Chapter Text
If Buck were to say that he had a superpower, it would be his infallible ability to make friends with literally every person he meets. Hen says he must have been a golden retriever in another life, and well, Buck couldn’t really argue with her point. He simply loved people. Loved meeting knew faces, learning new names every place he went. Buck strived to bring broad smiles to each individual he spoke to, vowed to brighten up their days with any bit of sunshine he could emit.
It had been a helpful quality throughout his life, always needing to find companionship outside of his family because he certainly wasn’t getting it from his absent parents. He had so many friends in school, and Buck honestly could not remember being hated by a single person in Hershey in all his childhood days.
And when he set out to travel the country, even spending a brief stint in Peru, he was so thankful of the speed in which he could gain a new friend after arriving at a new place. At each temporary job he took on, his coworkers always warmed up to him. The customers at restaurants or bars would always deem him their favorite server, tipping quite generously.
If Buck were to say he had a kryptonite, it would be that the friends he makes never tend to stay. And that applied to lovers as well.
It’s like his winning personality reeled them in, but they would all grow tired of him soon enough. Maybe that had been his parents’ problem: already tired of Evan by the time he was old enough to form memories. None of his school friends bothered to stay in touch after he left Pennsylvania. None of his past coworkers were all that sad to see him move on to the next job. None of his lovers wept at the thought of him parting from their beds.
Buck could make someone, anyone, happy for a day. But a day of smiles wasn’t enough to forge a forever kind of bond, apparently.
The first person to test Buck’s superpower was Bobby Nash. He was not a huge fan of Buck at first. Didn’t smile at Buck’s silly jokes, didn’t warm up to the sunshine that Buck embodies. He seemed, quite frankly, sick of Buck’s shit from day one. And it didn’t help much when Buck reverted back to his old teenage ways of trying to get a parent-figure’s attention by acting out. The Captain did not respond well to unprofessional displays of carelessness in the workplace, such as steeling the firetruck to go hookup with someone from Tinder.
The second person to test Buck’s superpower was Athena Grant. It’s no wonder that she and Cap were made for each other. Because she was also rather sick of Buck’s shit from day one. In her defense, Buck did have a rather spectacular asshole moment during their first meeting. And eventually, she ended up coming around to him a lot sooner than Bobby did.
Now, Bobby and Athena were like his surrogate parents. He only hoped they didn’t grow sick of his shit once more and leave him like all the rest of the people he had known.
Hen Wilson and Chimney Han were, perhaps, the best friends Buck’s ever had. It had been three years since Buck was the new guy at the 118, and he was pretty sure it’s the longest he’s ever kept the same group of friends.
He even had Maddie here now, with him in LA, dating Chimney to Buck’s slight dismay. And he thought, maybe he didn’t have a kryptonite after all, maybe everyone would stay for good this time. And maybe he didn’t even need his superpower of making new friends anymore because he had all the ones he needed right there with him each shift of work and more often than not at a karaoke bar on their days off.
Life was good. But still, Buck couldn’t shake the sense that he was missing something.
***
Buck had some, perhaps unusual, hobbies for a 28-year-old single guy in Los Angeles. When he wasn’t fighting fires or scaling buildings, he liked to take up classes or join various groups at a local community center. There was a sculpting course he did for a while that was an absolute disaster. Still, he made fast friends with the instructor and all the other students. There was a group for exercise enthusiasts who planned hikes and other strenuous activities together. He still participated in that one from time to time. Then there was a class on graphic design. And Buck really was not that skilled in technology.
A photography sharing group.
A creative writing class.
Singles group. Ugh. The worst idea.
A carpentry course. That one was quite useful.
And then, his favorite of them all, a gardening club. He lived in a loft apartment with the tiniest balcony, but he so enjoyed the cramped garden bed he’d built out there (curtesy of his carpentry skills) and cultivated with vegetables and a few flowers.
The group was helpful in the sense that all the participants would share information on the best soil mixes, pesticides, watering schedules, harvesting seasons, and anything else Buck would possibly want to know. They would all take progress pictures, showing the growth that had been made from start to finish of their garden beds.
