this is happening, and then six months of waking up with a breath caught in his throat like the edge of a scream. But it’s been over a year since Ana, since anyone, and since then Eddie’s put in the work, gone to therapy and pushed his way with gritted teeth through every last trauma Frank had drudged up.

And it’s true, that Eddie had told Hen, a while ago, that he was thinking about maybe putting himself out there, a little thrilling in its newness again. So maybe what is the harm of following it through, going on a date with Karen’s single coworker? There’s something in him that bizarrely, thinks of Buck, but he dismisses it: he’s come to terms that few people will ever mean as much to him as Buck does, his love for him always-remaining, nestled warm and familiar in the ventricles of his heart, but he can’t keep playing pretend in his head when Buck makes pancakes at his stove or replaces his lightbulbs that he has him the way he wishes he could. Frank would say something about how he deserves more than make-believe—and while even on a good day he doesn’t believe he deserves Buck, maybe there is some truth in that.

So Eddie says, “Do you have her number?”

“I don’t,” Hen says, but she pulls out her phone to text Karen, eyes carefully hopeful. “Do you want it?”

“Maybe, yeah,” Eddie says.

Hen smiles; shoots off the message, and then puts her phone down. “Okay,” she says. “That’s good. I think you’ll like her.”

She wouldn’t say that if she didn’t genuinely mean it. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll keep you updated.”

She squeezes his arm, probably because she doesn’t want to embarrass him by pulling him into a hug, but Eddie feels it all the way down to his bones; feels strangely excited, in the way he hasn’t been since he was a kid and steeling himself to ask Shannon Parker to the sophomore formal. There’s something a little sad in him, too, a kind of grief for the loss of the imaginary family he’d been dreaming about with Buck, but—it’s one date. His first date, really, in years. Between the grief, he’s sort of really proud of himself.

“Thank you,” he adds, to her, and Hen’s smile softens like she knows his train of thought.

“Of course,” she says.

*

The coworker’s name is Maggie; she has three dogs, moved to California from Minneapolis five years ago, and when she laughs it’s with her whole body. The date is nice, but they agree they’re better as friends, and part amicably: still, when Eddie gets back home, his body is thrumming with adrenaline, the good kind like when he’s just gotten off a rollercoaster.

He never casually dated before: Shannon was his first, in every way, and they’d been so young when they got together and were together so long that he’d never gotten time to experiment or date around like the other boys did. But he finds he kind of enjoys it, enjoys dressing up nice and going out for dinner and getting to know new people. So when Hen asks how it went, he tells her the truth, but then shyly says that if she knows of anyone else, he wouldn’t be necessarily opposed to it. Her eyes brighten, hand tightening around his arm, and she says, I’ll have an ask around.

And so it becomes a game of telephone: friends of friends of friends, asking around for their single thirty-year-old friends, and Eddie finds himself with a new blind date every fortnight. Some he encounters for the first time at the dinner table, only going off a name and an outfit description; others, he gets the numbers of beforehand, and spends the upcoming week on-and-off messaging. It’s fun, kinda, even if he gets home from each one feeling a little—wanting, but he puts it down to each one never quite fitting, like a suit jacket tailored slightly wrong.

And then Alex.

Alex is a friend of a friend of Karen’s; someone from her book club who apparently also specialises in single friends. Her number gets passed down the grapevine to Eddie, and quickly she and Eddie are texting—and Eddie can’t help but feel a little different about this one. They’re connecting in a way he hasn’t quite with the other women, conversation flowing with an ease he’d missed, and there are some moments he finds his cheeks bright with a smile, having sat on his phone for half an hour already texting the night away.

So when Alex messages asking if he wants to go out, he’s ready.

*

Eddie’s palms are clammy against his thighs.

The restaurant Alex has chosen is nice: something off the main street Eddie has passed a few times, always distantly wondered about but never ventured into. It’s also nice, the sort with waiters in waistcoats and wine menus. Eddie feels underdressed in a button-down and dark jeans, which also isn’t helping the nerves. Nor the fact Alex is running late.

She’d texted ahead, I’m so sorry, Eddie, traffic is terrible! but Eddie’s been seated for fifteen minutes, has fended away three waiters thus far, and can tell they’re getting a little twitchy about how long he’s been sat without ordering. When the fourth approaches, he knows he’s pushing it, so he does a panicked skim of the wine menu he’s been handed, and, with a feeling he’ll probably be laughed out if he asks for a beer, asks for a lime and soda. The waiter nods and swans away, at the same time as Eddie’s phone clutched tight in his sweaty hand, buzzes.

Just arrived! Wearing a green sweater :)

Eddie expels a nervous breath, scrubbing his hands again down his jeans, and scans the restaurant. It’s evening time on a Tuesday, so it’s decently busy, milling with servers and people trying to find tables. There’s a man in a suede jacket picking his way through the hubbub; a woman on her phone near the corner of the room, looking like she’s trying to find someone. Eddie sits up a little, but—no, she’s in a red dress, not a green sweater.

He deflates a little. The man in the suede jacket is drawing near, and Eddie twists his watch, looking past him for the entrance of the restaurant—but then the man is slowing to a stop in front of him, touching a hand to the back of the chair across the table.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is bright, mouth curving into a shy smile. “Eddie?”

The action has his jacket shifting a little. Beneath it reveals a green sweater.

Eddie’s mouth goes very dry. “Uh. Yes?”

“Hey,” the man—Alex—says again, only this one is tinged more with relief, less the polite hello you’d say to a stranger and more the familiar hey you’d say to someone you recognise, and before Eddie can say anything he’s taking off the jacket, draping it over the back of the chair and sitting down. “I’m so sorry again that I’m late; traffic this time of day is awful, I don’t know why I thought I could get from Glendale to downtown LA in a reasonable amount of time during rush hour.”

Eddie wishes he could respond in some way, but his mouth feels kind of glued. Thankfully, before he can, the server returns with his drink, and then turns to Alex, asks if he’s ready to order. Alex shakes out his damp hair, explains with a friendly smile that he’s just arrived and hasn’t had time to look just yet, and Eddie closes his fingers around his glass, forces himself to feel every point of dampness where his skin touches the condensation, and tries not to panic.

“Maybe five minutes?” Alex says to the server, who nods, and disappears. It’s only when Alex turns to Eddie, a little expectantly, that Eddie realises he has yet to respond to his previous statement about traffic.

Maybe, if it were any other time, Eddie would have kept quiet. Responded, tell me about it, get that warm smile back on Alex’s face; sat through dinner like there wasn’t something in him winding a little uncomfortably tight at the idea of being on a date with another man, and then never seen him again.

But Eddie has also been going to therapy for a year and a half. He’s talked himself hoarse about Shannon, about Ana, about how her mouth on his made him feel nauseous, how her hands on him made him feel like his skin and body didn’t belong to him, and this is a handsome, smiling, affable man sat across from him, face lit warmly by candlelight, and the strange breath caught in Eddie’s throat isn’t anxiety—isn’t anything definitive, nothing he can put his finger on, but it's there, lodged tight—but he doesn’t deserve to be lied to, and Eddie doesn’t deserve to let himself biting his tongue hurt him again.

“Eddie?” Alex says, and this one is a little gentler; a little concerned. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, sorry,” Eddie says. He scrubs a hand up the thigh of his jeans; curls it, briefly, into a fist. “Um, I’m really sorry about this, but I think there’s been a slight misunderstanding here.”

“Oh?”

Alex’s face is carefully schooled, watching him. Eddie swallows past the lump in his throat and says, “Yeah, I—sorry, this is really awkward, but I was sort of under the assumption you were a woman.”

He curls his fist a little tighter beneath the tablecloth. Across the table, Alex’s expression clears, but into something a little guarded. “Oh,” he says; is all he says, for a while, and Eddie rubs his hand a little harder against his jeans. “Niamh didn’t… say?”

“No,” Eddie admits.

“And you’re… straight?”

Eddie doesn’t think he’s been asked that one before; at least, not that iteration of it. He’s had a few are you…?s, because he works out and styles his hair, and the gay men of Los Angeles are brave in a way that has something kinda complicated happening in his ribs, but he doesn’t think he’s been asked are you straight? Like queer is the assumption. It’s easy to kindly shake his head at are you gay?, because he doesn’t think that’s it, but it’s like now, at the inverse, his neck has locked. Are you straight?

Why can’t he say yes?

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says, instead. “I know this is probably not exactly what you wanted to hear when you came out on a date.”

“Well,” Alex says, and he’s beginning to smile now, just a little, something wry, like he can find the humour in it. “I can’t say I’m not bummed, because, I mean, look at you.” Eddie feels his face heat a little. “But I don’t see why we can’t just have dinner anyway? Get to know each other as friends?”

“You’d want that?”

Alex shrugs. “I came all this way. It’s a nice restaurant. I bet I could probably even use that straight guy guilt to get you to pay.” Eddie manages a laugh. “Besides, Niamh and Karen vouched for you. I trust you’re a good man. We can still have a nice time.”

And yeah. Yeah. “Yeah, okay,” Eddie says. “That sounds good. Thank you. And—sorry again.”

“Hey,” Alex says, a little gentler now, as he picks up a menu. “No sweat. These things happen.”

“Do they?”

“Sure. Probably. At some other point in history.” Despite himself, Eddie snorts, and Alex looks a little pleased as he picks up his menu. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I think we’re gonna need something stronger than tap water, and I don’t think there’s ever been a more fitting occasion for ludicrously elaborate cocktails.”

Eddie couldn’t agree more.

They each order a meal and a round of drinks, and then, when those go down a treat, another, and another. Eddie can’t remember the last time he’s been this indulgent, or had this much fun doing so—he can only imagine the proud twitch to Frank’s mouth when he tells him about this, then thinks a little wryly about how he can’t believe he’s at a point in his life where he can’t wait to update his therapist on proceedings in his life. The weird tight anxious knot in his stomach abates with every drink, until he’s pleasantly tipsy and watching the candle in between them cast interesting shadows across Alex’s face as he details a story from college and can’t remember what he was ever so afraid of.

He feels like they’ve only been sat for an hour, but by the time Alex stretches with a laughing half-groan and says that he has work in the morning the sky is dark and most of the restaurant has cleared. By now, Eddie’s mostly sobered up, having switched to to 0% beer when he felt the alcohol begin to touch his head, but when he stands, watches the handsome line of Alex’s face when he thanks the wait staff as he collects his suede jacket from the back of the chair, he feels his insides begin to clench again, a little.

And you’re… straight?

“After you,” Alex says, and Eddie comes out of his reverie, stepping in front of him through the front doors of the restaurant. The cool night air is like a balm on his jittery nerves, and he puts his hands deep in his pockets as he slows to a stop and watch Alex check his own pockets for his keys and phone. “Got everything. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve left my wallet behind here.”

“You come here often?” Eddie says.

Alex shrugs. “It’s my first date spot. I take all my Tinder men here.”

Of course. Because this was—was meant to be—a first date. “Well, now I feel less special,” Eddie jokes, to cover the strange way his stomach twists.

Alex laughs. “Well, you might not be the first straight guy I’ve been on a date with, but you definitely are the first who thought I was a woman.”

“A worthy commemoration, for sure.”

“Oh, certainly. This is going to be my amusing workplace anecdote for the next year.” Alex finally finishes double checking all his pockets, and then looks back up at Eddie, easily sliding his hands into the pockets of his chinos. They’re probably entirely at ease, Eddie thinks, not clenched into tight sweating fists like his own. “I know this was a kinda weird night, and not really what either of us were expecting, but for what it’s worth, I had a really good time.”

“Me too,” Eddie says. It feels like a confession, but not the kind admitted through an ornate grate for penance like he’s used to; like a whispered secret. Like the first time he told Shannon he loved her; like the time he sat across from his lawyer still tasting soil in his lungs and said he wanted to change his will. Though maybe they’re not so different. “I really enjoyed it. And I’m—”

“If you say sorry again, I’m going to push you into the road,” Alex says, and Eddie holds up his hands, like, guilty. “Well, I’m glad. You’re a good man, Eddie—I really enjoyed getting to know you. You’re going to make some woman very happy one day.”

“You, as well,” Eddie says, and then—“I mean—not a woman. A man. You know what I mean.”

“Mm, no,” Alex says, “please, talk yourself deeper into that one,” and Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m kidding. You’re sweet, cowboy. Maybe we can do this again sometime. As friends, of course.”

And maybe it’s the way Eddie’s stomach is still in nervous knots—or the handsome line of Alex’s face in the orange streetlamps—or the remnants of the alcohol still in his system—or maybe it’s and you’re straight? and the way Eddie’s inability to say no has haunted him throughout the entirety of the night, but he screws every single piece of courage to the sticking post and dares to say, “What if I wanted to not as friends?”

