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apronnash · 4 years ago

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rainbows have nothing to hide

[also on ao3] | buck/eddie | 3 700 words

“Glad to see someone is happy I’m here,” Buck yells into the house, and only gets the rustle of paper bags and a vague grunt in response. He leans down and whispers into Christopher’s ear: “Was he being a Kermit again?”

Christopher nods so hard that some of his hair ends up in Buck’s mouth.

“It’s so bad,” he whispers back. “You need to move in with us already.”

how is eddie diaz like kermit the frog? let buck and christopher count the ways.

It starts – and Buck can’t believe this is his actual life – with Kermit the frog.

“Run this by me one more time,” Buck says, blinking at the array of markers and pencils Chris has spread out all over the kitchen table. “You’re supposed to draw inspiration from Andy Warhol?”

“Yes,” Christopher says, a touch impatiently. “Miss Dara told us about him and showed us his paintings of the lady with the curly hair—“

“Marilyn Monroe,” Buck says feebly.

“—and we’re supposed to make a picture like that, two tall and three wide.”

Which is, presumably, what the big sheet of paper in the middle of the table is for.

“Okay,” Buck nods, resolutely ignoring Eddie’s snickers from where he’s stirring the pasta sauce, “and you want to draw, uh. Kermit? The frog?”

Christopher nods enthusiastically, his glasses bouncing a little. “But I wanna do six different pictures. Repeating the same thing over and over is boring.”

And look: Buck is aware that repeating the same thing over and over was kind of the point of Andy Warhol, but Christopher is his own artist. He’s not going to tell the kid no.

“That’s fine, buddy,” he says, reflexively sorting Christopher’s markers by color, because that’s how they both like to work. “Just—wouldn’t you rather do, I don’t know. An object, or something? He has this super famous painting of a bunch of soup cans.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh that he tries to cover with a cough, and Buck blindly throws a marker at him over his shoulder. Christopher levels him with a terrifyingly adult look.

“Buck,” he says, so disappointed it kind of makes Buck want to cry, “we just watched Muppets Haunted Mansion. Like last week, remember? Kermit dressed up as Miss Piggy for Halloween.”

Buck is—not convinced that’s enough of a reason, and also a little worried that drawing six different Kermits might get complicated, but he’s not about to try and talk Christopher out of something he clearly wants to do. He does look back at Eddie, just to see if he has anything to contribute, and finds him leaning back against the counter tapping away on his phone, because he’s on math homework duty and doesn’t have to deal with this.

“You know what they say, Buck,” he says, a grin settling in the corner of his mouth when he feels Buck looking at him, “it’s not easy being green, but someone’s gotta do it.”

“That’s not—“

“He won’t even be green!” Christopher interrupts, bouncing in his seat as he plows straight through Buck’s neatly arranged color groups in search of some specific shade. “That’s the point, dad.”

So Buck gets his laptop from where it’s half-wedged between the couch cushions in the living room, and they pull up Google Images to look for some inspiration. Eddie, in the meantime, judges the sauce done and brings a little bit over on a spoon for Buck to taste, and when Buck gives him the go-ahead, he disappears next door into the dining room to set the table.

Right off the bat, Chris decides on Kermit as Piggy from the movie they’d just seen, Kermit in a hat and scarf from what Buck’s pretty sure is The Muppets Christmas Carol, and Kermit with a banjo, but the further down they scroll, the more pronounced his frown becomes. Buck tries to refine the search several times, only to end up with a page full of mostly memes that presumably fly over Christopher’s head.

“That one,” he says, pointing to a picture of Kermit in slacks and a sweater, so Buck saves it to the brand new folder he’s created. Then, as he’s about to start scrolling again, he hears Christopher giggle under his breath.

When he looks over, Chris has a hand pressed over his mouth, his face rapidly going red with how hard he’s trying to suppress his laughter.

Automatically, Buck smiles in response. “You okay?”

Christopher nods, curls bouncing on top of his head, and looks over his shoulder to the open kitchen door. When he finds it empty, he leans forward in his chair, and whispers: “That one looks like Dad every time you leave our house.”

He’s pointing to the screen, where the meme of Kermit staring wistfully out of a window sits right next to the picture they just chose.

Buck blinks, and for some definitely unrelated reason, his mouth goes dry.

“What do you mean?” he asks, laughing a little because it’s impossible not to catch the giggles from his favorite kid in the world.

“He doesn’t like it,” Christopher says, still whispering, and Buck starts keeping watch for the man in question over Chris’s shoulder. “He was so annoyed yesterday when you took too long at the store.”

