Archive of Our Own ^beta

It takes about a month of living in his new place for Eddie to notice him for the first time.

It’s a quiet Wednesday evening, the sun dipping its toes in the horizon and throwing warm pink light through Eddie’s bedroom window. He sits on his bed over the covers, back propped up on a pile of pillows and one ankle crossed over the other; he wears a furrow in his brow and chews on the bendy metal tip of his pencil where an eraser used to be; he stares at the clue for sixteen-across: 33rd Academy Awards Best Picture Winner—The [BLANK] (1960). The only letters that have already been filled out are the third and the sixth— an A and an M respectively. Eddie knows nothing about the 33rd Academy Awards, so with a sigh, he moves on. Seventeen-across seems easy enough.

Something compels him— he’s not sure what or how or why, but his eyes lift up and to the right, through the window in the corner of the room and beyond. The sky is orange-ish with dissipating sunlight. It beams off the glass exterior of the building across the way.

The building across the way, that’s what compelled him. An apartment, one floor above Eddie’s, with room-wide windows and a little smoker’s balcony; it’s the same structure as the apartment below it and the apartment above it and every other apartment Eddie can see from his bedroom. An apartment, one floor above Eddie’s, where the room-wide window displays a living room, pale walls scattered with shelves of vinyl records and framed movie posters, a brick column where it splits into a kitchen; a trendy industrial-style coffee table upon which someone rests their feet; a brown leather couch that is currently occupied, situated to face the right, a TV presumably mounted to a wall just beyond what Eddie can see. Eddie’s eyes follow the egregious length of the legs outstretched on the coffee table, up, up to the face of the man who sits on the couch. A curly head of hair, a tattoo that wraps around his right forearm, elbow propped up on the arm of the couch.

He’s staring at Eddie.

Unabashed, craned neck, sat-there-to-enjoy-the-view staring. He has a boyishly handsome face that lights up once their eyes meet, scrubbing a hand over his bashful grin that spreads wide at being caught. He shrugs at Eddie, as if to say, oops, but he does not look away. Instead he smiles at Eddie like he’s waiting for a smile in return.

Eddie experiences an eruption— heat and weight and fluttering wings in the bottom of his gut, the deepest of caverns that wind about his chest. He wonders how long he’s been watched. He tries to recount everything he’s done this evening since entering his room and mostly it’s just this, sitting on his bed and scribbling away at his crossword puzzle. But he did get changed earlier, out of jeans and into a pair of sweats, and the realization hits him like two opposing walls, fronts both cold and warm. Is that incessant thumping that deafens him his heart? Is this spiral in his belly trepidation or excitement? And how the hell is he supposed to tell the difference?

For the briefest of moments, Eddie considers closing his blinds. The briefest of moments because his mind supplies an immediate, resounding no. Eddie will find a way to soothe himself, to ease his mind with half-drawn excuses—the light is too lovely, the view of the city too sparkly, he has every right to exist in his own room in his own apartment with the windows wide open as he pleases. He’ll know deep down, however, that the reason he doesn’t close his blinds is because of the warm, all-over-kiss of blinding spotlight. It’s because of the way his posture corrects itself subconsciously, his neck a little longer, his chest a little wider. It’s because of the way his expressions school themselves into something smooth and alluring and never ugly, the press of the chewed-up pencil to his bottom lip, the smoothed-out line between his brows. A layer of perfect resting veil-like over his being.

He doesn’t give the man a smile back. Rather, he just clicks on his bedside lamp and continues his crossword. And he pretends that he doesn’t feel it, his smile beaming down at him, bright as the departing sun.

It’s been about a month. It took Eddie a month to notice him. Later on, weeks, even months from now—long after the end of this story being told—Eddie will learn that it took him about three days to be noticed.

-----

When Eddie had first toured this apartment with the real estate agent, he had gone, oh, wow, at the light coming in through his bedroom window. It’s a nice place, complete with updated finishings and new appliances, ensuite bathrooms and big, wide, generous windows. The main bedroom, the one that would soon become Eddie’s, is southwest facing and on the outermost corner of the building, the big, wide, generous window installed with a right-angle in the corner of the room, perfectly positioned to catch the sun as it sets. The city, a sprawl of lights and movement and life displayed before and beneath him, enraptured him enough that he paid no mind to the obstruction at his right—the tall, neighbouring building was in just the right spot that it didn’t block the sun, so Eddie didn’t notice it, Eddie didn’t care, and he signed some papers and forked over a deposit before he could give it another thought.

Now, almost two months deep in this apartment, the bedroom window is still Eddie’s favourite part.

It’s the first thing his eyes will cut to upon entering his room. He’ll walk through the door and as if magnetic, as if drawn by the tug of reins, his eyes will dart to the right and just a little bit up. He’ll keep it brief, subtle, never a full turn of his head and always through a flicker of eyelashes, lest that man with his curly hair and his curly smile and his all-observing eyes be watching. God forbid Eddie be caught looking back. God forbid he shatter this one-sided illusion of privacy (or lack thereof). And God forbid—God forbid—he allow himself a closer look only to discover he isn’t being eyed at all. Sometimes Eddie sees him, curtailed glimpses of his long, hulking form sitting on his couch or the armchair or walking over to his kitchen, sometimes he has company, often he’s alone. And when he isn’t there, when Eddie risks a glance and finds the apartment across the way absent of anybody, his spine will shrink, his posture loosening and heart rate slowing, and he’ll stare, stare, stare at that empty pocket behind glass, free to observe all he wants.

It’s a carefully choreographed routine of coy acknowledgement and averted gazes. Eddie leaves his blinds open when he changes but does so demurely, swiftly, with his back turned or in discreet corners, as his pulse thrums violently in his ears. He’ll sprawl across his bed on his side or his back or his stomach, ensuring his limbs are arranged attractively, and he’ll read a book or fill out crossword puzzles or play match-three games on his phone. He’ll pretend he doesn’t know he’s being watched, but he’ll feel it the whole time, and it will coat him in a layer of gently stroked ego; of feeling maybe wanted but certainly admired. A pin-prick sense of welcome invasion.

Sometimes, in the mornings, Eddie will wake up on his stomach with his cheek pressed into his pillow, and through sleep-heavy eyelashes or his messy bed hair feathered over his eyes, he’ll peer out his window and into the next in search of him. Sometimes, in the mornings, he’s out on his balcony with a cup of coffee; sometimes he’ll be looking down at the city sprawling below them; sometimes he’ll be looking down at Eddie.

(Those mornings taste like boiled sugar in his throat— ultra-sweet with a physical hurt. He wakes under the blanket of meticulous gaze and it kisses his skin all sticky like a mouth that’s been sucking on candy, a tangible press-and-peel as the gaze upon him wanders.

Eddie is typically slow to wake; a lethargic crawl through the downy texture of slumber, cracks of bleeding light that expand until the fog clears; warm and sedate and leisurely. Those mornings when Eddie cracks an eye open and is met with oncoming headlights… it’s especially warm, sedate, leisurely, the clingy fog of slumber sweetened and dewier and tinted a little pink. A viscous lick up the track of his spine. A whirlpool of heat in his lower belly.

He’ll imagine he’s been watched all night. Or he’ll imagine that his neighbour’s first thought upon waking was of him, rolling out of bed to drag his curls and his smile over to his living room window like the face of a flower seeks sunlight. Eddie’s hand will slide under his body, settle into the narrow heat between mattress and hips, and he’ll consider it— giving into it. That murmuring voice that speaks to him through the groggy mist. It tells him to roll into the pressure, to wrap a fist around his cock, to chase that beck and call of an arousal he doesn’t care to dissect. He’ll wonder what would happen if he did; would it be obvious? Would the blankets do little to disguise the movement beneath? Or would that smile watch on obliviously? Eddie will wonder and wonder—unable to admit which outcome he’d prefer—until he’s too close to awake and too far from brave to participate beyond the hypothetical.

Someday, he’ll think to himself. And then he’ll tack on, maybe.)

This morning, Eddie wakes unwitnessed. It is disappointment that greets him.

Slow to wake as he is, Eddie yawns into his fist as he rounds the foot of his bed and pads into the ensuite, turns his shower on, sheds his pajamas. He ambles through his morning routine on autopilot, the clingy tendrils of slumber’s fog still licking at the edges of his mind; glimpses of the dreaming world he leaves behind—flashbulbs, ribbons, spotlights, and the physical sensation of being perceived.

Sleep’s hold eventually retreats and with the fog goes that sensation. The feeling that replaces it is… well, missing it.

The mirror moans as Eddie swipes a hand through the steam, his fuzzy reflection shining back at him. He trims his moustache, brushes his teeth, secures a towel around his waist and pads back out into the bedroom. His feet leave wet little footprints on the carpeted flooring from one end of the room to the next, charting his journey to his dresser by the window.

Unthinking and instinctual, Eddie’s eyes lift up and across. There they are met with a smile.

It makes him halt in his tracks, poised to open his sock drawer, wide-eyed and off-guard. Eddie feels as if he’s been plopped into a saddle and given a lance before he could protest. A stand-off of sorts. Just two panes of glass and a one-way street between them. It’s the first time their eyes have met since that night several weeks ago.

He isn’t on his balcony this morning. Rather, he stands smack-dab in the middle of his room-wide window with his arms crossed over his chest. He holds a mug in one hand, the steam rising in thick, pale ribbons. He’s in a pair of striped pajama pants and a soft-worn t-shirt but the most obvious thing he wears is a smile— half-formed and crooked, pulling tight with bright amusement. Even with the distance between them, Eddie catches sight of a particular sort of sparkle in his eye.

This is the most Eddie has allowed himself to look at him, held hostage by the catch of gaze and unable to slip away and feign ignorance. He looks and looks, watching as those handsome features stretch into an impish grin; as he unfolds his arms, raising one above his head to lean his forearm against the glass; as he takes up more space, an egregious amount of space— the wall of his chest and the towers of his legs and that big, bright beacon between grinning pink lips.

The hand that holds the mug rises to gesture, his index finger lifting from the rim to make a little twirling motion. Give us a spin. He punctuates his request with a playful wink.

