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Buck and Eddie kiss for the first time in the middle of a park in El Paso, in the heights of beautiful, Texas spring. They do it surrounded by flowers, a warm breeze, and a million unspoken words.
Fifteen minutes after they kiss, after Eddie's legs go shaky with anxiety enough that Buck lowers them both to the ground, staining their pants green and blue with the grass and flowers, Eddie starts speaking.
“I picked a bluebonnet once, when I was a kid.”
His head is in Buck’s lap, eyes staring sightlessly somewhere at the clouds above them. As he talks, he reaches out a hand to brush over the field of blue flowers surrounding them, fingers tracing along petals and stems, bending them without breaking them.
“They’re the state flower, right?” Buck asks quietly, matching the softness of Eddie’s voice.
“Mm,” Eddie hums. “Yeah. They’re a big deal here. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in Texas, but I’m sure you’ve seen it even just this visit.” He rolls his head slightly so he can stare sideways past Buck's leg. He’s at the perfect level that Buck imagines his entire vision is filled with blue. “Spring comes, and every patch of grass starts blooming with them. The side of every highway, and every street, and along the edges of every tree line. For a week or two, the entirety of Texas holds its breath so they can bloom." He sighs out a breath, something caught between wistful and regretful. "I always loved looking at the bluebonnets.”
“So you picked one?”
“Yeah, I picked one.” He pulls his hand back from the flowers and turns back towards the sky. “Not in front of anyone, though. It was just me and the bluebonnet. I don't think I had ever seen anyone pick one before, and on some level I— I don't know."
Buck runs his hand through Eddie's hair, carding it so gently away from where it had dusted in front of his eyes. "You don't know?"
"Nobody picks bluebonnets in Texas." He says. "Or if they do, they don't do it in El Paso. Not in front of my family or me. Not… not hidden behind the storage shed next to the chapel, after mass."
Buck's hand pauses for a split second in his hair, a barely there moment of nothing before it starts moving again.
"My parents found out," Eddie continues, voice heavy, lined with something so childlike it feels like teenage Eddie is speaking through this version of him, the body older but the words the same. "Or— found out isn't right. I told them about it."
Buck hums out a sound, not judgmental, but just shy of confused. "Willingly?"
"Yeah, willingly. I was so happy. It— I had picked the bluebonnet a few weeks back, and I guess I was." He shrugs, mouth tilting up into a self-deprecating smile. "I don't know. I knew I shouldn't have told them, but when you sit in happiness that long, you start asking yourself if anyone could really be that unhappy to hear about it. You just— you stew in it. And it's so fucking stupid in hindsight, because I don't think there had ever been a single thing in my life that made me that happy that my parents approved of, but I told them anyway."
The wind blows by them, a breeze strong enough to bend the stalks of the flowers, to press patterns and waves into the tall grass. Buck can only see it out of the corners of his eyes, unwilling to look anywhere but fully down at Eddie.
"They freaked out," Eddie continues. "I mean— I mean really freaked out. And they told me that picking bluebonnets is illegal. They used the word like— like a threat, or something. They kept talking, and talking, and talking about how much trouble I would get into. How if anyone ever saw me, they'd never look at me the same. How just by picking bluebonnets I'd be ruining my life, and making them look bad."
Eddie laughs out a choked sound, squeezing his eyes shut. "And all I could think about the entire time they were yelling at me was how badly I wanted to go back and see that bluebonnet I picked. But I was a kid. When your parents yell at you and tell you something is illegal, and tell you how badly it could ruin your life, you listen. You believe them. You trust them."
"I—" he cuts himself off, voice cracking. "I trusted them. I trusted them the way you always trust your parents. I trusted them about going to school, and about God, and about what it meant to be a man in my family. I trusted them about bluebonnets, and I trusted them about—“
He turns his head slightly away from Buck, as if it can hide the way his eyes have gone glassy, can disguise the way his forehead is wrinkling in the way it always does when he's trying to convince himself he shouldn't be allowed to feel something. Buck lets his fingers fall down his forehead, smoothing away the wrinkles as he whispers, so quiet it's nearly lost to the breeze. "It's okay, Eds, it's okay. Take your time."
Eddie breathes out again, so hard it sounds like it hurts. “I trusted them about the bluebonnets. So I picked one once, and I never picked one again.”
A tree across the clearing from them rustles. Neither of them turns to look.
"I told myself it was easy," Eddie says, voice small. "I told myself I didn't really care. I still liked spending time around the bluebonnets, even if I wasn't allowed to touch them. After my— after I picked the bluebonnet, my parents wouldn't even really let me look at them. But I told myself it was okay. It was a sin to pick the bluebonnets, so I— I mean." He flinches slightly. "Illegal. It was illegal to, to— Not—"
Buck's other hand moves, squeezing once on Eddie's shoulder. Unspoken understanding.