And it’s—okay, it’s pathetic, it’s pathetic of Buck’s heart to jump at the thought of Eddie missing him when he went out for half an hour to get some toilet paper and potatoes for Bobby’s mushroom soup. Buck’s kind of missing Eddie right now, when he’s ten steps away in the other room, but Buck is also very much in love with the man.

“He was?” Buck whispers, and he’ll probably feel bad about extracting this information from a child, but only after he’s extracted it.

“Yes,” Christopher rolls his eyes, dramatically leaning back in his chair. “He was looking out into the street and checking Google Maps for traffic.”

Buck has to press his lips together to stifle a laugh, and Eddie chooses that moment to reappear in the doorway, his arms already crossed.

“Kermit the frog can’t be this funny,” he says, one eyebrow arched so high it’s practically flying off his forehead. “What are you two whispering about?”

Buck and Christopher look at each other. For a breathless second, silence hangs in the air, and then they’re laughing so hard Buck can barely see Eddie’s offended expression through the tears.

As Buck predicted, drawing six separate pictures in abstract colors is not as easy as it might sound. But the assignment gets done, Miss Dara commends Christopher’s creativity and gives him an A, and that should, theoretically, be the end of it.

Except then they spend a Saturday at the Observatory, and Eddie decides to drive for a change, and gets so spectacularly cut off at an intersection that he throws up the world’s quickest middle finger before he drives away. Buck meets Christopher’s eyes in the rearview mirror to check whether he’d seen and, judging by the ear-to-ear grin on his face, concludes that he definitely did.

The second they get home – to Eddie’s, where Buck doesn’t live, no matter how much he might want to – and Christopher asks to use his phone, Buck’s own phone pings with a message.

dad today, it says, and then a picture comes through underneath it: Kermit the frog, sitting in a car, looking at the camera with the most Eddie-like expression Buck has ever seen.

“Okay, what now?” Eddie asks, when he steps out of his bedroom changed into sweats and a t-shirt and finds Buck and Chris in a literal pile on the couch, laughing so hard they’re wheezing.

“You wouldn’t get it, Eds,” Buck says when he’s capable of speech, taking one look at Eddie with his hip cocked all disapproving and dissolving back into giggles. He feels a little bad, because he knows for a fact that Eddie hates feeling like he doesn’t know what goes on Christopher’s life as he gets older, but when he looks up again, Eddie’s stance has softened, and he’s looking at the two of them with eyes so gentle they look almost liquid in the evening lamplight.

A couple of days later, Buck trips through the door with groceries in one hand and several bags of takeout in the other, and Eddie barely lets him get out of his shoes before he’s stealing all of it and scurrying into the kitchen.

“Buck!” Christopher shouts, coming out of the living room and collapsing with his arms tight around Buck’s waist. “Finally.”

“Glad to see someoneis happy I’m here,” Buck yells into the house, and only gets the rustle of paper bags and a vague grunt in response. He leans down and whispers into Chirstopher’s ear: “Was he being a Kermit again?”

Christopher nods so hard that some of his hair ends up in Buck’s mouth.

“It’s so bad,” he whispers back. “You need to move in with us already.”

And then, without a single look back, he follows the scent of food into the kitchen.

Buck stands in the hallway for a minute just—digesting. Processing the way his heart almost beat right through his chest to hear Christopher say something like that so casually, like it’s an inevitability. He already knows he’s here way more than is appropriate for anyone claiming to just be a best friend, but. Eddie never looks like he wants him to leave, is the thing.

When he steps into the kitchen, Christopher’s already tucking into his burger, and Eddie is standing at the counter with a frown on his face that has no right to look adorable.

“I know,” Buck says, slotting right next to him so he can unload the groceries, studiously ignoring how warm and solid and there Eddie is. “They didn’t have any, Eds. I’m sorry, I went to three separate stores.”

Eddie turns to him with betrayed eyes. “No Hazy Little Thing?”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says again, and briefly considers getting in the car and driving to the actual brewery to demand they unhand a six pack. “I did get normal beer,” he says, holding up the PBR he knows is a poor substitute.

Eddie looks at it for a second, tilting his head, and finally smiles.

“Thanks, Buck,” he says, and pats Buck right in the middle of the chest before he goes to sit down.

Buck sways in place, thrown by the sudden absence of Eddie in front of him, because he’d apparently been unconsciously leaning forward. Like this is one of those stupid fantasies he indulges in in his weakest moments, and not just a normal Wednesday afternoon at the Diaz house.