Alex looks at him. Eddie looks back.

“You’d,” Alex says, “want that?”

Eddie nods. His mouth is dry. “Yeah. I think so.”

Alex watches him for a little longer. Eddie gets it—but he also feels a little like he’s going to die with every second he doesn’t respond. “You thought I was a woman,” he says, which isn’t but you’re straight, but it’s not—not that, either.

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

“But you’ve had a few drinks.”

“But I haven’t connected with someone as immediately as I did with you in a long while,” Eddie says, and Alex’s gaze softens, just a little.

Still, he says, as gentle as it is firm, “I won’t be your straight-guy experiment, Eddie.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “I know. And I—I don’t know if I can give you an answer with what… what I am. And I understand if that’s a—a deal-breaker, I guess. But I think I owe you an actual first date. So. This is me offering a do-over. If you want.”

Alex begins to smile again; the kind of smile he had at the very beginning, when he first pulled out the chair and sat across from Eddie in what he believed to be a companionable first date. “Okay,” he says, finally. “Yeah, okay.”

Eddie’s answering smile is accompanied by a heaving, relieved breath. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, cowboy,” Alex says. “I’ll go on another date with you.” He steps forward, and then to Eddie’s surprise kisses his cheek. Eddie shivers with it all over. “You have my number.”

“I do,” Eddie says, a little dumb.

“Then I’ll guess I’ll see you around,” Alex says. He steps back, gives Eddie one last appraising once-over, and then starts moving away. “See you later, Eddie.”

“See you,” Eddie says, and he stands rooted to the spot until Alex has disappeared around the corner. Then he shakes his head, gets into his own car, and takes the long way home.

*

On the way back, he passes a garden store. The lights are on, the sign in the door still flipped to open, and before he’s thinking he’s parking his car and stepping inside. It’s almost entirely empty save for the girl at the counter, boosted on a stool reading a paperback, who barely looks up when he enters with a soft twinkle of the bell above the door.

He slows to a stop a few feet inside the doorway, suddenly unsure why he came in. The girl at the front desk casts an unimpressed eye over the top of her book. “Can I help you?”

I think I might like men, Eddie thinks, a little hysterically. “Um. I’m just looking.”

“Hm,” she says, but she’s already turned back to her book, taking a long sip of the black-and-neon-green energy drink can beside her.

Eddie hesitantly steps further into the store. He’s at once a little overwhelmed by the amount of greenery, the rows of different-shaped succulents and cacti, the array of leaves and ropey vines hanging from the ceiling, the row of clay pots shaped like naked women cluttering the sill of one of the storefront windows; thinks, I don’t know why I stopped here, but is aware the girl is pretending not to watch him over the rim of her book like measuring his next move. It’s sheer social nicety that has him picking at random a small two-dollar cactus in a plastic pot off one of the shelves and shuffling toward the counter—Buck’ll appreciate it, probably—only because he always feels impolite coming into a store and leaving without buying anything.

The long look the girl casts him makes him feel like he’s failed some sort of test, like anyone coming into a garden store still open at ten in the evening should have least done something interesting to make up for the fact it’s a garden store open at ten in the evening, but she nevertheless puts her book down and scans the underside of the cactus, muttering to herself when it doesn’t go through and then sighing and manually typing it into the till. Eddie busies himself dutifully scanning the little countertop rack, but then his eyes snag on the little plastic dividers full of brown paper seed packets.

“They’re good for beginners,” the girl says, and he jerks, caught. When he glances at her, she’s watching him, her pierced eyebrow raised. “The seed packets. If you’re wanting to grow something from scratch.”

Eddie looks down at the seed packets. There have to be at over a dozen of flower varieties, there: cosmos and sweet pea and nasturtium. Of their own accord, his fingers move toward them; page at the corners like he’s flicking through records at a stall. “Are they hard to grow?”

She shrugs, tapping something on the screen with a click of her long nail. “Not if you’re diligent.”

Diligent. Eddie can do diligent. “Okay. Uh, these as well, then.”

He buys two packets of marigold seeds and one packet of snapdragon, plus the cactus, plus a pencil with an eraser at the end shaped like a tree he knows Hen will like. The girl rings him up his total, and he pays, feeling a little like he’s in a daze.

“Thanks,” the girl says. “Come again.”

Eddie gets all the way to the door before he pauses. “Can I ask something?”

“What?”

“Why are you still open this late?”

The girl looks at him like he’s stupid. “Because we sell weed. What are you, a cop?”

Ah. “Have a good night,” he says, and leaves.

The living room lights are on when he arrives home but turned low, flickering with whatever is playing on the TV. For a long moment, Eddie stays sat in his car, hands on the steering wheel, watching as the room flashes grey, briefly, settling back to dark in an instant; if he strains his ears, he thinks he can hear the lower hum of chatter from whatever is playing. Then he looks down at the paper bag filled with other paper bags plus a pencil and a cactus sitting on the passenger seat, branded on one side with Anna’s Plant Emporium. The A of plant is in the shape of a marijuana leaf, so really that was on him.

He shakes his head, switches off the engine, and climbs out the car.

Buck is half-asleep on the couch when he enters, head turned in the direction of the TV as he mindlessly crochets. He’s a little too tall for it, so his long feet drape over the end, in mismatching socks, one with a hole on the big toe, the other worn almost transparent on the heel. He turns sleepy blue eyes to the doorway when one of the floorboards creak with Eddie’s weight, and brightens as much as he can when he’s near-dozing, knuckling at one of his eyes. His birthmark flashes red above the curve of his wrist. “Hey, you’re home,” he says, and Eddie—aches, and aches, and aches, and also thinks that maybe, just maybe, Alex shouldn’t have been this much of a surprise. “How was it? You were out for a while.”

His smile is careful, pushing himself up to a seated position; his hair is all smushed on one side, face gently patterned in a pink pillow crease, wearing the light blue hoodie Maddie bought him for his birthday and a pair of grey sweatpants, because one day he just started showing up in sleepwear and his battered sneakers as though he’d grown so comfortable and familiar here he didn’t feel a need to dress up, just show up to relax, and Eddie:

Eddie says, “Do you want to help me plant some flowers?”

Buck blinks at him, a little owlishly. Eddie waits until finally, he kinda smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

So they do.

*

The marigolds bloom first. The snapdragons germinate in their plastic Ziploc bag on the second week, and Eddie transfers them to the window box alongside the tomato plants, which are now all a couple of inches tall and growing promising buds of their own amongst the fine velvety leaves. Buck’s cactus, which Buck elected to house on Eddie’s kitchen sill on the other side of the glass from the windowbox, is joined by another cactus, then a jam jar of propagated ivy, then Christopher’s school project of growing watercress, then the basil plant Buck rescued from the clearance section at Sprouts, until entirely against his will Eddie has curated his own haphazard garden in his own kitchen.

Buck, still on his crochet kick, makes the jam jar a little woollen cover. It’s sweet, orange and white to match the curtains, except halfway through crocheting it Buck stares at it like he’s never seen it before and murmurs, “Knitted condom”, and Chimney barks out coffee all over the table.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Eddie says, when he catches Buck eyeing up the cactus again with the sort of look kin his eye that promises the plastic pot a knitted condom of its own in the next week. “The… covers.” He refuses to call them knitted condoms aloud. “I don’t think the plants can get cold.”

“I like doing it,” Buck says. “It’s easy. And I need a break from my other project.”

The other project—Eddie has caught glimpses of this one. He still doesn’t know what it is, mostly in part because he can’t make a head or tail of it when it’s lying in Buck’s lap as they’re watching TV or meal-planning together, but also because Buck has been strangely cagey about what it is. He only refers to it as his project, and whenever Eddie does ask about it he just shrugs and says he doesn’t know what it’s going to be yet. Eddie’s not sure he believes him—he spends too long frowning down at it, like it’s not going the way he’d envisioned, to be improvising the way he did with Eddie’s sweater-turned-scarf-turned-snood—but he never pushes the matter. If Buck wants to keep it to himself, that’s okay—it’s probably a surprise of some sort.

All the while, he goes on more dates.

With Alex, specifically, but also with a few people who aren’t Alex. Some are women, still friends of Hen and Karen’s, who seem to have an ever-widening social circle of available female peers, all academically accomplished with flattering haircuts and kind smiles, but Eddie leaves those dates feeling a little wanting, the kind of strange gut-tug of expecting an extra step at the top of a flight of stairs and his foot instead landing level with the last. 

So he also goes on dates with men.

He doesn’t tell anyone—not Buck, not Frank, not even Hen, who is still under the impression Alex was a woman and at this point only inquires after dates if Eddie brings them up first. It’s almost like the tomatoes again: just for a little while longer, he wants this to be just his, at least for now. At least until he’s figured out what this is.

The fact he could be into men maybe isn’t as earth-shattering as it should have been. He’s always suspected there was something a little different about him, even all the way back in high school when boys his age hit puberty and discovered porn, and started talking about women like they were window-shopping mattresses. And he’d loved Shannon, and being intimate with her, but maybe the part he’d liked best was afterwards, when they’d lie together in his twin bed and he’d thumb at her cross necklace and she’d play with his hair, and they’d exist there quietly listening to each other’s heartbeats. By the time Christopher was born things had become dutiful between the two of them, what should have been an otherwise amicable, friendly break-up was instead staying together for the sake of their families’ reputations, and so things soured, and soured, and soured, until Eddie woke up to cold sheets and a note and realised that she’d only put into play what had emotionally had been there for five years: distance.

Then he moved to Los Angeles, got stationed at the 118, and made a family away from home; met Hen, and Chimney, and Bobby, and Buck, rekindled with Shannon and lost her not a month later, and then somehow three years had passed and he hadn’t so much as held a woman’s hand.

Maybe that’s why he’d let Ana happen. He’d enjoyed that too, at least at first, when they’d go for coffee during the daytime at off-road cafes that he’d already vetted out first with Buck on his support-independent-businesses kick, but then it had been three months and there was only so many more times he could drive her home after dinners instead of back to hers. And through no fault of her own her touch on him had made him almost physically ill, like his body didn’t belong to him; like she was touching someone else, and he was forced to watch from the corner of the room. They’d had sex twice, and both times he’d spent the majority of the next day on the treadmill trying to reattach his head back to his torso. Breaking up had felt like dislodging the stone in his throat he’d been having trouble swallowing around for months.

And then, of course, there was the Buck of it all.

The Buck of it all, that’s Eddie always avoided looking at too hard lest it reveal something he doesn’t have the capacity to push back down again. The Buck of it all, where unlike Ana, who he’d be scrambling for reasons to get to leave, his retreating back down his front porch every night would make him ache, and ache, and ache. Buck, who his abuela loved like her own and would offer to clear Pepa’s gutters without a complaint; Buck, who caulks his bathroom and fills his kitchen with chintzy frog soap dispensers and his living room with houseplants, who loves his son like his own and is the only one who to still wear Karen Wilson’s lopsided winter hat.

It maybe should be a big deal. It probably is a big deal. But as well as now probably-queer, Eddie’s also the parent to a pre-teen, works a full-time job and is now attempting to grow a garden, so the realisation that he’s been letting Buck cover his house in snake plants and poorly painted ceramic gnomes picked up for a dollar at garage sales because he loves him falls largely to the wayside in favour of his tomatoes. He has a lot of life to unpick his feelings, but the margin for repotting his tomatoes from the window box to his garden is ever-decreasing and he only has one shot.

“All the websites you have to wait for the last frost in May,” he says to Alex over dinner. “But we’ve had such an unseasonably warm spring thus far that we haven’t had any frosts, let alone a last. I know that’s probably not a hard and fast rule, but I’ve just worked so hard to get them to this point, you know? I don’t want to fumble at the last hurdle.”

“You’re really hot when you’re talking plants,” Alex says, and Eddie feels himself blush a little.

“Sorry, I’m probably rambling.”

Alex touches his hand across the table, which is a thing he does, now. “No, seriously. I love it when you talk about nerdy. It’s obvious you’re really passionate about it.”

Eddie looks down at their touching hands. “I just wanted to try something new,” is all he can say.

Alex pulls his hand back, but he’s smirking a little as he reaches for his wine glass. “Well, lucky me.”

He doesn’t know what he and Alex are doing. Going on dates, sure—and they’re dates for real, now, the sort where they take turns covering the bill, where Alex will hold his gaze and not-so-accidentally knock their feet together beneath the table—but beyond that, he doesn’t know. He likes Alex, and feels suitably confident Alex likes him too, but he doesn’t think he wants anything serious. Namely, because his queer awakening was immediately followed by the subsequent realisation his feelings for Buck were probably not just platonic, but also because…

Well, he kind of likes how their relationship is. Shannon was his first and only relationship in high school, and it’s only been in the last year that he’s felt even remotely ready to get back in the dating scene, but like this—dating men, now—it feels almost like he’s back in high school. Like he’s sixteen and experimenting, flirting with girls at a party to kiss them once and never see them again, going on casual dates and seeing what fits.