Eddie exhales.
"I believed them for years that it was illegal to pick them. Everyone in my community thought so, and if there were people that didn't, I— I guess I was too scared to find them. It was easier than it should have been, to just—" Eddie huffs out another disdainful breath. "Jesus. I was a terrible person."
"You were a kid, Eddie."
"A terrible kid, then." He shakes his head. "It was so goddamn easy to just agree and nod my head whenever anyone else would shame someone for picking bluebonnets. To bite down my own guilt and tack on my own comment about it being wrong. It was so ingrained. In the walls of my house, and my church, in the fucking pavement to every place I walked. Just this— this hatred." His voice chokes a little. "I fucking hate myself. I hate knowing that there was a version of me that acted that way. I hate that I looked at the pride on my parents' faces whenever I spewed that rhetoric like it was a reward. I hate that I wanted their approval that bad."
"You were a kid, Eddie," Buck says again, voice raw. "It wasn't on you to know they were wrong."
"Still doesn't make it feel better." He sighs again. "Once I left El Paso, though, it— it was so different. I actually saw people picking bluebonnets. Happy people— just walking through the fields until they find the one. But this time, there weren't any more voices around me reminding me about how wrong it is, how illegal it is. And I started looking at how happy they are, and remembering how happy I was. That one time I picked a bluebonnet, all those years ago."
Eddie shuffles slightly, head pressing further into Buck's leg. "I think I still thought it was illegal, on some level. Just… the type of illegal I could look past."
"How come?" Buck asks, like he already knows the answer.
"They were happy," Eddie says. "And I didn't care about the bullshit my parents had told me about how bad and damaging it was when I saw how happy it made them."
"Mm," Buck hums. "When did you figure out it wasn't?"
"I… it was a gradual thing, I think. Just—I spent years being around all these amazing people, watching them pick bluebonnets. And feeling every argument I had been fed slowly fall apart. And when I finally spoke to one of them, one of these evil, wrongful bluebonnet pickers, they told me that it was never illegal to pick them at all. They put their hand on my arm, and told me that it was only ever my parents who didn't like to see their son running around with flowers."
Buck gently runs his hand up and across the swoop of Eddie's hair. "I like seeing you with flowers."
"Yeah. I like seeing me with flowers, too. I just kind of wish," his face pulls in with something like regret. "I just kind of wish I had been able to spend more time with that first bluebonnet. The first one I picked."
The breeze picks up again, and Buck runs his fingers back up through Eddie's hair, taming the loose strands. He's quiet. The thoughtful kind of quiet Buck only really takes the time to be when it matters. And after maybe a minute, he asks, “That bluebonnet… what—“ he cuts off for a second, then continues, infinitely softer. “What was his name?”
Eddie's expression doesn't shift immediately. There is no sudden shocked gasp, or full body freeze. He just lies in Buck's lap, letting the fingers comb through his hair, letting the heat of Buck's thighs warm Eddie's neck.
It takes a moment before he reacts. A moment before a tiny smile colors across his lips. "Corbyn," he says. "He always made sure to remind everyone he met that it was spelled with a 'Y' instead of an 'I'. He said he was such a boring-looking guy that people needed to know the one interesting thing about him from the get-go. I never thought he looked boring, though." The smile on Eddie's face morphs into something bittersweet. "I miss hearing him say it. I wish I knew enough about him to miss even more."
"You didn't see him again?"
"No," Eddie says. "My parents told his parents, and they were— My parents weren't happy, but they weren't as bad as his parents. They moved churches, or maybe moved altogether. I don't know. I never saw him again, and every time I tried to ask my mom, she would shoot me this look. Like I was wrong just for thinking about him at all."
Buck makes a sound at that, tiny and pained.
"I've looked him up, though." Eddie continues. "There aren't many Corbyns with a Y. He got married a few years back."
"And he…?"
Eddie's smile widens, lined with something almost proud. "He and his husband look very happy in their wedding photos. He found his bluebonnet, I think. I'm… happy for him. I'm happy that it worked out."
"I like when things work out," Buck says.
"Me too."
The wind whistles past them, and Eddie's eyes finally flick up enough to meet Buck's for the first time since he started talking. Buck smiles at him. Eddie smiles back.
"Thank you for trusting me," Buck murmurs, shifting his hand to cradle along the side of Eddie's face.
"Thank you for listening," Eddie replies, leaning into the hand.
Buck's smile softens, and the hand he had resting on Eddie's shoulder disappears for a moment. There's a sound to the right of his head, a tiny wet snap noising. The breaking of a stem.
A moment later, a bluebonnet is being slid behind Eddie's ear, sun-warmed and damp. He wonders, for a moment, how the flower looks against his skin. He wonders if he looks pretty. He wonders how many years he would have had this, if he let himself believe he could.
Buck looks down at him, eyes soft. "You look good like this. My bluebonnet."