After they’ve eaten, as soon as Eddie gets up to clear their takeout containers away, Buck gets another picture: a Kermit doll with its little green arms wrapped around its knees, looking down sadly.

dad when you dont get his beer, the accompanying text says, and Buck has to hide his bark of laughter in a napkin.

After that, Buck is on board. He and Christopher go back and forth trying to one-up each other: Kermit sipping tea when Eddie, already a bit of a slurper, takes a sip of coffee one morning that’s so loud it startles him; Kermit wrapped in a blanket when Eddie picks up an extra shift one day and the two of them find him bundled up on the couch fast asleep; Kermit screaming when Eddie just barely keeps it together as a woman cuts them off in line at Universal.

Christopher keeps sending the sad window meme every time Buck leaves, to a point where it becomes a comfort. It’s sad, but Buck gets to arrive at his increasingly sterile-feeling apartment and open his texts and see Chris complain about Eddie being annoying when Buck isn’t there, so he’s also kind of winning.

He convinces himself it isn’t mean. They’re just—pointing out certain facets of Eddie’s personality. Lovingly. With so much love.

And then Eddie finds out.

“Hey Buck,” Chim calls as Buck hops back up the stairs to the loft, returning from the bathroom, “you got a text from Christopher.”

Buck feels an irrational grin taking over his face as he dives for the couch and stretches his arm out to the table, where he’d left his phone.

Too late, he realizes that someone’s watching him.

“Why is Christopher texting you?” Eddie asks. He’s frowning a little like he’s trying to figure something out, but his eyes are so soft they make something low in Buck’s stomach ache.

“It’s just this thing we have,” Buck says. “Nothing serious.” And he swipes the notification open to see a picture of a Kermit doll in a firefighter’s outfit. Can we get this for dad’s birthday, Chris has written, followed by an eye-watering amount of firetruck and frog emojis.

Buck bites his lip around a smile. This kid, he thinks, and starts to type out a response, and then his phone isn’t in his hands anymore.

“Got it,” Chim says, holding his trophy between a thumb and index finger, grinning at Eddie. “Let’s see.”

“Oh my God,” Buck jumps up, scandalized, but Chim’s already running away, taking cover behind the kitchen table. “Chim! Are you serious? That’s an invasion of privacy.”

“It’s not when you’re conspiring behind Eddie’s back,” says Chim, snapping his gum. He backs up when Buck advances on him.

“You’re about to be my brother-in-law,” he tries, because he can feel Eddie’s gaze in his back and the whole comparing him to a muppet frog thing suddenly seems a lot more serious. “You’re supposed to side with me.”

“Eh,” Chim shrugs, making an elegant loop around the kitchen and walking backwards towards the stairs. “It can’t be that bad if you’re texting it to a ten-year-old.”

And he’s about to turn and run down the stairs – Buck can tell by the way he twists his feet just so – until Hen gets up from the table and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s see,” she says, leaning into him, clearly ready to intervene on Buck’s behalf if necessary, but it takes all of two seconds for her to start grinning.

“Oh,” she says, pulling Chim into a chair and grabbing the phone from him so she can keep scrolling, “oh, Buck, this is adorable.”

Buck knows exactly what they’re seeing: yesterday’s back-and-forth of Kermit on the couch (when baseball is on TV), Kermit surrounded by heart emojis (when the right team wins at baseball), Kermit screaming again (when the wrong team wins at baseball), and everything beyond it; Buck and Christopher batting their shared love of Eddie back and forth via a stupid green puppet.

His face is feverishly hot; if he looked in the mirror, he’d probably be redder than he’s ever seen himself.

“It’s nothing,” he tries, but Eddie is already crossing the loft with a curious quirk to his eyebrow. Buck’s blood drums through his veins, a little terrified, because he’s pretty sure there’s at least five texts in there that make it painfully obvious how he feels about Eddie.

He scrubs a hand over his face and makes for the stairs, going to hide back in the bathroom or maybe the bunk room or maybe just drown himself in the shower. Eddie’s voice stops him in his tracks.

“Buck,” he says, and it’s so simple and so complicated. Buck’s throat tightens; he looks up to see Eddie standing next to Hen and Chim, but looking straight at him, his eyes a golden brown, a stray strand of hair falling into his face. “I don’t need to see it.”

It lands like a blow straight to the kneecaps, Eddie’s gentle words and his gentle gaze and the casual way in which he just—trusts and trusts and trusts Buck with things that are so very breakable. He has to grab on to the railing just to make sure he stays upright.

“No,” he shakes his head, even though saying it feels like blurring some invisible line that can never be drawn again. His voice comes out too high, unsteady. “You can look.”

