Can I do a soft prompt not on the list ? I love your writing 😊 Buck and Eddie driving back from a zoo trip or something with Chris and Chris falling asleep in the back seat.
Going to count this under “road trip” for list checking purposes. Send me soft prompts! Find the finished ones on ao3!
Sometime in May when the end of school was weeks away but felt like eternity even to a kid who liked the place, Eddie had come home from running errands to find Buck and Chris laying out flat on the living room floor marking up a giant piece of paper. Eddie doesn’t know where they got it - it must be 18x24 at least - or why the floor was the best option for putting it to use - a mystery shortly solved by finding the remains of lunch still scattered over the kitchen table - but Eddie is careful not to step on it or any stray limb or crayon as he makes his way through to put groceries away. When anything perishable is safe someplace cold he comes back to sit between them, at the long edge of the sheet.
“What are you up to?”
“Read the paper, dad,” Chris says, exasperated. Eddie makes a face at him, and Buck tries not to laugh from his spot on the floor. The two of them share a look before Eddie puts his attention on Buck and Christopher’s work. Written at the top of the paper in chunky block letters is BIG SUMMER IDEAS, decorated by a smiling sun with cool guy shades and what Eddie assumes is a flamingo judging by the shades of pink. There’s more writing all over the page, half of it upside down because Chris is laying along the top edge. Eddie picks out BEACH DAY and GARDEN WITH PEPPA and NEW PIZZA (RESTAURANT? INVENT?) and, mirrored in both hand writings and circled twice, ZOO.
“You two aren’t sick of the zoo by now?” Eddie asks, and then raises his hands when they both look scandalized.
“Never!” Buck proclaims. “Besides, San Diego and Santa Barbara are both not that far away, we thought we’d maybe try and branch out.”
Chris nods seriously. “We need to expand our zoo repertoire,” he says, confident around the big new vocabulary word.
“Alright,” Eddie gives in, easily. “This is a big list, we gotta do all of these? I don’t know if we’ll have the time…”
Buck pushes himself up to sitting, and shrugs. “Just ideas. We were getting antsy waiting for Summer, huh?” Chris nods emphatically and Buck grins at him, before looking back at Eddie a little less sure. “Thought we’d write out some things to look forward to. We- you don’t have to do all, or any-“
“We’re definitely going to the zoo,” Chris frowns.
“Except for the zoo, of course.” He still has that look on his face, like he’s overstepped somehow, and Eddie wants to say please don’t apologize for finding a way to make Chris happy when he’s feeling down, and of course “we,” of course you’re coming with us, I haven’t the first idea how to invent new pizza.
“It’s a good list,” is what he says. “We’ll see what we can pack in there.”
That was May, and it’s the end of July now, and history books worth of things have happened in between, and Buck and Eddie’s Relationship (capital R, for Romance) is so new it’s stumbling around on doe legs. Eddie thinks they’ve spent years planting a pretty nice meadow for it to stumble around in, though, and taking his hand in public for the first time ever as they trail Chris around the Santa Barbara Zoo is easy as anything. It helps that they both start laughing - giggling, really, he’s a grown man giggling at the zoo - whenever they make eye contact. They hold hands in front of an island full of tiny little monkeys, and in a cave where you can watch penguins swim around, and by the statue of the giraffe with the crooked neck, and on the train that loops around the whole thing and gets so close to the lion enclosure that it’s almost a little frightening. They spend a fair amount of time not holding hands, too, as Buck and Chris pour over every informational plaque in the place. Eddie is perfectly content to watch them have at it and provide sunscreen reapplications and snacks, probably smiling just as sappily at his two favorite people in the world having a good time as he did at holding hands (holding hands!) with his boyfriend (boyfriend!).
They only stay at the zoo until about four, but they’d had to get up at the crack of dawn to make it up the coast in a reasonable amount of time, especially with the mess of construction Buck had to white knuckle through on the northbound 101 past Ventura. Chris is starting to wilt a little, and Eddie’s running on several cups of coffee, and even Buck has yawned once or twice by the time they’re eating an early dinner at a sandy little outdoor restaurant close to the beach outside of town. A train goes right past during the meal and all three of them stand up for a good look, Buck hefting Chris up on his back for a better vantage point. If Eddie gets distracted by watching the joy on their faces instead of the train, well, his sappiness was never going to be contained just within the walls of the zoo. He finds it a little hard to believe, sometimes, the amount of happiness he gets to experience. It jostles around inside of him like loose parts, or a bag of treasure. He’s been happy before, he’s been happy for years here in LA with the family of the 118 taking root around him, but it’s felt… more, these days, almost dizzying since he and Buck had either suddenly or finally closed the distance. It bubbles away inside of him, somewhere near Camarillo with Chris falling asleep in the back seat and pink California summer sunset light washing over them all. Buck’s got the windows rolled down just a little, to feel the air, and the radio is on low, and Eddie has been trying to leave less things unspoken, so.
