Work Text:
I saw him for the first time on what I believe was a Monday.
There had been very little to see in this corner of the neighborhood of late. The house had been occupied for some time, to my knowledge, before the man who lived there allowed it to fall into some disrepair. I’d witnessed the event firsthand when the landlord arrived in the summer: from just around the corner, I had watched as he stormed up to the door. Later, I heard that it was to post an eviction notice.
After that, things grew quiet for some time.
There had been rumors— though I, myself, had been absent at the time— that someone had come in to tour the house. I didn’t ask too many questions. Before that Monday, I’d been disinterested. I had my sights set on plenty already, too much on my plate to concern myself with who lived in the house or didn’t.
Anyone would have been interested in him, though. And with eyes everywhere, how could I have missed him?
He came in early in the morning. Perhaps that was part of the reason that he looked the way he did— a combination of the glow of the morning sun on his face and the sleepwarmed quality to him, which conspired to attract my attention after all.
He was a singularly beautiful man, and when I saw him for the first time through the glass of the windows I noticed firstly the sheer size of him: that when he moved, he took up space, and this enamored me immediately, due to the contrast between us. Where I was wont to sneak about in shadows, the new tenant lived in the light.
It caught his hair in its grasp. I was delighted to find that it shined, like silk, beneath the sun. And when he turned his broad frame in a warm blue sweatshirt, I learned that his eyes were the same color. Funnily enough, I had not seen much of the ocean. I imagined that if I had, it would have the same effect: to captivate. I watched as he moved, animate, gesturing from one room to the next. For some time, he disappeared; when he came back into my view, there was a brunette with him, a woman with a softness that she carried. I strained to listen and heard his voice for the first time.
“I think K was for kitsch?” he said, like a question. I could see, through the slant of the blinds, that his face was scrunched into a sweet, puzzled expression that endeared me. “What?” he asked her, defensive. “I thought I’d be able to remember what was in the boxes.”
He moved more fully into the room, then. I had taken note of the new curtains on the windows; the blinds that partially shielded the house from view; the presence of cardboard boxes full of belongings and furniture in the rooms. All of it pleased me, because it meant that he was staying.
“I didn’t know it was going to take me four months to find a place and then another three to get the previous tenant to move out,” he continued.
The eviction notice that had gone largely unheeded. I hadn’t cared much for the previous tenant. He hadn’t intrigued me the way that the new one did, being neither beautiful nor captivating. It was true to me that we all had our preferences, and he was quickly becoming mine. I was glad that the other guy had been replaced, and quickly I was finding that watching him, or waiting for an opportunity to watch him, was taking up much of my time.
“Yeah, I think I would have walked away,” the woman agreed. I had missed her name.
The tenant looked out toward the window, and I caught a more clear view of his face as he nodded into the world beyond the glass. Where I was. “But how about that backyard?” he said, like it was the prize of the whole thing.
“The trees are nice,” the lady agreed.
I had always thought so, too. They were a perfect cover, for the tenant and for me. I listened to their bickering and I came to the conclusion that whomever the lady was to him, it was friendly. I relished this observation as they argued lightly and then disappeared, too deep into the house for me to see them from my vantage point.
When they had gone, I continued to dwell on him, and later that evening I watched as he moved through the house alone. It was easier to see him this way, as evening fell and the world within the windows was illuminated and lightened. Even when he was out of view, I could see his shadow against the walls and I found that I liked knowing he was inside.
I missed the events of the next few days. It was night, and I was elsewhere. I heard the sirens, but saw very little, and only later did I gather that the tenant had two guests, only one of them wanted. I learned that the previous tenant— the one I hadn’t taken an interest in— had never left. I felt strangely enraged by this and for some time I contemplated the worth of my actions— if, perhaps, I should back off.
But then I saw him again.
It was morning, a clear day.
He wandered out onto the patio of the house: the first time I had seen him quite this close or clearly, with no glass between us. I was sure he’d been outside before, because I had noticed changes to the space, but my timing had been off and I’d missed him. It would have been a lie to say that I wasn’t disappointed. He continued, even in my hesitance, to intrigue me.
