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“D’you know,” Buck begins, tongue out and forehead wrinkled from concentration as he flicks his knife this way and that, “they used to carve turnips instead of pumpkins?”
Eddie does know, funny enough. Christopher asked him something about Halloween a few years ago and they took to Google together; one thing led to another, and they stayed up way past bedtime to get to the bottom of it. They went to school and work raccoon-eyed and tired, but knowing the origin of jack o’lanterns and Stingy Jack—something to be proud of, in Eddie’s opinion.
“No, I didn’t,” he lies, grinning at Buck across the island. “Tell me about it.”
Buck smiles, brighter than the setting gold of the sun outside the kitchen window and more vivd than the dozens of carved pumpkins with flameless tea lights sitting all over the counters, and Eddie falls a little bit more in love right then and there.
How can he not? Buck’s in his home, in his kitchen, their home and their kitchen, sipping apple cider and dressed in one of his old sweaters even though it’s still warm outside because it’s October, it’s the time to be festive, and there’s a plethora of pumpkins all over the place, a mountain they’re tackling together since it’s date night, and there’s pumpkin guts strewn all over and seeds baking in the oven to snack on later, and they’re mid-thirties and boring, according to Christopher, and this is everything.
This is everything Eddie has ever wanted and he can’t wait to marry this man.
“I read this off History Channel’s website, and that was a few nights ago when we were staying with those two brothers at the hospital and you fell asleep in the chair.” Buck claps his hands together, goofy and adorable, excited like a jubilant child. “It all started in Ireland with this guy named Jack. Everybody called him Stingy Jack.”
“Stingy Jack?”
Buck nods once. “Mhm. Stingy Jack.” He does a weird thing with his wrist, cutting out whatever design he drew on this pumpkin with odd precision and detail. There’s no telling what it is; the last one was a bat and before that was a mushroom. “Apparently, Jack invited the devil to have a drink with him but didn’t want to pay.”
“What a dickhead.”
“Right?” Buck chunks a misshapen triangle of pumpkin over his shoulder. “I mean, like, it’s the devil, but it still stands, you know? You invite somebody out for a drink, you pay for their drink. That’s the rules.”
Eddie hums. “That’s right, baby,” he agrees, poking at the cutout W with the tip of his knife and dropping it into the gathering pile near his feet. “Anyway.”
“Jack tricked the devil into becoming a coin, and instead of using it to pay he put it in his pocket next to a cross. The devil couldn’t change back, o’course, so he just stayed in Jack’s pocket for a while.” Buck reaches into his pumpkin and pulls out a triangle similar to the one just a moment ago. “Eventually, Jack let the devil go after a while, but made the devil promise to leave him alone for a year and not take his soul if he died in that year.”
“Can’t blame the guy there.” Eddie cuts the crookedest straight line ever and tries not to sigh. Maybe he should’ve practiced a little before he committed to this plan. “Gotta protect yourself from the devil.”
“Yeah, well.” Buck huffs. “Maybe the devil isn’t all that badass because he let himself be tricked again.”
Chuckling, Eddie carves out a fairly decent U that’s only slightly crooked. “Really?” He glances up, taking in Buck’s hulking frame bent over a small white pumpkin; adoration, hot like lava, spreads through his chest and makes his breaths come quicker. The crush he has on his boyfriend is massive—bigger than the whole entire sky. “He didn’t learn the first time?”
Buck shrugs. “Guess not,” he says. “He tricked the devil into climbing up a tree and carved a cross into the bark so he couldn’t come down until Jack was promised he’d be left alone for ten years.”
“Maybe the devil should stop accepting invitations from Jack. Like, how many times is this dude gonna let Jack trick him before he realizes Jack isn’t his friend?”
“Right?” Buck cackles, high and bright. “Anyway, Jack died before the ten years were up. The legend goes he wasn’t allowed in heaven because he was such a dickhead and the devil didn’t claim him because he was keeping his word, so he gave Jack a burning piece of coal and sent him off into the night. Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip and he’s been roaming the earth with it ever since.”
Eddie makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, edging the E in a way that makes it somehow circular and square all at once. It’s his last letter and definitely not the best; he can’t begin to imagine how hard it would be carving all these letters into a turnip. He might have started crying.
“So people started carving turnips and putting coals in them ‘cause of Jack?”
“Well, yes and no. There’s several different reasons. Some of it’s ‘cause of Jack—they’d put turnips with coals in the windows to ward his spirit away—and some of it’s because of Samhain celebrations.”
Eddie nods, letting Buck knows he’s paying attention as much as he can while putting the finishing touches on his proposal. He knows about Samhain—the most basic information that can be found with a quick Google search, that is—because Halloween was his favorite holiday growing up even though his dad didn’t like very much. It’s a topic so interesting he wrote a term paper over it in high school.