With a sudden jolt of self-awareness, Eddie’s skin ripples with goosebumps; mostly-nude and shower-damp. He had drifted, at some point, over to his window, standing as close to face-to-face as he and his audience can get. Tha-thump, gulps his heart. The flattery washes over him—a rush of pleasant heat—yet he does his best to bat away the flush that threatens his cheeks and rolls his eyes theatrically, hugely, ensuring that it’s visible from this far away as he reaches for the cord that hangs by the window.

For the first time in weeks, Eddie closes his blinds. He misses him immediately.

-----

At breakfast, Eddie munches slowly and distractedly on his toast and listens to the fragmented sound bits blaring from his son’s phone as he scrolls noncommittally through TikTok. It’s quiet otherwise, both of them groggily eating their breakfasts. That slow-to-wake gene happens to run strong in the family.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Eddie asks, “do you think I’m spending too much time in my room?” to which Christopher gives him an incredulous look.

“I dunno,” he says with a shrug. “I spend all my time in my room.”

Eddie nods, his eyes drifting off to stare unthinkingly at a knot in the wooden table. “Right.”

“But like. I have a computer,” Chris adds, an adolescent brand of apathy in his tone. “What do you even do in there?”

Ripping off a piece of crust and popping it in his mouth, Eddie squints and chews and thinks. He thinks about the dent in the mattress approximately his height and width, thinks about the diffused lighting of his bedside lamp. He thinks about his window awaiting him with the blinds already re-opened, and the face he’ll inevitably find on the other side.

“That’s funny,” Eddie eventually says, “I could’ve sworn you knew what a book was.”

“Oh yeah?” Chris challenges. “Tell me about the book you're reading.”

Eddie doesn’t; he can’t seem to remember what it’s about.

-----

“Never again,” Eddie mutters to himself, clumsily turning his key in the door. He shakes his head, blinking slowly down at the poor coordination in his hands, wondering if they’re even attached to him at all. “Never. Again.”

This is the first—and definitively the last—time Eddie has taken his coworkers up on their invitation for after-work drinks. He gets along well enough with them for someone relatively new to the job, and they’re always going out for drinks after work—to the point where Eddie has his quiet concerns about their habits—but it wasn’t until today’s slap on the shoulder and, “Diaz, you in?” that he agreed to join. He figured why not, it’s a Friday night, his son is spending the night at a friend’s. He’s got nothing else going on. This is how Eddie found himself too many beers deep in some sticky dive bar with a bunch of burly manual labourers slash functioning alcoholics, pretending to keep up. At this point he’s just glad to be home.

He makes it through the door, thank God, stumbling into the dark on unsteady feet. He rolls his shoulders out, flexes and loosens his fists, trying to get a proper feel on his motor functions. This is more drunk than Eddie would typically like to be, especially more drunk on beer than anyone should ever be, but it’s not entirely unpleasant—Eddie feels fuzzy and drifty, loose of limb and tongue and inhibition, a simmering pot of comfortable warmth bubbling away beneath his skin. If anything, he’s just a little embarrassed to look like such a lightweight.

When he steps through the threshold into his bedroom his hand automatically reaches for the light switch. Miraculously, he stops himself from flipping it on, distracted instead by the dancing pale light past his window—that TV mounted just out of sight flashing blues and yellows and pinks into the otherwise dark cavern of the apartment across the way.

You, Eddie thinks, like the accusatory point of a finger. His neighbour—Smiles, as the voice in his head has begun calling him—is sat upon his couch in the dark, his face illuminated by the kaleidoscope of his television screen. You, Eddie thinks again as he steps deeper into his bedroom, safe under the cloak of darkness. You, you, you, you. The source of all Eddie’s problems. The singular thing running laps through his mind. He’s spent days thinking about him, reliving that interaction; his edacious grin and his flirty little gesture and his face and his wink and his—

He’s been on Eddie’s mind, full stop.

Like just earlier, some woman with flowers tattooed from her wrist to her shoulder sidling up to him at the bar, saying something like, your pretty face sticks out like a sore thumb in here, while Eddie let the words drift in through one ear and out through the next. He sat there, soft and unguarded in his inebriation, longing for the display case of his bedroom, the soothing balm of admiration. He sat there, reliving that interaction, dissecting it and analyzing it as he has ever since that morning; the destruction of the one-sided illusion; the interest made blatantly clear. This routine of theirs has finally been acknowledged for what it is: a duet, not a solo. It isn’t about Eddie alone in his room. It’s about the pair of eyes in here with him.

Those eyes. Eddie’s becoming a little addicted to them; the feeling in which they coat him, inside and out. And oh, how it suddenly occurs to him just how bad he craves them.

Opting against the less flattering overhead light, Eddie reaches for his bedside lamp and flicks it on.

Instantly, a head swivels to face him.

In a sudden, sharp rush, Eddie’s breath escapes his lungs. The thrill of audience wracks through his body, lowering his lashes as he takes another couple steps forward.

Eddie is feeling brave; clothed in the pleasant boldness of inebriation and backlit with gold, he basks in the electrifying kiss of attention. He keeps his gaze averted but still feels those eyes on him, especially as he crosses his arms over his front and curls his fingers in the hem of his shirt. He’s unable to fully conquer the bashfulness that blooms in his chest in an expanding ball of heat—it rises to his cheeks and his ears and sends flutters to his stomach—but the courage he’s spent all night guzzling does enough. Enough to have him making a show of it, taking his time, peeling the shirt from his body in a slow, sensual display. He turns away subconsciously, right as he swipes the shirt over his head, and peers shyly over his shoulder.

He’s still watching. It’s a vise around Eddie’s stomach. It’s a pair of fangs at his throat.

Smiles is still in the dark, one half of his face lit up by flickering halogen light. His expression is rapt and anticipating. Eddie’s hands drift to his belt. That expression only sharpens.

Calculated, ostentatious movement; Eddie’s belt undone, and his fly unzipped, and his jeans pulled down over wiggling hips. Look at me, look at me, look at me, like a mantra in Eddie’s mind. He turns this way and that as he undresses, ensuring the light hits him best here, and here, and here. He is observed the entire time, the discernible sear of heated gaze upon his flesh from head to toe.

It excites Eddie, hot and tantalizing and rolling through him in crashing waves. It’s accompanied by something like shame and maybe fear; he climbs onto his bed in just his briefs and wonders, distantly, if there are any other faces in any other windows settling in for a show. Who else is here to witness him? Indulge in him, feast on him, fantasize about him. Eddie crawls on his stomach, twisting his neck to peek past his shoulder and check in on his audience. Dancing blue light, eyes so sharp they pierce through dark and shame and muscle. The only face in the only window Eddie gives any damn about.

With a huff, Eddie plops onto his side with his back to him. He tilts his neck and squeezes his knees and fits himself into the perfect shape— the dip of his waist, the hill of his hip. He needn’t peer over his shoulder to check; he knows he’s being watched. So long as there is light to see, Eddie will infallibly be seen.

Oh, it eats away at him. Licks at his skin and nibbles on his spine, chewing away his inhibitions and his self-preservation like crumbling sugarcube. His hand cups itself around the growing bulge in his briefs and he moans, surprising himself. He can’t believe how ignited he feels, arousal coursing through him and egging him on. To get himself there. To put on a show. To take his audience there with him.

Another moan, as his hips roll into the pressure of his palm. The point of no return officially manifests behind him.

“Fuck it,” Eddie hisses to himself, shoving a hand under his briefs and wrapping a fist around his cock.

The heat consumes him. The heat and the beer and the inherent tension of being observed. Eddie rolls his hips into the circle of heat his fist provides, twists his wrist and squeezes at the base— all of the tricks that will carry Eddie to the edge as efficiently and effectively as possible.

He wonders how he looks, imagines himself from one floor above and across the street; the serpentine motion in his spine; the muscles in his glutes and his quads and even up in his shoulders flexing and relaxing in waves. His skin must be so pink, flushed from cheek to chest to knuckles, his body overheating with prurience and abashment combined. His toes keep curling, too, his socked feet sliding around atop the sheets that tangle around his ankles.

Look at me, look at me, look at me. Eddie fucks his fist and spills heavy breath all over his pillow, getting an arm under him to support his weight, prop himself on his elbow and bow his head. He peers out from under the visor his body provides. He—Smiles—stares and stares unending with a sort of reverence in his undivided attention. The arm of the couch blocks Eddie’s view of his lap. He can’t see what he’s doing, where his hands are, whether he’s touching himself too or merely watches on with cold impassivity. “Aaahhn,” rolls out of Eddie, the clutch of pleasure yanking taut. He collapses onto his stomach, thrusting into his fist and crying out into his pillows. Look at me, look at me, look at me.

When Eddie comes it’s verve-killing. Tongue fat, head swimmy, muscles bled free of all strength. He lies face-first in his pillow, his back heaving, his hand still crushed under his pelvis, and basks in the drowsy fog that envelops him. The beer and the orgasm and the crash of mild adrenaline catch up to him at once, like a wave, like a pull.

As he drifts off to sleep, sticky and stale and seen, Eddie can only hope his audience follows him into his oncoming dream.

-----

Hanging from the wall of Eddie’s childhood bedroom are ribbons in every colour— reds and blues and yellows and greens, some pinks, some multi-coloured, with gold trim or silver trim or trim that just plain glitters. There are trophies, too, crowding the top of the dresser and the desk and the shelf, glinting in the sunlight that comes in through the window on bright summer mornings. Some are silver, some are bronze, some of them participation awards, but most of them—almost all of them—are for the very best of the best; first place; first prize.

They aren’t for baseball, as one might suspect. Or football or soccer or even the chess club or mathletes. They’re for ballroom dancing—years of it. For gelled hair and twinkling button-downs and vaseline on his teeth. Trophies, ribbons, medals for his elongated spine and his broad chest and his proud chin; for the sparkle in his eyes, the round balls of his smiling cheeks. Your form, they used to tell him, it’s perfect, just perfect. The mastered craft of stacking his bones into all the right poses and finding the light. An exhibition. A performance. Eddie would carry his shoulders high and turn left and right and left again, present his partner, support the lifts. Love me, he would beam at the judges. See me, the shining white of his teeth, the point of his toe and flex of his wrist, love me. And they would; they did. Hence the ribbons and medals and trophies in abundance.