On this particular morning, he held a broom in his hand. I watched as he dutifully swept the concrete with strong, muscular arms and long even strokes. I thought he might be humming to himself, but I caught only a note or two here or there and I wouldn’t have known the song anyway, but it was nice to think that he liked it. That he was comfortable there, in the house, even after the events around Halloween. It had been a busy time for me, though I was sorry to have missed it.
After he swept, he paused on the patio and tilted his head back. And this was when I heard his voice again.
“Oh, hey there, little guy,” he said. It was the gentlest I had heard his voice yet. He was looking up into the corner of the rafters, and his face softened entirely. Curious and strange, he tilted his head and squinted into the sun at the residual strings of webbing, his gaze following the strands all the way to their tethers against the wood.
A fragile thing, the spider’s web.
The tenant was a large, strong man. I had come to learn that he was a firefighter, which explained his erratic schedule well enough. I waited with bated breath to see what he would do and found that I liked the anticipation.
He located the center of the web, then. His eyes brightened with unexpected enthusiasm and I felt a little thrill at the sight, the surprise of it.
“You look comfy,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” He gestured with his pushbroom, its bristles more than enough to wipe out the web entirely. “I won’t hurt you,” he said.
And I think that was the moment that my fascination with the new tenant became something else entirely.
He was earnest, and I believed him. From then on, I loved him.
I began to collect little facts about the tenant. I learned that he liked to bake; though I had suspected this before, I began to catalogue the scents that floated delicately from the window of the kitchen and the dining room door: chocolate and cinnamon and lemon; occasionally something nutty; other, more savory things from time to time. I learned that he laughed with his whole body. I learned that he was helping a younger man train for something, both of them spreading out in the backyard near the trees.
I learned that he liked to keep the French doors between his dining room and his patio open wide to let the air in. This was particularly fascinating to me and I dwelled upon it for a long time. I wondered what kind of man he must be, to have had an intruder in his home merely weeks ago, and still leave the open doors unattended. I wondered, also, what it would be like to simply…walk inside the house. To be in his space, rather than outside of it. To be surrounded by the accoutrements of his life. After this had occurred to me, I thought of it almost all the time. I surprised even myself by how much I wanted it.
Most importantly of all, I learned that his name was Buck.
Knowing his name, I found, made me feel incrementally closer to him. I felt this way for some time, unthreatened and comfortable with my proximity and my daring hope that one day I might cross the threshold into the inviting dining room where I had often watched him eat.
That is, until one day, there was someone else outside on the patio.
This man looked as if he belonged here. Buck was nowhere to be seen, and yet he stepped outside with a kind of ownership, a comfort that made me feel irrational right away. Generally speaking, it was not my temperament. I was calm; I stayed hidden when necessary; I kept to myself by nature. But the sight of his sturdy shoulders and the ease with which he moved began to unsettle me as I watched.
The scene unfolded before me. There was a teenage boy with him, and an attractive woman whose glasses caught the light and refracted it. But the man— he soaked in the sun. He rearranged furniture as if it were his own. He smiled, easy. The boy, I realized, was his child. Something about this bothered me, too, though I couldn’t understand why. At least not then.
They danced. I watched him move his hips. I heard them laugh at everything he said. I watched the way he cared for them both— the way he touched them. I could see that they were enamored by him, in their own ways, but I was not.
I wondered where Buck was.
And eventually, I got my answer. Perhaps, in hindsight, this was the moment which changed everything and led to the rest. Perhaps if I could go back, it would have been better not to be there at all on that particular day.
He swept out onto the patio with his usual exuberant demeanor. Normally, he would cast a wide gaze over the whole backyard. I knew this because I found it endearing that he felt this need to protect the space, to keep watch over what was his.
It was because I knew this so well that I could not have missed what was different about this time. This time, he looked at the other man. I had not caught his name, but as soon as Buck looked at him, I was desperate to know it.
“Hey, look at you!” he said, bright, as he startled them into looking at him.
“Oh,” the other man said. “Hey, Buck.”