Mostly, Buck enjoyed the group because he was the only one in there that was under the age of fifty. The others were all elderly men and women who searched for hobbies to occupy their time in the years of retirement. He found that the elderly generation always had a vast array of fantastic stories and invaluable wisdom. Plus, none of them tried to hit on him.
And Buck’s newest friend in the gardening group was a woman in her seventies named Isabel. She was an absolute delight. They texted each other frequently, as everyone in the group had exchanged phone numbers months ago, and they were always sending gardening laments back and forth. Not a single ladybug would land on the leaf of Isabel’s hyacinths without Buck hearing about it. She was also constantly trying to teach Buck Spanish after he mentioned in passing that he’d spent some time in Peru and knew a handful of words. He would buy her lunch after the group meetings every other week, and then they would sometimes go to for walks around a wonderfully landscaped park as she told him stories of her supposedly adorable and headstrong great-grandson who had come to live in California with his father about a year ago.
“Eddito was supposed to fix the steps on my back porch tomorrow, but he had to pick up an extra shift at work to cover the costs of Christopher’s new crutches,” she informed Buck one day in late September as they walked along the sidewalk in the direction of their favorite seed-supplier, carrying citrus-iced teas in their hands.
“I can come fix if for you, Isabel. I don’t have any other plans for tomorrow.”
She gave him a conflicted look. “I don’t want to give the impression that my nieto is not a good man. He always makes an effort to help me with anything I ask… but he is a single father. So busy. So overworked and always taking on more than he can truly handle. I worry about him so much sometimes.”
“I understand,” Buck assured her, “which is why I’m offering to do it instead. I don’t have a kid to worry about, and I’m pathetically single. It’s no trouble for me to come over tomorrow and fix it, really.”
She remained hesitant for a second longer before shifting into a smile. “All right. You can fix it, and my Eddito can have one less thing on his plate. I’ll message you the address.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Eddie took great pride in being his Abuela’s go-to handyman. The thing about the Diaz family was that they didn’t believe in hiring a professional for any kind of work around the house, and if it wasn’t something that could be fixed by oneself, the next plan of action was to phone a family member or a friend. It was a whole network of never-ending favor exchanges, and that was how it had always been since Eddie was a child in El Paso.
Now, he was the only Diaz family member in Los Angeles besides Abuela and Pepa, and he’d be damned if he was going to let some stranger come into either of their houses and charge them absurd amounts of money for miniscule repairs. So, the two women had strict instructions to call him with any problems they had, and Eddie would consistently take it upon himself to get the matter solved.
It was a pride thing, really.
Which was why he was a little caught off guard when he called his Abuela on his next day off to let her know he’d be coming over to finally fix that broken step and she informed him not to worry about it because it had already been repaired.
“Abuela! It would have taken me fifteen minutes tops. Tell me you didn’t pay someone to come do it.”
“Of course not, nieto,” she scoffed at him through the line. She was an elder Diaz after all, so she was just as wary of hiring help as all the rest of them were.
“You fixed it yourself? Perhaps I should still come over and check that it’s secure so you don’t break a hip again.”
“Eddie,” she said in exasperation, “the step is fine. Perfect, actually. A friend offered to do it.”
“A friend? One of your neighbors or something?”
“No. Someone I met in my gardening group.”
Eddie was picturing some friendly old widower in his eighties who had probably taken a liking to his charming Abuela.
“Uh huh… well, next time something breaks, I promise you that I’ll get it fixed before you have to call this friend of yours.”
“Sure,” she agreed, then promptly changed the subject, “how’s my Christopher today?”
“I’ll put him on,” he told her as he walked down the hall to his son’s room.
***
But Eddie was starting to worry that something strange was happening with his grandmother. An entire month went by where she didn’t so much as ask him to change a single lightbulb for her. The kitchen cabinets got a fresh coat of paint. The leaky faucet was magically un-leaky. Three hundred pounds of fresh soil appeared in her front garden beds. A new bookshelf was installed for her huge collection of terrible romance novels.
None of these things seemed easily manageable for a woman in her late seventies, yet they all seemed to happen miraculously without a word ever being uttered about it to Eddie.
Honestly, it was starting to hurt his feelings a little. Did Abuela no longer want his help? Did she no longer need him?
