My main is @sorgenfalter This is a place to put all my fan art and hyperfixations of the season. Icon by myself but tumblr wont let me find the postvagain to link it :)))
the desert motel does a honeymoon deal so buck and eddie pretend to be newlyweds. to get the deal. and well fastforward to the motel owner being The Killer. and he's taunting them. threatening them. like, oh this is Fun. which one of you should i kill first? eenie meenie minie mo. lands on eddie and looks at buck like, i'm going to rip the skin from your husband's bones while you watch. and buck panics and is like, he's not even my husband! we're not—we just. we said that to get the honeymoon deal. we're just colleagues! and he looks at eddie for support who for some reason looks So Offended by this. buck's not sure why. he's trying to Save him. and The Killer laughs and is like, oh, Please. you can't fake that kind of devotion. i can see it in your eyes. and fuck. god. even The Killer thinks he's in love with eddie. he's Not. he's NOT!!!!!!! and buck is extra panicking now. because The Killer does not believe him. for some reason. why does No One believe him? and also eddie is not backing him up here. for some reason. and he just blurts out, no please. he's Straight. we just—we just saw the deal. and he looks at eddie. imploringly. and eddie just says, i'm not. and buck's like, what? and eddie's like, i'm not straight. and The Killer is stood there like, are you guys doing a bit or?
[Image ID for above post: post from helena @freshhel at 5:50 PM on Sep 15, 2021: Ohhhhh my god is the narrative device being mean ? should we tell everyone? Should we hold a trial ? should we invite the Pope ? /end ID]
just remember that before there was clipboard!buck. there was maddie with a whole notebook of detailed notes to take into her first day at work which josh promptly threw into the trash. and before there bothered and bewildered buck. there was teen maddie crashing out because her best friend got a new friend. and before there was i’m not hopelessly in love with my straight best friend and renter of homes eddie diaz. there was i won’t admit im dating chimney han yet maddie buckley. she taught him everything she knows. she is big sister.
walk with me here: buddie and ravi are discussing buck’s couple sex shenanigans in the gym and ravi mentions something about “well i guess this time it wasn’t me enabling you to hook up with your ex again” and this is how eddie finds out buck slept with tommy in his house and eddie gets pissed off with ravi for making it happy and pissed off with buck for reasons he can’t even begin to verbalize :)
was thinking last night about the buck/harry siblingism we saw and who else was a teenage school dropout who felt like his parents’ grief left no room for him so i guess this is kind of an episode coda?
—
In Buck’s opinion, he’s getting pretty okay at decorating these little sugar cookies.
Jee’s birthday is coming up soon, and Buck had watched one too many cookie-decorating Instagram reels last month, so he impulsively bought a set of pastry bags and a bunch of frosting tips, figuring he could give it a shot. Jee’s going through an Encanto phase, so he’s trying his hand at a themed set.
Except it turns out cookie decorating is really, really hard, and requires absolute surgical focus. About a dozen cookies have already been sacrificed. But he’s improving! The last few cookies were almost recognizable!
He’s intently trying to draw a little swirl of Mirabel’s hair when a knock on the door startles him about eight inches off the ground.
“Jesus Christ!” Buck looks down at his cookie. Mirabel appears to have experienced serious facial injuries. He sighs and puts the piping bag down. “Coming,” he calls to the door.
He’s not sure who he was expecting on the other side, but it definitely wasn’t Harry.
Harry’s in sweatpants, and he sounds tired. “Hey, Buck. Can I come in?”
“Uh, yeah, of course,” Buck says, standing aside to let Harry come in and slip off his shoes. “Not that it’s not always great to see you, but—”
“Why am I here?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
Harry slumps down on the couch. “My mom is pissed at me, and May is pissed at me, so. Wanted to get out of their apartments.”
Buck moves around in the kitchen, hanging up his apron and filling a water glass for Harry. “Why are they pissed at you?”
“Because I dropped out of school.”
“Whoa,” Buck says, almost fumbling the glass.“You dropped out?”
“Not you, too,” Harry groans. “Are you gonna lecture me now about how it’s the biggest mistake ever?”
Honestly, Buck wants to, a little bit. But Buck looks at Harry on the couch, how his sweater sleeves covers his palms. And he remembers what it’s like to be eighteen and scared and angry at the world and underneath all that, just plain lonely. So—
“Nah,” Buck says. “Would be kinda hypocritical of me, since I dropped out of college at nineteen, so.”
“Exactly,” Harry says forcefully. “And you turned out fine!”
“Took me a while to get here, though,” Buck says honestly, handing Harry the water and sitting down in the armchair adjacent to the couch. “Though I don’t know if college would’ve made me turn out any better.”
Harry takes a sip of his water. “That’s what I keep trying to tell them,” he says. “Like, college just isn’t for everyone. It’s a scam anyway, with the student loans. Might as well just start working so I can support myself.”
Buck chews the inside of his cheek. “I,” he starts and then stops. “I’ve told you that when I was a little older than you, I drove cross-country for a few years working odd jobs, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Maybe I’ll do something like that.”
“I mean, I can’t stop you. But if you do, I want you to have a good reason for doing it. Because I don’t think I did.”
“Seeing the world, making some money? Those seem like good reasons.”
Buck shakes his head. “No. I mean, those things happened to me along the way, but they weren’t the real reason I was driving.”
Harry tucks his feet up on the couch and wraps his arms around his knees, and it makes him look so young Buck wants to cry. “What was?”
“I was lonely,” Buck says honestly. “I was angry, and my parents—they weren’t the best parents. I told myself I was seeing the world, but really I was just running away and hoping I’d end up finding myself running to something. And I landed here eventually, sure, but it took like, seven years. And I spent a lot of that time being really, really lonely. And sleeping in my car, hoping I didn’t get robbed in the night, or freeze to death, or seeing if I had enough cash to scrape together for a motel room in the middle of winter. Which sounds kind of adventurous, but honestly, it fucking sucked a lot of the time. So if you’re leaving school to go do the ‘I’m standing on my own two feet’ thing, you can do that. But it should be because you want to do it, not because you’re running away from something. Especially not from people who do care about you.”
“I don’t think my mom cares about me that much,” Harry says. There’s a wobble in his voice. “Ever since Bobby died, all she does is work. She doesn’t—she didn’t even notice I’d dropped out.”
Buck relocates, settling himself on the couch next to Harry and wrapping an arm around him. Harry pushes his face into Buck’s shoulder; Buck can feel his arm getting wet.
“I know she does care about you,” Buck says. “Even if she’s not always good at showing it. So I’m not saying not to be mad at her. I think you’re allowed to be mad at her. I think there’s just a lot of pain in your family right now and it’s going all over the place. But if she wants to show up for you, maybe you should give her a chance. And if she continues to—” Buck closes his eyes and is struck with the memory of a missing baby box, of his mother shrieking What did you want us to do, “—to not be there how you need her, you’re allowed to go off and do your own thing. But if she is trying to reach out now. Maybe give her a chance.”
Harry sniffles. “Everything sucks so bad,” he says plaintively.
Buck laughs a little and swipes at his own eyes. “Yeah, it really fucking does. Do you want a sugar cookie?”
“Okay,” Harry says, and Buck gets up to grab them both cookies.
Harry frowns at the Mirabel in his hand. “Is this Abraham Lincoln?”