And then he’s tripping and almost falling down the stairs, running into the closest door, which is the locker room. He leans back against Chim’s locker and pulls one of his legs up, automatically reaching into his pocket for his phone only to remember it’s upstairs, probably altering his relationship with his best friend forever.

Said best friend takes a grand total of two minutes to come find him. He slips in and closes the door behind him, leaning back against the glass wall.

“So,” he says, crossing his arms. It doesn’t look like anything is different about him, but Buck hardly dares breathe. “Kermit the frog.”

And he makes a Kermit expression, which makes Buck groan and laugh at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he is, but he also loves having this with Chris and doesn’t really know what he’s going to do if Eddie puts a stop to it. “Will it be better or worse for me if I blame it on Christopher? Because it is technically his fault.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, and then his fake sternness is melting away and a smile takes over his entire face. He crosses the room in three big steps, coming down right beside Buck on the bench, pressing them flush together, shoulder to hip to knee, then hands over Buck’s phone.

Buck’s breath stutters in his chest. He doesn’t dare turn and look, because he can feel Eddie’s ribs expanding against his own, can feel him breathing, and he can’t remember the last time they were that close.

For a minute, they both stare out through the wall into the bay. Then Eddie takes a deep, unusually shaky breath.

“I saw the one with the window,” he says, mild. Buck looks at him and, for once, can’t read the curl at the corner of his lips, the specific angle of his jaw. “He’s right, you know.”

Buck blinks.

“You miss me when I’m gone?” he asks, in a voice he doesn’t recognize. Something inside him cracks most of the way open, trembling to be set free.

Eddie scoffs and shakes his head. He smiles so wide his eyes almost shut.

“I miss you when you’re in the other room, Buck.”

And, as if to reiterate his point, he leans into Buck’s side, all of the endless warmth of him so close it seeps in through Buck’s skin, makes a home all the way down in his bones.

When he looks over, really looks, all of his wishful thinking stares back at him from Eddie’s eyes.

“Hey, uh,” he says, then clears his throat, “can you go miss me for a second? I have to do something, and I’m going to chicken out if you’re sitting right next to me.”

Eddie tilts his head in complete incomprehension, and takes a second to digest Buck’s words. He looks over at the open doorway that leads to the showers, then back to Buck, then back to the doorway again.

Buck nods, and Eddie, the kindest, most patient, most loving man Buck has ever met, physically gets up and walks into the shower room.

He picks up his phone and, with shaking hands, navigates to his hidden album. He’d started saving things in there that he couldn’t show Christopher but that wouldn’t leave his head, and then progressed to making Kermit memes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep for thinking about Eddie like a lovesick idiot. He knows exactly which one he’s looking for, and when he finds it, he texts it in two quick taps. Then, he lets his phone drop on the ground and kicks it away.

He slaps his hands over his face, wondering what the fuck he’s just done.

From the showers, Buck hears: Eddie’s text notification, a confused little noise, and then absolute silence.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Buck.”

And Eddie is—not running, but he’s definitely hurrying out of the shower room, and reaching for the collar of Buck’s shirt, and pulling him up, and cradling the back of Buck’s head in his hands and slamming him back against the locker – still Chimney’s, ha– and then he’s—

Oh. Oh.

Eddie’s kissing him, and he smells like his nice cologne, not the kind he usually wears to work, and even as he presses in his lips are so, so gentle on Buck’s. Buck wraps his arms around him, anywhere he can reach, opens up when Eddie asks to be let in and almost slides to the ground right where he stands when Eddie’s tongue meets his.

His skin burns where Eddie touches him, the nape of his neck and the side of his face, and the only thing he knows how to feel is relief, sweet and heady and intoxicating.

It’s Eddie. Eddie here, kissing him, holding him, and maybe possibly hopefully keeping him around forever.

They separate quicker than Buck would like, because they definitely still are at work and on the clock, but Eddie doesn’t go far. He lets Buck get his feet underneath him, and touches him what feels like absolutely everywhere: his birthmark, the collar of Buck’s uniform where he’d creased it, the center of Buck’s chest where his heart just so happens to be beating out a crazy rhythm underneath his half-undone buttons.

And then Eddie looks at him, and Buck recognizes the look: from a hundred family dinners made while going over homework, and the times their eyes meet across the scene after they’ve saved somebody, and every time he comes home with a full grocery bag or a jug of milk that was just running out or a cheap bouquet to put in the vase on the dining room table.

“You couldn’t just kiss me, like a normal person,” Eddie grins, and reaches up to fix Buck’s hair.

“Never,” Buck grins back. “Imagine if I was normal and never indulged your son’s love for Kermit. None of this would have happened.”