His face lit up. The boy turned to him and the woman laughed and Buck pulled all three of them into his orbit, as he had done to me. I watched it unfold and felt a deep, thrumming jealousy as I was faced with my reality.
He did not even know I was there. Not really. I was a concept to him at the most. He certainly would never look at me the way he was looking at him.
“We were just—” the other man was saying as I tuned back in, unable to stop myself.
“Dancing?” Buck suggested, smiling a kind of smile I had not yet seen on his face before.
“Samba,” the boy said, grinning as he looked between Buck and his father.
Buck grinned, too. He looked at the boy as if he loved him very much, and I became slowly and dreadfully aware of what a little slice of his life I had been privy to.
“Samba, huh?” he asked.
I could not see the other man’s face, but I knew that he was looking away, down at the concrete like it had become very interesting. Buck smiled— wider, brighter.
“He’s not bad,” the woman said, her voice lilting, teasing.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Buck laughed. He looked at ease. “Well, I’m back with stuff for lunch if you guys want to come in and eat?”
It occurred to me then that he had not been there at all. The whole time, while I might have been assuming he was just inside, just out of sight— this man had brought his son and their friend to Buck’s house without him. He had a key, I realized. And I felt a new flash of fury at the knowledge of it.
“As long as it’s not— you know, something with fish,” the other man said. The boy and the woman laughed, a joke I was not on the inside of.
“Eddie,” Buck groaned, tilting his head back and baring his neck, the freckle I had noticed weeks ago now.
Eddie. I turned the name over and over. I watched him as he touched Buck on the chest with the back of his hand, this light and tender movement that didn’t surprise any of them at all. Buck, least of all.
I watched as he hung back, the last to go inside. Unlike Buck, Eddie shut the doors to the patio behind him.
And I knew then that I hated him.
Days turned into weeks. I began, admittedly, to inch further from sanity. I was aware of this and I did nothing to stop it. I am not sure I could’ve had I wanted to, too consumed by my infatuation with Buck to consider it at all.
Once, when I knew that the house was empty because I had seen Buck leave in his truck earlier in the day and I had learned over time that when he left at this hour it was to go to work, I crept closer to the house. The patio doors were closed. All of the lights were off. Evening was approaching. I went near to the kitchen window and peered in between the blinds.
I wasn’t sure, to be exact, what it was that I was hoping to see. Possibly, and even probably, I just wanted to be closer to Buck’s life. To see more of it. I could have gotten inside, doors and windows not entirely an obstacle to someone with my skillset.
But I loved him, remember? I didn’t want to hurt him.
So I looked in through the glass, and catalogued the things I saw in the slivers of his life I could glean through the slats in the blinds on their strings. I saw the fruit bowl; the kiwis; the blender left to dry. I saw the countertops and the rag left behind as if he’d been wiping up but grew distracted halfway through. This was another little fact that I knew about Buck— his propensity for getting distracted. I had spent some time wondering if Eddie knew this; deciding that he did; and then wondering if he liked it, the way I did. Eventually, I spun this into a fantasy of a belief that it annoyed him, and I took comfort in it and felt wicked.
I kept looking for a while. And then I saw the pictures on the refrigerator, and I noticed one in particular that stood out from all the rest.
Buck, though younger. And the boy. I had since learned that his name was Christopher, and though he belonged to Eddie, I had seen him in the house without his father. I didn’t have it in me to hate him, but I watched Buck with him and knew that I was missing pieces of something. And here he was, much younger as well, just a little boy— in a picture on Buck’s refrigerator.
I stayed at the glass for a long time. Much longer than what was advisable. I couldn’t help it. I stared at the picture, at Buck and at Christopher, and I supposed that what I did in that moment was to mourn. I mourned a life that was far beyond my grasp; I mourned an existence that would never be mine, as a painfully shy creature; I mourned my own misfortune and wondered if I was merely a symbol of bad luck, doomed to exist outside of this bright life next to this man who exuded tenderness.
Eventually, I pried myself away from the window and left.