Eddie has always found life to be a matter of performance. A character built from scratch; you construct your expressions and your mannerisms and the way the world will see you and you play that part until you’re alone again. To be is to find the light, to learn your best angles, the better smile or laugh or partner. What shirt to put on. What image to project. What version of yourself different audiences want you to be.

He stopped dancing competitively years and years ago. But it’s all much of the same— the inherent showmanship of life. He does kinda miss getting trophies for it, though.

-----

“I really wish you’d asked me sooner,” Eddie says as he stalks down the hall, the rhythmic thump of his son’s crutches audible behind him. Walking through his bedroom door and stepping aside to let Chris in past him, he says, “should be hanging in the closet,” with a jerk of his chin.

Eddie checks his watch. Then he sighs. The game starts in about an hour, which wouldn’t be a big deal if they didn’t have downtown LA traffic between them and the arena, but just as they were shoving their shoes on to hurry out the door, Chris suddenly remembered that he wanted to borrow one of Eddie’s jerseys.

As Christopher sifts through the shirts hanging in Eddie’s closet, Eddie risks a glance over his shoulder. There, through the window, his neighbour stands out on the balcony. He isn’t alone; he is joined by a woman with shiny dark hair, eyes that rest in a smiling curve. Eddie has seen her visiting on a handful of occasions. She’s usually with another man, small of stature with wild, spiky hair, but he’s not here today. It’s just the two of them out on his cramped little smoker's balcony on this beautiful sunny evening, an animated conversation, and—without fail—a big, broad grin all over his face.

Smiles. It’s really no wonder Eddie’s brain has landed on that moniker for him. He’s always fucking smiling at Eddie.

The girl he’s with turns to look over her shoulder, following the direction of his gaze. Eddie’s heart lurches into his throat, caught, met with not one pair of eyes but two.

With an, “aha!” from Chris and a flash of flying purple, Eddie is startled back into his body, his bedroom. Chris comes to a stop a few steps in front of him. “Found it.”

Eddie smiles, pushes a hearty puff of air through his nose. “It’ll probably be a bit big on you so you should just—” he stops in his tracks, reaching out to help Chris pull the jersey over his head, layering it over his hoodie. “Do exactly that.”

“Duh,” Chris says, then begins his ascent down the hall. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.”

One more look before he goes— Eddie risks a glance over his shoulder to find Smiles out there alone. The sliding glass door to his balcony sits open but he loiters with his elbows on the railing, waiting. Eddie cocks his head at him, as if to ask, what?

With a jerky nod, Smiles gestures with a pointed finger between Eddie and the door Christopher just left through, an inquisitive lift in his brow. That your kid? Eddie turns briefly to look at his son’s retreating back and then turns back around to face him. The sunlight is bright and forgiving, in wind-tossed dirty-blonde curls and where his cheeks dig into dimples, shining in his eager and expectant eyes. Eddie answers him by way of a small smile, a quick nod.

With a proud, ecstatic grin, his neighbour shoots him an enthusiastic nod and a thumbs up. Eddie just laughs and shakes his head. And then returns his thumbs up.

There are wings aflutter in Eddie’s belly. There is a gentle hum in his veins. It’s overwhelming in its pleasantness, a light summer breeze compared to the heady night-lit smog that tends to saturate their interactions no matter the time of day. He has to clear his throat and shake it out and tamp down the smile that swells his cheeks.

He finally turns to make his leave, calling out to Chris, “and whose fault is that?”

-----

On a night where Eddie tosses restlessly about his bed in lieu of catching sleep, Smiles brings home a girl.

It’s late. So late. Eddie has been obsessively groaning at the numbers on his clock for hours. The sky is dark and moonless, a humming teal near the horizon from the pollution of winding city lights; the sudden beam of gold shining in through the window draws Eddie’s eye like a moth to a flame.

He lies on his back with his head tossed listlessly to the side, watching. He watches as his neighbour follows a pretty girl into his living area, takes her jacket from her, guides her politely to the couch. The light is coming in from his kitchen area, past the brick column; it is warm and softly reaching, their faces mostly in shadow but fuzzily lined with honey. She has hair that spills like silk over her shoulders and down her back—her back that faces Eddie where she sits on the couch. Smiles sits next to her, facing her, thus facing Eddie in turn. It sends a gust of air rushing down Eddie’s esophagus, ballooning his ribs.

It’s too dark in his room—he knows he can’t see him. Still, his eyes cut past her slender shoulder as if they seek him out regardless.

A long, shaking exhale. Go to sleep, Eddie tries to tell himself, turning his face away and forcing his eyes shut. Go to sleep. As if the tug of curiosity isn’t strung to all his senses. As if the hiss of jealousy doesn’t skirt across his pebbling skin. One eye squeezes open and soon the other follows.

When Eddie turns his head, they’re kissing. Viscous and savoury, the curiosity and the jealousy and the intrigue and hunger course through him, pooling hot between his hips. He watches the hands that slide up the length of her spine, tangle in her hair. She’s pulled into his lap with a quick, insistent tug, and Eddie’s breath catches at the same time hers must. He watches her laugh. And then she dives down for a deeper kiss. And at some point, Eddie had sat up in bed and his feet had met the floor.

It startles him, as if waking from a trance. Tied up on strings, wired to a remote under some other entity’s thumb. The realization of what he’s doing—the privacy he’s invading—registers like a palm to his cheek, sharp and unmistakable; in the corner of his eye, fabric flies as limbs scramble to be nearer. He picks his feet up, rolls onto his side to face his back to them. He pulls his knees up and stares at the wall, the closet door. The rectangle of light coming in through the window.

He doesn’t know how long he lays there like that, squeezing his thighs and tightening his stomach, but it feels like an eternity; doing his best to ignore the thrumming weight between his legs and the pictures in his mind; them, on the couch; bare skin and tousled hair, the drag of plump pink lips across the cut of collarbones. He tries to ignore it but it’s all too insistent. The image of her on his lap, her head tossed back. The image of his big, wide back, where he hovers above her splayed out body. His hands, his teeth, his—

Eddie is hard. Covetous. He aches between his legs and gets no relief from the smothering grind of his palm. Those strings he’s tied up to, that remote to which he’s wired—there’s no chance in hell Eddie’s falling asleep any time soon.

Nothing could have prepared Eddie for the sight that awaits him as he flips onto his other side. He rolls, half expecting to find them on the couch or maybe migrated to the bedroom by now, or any of the images he’s spent however long trying to suppress. What he finds instead is a broad display of bare skin; her front pressed flush to the window, her breasts and palms and thighs squished flat against glass, a knee hiked up in the sturdy grip of the body behind her. Huge, towering, one hand slung under her leg and the other pressed to her lower stomach, he drives into her with great force but careful rhythm. His nose digs into the cascade of her hair. But his eyes. His eyes.

They are the string, the remote, the call. They reach across the street and into the dark of Eddie’s room and tug. And Eddie follows, helpless but to follow, drifting across the carpet with balloons beneath his feet until he comes to a stop before his window.

Eddie knows the exact moment he steps into the light. It’s the same moment his neighbour’s face pulls into a delighted, satisfied grin.

As if to greet him, Smiles drags his hand away from her navel and up to her hair, yanking her head back into the meat of his shoulder. It looks like it stings, just right, just enough. Smiles is still beaming at him, dragging his bared teeth over the delicate skin of her jaw and neck and cheek but his eyes affixed to Eddie’s. His cock looks huge where it thrusts in and out of her, his heavy swinging balls, his rippling thighs. Eddie has no oxygen getting to his brain, it all keeps collecting in a bubble in his throat.

The girl is gorgeous. Soft and supple and pink, trembling in his arms. Eddie pays her little mind. Instead, he watches the hulking form of the body that fucks her, his stick-and-peel eyes and his sharp, knowing grin. She shakes something violent but Eddie barely notices beyond the nip of envy— his eyes follow the contours of Smiles’ speaking mouth, the way his teeth and tongue and lips curl around every letter, the way they form the words:

Good girl.

He speaks it into her hair, but he’s looking at Eddie. He’s looking down at Eddie and Eddie looks back, his cock twitching against the restraint of his briefs, a groan stifled in his chest. His hand drops to squeeze against the lump in his pants and then he realizes what he’s doing—what he’s caught doing—and his hand flies up to float in panic near his chest. Smiles laughs at him, tucking his face into his partner’s hair. He shakes his head, shooting Eddie a cheeky look.

As if to prove a point, Eddie’s hand returns to his dick. Those grinning teeth pinch down on the plush of his bottom lip, a wordless sign of encouragement.

He can’t believe this is happening to him. He can’t believe he’s standing at his window rubbing his cock through his underwear as he watches two strangers fuck. It’s so, so shameful—so wrong—in a way that materializes as something luscious. Thick as molasses and sweet as honey. As sharp and violent as a hundred prodding pins.

It won’t take much to get him there. Eddie is alight at every inch like a livewire, his pulse racing in his ears and his nerves piqued. He grinds the heel of his palm into his cock and watches, stares, watches. Watches that mouth murmur nasty nothings into her hair. Watches his hand drift up her body, to her throat, her waist, her hip, all over again. Watches him fuck and fuck and fuck her until his rhythm starts to falter and his eyes go a little foggy. Watches as he pulls out and shoots his release all over the window, a total mess. Eddie’s eyes follow as it drips down the glass. It’s as if he can feel it, smooth and cool up against his tongue.

Eddie is close, so close, fucking his hips into the pressure of his grip, grinding into the fabric that still covers him. He watches the rise and fall of their heaving shoulders, the come that trails down the window pane, his soothing, attentive hands as he lowers her foot to the floor and steadies her by her waist. The kisses he presses to her shoulder, her neck. His eyes that seek out Eddie.

Her forehead is pressed to the glass as she catches her breath. A patch of fog blooms, shrinks, blooms with every exhale. At some point, she lifts her head, her eyes, and for the briefest of moments Eddie’s breath halts in his throat as he braces himself for exposure.

But then Smiles’ big hand cups her by the jaw and turns her face away. With a shudder and a moan, Eddie comes into his palm.

-----

There has, invariably and undeniably, been a shift. A truce of sorts—the no-man’s-land between two opposing panes of glass suddenly rich with vegetation. Life. Habitat. As though they’ve bared enough to bare it all, the playing field evened, unafraid and without remorse; they are free to acknowledge and interact with each other, seek each other, sit patiently and prettily and anticipate the other’s arrival.