“I think my grandmother has a secret boyfriend,” he confided in Lena as they walked to the nearby sandwich shop to pick up lunch for their crew at the 136.
She snorted. “And?”
“It’s just strange that she’s being so deceptive about it. I mean, if she’s finally trying to move on after my Abuelo’s death, then I’m happy for her, but I don’t understand why she wouldn’t say anything to me. We talk about practically everything else in our lives.”
“Maybe it’s nothing serious, and she doesn’t feel the need to introduce him to her family.”
Eddie furrowed his brow at the thought of his Abuela having casual hookups.
“Eddie, Isabel Diaz is a grown woman. If she wants a boytoy, I doubt she feels the need to run it by her grandson.”
Eddie scrunched his nose. “Please do not ever say ‘boytoy’ again. And I’m not saying she has to ask my permission… the omission is just out of character for her. That’s all.”
“How do you know about it if she hasn’t said anything?”
“Well, there’s this mysterious friend that she met in her gardening club that’s been doing all the handiwork and repairs around her house for about a month now. She used to ask me to do it, but now she never mentions anything.”
“Ah,” Lena said as she elbowed him roughly in the ribcage, “so that’s what this is really about.”
Eddie flashed her an oblivious look, tilting his head in confusion. He had no idea what she was referring to.
“You’ve taken a hit to your pride. Can’t stand it that somebody else is the big strong man around the family now, huh?” She pinched at his cheeks mockingly. “Poor little Eddie.”
He shoved her hands away from him. “Shut up… I’m just concerned is all. What if he’s not a good guy and is taking advantage of my Abuela? I think it’s perfectly within reason for me to want to meet him and judge for myself, yeah?”
She offered a noncommittal shrug and opened the entrance to the sandwich shop as she said, “Whatever you say, Diaz.”
“I dunno why I’m friends with you, Bosko,” he retorted in a grumpy tone.
She belted out a laugh.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Buck absolutely loved being useful, offering his eager help to others without asking anything in return. And Isabel had easily become his most frequent recipient of such help. After she approved of the job he’d done on her broken step, she seemed to feel more comfortable in asking him all kinds of favors. And well, it wasn’t like Buck’s schedule was packed full of social appointments. So of course he rarely refused.
He had his Buffridays with Maddie and Chim. Every once in a blue moon, Bobby and Athena would invite him around for dinner, or Hen would organize a group outing at a bar for everyone to let loose. But those commitments seemed few and far between. He supposed he could spend time at bars or clubs by himself, meeting new men or women to possibly date, but the thought of trying to get back out there sort of exhausted Buck right down to his bones.
What was the point in going through the motions again and again, getting to know some stranger, just for them to bail right when Buck started falling for them?
He didn’t think his heart could take another repeat of the entire miserable process.
Which left him committed to his friendship with Isabel and the extended offer to help take some of the stress off this mysterious grandson of hers that Buck was always hearing snippets about.
Apparently, Eddito had grown up in Texas, and according to Isabel, his parents were rather hard on him throughout most of his life. They never approved of any of the man’s choices, and that was something Buck certainly found himself relating to. He didn’t say so to Isabel, not ever really feeling in the mood to discuss Phillip and Margaret Buckley, but when she told him these little things about her grandson, Buck was amazed at all the ways it resonated with him. It sort of comforted him to know that there was another man out there, similar in age, struggling with the same sort of issues of self-worth as Buck was all because of shitty parents.
Isabel spoke about Christopher the most, sprinkling in remarks about how great of a father Eddito was to the boy, how he reminded her of how her late husband had always been with their kids and grandkids. Buck couldn’t imagine what that was like: to lose the person whom you’d shared fifty years of your life with. He didn’t think he could survive such heartbreak, but here was wonderful Isabel, cheery and bubbly and always so kind. She never let a single thing put her in a sour mood.
She was wise beyond belief, and Buck realized that she was probably the oldest person he had ever been close to for such a long period. He hardly knew his grandparents as a child. Bobby and Athena weren’t quite in Isabel’s age range yet. And Red had only been in Buck’s life for a very brief stint before passing of cancer. But Isabel, she had lived through so much vibrant life, and it seemed she was here to stay. At least, long enough to tell Buck every last detail of her 78 long years. He would happily listen to her chatter away as he painted kitchen cabinets or worked on the leaky faucet or hauled huge bags of garden soil to dump in the front beds.
