Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Glitter flakes to the ground, sticking to everything in its path—the toes of his sneakers, beneath his nails, the entire length of his index finger, still tacky with glue. Pink, red, and silver replace the darkening bruises on his knuckles, making them multicolored in a fun way as opposed to the real, embarrassing reason. He’d been wrong to think the bullying would stop after the disappearance of Bowers and his shithead friends, but awful bigots are always there to fill the void, he supposes.

Still, this is not about his most recent loss, which he still remembers with a vividness that startles him—maybe you never forget your first concussion, or the way your head cracked against the concrete—but rather, it’s about this heart not fitting through the slots of this locker and all the goddamn glitter falling off it.

All of his hard work will be for naught if he cannot get this where it needs to be; it is already covering the floor in an explosion of nauseating lovesickness.

He tries again, shoving a curve through first and slowly moving it, but he fears that will result in utter destruction and stops.

“What the hell happened to you?” Stan asks. He grips the strap of his backpack with a fist, quirking a brow at Richie, looking like an arts and crafts closet threw up on him.

“Art class,” Richie replies, though he’s not sure what he means by that. It was relatively easy today, but every day is easy because Richie does not follow the lesson plan.

They’re supposed to be drawing some landscape or another, recreating it in any way they choose, but while Constance Gallagher cried over incorrectly mixing the blue she needed for the deep sea and James Gregory fumbled his way through a jungle they all knew he couldn’t sketch, Richie spent the past three days making the perfect valentine. And this is perfect. Very symmetrical. The heart is probably the only thing he’s ever focused on with so much care.

No one needs to know it took him four sheets of construction paper and he accidentally cut into his thumb with a pair of very sharp scissors. No one needs to know that he’s basically a kindergartener. His battle scar throbs beneath the green band aid he’d wrapped around it as if reminding him of its existence. Stupid.

He looks away from Stan because Stan can see right through him and glares at the stupid metal door. His heart hangs out of it pathetically. “Did the lockers get smaller this year?”

“No,” Stan says. “This has been Eddie’s locker for years. Literally nothing has changed about it since he got it.”

“Then why can’t I—” Richie stops, grits his teeth, and shoves, but then thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to rip his masterpiece. “Why can’t I fit this stupid thing in here?”

Stan smirks, an infuriating twist of the mouth Richie witnesses from the corner of his eye, and shifts his backpack so he can lean up against the wall. “What is it?”

“My art project,” Richie says. “I’m giving it to him.”

“So just hand it to him,” Stan suggests.

“That defeats the—” Richie snaps his mouth shut, teeth clanking together and sending a sharp, shooting pain up the side of his face to his temple. “I can’t just give it to him, he needs to find it in his locker. That’s the point. I do this every year. I can’t just stop—”

Stan picks at a skateboard sticker pasted to the metal by his shoulder, digging his thumbnail beneath it, trying to rip it off in one fell swoop. He pulls it up, smooths it back down, and repeats. “You make Eddie a valentine every year?”

Richie looks at him, now not meeting his gaze, and wipes his sweaty palms on his pants. It’s not a valentine, he wants to say. It’s just a stupid heart. But his mouth and his tongue and his goddamn vocal cords are traitors to the crown, the crown being Richie’s head, and he says, out loud, “Yeah, since, like, ninth grade. You know this, Stan.”

“I wanna see.”

“No,” Richie says immediately. “It’s for Eddie.”

“Gotta make sure you aren’t embarrassing yourself too much, then.” Stan snatches it away from him, remarkably gentle for someone talking so much shit, and his eyes glitter with mischief as he reads it. Glitter sticks to him, too, almost in the same spots as Richie. On the matching puckered scars of their palms, red like blood but sparkling like something better. He snorts, Stan does. “How long did it take you to write this out?”

“Not long,” Richie lies. His fingers still feel cramped, stuck in the bent position he’d forced them into. His handwriting is shit, of course, so naturally he decided to teach himself calligraphy; it’s more roma—

No. Nope. Do not go there, Tozier.

His mind does, but he ignores it because it’s not. It’s nothing like that. He just likes to bother Eddie. Likes to tease him. They like to make fun of the same things, and one of those things is how fucking frazzled everyone gets around Valentine’s Day. There’s a goddamn bear sale in the lunchroom, Jesus Christ.

This is nothing, nothing, nothing, even if his heart beats wildly out of tune.