“Thank you.”
Buck glances at him with a little smile, then looks back at the road. “For what?”
Eddie shrugs, because how is he supposed to encompass all of it with words? “For driving. For coming with us. For holding my hand.”
Buck’s laugh is just a soft exhale. “I should be thanking you for all that.”
“Even the driving?”
“Okay, well, the construction was bad, but yeah even the driving. You know I don’t mind it.” Buck’s smile is still small, and it feels important, suddenly, to try and get across the enormity of all this.
“Thank you for- everything, Buck. For inventing new pizza.”
Buck laughs loud, and then sheepishly checks Chris in the rear view mirror. Still sleeping. “I don’t think we’ve quite perfected it yet,” he says, quietly. “Give me a few more tries.”
Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t know how to- the time you give us, the- everything- Do you know? How happy you make us? Make me?”
Buck glances at him, twice, three times, keeps his eyes back on the road. “It feels like…” Buck is almost whispering, and gestures at his chest. “Like that little bag of rocks Chris got at the gift shop.”
Eddie laughs, folding a little closer to Buck, because a bag of treasure, they’re sharing metaphors. “Yeah. Like that.”
“I know,” Buck says, like he can’t believe it sometimes either. “You know? Me- me too?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know." There's hardly been any complete sentences in this conversation but Eddie thinks they've never really needed words to communicate anyway. He knows. Buck knows. "We've still got 23 items on the list."
Buck laughs, and lets go of the steering wheel to grab Eddie's hand again. "Well, tomorrow's a new day. Summer's not over yet."
Eddie thinks, holding Buck's hand with Chris sleeping in the back, on the road headed home, that with each other summer is never going to end.
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HIIIII VIBEY!!!
'Tis was my favorite boy's bday yesterday. Sooooooo *leans innocently against you* You got any tim drake headcanons? /nf
IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY????? Oh shit that’s right it’s July- HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM
*excitedly slams notebook on the table* GLAD YOU ASKED
Ahem first off
Tim absolutely made a deal with some immortal/mystical being because this kid DOES NOT AGE he made a deal to stay 17 forever
For his birthday he doesn’t do much but his family invites his friends over (fuck the no-meta rule in Gotham) and Alfred makes a big dinner and they all sing happy birthday and it’s overall a very nice time (that may or may not end in a karaoke night because when does something not end in one)
Damian gifts him a pet for his birthday and as an apology for being mean. A cat to be exact, Tim is surprised but accepts it and plays with the cat (though he probably isn’t the best caretaker because he’s busy so Damian feeds the cat when Tim forgets/is unable to do so) but it’s his little cat and he loves it and he spoils the living shit out of that cat
Constant yells of “TIM THE CAT TOYS ALMOST MADE ME FALL DOWN THE STAIRS”/“WELL YOU SHOULD’VE LOOKED AT WHERE YOU WERE GOING”
Someone gifted him poker cards cause they found out that Tim was a magic nerd before being a photography nerd (is that canon? No but shush) Tim can do cool card tricks, like with the poker cards? Yeah he can do all kind of magic tricks and when he gets the gift he’ll be so annoying with it. Like he will walk up to people and be like “pick a card any card” and the family is so used to him that they just accept it (thing is he hasn’t done tricks in years so like it’s like 50-50 if it works)
Going outside of his birthday and casual Tim headcanons: Tim still takes pictures even after being adopted and has a secret photo album of his new family doing their daily stuff but he takes pictures of it to remind himself that he is part of a family now and that’s more than he ever wanted
Tim enjoys spending time with Alfred (tbh who doesn’t) and when he has nothing to do he’ll go find him and help him clean the house or something
Tim when he has nightmare usually just stays in his room and distracts himself with other normal human activities (he’s watching ghost adventures on his laptop because spooky and spooky cancel out) and this goes great until one day Bruce walks by the room and hears the noise so he knocks on Tim’s door cause it’s like 4am. Bruce finds out that Tim had a nightmare and tells him that he can go find him if he has a nightmare he doesn’t mind, and Tim is like okayyyyy and on another day after a really bad nightmare he goes into Bruce’s room and just sleeps there
And Tim headcanons have been served. Enjoy
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