oooh fake fic titles? “you and me and the lemon tree”
whoops this is no longer a fake fic
you and me and the lemon tree
1.6k | future fic | buckley-diaz family shenanigans
The lemon tree is Christopher’s idea.
“We’re not moving again,” he says. “That’s what you said, right? So we could plant it now and take a picture, and then in like ten years we could take the same picture only the tree would be big. It would be cool.”
“It’s gonna take a long time to get there, buddy,” Eddie says, and Christopher sighs and rolls his eyes. He’s fifteen, now, and the eye-rolling happens a lot, but most of the time it’s still tinged with fondness.
“I know that,” Christopher says. “But it could be like—a tracker. Of how long we’ve lived here. It would be cool, right?”
“Of how long we’ve lived here,” Buck corrects, nudging him gently. “You’re off to college soon. Just a couple of years, and it’s just going to be me and your dad.” He looks over and winks at Eddie, who hurries to put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder and reassure him he’ll always have a home to come back to.
“Of course you will,” Buck says, and reaches out to ruffle Christopher’s hair. Christopher ducks away and tries to fix the curls that fall into his face. “We’re always here for you. But when you’re not home…”
“Gross,” Christopher groans, and Eddie leans over to shove his shoulder. The cold metal of his wedding ring brushes against Buck’s skin, and he grins.
“I just meant we’d have space to spread out the big puzzles on the dining table if it’s not covered in your homework,” Buck says, projecting innocence.
“Sure you did,” Eddie grins, and hooks a finger into the belt loop of Buck’s jeans to pull him in for a kiss.
“So are we planting a tree or not?” Christopher asks, and Buck laughs into his husband’s mouth.
—
They plant the tree exactly one month after they move into the new house, and exactly one year after Buck had gotten on one knee in the middle of the loft and Eddie had said fuck, I have a ring stashed in my sock drawer. Buck and Christopher spend several days doing the research, and they determine that their best bet is a grafted sapling, a tree that’s already done a little bit of growing.
“They’re harder to fuck up,” Christopher says, and Eddie says hey, then admits it’s probably for the best.
“You told me you have a black thumb,” Christopher says.
“And you told me I can’t cook,” Eddie says. “I learned that, hm?”
“I guess,” Christopher says, and Buck snorts a laugh then kisses Eddie in apology.
The sapling is barely a foot tall, and looks more like a twig than anything else when they get it planted. “It’ll grow,” Christopher says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself just as much. “It’ll look more like a tree eventually.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “You almost look like a person now.”
“More than you do,” Christopher shoots back, and Eddie makes a mock-offended noise.
“Sorry, kid, I don’t agree with you on that one,” Buck says, slipping a dirt-streaked hand into the back pocket of Eddie’s jeans.
They take the picture, the little sapling with their house in the background. The house they bought together, that they moved into together, the house that neither of them is ever going to live in alone.
They take the picture, and then discover that it’s surprisingly hard to get photos printed anymore. But finally, after several trips to several different drugstores and Walmarts, they have a shiny four-by-six inch photo to put up on the refrigerator with the magnet they’d bought at the aquarium the day after Eddie kissed Buck for the first time.
The front of the fridge fills up quickly, with shopping lists and receipts, ticket stubs and shift schedules and permission slips and the general detritus of three lives intertwined, but the photo is always there at the centre of it all.
—
The day Christopher leaves for college the tree is twice as tall as it had been, if not more. It looks like a tree now, if in miniature, still too small to bear fruit but tree-shaped nonetheless.
Eddie insists on getting a picture of Christopher next to the tree, and walks into the backyard to find Buck already lining up a shot.
Christopher grumbles, and Eddie stands behind Buck to rest his head on Buck’s shoulder and peer at the phone screen. “This was your idea,” he reminds their son. “You said it would be a good tracker.”
“We didn’t take a picture of me with it when we planted it,” Christopher points out. “It’s only tracking the house.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and hooks his thumbs through his husband’s belt loops. “But it’ll be cute anyway.”
Christopher rolls his eyes, but he lets Buck take the picture.
