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Buck hasn't even committed any sins recently, unless gay sex counts. So what did he do to deserve this?
“The guy at the plant store says it's unkillable,” Eddie announces, looking far too proud of himself for the circumstances.
“Yeah, but he hasn't met you,” Chris says, looking concerned.
“He said if I have any trouble, I can come back and ask him. He gave me his number.” Eddie shows them a sticky note with–god, is that a heart?
“Did everything short of deflowering you,” Buck mutters, staring at that stupid heart.
Chris huffs out a laugh. Eddie rolls his eyes, “I think we can safely say that ship has sailed.”
“Ewww, Dad, stop,” Chris complains. It would be more convincing if he could stop giggling.
Eddie goes to ruffle his hair, but Chris dodges, still laughing. “Do you want another birds and bees talk?”
Eddie and Chris descend into silliness. Buck, who usually joins in with almost no provocation, keeps staring at that plant. It's small, with a few long leaves shooting right out of the dirt. Buck is pretty sure it's a spider plant. Unkillable or no, Eddie Diaz is a force to be reckoned with. Once he touched one of Athena's plants, a graze at best, and the poor thing had shriveled up and died within a week. He's done unspeakable things to Bobby's herbs. When Chris wanted to keep a plant alive during the pandemic, he'd banned Eddie from even looking at it. It had still wilted after Eddie had sneezed in its direction. The man is a bonafide plant killer.
Buck worries about Eddie still, even a year on from his breakdown and subsequent attempt to blow his life up. He'd been there when Chris was gone, when Chris came back, when Eddie tried to ask Buck out with words but ended up kissing him silly against the refrigerator instead. He knows it isn't fair, that he should have moved on and started trusting Eddie again by now. And he has, for the most part. But he's still worried that something could set Eddie sliding back. Like his inability to sustain life (ignoring that he's managed to keep both a human child and Buck alive for years, because Eddie is the sort to ignore all of his best parts and only see his failures).
So Buck is going to keep this unkillable plant unkilled. He's got a plan.
Step one: move in with Eddie and Chris to ensure full plant awareness.
His lease is up in two months anyway, and Buck has been wondering. Hoping, even. But Eddie hasn't said anything about it and Buck doesn't want to be pushy. He also doesn't want to be moved in and out in a weekend. Or cheated on and then asked to move in as a panic cover-up. But Eddie wouldn't do that. If nothing else, he has a proven track record of being way better at keeping his lips to himself than Buck is.
He starts off by being subtle. At the station, he tells Chimney, “I’m thinking of not renewing my lease.”
“You can't live with me and Maddie,” Chimney announces instantly. “I remember what you were like as a roommate.”
“He's not so bad,” Eddie says. He slides a mug of coffee over to Buck. “I finally taught him to fold laundry the right way and he's a great cook. Snores though.”
“I remember the snores,” Chimney says.
“Remember the snores?” Hen asks, incredulous. “We still live the snores.” That's enough to set them all off on an argument about bunk room etiquette.
Eddie doesn't say a word about Buck moving in with him. But when they go to sleep, every night he makes Buck watch while he waters the plant.
“Her name is Dorothy,” he tells Buck one night.
Buck is busy watching Eddie absolutely drown the poor thing, so his first thought pops out. “‘Cause you're gay? Or is it for Golden Girls?”
“What?” Eddie asks. He finishes pouring the last of his glass of water into the pot. Buck watches as the water sits on top of the soil. Slowly, some starts draining sluggishly into the saucer beneath Dorothy. “Like the saint.”
“Catholics,” Buck grumbles.
Eddie shoves him back onto the bed and straddles him. “Watch who you're calling Catholic.”
Two weeks before Buck's lease ends, when he has moved absolutely nothing, Chris calls. “Dorothy’s toast,” he announces.
Buck gets his ass in gear and gets over there. Chris has Dorothy spread out across the back porch. She's suffering. Or, more likely, she's already been put out of her misery and the little bit of green left on her just hasn't realized that yet.
The diagnosis, dire as it is, doesn't take more than a quick look. “Root rot.”
“Yep,” Chris says. “He's lucky I actually do need daily water or I would've rotted too.” He shoots Buck a happy grin, one that takes over his whole face. Despite the carnage in front of them, Buck can't help but smile back. Christopher may have his moody teenage days, but it's not hard to see the happy kid he first met in this gangly teenager.