It's fun, with Alex, even if the furthest they’ve gone was the kiss on the cheek Alex gave him after the first date. He feels like he’s getting to be the reckless indulgent teenager becoming a parent at nineteen never allowed him to be.

“Buck says there are websites where you can calculate last frost,” Eddie says, because he may as well now that Alex has all but given him permission to talk at length about his tomatoes. “We’re trying to work out with the weather for the next few weeks when to plant them.”

Alex takes a considering sip of his wine. “Buck.”

He says it as though he’s testing the name in his mouth. Eddie says, “I’ve told you about Buck.”

“Yes, the best friend. I know Buck.” Alex puts his wine down. “You were saying about the last frost?”

There’s a look on his face Eddie doesn’t know if he entirely trusts, and he eyes him across the table. Alex simply stays smiling winningly back at him, and finally Eddie relents—there is only so long he can hold out on what is indubitably bait, but effective bait, because he could talk about his tomatoes for hours. “Last frost, yeah,” he says, finally. “It’s apparently more of a time period than a specific event…”

And when Alex goes to pour him another glass of wine, he doesn’t object.

*

It all changes on a Thursday.

It’s been a slow shift; a shorter one today, for Eddie, just eight hours, so he can pick Christopher from a birthday party tonight. There have only been a handful of calls, most of which have been medical, so he’s mostly spent his time making his way through the vintage science-fiction paperback he’d found propped on top of a postbox this morning with a sticky note saying, take me! He wouldn’t have normally, but he guesses he’s trying to embrace life now, which means heeding universal calls in the form of free books on the road. He’s not really making a heads or tails of it, but he supposes that could be because his attention has mostly been preoccupied by Buck, sat beside him for the whole morning, a line of warmth against his side, caught between intently focusing on his crochet project and his phone, which he has been incessantly checking all morning as though he’s expecting a call.

The project is taking form, now, though it’s still mostly ambiguous: Eddie thinks he can make out what looks like fingers, so he assumes it’s some sort of glove that Buck is simply crocheting splayed out to stitch closed later. Why Buck would be crocheting gloves at the fulcrum of spring, he’s unsure, because even in winter California rarely gets cold enough to warrant them, but maybe he’s anticipating a trip down to Pennsylvania soon.

The truck is pulling in from the latest medical call when Buck’s phone goes, and Buck drops his crochet like it’s red-hot to answer it, pushing himself up off the couch to take it in private across the loft. Eddie’s thigh at once feels cold without him, and he tries not to ache too keenly at the loss; just watches him across the room, the breadth of his shoulders in his tight LAFD shirt—the unmistakeable excitement in his voice when he says, “I can?”

“Oh, don’t look so excited we’re back, Diaz,” Chimney says as he, Hen and Bobby emerge from the top of the stairs. “I know you missed us terribly.”

“It was getting very quiet without you,” Eddie says, looking away from Buck, and for that Chimney swipes a shortbread finger from the plate in front of him. “Hey!”

“Children,” Hen sighs, but she squeezes Eddie’s shoulder as she passes anyway. “Any luck on 34 across?”

“Twenty two down gave me an A,” Eddie says. He’s started crosswording with her, since Buck got him into Wordle. “But I can’t think what it would be.”

“Hm,” she says. Before she can say anything further, however, Buck comes back across the loft, phone clutched tightly in his hands, eyes bright.

Bobby is the first to notice—aside from Eddie, who is probably fated to do nothing but, when it comes to Buck. “Good call, kid?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Buck says, and his cheeks are flushed from the force of biting down on his smile, face practically incandescent with elation. Despite himself, Eddie feels himself frown, wondering what this could possibly be about—he can’t think of anything Buck’s told him lately that would make him this excitement. “Uh, everyone, I kinda have some news.”

Hen glances at Eddie as she sits beside him on the couch—just once, like she’s expecting him to know. Eddie shakes his head imperceptibly—no, I don’t know—but something in him sort of pleasantly lurches a little, too, at the recognition that he and Buck are such a unit that he’d be informed about developments in Buck’s life before anyone else. He wonders if his recent realisation will be surprising to anyone or if they’d maybe suspected, too.

Buck waits until everyone’s seated, before he rocks a little on his heels, phone clutched giddily in his hands. “I’m going to be a father.”

You could hear a pin drop in the ensuing silence.

Chimney is the first to break it. “Uh,” he says, which feels fitting, because Eddie thinks his tongue has at once grown too fat for his mouth. “…What?”

“Buck,” Bobby says, gently, “you mind taking us back a few steps, kid?”

“Right, yeah,” Buck says, shaking his head. Eddie feels rooted to the spot; his stomach feels a little like it’s tunnelling out. I’m going to be a father. “You guys know Connor and Kameron—the couple Chim and I play pickleball with?”

“You’ve mentioned them, sure,” says Hen, at the same time as Chimney mutters, “Oh God, what are you about to reveal about my new friends?”

“Well.” Buck clasps his hands in front of him. “I’m their sperm donor.”

Eddie will feel guilty about this for the rest of his life—but his first thought is one of overwhelming relief. He didn’t get someone pregnant, he thinks, and it’s a bad, mean, selfish thought to have, that this means he gets to keep Buck for himself, just a little longer, play house with him in his head as already a father, a co-parent with him, but then he properly comprehends—a sperm donor?—and balks. “What?”

“They asked,” Buck says, “and I said yes. I went for the donation a few months ago, and Kameron just called to let me know that they’ve passed the safety period for complications. She’s pregnant.”

“You didn’t say,” Eddie says, a little numbly.

Buck shrugs. “It was their business. I told Hen.”

Eddie turns to Hen, trying to hide his betrayal. Hen has the decency to look a little sheepish, but her voice is unwavering when she says, “I told him he should do whatever he feels is best.”

“…Wow,” Chimney says. “I mean—congrats, man.” He steps up to him, pulls him into a shoulder-clapping hug, before pausing. “Uh—do I say congratulations? I’ve never been in this situation before.”

Buck laughs. “I’ll take the congratulations.”

“This is a really big decision, Buck,” Bobby says, a little carefully. “Are you sure you’ve thought it all the way through? I mean, there is a lot to consider.”

Buck nods. “I’m sure,” he says. “Connor’s one of my oldest friends—we go all the way back. Of course I want to help him start a family with Kameron. And—” At this he shrugs a little, folding his arms, almost uncharacteristically self-conscious when he adds, “You know, I’m not really getting any younger, and it’s not looking like that’s going to be in the cards for me any time soon.”

Hen reaches across Eddie to touch his knee. Eddie’s glad, because his own hands are curled so tightly into fists beside his thighs he thinks his nails have broken skin. “Buck.”

Buck waves her concern off. “No, it’s okay. I just… I want to do this for them.” He cracks a smile. “Broadening my horizons, right?”

Eddie can only manage a weak smile in response.

“I mean,” Chimney says, and he’s hedging a little here, dancing around a point they’ve all got in their heads but are a little afraid to vocalise in its entirety, “have you three… discussed what’s going to happen? With you and the baby?”

I’m going to be a father. Except for the part where he’s not.

“Not yet,” Buck says, and Eddie’s heart sinks farther. “But they live in LA, and we’re good friends—I’m sure I’ll be in its life in some capacity.”

Hen’s other hand touches Eddie’s. It’s hard, because none of them fit traditional nuclear family moulds: Eddie is a single father, Chimney and Maddie are unmarried, and neither Hen nor Bobby’s children are biologically theirs. But Eddie knows how this sort of thing usually goes, and he also knows Buck. Sperm donors aren’t third parents; their contribution ends at the petri dish. He remembers what Buck told him last year, about their station rule: that they don’t go past the glass doors.

He wonders if Buck knows it’s the same thing here.

“Well, if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you,” Bobby says sincerely. “Congratulations, Buck.”

“Yeah, congrats, Buckaroo,” Hen says, squeezing his knee.

Buck basks in their approval, face practically glowing with joy, and Eddie knows it’s probably his turn to say something now, pass on his own regards, but he can’t, not when he feels a little like something’s breaking in him. He’s self-aware to know it’s at least in part selfish, but it’s also mostly for Buck: Buck, and his big, kind heart, so achingly desperate for a family and so fucking generous he’ll help out a couple like Connor and Kameron in spite of how it’ll hurt him. He can feel Buck’s gaze on him, careful, like he’s waiting, but Eddie’s mouth feels glued, tongue pinned against the roof of his mouth to stop a barrage of words he has enough sense to keep inside. Words like, could I be enough? Would my love and my son and my home be enough for you to stop running?

He's mostly afraid the answer will be no.

“Eddie?” Buck says, a little tentatively.

And then, from downstairs, someone says, “Is Eddie Diaz here?”

Eddie’s momentary relief at being rescued is suddenly eclipsed by something much stranger—not panic, not quite, but not not panic, either, a mix of anxiety and exhilaration when his foggy brain places exactly whose voice that is. He stands on unsteady legs, moves past Buck still watching him like a wounded animal, to the balcony of the mezzanine, where he peers down to see Alex talking with what looks like Ravi. Ravi says something Eddie can’t make out, and Alex nods; through a bone-dry mouth, Eddie manages to say, “Alex?”

Alex looks up, and grins, an eye winking shut against the bright lights. “Well, hey there, cowboy.”

Eddie can feel his team’s gazes on his back, and he purposely avoids making eye contact as he heads down the steps to where Alex is stood in the middle of the loading bay, holding a brown paper bag. No doubt they’ve all swanned to the balcony, peering over like members of the peanut gallery, but Eddie pointedly tries not to look up, just keeps his gaze on Alex’s warm gaze, familiar and yet startling not in this home environment. “Hey,” he says, a little awkwardly. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”

Alex’s mouth quirks a little. “I texted you.”

Oh. Eddie retrieves his phone from his pocket, where it’s been sat untouched for the past several hours as he alternated between his book, the crossword, and watching the handsome line of Buck’s frowning face as he tried to navigate lines of his crochet. Sure enough, there’s a text on his home screen from half an hour ago, reading, you work in central right? i’m just passing through to pick up lunch, want me to grab you anything? and then one ten minutes after that reads, i’ll take your silence as a yes with a laughing emoji.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, sheepishly, but Alex shakes his head, smiling.

“Don’t be. I know you’re usually unreachable during work hours.” He passes him the paper bag. “Here, I grabbed you a burger. I wasn’t sure what you liked since we usually just do drinks but I hope you’re a hamburger, pickles and relish kind of man?”

“I am an anything burger man,” Eddie admits, as he takes it, and Alex laughs. Eddie clutches the bag a little tightly in his sweaty hand. “Um. Thank you.”

“Of course. Consider this a public service, since you are a firefighter, and everything.” Eddie manages a laugh. “And hey, if I knew your whole team was here, I would have gotten lunch for everyone.”

“Christ,” Eddie mutters, and glances over his shoulder, where sure enough Hen, Chimney, Bobby and Buck are pretending not to be eavesdropping over the balcony. As soon as they notice he’s spotted them, Chimney ducks, forgetting the railing is glass, and Hen takes off her glasses as though she was just holding them up to the light to see any smudges on the glass. He doesn’t even bother telling them off, just turns back to Alex. “Um, sorry. They don’t know boundaries.”

“Eh, it’s sweet,” Alex says. His eyes glint a little. “Which one’s Buck?”

“No,” Eddie says. “We’re not doing this.”

“That was a trick question, cowboy,” Alex says. “I can make an educated guess based on which of them is staring at me like I’m puzzle. Either that or you have a homophobic colleague with excellent gaydar.”

Eddie sighs, caught, and Alex smiles. “No, that’s Buck.”

Alex surveys him over his shoulder. “Hm.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Turn this way for me?”

Confused, Eddie does, and Alex kisses his cheek, in perfect view of the gallery. Eddie feels his ears flame, and Alex whispers, “You’re welcome.”

“You’re an asshole,” Eddie says, as he leans back and starts walking away.

“An asshole who bought you lunch.” Alex winks. “Enjoy your burger, cowboy. You can thank me later.”

Eddie stays standing there until Alex disappears from view. Then he sighs, resigned to his fate, and turns to climb back up the stairs.

“So,” Chimney says, as soon as his head crests the top of the balcony.

“Must we do this,” Eddie says.

“Yes,” Chimney says gravely. “You should probably also give me one of your fries.”

Eddie sighs, but passes him the bag when he gets near enough. Hen slaps Chimney’s hand away from the opening. “No, Chim,” she says, “that’s Eddie’s. And Eddie doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to.”