That could have been the end of it. Maybe it would have been, if not for the events of the following day.
In the morning, I had intended to try my best to stay away from Buck’s. I had hoped to refocus on some of the things that had lapsed in my own life since it became all about Buck. But then, I heard the sound of his voice.
“— really not that bad,” he was saying, from somewhere deep enough inside the house that I had to strain to listen. “Like I said.”
“Yeah, yeah,” came the reply. “Keep talking, Buckley. Somebody might believe you.”
I had come to know this voice. Its dry inflection; its gravel; its mocking disguised as softness. Eddie.
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I was enraged nonetheless at the implication. The way he spoke to Buck, as if he were ridiculous. I resented it. I resented Eddie, and most of all I resented his place in Buck’s life. His child on the refrigerator. The key he’d been given when I believed that he was not deserving of it. His freedom to move in and out of the patio or to shut the doors with ease.
I couldn’t leave, having heard his voice. Something welled up within me and I could not overpower it enough to walk away and leave them alone. It was, perhaps, the moment I should have realized I was in too deep.
Buck and Eddie moved into the kitchen and their voices became clearer, louder.
“I’m fine!” Buck insisted. I watched him. I knew his routine and I knew that at this time of day he must be just home from work. This meant, almost invariably, that he would go into the kitchen and stand at the counter in front of the window and I would be given the gift of a front-row seat to the view of him making his breakfast.
But that didn’t happen.
I watched as he moved into the dining room and sat down in a chair— collapsed, really. He looked— even just from far away— uncomfortable. In pain. It brought a new kind of feeling over me: a flash of fear and protectiveness that I had not known myself capable of before.
Suddenly, I just wanted to be inside.
As I watched, Eddie walked into the room, too. He moved closer and closer to Buck until he was standing over him, and then he put his hand on Buck’s shoulder. Even from the outside, the touch was visibly sweet. I saw it, the swipe of his thumb back and forth over Buck’s tshirt, and I thought of cavities; a rotted, sugary crevasse in what was meant to be strong and clean.
“You’re not,” I heard Eddie say.
I had never heard his voice quite like that before. It raised every kind of alarm bell, a cacophony of wrong that drowned out any reasonable thought in my head.
Buck tilted his head back in Eddie’s direction and at the new angle, I could see the unmistakable crease of pain on his features. I began, almost immediately, to spiral. I buzzed with questions. How had this happened? Was he injured? Was he burned? I knew that Eddie and Buck worked together, and as I watched them I looked at his face. New questions rose to the surface of my mind. Where had he been? Had he let this happen, whatever this was?
Buck nodded his head. Whatever he may have said, whatever words of acquiescence, were lost on me. I was too far away, too exterior, to hear. But Eddie nodded, too, and looked satisfied. I watched his features and contorted them in my mind, enough to convince myself that he looked smug. I hated him, in that moment, more than ever before.
“I can make breakfast,” Buck said. He moved like he was going to get up, and I watched Eddie press him back down with a firm hand to his shoulder. Buck winced visibly.
“I got it,” Eddie said. “I’m just going to warm up the hot tub and then I’ll make you something. You stay there.”
A stroke of luck, I thought. I kept hidden, entirely out of sight, as Eddie opened the patio doors— all the way, wide, the way Buck did— and stepped just far enough outside to flip the switch on the hot tub that would turn it on to heat. I knew this. I had seen Buck do it himself, alone, in the evening.
It occurred to me as Eddie stepped back inside that it was only a matter of time before they were going to come out onto the patio to get inside the hot tub: the two of them, together.
I saw red. Suddenly, what I wanted more than to be inside was for Eddie to be out here, within my reach. I wanted blood to spill and I knew that I needed to be ready.
They chattered idly, and I kept my eyes on Buck. He looked uncomfortable, more so by the minute, and after a little bit Eddie returned to the dining table with something in his hand. I couldn’t entirely see what it was, but he handed it to Buck and he made a face at it in his palm.
“Take it,” Eddie said.