“I think she's past saving,” Buck says. “C’mon, let's go.”
“Dad's at Tia Pepa’s and then he's swinging by Whole Foods,” Chris reports. He giggles again.
Excellent. They'll have ages. As much as Eddie claims to hate Whole Foods, the man can spend hours there. He's not as into weird health fads as Buck, but he does like fancy chocolate and complaining about how the word organic doesn’t actually mean anything.
Buck and Christopher stride into the nursery, two men on a mission. They've got Dorothy’s pot in the Jeep and a few of her remains in a plastic baggie Chris is clutching. “I need to see a man about a plant,” Chris says very seriously to the woman at the counter. “He gave my dad a sticky note with his number and a heart. His name is Jeremy.”
“Try the outdoor section,” the woman says, eyeing Buck up like she isn't old enough to be his mother.
“Come on, Buck,” Chris orders. He turns into a tyrant when they're doing something behind Eddie's back. Buck probably shouldn't indulge him, but it's funny. “We need to hurry before Dad gets home.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Buck says. He falls into line with Chris.
Jeremy isn't hard to spot. He also isn't hard on the eyes. Buck is trying to be normal about it. He knows what he and Eddie have is solid, even if Eddie hasn't invited Buck to live with him and Chris yet and that's turning into an actual issue that will probably leave him crashing on his sister's couch. It wasn't cute at 27 and he's trying not to think about how unimpressed she and Chimney will be by a repeat at 33. The relationship he and Eddie built won't be threatened by a man with delicate features, soft eyes, and a sunny smile.
“Jeremy!” Chris calls. He's still on their mission, at least, because that sounds like an accusation. Maybe Buck should be reining him in.
Jeremy smiles at Chris, even though he could stand to look a bit intimidated. Chris is doing his best to look mad. Jeremy would probably be the kind of stepdad to cut all of Christopher's crusts off of his sandwiches, which Buck doesn't do because it's a ridiculous form of food waste and Chris doesn't mind crusts anyway. Plus, he isn't Christopher's stepdad. He and Eddie aren’t married. Buck would probably spiral further, but Christopher takes charge.
“You sold my dad a plant,” he brandishes Dorothy as he speaks, “and he killed it.”
Jeremy's face falls as he takes the plastic bag in. “Oh dear.”
“She was not unkillable,” Chris informs him.
“Clearly,” Jeremy says. He takes the bag and studies Dorothy’s remains. “How on earth?”
“He watered her every night,” Buck says.
“You were supposed to stop him!” Chris says, an accusation Buck has already heard three times on the drive here. “I don't sleep in his bed. I didn't know he was committing crimes.”
Jeremy’s sculpted eyebrows rise. “I'm sorry to hear about the plant crimes.”
“We need a new Dorothy before Dad gets home.” Chris takes his bag back. “Can you get us a new one?”
They leave the store with Dorothy 2 secured in a bag hanging from Christopher’s crutch. “Dorothy is dead,” Buck says solemnly as they replant in the parking lot of the store. “Long live Dorothy.”
“May your reign be long and your crop flourish,” Chris says.
They ditch Dorothy's remains in a dumpster nearby. It's an inglorious burial, but Buck thinks she'd understand why they had to do it.
That night, as Eddie waters Dorothy 2, he asks, “Do you think she looks different?”
“No,” Buck says. “Why?”
Two days before Buck's lease runs out, Eddie slides into the driver's seat instead of indulging his usual love of being a passenger princess. The man doesn't even navigate or choose the music. He's lucky Buck loves him, is all he'll say about that. “Get in,” Eddie says, “or we'll be late.”
“Late to what?” Buck complains. Eddie shoves a travel mug of coffee at him.
Late to Buck's own apartment, it turns out. One of Eddie's cousins, José, pulls up a few moments after them in a Home Depot van. The answer for what they're doing is, apparently, dismantling Buck's bed and putting that and the mattress into the van.
“The couch stays,” Eddie dictates, “but we can take the TV.”
Once they've accomplished that José asks, “Anything else?”
Eddie opens a cabinet and pulls out a lone bottle of hot sauce. “This is too spicy for Buck. You want?”