Eddie appreciates the sentiment, especially because he knows despite their good-natured eavesdropping they’ll all hold steadfast to it; will probably all immediately forget Alex’s face from their heads, never bring it up again, as soon as he says the word. At once Eddie is so, so grateful for them that his love almost hurts a little, with its bigness in his chest. “No, um, it’s okay.”

For some reason he looks at Buck at this, to find Buck already looking back at him, gaze inscrutable. When their eyes meet, Buck smiles at him a little, hesitant but sincere, and for some reason it’s enough for Eddie to feel brave.

“His name is Alex,” he says. “We’ve, um, being seeing each other for a little while.”

Hen is watching him large suspiciously shiny eyes, hands clasped in her lap; Bobby looks like he’s resisting the urge to give him a hug. “And by seeing each other,” Chimney says, “you mean…”

“I’m gay,” Eddie says, all in a rush, and it’s not exactly a weight off his shoulders that has been lifted, necessarily, but more something that has… settled. Like the first buds of his tomato plants emerging from compost on the first warm day of spring. “Or—I don’t think that’s exactly it, I’m still trying to find what label works, but I—I like men. I’ve been going on dates with men the past couple of months. So.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Hen says, and she’s the first one to come over to him and pull him into a hug. Eddie goes willingly, pushes his nose into her shoulder, just a little. Of everyone, Hen knows this part best, and he is so enormously grateful for her constant, quiet, steadfast presence in his life that he can’t help but grip her a little tighter.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says.

Hen laughs, a little watery. “Don’t even, Diaz. This is yours. You were under no obligation tell me anything.”

“I know,” Eddie says, as he pulls back. “But I just wanted you to know it wasn’t because of you, or because I don’t value or trust you, or anything. Just knowing that I could come to you if I needed to was sort of enough.”

Hen’s eyes get shiny again. “I’m so proud of you, Eddie.”

Eddie’s throat clogs a little too. “Thanks. I’m… kinda proud of me, too.”

“All right, my turn,” Chimney says impatiently, from behind them, and Hen laughs and lets go of him entirely, and Eddie is trussed from Hen to Chimney to Bobby, who both pull him into warm, laughing proud hugs and tell him they’re happy for him. Finally, he ends up in front of Buck, whose eyes are still a little inscrutable, but his smile is wide and sincere.

“Sorry for stealing your thunder,” is all he can think to say.

And Buck laughs. “Come here, man.”

So Eddie goes, and they hold each other. They don’t do this a lot, hug, which maybe is strange, because at this point in their friendship where they split grocery bills and run errands together and where Buck spends more time on his couch than in his own apartment it would be one of the less intimate things they do, but in Buck’s arms, chin against his shoulder, hands around each other’s backs, Eddie’s braced low on enough on his spine that he can feel where his ribs start, he gets it, now. In Buck’s arms, in light of recent revelations, it just crystallises what months of coming across him asleep on the couch with the TV still on and going, oh, have been dancing around: that Eddie would be happy to spend the rest of his life, here.

But Buck is Age of Absolutely-ing his way to another, more compatible Taylor Kelly, probably, a woman with a ringing laugh, or a man with kind eyes—point is, someone not Eddie—and somewhere across a town a woman is pregnant with a child who will come out with his kindness and blue eyes, so when he finally pulls away, Eddie lets him; aches a little, at the loss, but lets him. The distance between them yawns wider than ever before when he does.

Maybe this is why they don’t hug, often: because whenever they do, Buck leaves hooks in his ribs that only hurt when he steps away again. As he always does.

“Two big pieces of news we’ve had,” Chimney remarks, as he and Buck step away from each other. “Man, if only we had cake or something to celebrate.”

“Cake is always fitting for an occasion like this,” Hen adds, because she and Chimney have some sort of best friend telepathy that always kicks in whenever the other needs enabling. “And—huh, Chim, are those very, very ripe bananas in the fruit bowl next to you?”

“Why, Hen,” Chimney says, “yes. Yes, they are. Too ripe to casually snack on, for sure, but—”

“Okay, fine, I’ll make banana bread,” Bobby interrupts, and Chimney silently fist-pumps. “Though it would have been kind of you to maybe ask Buck and Eddie what they would want instead of you using their news to your advantage.”

“No, I’m in favour of this,” Eddie hastens to say. Bobby has been promising to make them his famous walnut banana bread for months now but always ends up turning heel at the last minute; if Eddie knew coming out would be what finally did it, he would have done so months ago. He just hopes this sort of double whammy with big news isn’t now a prerequisite for banana bread; he’s not sure he knows how to top this one. Though he did have his breakdown last year, so maybe a yearly revelation of sorts is just a thing that happens now.

“Me, too,” Buck quickly adds, and Hen excitedly squeezes his knee. Bobby sighs, but his eyes are bright as he pushes himself to his feet.

“Fine,” he says, but as he rounds the counter he stops between Buck and Eddie, puts a hand on both of their shoulders. “For what it’s worth, I couldn’t be happier for you both. Thank you for trusting us with these parts of your life.”

Eddie’s throat thickens, a little. “Thanks, Cap.”

“Thanks, Cap,” Buck echoes, softly, and when Eddie glances at him he looks similarly affected. Bobby squeezes their shoulders, like maybe he can tell, and then starts off in the direction of the kitchen. Chimney says, “I can’t believe all it took for banana bread was Buck getting a woman pregnant” and Hen hits his shoulder as a delighted laugh bursts from Buck, sounding like it surprises even him, but Eddie can only watch Bobby’s retreating back as he pulls a loaf tin from one of the cupboards.

The hooks’ entry wounds gape a little wider.

*

That night, there’s a knock at Eddie’s door.

He goes to answer it, mindful of the creaky floorboard by the coatrack when he knows Christopher is asleep two doors down, and isn’t wholly surprised when he opens the door to reveal Buck, holding a plant in his hands; only maybe that he didn’t come earlier, and that he knocked at all.

“You have a key,” is all he can say.

“I know,” Buck says. “I just.”

He doesn’t say any more than that, but Eddie kinda gets it. “Come in.”

Buck steps inside, leaning against the wall to toe off his shoes while his hands are preoccupied by the plant, and then follows Eddie down the hall into the kitchen. He sits at the table as Eddie turns on the kettle, and a small, wry smile tugs at his lips. “Remember when we used to do this with beer?”

“I’m thirty-six this year, Buck. I can’t do alcohol this late anymore.”

“No, it wasn’t a slight, or anything,” Buck says. When Eddie glances at him, he’s smiling a little, looking down at the plant, hands cupped around its little plastic pot as though it’s a hot coffee mug. “I kinda like that we’re getting older and being sensible. It’s nice. Like life’s settling down.”

Eddie likes the sound of that. “Yeah.”

For a moment they’re quiet as the kettle pops, and he carefully pours hot water into the mugs—the Lakers one Chimney got him as a gag gift because he knows he’s a Clippers man, and the painted chipping one Christopher brought home from school in third grade. He passes one Buck’s way as he sits across from him at the table, and in return Buck slides across the plant, which Eddie sees is a baby pothos. “For you,” Buck says.

Eddie accepts it, a little cautiously, sliding a thumb over one of the slippery dark green leaves. “What’s the occasion?”

“It was in the clearance section,” Buck says. “Thought I’d rescue it.”

“And you’re giving it to me?”

“It’ll be safe here. You’ll look after it.”

The thought oddly makes Eddie’s throat thicken, a little. “My tomatoes haven’t even grown yet.”

“Yeah, because they fruit in summer. But they’re looking good.”

At the same time, they both look at the tomato plants on the windowsill: over a foot tall, now, sturdy green stalks and the beginning of white flowers at the end of the stems. It’s easy for Eddie to get insecure about them, because he looks at them so often the daily change is negligible, but for some reason, looking at them through Buck’s eyes, knowing the last time he saw them was early last week when they hadn’t flowered yet, makes him feel almost proud. “Yeah,” he says, softly. “They do.”

When he looks back at Buck, he’s looking down at his mug, swirling his teabag around a little. Eddie watches him. “Is everything okay?” he asks, carefully. It’s certainly not the first time Buck’s shown up unannounced, but it is one of the first he’s not used his key—which he usually only does whenever he feels a little unsure of where they stand.

“I guess I was just thinking,” Buck says. “You know, about—about today. And I wasn’t totally happy with how I responded when you—told everyone your news, so I just. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry if I made you feel, like—I don’t know, like I didn’t care, or that it wasn’t really important. Because it is, and I’m—I’m really proud of you, man, and really glad that you’re happy.”

Eddie’s a lot touched, but mostly just kind of surprised. “Buck, that’s—that’s really nice of you, but I didn’t feel that way at all. It’s not like you spat on me and called me a slur.”

“No, I know,” Buck says, “but I’m your best friend, man. You deserve more than not being hate-crimed. That’s, like, bare minimum.”

He looks genuinely grieved by the idea that he could have made Eddie feel this way. Eddie sobers a little. “I was just kidding, Buck,” he says, softly. “You reacted perfectly. I felt—I felt really loved, actually.”

He blushes a little as he says it, because it feels so silly and trite to say aloud, even if it is the truth, but Buck thankfully looks comforted by it. Still, there’s something still a little tight to the corner of his mouth, the cup of his hands around his steaming mug, and Eddie recognises it, at once, because that own look had been souring around the edges of his eyes and mouth when he caught sight of it in the reflection of his coffee earlier today.

“Is it because I didn’t tell you first,” he says, and Buck’s shoulders tighten a little, guiltily—and caught.

“I know it’s selfish,” Buck whispers, to his tea. “And it makes me such a shit friend, but—”

“You felt like I couldn’t trust you,” Eddie finishes. His mouth feels a little like it’s filled with chalk. Buck carefully glances up at him, and Eddie admits, quietly, “I kinda felt the same. About the Connor and Kameron… thing.”

Saying sperm donor makes it real in a way thing doesn’t, but thankfully Buck doesn’t notice. “I’m sorry. It’s the worst thing to think when your best friend comes out.”

“Or when he reveals he’s going to be a father,” Eddie says, and Buck smiles at him, half relief and half guilt.

“Are we both awful people?”

“Maybe,” Eddie says. “I think you’re just also my best friend.”

Best friend also makes it real in a way simply referring to him in passing as a friend doesn’t; they know what they mean to each other, of course, but it’s not often they tell each other so nakedly. Best friend feels so middle school, but it’s true. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever had a friend quite like buck before.

Buck just smiles at him, softly. “Yeah,” he says; and, when it becomes clear Eddie’s willing to listen without judgment, he hesitantly elaborates, “I guess I just… I don’t know. The last person this is about is me.”

Oh, you have no idea, Eddie thinks.

“But it… yeah. I guess it did feel like you didn’t trust me. You know, because I’m bi, and I just…” He stops; shakes his head. “Sorry, this is so selfish. I’m making this all about me.”

“No, it’s okay,” Eddie says softly. He thinks of being in Hen’s arms, what he told her: I just wanted you to know it wasn’t because of you, or because I don’t value or trust you. It was true, of course, but he’d been so wrapped up in the other way Buck factored into all this—namely, that he loved him—that he’d forgotten Hen wasn’t the only queer friend he didn’t confide in. He knows he didn’t owe either of them his confidence, but he can also remember of the ugly prickling feeling of finding out Hen knew about the sperm donor and he didn’t; the even uglier relief that has swarmed him after he realised that it wasn’t really Buck’s child.

So maybe Buck is being selfish, but Eddie is, too, and maybe that does make them both awful people, but at least they’re the same. At least Buck isn’t, in the very depths of him, praying for outcome that will hurt him: praying that Buck won’t be in the child’s life, at least so he can stay in Eddie and Christopher’s.

But Eddie has known he’s not a good person. Not like Buck, who tries. He will always be greedy, he’s learned, when it comes to Buck.

So he says, “No, it’s okay,” and then dares to reach and encircle his fingers around Buck’s wrist. He doesn’t remember much about the shooting, but he’d woken up with bruises around his own wrist; seen matching fingerprints around Buck’s. Had got the idea. It’s a hold they do often on the job, the most secure grip they can get each other when rappelling down buildings, but he’s careful now, here, and Buck shivers a little with it. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Buck shakes his head. “No, Eddie—”

“No, let me talk.” Buck does, but his eyes are unhappy. “You’re… one of the most important people to me, Buck. Behind Christopher, you’re the most important person to me. I trust you, and I value you and your opinion, and if I’m ever afraid to tell you something it’s not because I’m afraid you’ll judge me, but because telling you things makes them real in a way keeping them to myself doesn’t. So I—I didn’t tell you, not because you’re not my best friend, but because I don’t think I was ready to admit it to myself. The first date with Alex was a total accident—I thought Hen was setting me up with a woman. And then when I walked out wanting to do it again, I was—I was scared as hell, Buck, because I hadn’t let myself entertain the idea of anything like that my whole life, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be that brave. You know, put into action what had maybe always existed at the back of my head. So for that, I’m sorry.”