Eddie has no idea what kind of schedule Smiles works. Sometimes, in the mornings, Eddie catches him coming through the door with heavy-dragging heels, tossing his keys aside and heading straight for the hall out of sight. Eddie has caught him leaving in the evenings and mornings and afternoons alike, a bag slung over his shoulder, cutting the lights and locking up behind him. There are chunks of time where the apartment remains unlit and empty. There are times where the light comes on in the middle of the goddamn night. Eddie leaves every morning at the same time and returns before dinner without fail; he can’t quite get the hang of his neighbour’s wonky and unpredictable schedule.

It makes it difficult, nurturing this newly forged landscape between them. Eddie can’t help but grieve every missed opportunity, every evening wasted sprawled across his bedding to no one’s awareness, every morning he wakes unseen; every time he peers across the way just to catch a glimpse of the backs of his shoulders as he slips out the door or down the hall.

Somewhere along the way, Eddie stopped checking. Stopped looking. No matter how much Eddie delights in those moments where they happen to catch each other, lock eyes and smile or briskly wave, he’s found it easier to maintain this newfound terrain by simply performing at all times. Regardless of how occupied the apartment is or isn’t.

Eddie performs: neatly arranged limbs as he reads—and forgets—a book; the carefully slow peel of his clothing each night; a swing in his hips when he walks; his proud chin, his elongated spine; a hand between his thighs, soft breaths that pitch his ribs, the squirm of limbs beneath or above blankets; in the lamplight before bed or the lingering fog upon waking. He performs. Sometimes Eddie knows he’s watching and sometimes he hopes he’s watching and sometimes he suspects it. Feels it and welcomes it.

It’s funny. It goes against everything Eddie knows about himself— his bad habit of hoarding secrets, his compulsion for privacy. He stands in his shower, watching the water roll down his body and drip from his hair, anticipating the invasion that awaits him (he knows that Smiles is home, had caught a glimpse of him near his kitchen on the way by). He wonders why that is— why he craves his prying eyes so viscerally, the warmth and satisfaction it brings despite the inherent humiliation of being perceived. Eddie stares down at his hands, the puddles in his palms and pruny wrinkles in his fingers; considers perhaps in his pursuit of privacy he’s become a bit too isolated. Maybe even lonely. It’s about time someone wormed their way in, even if from a distance. Or perhaps it was the distance that forged a way in at all.

Whatever. Eddie could have closed his blinds at any point and he very much did not. Or he did, once, but hated it, so take what you will from that.

It’s been days since Eddie has performed for a guaranteed audience. He’s a little tired of hoping for it, wondering about it, longing after it. He turns off the shower and towel-dries his hair and stomps all over the roiling excitement in his gut. That extra level of something—it makes him breathless and reactive and unaffected by gravity—that presents itself when he knows for certain his audience awaits. Rather than putting it on just in case.

With a deep, grounding breath, Eddie leaves his ensuite bathroom clothed in nothing but the steam that billows out with him.

Open chest, a swing in his hips; just a few steps between the door and the bed where Eddie plops himself down supine. He cocks a knee and tucks his foot under his leg, folds an arm behind his head, rests a hand on his stomach. When he turns his head, he’s met with the smile he’d been hoping for.

In fact, they smile at each other. Wide, grinning teeth to Eddie’s shy, closed-lipped pinch. They tilt heads and cock eyebrows, this silent language they’ve developed over time.

Hi, how are you—it’s been a while—so nice to see you again—look how incredibly naked you are.

Smiles is on his couch, lit up at all angles by various lamps and his television screen but mostly the pique of delighted interest. He shifts in his seat, turning to face Eddie completely, propping his elbow on the back of the couch and his head in his hand. Eddie laughs and rolls onto his side to mirror him, propping his own head up on his fist and folding his legs just right at that spot that adds an extra dip to his waist.

The reaction he earns is a hand scrubbed over his brow and the rise and fall of a sigh in his shoulders. It’s like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing, his pinking cheeks high with his ear-to-ear smile. He shakes his head, looks at Eddie as if he’s speaking to him, familiar and comfortable and all too endearing; an anticipating lift of one brow, a spinning wave of his wrist. Well? it’s as if he’s saying. By all means, continue.

Eddie laughs again, flushing pink with equal parts nerves and flattery. He rolls onto his back, pushing harsh breath through his teeth, taming the violent race of his heart; already so lit with arousal it overwhelms him.

That’s the thing about performing at all times, regardless of who watches: Eddie is on all the time. The arousal, the excitement, it hums beneath his skin in dormancy and rips through him like a forest ablaze at the most inconsequential strike of a match.

He’s getting hard, swelling at the base of his cock that rests in the dip of his pelvis. He closes his eyes, lets himself bathe in the light that sifts orangey through his eyelids, the weight of attentive eyes upon him. He is spotlit, centerstage and well-rehearsed; the slow drag of calloused palms all over his body, the arch in his throat as he digs his head back into his pillow, breaths so big and visible his audience could count each inhale, each exhale, and the pauses in between.

Eddie intends to make this good. Put on a real show for him. Spent extra long in the shower working up the courage for this—his wandering imagination and bank of vivid memories on loop.

It’s the same thing Eddie’s used to get himself off for weeks now; bodies pressed to glass and eyes like diamonds, slicing their way through. He remembers each detail so intricately— the way the light hugged the muscles in his arms, his huge cock in her wet cunt so vulgar from his perspective, across the street and a floor below. The way her skin dimpled under his touch. The way Eddie’s brain kept repeating, that should be me, that should be me, and the way it still does that, even now, even when Eddie’s imagination has done all the work to replace her, to satisfy that nagging mantra. That should be me, that should be me.

Eddie is so hard, but he has yet to touch himself. Not where it matters, at least— he’s been lying here with his eyes closed and feeling himself up for god knows how long. It’s partially to do with all the wandering his mind is doing but it’s mostly just to ground him. Remind himself of his physicality and his location and his surroundings. The blanket beneath him is cool from the kiss of conditioned air, his palms map out the shape of his form and spread goosebumps over his flesh like butter. A hand along the trail of hair on his lower belly, a hand coursing up his soft inner thigh. He hopes that Smiles watches them, his hands, and hopes it gives him envy; that he stares into the miniscule gap between palm and stomach or palm and thigh and thinks, like a mantra, that should be me, that should be me. A laugh sprouts behind Eddie’s sternum. He can’t help but agree.

When he finally wraps a fist around his cock, it’s electric. He grinds his teeth together until they squeak and pushes out a grunt, his hips rolling up into the friction instinctively. A long, shaky sigh, his free hand flying up to grasp the pillow under his head. Eddie has to wrestle with it, the instinct to rein it in, to suppress and smother his pleasure; he wants to let himself feel it. He wants to savour it. But most of all, he wants to share it.

After all, if there’s one thing Eddie’s learned from years under the spotlight, it’s that the only way to show it off is to play it up.

Eddie jerks himself in quick, undulating circles. His chest hitches over and over with the moans he silences in his throat—Chris is merely a room over, and this is about visual spectacle alone—as he plants his feet into the mattress for better leverage, thrusting into the circle of his fist in practiced, rolling waves. He licks his lips. He rolls his face to the side, his eyelids fluttered closed and his brows pinched sweetly together.

As he rolls onto his side enough to reach into his bedside drawer, Eddie catches movement from the corner of his eye— Smiles sweeps across his living room, his wide back disappearing into his kitchen. “Hmpf,” Eddie huffs, an elbow squished awkwardly under his side and his fist around his throbbing dick.

He uses his free arm to dig through the drawer and retrieve the bottle of lube that remains mostly forgotten at the very back corner. Just as he clicks the cap open and rolls onto his back, Smiles returns from the kitchen with a beer in hand. Eddie’s eyes track him from brick column to the arm of the couch, against which he leans his hips and stands before his window. He twists the cap off—it’s as if Eddie can hear the hiss of carbonation—and takes a long, superfluous drink of it.

Giddiness presents itself, a bubble about to burst, an explosion of thrill in his gut. He upends his own bottle, pouring slick onto the flushed head of his cock until it trails down the shaft and over his knuckles all goopy and gratuitous, then tosses it aside. It makes an awful wet noise as Eddie spreads it over himself, too much of it, soaking the coily hair at the base of his cock and glinting in the lamplight. He steals glances at his audience—his scene partner, in a sense—leaning back against his couch with his arms crossed over his chest and enthralment saturating his face. It’s so casual, so easy, the way he stands and watches on while Eddie fucks his fist and strips himself of armour and cracks his ribs wide open.

It’s enough to crawl down his spine in a delicious sort of agony. It’s that fear again, the one Eddie felt the first night he got himself off—tipsy and bold—as someone’s viewing pleasure, and he sees it now for what it is. It’s stagefright. Adrenaline pumping, flame igniting, bone rattling stagefright.

A groan creeps past his clenched teeth. His lower belly thrashes and swirls with heat and lust and butterfly wings. Eddie has a reason for the excessive amount of lube beyond the visual reach; he just needs conquer this stagefright first.

Or maybe conquer isn’t the right word. He never did get over it in all his years as a performer. It’s more a matter of processing it, reassessing it, until it becomes fuel in the combustion engine of Eddie’s shapeshifting ego.

Eddie rolls onto all fours and sinks into the stack of his bones, his chest lowering to the mattress. He turns his head to press his cheek to his pillow and snorts at what he sees: Smiles’ beer suspended in the air halfway to his mouth, wide-eyed and jaw agape. Eddie grins and hopes he sees it, his sticky-slick hand giving himself one firm pump before drifting further between his legs. He digs his fingers into the squidgy tissue behind his balls. He spreads the lube around his pucker in small, anticipatory circles.

It’s a slow, tantalizing process; the pad of his finger just barely dipping in before retreating, and then again, and again, until he steels himself and sinks down to the knuckle. Eddie doesn’t allow himself this often— it’s more work than necessary for middling results, his fingers alone never quite enough stimulation. Still, this once, he has to bite down a violent moan. The ignition of performance turns everything up to a thousand—Eddie’s swimmy lust-drunk mind and the heat in his blood and especially the squelchy thrusts of his exploratory finger. His hips wiggle and roll and his chest heaves against the bedding. He slides his finger out, scrubbing a hand all over himself to collect more sticky lube and returns this time with two. His cock twitches and drools. His mouth, too, flapping around harried breath and pouring spit into the pillowcase.