I hated the way he demanded things. I hated him, all of him. A wayward thought occurred to me as Buck relented and put the thing from his hand into his mouth, then swallowed. If I was successful, the boy on the refrigerator who meant so much to Buck would need a new home. This was a good one. He was comfortable here, with Buck. I could watch them both. If Eddie were not around, I thought that I could grow fond of Christopher, if only because I knew that Buck loved him and he loved Buck.
Yes, I thought. It could be a nice life, quiet and untouched.
I was aware— don’t get me wrong— that Buck loved Eddie. I had been watching him for a long time by then. I had never heard him say those words, but I didn’t need to hear them to know. I knew Buck; I had catalogued every morsel of his life. I knew that he loved Eddie, even if he didn’t know it himself. And I could even understand it: though I didn’t like him, I knew that Eddie was charming and beautiful.
I was familiar with the kind of web that he’d spun.
I also knew that Eddie loved Buck. I did not think he was very good at it, but I knew that he did. I simply believed that I could do better, and I knew— without a doubt— that I could eliminate him efficiently.
I believed that if I was careful, if I struck at just the right moment, Buck would never even need to know that it was me.
And then we could get on with our lives. Buck would be better off in the long run, without this. I had seen the way they looked at each other: the yearning. It could only do the heart in, that kind of feeling. With us, despite my life thus far, I really believed that it could be different. That I, too, could live in the light.
So I waited as they ate.
Eddie sat across from Buck, with his back to me. I was tempted to make my move but I worried that I would be seen. As I waited, I listened and watched as Buck teased Eddie lightly for the food.
I knew that I couldn’t do better. But I wanted to— didn’t that count for something? Wouldn’t it, after this was over?
“How’s that feeling?” Eddie asked later. The sun had crept up higher in the sky and the day warmed. Where he sat in the open doorway, the back of his tanned neck was exposed and sunkissed. I looked at the skin and felt alive, knowing that the system of veins that led to his heart was just underneath the ultimately fragile surface.
Buck shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not too bad,” he said.
“Right,” Eddie answered lightly. “In other news, I’m headed to the moon later.”
“Hey,” Buck said, brightening. “That’s not too far-fetched. Any one of us could have ended up in space.”
Eddie snorted lightly. “Yeah, like you ever had any intention of going to space.”
Buck rolled his eyes, and was preternaturally beautiful as he did it. “But you did?”
“I didn’t say that,” Eddie answered, evasive.
“You literally did.”
I was, to no one’s surprise, on Buck’s side of the argument. It bothered me that I did not get the sense they were really arguing. I was also aquiver with anticipation, eager for them to finish and step outside. I was close enough to the patio and the churning hot tub, anticipating their positions.
“Come on,” Eddie said. “The water will help.”
“Actually,” Buck said as Eddie circled the table and offered him a hand. “It’s the heat, mostly? I-It increases blood flow, better circulation, and some people think that it’s kind of a placebo effect with the— ah.”
He hissed in pain and I, desperate to know what was hurting him, inched closer in place. I felt both trapped and free, an existence of limbo.
“You’re okay,” Eddie said. His voice was low and warm and close to Buck. I seethed, thrumming with my need to get between them. It had consumed me entirely. “Go on,” he continued. “Tell me about the placebo effect.”
“You know what the placebo effect is,” Buck said, half-laughing as he leaned on Eddie and they made their way around the table. I caught a glimpse of Eddie, smiling, and hated him all the more for it.
“Yeah,” Eddie shrugged. “Tell me anyway.”
The tension was building, though they seemed unaware. Soon, I thought, they would be. They stepped outside as one. Buck paused and let go of Eddie just long enough to sweep his shirt over his head, revealing expanses of soft light skin and dark ink and little freckles.
As I had thought from the moment I saw him, he was decked in an excess of beauty. I had never before, and would never again, seen anyone like him.
“Easy,” Eddie said gently. And then, keeping one hand on Eddie’s arm, Buck bent down to remove his shoes, one and then the other. I held myself still, knowing that if I wanted this to be effective, my timing had to be perfect. I felt alight with the energy of it. The thrill of the moments just before the strike. It was not unfamiliar to me, but this time still felt brand-new.