For a long moment, Buck just watches him. At some point, Eddie’s thumb had started ticking gently back and forth across the inside of Buck’s wrist, and they both look down at it now. Something almost like embarrassment floods him, but then Buck says, quietly, “You don’t owe me anything, Eddie. This was yours.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “But I wanted to tell you. And I wanted you to know that.”

Buck’s lips tick upwards, just a little. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “you’ve always been one of the bravest people I know.”

Eddie smiles wryly. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do. And I’m really—I’m really fucking proud of you. Because I know how much braver you had to be for this.”

It’s the conviction in Buck’s voice, that gets him: he believes what he’s saying. Eddie’s a lot proud of himself, too, but it’s never been easier than when Buck is sat across from him holding his wrist like he does every day, saving his life over and over every shift, declaring it so nakedly. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“Thank you,” Buck says. “For—saying all that. You—really didn’t have to, but I. I appreciate it.”

He’s biting back a sorry for making it about me, and they both sort of smile at each other like they know. Both still understanding they’re allowed to take up this sort of space in each other’s lives and not feel guilty for it. Like there’s anything about Buck that’s too ugly for Eddie not to love, and love, and love, unequivocally and unconditionally.

“Two big pieces of news,” Eddie says. “If only we had cake or something to celebrate.”

Buck snorts, and the heavy atmosphere dissipates as they both take long sips of their tea. Not for long, though, because then Buck is putting down his mug with an almost strange, unreadable look on his face. “So,” he says. “Alex.”

So they’re doing this, now. “Yeah.”

“He seems nice.”

Buck looks like he’s so desperately trying to find something nice to say about him, eyes a little inscrutable as he stirs his tea. Eddie says, mildly, “he is.”

“Are you guys, like… together, then?”

“No, we’re just hanging out.”

He cringes a little as he says it—hanging out feels so teenage—but all Buck says is, “Oh.” He stirs his tea again, a little more intently. “Do you… do you want to be together?”

“No,” Eddie says. “Or. I don’t know.”

“Oh?”

Buck’s face is still a little unreadable, but he is asking, and seems willing to listen, so Eddie awkwardly elaborates, “I mean, I do know that I don’t want to date him, but… we’re having fun, I guess. Just keeping things casual.”

Buck’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t think you were much of the casual type.”

“I’m not. Or, I didn’t think I was, anyway, but…” Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m enjoying this. whatever it is. maybe it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”

“Yeah,” Buck echoes, and his expression is still unreadable, but there’s something a little sad, too, about it now. Eddie desperately wants nothing more than to wipe that look off his face.

“We should do something, the three of us,” is what he finds himself saying. “I think you guys would get along.”

He can’t imagine how they wouldn’t, both bright and talkative, but Buck properly snorts at that. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Eddie frowns. “What?”

But Buck is shaking his head. “Don’t worry about. I just don’t think we’d gel that well.” He pushes his mug back. “I should probably get going.”

Eddie feels a little dizzied. “You’ve only been here for like ten minutes.”

There’s still something a little sharp to Buck’s eyes, but he smiles, a little softly, at that. “I was just stopping by.”

“You can stay over, if you want.”

“Nah, don’t worry. Maddie wants to go on a hike tomorrow so I have to be up early anyway.” He stands, picks up his mug as if to wash it, but Eddie puts his hand on it to stop him in his tracks. Something about the thought of Buck washing dishes at his sink only to leave is almost too much to bear.

“I’ll walk you out,” he says.

He waits by the door as Buck pulls on his sneakers, stooping when the laces on one knot tight and he has to unpick them to get his foot in. Eddie watches the curve of his bent spine, the milk-white skin that flashes between the waistband of his jeans and the end of his hoodie, and keeps his hands tight in his pockets so they don’t reach out to touch it. Finally, Buck stands, a few inches taller than him, as always, more so in his sneakers when Eddie is just in socks.

“Thanks for coming,” Eddie says, like a keynote speaker. It’s all he can think to say that isn’t stay.

Buck smiles, softly. There’s still something a little sad about it. “Thanks for letting me barge in.”

“Anytime. You know that.”

“Yeah. I do.” It’s his cue to go, probably, but he hesitates; hits the toe of his sneaker against the floorboard. Dithers. Eddie’s about to finally bite the bullet and ask if he’s sure he can’t stay when Buck says, instead, “Can I ask you something?

A little surprised, Eddie says, “Of course.”

“What do you really think? About me being Connor and Kameron’s sperm donor?”

Eddie had been expecting this question since Buck had first announced it all those hours ago, turned to him and faltered a little when he said nothing. Still, he doesn’t know how to answer comfortably. “I think if you’re sure—"

“No,” Buck says, “no, don’t give me any of that as long as you’re happy crap, Eddie. I want to know what you think.” His gaze is imploring. “Please.”

Eddie’s resolve cracks, a little. “I honestly don’t know.”

Buck watches him.

“I don’t know what I think,” he says. “It’s such a big thing. I meant what I said, about how if you’re sure. But I—” He pauses, works his jaw a little. “Honestly, I don’t think you are. And I don’t see a way this goes where you don’t get hurt.”

Buck’s jaw ticks, but he says nothing.

“That’s just my opinion,” Eddie says, quietly.

“Sounds like you do know what you think,” Buck says.

“I know that I care about you. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Why would I get hurt?”

Eddie aches, and aches. “Buck.”

Buck shakes his head. “You know what, don’t worry about it. Thanks for the tea, Eddie. Enjoy your new plant.”

He’s halfway down the garden path before Eddie calls, “Buck.”

Buck turns.

“Do you remember what you told me,” Eddie says, “about the glass doors?”

“It’s different when it’s your emergency, Eddie.”

“But is it really yours?”

Buck watches him for a long, long moment, face half concealed in shadow, before he turns back around without another word and leaves. Eddie wonders why he feels, at once, like he’s about to cry.

*

The next day, Eddie opens his locker to find a little knitted condom tucked in the corner: orange and dark green, to match the leaves of the pothos. There’s no note, but Eddie knows who it’s from; what it means.

*

Summer hits California early this year.

Christopher starts going to school in T-shirts, and Eddie drives to work with the windows down. Buck switches from hot to iced coffee, which is Eddie’s own private marker of the changing of the seasons; his mysterious crochet project grows two more fingers and a second colour but still not a name; and the sun starts slinking down later and later, until Eddie can see both sunset and sunrise from his perch on the station roof on the same twelve-hour shift.

And, more importantly: he grows his first tomato.

The sun is kind to his plants, their leaves growing enormous and green and glossy, until his windowbox is all but dripping in gooseberries and sugarsnaps, grown fat and sweet and plentiful. Eddie starts making parfait and granola, cuts strawberries on top of Christopher’s cereal and brings broadbeans by the box to the station for his team to spend hours delightedly peeling open and snapping in half. The apricot tree at the end of the garden that came with the house grows fruit, and for the first time Eddie doesn’t let them drop and rot; collects them, passes excess to his neighbours and Pepa, sneaks some into Christopher’s lunchbox, Googles how to make relish and buys an antique canner.

The tomatoes, though, are his real pride and joy: the first plant to grow, and the last to bear fruit. But bear fruit they do. The white flowers start wilting, a little, in their place tiny green buds that slowly swell and swell, until Eddie looks out the window one morning and sees that he has his first tomato. He doesn’t even bother putting on shoes, all but dives out the back door into the warm sunshine, and twists it right off the vine. It could probably have used a few more days, the skin still tight and firm with youth, but it’s sweet, dripping in juice and seeds, filling his mouth with tartness, and Eddie stands in his back yard that for five years has remained barren with a tomato he grew from seed in his mouth and tries not to cry.

The others, he’s patient with: lets them grow until they’re fat, weighing the stems down, skin hot and sweet and splitting a little at the sides, and then slices them thick, layers them on sourdough he bought from his latest farmer’s market trip with Buck and Maddie, and for the first time since trying Bobby’s cooking brings a packed lunch to work.

It’s not out the ordinary to bring lunch—most do—only the station kitchen has just ran out of dried noodles and the fridge houses only one sad broccoli, so when Chimney starts rallying orders for a collective Deliveroo order from the Chinese place down the road even Hen puts aside her Karen-assembled lunchbox to peer at the menu. Buck stays resignedly eyeing his Tupperware of quinoa salad at the table as he crochets.

“I’m trying to be vegan for a month,” he explains darkly to Eddie, when Eddie slides in beside him. “It’s not going well.”

Amused, Eddie says, “There are probably lots of vegan options.”

“But the chicken lo mein is the nicest thing there. I dream of it, Eddie. Dream.” He finishes another row with a mutinous yank of his yarn. “I guess I’ll just stick with grains.”

 “Well, I’ll join you,” Eddie says, and unwraps his sandwich. Buck eyes it curiously. “Guess what these are.”

“Is that a trick question?”

“No, c’mon.”

Buck glances between him and the sandwich. “Uh. Tomatoes?” He gets it a second later. “Wait. Holy shit.”

“Right?” Eddie says, giddy. “Here, look—” He rescues his phone from his pocket, starts swiping through his camera roll trying to find the picture he took of it this morning. By now, they’ve attracted the attention of Hen and Chimney, who meander over, Chimney still holding the phone with the station’s order listed on it.

“Boys, last call,” he says. “Any orders?”

“I’m vegan,” Buck says.

“So prawn crackers for Buckaroo,” Chimney says, and Buck slumps back in his seat like a man defeated. “Eddie?”

“Oh, I brought lunch,” Eddie says, and Buck perks right back up.

“Eddie, tell them about the tomatoes.”

Hen says, “Tomatoes?” as Eddie finally locates a recent picture of his tomato plants, protruding victoriously from the net of fauna that is the rest of the windowbox. It’s admittedly a not an unimpressive sight, the branches swollen and laden with fruit, the tomatoes dark red and bruised with juice and sun, but all of a sudden Eddie feels a little shy showing it. While Buck has been there through every new unfurling leaf, he hasn’t said much to Hen or Chimney about his new love for gardening, only mentioning offhandedly that he’s trying to grow tomatoes in a way that is probably not dissimilar to the way everyone in lockdown started baking bread.

In a way, it almost feels oddly personal to turn the screen in their direction, like he’s baring them his soul, but the showman in him is also satisfactorily suited by the way their eyes grow big, making matching impressive awed sounds.

“You grew these, Eddie?” Hen says, taking the phone from him and zooming in.

Chimney whistles, lowly. “Far out, they’re massive. What’s in your soil?”

“I read an article that human urine is good for growth,” Eddie says, just to be a shit. They both gape at him as Buck sniggers. “I’m absolutely kidding.”

“Christ,” Hen gasps, at the same time as Chimney wags a finger and says, “You never know with gardeners. You tell them the blood of Christ will help their pumpkins grow and bam, they’ve suddenly found the Messiah himself.”

Eddie can’t deny the little thrill of being called a gardener. Like his tomatoes are impressive enough to have earned him the title. (That, and reading that the blood of Christ would help with his plants probably would have had him picking up his dusty Bible tucked in his bedside table for the first time in over a decade.)

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Buck says.

“Be quiet and eat your salad, Vegan Boy,” Hen says, and meekly Buck sinks back in his seat, still crocheting. “Eddie, this is so impressive. I didn’t know you gardened.”

“It’s kinda recent,” Eddie says. “This was my first yield.”

“Wait a minute,” Chimney says. “Those containers of vegetables you bring us, like, every day—did you grow those, too?”

Eddie feels a little shy under their expectant gaze. “Uh. Yes?”

“Eddie!” Hen says. “Why didn’t you say anything? They’ve delicious.”

“Yeah, man,” Chimney says. “I’ve dragged Maddie through a circuit of LA’s health food stores trying to figure out where you got them from but the ones being sold right now are all just been sad and limp.”

“Apparently there’s currently a nitrate shortage in the soil of local farms,” Eddie says, because at thirty-five he’s now the kind of person who has subscribed to Farmer’s Daily and Gardener’s Delight, and then he shrugs a little, kinda self-conscious. “I don’t know. I guess I just… wanted to actually start growing eatable food before I told anyone.”

He glances at Buck, who is smiling at him softly, and then risks looking at Chimney and Hen. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting—judgment, maybe, that a man like him would spend his time trying to grow plants—but all Hen says is, “Well, very eatable, and feel free to pass along any spare produce you have kicking around” and Chimney says, “Word,” and then, “Oh, shit, our order timed out”, and they’re both harrying away trying to re-rally takeout orders again, and Eddie—breathes, twice, long and slow, feels something in his chest unwind.