José wants. Buck circles his apartment and realizes that aside from the hot sauce, his cabinets are completely empty. His whole apartment is empty, except for a couch Eddie refuses to let pass through his doors.
By the time they have Eddie's bed dismantled and in the van, Buck's bed now in its place, he starts to think they might be moving in together. “Do I live here now?”
Eddie looks at him. “Buck, your lease is up. Where did you think you were going to live?”
Buck smiles to himself. He lives with Eddie and Chris. He may have actually already lived here, given how empty the loft was and how he can't remember the last night he spent there. “I live here.”
Eddie kisses him. “You live here. With us.”
He leaves with José, because they're planning to move the old bed into yet another cousin's new apartment. Buck heads for Eddie's bedroom, for their bedroom, on cloud nine. Or at least he is until he sees Dorothy 2, lying spread across the carpet in a halo of her own dirt.
He sends Chris a picture. Then he texts, WHAT DO I DO. Chris texts back instantly, even though he's in math class and definitely not meant to be texting, Jeremy time!!!
Anything but that. Buck scoops Dorothy 2 up, but she's good and gone. Her leaves are severed from the roots. There's no way he can save her. He bags her remains, vacuums the carpet, and sets off.
Jeremy doesn't even look surprised to see Buck with another bag of dead plant. “I actually can't blame Eddie for this one,” he says. “Probably. At least not entirely. I'm worried it runs in the family, but at least the gene skipped Chris.”
“Dare I ask?”
“Got knocked over by a bed,” Buck says.
Jeremy opens his mouth to ask, then seems to think better of it and shuts it. “Let me get you another.”
Eddie doesn't ask about Dorothy 3. He's too tired to even glance at her, let alone pour an entire glass of water in. He comes home from the last in a string of errands he and José ended up on for Eddie's cousins and drapes himself over Buck while Buck is finishing dinner. “Gonna marry you,” he hums. “That’s the next step.” Buck shivers and tries not to think too hard about being Buck Diaz, something that is probably years away. After they eat, Eddie barely stays up long enough to sign Christopher's newest test (an 87% in biology–Buck helped him study and he's so proud) before he passes out.
Dorothy 3 dies an embarrassing death. Eddie spends most of the next month distracted, which means Buck is distracted too because he doesn't know what's going on and he and Eddie don't see enough of each other. Eddie takes extra shifts, leaving Chris and Buck to entertain each other. For Chris, this mostly means being dropped off at various friends’ houses or at random hangout spots. For Buck, this means worrying.
So much worry that Dorothy 3 gets brown and crackly from the early summer sun before he realizes Eddie has moved on from his daily watering routine and into neglect.
“I think she's past saving,” Jeremy tells him.
“This plant is not unkillable.”
“I've never seen someone kill one of these from under watering,” Jeremy says. “They really are hardy plants.”
“Eddie is special.” It comes out unbearably fond. Buck does love his ridiculous boyfriend, even when he's murdering plants with impunity.
“Yeah.” Jeremy smiles at him. “I'm getting that.”
Dorothy 4 burns to death. Buck is not sure what inspired Eddie, who is ostensibly also a firefighter, to put that many candles in their bedroom. Dorothy is the only casualty, aside from the curtains Buck hated anyway and some rose petals that make him wonder if Eddie killed another plant while his back was turned. He shoves her under the bed while Eddie blows out the rest of the candles and apologizes profusely. Maybe he won't notice as long as Buck replaces her tomorrow while he's picking Chris up.
There's no denying this man is a menace.
The next morning when they pick Chris up from his friend’s house, he demands, “Well?”
“How did you even know?” Buck asks. He'd checked before they left and Dorothy was still safely hidden.
“Dad told me.”
“About the fire,” Eddie puts in, more loudly than is needed considering they're all sitting in the same car.
“Oh thank god,” Buck says as Chris shrieks, “What fire?”
“There is nothing to be concerned about,” Eddie announces. “I have everything under control. Drive, Buck.”
Buck does. He drops Eddie off to get his truck because he's in charge of replacing the curtains. Buck is a bit worried about what monstrosity they'll end up with next, but he's way more worried about replacing Dorothy before Eddie realizes what he's done. So he and Chris argue that people who don't set the house on fire get ice cream and don't have to go curtain shopping. They win with barely a protest from Eddie, which probably means he still feels horribly guilty even though Buck keeps telling him that it's okay.