It’s difficult to parse the difference between what’s organic and what’s show; he gets lost in the performance of it, the overdramatic spiral of his hips and batting lashes, until the pleasure he feels becomes intense enough to meet it. He fucks himself with two fingers, unpracticed and uncoordinated, and it sets his nerves on fire.

Through blurry lashes, Eddie checks in on his audience. Smiles is rapturous, all-observing. Almost intimidating in his intensity. His cock is hard—Eddie can see the lump of his bulge pushing shadows and creases in his sweats—and it sends a flood of saliva to the pockets of Eddie’s mouth. He moans softly into his soaked pillow, curls his fingers, longs so desperately for him to fucking whip it out, god. Eddie’s sanity is unravelling. He can feel the thread unspooling in his grip.

The position he’s in has his back and shoulders screaming. It’s also making it a little difficult to get any real leverage. So he flips onto his back, diagonal across his bed to face the window head-on, his legs spread wide, shoves a couple pillows under his shoulders. Shaking the fluffy-clean hair from his eyes and closing his fist around his slimy cock, he sends Smiles a pointed look. A silent invitation, a sort of call to arms. He earns an upturned expression of intrigue that taunts him right back, a big hand adjusting that lump in his sweatpants. It makes Eddie grin, breathless and pointy, an even further prod. He slides his fingers back into the heat of his own body, squeezes on the upstroke with his other hand, rolls his head back on the ball of his spine until it swings back around to face his captive audience. C’mon. He stares. C’mon.

There’s a flash of pink as Smiles wets his lips. Then he brings his beer to his mouth and throws his head back, his throat bobbing as he downs the rest. His scruff stipples in the low light. Eddie curses the barrier of distance between them, wants nothing more than to feel the stubble under his tongue and lips and teeth, to taste flesh and spit, warmth and grit and give. Not the cold, hard, unfeeling glass that currently stands in his way.

Eddie fights another moan. He curls his fingers and pops all his fuses, his breath wheedling out of his chest as a limp, broken thing. Smiles finishes his beer and puts the bottle somewhere Eddie doesn’t care to notice and then he’s looking at Eddie as if his eyes are lunging for him. He shoves a hand below his waistband. Eddie’s grin pulls tauter, digging his tongue into the tip of his canine, and curls his fingers once more. Smiles gives himself a few long, thorough strokes, just movement under grey cotton, before he’s shoving the waistband down past his hips and freeing his flushed-red length.

“Yes,” Eddie hisses, accomplished. He picks up the pace of his thrusting fingers, his pumping grip, closes his eyes and allows his head to fall back with a great big sigh.

It becomes something of a competition. It’s all a breathless, turbulent rush to the end, the wet noises from the space between Eddie’s thighs and the ebb and flow of air in his lungs, his eyes caught by his onlooker. His onlooker, with his big hand rapidly jerking his hefty cock, the pinch in his brow, the intensity of his gaze. Eddie, briefly, forgets to perform, so lost to the pleasure tearing through him, the insistent press of his fingers and his slick-warm palm. But then he comes back to himself, remembers to play it up, arching his ribs off the bed and circling his hips and fluttering his eyes closed. A moan forms itself—as if cued by muscle memory—and stops to rest on Eddie’s tongue. He sets it free slowly, gently, the sound dripping past his parted lips soft and low, and can feel the stutter in his breastbone as he does so.

He wonders what he looks like. He wonders what Smiles sees. His limbs, his flesh, his form all saturated in the rosy flush of ecstasy, the tension in his muscles, the shimmer of spit on his bitten lips. He wonders, he wonders, and feels, feels, feels. Is he imagining himself in place of Eddie’s hands? Is he picturing Eddie in other places, other poses— on all fours or in his lap or with his mouth full? Or is what he sees all he needs? Is it enough just to watch him in the throes of lust and hunger? Eddie squeezes his fist and curls his fingers and stares right back at him, imagines the taste of the drop of precome that glints pearlescent in the atmospheric light; imagines maybe a thousand things but also merely watches, all at once, an assimilation of fantasy and observation.

Eddie’s head teeters back on his nape, a sigh that quakes right through him. He feels saturated in it, coated by it—observation, fantasy—dipped in lacquer and framed with gold. A display, an exhibition and a dream in tandem, admired and coveted and eternal.

He sees the peak approach before the plummet that follows. When he spills he does so wanton and showy, his jaw hung wide and contortion in his spine. He shoots all over his stomach and up to his sternum, bright-hot pleasure ripping through muscle and bone to collect in a puddle on his tongue. And he grieves it when it’s over, even in the fuzzy blanket of afterglow and with the buzzing still pungent in his mouth; it dissolves, unfrozen, without frame and finite.

Over his heaving pink body, through one window and into the next, Eddie watches Smiles come. His shoulders shake and his mouth moves around what looks like, oh, shit, and then he’s overflowing the cup of his palm with a shudder. Eddie’s tongue darts out instinctually.

For a long moment, it’s still. Silent save for Eddie’s ragged breaths. He and Smiles look at each other, panting, glowing, until a look of—recognition? realization?—lights up Smiles’ face. He holds up an index finger with his clean hand, tucking himself back into his pants and scurrying off toward his kitchen.

Eddie huffs a somewhat-laugh. Takes the opportunity to pluck a couple tissues from his nightstand and wipe himself down. His pulse races and his lungs are near bursting and whatever shame or embarrassment he’s supposed to feel must have been smothered under the all-encompassing palms of gratification, because he can’t seem to find it. He’s been power washed with bliss.

When Smiles returns to his window he’s holding something— Eddie squints as he sits himself up criss-cross on the bed until he can make out what it is: a whiteboard, not very big, maybe one that hangs from the fridge for, say, grocery or to-do lists. He scrubs it clean with the side of his hand and then sticks out his tongue as he writes. He turns it around. Eddie has to squint again.

OUT OF TOWN NEXT WEEK

Eddie’s expression screws up, his head tilted to the side and a curious smile sitting crooked on his lips. Before he can think of a way to respond, Smiles’ expression is dropping into an o, turning the board around to wipe it clean and write something anew.

PLS DON’T ROB ME, it says, with a little frowny face to boot.

With a short belly laugh, Eddie climbs out of his bed and pads over to his dresser. He slips on a pair of boxers and then lingers by his window. He swings his arms out with a shake of his head, wordlessly asking, why are you telling me this?

A beat passes where Smiles just stares at him, seemingly contemplating his next move. Then he writes out a new message, prefaced by the mischievous pinch of his mouth.

It’s long, the letters small and crammed together. Eddie narrows his eyes and leans so far forward his breath fogs up the glass.

DON’T DO ANYTHING WHERE I CAN’T SEE

Eddie snorts out a laugh, shaking his head despite the playful grin on his face. The heat in his cheeks. He shrugs, acquiesces with a casual nod and a roll of his eyes. And Smiles, so aptly nicknamed, illuminates with vindication.

Another roll of his eyes but his stomach aflutter— Eddie’s honestly glad he told him. He drags his fingers over cool cotton sheets as he climbs back into bed, drowsy and soft and contemplative. Hell, he considers, sprawling on his side and meeting his neighbour’s watchful eye, maybe there’s some way he could ask for his schedule...

-----

If Christopher notices how little time Eddie spends in his room the following week, he doesn’t mention it. Thank god, he doesn’t mention it.

But Eddie notices. Eddie is well aware. He’s never seen so much of the view from his living room window; a wall of glass, glinting in the sunlight or blackened in the evening; neatly arranged rows and columns of window, balcony, window, balcony; closed blinds or odd angles—ceilings, floorboards, blank white walls—or the vacuous hole of infinite reflection.

Eddie’s never seen so much of it, the lifeless view from his living room window. The conclusion he’s left with is simple: there are certainly better windows to look out of— off the top of his head he can think of at least one.

-----

The day that Smiles returns from wherever he had gone is one of those vivid summer days, with a yellow sun that dims into coral as the evening approaches and clouds of whipped meringue drifting smoothly overhead. Eddie is standing at the foot of his bed folding a pile of clean laundry, humming a tune under his breath. His newly developed reflex—something like a sixth sense—switches on the moment Smiles twists the lock on his door; Eddie whips his head around and there he is, closing the door clumsily behind him with all the bags he’s struggling to handle. His lock throws and the first thing he does is turn around and seek Eddie out, his face open and eager and a thousand watts brighter than the sinking coral sun.

They greet each other with upturned lips and bright eyes. Smiles drops his bags where he stands and then disappears into his kitchen. Eddie dips his chin into his chest and attempts to bite down the giddiness in his expression, feeling like a kid with a schoolyard crush, so embarrassingly excited to see what is essentially a stranger. He huffs in an effort to expel all the wings, folds up the shirt in his hands and drops it in its pile. As he wanders over to his window Smiles emerges from his kitchen, writing on his whiteboard as he strides over to meet him.

Eddie tries to make sense of the message, a jumble of letters and numbers presented to him with a visage of earnest outreach and through the overlay of reflected sunset. A fuzzy screen of peachy clouds and glinting light and there, in the middle, his towering form and laserbeam eyes. And a random bunch of numbers.

“Oh,” Eddie says, as the message decodes. It’s an invitation; a unit number and a buzzer code. It may as well read, come over.

Without so much as a glance at the waiting pile of laundry, Eddie spins on his heel and heads for the door. He can’t see it, but he can imagine it—the triumph on Smiles’ face—and it makes his chest boil over, his head spinning right off his neck.

Eddie pops said head into his son’s room. “I’m going out,” he says, barely giving him enough time to slide his headphones off to hear him. “I’ll be back later.”

“Out?” Chris asks, quizzical. “Like, with friends?”

Eddie closes the door in lieu of a response. So he’s eager, antsy after a week of tiresome nothing, sue him. He got a little too used to having company while he sat all alone in his room. This past week has felt especially lonely.