“Prawn crackers,” Buck says, from beside him. “It’s like he’s making fun of me.”

“Oh, he totally is,” Eddie says, and he thinks he sounds normal but he must not because Buck glances at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Buck says, but he’s smiling a little. “You should try your sandwich.”

Oh. In the excitement, Eddie had almost entirely forgotten about his lunch. He glances down at it, and then looks at Buck. “You want to split? It’s just tomato, lettuce and mustard.”

Buck’s face turns a little hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “of course,” and slides him half, and Buck puts his mysterious crochet project down—nearly complete now, three shades of blue—and they both turn into each other a little, using the waxpaper Eddie had wrapped it in as a shared plate as they take their simultaneous first bites. It’s so good Eddie can’t help the laugh that bubbles in him, closing his eyes at the weird rush of tears and letting himself taste every flavour. It’s one of the therapy techniques Frank gave him, when his PTSD was at its worst and he’d show up to his job at dispatch on three hours of sleep because he was so afraid of closing his eyes: five things you can see, four things you can touch, and so on. Taste was always last, one thing you can taste, but Eddie would keep his pockets filled with sour candy, the kind he’d confiscate off Christopher at Halloween after reading one fearmongering article about kids burning their tongues on them, let them dissolve on his tongue and fill his mouth with tartness just to feel something that wasn’t numb.

Now, instead, he registers every flavour: the crunch of the bread, of the lettuce, the flash of mustard—and then the overwhelming crisp sweetness of the tomato slices, bigger and sweeter than anything he’d ever bought at a supermarket, and has the fleeting thought of just how glad he is to be alive, to be able to grow tomatoes and eat them on bread. It’s passing, entirely instinctual, and startles him a little, at the sheer ardour of it.

He hasn’t been glad to be alive in so, so long. Glad not to be dead, sure, but actively enjoying living, enjoying having his feet in shoes planted on an sturdy ground, a son and a house and a windowbox that can grow food, is something he hasn’t felt in…

Well, in a long time. The weird urge to cry returns, again, but this time it’s sweeter. He can’t believe this fucking tomato plant has helped him appreciate life again.

Next to him, Buck is making all sorts of ridiculous appreciate sounds, the kind that have Eddie’s ears heating mostly on instinct, but when he looks over at him, all he says is, “Good?” Like maybe he knows.

“Yeah,” Eddie says; is all he can manage, because he’s too overwhelmed for words. “Yeah. Good.”

Buck smiles at him, and maybe it’s that, too, that has Eddie glad for being alive.

*

With the height of summer has also come a few other things. For one, Kameron is heavily pregnant, as swollen as his tomato plants, and only growing more so by the day; for another, Eddie only knows this because he comes out of the showers as Buck’s phone is being passed around, everyone marvelling at the latest update photo Connor sent. He and Buck haven’t talked about the night at his place since it happened; the only reminder is the pothos, which sits in the middle of the kitchen table wearing its green and orange knitted condom and seems to taunt Eddie every time he sees it. What is clear, however, that despite everything they cleared up that night, Buck isn’t particularly eager to keep Eddie in the loop with the pregnancy.

It suits Eddie fine enough, even if it stings: he doesn’t regret telling Buck what he thought, only that he maybe wasn’t a little kinder about it. Of course, he wants to support his best friend no matter what he does, and Kameron’s rapidly growing stomach is enough evidence that Buck does, for certain, but he also understands why Buck is cagey to include him in it. He doesn’t want to be judged, and Eddie’s not known to be one to hide his feelings. So he doesn’t call him out on it, just says, “Looks like it’s going well,” when Bobby shows him Kameron’s latest selfie from Buck’s phone and hands Buck a mug of coffee as a peace offering.

Buck’s smile is a little strained, but when he knocks their knees together in thanks as Eddie takes the seat beside him, he keeps them planted together.

Eddie also stops going on dates.

At least, on new blind dates, with friends of friends of friends of the Wilsons. He lets Hen know, who gives him a significant, too-long hug that makes him think she’s got the wrong idea, but he supposes it’s not helped when his reason he can’t stay long is lunch with Alex.

Hen says, “Alex, huh?” and raises her eyebrows.

“Yes, Alex,” Eddie says; fights a weird blush. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what,” Hen says, looking at him Like That.

“We’re just friends.”

“Does he know that?”

“Yes, Hen.”

Her eyebrows don’t believe him, but her grin is nothing short of devilish when she says, “Well, you don’t want to keep Alex waiting.”

“Don’t say his name like that,” Eddie protests, but it falls on deaf ears as she closes her front door. Her raucous laughter echoes through the letter box.

It’s not like that, is the thing. Or he doesn’t think it is, anyway. He and Alex are just having fun; going on casual dates, getting to know each other. Granted, it has been a few months, but they are friends, and good ones. His relationship with Alex is no different to his relationships with any of his other friends, like Bobby or Chimney or—or Buck. Sure, they’ll jokingly flirt, but at this point they’ve established they work better as friends than actually dating. There’s also the matter of Buck, which they don’t talk about much but Alex knows, so. No, it’s not like that.

The Buck of it all is also getting harder and harder to exist around. Eddie’s love for him is almost overwhelming in its sheer bigness, the size of it in his body, enough so that sometimes it’s almost too much to bear. Buck is just constantly good, and there, helping Christopher with his summer homework and setting up trellises for Eddie’s new grape plant, crocheting hats for anything that moves, and some things that don’t—notably, the frog soap dispenser, who now has a matching hat and scarf—and trying out new recipes. It’s the point Eddie sometimes wants to just shake him; shout, do you know how reckless you are being with my heart, when it’s out and beating just for you? He'd dare to dream, sometimes, that Buck loved him back, only Buck just unfailingly good and kind to everyone, has sent the Grant-Nashes crocheted hats of their own even in the height of July and spent an afternoon helping Maddie and Jee-Yun de-weed their garden.

So Eddie is no exception, is the point. Eddie is lucky enough to share the spotlight of Buck’s love, but not arrogant enough to assume he has it all, or any brighter than anyone else.

But Eddie also thinks he could be content with just this. He could live without romance, if Buck keeps being around, helping Christopher with homework and crocheting little hats for all the dumb animal-shaped appliances he bought for the kitchen.

It could be enough.

*

It’s on the last day of summer, when Eddie finally tells Frank.

The weather is in the hundreds; the weatherman warns to stay indoors and keep hydrated. Christopher, as is becoming typical, now, is at a friend’s house at a pool party to celebrate the last sparing days of their summer vacation, and it’s also a Thursday, which means Buck and Chimney are at pickleball with Connor and Connor’s neighbour now Kameron is too pregnant for an hour of intensive sport every week. And Eddie:

Eddie sits in the scratchy chair in Frank’s office, quietly sweating in the tank top he threw on this morning, rubbing a damp palm over and over the arm of the chair until the fabric is damp with perspiration, as Frank says, “Huh.”

It’s the most out-of-character thing for Frank to say, who usually exclusively speaks in full sentences, that it’s almost enough for Eddie to crack a smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“Don’t be sorry, Eddie,” says Frank, seemingly on instinct. He looks like he’s still processing. “This is an understandably deeply private, personal thing you have gone through. You were under no obligation to tell me.”

So everyone keeps saying, anyway, but maybe the guilt is just Eddie having good people he trusts in his life for the first time that he wants to tell.

“Isn’t deeply private kind of the expectation of things I tell you, though?” Eddie says. “You know, so you’re not giving me bad advice?”

Frank’s lips twitch. “Bad advice?”

“Like, not fully informed.”

“Sure—but the fact you’re telling me now is enough.” His eyebrows raise, a little. “Is there any reason you’re telling me now?”

“I grew tomatoes,” is all Eddie can say.

Frank nods, like this is a normal thing to say in response to a question like that. Eddie doesn’t know how to explain that somewhere amongst his tomato plants he found so much more about himself that he doesn’t think it’s ever just really been about tomatoes, but maybe Frank gets that. He’s the one who’s borne the brunt of Eddie’s plant-related breakdowns thus far. “So what is your expectation now?” Frank says. “Where do you go from here?”

Eddie, oddly, hadn’t thought of that. “What do you mean?”

“You love Buck. What happens next?”

“I don’t know if there is a next,” Eddie says. “I don’t think I can do anything but.”

A ghost of a smile appears at Frank’s lips. “I mean, Eddie, what are you going to do about it?”

Oh. “Well, I guess just keep going about life.”

“You’re not going to tell him?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you just told me you can’t imagine doing anything except loving him.” Frank’s expression is gentle. “To me, that sounds like you’re quite serious about it.”

“Loving him is just a part of me now,” Eddie says. “I don’t think I can stop. But it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Change what?”

“His feelings. Towards me.” Eddie feels very small when he says, “He doesn’t feel the same.”

Frank’s eyes are sympathetic. “Have you asked him?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Buck doesn’t love people quietly. Not like that. If he loved me too he would have said something.”

“The same way you won’t?”

Eddie hunches his shoulders. “I’m not as brave as he is.”

“So you’d resign yourself to a life of unreciprocated love?” His words are firm, but his tone is nothing but kind. “For the chance Buck might not reciprocate, you’d be content to love him in this incomplete way forever?”

“It’s not incomplete,” Eddie says. “It would be enough.”

“Enough?”

“Enough to love him like this. I’d be happy to have just this.”

Frank smiles, a little sadly. “But don’t you think you think you deserve more than that?”

“More than Buck?”

“More than a man who doesn’t love you back.” Eddie must flinch a little, because Frank gentles a little, leaning forward in his chair; amends, kinder, “Don’t you think you deserve someone who doesn’t know how to do anything except love you too?”

“It’s not that easy, Frank.”

“I know,” Frank says. “And I don’t mean to persuade you one way or another—that’s not my intention here. But in my personal—and maybe unprofessional opinion—you have a lot more to gain than you do to lose in telling Buck how you feel. This love you hold for him is enormous, and the fact you discovered it in your garden when you were trying to find yourself tells me that it is almost instinctual, now; it is as intrinsic to you as breathing. Why risk losing someone who means this much to you because you assumed wrong?”

His watch beeps, then. Fifty minutes: their session is over.

Eddie can’t even speak. His tongue feels glued to the roof of his mouth; his palm sings white-hot; despite the temperature he has gone cold all over. Frank smiles at him, gently, like he can tell. “Just something for you to think about,” he says, and closes his notebook. “I’ll see you next week, Eddie.”

“Yeah,” Eddie manages, through a mouth that feels full of glue, and pushes himself to his feet. “See you next week.”

He gets in his car and sits there in silence for ten minutes. Then he pulls out his phone and texts Alex.

*

“Man, we haven’t been here in a while,” Alex says, as they sit. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Rose’s Turn is nice, but their calamari doesn’t hold a candle to the starter plates here.”

Eddie cracks a smile as the waiter comes and hands them menus. It’s the restaurant they visited the first time they met, now seated two tables away from one they’d sat at, that night, at the unknowing volta of Eddie’s life, and as they sit Eddie realises they haven’t been back since. The second make-up date had been at a local birria stall Buck had introduced him to during his first year in LA, when they’d go on hikes together every Saturday and grab lunch. It makes Eddie a little bittersweet, that stall, because it had been over those Saturday lunches that they’d become proper friends.

“Guess I thought we needed the reminder,” he says, instead, which is clearly the right answer, because Alex smiles at him.

“I already know what I’m going to order—you, too?”

Eddie nods, probably sticking to something safe like the seafood pasta he went for last time, and Alex catches the attention of the waiter before he can properly drift away, relaying their orders and then handing their menus back. The waiter nods and takes them, disappearing in the throng of the restaurant, and Alex turns back to Eddie, eyes bright over the candle between them. For a second the handsome line of his face looks so much like Buck’s that Eddie has to blink hard, so his eyes go back to green.

“So,” Alex says. “What’s the occasion, then?”

Eddie comes out of his reverie, finds Alex watching him with a smirking eyebrow raised. “Does there have to be an occasion?”

“Well, no, except I feel like we’ve moved past formal dinners now. Are you about to propose?” He puts on a look of mock severity. “Honey, we’ve talked about this: I didn’t want in public.”

Eddie laughs. “No, nothing like that. I guess I just… thought it’d be nice to do a formal dinner again.”

Alex’s smile comes a little more genuine, now. “Well, I’ll take that,” he says, and they cheers their water glasses together. “It is really nice to see you. You’ve been so busy with work I feel like I’ve barely seen you this past month. How are you? Catch me up on your life. How are the tomatoes?”