Jeremy barely even looks surprised at seeing them again. “We're running low on Dorothy lookalikes.”
“Dad likes doppelgangers,” Chris says. “Emotional accuracy not required.”
“Alright!” Buck yelps. “Let's get Dorothy 5–look, that one seems close enough–and we'll still have time for ice cream.”
Chris is right enough. Eddie doesn't even glance at the new Dorothy. Her pot is even singed but he doesn't seem surprised by her good health. Either Eddie is getting less observant or Buck and Chris are great at choosing new Dorothys.
Eddie hardly notices anything at all, after that. If Buck thought he was distracted before, it's got nothing on his current distance.
“Do you think he wants to break up with me?” he asks Maddie. She's been sworn to secrecy both about the plant conspiracy and about Buck’s current freak out.
“Do I think Eddie wants to break up with you? No. Buck, why do you think that?”
“He's been weird!”
“You've been weird,” Maddie reminds him. “And the only thing you're doing behind his back is replacing a plant he keeps killing.”
“Losing Dorothy would be a blow he may not recover from,” Buck says as seriously as he can manage.
“Right,” Maddie says. “But do you think you might be reading into this a bit? This is Eddie. Why don't you just come clean about the plant and ask what's been going on with him?”
Buck chews on this. “We can always schedule an emergency session with Frank.”
Maddie sighs. “You two have a child. A great child. Somehow.”
“And a plant,” Buck reminds her.
The death of Dorothy 5 necessitates Buck telling Eddie what's been going on. Eddie comes home from a vague errand he won't tell Buck about and drags him into their bedroom. Theirs, now, not just Eddie's. He still gets butterflies when he thinks about it.
One thing leads to another, and limbs are flailing about a bit, and a particularly lovely ass is put on a windowsill and does some wiggling about, and then there's a crashing sound.
“Oops,” Eddie says. Buck detangles himself and leans around Eddie to look out the window. Dorothy 5 is lying out there, pot shattered on the ground.
“She never stood a chance,” Buck says. “Not against your ass.”
“Didn't you promise you put the screen in right this time?” Eddie asks.
“It also never stood a chance.”
Once outside, Buck leaves Eddie to clean up the shattered pottery pieces and sweep up the dirt. He gently picks Dorothy out of the carnage and says, “A new pot and it'll be like nothing ever happened.”
Which would arguably be true, except Eddie comes to the nursery with him this time. And he keeps Dorothy on his lap in her temporary pot, a mixing bowl Buck isn't too fond of. It's a nice day, so the windows are down. When Buck hits a pothole, Dorothy sails out of her bowl and right through the window.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Buck says. “Seriously, Eds?”
Eddie cranes his neck around to see where she landed. “She's been run over,” he reports.
“How was that even possible?” Buck asks him. “That makes no sense.”
“She committed suicide to get away from me.” Eddie sounds way more miserable than the situation calls for. Especially considering this is the fifth iteration of Dorothy, not one that's magically stayed alive for months despite Eddie's extremely powerful black thumb. But then, Eddie doesn't know that. To him, Dorothy has been the only plant who managed to put up with his bullshit for longer than a week. They're probably going to need to have a funeral, even if the grave will be empty.
Buck is almost to the nursery, so he pulls in anyway. Eddie leads the way inside, both of them quiet. Buck may be grieving. He doesn't know how to feel.
“Hey,” Jeremy says when they get inside. Then he takes them in and the smile slides off his face. “You two okay?”
“Dorothy died,” Buck says.
“We're out of–”
“Do you have any fake plants?” Eddie interrupts. “I killed her.”
“This is a nursery,” Jeremy says. “Obviously we don't have fake plants.”
“I want a cactus,” Buck says.
“You are not shoving my ass into a cactus, Buckley,” Eddie said.
“You’re the one who wiggled around,” Buck points out.
“So how did Dorothy die?” Jeremy asks.
“She got run over,” Eddie says miserably.