“My son,” Eddie rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

And Buck opens his mouth to ask what the hell that is supposed to mean, but then the bell is ringing and Chimney’s crashing through the door yelling something about a bet, and the love of Buck’s life is grinning at him with his hair all mussed from where Buck’s fingers were in it.

They tell Christopher as soon as they step through the door the next morning, and his response consists of a grin and a separate hug for each of them that brings tears to Buck’s eyes.

One of them may or may not slip out when Christopher leans in, all conspiratorial, and whispers: “I bet we can find a Kermit for this.”

#saving for later

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apronnash · 4 years ago

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i was back on a different kind of bullshit last night so have this fusion au I'll never write

Look, so, it's the 1940s.

Buck gets drafted. Eddie doesn't for various health reasons.

Eddie signs up for an experiment.

the programme is at least partly organised by Agent Maddie Kendall (i know, but trust me, he's just overseas and then later he's just dead it's fine). And see, because there's such an age gap between Maddie and Buck, Eddie doesn't know she's his best friend's sister, and Maddie thinks to herself "surely there is another Eddie Diaz" and so neither of them make the connection.

Eddie, obviously, becomes Captain America

And ends up in the USO

Which he hates because he's an introvert, but he's also really good at it, he'd just rather be doing something worthwhile. Anyway, he's doing a show in Italy and discovers that he's performing for the 118 and hey wait that's Buck's unit, hey wait they all got captured.

And so he goes to the colonel and to Maddie and is like "My best friend's unit got captured" and Maddie's like "hey! it was my brother's unit too!" and they finally figure it out in a very spider-men meme, but anyway, Eddie goes and breaks out the 118, including one Howard "Howie" Han (this is 80% of the reason this was in my head) and together they become the Howling Commandos.

Buck is reluctant to join on account of being pissy about Eddie being in danger (again) and also he's pretty sure Eddie and Maddie are flirting and for whatever reason that makes him kinda want to die on the inside

at some point he tries to be like haha you're flirting with my sister man and Eddie just like points him at the corner where Howie and Maddie are gazing deeply into each other's eyes and Buck's in a better mood after that

Anyway, then there's the train.

And then Eddie goes into the ice.

and wakes up much earlier than 2011 but he's handed into SHIELD supervisory custody with Agent Shannon [Surname redacted] and wouldn't you know it, they strike up a relationship which is against the rules, and wouldn't you know it but turns out the folk legend in the background of SHIELD about Project Rebirth, ah, separating the captain from his men if you will, not true.

And well, eventually, things implode and fall apart and then aliens invade and it's just like, it's a whole thing.

After the aliens, after Norse gods, after after after, Eddie ends up working for SHIELD in DC in his capacity as Captain America, and on a morning stress run, he runs into a ghost.

Not a real one, of course although considering the state of the world, that's probably a solid possibility. But the other guy running stress laps around the Mall at dawn looks exactly like that other Howlie, Howie Han.

"Nah, Howie was my grandfather. I'm Chimney," Chim tells him, and a friendship is struck.

Rounding out their trio for the sake of this AU is Lena, but see there's this problem.

Another ghost, another relic from the colder days, known only as the Winter Soldier.

they wanted machines right someone who could turn a switch and not be human anymore and that's not him it's not but how can he remember when they go out of their way to just overwrite all his memories all the time and the screaming that echoes in his head all the time is his own but

And the Winter Soldier is tearing through them, just rendering all of SHIELD basically useless, ostensibly took out Director A. Grant and everything.

But when they come up against him, the Winter Soldier's muzzle gets knocked off and really it's amazing what counts as a memory trigger, but Eddie saying his name works pretty damn well

the flashback, of course, isn't "I'm with you 'til the end of the line" it's "You can have my back any day" and the line when Eddie's almost dying trying to get through the Winter Soldier programming is "I said I've got your back, Evan" and well

When Buck drags him out of the Potomac (or was it the Anacostia? doesn't matter) Eddie is conscious enough to keep him from running, and instead they flee the dregs of SHIELD together, and hole up in the safehouse where Christopher lives, and it's that ultimate show of trust, placing him in the same house where he keeps his son, that breaks through the last of Buck's programming, and the fact that they've been just stupid in love with each other since like 1936 is allowed to surface, and they get to step aside from this awful life they've lived, together, on their own terms.

#i’m in love with this avengers fusion sort of au???#eddie as cap #wow #didn’t think i could love him more #BUCK AS THE WINTER SOLDIER?#ANGSTY BUCK ALL THE TIME?#i would read it #i will def dream about it

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