The college Christopher had chosen isn’t far, so Buck and Eddie drive him to his dorm and fuss over his room and take him out for dinner, and still make it home by the end of the night. Eddie drops their bag by the door and Buck slips into the kitchen, and they meet out on the porch swing.
Buck hands Eddie one of the open bottles of beer he’s holding, and offers his own up to clink against. “So,” he says, taking a sip, then tips his head back to look at the sky. They can’t see many stars in the middle of LA, but it never stops them from trying. “Empty nest, huh?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, tapping the neck of his bottle against his chin. “Just you and me.”
Buck smiles, resting his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, and Eddie’s hand splays across his thigh. “You and me and the lemon tree.”
—
The first time they fight—really fight, the kind with voices raised and doors slammed and words so sharp they draw blood on the way out—Buck goes out to the lemon tree. Years later, when he no longer remembers what the fight was about, he’ll remember this: the tree, four feet tall with a trunk that just barely holds him up when he leans against it.
He changes his mind almost instantly, though, and lies under the tree instead. He doesn’t want to damage the tree, risk pushing it off course before it ever flowers.
Buck lies under the tree and stares up at the sky through the leaves, searching for patterns in the gaps and trying not to think about the things he’d just said. It’s all—
It all seems so stupid now, five minutes and twenty-five steps removed. This is what they’d promised each other, after all. The good times and the bad. This fight doesn’t matter, not really, not in the long run.
He doesn’t know if it’s five minutes later or fifty, but eventually he hears the sound of the porch door and the footsteps he’d recognise in any crowd. Eddie sits down next to him and Buck extends his arm, waiting for Eddie to lie next to him and settle his head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie murmurs.
“I know,” Buck says, pressing his lips to the bit of Eddie’s forehead he can reach. “I’m sorry, too. We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I know we will.”
—
Christopher brings home his first serious girlfriend, and the lemon tree bears fruit.
“This better not be a sign,” Eddie says, holding up a finger in warning. “We don’t need to have the talk, do we?”
“Dad,” Christopher groans, every bit a child complaining about his father despite his twenty-two years. “Ew.”
“I’m just saying—”
“It’s okay,” Buck interrupts him, swooping into the living room with a kiss to Eddie’s cheek and bumping Christopher’s fist. “I gave Chris the talk long before I gave you any kind of talk.”
“You did what?” Eddie squawks.
“The kid had questions,” Buck shrugs. “I was there.”
“It’s not a magic tree,” Christopher says. “It’s just lemons.”
“Just lemons,” Eddie says. “No metaphors?”
“I promise,” Christopher says. “No metaphors.”
—
Things don’t work out with the girlfriend, in the end, as often is the case with first loves. But some years later, Christopher marries Matilda in his fathers’ backyard, and the tree is tall and beautiful, full of vibrant yellow fruit. Christopher promises to love her forever, in good times and bad, standing under the tree he planted when it was barely a twig, and Buck surreptitiously swipes a tear from the corner of his eye.
Beside him, silent tears run down Eddie’s face.
“Remember the day we planted the tree?” Buck asks, and Eddie sways against him.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “It barely came up to his knee.”
“You said he almost looked like a person,” Buck says.
Eddie laughs. “Look at him now.”
“Yeah,” Buck says. “You did that. And before you say it—I helped, I know. But you did most of the work.”
“I guess I did,” Eddie murmurs, leaning his head on Buck’s shoulder. “And now he’s married.”
“It’s just you and me now,” Buck says. “It’s always gonna be you and me.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and Buck hears the smile in his voice. “You and me and the lemon tree.”
—
They take a picture, later that night, of the tree with the house in the background. They compare it to the original, and of course Christopher had been right all those years ago. It’s cool.
“Did take a while to get here, though,” Eddie says, when they’re finding a place for the new photo on the fridge.
“Yeah,” Buck says, and bumps his hip against Eddie’s. “But it was worth every step.”
Eddie was still getting used to waking up like this, with Buck pressed against his back. Their relationship was so new, so precious in its infancy and fragility, and Eddie treasured moments like this, early in the morning, before the day at really begun, before the rest of the world could catch a glimpse of this beautiful thing they shared. The sun was peeking through a crack in Eddie’s bedroom curtains, golden and soft, and Eddie wasn’t sure that life could get much better than this.