“I got it,” Buck said.
He took his hand off of Eddie’s arm.
This was my moment. I knew it down to every cell, felt it wash over me. And so I moved, with the usual precision and grace; bared; out for blood.
I watched, as if in slow motion, as Buck looked up and saw me for what I really was for the first time. I saw it on his face, in the ocean-blue eyes that I’d seen just once and loved immediately. Fear; understanding; determination— all flickering across his face in a fraction of a second as we each leapt into movement.
For the first time, we saw each other clearly and moved in tandem, a beautiful, shining second of connection as I set my eyes on the flesh of Eddie’s neck.
And then, in the space of an instant—
“Ah!” Eddie yelps, dodging Buck’s shoe as it narrowly misses his ear and lands solidly with a satisfying, if alarming, splat to the wooden column of Buck’s back patio.
“Got it!” Buck announces. His eyes are a little bit wild, but Eddie is mostly concerned with his knee, which looks about a second away from buckling.
“Jesus,” Eddie says, reaching for him. “Got what? Here, don’t fall.”
“I’m not going to fall,” Buck retorts, looking very much like he might be about to fall. With his free hand, he takes Eddie’s. Like every other time this morning that he’s leaned on him, his hand is warm and it sends a rush of honeysoft warmth over Eddie, too. “There was a spider.”
Eddie frowns. “What?” he asks, looking around at the column and the shoe that Buck is now holding. “Where?”
“There,” Buck says, nodding to the column as he casts his eyes up a little further. He frowns as his eyes land on the neat little triangle of spiderweb in the corner between the wood and the roof above it. “Or— here, now,” he adds, holding up the shoe.
Eddie looks back at it. On the bottom, there’s the unmistakable mangled body of what had been, until a moment ago, a spider.
This would all be very normal, probably, if he were dealing with anyone other than Buck. As it stands, none of this makes any sense at all.
“Why would you do that?” he asks, bewildered, as he looks again between the remains of the spider and Buck, whose face is turning slightly pink.
Eddie has known Buck for many years. He has watched him run into fires on countless occasions. He’s held his hand as he screamed in agony. He’s seen Buck scale buildings; watched him die and come back to life; accomplish any number of impossible and near-impossible things, so many that there are very few experiences they haven’t shared by now, everything from the mundane to the spectacular.
What Eddie has not seen Buck do, ever, even once, is to kill a spider.
“Um,” Buck says.
“You don’t kill spiders!” Eddie says.
“Well— I-I do sometimes,” Buck replies.
Eddie levels him with a look and Buck withers a little bit under it. He looks down at the squished spider and then back up at the web.
“Okay,” he admits. “I don’t kill spiders. This one has been up there since I moved in and I told it that I wouldn’t hurt it.”
He pouts a little bit at this. Eddie remembers very suddenly and vividly, holding onto Buck to keep him from falling as he pouts over a spider that he killed, that he is in love with his best friend.
“Is this— were you possessed?” Eddie asks shrewdly.
Buck rolls his eyes. “No, Eddie, I’m not possessed,” he answers.
“Well!” Eddie argues. “I don’t know what else would motivate you to suddenly turn on arachnids. After you told Chris that whole thing about them being the number one protector of the lower animal kingdom, he wouldn’t let me kill one for a year.”
“Okay, well, they are,” Buck says. “But this one—” he holds up the shoe for emphasis; “—deserved it.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows. “What was this one doing?”
Buck’s cheeks turn pinker, right in front of Eddie’s eyes. “It was going to attack you,” he mumbles, looking down.
Eddie pauses. “It was what?”
“You heard me!” Buck insists. “It was going to attack you. So I had to kill it.”
Eddie feels the smile growing on his face even before it’s visible. He knows when that changes because Buck looks at his face and sighs.
“Don’t make fun of me,” he insists. “I just saved your life. You’re so ungrateful.”
“No, no,” Eddie defends, trying hard not to laugh. “I’m so grateful, Buck. Really. I’m sure the spider was bloodthirsty.”