She would bring him tea or lemonade or sometimes a beer. She’d always have some form of baked good to offer. Whether it was cookies or brownies or cupcakes or pastries, Buck accepted them all happily. Isabel would then switch to grilling him about his love life and any new dating prospects, scolding him for his unwillingness to put himself back out there. He’d sit through her lectures about his ‘soulmate being out there somewhere waiting for Buck to find them’ and smile contentedly.
If Bobby and Athena were Buck’s surrogate parents, Isabel Diaz had become his surrogate grandmother.
Sometimes Buck worried about overstepping, frequently asking Isabel if she was absolutely sure that her grandson wouldn’t mind that he had basically stolen the man’s job.
She waved off his concerns every time, informing Buck that Eddito appeared a little less tired and grumpy each time that she saw him.
Buck’s Spanish was already improving greatly as the weeks went by, with Isabel using the language more and more often in conversation with him and expecting Buck to keep up. She was even so kind as to loan him some of her books written in the language, although from what Buck could tell of the covers, they seemed a little racy for his interests. Erotica wasn’t really his thing. Still, he accepted them with a thanks and used them for his studies.
They continued attending their gardening group meetings every other week and doing their park walks out of habit, but Buck realized he didn’t care about them as much as he used to. The community clubs and classes had always been more of a means for meeting new people and making friends. Luckily, he had made a great friend in Isabel, and he no longer felt that the group meetings were as necessary for his overall mental health as they had been before. Nevertheless, they remained useful for gardening tips, and Buck was growing quite proud of his own little garden out on the tiny terrace of his loft.
He found the art of landscaping rather relaxing and tranquil, and it was about two months into his visits to Isabel’s house that he found himself helping her to plant some new evergreen trees along the outskirts of her front yard. The trees weren’t towering. On the contrary, they were all shorter than Buck by about a foot and quite easy to manage. Alas, digging the holes for them was cumbersome work, and he was properly sweating through his tight t-shirt within an hour of digging through the dirt with his shovel.
Isabel had stepped inside to make bloody marries, and Buck paused from his repetitive motions to wipe his forehead sweat away with the hem of his shirt when a deep, guarded voice spoke up from behind him.
“Who the hell are you?”
Buck turned around then to discover the most handsome man he had ever seen in his life. He was rather tall, if not the tiniest bit shorter than Buck. His eyebrows and hair were dark brown, with the latter being perfectly styled in an easy side part. It looked so lovely and soft that all Buck wanted to do was reach out and run his fingertips through the locks. His eyes were brown as well, piercing him with a suspicious glare. The man’s full lips were arranged into a purse, and Buck thought it made him look delightfully kissable.
Buck wiped his sweaty right palm against the side of his shorts and then stretched it out in a gesture of greeting. “I’m Buck… And you must be Eddito,” he said with a smile, noticing that the man bared a few small resemblances to Isabel and guessed it might be her infamous grandson.
He did not accept Buck’s handshake. Instead, he stood there threateningly with his face contorting into a further grimace.
“It’s Eddie. Do not call me Eddito.”
Buck let his hand drop back to hang at his side. “Oh, my apologies. It’s just that Isabel always calls you that, and it sort of led me to believe that that’s what you went by… Anyway, it’s nice to meet you, Eddie. Isabel is inside making bloody marries if you wanted to speak to her.”
The man, Eddie, shot Buck one last intimidating glower before marching across the front yard and entering the little yellow house through the screen door.
For some reason, Buck got the sense that he hadn’t made a good first impression.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Abuela!” Eddie called out as soon as he stepped into the house.
“Nieto! I didn’t know you were coming by today,” she exclaimed joyfully as she walked out of the kitchen with two tall glasses of cocktail in her hands, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I had some spare time since Christopher is at a birthday party and sleepover, and I came to see if your lawn needed mowed,” he explained as he narrowed his eyes at the woman, “but it appears that that’s already been taken care of.”
“Oh! Yes, Buck cut the grass earlier this morning before we went to pick up the new trees.”