And it’s kind of funny, looking back. He never would’ve thought, as an eighteen year old writing a six-page essay over the history of Halloween, with sources, that he’d be here in LA almost two decades later about to propose to his boyfriend via messy and lopsided pumpkin carving while his teenage son hid in his room playing video games to give them privacy.
Wow.
He never thought he’d be here. He never thought he’d leave El Paso, but here he is. Here he is, and he can’t imagine being anywhere else.
He grabs a flameless tea candle from the pile, pulls the plastic tab, flicks the switch on, and adjusts it inside the pumpkin. It lights up beautifully, gentle and delicate; white-orange-yellow glow, faint like moonlight fingers dragging over the earth, glows as if it’s magic.
Excitement bubbles up in Eddie’s tummy like a smoking cauldron, boiling over in an array of sparkly colors and painting his whole life in shades he’s never seen before. “Hey, Buck?”
At his name, Buck looks up and blinks. “Yeah?” There’s a smile on his ruddy face, one that’s small and soft at the corners and full of so much sunshine Eddie thinks he might start orbiting.
Eddie takes a big, deep breath and holds it for a long moment before letting it out. “Do you like my pumpkin?” he asks, spinning it around.
And he knows what Buck’s seeing—WILL YOU MARRY ME carved into a lumpy, warty orange pumpkin; the L’s blend together and the M’s are way too big and he decided to leave off a question mark because he ran out of room but the tea candle shines bright and it looks okay, pretty, if a bit crooked, and Eddie’s proud of it.
Buck blinks once. “Eddie?” he asks, confused, and then blinks once more when realization dawns. “Oh, Eddie, I—”
Several things happen in that moment. The timer for the pumpkin seeds goes off, startling both of them; Eddie jumps in his chair, nearly falling out, and Buck’s entire body spasms like he’s been suddenly tickled, and his carving knife slips.
“—oh, shit.”
The knife hits the table and then goes flying, falling and landing in the floor where it clatters. Hotly concerned, Eddie shoves up out of his seat and trips over the pieces of pumpkin in the floor. Buck cradles his hand to his chest, keeping it squeezed tight, and looks at Eddie with a torrent of emotions.
“Are you bleeding?”
Buck nods. “Yes,” he says, bug-eyed and a bit mystified.
Eddie balances himself on the island and counter, stepping over an unnecessary amount of pumpkin guts on the floor. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make a mess like this one was clearly out of their mind. “Badly?”
Buck nods, again. “Yes.” His eyes are still wide, still bright and blue and beautiful, and he stares at Eddie with a funny look on his face that Eddie can’t decipher.
“Does it hurt?”
Buck nods for the third time. “Yes,” he says, again, and speaks nothing else. Like it’s the only word he knows right now or something.
“Oh my God.” Eddie puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder, knotting his fingers in the fabric of the sweater. “Hospital? Do we need to go?”
His mind’s racing a million miles a minute. He hates driving, especially when the sun is going down, but he can do it if he has to; Christopher is old enough to stay by himself, as long as the doors are locked, and it shouldn’t take too long, surely, and Buck might have to take on light duty for a couple days but that’s fine as long as he’s fine.
“Yes,” Buck says for the fourth time, and then, after a shake of his head and small chuckle, “No.”
“Huh?”
Buck laughs loudly; it rings through the room like Eddie’s favorite song. “Yes, but no,” he says, still as confusing as he was before. “Or maybe it’s no, but yes? I don’t know.”
Eddie frowns, fizzy from the tips of his hair to the ends of his fingertips. “Baby, what?”
Still laughing, Buck scoots away from the island and walks his big body into Eddie’s chest. “No, I don’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just a small cut. It surprised me more than anything.” He takes his hand away from his own chest and shows Eddie; sure enough, it’s a short, shallow cut on his finger that’s barely bleeding. “And yes, I’ll marry you.”
This time, Eddie blinks. “Are you serious?”
“Well, yeah.” Buck coughs and rolls his eyes and shimmies ever closer to Eddie, as if he wants to crawl inside Eddie’s skin. “D’you think I was gonna say no?”
Eddie chuckles, winded and full of wonder all at once. “No, but—” he starts, stops, and then grins so big and wide his cheeks hurt. “You mean it? You wanna marry me, Buck?”
Buck hums, nods, and kisses the skin right above Eddie’s ear. “Of course,” he says, smiling like he’s won the lottery or something—like he’s the happiest he’s ever been before. “There’s nobody else in the world I’d rather spend the rest of my life with than you, Eddie.”
Glee bubbles up in Eddie’s throat and pushes out with a bark of laughter. He wraps his arms around Buck’s neck, squeezing tight, and finds Buck’s mouth with his, and they kiss and kiss and kiss until their lips are tingly and swollen, until the smell of burned pumpkin seeds in the oven brings Christopher out of his room to investigate what’s going on—and then they turn the oven off and laugh, and tell Chris the news, and then laugh some more because this is everything Eddie’s ever wanted and he has it.
He finally has it and he’s never letting go.