Eddie has to smile at that: always considerate, that he knows to ask about them. “They’re good,” he says, a little shyly. “The plants have stopped growing new fruit because it’s beginning to get to fall, so I’m thinking about building a little greenhouse for them; you know, so they can grow fruit year-round.”

Alex grins at him. “You know, for all you talk about them, I’m kinda bummed I never got to try one.”

“They went so fast. Buck wouldn’t stop talking about them at work and everyone was twisting my arm to try.” Eddie ducks his head a little at the memory, half embarrassed and half flattered. “I mean, it was nice of him, but he was acting like they tasted of chocolate, or something. They were just tomatoes.”

“Give yourself more credit than that, Eddie,” says Alex. “I’m sure they were the best tomatoes this side of the Mississippi.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Buck said the same thing. He was just trying to sweet-talk me so he could play around with the canner. He’s even trying to use Christopher to get me to let him use it, which infuriatingly is working.”

“Oh?” says Alex, and his face has done something a little weird, but Eddie tries not to dwell on it.

“Yeah. I mean, you know I can’t say no to Christopher, and Buck’s like, it can be a fun activity for us to do on the weekends! So. I’m caving. He has all these insane ideas about us canning enough to sell at the farmer’s market on Peachside, even though I’m pretty sure I only have enough apricots for a few jars, but…” Eddie shrugs; sees Alex’s face still in that weird look, and gets a little self-conscious. “Sorry, I’m just going on about my plants. How are you; how’s work? How’s your mom? And that girl at work you weren’t getting on with—has she eased up?”

Alex is just looking at him. Then he shakes his head. “Oh, you son of a bitch.”

Eddie blinks, a little startled. “Uh—”

“You don’t make it easy, you know that?” Alex says. “How’s my mother?”

“Um.” Eddie feels like he’s all of a sudden treading landmines. “Sorry, I didn’t realise—”

“No—Eddie.” Alex sighs. “You’re so goddamn sweet. You ask about my mom, you know about fucking Cindy at work, you bring me to the first place we met, and yet—” He makes a frustrated sound, half to himself. “All you do is talk about Buck.”

“Buck?” Eddie feels a little whiplashed. “What has—”

“You know what Buck has to do with this.”

“…Do I?”

“Our relationship basically has a third member, Eddie, and he’s shaped a hell of a lot like your best friend.”

“I thought—” Eddie blinks. Our relationship? “I thought you—knew.”

Alex stares at him. “Knew what?”

“That.” Eddie swallows. “You know, that Buck is.” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, but Alex does it for him.

“Around? Omnipresent in your life? Yeah, I knew, and I was prepared to overlook it, because despite everything I really like you, Eddie. I thought, he’s hung up on his best friend, but that’s just a rite of passage for gay people, and he’s so—new to it, of course I’m gonna give it time, and he’s sweet, and kind, but you just—” Alex exhales. “He’s still around. He’s in your life more than ever. How could I ever compete?”

“Compete?” Eddie says.

“Do you even know how much of your attention he has?”

We’re friends, he’d said to Hen, and she’d responded, does he know that?, and as Eddie looks at Alex’s genuinely upset face across the table he’s realising that maybe he’s really, really fucked up here. “Alex…”

Alex sits back. His face is wry. “You do,” he says. “You do know. I know that face; that’s the face you wore when you said you thought I was a woman.”

A horrible hollowing feeling starts to form in his stomach. “I think,” Eddie says, slowly, “that I’ve been really thoughtless.”

Alex laughs; as empty as the pit in his gut. “You think?”

“I thought—” Eddie swallows. “I thought this was—casual.”

“Casual,” Alex repeats.

“Between us.” Eddie’s blood is roaring. Fuck. He’s really, really fucked up here; got careless and blinded by his love for Buck, and has now done something really unkind to someone he genuinely cares about. “I thought we were just—having fun.”

“Having—Eddie. We’ve been seeing each other for over six months.”

Six months. Fuck. Has it really been that long? “I know,” Eddie whispers.

“We were having fun for the first four dates,” Alex says. “When you get to date thirteen you’re kind of dating.”

“I thought we were just friends.”

“Just friends?”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie whispers. “I’m really, really sorry, Alex.”

“So—what?” Alex looks upset. “I was just a pastime until you got the real thing? Is that it?”

“No, of course not, I just—” An unhappy noise escapes him. When he next speaks his voice comes out a little plaintive. “I thought you knew about Buck.”

“I did know about Buck. But we’ve been seeing each other six fucking months, Eddie.”

Fuck. “I’m so sorry.”

“What did you think was going to happen? Were you expecting that I was going to be a shiny enough distraction to make you forget you were in love with your best friend?”

Eddie wants to tell him to stop, but he also thinks he deserves this. “I liked you. I like you.”

“But as friends, right,” Alex says. “Just as friends.”

Eddie doesn’t really know what to say that can make this better. It’s becoming clearer by the passing minute he’s fucked up beyond measure. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Alex says, “no, I’m sorry.” He stands. Eddie can only look up at him from where he’s still sat, feeling about two feet tall. “Clearly I read this wrong.” Eddie opens his mouth to argue, because Alex didn’t do anything wrong, but Alex evidently is not in a call-and-response mood. “But I also think too highly of myself to waste my time being a placeholder. I deserve better than that.”

Eddie can only nod.

“And—” Alex stops at this. “One last word of advice?”

Eddie nods again, wordlessly.

“Just—” Alex sighs, frustratedly; scrubs a hand through his hair, pivots a little to look at him, really look at him. “Tell the guy you fucking like him already. Before you make someone else miserable.” Eddie stares at him, throat thick. Alex shakes his head. “See you around, Eddie.”

He’s gone before Eddie can say another word. It’s only when the restaurant doors close behind him that Eddie realises he was wearing the green sweater.

He closes his eyes and wants the world to end.

*

The drive home is long and sad.

Eddie sits in traffic with both hands on the steering wheel feeling like the shittiest person alive. He’d assumed that Alex’s intentions were the same as his; assumed that because Alex had known, or at least guessed, that he was in love with Buck, that he was okay with it, but hadn’t taken time to consider that maybe he wasn’t. Because they were friends, but they also did go on dates: would touch hands over the table, pay each other’s bills, flirt a little. It’s not unconceivable that Alex would believe this was leading somewhere; in fact, it’s almost inconceivable that he wouldn’t.

And Eddie was just the asshole using him, at least in part, to soothe the aching gap he’d realised only Buck was ever going to fill. Never would fill.

It’s maybe been the hardest truth of all, that he was one in the wrong. He’s been wrong before—knows he’s not a good person, at most someone who tries, knows that Shannon was a lot his fault, that he didn’t treat Ana well, but it’s been years since then. He’s gone to therapy, worked through all his shit and can finally close his eyes and fall asleep content at night, and had naively thought things were only uphill from here. That he couldn’t be thoughtless, or selfish anymore: as though he didn’t know his biggest blindspot was, and always has been, Buck.

The light goes green, and he pulls forward; can’t help but feel a strange surge of irrational anger, at Buck. It’s fleeting, but it’s there: an anger, and frustration, that Buck won’t let him move on. That he tried to accept he would never have Buck, tried to move on, but it was still Buck who tripped him up in the end. He dismisses the thought as soon as he has it, because he knows that of course it’s not Buck’s fault that Eddie’s in love with him.

(It’s also not Buck’s fault that Eddie didn’t really try to move on; that Alex hadn’t been an attempt at a relationship, only companionship. That Eddie hadn’t even tried beginning to stop loving him.)

Then he gets home to find his tomato plants have been slashed to stubs.

His feet slow on the floorboards; his keys fall out of his hands. He can only stand in silence and look at his windowbox—his pride and fucking joy—where used to exist his tall, blooming, flourishing tomato plants, still heavy and fecund with its last tomatoes, and now only the remains of shredded stalks, savagely torn, leaking sap and bruised brown. Raccoons, it must have been—only the other day when he’d passed his neighbour the last of his apricots she’d remarked that raccoons had raided her garden the week before—but as Eddie stands in his kitchen looking where his plants used to be, on the heels of Alex and everything that has already happened tonight, it’s almost too much to bear.

He’s fucking devastated.

Those tomato plants had been everything to him. He’d spent months tending to them, carefully grooming and nurturing until they were tall and healthy and full, can still remember the euphoria of first unfurling leaf, first flower, first fruit, and now they’re gone, ripped away and eaten by animals in the blink of an eye. There’d only been a couple of tomatoes left on them, but he’d planned to uproot them, move them someplace warm, build a greenhouse to coax more tomatoes out during the winter, and now—

Now… he has to start all over again.

He brings a trembling hand up to cover his face; feels his cheeks grow hot, his eyes sting with tears. He manages one long, shaky breath, and then from behind him the front door clicks open, and there is the telltale squeak of crutches on the floorboards as Christopher comes in.

Hurriedly, Eddie scrubs at his eyes, turns around just in time for Christopher to enter the kitchen, his backpack haphazardly half-zipped as he carefully comes off his crutches, leans them against the wall. “H-hey, bud,” he manages, and he thinks he gets his voice to sound normal even if it feels like it’s coming strangled out of his throat, but Christopher looks up anyway. “I, um, wasn’t expecting you home.”

“I asked Leo’s mom to drive me home early,” Christopher says. “My legs started to hurt and I got tired.” He pauses, tips his head a little consideringly. “Are you crying?”

It’s instinct, for Eddie to say, “No,” and then, after a pause, “Yeah. A raccoon ate my tomato plants.”

He sniffs, a little self-deprecatingly, scrubs at his eyes again; knows it’s a stupid fucking reason to cry, and it’s not totally about that, not really, but it also is, in part. He expects Christopher to maybe gently poke fun at him, tell him they’re just tomatoes, Dad, or maybe just be indifferent and shrug before moving to his bedroom, but instead, Christopher comes all the way over and gives him a hug. A little surprised, but mostly trying not to cry again, Eddie hugs him back. He’s shooting up like a weed; is tall enough now that Eddie can bury his face in his hair without having to crouch like he used to do, and for a moment they just stand there holding each other as Eddie tries to choke back the lump in his throat, even if a few tears do escape.

It’s the first time in so long they’ve been able to have a moment like this together.

“We can grow the tomatoes again,” Christopher says, after a moment. “I can help you.”

Eddie glances down at him, to find Christopher already looking up, chin on his sternum. “Yeah?” he says anyway.

Christopher nods.

Eddie nods too; sniffs a little, scrubs at his eyes one last time. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and his voice is a little hoarse, and he’s still more than a little sad, but at the end of the day, this is what matters: his son, warm and alive, in his arms. “We can do that.”

So they do.

Eddie fetches a new seed tray, and Christopher is tasked with carefully filling each slot with soil. One of the tomatoes had grown heavy enough that its branch had snapped, so that morning Eddie had carefully rescued it; now, he takes it from where it sits, bruised and blood-red, on the fridge shelf, cuts it in half, prises free as many seeds as he can and carefully pats them down in Christopher’s soil-filled partitions. Christopher pats more soil over, listens and carefully watches as Eddie shows him how to pack the soil down, and then together they drizzle water from the watering can Buck had bought him all those months ago.

Compared to the memory of his old plants, tall and sturdy and strong, the urge to dismiss this little tray of packed seeds as a silly, children’s project looms heavy over him, but Eddie firmly pushes it down; instead, carries the tray over to the windowsill, where its predecessor had sat months before, and steps back to admire his handiwork. Something almost like embarrassment prickles at him at the sight, and his eyes burn a little again, but then Christopher leans into his side, and Eddie’s arm naturally falls around his shoulders.

“See,” Christopher says. “Good as new.”

Eddie looks down at him, but Christopher is too busy admiring their handiwork. Despite the grief—because he can admit to himself it’s probably grief—his heart swells, a little. Christopher had never really cared about his tomatoes, only that that it had meant less takeout and more fresh salads (which he’d probably been annoyed about), but it had made his dad happy, and that was all that mattered. Therefore the solution to this problem had been simple: to grow new ones.

Eddie looks back at the tray. He still aches a little as the shadow of his ravaged tomatoes hovers in the background, but maybe the new seeds don’t have to be reminders of a bad thing. Maybe this is a chance to start afresh.

It’s hard not to think of Alex, but maybe that also doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe Eddie can learn from his mistakes; cover his plants in the winter when the pests start coming, and not assume what others are feeling.

“Yeah,” he says; finds he might actually believe it, too, when he adds, “Good as new.”

*

Christopher wants to be driven back to Leo’s house the next morning so he can partake in the museum trip, so Eddie gets up early to chauffer him there. The tomato plants in the windowbox appear even worse in the daylight; Eddie leans against the sideboard sipping his coffee as he looks at them, stems bruised black by sharp teeth, the flowers surrounding them trampled by small clawed feet. Then Christopher comes in, fully-dressed except for his socks, and says, “How are the tomatoes, Dad?”

