buck gets eddie flowers for their first date, big and bright and beautiful, and eddie blushes sweetly and smiles into them. when chris sees them on the dining table later he rolls his eyes at how embarrassing and over the top it is, even as he's grinning at the blush on his dad's face. their second date eddie gets obsessed researching flowers and recruits hen and karen to help him. he ends up getting buck an even bigger bouquet, summery and sweet-smelling, and when buck stutters and goes crimson eddie tells him how pretty his birthmark looks flushed against the blossoms.
of course buck can't be shown up like that, so he gets competitive about it. takes an entire flower arrangement course. he's a bit sheepish about the slight wonkiness of his homemade bouquet but eddie tears up a little when buck babbles about the meaning he put into it. but then he looks up with wet bright eyes and goes 'i'm gonna beat you next time, buckley'.
and so begins the great buckley-diaz flower-off. bouquets everywhere. flowers picked at scenes and presented to each other, tucked in turnout pockets as their teammates pretend to gag. once buck disappears for a medical call and comes back with a daisy crown that eddie wears as he's setting a baffled vic's bone. eddie slips out later that shift and comes back with a basket full of fresh lavender from the local farmer's market, for the lavender syrup buck's been ranting about.
eventually they have to sit down together and admit that their wallets Cannot support this activity, and eddie kind of thinks that's the end of it except then buck starts bringing home flower planters, lining the house, hanging off of windows. he gets really into researching rose varietals, bright hyacinths, googling 'what flowers survive best in LA weather'. some flowers don't bud and he always pats the dirt consolingly. others bud and he beams at eddie, dirt-smudged and beautiful.
once there's enough buck starts plucking them and sneaking them into vases around eddie's house, making it smell like buck's backyard, sunshine and sweetness and all. eventually eddie raises an eyebrow at buck and goes 'are you trying to stage a hostile botanical takeover of my house?' and buck just grins and says 'oh, now you notice?' and that's how eddie realizes that buck has been telling him with roses to move in with him.
after they move in together the flowers continue. he doesn't have to pluck them anymore but he does trim them when he needs to, always makes sure that they end up on eddie's bedside table and sometimes tucked with dirt-covered gloves behind a blushing eddie's ears.
he doesn't forget the kids, either. christopher wanders into the backyard and comes back with handfuls of cherry tomatoes that he eats like candy, theo's face is sticky with the strawberries that were too sour to eat but perfectly delicious as jam.
one day they get married, and eddie surprises buck with a wedding album that he made. on every page are dried flowers, carefully pressed, all the way back to that first impossible bouquet. buck cries, and eddie teases him. they learn to make potpourri. eddie gives a lot of suspicious looks to the plethora of bees that visit every summer. buck makes a lot of floral syrups. jee-yun and mara and theo have a lot of tea parties with mint leaves and rose petals, playing fairies. their world smells of sweetness and sunshine. it's a good life.
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blakekathryn
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