“I'm not asking any follow up questions,” Jeremy says. He's wise, Buck decides. But not that wise. This all started because Jeremy thought he could fix a hot guy. Buck gets the impulse. But it's never a wise one. Buck took one look at Eddie Diaz six years ago and decided he wanted this man’s problems to be his. And look at him now. Five dead Dorothys and not even a corpse to show for this one. Plus, Eddie’s been so weird. He keeps taking extra shifts and measuring Buck’s fingers and complaining about how much fancy restaurants they’ve never even been to charge for tiny bits of food. Buck can’t figure out what’s going on with him.
“Let's go, Buck. I'm over this.”
Buck follows. “Over me?” he asks.
Eddie spins. “What?”
He considers this. It was actually a little bit too pathetic even for him. Obviously Eddie isn't breaking up with him over a dead plant. Or five dead plants. He takes a deep breath. “I want a cactus,” he tells Eddie.
Eddie heads right back for Jeremy. “Do you have any cactuses?”
“I'm scared to give you two a plant,” Jeremy says. He leads them towards a different part of the greenhouse anyway. “I've seen people kill spider plants before, but not with so much flourish. Treat this one with kindness, boys.”
“I didn't kill her,” Buck mutters.
“It could have happened to anyone,” Eddie complains. “You're the one who hit the pothole.”
Buck leaves the nursery with Blanche safely in hand. She rides in the cupholder with the windows closed. He puts her on the kitchen counter to repot later and makes Eddie promise he’ll never, ever try to water her.
“I didn't realize you knew Jeremy,” Eddie says.
Buck leans against the counter. “I've been replacing Dorothy every time you kill her so you wouldn't be upset.”
Eddie smiles. It makes him even more unfairly attractive. Watching his face light up like that is Buck’s own personal sunrise. “Buck, I know.”
He’s sure he’s misheard for a moment. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I know my kid. You think Chris has ever been able to keep a secret from me? All it took was one giggle when I asked where you two were. I asked if he thought Dorothy was looking healthy. He couldn't stop laughing.”
“He'll never be a spy.” Buck crosses his arms. Really, it's more of a comforting gesture than him being annoyed. But he doesn't know how to have the conversation they need to have. He needs to know why Eddie has been distant and working so much. He also doesn’t know what to do now that it turns out Eddie is okay with the Dorothy replacement strategy.
“So, six Dorothys,” Eddie says. He mirrors Buck’s pose, crossing his arms and leaning back against the fridge.
“No, five.” Buck frowns. “I think.”
Eddie looks sheepish. “I had to replace her once too. I had an accident with the vacuum.”
“How? When? What–”
“Before the fire,” Eddie says. “That Dorothy wasn't built to last.”
“Because you torched her!”
“I really thought you'd come clean after that one. Or just let me live with murdering her.”
“I didn't want you to be sad.”
“Buck,” Eddie says. He drops to one knee and takes Buck’s hand. “This isn't how I pictured doing this. There were more candles in the first draft. But I finally got the ring perfect this morning.”
“Yes,” Buck says.
“I love you. Chris loves you. You're the only person I want to live the rest of my life with.”
“Yes,” Buck says.
Eddie pulls a ring box out of his pocket and opens it. It's a thick ring that can clearly withstand some damage. Buck doesn't know what sort of metal it is, but it's silvery and he likes it. Inside, it says, I’ve got your back. “Evan Buckley, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” Buck says for a third time, and this time he hauls Eddie to his feet so he can kiss him. Eddie obliges. He also slides the ring onto Buck’s finger. Not the right finger, but he's distracted and Buck is sure they can fix that later.
It turns out his middle finger is wider than his ring finger. Luckily, they're two firefighters with experience in this sort of thing. Eddie manages to slide it right off with some dish soap. Unfortunately, expecting more resistance, he's pulling too hard. He goes careening backwards.
The last Buck sees of Blanche, she's headed straight down the garbage disposal. He doesn't mind. He has a fiancé sliding his ring onto the correct finger and an engagement to consummate.
When Chris gets home, thrilled that they’ve finally gotten engaged and that he can stop replacing his dad’s dead plant, he has a fake ficus with him. It lasts a week. Eddie refuses to explain. Luckily, at their wedding all the flowers come already dead. It mitigates the damage Eddie can do.
Buck doesn’t mind. There’s no one he would rather watch murder plants than his husband.