Eddie crossed his arms illustrating his favorite ‘fed up’ stance. When he spoke, it was in Spanish now, “Abuela, please tell me that you are not dating a man that looks younger than me.”
Her features jumped, eyebrows raising in bafflement of the question. “What are you talking about, Eddie?”
“Well, when you mentioned your ‘friend’ from garden club, I was imagining someone with far more wrinkles and far less hair. No muscles either. I can’t believe you’ve got some fling going on with a guy in his twenties! What has gotten into you?”
Isabel crossed her arms as well, mirroring the exact stance that Eddie had learned from her long ago.
“Buck turns thirty next year, I’ll have you know. And what on earth makes you think I’m in any sort of ‘fling’ with anybody?”
“Is that not what’s going on here?”
“It most certainly is not. Buck is my friend. That’s all. But even if it weren’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t need a lecture about it from you, Edmundo Diaz.”
A throat cleared from behind where the pair of them stood in the hallway.
“I promise I’m not sleeping with your grandma, dude.”
Eddie’s shoulders somehow became even more tense.
“You understand Spanish?” he asked in a hostile voice without even bothering to turn toward the man that had apparently come through the front door.
“I’m teaching him,” Abuela explained proudly.
Eddie threw his hands up in defeat. “Of course you are!” He stalked off to the kitchen to get himself a glass of ice water in an attempt to cool off.
As he parted, he heard Abuela mumble to Buck, “Don’t mind him. My Eddito’s been mad at the world since the day he was born.”
The chuckle Buck responded with only intensified Eddie’s seething mood.
***
Eddie insisted on helping with the trees. If he didn’t stay and put his hands to work, he simply would have been bored at home worrying about his son. He needed to keep busy… even if that meant spending a few hours in tense silence shoveling dirt and planting trees alongside whoever the fuck this Buck guy was.
Friend. That’s apparently all he was to Isabel, but Eddie could not for the life of him figure out why a 29-year-old man would want to be friends with a 78-year-old lady. It was truly a mystery. Like did this guy have no life or something? And did he really meet Abuela at a gardening club of all places? For some reason, his bulging biceps and tattoo ink didn’t really scream daffodils and carnations to Eddie.
“You know,” the man’s energetic voice interrupted Eddie from his spiraling thoughts, “you could just ask me instead of making wild assumptions about ulterior motives I might have.”
Eddie clenched his jaw. “Ask you what?’
“Anything you want. Anything that will put your mind at ease about me spending time with a part of your family,” Buck spread his arms wide in gesture, “I’m an open book, I swear.”
Eddie figured the easiest way to judge this man’s character was to get some references. If he spoke to his employer or something that would give him a good sense of whether or not Buck could be trusted.
“Where do you work?”
Buck grinned, clearly excited to be on the subject of his job. “LAFD station 118.”
Eddie’s eyebrows raised to his hairline. “You’re also a firefighter?”
Buck tilted his head in confusion. “Also?”
Eddie let out a humorless laugh. “I guess Abuela didn’t tell you everything about me then? I’m stationed at the 136.”
“What? No way! Eddie, that’s awesome. I haven’t really made friends with any firefighters outside of my crew.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one,” Eddie grumbled lowly. “What’s the name of your Captain?” he asked louder for Buck to hear him properly.
“Robert Nash… why? Are you planning on reporting me or something?”
“Now there’s an idea,” Eddie said with a hint of sarcasm as he grabbed his shovel and started digging again.
“Look, I promise you that I don’t want any trouble. I go to the community center to learn new things, meet new people. I make friends with all sorts of personalities, individuals from every walk of life. And it’s nice. I really enjoy the companionship. So, Isabel and I bonded over gardening and then she mentioned her step needing fixed a while back and said you couldn’t get to it because you had to pick up an extra shift. I offered to help and then me coming around to fix things sort of became a new routine.”
It was like Buck was rubbing salt in the wound, reminding Eddie that he wasn’t good enough to be able to help his grandmother with everything all the time while also taking care of his son, bringing up the very nature of Eddie’s failures and insecurities. “Right.”
The tense silence returned, and Eddie was happy to let it stretch out for the remainder of their yard work. Buck had other ideas.
“Anymore questions?”
“Nope,” Eddie replied sharply, shutting down any further attempts at conversation between the two of them.