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If anyone asked Buck, this was probably his favourite thing to do with his family.
It wasn’t every weekend all four of them could afford a lazy day trip to the park, but when they could, they went all out.
Buck and Christopher were in charge of food, Eddie and Vera were in charge of packing their picnic blankets and random other things for them to do, and by the time the weekend rolled around, all four of them were psyched to have a day together.
It was a system that just worked.
Today, Buck and Christopher had packed sandwiches, snacks and juice while Eddie and Vera managed to pack the car with every single board game they owned (that they wouldn’t even take out of the car). It was obviously their three-year-old’s doing, given that Eddie was absolutely incapable of saying no to their kids once they pulled the puppy dog eyes out.
It worked less as they grew up. Christopher was fourteen and had mostly grown out of it anyway, but Vera, at three years old, used them to her heart’s content on anyone that would give her a second glance.
Honestly, Buck couldn’t blame her — if he could get away with things with just a look, he’d damn well do it, too.
Somehow, their lazy day had ended up with Eddie dozing off on Buck’s lap while the kids played nearby. Buck leaned back against the tree, one hand slipping through Eddie’s hair, thumb stroking beneath his jaw. His skin was warm from the sun, prickly from the lack of shaving.
He missed these moments between him and Eddie. Before they got married, before life picked up and pressed the accelerator, they managed to spend the majority of their time as just the two of them, learning and re-learning their relationship, dealing with the changes and insecurities that plagued them as they defined what that crackling energy between them was.
Now, most of their time went between work and the kids, and both of their attention was always divided with the sheer amount of responsibilities that seemed to stack up. It was maybe only a few times a month that they’d have a few hours to themselves. Buck wouldn’t trade any of it for the world, but it was nice to have Eddie in his arms for once, without having to share.
Just as he had that thought, he spotted both kids coming towards them. He laughed to himself at the irony of it, even as his mind shifted to parent mode.
“Papa, you need to play with us,” Vera ran over, already tugging at his arms. “We want to see the flowers.”
“Flowers?”
Chris, a few paces behind his sister, explained. “There’s a new flower shop that’s opened right around the corner. They have really pretty flowers, so we want to go see them.”
Buck turned to his daughter, who was — very predictably — using her puppy dog eyes again.
“You have to!” she said in her excitement. Buck froze as Eddie stirred on his lap at the commotion, only to toss an arm around his legs and bury his nose in his stomach.
Thankfully, Eddie settled and his breathing evened out immediately. Buck still gestured to Vera in the universal symbol to quiet down as he sat up a little straighter. “Okay, I’ll come, hang on.”
Christopher giggled as Buck carefully slipped out of Eddie’s hold and tucked a jacket under his head. He reached for his phone and wallet, quickly sending his husband a text to let him know where they were going.
“Okay, kiddos, let’s go.”
The three of them walked over to the new shop, Vera’s hand clutched tightly in his. Buck raised a brow when he saw it.
It was a quaint little place, with bright flower bouquets decorating the shelves right in front of the window. There was a lady with a big garden hat spritzing them with water, humming softly under her breath. There didn’t look to be much set up yet inside; he wondered if she was even open for business.
“I want to see the red ones!” Vera yelled excitedly, pulling out from Buck’s grip to latch onto Chris’ shirt, ever mindful of his crutches. He smiled at the sight of them, so unbelievably grateful that both their kids were highly protective of one another.
“Careful,” he warned as the two made their way over to the flowers spilling from the side of the stand.
“Looking for anything specific?” the lady asked them kindly, talking directly to Chris and Vera.
They’d initially come to just look, but clearly, Vera wasn’t on board with that plan because she started pointing out the red flowers, then white daisies, then orange roses and then sunflowers, all while the woman indulged her. Buck and Chris exchanged a glance.
It was a given fact that all three of them absolutely had the worst time saying no to the youngest in their family. Buck and Eddie were sometimes forced to say no as parents, but Christopher never denied her anything.
True to it, he looked over and shrugged. “You can give it to Dad.”
Well, there was that; Eddie would probably love them. Buck turned back to the conversation, only to find the lady already tying up a small bouquet that they’d somehow put together in the ten seconds he’d looked away.
“Vera’s got every single bit of your dad’s impulsivity and ambition,” he muttered to Chris, pulling out his wallet. "While you...you take after me, and I love that."
His son laughed, already calling him out on his bullshit before he could even ask the woman how much the flowers would cost. “I think she gets both of yours, to be honest. Don’t tell him I told you, but Dad agonized for an hour about the perfect bouquet to get you for your first date, and second-guessed so many times that Carla just kicked him out of the door. I guess that’s where the flower thing comes from. But yeah, I'm glad I take after you, too.”
