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It was nearing sunset when they finally made it out of the front door, arms laden with bags and baskets.
Bdubs had picked out the spot days ago. The perfect little clearing, creek near enough to hear the babble, but up on a small rise that prevented it from getting soggy. Wildflowers grew abundant at the edges, attended to by buzzing bees and delicate hummingbirds.
A little slice of heaven where they could enjoy a slice of pie.
Etho spread out the blanket, humming critically as he squinted his eye at their surroundings.
“Alright, alright. Pretty nice. Would have been good to get out here with some daylight left, but–”
Bdubs resisted the urge to throw down the picnic basket, its contents too precious to risk. “Shut your pie hole or it ain't getting any pie. If you'd brought me the right blueberries, we wouldn't have had a problem.”
Etho sighed heavily. “I didn't know blueberries had kinds. You said ‘lowbush’ and I thought it was the name of a grocer –”
“Well now you know!” Bdubs cut him off, top of the basket clattering as he threw it open. “And when you get a taste of this pie, you'll be saying, ‘oh Bdubs, you were so right and I'm so glad I went back to get the best blueberries for the best pie. You are amazing and handsome and I will never doubt your botany knowledge again.’”
“That does sound like something I'd say, yeah,” Etho agreed, kicking off his shoes and settling cross-legged on the blanket. He propped his chin in his hand and watched the other man fuss with the pie tin and plates, setting everything up just-so before he began to carefully extract a slice.
Etho's hand inched toward the plate. Bdubs slapped it away with a hiss.
“S’not ready!” he insisted, digging through the basket. He pulled out a jar of powdered sugar and a tub of whipped cream, sprinkling the first over the top and dolloping the cream on the side. He finally slid the plate to Etho.
Bdubs watched him with moon-wide eyes, bright and expectant in the growing orange haze of sunset. Etho didn't waste a second more – he scooped a bite onto his fork and shoved it in his mouth.
He tried to keep his expression neutral, to drag it out until Bdubs started cursing, but damn. That was good pie.
He knew he'd given away the game when Bdubs smirked like a villain, finally cutting himself a piece. “I told you, I told you,” he sang. “Worth all the trouble I put you through.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Etho grumbled around his second bite. “Worth the trouble,” he repeated, watching Bdubs savor his own bite, the warm scattered light forming a halo around his loose, dark curls.
Trouble, sure.
They managed to eat half the pie before they cried uncle and switched to just the mint tea they'd brought along. Leaning back on the blanket, Etho watched condensation bead on his glass and tried to be both there and not – to relax in the midsummer air, belly full, content and safe and together. To savor the moment without thinking about the way Bdubs’ lips looked when he smiled, berry-stained and guileless. To feel present and be still, as his hands twitched whenever Bdubs’ shoulder brushed his own.
The air shifted and he was hit with the smell of cloves and lye soap and clean, living green things. The smell of Bdubs and home and screw it, Etho closed his eyes and let himself breathe it in. His fingers twitched again. Bdubs saw it, and he crawled away to tug up a bundle of wildflowers.
“Gem taught me this,” he explained, hooking the stems and beginning to chain together a crown. “She said I look like a Roman statue when I wear one. Said Keralis might steal me for his base.”
Etho sat up, watching Bdubs work. He took a few of the flowers and began making his own.
“Show off. Gem had to draw me a picture,” Bdubs snorted, holding up the finished crown. “C’mere, lemme put it on ya.”
Etho dipped his head so Bdubs could drape the little flower crown over his messy hair. When he looked up, Bdubs was giggling at him, looking at him so fondly that Etho had to look away, back down at his own creation.
“What a cutie. Like a…elf guy, you know? Ethereal.”
Etho hurried to finish the crown.
“Alright. Let's see how I did,” he weighed it in his hands like he was testing the structural integrity. Bdubs offered his own mop of brown hair up to be adorned. When Etho leaned forward to settle the flowers over his curls, he got another deep breath of him. Of home. His hands shook a little as he pulled them away.
Bdubs smiled as he straightened, but there was something self-conscious in it. He laughed as he shifted back, fiddling with the picnic things. “Ain't we a sight? Whaddya think, statuesque, or circus freak?”
The sun was low on the horizon now, the first peeks of purple twilight chasing away the edges of the day. In the low light, Bdubs could have been made of bronze, with bits of obsidian for eyes.
But he was very real. Present and alive and close.
He could cast him in metal and paint on his features by memory. Spend the rest of his life trying to capture him like this, and he'd never come close. So Etho had to breathe, breathe him in. Make it count.
Make trouble.
“Oh Bdubs, you're so amazing and handsome, and you know so much about fruits. Right?”
The crown got caught up in his hair as Bdubs threw his head back to laugh like a wild thing.
“You're incredible,” Etho went on, head propped in his hand again. “And you put a Roman statue to shame.”
Bdubs’ laugh fizzled out into a sputter. “Maybe the ones without heads,” he joked. “Don't remember feeding you that line. Pie must’ve been real good, huh? You don't gotta butter me up, I'll make another.”
“You're something else, you know that? Drives me crazy. I don't know what to do with you,” Etho went on, too earnest, searching and vulnerable like there wasn't still a sliver of sunlight revealing the blush sitting high on his cheekbones, highlighting the muted red of the scar that bisected his face.
Bdubs reached up to touch the flower crown on Etho's head and the taller man's heart nearly stopped from the proximity, from the split second moment he thought he was reaching for his face, his hand, somewhere, anywhere–
“What do you wanna do with me?”
Something between a cough and a whimper got caught in Etho's throat. He swallowed it down. Bdubs’ hands were still in his hair. “What do I want to do?”
“Yeah, you don't know what to do with me. What do you wanna do with me?”
Etho reached up, managed to take Bdubs’ fingers out of his hair and hold them in his palms, fingertips smoothing over his knuckles.
“I like doing this with you, B.”
He'd been wrong about the obsidian for the eyes – it was an insult. He'd have to mine for one hundred years to find a gemstone with the kind of depth and shine he saw when Bdubs was this close.
“Sure you do. But. Sometimes,” Bdubs said, licking his lips. “Sometimes, I think you wanna do something else.”
He'd leave it like that. The way he left his back door unlocked, so Etho could come in and sleep in the guest bedroom when his own place was too quiet. The way he ordered decaf so they could share. The way he’d draw out a yawn and say he needed a walk home, because he knew Etho wanted to leave.
The ins and the outs where he made space for him, as natural as the curve of his hand around Etho's own. Loose, so he could let go at any time.
Etho didn't want to.
The hummingbirds had gone off to sleep, dusk crawling into the valley and settling over the grass and flowers and little creek like a blue-gray blanket, still summer-warm but cool enough to linger, to get close. To share a little body heat with someone else.
Bdubs tastes like lowbush blueberries and mint when he kisses him, and his lips are smoother than stone, his cheek soft and real beneath Etho's hand, his hair wild and tangled between Etho's fingers, carelessly smashing the flowers between them.
When they part for breath, Bdubs' exhale ghosts over his lips, and it feels like home.