Eddie’s gaze adjusts; focuses on the tray in front of the window instead. It’s still empty, of course. “Good,” he says, anyway.

“Cool,” Christopher says, and then when he pours himself a glass of water parks himself by the sill to drink it; gets through three-quarters of the glass, and then carefully showers the rest over the tray. “In case they’re thirsty, too.”

“That’s kind of you, bud,” Eddie says, instead of doing something insane like bursting into tears. “Uh, you wanna get your socks and shoes on?”

Christopher gets his socks and shoes on, and Eddie drives him back over to his friend Leo’s house, where Leo’s mother tells him in a low voice she’s very proud of the way Christopher marked out his boundaries the night before and that he raised a very kind boy. Eddie thanks her and gets back in the car, and by the time he gets back home he has a new text from Buck.

Can I come over?

He’s never had to ask before. Of course. Let yourself in.

Eddie’s in the garden when Buck arrives, rooting what he could salvage of the tomato plants in the ground. He hears the back door open, but keeps his eyes on his work; feels rather than sees Buck come and sit down next to him, cross-legged in the dirt. For a few long moments, they’re quiet as Eddie works, Buck silently watching him, before finally he says, “What happened?”

Eddie packs down soil around the roots. “Raccoons.”

“Oh,” says Buck, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Chris and I planted new ones. These ones…” He smooths the soil around them, quiet for a moment as he tries to choose his words. “I don’t know if they can be saved. But I thought some sunlight won’t hurt.”

“Yeah,” Buck says.

Eddie finishes patting down the soil before he turns to him. Buck is quiet, gaze fixed down on the plants.

“You want to help me plant the freesias?” Eddie says.

Something in Buck’s eyes shift, a little, and he glances at him. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Okay.”

So they spend the afternoon planting freesias and tidying up the garden, collecting all the old rotten wood at the base of the garden and pulling up weeds. It’s long, laborious work, the kind of manual labour that brings out the aches in his knees and back but settles something in his soul, kinda, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the way the weird knot to Buck’s shoulders gradually eases as the hours go by, little by little.

They take a break for lunch, leftover soup from the night before and a cup of coffee, and then get back to it, kneeling beside each other in companiable silence as they pull up dandelions and crabgrass, accompanied by the faint ambience of Los Angeles midday traffic and the 80s radio station playing from the yard over. It’s just past four o’clock when they finish, and it’s only when Eddie’s hosing off his hands at the tap that Buck says, quietly, “Kameron had her baby.”

Eddie glances at him, but his gaze is somewhere at the end of the garden, at the apricot tree. Something about the pensive look on his face stops him from saying congratulations. “Okay,” he says.

Buck sighs. “It was Connor’s.”

Eddie can’t have heard that right. “What?”

“The kid. It was Connor’s.”

“Are they… certain?”

“Yeah. The baby wasn’t white, so.” He shrugs. “They’re gonna do a DNA test to double check, but we all know.”

Eddie turns off the hose and steps up beside him. Buck doesn’t look away from the tree. “How does that even happen?” Eddie says. “I thought Connor was…”

“Not entirely.” Buck sighs. “They said they recommend couples have sex after insertion of the fertilised egg to—you know, encourage implanting. As it turns out it worked kinda too well.”

He sounds—upset. Eddie thinks of the smile on his face when he said I’m going to be a father, and reaches up to squeeze his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Buck,” he says softly.

“It’s stupid,” Buck says. “I should be happy for them. I am happy for them.”

“I know you are,” Eddie says. “You’re also allowed to be sad.”

Buck lets out a watery kinda laugh. “Fuck. I should’ve known.”

“Hey, no. There’s no way you could’ve. This is like… some sort of freak odds.”

But Buck’s already shaking his head. “No, not that. This… this was never gonna be my kid, Eddie. Hen was right. You were right. Donor, not dad.” He squares his shoulders; the line of his jaw is stiff. Eddie’s heart lurches when he notices his eyes are damp. “We don’t go past the glass doors. That’s what I told you. And I thought it was different, for me, because it was mine, this time, but it… it wasn’t mine, not really. It never was. A fucking… petri dish donation was all it ever was.” He digs in his pocket, pulls out something small and blue—with a jolt, Eddie realises it’s his crochet project, the thing he was working on on-and-off for months. “You know what this was meant to be?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“A fucking baby onesie. I’ve been working on it since I donated the sperm; I didn’t even know if Kameron had fallen pregnant yet. I made it blue—for my eyes, you know—and now—” He twists his mouth; closes his fist around it. Mangles it, a little. Shakes his head, roughly, and shoves it back in his pocket. “Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s my fault for thinking this was my chance at family.”

“Hey.” Eddie squeezes his shoulder again, hard enough that Buck finally looks at him. His gaze is pale and damp. “This is not the end for you. You hear me? You still have chances at family.”

Buck shrugs, mouth in a tight, wry twist. “I’m thirty-one this year, Eddie.”

“So?”

“I just—” He stops, twists his mouth and looks up like he’s trying to stop his voice from wobbling. When he next speaks his voice is almost a whisper. “I wonder if it’s me, you know? Like I’ve had all these chances and I keep fucking it up.”

Eddie aches. “You didn’t fuck this up, this was—”

“A freak chance, yeah. I know.” Buck shrugs; shoves his hands in his pockets, digs the toe of his sneaker into the dirt. “Sometimes I think the universe is just trying to tell me something. And I keep ignoring it.”

Eddie’s hand still sits, hot and damp, on Buck’s shoulder. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with it, only that it wants to curl into his shirt and pull him into a hug. “You know I don’t believe in the calls of the universe.”

Buck’s lips tick upwards into a rueful smile. “Yeah. I know.”

“You’re not unlovable, Buck.”

“Aren’t I?” He shrugs; Eddie’s hand falls from his shoulder. His palm sings with loss. Buck’s tone is light, but it’s evident this grieves him; that he’s holding back tears. “I know I’m lucky. I know my life is filled with love; you know, I have Maddie, and Bobby, and Chim and Hen and you. Taylor said to me once that my life is nothing but meaningful relationships, and I grew up—so fucking lonely, Eddie. I know how lucky I am to have that. But I just—” His lips twist, again, and his voice breaks a little, here. “I just want someone to choose me. Just for once.”

Eddie aches, and aches, and aches, so deeply he thinks it might snap all his bones. I don’t think I can do anything but, he’d told Frank, about loving Buck, and it’s on the tip of his tongue, to shout it at him—I choose you—but something holds him back. “Buck…”

Buck laughs, something wet and strangled, and scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes. “God. Sorry. I know that’s embarrassing to admit, but—”

“It’s not embarrassing,” Eddie says softly. “It’s—it’s really brave.”

“I don’t feel brave. I just feel so—I feel so fucking lonely, Eddie.” Buck puts a hand over his eyes; his shoulders shake, once. “And I just—I always feel less alone, here.”

Eddie—cracks, there. Like his bones all break. “Buck…”

“I’m sorry I barged in,” Buck continues. “I just… I needed to be somewhere it didn’t hurt so bad. The—the longing, I guess. It’s like it’s—muted. Like it’s not as loud.”

Because this house loves you, Eddie wants to say. Do you not see how this whole house rings with my love for you? He has frog-shaped dispensers; he has potted plants; he has potted plants with fucking knitted condoms; he has a son, who will only accept hugs from Buck. This whole house is an embarrassing, overwhelming shrine to his love for him, and he vibrates with the urge to keep it in. “Buck.”

“Sorry,” Buck whispers.

His hand is still over his eyes; he sniffs, once, and scrubs the back of it across his nose. His eyes are red and a little puffy. Eddie breaks all over again. He looks out at the apricot tree; wishes he could touch the hinge of Buck’s jaw where his tears are collecting.

“Alex and I broke up,” he finds himself saying.

In his peripheral, he sees Buck look at him. “What?”

“We broke up.” Eddie shrugs. “Or—just ended things, I guess. We weren’t really together. Which I think was the problem.”

“Are you okay?”

Eddie looks at him. Buck’s eyes are wide and gentle. “I think so,” he says, and turns back to look out at the garden. “I—I realised that I didn’t care for him the way he cared for me. I don’t think I was very kind to him, about it, but.” He shrugs.

Buck’s voice is soft when he says, “I can’t imagine you being unkind.”

Eddie scoffs, a little. “Try selfish, and thoughtless.”

“What happened?”

Eddie looks at him. Buck looks back.

“Do you really want to know?” he says.

Buck nods.

Eddie blows out a breath; puts his shaking hands in his pockets. Thinks of Frank saying, why risk losing someone who means this much to you because you assumed wrong? and thinks he’s had enough of hurting people because he thought he knew better than they did. Decides that maybe, just maybe, he can brave, too. “We wanted different things,” he says. “Alex… I think Alex wanted a relationship. And I was thoughtless, and didn’t think to ask him that, because I—I didn’t. Not with him, anyway. He was a good friend, but he wanted more than that, and I—I couldn’t give that to him. Not when I—”

His throat closes, here. Buck says, voice scarcely above a whisper, “When you?”

Eddie dares touch his thumb to the hinge of Buck’s jaw, damp with tears. Buck’s eyes are wide and fluttering—and daring to hope.

“Eddie,” he breathes. “When you what?”

“When I was in love with you,” Eddie says, simply.

Buck shakes all over. Eddie catches Buck’s jumping pulse in his thumbprint; puts his other hand on the other side of his face, until he has his head between his palms, hands still a little damp and smelling of petrichor. Buck has a smear of soil on his cheek that disappears, a little, in a dimple when a first, hesitant smile breaks out.

“Yeah?” he breathes.

Eddie nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but I—I had to tell you, once. Because I couldn’t hear you talk about wanting to be loved and not.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, “Eddie—”

His hand finds his waist. He smells of the garden; he smells of the chipped Lakers mug; he smells of something uniquely Buck. “Buck,” Eddie says.

“Can you kiss me?” Buck whispers. “Can you—please—”

Eddie kisses him. Buck’s mouth opens on an exhale, and Eddie kisses him, hands framing his face, surrounded by damp air and grass and the apricot tree, and Buck’s hands tighten a little, around his waist. Eddie kisses him, and kisses him, and the ache in him for the first time alleviates; the knot in him unwinds.

He feels the way he did when his tomato plants first sprouted, all those months ago: damp with newness, full of potential and possibility. Stood in the middle of his garden with Buck between his hands and his bottom lip between his teeth has something anxious and jackrabbiting in his chest slow, for the first time since he stood in the plant store at ten at night and thought, I like men.

“I choose you,” Eddie says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I choose you—over and over, I don’t know how to do anything but—”

Buck kisses the words out of his mouth. “I’ve dreamed of you saying those words to me for years,” he whispers, in the gap between their mouths. The fact it exists at all is inconceivable to Eddie. “I don’t—I don’t really know how to function now that it’s happened.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Eddie says.

But Buck’s already shaking his head. “It took you just the right amount of time. This is—it’s perfect.”

Eddie has to kiss him again, for that. And it’s not perfect, not entirely: Buck’s face is still a little damp with tear tracks, and Eddie’s tomato plants are still mangled in the ground. But Buck’s waist fits in Eddie’s hand like it was made for him, their mouths together like they’ve been doing this for years, and Eddie reaches into his pocket and pulls out the blue baby onesie. Buck’s eyes grow a little sad when he sees it, but Eddie doesn’t let him; presses it against his chest. “You have a family,” he says. “You have always had a family here. We’re your family. We’re going to keep this, and one day we’re going to have a child who will fit into it, and probably a few dogs, maybe a turtle because Christopher has been asking for one for years, but—” He presses, a little harder. “This is a reminder, that you’re ours, and we’re yours. Okay?”

Buck’s eyes are kinda damp again. “Okay,” he says. “I, um. I love you.”

Eddie warms from the inside out. “I love you too.”

“We should plant something,” Buck says. “Like, a tree.”

He’s mostly being indulgent, but Eddie thinks of it: thinks of how, in several years’ time, when their love is ripe and mature, they can step outside and see it bloom for real; collect fruit from it; have picnics beneath it. It sounds like the perfect idea. “Yeah,” he says. “We should.”

Buck smiles at him; a little silly in his fond he is. “Will any garden stores be open at this time?”

“I can think of one,” Eddie says: and kisses him again, just for luck. Buck’s mouth parts under his like it’s been doing so for years. Eddie could maybe stand here for the rest of his life while the garden grows and dies and grows around them, but eventually they do come up for air, and when they do, Buck’s cheeks are flushed pink. “Come on,” Eddie says. “Let’s go plant a tree.”

And Buck’s smile is like a fresh bud on the first day of spring.