Buck laughed at the memory, even as his chest warmed. He’d preserved those flowers as long as he possibly could before plucking a single flower from the bunch and carefully pressing it in between the pages of a heavy book.
“Would you like to know what those mean?” the woman, whose name tag read ‘Lynn.’ Buck looked down at the bright bouquet in his hand, colorful flowers offset by the green leaves. The arrangement reminded him of the ones Karen and Maddie had made for his and Eddie’s wedding.
“Sure,” he agreed.
She pointed each flower out as she spoke. “The sunflowers mean adoration and happiness, the orange roses mean passion and enthusiasm. White daisies mean true love and innocence, or purity, and the ranunculuses mean that you’re charmed by someone.”
Buck choked out a laugh as Vera let out a shrill giggle. “Well, I married him so I guess I am. Thank you, we appreciate your help.”
“Oh, I think you’ve got to thank this little one for choosing them!”
Vera seemed to have taken after Christopher in the uncanny ability to make friends. “Prince Charming” as Pepa once called him now had a three-year-old counterpart. He said as much to his son, who only laughed, taking his sister’s hand.
After waving goodbye to Lynn and thanking her again, the three of them made their way back to where Eddie was still asleep. He looked to be in the same spot they’d left him, face turned to the side as he lay on Buck’s jacket.
Glancing between the flowers and his husband’s serene face, Buck was struck with an idea. He hated to pull apart Lynn’s work so soon after she’d made it, but he supposed he could give it to Eddie like this.
Slipping one orange rose free, Buck carefully snapped the stem and bent down near him, gesturing for Chris and Vera to stay quiet as he slid it into Eddie’s hair, which was thank God fluffy again. The gel made it easier for the flower to stay in place, and the color of the petals stood out starkly against the dark strands.
“My turn!” Vera whisper-yelled, bouncing eagerly with her excitement. Buck snapped the stem of one of the ranunculuses and passed it to her, giving Chris a sunflower. They leaned over to slide the flowers in, stifling their giggles.
Like that, they slowly arranged the rest of the flowers in Eddie’s hair. The strands at the back wouldn’t hold the stems, but the quiff at the front was pretty much perfect for them to stand the flowers up until Eddie’s head looked like one of those styrofoam floral bases.
Buck sat back, letting Chris and Vera decide which flower should go where, all the while taking pictures. He nearly dropped his phone when Eddie popped one eye open, a smirk on his face telling him he’d been awake the whole time.
He rolled his eyes at his husband, but continued taking pictures of their kids’ creative process. If their medium happened to be their dad’s hair and flowers, who was Buck to deny them of that?
Neither child had noticed that Eddie was awake, too consumed in making sure everything was perfect, so he winked at Buck and shut his eyes again.
Ridiculous, Buck thought to himself even as he shook his head, fondness surging up in him for the love of his life.
It took another five minutes and fifty pictures for them to finally be satisfied with their work. “We can wake him up now,” Chris declared, shaking Eddie’s shoulder.
“Hey kids, where’d y’all run off too?” He let out a faux yawn that was so fake that even Buck had to laugh, Christopher staring at him unimpressed. Vera didn’t seem to notice as she chattered away excitedly about Lynn and the shop and how she and Chris chose flowers for him.
“Oh did you? Where are they?” Eddie asked, crossing his legs beneath him and sitting up straight, one flower teetering on the verge of falling out. Buck stared at him wide-eyed at how good the flowers looked in his hair, even if they seemed slightly crowded. There weren’t more than eight, but they were too squished together.
“In your hair, Daddy!” she piped up.
“In my–” Eddie pulled his phone out to look at it, mouth dropping as he saw the bouquet on his head.
“Do the flowers look like too much?” Chris wondered out loud, now that Eddie was sitting upright and they could see it clearer.
“I was just thinking they do. Maybe only four instead of all eight?” Buck suggested.
“No! Papa, we have to take one picture,” Vera said, crawling onto Eddie’s lap. Buck choked out a laugh and gestured for Chris to join them, sliding his camera to portrait mode.
After a billion photos that Buck was so going to frame, Eddie pulled him into the mix so they could take a few selfies.
“Can you imagine what Hen and Chim would say if they saw you like this right now?” Buck asked as Chris started pulling one of each flower variety out of his dad’s hair. Eddie scoffed, sending him a warning look.
“We can put them in Papa’s hair!” Chris intervened when Vera started to protest the dismantling.
Buck held his hands up, clearly having walked into a trap of his own making. “Woah wait. Your dad’s hair is straight, the flowers will come out easily. Mine is curly, I’ll be washing petals, stems and leaves out of it for months.”