He makes short work of the trip through his building, out the door and across the street. He barely looks both ways. In the vestibule of the neighbouring building he punches in the buzzer code, and a name pops up on the display: Buckley, E. Eddie stares at it a moment, his brow scrunching together, like his brain can’t quite comprehend that his name would be anything other than Smiles. But then the door clunks and squeals a horrible buzz as it unlocks, welcoming Eddie in.

The elevator ride up to the fourteenth floor is spent with tight fists around incorporeal reins; Eddie’s efforts to temper his excitement sound like harsh, repetitive exhales and a rapidly tapping foot. Be cool, be cool, be cool, as he treads down the hall. Be cool, be cool, be cool, as he finds the unit door and knocks.

It’s hardly a breath before the door swings open and there he is, as tall and curly and smiley as expected. Taller, curlier, smilier, even. His eyes gleam as though presented with head-on starlight.

“Hi.”

Eddie pinches his lips between his teeth, sighing softly through his nose. “Hi,” he echoes.

“Come on in,” Smiles says, stepping aside and swooping an arm out. And Eddie does, drifting into the apartment on trepid feet, his eyes swivelling this way and that as he takes it all in from the other side.

It’s a little bizarre, like walking onto a set dressing before the matinee, the curtains down and the lights dimmed but everything in its rightful place. The records on the wall, the brick column, the couch. The window. All of the things Eddie has seen from afar countless times and the things he never has— the wall to the left (or right, depending on one’s perspective) of the window with its mounted TV and shelves of books and DVDs, the pocket of kitchen past the column, the corridor to Eddie’s left. At the end of the hall a door sits open, revealing a bed and a dresser and all his yet-to-be-unpacked bags.

“So,” says his host, bright and warm like the patch of sunlight on hardwood floor. He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks onto his toes, taking up so little space despite the impressive size of him—no more than a couple inches taller than Eddie but noticeably wider; stocky, squared-off muscle where Eddie tends to bend and curve—and says through that boyish grin, “can I, uh, get you anything?” He shoves a thumb over his shoulder. “I got some Pils in the fridge.”

A small nod. “Sure,” Eddie says. “Sounds great, thanks.”

If even possible, his smile glows brighter. “You got it. Coming right up, uh….”

“Eddie,” he supplies, unable to tamp down the shy smile that tugs on his mouth.

“Eddie,” Smiles nods, his cheeks high and pink and a shimmer within the frame of his lashes. “Eddie,” he says again, “I’m Buck.”

“Buck, huh?” he says, taking a few gradual steps in as he trails distantly behind Smiles—or Buck, he supposes—as he heads into his kitchen. He leans a shoulder against the column. “Is that on your birth certificate and everything?”

Buck laughs, ducking into his fridge and returning with two sweaty beers. “I mean, technically, my name’s Evan,” he says, the fridge door closing with a thud. He uses one bottle to pop the cap on the other and offers it to Eddie. “But my friends call me Buck.”

The beer is cold and drenched with condensation as Eddie takes it in his hand. “Alright,” he says, “Buck it is.” He nods thoughtfully, murmurs, “Buck,” to himself like he’s reciting a phone number he needs to call back.

There’s a hiss as Buck pops his own bottlecap, his gaze inquisitive, imploring. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Eddie says with a shake of his head, turning where he stands at the column to follow Buck as he departs the kitchen. He takes a sip of his beer, perhaps to soothe nerves or cool his throat or buy himself an inch of time. Likely all of the above. “Just— gotta get used to the new name, is all.”

“Oh?” Buck says, his face illuminated with mischievous curiosity as he settles his hips against the back of his couch, facing Eddie where he stands leaning back against the column. “Is there another name I should know about?”

Eddie feels the heat as it rises from his chest to his cheeks. The tips of his ears. “I mean…” he says, scratching his jaw. “What, you didn’t come up with something to call me?”

“Oh, I called you all kinds of things,” Buck admits with a tilt of his head. “Mostly, like, pronouns. You. Him. There you are, there he is.” He shrugs. “Or descriptors, like…hah—” he ducks his head instead of finishing his thought, smiling bashfully down at his feet. “DILF was added to the roster after finding out you have a whole teenage son, though—how old are you, anyway?”

“Ha,” Eddie laughs with a shake of his head. “I, uh. Had him when I was young.”

“Right, right,” Buck says with a nod. “So? Who am I?”

He has to fight back a groan, rolling his eyes a little in an effort to mask his embarrassment. “You’re— Smiles.”

Buck self-awaredly purses his lips together, but is unable to fully suppress the amusement that stretches wide across his face. “Smiles?” he warbles brightly.

Eddie rolls his eyes again. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not!” Buck says, displaying all his perfect teeth. “I’m not, I swear. I love it. It’s fitting.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What can I say?” he says with an easygoing shrug. “I’m a happy guy.”

“Huh,” Eddie agrees with an unimpressed lift of a brow. He takes another drink of his beer to disguise his bemused smile. Buck takes a drink of his, too.

Eddie’s eyes cut to the door at the end of the hall, the pile of overstuffed duffel bags and backpacks. He says, “I’m surprised you invited me over so soon.” Buck blinks at him, waiting for him to finish. And while Eddie is well accustomed to his ardent attention, it’s significantly more intimidating from this close. “You didn’t wanna settle in after your trip?”

“Nah,” he answers immediately, shrugging a shoulder and wagging his face. “No way. I spent the entire week thinking about when I’ll see you again, like…” he expels a great huff, scrubbing a hand through his curls. “Tell me if I’m coming on too strong, but— I couldn’t stop thinking about you, missing you, oddly enough, that… I don’t know, by the time the week had gone by I felt like seeing you from across the street just wouldn’t be enough. Had to get you over here.” He pauses, swishing his beer in a circle and smiling wistfully, distractedly. “Thought about it the whole way home,” he says, and delightedly adds, “also didn’t expect it to be so easy.”

Eddie doesn’t respond right away. He finds himself unable to, his throat contracted with furor, his lungs glaringly empty. The best he can do is nod his head in understanding.

Buck repeats, “tell me if I’m coming on too strong.”

“Okay,” Eddie answers, and then says nothing more.

Something in Buck’s expression shifts, the longer they stand here; a curious poke and prod softening into a guiding hand as he gains his footing and gauges his freedoms. Only a few feet stand between them, unobstructed and borderless, yet Buck looks at Eddie just as intently, just as studious and awe-struck as he does from afar. It slices through him—a violent, unrestrained thing—without the filter of glass between them. It fissures and intimidates, no matter how tenderly his gaze cradles him.

So Eddie pushes off cool brick to amble slowly across the living room, as if he could wriggle his way out of his observatory grasp. “It’s so weird…” he says, resting a hand on the back of the couch. Past his shoulder, he can see Buck’s face following his journey across hardwood and sunlight. “Seeing this stuff from up close.”

“Yeah,” Buck agrees, speaking to Eddie’s back as he wanders closer to the window. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re familiar.” Eddie hears movement behind him, glances over his shoulder to see Buck standing straight and sweeping his arms out. “Here you’ll see my living room,” he announces as though giving some grand tour. “My faux-leather couch—purchased on sale, no less—and this lovely rug from Target, of all places.”

“Oh, fancy,” Eddie grins.

Buck smiles at him, swinging his arms out to his right. “And here, by the balcony door, you’ll see my dining nook. No, I never eat at this table; the TV is over here.”

Eddie laughs, spinning on his feet to chart Buck’s course from his dining nook to the open area behind the couch, and then circles all the way back around to face the room-wide window. It’s warm here, where the setting sun breathes heat upon the pane. He looks out at the view from Buck’s apartment— the winding city below them, rooftops, traffic jams, streetlights that wake as the sun dips beyond the skyline; the building across the way and its corner-unit windows; Eddie’s bedroom, awash with roseate light, with his dresser by the window and his unmade bed and the mountain of unfolded laundry he so hastily abandoned.

“Ah,” Buck says, startling Eddie out of the tiny reverie he’d fallen into. His voice sounds near, inching into Eddie’s space. “Now that,” he says, reaching over Eddie’s shoulder to point with his beer-occupied hand. “That’s my favourite show.”

A crane of his neck and Eddie finds Buck there, crowding behind him, big and wide and somehow familiar. He smells like the recycled air of a car’s AC and like spicy, stale deodorant. His breath like beer. From this near and in this light, Eddie can see the hint of grey around his temples, almost indistinguishable from the taupe-y middle-shade of his hair. The kiss of strawberry birthmark over his brow. He side-steps, still incredibly close but no longer directly behind him, and Eddie brings his beer to his lips and takes a big, calming gulp of it, looking up at where Buck hovers above his left shoulder.

He clears his throat, wets his lips. “Favourite show, huh?” he says.

“Uh huh,” Buck nods, a cocksure curve sitting crooked on his lips. “The star isn’t there right now, though,” he says with a mock apologetic tone. “He’s trying this new, more personal… hmm… let’s say hands-on approach.”

Eddie’s eyebrows reach his hairline. “Oh, is he?”

“I mean,” he darts his tongue past grinning teeth, “I sure hope he is.”

God, Eddie’s never seen someone so… vivid. Bright and tangible, with floodlights for eyes and abundant life in every expression. It’s like his veins are an interwoven map of fuses, traversing currents of sparks in place of pumping blood. Eddie stares at him and he stares right back, buzzing electric, so sharp in his intensity that Eddie has to look away.

Instead he stares down at his unoccupied room, says, “tell me about it. Your— this show.”

“Ha— oh, man,” Buck says, a blur of movement in the corner of Eddie’s eye as he shifts his weight on his feet, takes an audible swig of his beer. “Where do I even begin?”

It’s a good question, Eddie concurs. He wouldn’t know where to begin either, describing it from his end; his performance, his intent, how or why it works, why he does it. Where does one begin? What better paints the picture—the room, the window, or the body?

“So there’s— there’s this guy,” Buck decides on the body, a knowing lilt in his tone as he forms his spiel. “Hottest guy you’ve ever seen.” Eddie snorts mid-sip, the puff of air from his nose chiming through the bottleneck. “I mean it. He’s tall, handsome, his cheeks are always rosy. Got these— these eyes like weighted blankets. And of course you can’t forget the super sexy moustache.”

Eddie’s grateful he has his back to him, his cheeks flaring with heat. “Uh huh,” he deadpans, despite the uproar of fluttering wings in his belly, the way his eyes drift off a little swimmy.

