You Do Matter To Me

Buck's voice is a soft hum in the evening air--breaking the comfortable silence like the low buzz of a power line when you step close. Eddie wants to reach a hand out to touch it--thinks it'll kill him if he does.

Buck is stretched out on the grass of his backyard, staring up at the blushing sky. Dirt from his garden under his fingernails, rogue flour from hours before still settled into his shirt sleeve.

It's a lazy Saturday. He'd brought Chris over for no real reason. Had spent the day harvesting Buck's small crop of strawberries, adding the ones they didn't eat to the farmer's market basket, piling them onto fresh-baked shortcake, wiping whipped cream from the corners of their mouths.

Now, Eddie is on the patio, half his gaze on Buck, the other half on Chris and Theo playing Go Fish in the living room. A mug of chamomile warms his hands--not that they need warming in the late spring air. Still, it grounds him somehow.

"Coevolved?" He asks, and Buck nods, his gaze still fixed on the sky.

"Mutualistically of course."

Eddie chuckles lightly, and he watches with delight how Buck's smile stretches at the sound. "I'm gonna need a bit more than that, bud."

Buck's gaze finally shifts, offering Eddie a grin--soft and sunny like the hazy sunset--before turning back to the wispy, pinking cloud that's been drifting slowly over the yard.

"It's where different species adapt to each other's traits," he explains. "Plants and pollinators mostly." He picks at the grass under his hand, rolls it gently between his fingertips. "Like, Darwin's orchid and the sphynx moth. The orchid has a long nectar tube to force the moth to touch its reproductive structures when it eats. The moth is the only one with a tongue long enough to get to the nectar. They think it wasn't always like that, but one got longer and the other adapted to match it and on and on like that. Now the orchid has a reliable pollinator, and the moth has a source of food that it doesn't have to compete for."

The grass falls absently from his fingers. "They evolved to survive together, you know?" The deepening sunset casts a warm glow across his face. He turns his head, his gaze falling to Eddie again. This time it settles there. "Can't live without each other anymore."

The electric buzz courses lightly through the air between them. Eddie can't avoid it this time.

Rules: Post the last line you wrote and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you want).

i was tagged by my love @soupfic and it forced me to get started on this buck week prompt!

They're sitting so close, Buck's thighs are spread so the guy can sit between them and lean in close. Buck can feel the hot breath on his chest as they get started, and he's grateful for the sharp sting of the needle to ground him before he does something humiliating like get hard in the middle of this tattoo studio. Though, he's a bit worried it's still a very real possibility. He's never been opposed to a little pain.

"You're new," Buck blurts out in lieu of anything intelligent, because he needs to fill the silence before his mind starts to wander.

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Evan "Buck" Buckley in 9-1-1 S01E05 ~ Point of Origin