“Oh come on, don’t be dramatic,” Eddie waved off. “I’ll help you get it all out. Chris, Vera, go for it.”
That was all the permission their daughter needed because she instantly leaped onto his leg (unfortunately enough, his bad one). He barely concealed a wince as he shifted her weight to the other leg but Eddie immediately took notice, reaching out to dig his fingers into the joint, exactly where his muscle seized.
“Vera, be careful baby, remember Papa’s leg?”
“Sorry,” she said cutely, already slipping one of the stems through his hair. Together, she and Chris arranged it so both Buck and Eddie had symmetrical flower crowns across their hair.
“There, that looks better,” Christopher admired, laughing when Buck and Eddie exchanged a look. “ Now we can take decent pictures.”
Once again, they arranged each other in every single pose possible. Eddie with the kids, Buck with the kids, the kids themselves, each of them with one kid — they’d gone through every single combination and permutation they possibly could. Then, they tried to work out how to balance Buck’s phone on top of the picnic basket to at least try and get pictures with all four of them that weren’t selfies.
They succeeded in a few of them, but one of the pictures they’d taken made Buck tear up instantly. It was one where Buck and Eddie were sitting together, Vera on Eddie’s lap, near the middle and Christopher with Buck’s arm around his shoulder on the side. Both of their wedding rings were visible, and all four of them, especially their kids, were smiling brightly.
Buck could see how Christopher’s curls looked like his when he was younger, how Vera’s dark hair was like Eddie’s but she had stormy eyes that looked a lot like Christopher’s. This was what he’d been looking for all those years ago, and to have found it with his best friend — with Eddie — was the greatest gift anyone had ever given him.
His husband peered over his shoulder, grinning at the photo he was looking at. “A few touch-ups for color and lighting and that could be ready to hang in our living room.”
“You want to hang a photo of us wearing flower crowns in the living room?” Buck said skeptically, because right now, the frame they’d hung up was from when Vera was born. The flowers looked brighter against Eddie’s hair, and Buck couldn’t stop staring at the soft smile on his husband’s face.
“Yeah, because this one feels natural,” Eddie said, pointing to where Chris and Vera were fake-wrestling with each other. “This craziness...that’s what we were about from the very start, right?”
“Probably, yeah,” he chucked, leaning into Eddie’s arm. “Sometimes, it doesn’t feel real, even though it’s been so long.”
“Don’t blame you for that one,” he agreed. “But it is ours now, even if we were idiots for a good chunk of time.”
“Hey, we fixed that in literally half a year. Married and moved in before we’d even gotten to the six month mark.” They really hadn’t dated long. Buck had already known that no one would ever live up to what Eddie meant to him, even before they started dating; he just hadn’t let himself believe Eddie felt the same way, or that he was even ready for anything else.
But when Eddie had proposed less than a year after the fact, Buck hadn’t even taken a full five seconds to process the question before he said yes.
It sent him for a spin every single time he thought about it.
Eddie reached for his hand, entwining their fingers together as they sat quietly, listening to the shouts of joy and giggles from Christopher and Vera as they horsed around.
“Can we order pizza today?” Christopher asked, dusting his clothes off.
“Might as well turn this lazy day into the ultimate lazy day,” Buck shrugged, gathering their picnic supplies and tossing them into the basket. Eddie picked up loose trash and stuffed it into a plastic bag while Chris and Vera got to their feet.
Eddie waited until their kids were skipping ahead of them to bring it up. “You are way too wrapped around their fingers,” he laughed, sliding an arm around his waist. Buck chuckled, turning his head to press a kiss to his husband’s cheek, careful to avoid the flowers still in his hair.
“You knew that…” He tried to think back on the first time Eddie would’ve known. “The day of the earthquake. Your first week.” Eddie snorted at the memory, making Buck tack on, “but I’m not the one who packs the car with all the games we own every time we go on a picnic even though we never play a single one of them.”
“What if they wanted to?!” he defended.
They bantered with each other about it as they reached the car, buckling the kids in properly. Buck took one look at the trunk and pointed soundlessly between it and Eddie with a raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” Eddie conceded glumly, climbing into the driver’s seat. Buck let out a whoop of victory, settling his hand down on his husband’s thigh as they started towards home.
He took a second to reflect on the happiness washing through him. Vera and Chris were singing off key in the back, loud and deafening. Eddie was grinning at them, humming along as he drove and he’d dropped one hand onto Buck’s. Seeing Eddie so happy, knowing that the very same joy burned through him...nothing compared to it.
The sunflowers in their hair encompassed what he was feeling in one — adoration and happiness.
He may not have thought he’d ever have this, but now that he did...he was never letting it go.