“He’s also got the best ass you’ve ever seen,” Buck continues. “Just— like, it’s a little ridiculous. His body in general, it’s insane.” He’s close again, right over Eddie’s shoulder; his voice low and near to Eddie’s ear, the heat from his body seeping in through Eddie’s clothes. He once again reaches over Eddie to point and Eddie’s eye follows, a vague circle drawn around his messy bed. “He’ll lay there, spread out with his phone or whatever, I don’t know. I never pay much attention to what he’s doing. Just him. It’s hard to look at much else when he’s there, you know, it’s so easy to just… I catch myself daydreaming like crazy, just staring at him.”

Daydreaming? he wants to ask. About what? His voice remains a captive ball in his throat, however, gazing down at the empty stage of his bedroom; like the more intense he stares the more likely he’ll be to conjure it, the projection of himself, sprawled across the bed as Buck describes; a delicate display of the lines of his body.

He tosses his head back, the beer foamy and sparkling as it descends his throat.

“He’ll come in through the door, there, and I’ll watch him. His waist, his ass, god—so I’m an ass guy, sue me. He’ll get changed in front of the window, act all coy about it.” The upturn of his mouth is audible, his words pulled taut at the edges. “It’s cute.”

A hand snakes around and startles Eddie—his heart rate flaring noisily in his ears—and gently plucks the near-empty beer from his grip. The heat against his back disappears, briefly, just long enough for Eddie to hear the clink of glass on hard surface before he’s returning, big and warm, his breath damp on Eddie’s neck. There’s a pause; a wink of a moment where Buck gives Eddie a chance to stop him, to close blinds and lock doors and put some distance between them. But Eddie had already agreed—if Buck was coming on too strong he’d say so, so Eddie says nothing. Eddie stops nothing. He simply leans back into the wall of Buck’s chest and waits.

A gratified puff of air to Eddie’s hairline. Then, “sometimes…” he rumbles, his voice low and distant in its quiet reverence. He drops a hand to Eddie’s hip, drawing a shattered breath from Eddie’s lungs. “Sometimes he’ll touch himself. Get himself off, all hard and pink and desperate. It’s fucking gorgeous.” Eddie wants to sigh, or moan, or scream or jump or whip around and kiss him. But he’s frozen, caught between Buck’s sturdy front and wandering hold, his fingers dipping under the hem of Eddie’s t-shirt to brush hotly against tender skin. “Sometimes he sees me,” he continues, his mouth hovering behind Eddie’s ear, “and pretends he doesn’t. I think he likes it, the idea of me creeping on him. Watching through the window like some perv who just can’t help it.”

Eddie sighs, a rushing gust of air catapulting through his open mouth. “He does,” he breathes, and lets his head fall back as Buck descends upon his pulsepoint.

“And I can’t,” Buck murmurs into Eddie’s flesh, his hand sliding up the front of his shirt all sweltry and callous. “I can’t help it. How could I?”

“Hahh, shit,” Eddie hisses, his neck grazed wet with spit and teeth. Buck drags the flat of his tongue up the track of tendon before his mouth closes around his earlobe. Eddie moans and Buck moans back. His knees shake and his stomach squirms, but Eddie manages to lift his arms enough to help Buck slide his shirt over his head and toss it aside.

It’s faint and hard to distinguish, but Eddie can see their reflection in the glass before him. The vague silhouette of their bodies combined, Buck looming behind him, a mass on his shoulder. The backs of Buck’s hands bright in the fleeting sun as they explore the ridges and curves of his stomach.

“It’s like he’s built to be looked at.” Buck’s lips drag over Eddie’s skin, forming every word, sinking teeth into muscle. A palm trailing up Eddie’s tummy and sternum and chest, a palm slinking down to cup Eddie’s cock through his pants; Eddie pushes air though his nose and catches a whimper behind his teeth. “Even now,” he adds, grinding the heel of his palm into Eddie’s stirring, sordid crotch, “behind a different window, in a different room. With a strange man.”

“Fuck.”

“You’re so eager to show off,” he says, addressing him directly, and Eddie’s palm slams into the glass in a fruitless effort to brace himself.

The third-person schtick is effectively dropped, Buck’s deft fingers making quick work of Eddie’s belt and button and fly. His mouth suctions to the peak of Eddie’s spine. “God, Eddie, you— I watch you fuck your fist, I watch you moan and sigh and I— fuck.” Their chests rumble simultaneously, drippy breaths through hungry mouths. His pathfinding palms dig beneath denim, peeling the fabric from Eddie’s flesh as he speaks into the knobs of his spine, the hollow behind his jaw. “I just have to have you, in any way. Wanna get you in my lap and on my cock, just— just within reach, at all. But then again I wanna keep you in that cage, that box, like a-a pretty pet for me to ogle at.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie hangs his head, his lashes heavy. “Please.”

“All for my viewing pleasure.” Buck’s mouth descends the ladder of his spine, sinking to his knees as he drags Eddie’s jeans to his ankles. He taps Eddie’s ankle bone twice, a signal for him to lift his foot, and helps him step out from his pantleg. He’s grateful for the support—Buck’s gentle hold around one ankle then the next—with his wobbly knees and crumbling disposition. Buck sighs something close to a growl, sealing his lips to the little mole on the back of Eddie’s thigh. “Ahh-and what a pleasure it is.”

It’s a wonder that Eddie’s still standing at all; pressed to glass and storeys high, he feels off-kilter and a breath away from plummet. He huffs, wrapping a hand around his dick, blinking slowly down at the vacant display of his room as Buck drones on and on about all the different places he’s dreamt of getting his mouth on. Eddie moans, enveloped in something syrupy and soft, Buck’s wandering tongue and teeth and hands, the flattery of his laudatory words. He wonders if anyone is watching; stares down into the space just past his bedroom window as if someone is—he is; a version of himself from all those nights ago, a moth to flame with all-absorbing eyes. And here, between twilight-kissed glass and Buck’s hot mouth, he fills the shape he had longed to replace. The voyeur and the exhibition at once.

Buck licks the crease where cheek meets thigh, hands firm on Eddie’s hips. “I’m so lucky,” he exults, “to get to worship this up close.”

A current of air and sound from Eddie’s mouth, his chin dropping to his chest. He startles with the reminder that Buck remains fully clothed. Vulnerability, humiliation— it nips at Eddie’s skin until inflammation; but the shape of him, knelt between Eddie’s spread legs, his nose digging into the seam of Eddie’s cheeks, so delicious, so gratifying, it soothes the sting like cooling balm.

When Buck presses the flat of his tongue to Eddie’s hole he topples, a house of cards caught in a breeze. His forehead thumps into the window and a reedy sound bursts from him. To think— that shield of glass had only been breached mere moments before this. Was it really so easy? Was the path to Eddie’s most intimate, most vulnerable places so quickly accessible once the armour had been shattered?

He has to squeeze his fist around the base of his cock. It throbs in complaint, flooding his lower belly with pressure—an expanding balloon of whistling steam. Wet sounds and fervent groans jump from Buck’s mouth to Eddie’s ringing ears, his hot hands squeezing Eddie’s hips and ass and thighs until the skin dimples and pulls, until he leaves little pink-and-white trails in his wake. His tongue, his lips, his breath—sodden and ravenous, inundating all of his buzzing nerve endings with heat. He eats Eddie’s ass like a man starved, a meal he’s suspired for ages. All Eddie can do is shake. And moan. And bare himself to puncture.

The city, winding below them. The silver-blue light of a departed sun. Stretched across the sprawling urban landscape is the murky, faint reflection of Eddie’s heaving body, the sheen of sweat above his navel and the leaking tip of his ruddy dick. He imagines every face in the city; imagines them all looking up. He moans a broken thing and grinds his hair into the glass, so overstuffed and plucked apart it’s frying up all his sensibilities.

“Buck—” he squeaks. “Buck, I’m…”

He’s interrupted by a carnivorous growl in Buck’s chest, a hand drifting up to meet his mouth between Eddie’s cheeks. “Oh, god,” Eddie creaks, and then Buck is breaching him with not only a finger, but also the wriggling muscle of his tongue.

Eddie’s hips fuck forward, his knees buckling under his weight. The glass is cold and hard and unforgiving against his sweltering cock, smearing trails of sticky precome as his hips twitch of their own accord. Buck hums behind him, steadying him with one hand firm on his hip, the other prodding inside him, wet, invasive. The pleasure throbs through him thickly, coarsely. It’s as if his cock expands in his grip.

No, no, no, it’s too soon, much too soon. Eddie intends to make this last. He also knows if he were to leave here having absorbed all the attention, all the ecstasy for himself, the dissonance would sour into a guilt that ruins everything. A guilt that sucks the fun out of this little dance they do.

His sweaty hand squeaks across the window as he swipes his arm back, his chest and cheek holding him up against the glass. He fists Buck’s hair and pulls but Buck fights back, committed to plucking Eddie apart piece lapping piece. Eddie huffs—it almost resembles a laugh—and paints clouds of fog before his mouth.

“Buck,” he says again, regaining his balance and twisting at the waist. He yanks Buck from his flesh like a clinging parasite, looking down past his contorted torso at Buck’s besotted face. The sight of him is a gut punch— his foggy eyes blown wide and hanging heavy, the dusting of red atop his cheeks, his mouth hung open around haggard breaths. His face glistens with shiny spit from his nose down to his chin. It’s the most incredible, most formidable thing Eddie thinks he’s ever seen.

So he folds in half and kisses him.

It’s clumsy, crumpling into a squat and spinning around to seal their mouths together in one swift and toppling motion. Buck gasps down Eddie’s exhale and meets him halfway, the crane of his neck and reach of his tongue. Eddie groans. The taste is awful and redolent, the salt of skin and sour of spit. Yet still, it’s perfect; hungry hands and nipping teeth. Warm, soft, warm, unlike anything Eddie could ever have received from a distance.

It feels like a reward. For what he isn’t sure. Perhaps his form, he ponders. Perhaps his presentation.

Eddie, pink and bare and essentially seated in Buck’s clothed lap, tears their mouths apart with great determination. Their breaths suffuse together in hot puffs between kiss-bruised mouths. The hand still woven into Buck’s soft curls tugs at his scalp, tilting his head way back to look at him. Buck pants, droopy eyes clung to Eddie’s lips before they journey up his face to meet his gaze like the sharp and sudden pull of a trigger.