“Hey,” Buck says, holding up the shoe like a piece of evidence. “You didn’t see it, okay? It was coming for you.”
At this, Eddie can’t help but laugh. But even as he does, as he watches the look on Buck’s face as he tries not to give in and smile himself, just because he can see and hear Eddie laughing, there’s also a part of him that feels tugged into place.
He looks down at the shoe in Buck’s hand, and the dead spider on it, and thinks about it in a clear light for the first time. In all these years of throwing himself into danger, Buck has never even considered killing a little spider. He’s always insisted that they’re innocent creatures. Eddie has heard countless monologues in their defense and diatribes against people who kill them for no good reason. He’s heard all the facts, even if only a couple of them have stuck. Buck once spent an hour chasing a spider around Eddie’s kitchen so he could set it free out in the backyard because he didn’t believe that Eddie wouldn’t just kill it if he found it after Buck went home.
And yet— for Eddie, he’d done it without a second thought.
“Hey,” he says, gathering himself and his nerve as he steps just a little closer to Buck.
Buck looks up.
“Can we put the shoe down?” Eddie asks gently.
“Oh,” Buck answers. “Sure, yeah.” He drops it unceremoniously onto the concrete, and then Eddie is faced with the reality of the situation: the morning sun illuminating the tendrils of warm steam rising up out of the hot tub; the fresh, warm air around them; Buck, shirtless and barefoot in front of him.
No spider to be seen.
He smiles a little bit, watching as Buck takes in his face with a curious, open expression. It’s funny, he thinks. How he could watch Buck’s every move for months on end, probably, and never get tired of seeing him.
“You killed a spider for me,” Eddie says softly.
Buck squirms, uncomfortable under the heat of Eddie’s gaze. “Well, yeah,” he answers. “I mean— i-it was definitely going to bite you, and I didn’t get a good look at what kind it was but it could have been venomous, so—”
Eddie nods and leans in a little closer. Buck blinks.
“What— uh, what are you doing?” he asks.
“You can feel free to kick me if I’m wrong,” Eddie offers, suddenly absolutely sure that he’s not. “Or— actually, maybe punch me or something, I don’t know if your knee is up for kicking.”
Buck furrows his eyebrows, an expression that Eddie knows as well as his whole catalog of others, because if he’s honest with himself he’s been watching Buck for a long, long time. Probably since the night they stood across from each other in a parking lot and decided to have each other’s backs. Probably every day since then. He’s sure that nobody else has been watching Buck as closely, or for as long, as he has.
“What—” Buck starts, but doesn’t get any further, before Eddie leans in and kisses him soundly on the mouth.
He melts, almost instantly, and Eddie puts a hand on his waist, just the smallest bit of pressure from his palm urging Buck to lean out of his bad leg. Buck lets out a pleased little noise that Eddie wants to hear for the rest of his life, and then before he knows what’s happening he’s laughing too hard to keep kissing anymore.
Buck pulls back, breathless and bemused at once.
“What is happening right now?” he asks.
“I just—” Eddie laughs, tilting his head back, and then forward again so that he can look at Buck’s face— all pink mouth and flushed cheeks and beautiful blue eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “I just realized that you love me back because you killed a spider.”
Buck blinks. “You love me?” he asks.
Eddie beams, then steps forward, crowding into Buck’s space and then looking up through his lashes to meet Buck’s eyes. Unable to stop himself as Buck’s breath hitches against him, he brings a hand up to brush over Buck’s jaw.
“Yeah,” he answers tenderly. “I’d kill any spider for you.”
Buck grins. “Will you save them for me?” he asks.
“Tell me you love me and I’ll do whatever you want,” Eddie offers.
Buck nods, a flash of something warm and vulnerable on his face amongst the joy. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I love you.”
Late that evening, after their lives have been tilted and rearranged, Eddie goes outside and swipes away the remains of the spiderweb from the eaves of Buck’s patio roof, beneath a twilit lavender sky. Afterward, he steps back into the house and shuts the door behind him.
And that night, nobody watches through the windows at all.