He’d wanted it for so long, it felt like a fever dream to finally have it – to finally be able to wake up in the mornings with the love of his life curled around him.
It helped, Eddie supposed, that Buck was a fantastic big spoon – one arm tucked underneath Eddie’s head, the other draped over Eddie’s bare waist, Buck’s palm spread out wide across Eddie’s stomach, moving with every rise and fall of his breathing.
Eddie felt safe.
That was one of the reasons this thing, their relationship, felt so beautiful to him – Eddie felt safe. Despite the vulnerability of it all, the way that loving Buck meant tearing down the walls he had so carefully built over the years and cracking his chest open to let all that love that had secretly consumed him for years out, Eddie still felt safe with the other man. Actually – he felt safer than he ever had before in his life.
That’s how you knew it was real, he supposed.
“Mm,” Buck’s voice was hoarse, with sleep, as he woke, the scratch of his facial hair rough against the bare skin of Eddie’s shoulder. It was coming to the end of their long weekend off, and so Buck’s facial hair would be lost to the LAFD’s requirements for a clean-shaven face in a matter of hours. But, for now, it scratched deliciously against Eddie’s skin. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Eddie returned, linking his fingers with Buck’s, their hands clasped together on Eddie’s stomach.
“This still feels like a dream,” Buck admitted. He’d moved, slightly, enough that he could press a kiss to the back of Eddie’s neck.
Eddie hummed. “It does,” he agreed. “But it’s real.”
“It’s real,” Buck agreed, and the silence that fell between them wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the opposite, in fact, warm in the way it wrapped the two of them in a bubble that didn’t feel as though could be broken.
Eddie couldn’t help the way he shivered as Buck pressed another kiss to the groove of Eddie’s shoulder, pausing as his lips brushed against the raised skin of the bullet wound scar that would forever live on Eddie’s left shoulder – it almost matched the one on his right, the one he’d had since Afghanistan. The one on his left shoulder was the one that Buck had been there for, though – and that’s why he was hovering, Eddie knew.
“I’m okay,” Eddie reassured, giving Buck’s hand a squeeze. It was still hard to talk about that day. They were trying, and they were getting better – slowly, but surely, they were finding their ways to process that day. How it felt for Buck to see Eddie get shot like that, right in front of him – how it felt for Eddie to think the last thing he’d ever see before he died was Buck.
(He hadn’t minded the thought of it, was the thing – and that’s the bit that had scared Eddie for so long.)
“I know,” Buck breathed, and he pressed a kiss to the scar, his mouth dragging along the raised skin. “I just – I need to remind myself, sometimes,” he admitted, kissing around the scar. Before, Eddie would have panicked, if anyone – even Buck – had touched the place where the bullet had ripped through his body and almost taken his life. But now – now it was reassuring, in some ways. Eddie hadn’t always felt at home in his own body – and now it felt like a home he could share with Buck.
That was another reason it was a beautiful thing, Eddie knew. The place he’d been so afraid of being – his own body, his own life – was a place he’d invited Buck into, a place he wanted to share with Buck forever. Love was – healing.
Healing like the scar on his shoulder, was. One day, the scar would have faded even further, the skin would be silvery and the shooting would be a distant memory – but for now, Buck was pressing tender, gentle kisses to the wound that had almost taken his life, and the sun was coming up on another new day, and Eddie was pretty sure he was going to be fine.
if you love wardrobe clean outs, i highly recommend emma hill’s yt channel! she does one for each major season (AW, SS) and she’s meticulous and videos it all! she has them going back 4-5 years or so
ohhh thank you, annie!!! her name sounds vaguely familiar but i'm not sure if i've ever watched her stuff, i'll look her up 😍
all this time! it was YOU!! that’s incredible and i don’t have words. this fic has meant so much to me and another mutual. we look forward to every anonymous release but WOW! it’s YOU! and now we can shower you with all the praise you deserve.