“So?” Eddie says, every inch of him shaking with anticipation. “You gonna fuck me, or what?”

“Hah—” Buck heaves, his slack mouth tilting up at one corner. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck, get on the couch.”

He does, climbing up from the floor on wobbly Bambi-legs with encouragement from Buck’s hand patting him twice on the ass. He stumbles over to the couch as Buck straightens up behind him, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and scurries off down the hall.

With a breathless laugh, Eddie settles into his seat. The leather sticks to his damp, bare skin. He takes a moment to collect himself, gather up all he feels and reattach it to his bones; his throbbing dick and the fire in his belly; the static in his lungs. He turns, his bedroom dark and blue in the absence of sun, the city lights twinkling up at him as though in consolation for the starless sky.

It isn’t long before Buck returns with a bottle of lube and an ear-to-ear grin. Eddie grins right back. He plops himself down on the couch and immediately reaches for Eddie, who is already crawling across the creaky leather cushions in hopes of fusing together. He swings a leg over Buck’s hip and straddles his thighs, his hands immediately diving for the feverish, squishy skin beneath the hem of his shirt. He kisses Buck, open-mouthed and wet, fervent, and peels his shirt from his body inch by glorious inch.

They have to part long enough to sweep it over his head, a smacking sound as they crack the seal. Eddie spits under his breath some cocktail of expletives, his hands and gaze and imagination greedily tracing Buck’s thick, impressive shape. A hand dug in the soft muscle of his pec, a hand sliding up to the side of his strong neck. He moans at Eddie, ever so softly, an indication of contentment. His eyes won’t leave Eddie’s mouth. His hands are strong at his waist, one drifting back to dip tauntingly into Eddie’s hole.

It’s too dry, all of Buck’s drool since cooled and clung to flesh, but a noise shatters out of him just the same. Buck smiles at him, that stupid, perfect, life-affirming smile, and retrieves the bottle from the cushion beside them.

He uncaps it, wets his fingers. Even though Eddie watches it happen he still can’t help but hiss and tense up as Buck wastes no time sinking two fingers inside of him.

“Wow,” Buck says dumbly. He curls his fingers in slow circles, studying the pinch between Eddie’s brows, the breath that drips off his lips. “Man— I’ve thought about getting you up here, like, so many times.” A particularly soppy sound spikes in their ears on his next, exploratory thrust. It sends a sharp breath into Eddie’s gasping lungs. “God, those dreams don’t hold a candle to this.”

“Hm,” Eddie hums, a tiny, beholden smile balling his cheeks. “I thought about getting up here, too. Thought about being with you, right here, like this.”

“Damn,” Buck says. “Guess I coulda had you here sooner.”

An inquisitive curl of his fingers and the addition of a third, and Eddie is tossing his head back with a gut-punch noise. He laughs, bouncing on Buck’s lap and fist, and says, “But— but showing off for you is so much fun.”

“Ha— yeah,” Buck agrees, and Eddie needn’t peel his eyes open to know his grin has sharpened into something acute and self-satisfied. “Watching you is fun, too.” He spreads his fingers, stretching wide. Eddie can only grunt an unfinished huff in his sternum. “You know, my sister asked me the other day if I have any hobbies. Haha— how do I explain to her that I’m too busy lusting after my hot neighbour?”

“Tchh—” Eddie laughs, tilting his chin down to meet Buck’s eye. He bites his bottom lip and begins to fumble with Buck’s belt, says, “you could introduce me.” Buck slides his fingers out and yanks a gasp out of Eddie. “Ha— like, ‘hey, sis, remember that hobby you asked about?’”

Buck snorts a laugh and frees his cock from his fly, smearing his sticky fingers all over the daunting length. “Yeah, I could introduce you,” he agrees, a bashful filter on his smile. He stretches his chin out, pressing feather-light kisses to the underside of Eddie’s jaw as he lines himself up for entry; Eddie’s belly caves in with a phantom blow. “But like— not as a hobby. As… something else.”

Blinking stars up at the ceiling, Eddie tries to calm the cacophony of elated nerves that thunder within him. “Right,” he says, breathy and sweet. “You could.”

“Hmm,” Buck hums distractedly and with a gentle, guiding hand to Eddie’s waist, lowers him down onto his girth; slow, deliberate, until Eddie learns the feel of every last inch.

“Holy shit,” he exhales, his starry eyes rolling back in his skull. “Oh my god.”

A sound that Eddie can only describe as animalistic bleeds from Buck. It sounds like fucking torture. “Unhhh, you’re so—” he groans, dropping his forehead to Eddie’s collarbone and scrubbing his face side to side. “So warm.”

“Oh.” Eddie’s been ruptured, entered and invaded. Shattered glass, a machete to hermetic foliage, the path to Eddie’s core has been decisively forged. Every gap in him tenses like a gluttonous vise. He rocks back, forth, back again and moans in response to the grumble against his clavicle. He thinks of all the steps they skipped, exchanged for just one stride—far-reaching and hurried, one long step to cross a gap the span of a one-way street. “Oh,” he says again.

A rhythm presents itself, the rock of Eddie’s hips and responding thrusts from the body beneath him; Buck mouths breath and spit and boundless praises into the hot surface of Eddie’s flesh. Eddie’s hands on sturdy shoulders, one drifting up Buck’s fuzzy nape to weave into his tangle of curls. His head falls back into the cradle of it, looking mistily up at Eddie. “Fuck,” he says, awestruck through a dopey smile. He collapses back against the couch, pinning Eddie’s hand under his head, and lets his hands wander up the length of Eddie’s rolling torso. “Ha— look at this shit.”

“Ah—” Eddie squeaks, tensing his abs and rolling his hips with extra vigour. Buck’s gaze fogs up, dark, ravenous, dragging a course up Eddie’s form to land on the pink of his lips. Eddie licks them, just because.

“You’re such a shit,” Buck huffs with a shake of his head. He digs his heels into the ground and drives up with searing intent. “Like a-a cat showing its belly while everyone coos about how cute they are.”

Hard enough to pinch pink into white, Eddie bites down on his bottom lip. “Ha— Mm-hmm,” he hums, and rolls his head back to hide the self-satisfaction he knows saturates his features.

Buck thrusts again, hard and insistent, and again and again and again; determined to shake Eddie of his shell. The glitter and vaseline and gel. His hands wrench around the small of Eddie’s waist and yank him down to meet every thrust—it’s just the violent slap of skin and the breath punching up from Eddie’s gut, creaky leather, ovation.

It works. Eddie unspools; his form and presentation surrender to the outpouring of ecstasy, to Buck’s relentless pace and force and will. He reclines there, plowing up into Eddie’s pink and supple body and watches with intemperate eyes.

Eddie huffs and moans and shakes. He can’t do anything but take it, his quivering thighs hardly keeping him upright in Buck’s lap and his cock hard, neglected, slapping against squishy muscle. He leaks into Buck’s navel. “Touch me,” he asks on a wistful breath, but Buck’s hands don’t budge from his waist.

So he drops a hand from Buck’s shoulder to wrap around his cock. He whimpers, a puddle under his tongue and a ragdoll in Buck’s strong arms.

“Damn,” Buck breathes. He shakes his head in reverence. “Haven’t seen you like this sin-since the first time you saw me.”

Eddie’s forehead scrunches, his fist stripping along his length all slick and hurried. “Huh?”

“Just like— like loose,” he says, as if it makes any sense. “Just you.” He folds forward, reattaching his teeth to Eddie’s throat. The words embalm Eddie, a hot towel to torn muscle. Buck groans, “unh, it’s perfect. Just perfect.”

A thousand rubber bands twist and tangle and expand in Eddie’s gut. It tugs, tugs, tugs, until it snaps at once, relief that rushes from him as frothing whitewater rapids. He groans and shakes and spills all over Buck’s belly, his own belly, his wrist and fist and cock squished tenaciously between them.

“Uuunnghhh,” Buck fucking roars, his pace faltering and eyes drifting as Eddie clamps around him tight and hungry. And he comes—hot, viscous and glutted—winding his arms around Eddie’s back and hugging him tight to his body as he spills, spills, spills inside him. Their bodies stick together with come and sweat and spit. Clinging as their binding limbs relax and they allow a breath between them, it’s as if their skin puts up a fight.

They look at each other, catching their breaths and slowing their hearts. Buck cups a hand around Eddie’s jaw and Eddie passively sits there as he turns his face left and right, up and down. Like he just has to get a good look at him. There isn’t much light in here, the sky sinking into navy-teal and the apartment left unlit. Still, he studies, and Eddie’s spine crawls with lurid ingratiation, blinking heavy lashes down at him.

“You are,” he says, low and matter-of-fact, “so much better in person than I ever could’ve hoped.”

“Hah,” Eddie laughs, a little shy, his expression scrunching up as Buck gracelessly pulls out. “Think you could get used to it?”

“Please,” Buck huffs, incredulous. “I already have.”

-----

Now that Eddie has his hands on Buck’s schedule (A firefighter? Eddie had asked with an unimpressed lift in his brow, you’re seriously a fucking firefighter? As if it were possible for Buck to get any hotter than he already is), his body works in alternating shifts of pageantry and reality. He knows when to play it up and when he has time to tone it down, whether to be on or off or sometimes standby. It’s a far more sustainable care routine, nurturing this landscape between two opposing panes of glass.

The constant text threads and weeknight dinners, introductions to older sisters or teenage sons, plans next weekend and the next and the next—they certainly help, too. Their contribution is something that can by no means be dismissed.

It’s a sunny Tuesday morning, the tenth of the month; meaning the apartment across the way is occupied and Eddie’s audience awaits. He brushes his teeth and trims his moustache and wraps his towel around his waist. And when he leaves his ensuite bathroom, there he finds him, standing on his balcony with his steaming mug and his ever present smile.

It’s easy to fall into old habits, from afar and confronted with that grin—Eddie’s mind still calls him Smiles more often than he’ll admit.

Eddie meets his eye, cocks his head in silent greeting, and laughs as Buck’s finger lifts from the rim of his mug to make a twirling motion. He demands, like an adoring call from the crowd, give us a spin.

So Eddie spins.