Stan is still busy scanning on the heart, missing out on the flurry of emotions Richie feels take over his face. “Your poetry skills are profound,” he decides. With a quick clearing of his throat, he drops his voice an octave: “Roses are red, violets are blue, Groundhog Day is playing at the Aladdin, I got tickets for two. Incredible.”

Heat rises to Richie’s cheeks, burns its way up his neck and to his ears, which feel like they’re on fire. It’s corny and stupid but he wasn’t going to dedicate the thing to Eddie’s eyes, was he? No. Of course not.

(Maybe.)

He coughs, rubbing at his face like he can get rid of the flush, and says, “Shut up, Stanley Urine. Give it back. There’s only seven minutes left of this period and I need to get this in here before Eddie—”

Stan sighs and shoves him out of the way, which is rude, impolite, entitled, and every other adjective Richie can think of—and he knows a lot, currently, because of the SATs he does not want to take and the thesaurus he all but memorized doing this project. He once thought he could be funny and deep, but that ended up with him getting too close, too real, too much.

“Hey,” he snaps at Stan, tripping over his laces, untied beneath his feet. He throws a hand out to keep himself from eating shit and watches, dumbfounded, as Stan twists Eddie’s combination into his lock. It clicks open at the last number (five). He tugs on it, pulls the door wide, and places Richie’s valentine amidst the neatly organized books, Eddie’s perfect handwriting labelling each. “What.”

Stan sticks his hand into a plastic bag towards the back, hidden behind Pride and Prejudice and a beat-up chemistry workbook. He emerges again with a packet of M&Ms before locking up. “I know everyone’s combinations,” he says. “You want?”

“Green, please,” Richie requests.

Stan shakes out three—none of them the color he’d wanted—and pops one into his own mouth. He chews thoughtfully, too long for one M&M, and considers Richie like he’s something particularly interesting, something he’s never seen, a bird he’s been following around for weeks. “You gonna tell him you like him ever, or—?”

“Who?”

He levels him with a look, hitting the side of his fist against the locker. “You know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richie says, “or what makes you think that I… that I would. We’re just—we’re friends.”

“Mhm,” Stan hums back, “but you make him a valentine every year.” He ducks his head, makes a big ordeal of searching the bag for an M&M, and hands Richie over a green one. “You don’t make me a valentine. You don’t take me out on a ridiculous date on Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s not a date,” Richie says immediately. He sucks on the chocolate, slow as to savor it. As to collect his thoughts. “I can make you a valentine. I can take you to the movies. What do you want to see?”

Stan makes a face, pinched around his mouth. “Nothing. I don’t want to be treated like Eddie.”

“I don’t treat him any different,” Richie retorts. “We hang out like any ordinary day. It’s not like—it’s not a—I’m not—” He runs his tongue over his teeth, jittery and nervous and kind of mad, stomach churning. “It’s nothing.”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “Of course.”

“It isn’t,” Richie insists, hot and itchy and feeling like his hands are too big for his arms. He hates the look on Stan’s face, the disbelief, the sincerity, and hates that for once he’s suddenly being seen when he’s spent his whole life practically invisible unless he was getting the shit kicked out of him. He was seen then, too, and it never ended well. “It’s… it’s funny. We’ve thought it was funny for years. I just make him a valentine and we go to the movies. We… we… we make fun of everyone who thinks this dumb Hallmark holiday matters. We make fun of Bill and Bev!”

Stan presses his lips into a tight line, stares at him in that unblinking, all-knowing way of his. “My apologies,” he drawls. “I forgot making fun of Bill and Bev, who did not even date before she moved, is still funny four years later.”

Richie whacks at him with the heel of his palm. “You’re an asshole, Stanley.”

“Takes one to know one,” Stan replies. “You made me this way. Your friendship corrupted me. I used to be so nice.”

“You shoved sand down the back of my shirt in kindergarten,” Richie says flatly. “You’ve never needed me to be a monster.”

Stan cocks his head to the side. “Maybe,” he allows, “but I’ve had to keep up with you, so. You’re complicit.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Stan pours another couple of chocolates into his hand and offers them up; Richie snags the greens. “But somehow you’re my best friend,” he says, nakedly honest. He clears his throat, looks away, and tells the SAY NO TO DRUGS poster behind Richie’s head, “You can tell me anything, you know. Contrary to popular belief, I will not judge you.”

Richie bites his M&M in two, feels the sugar coat his teeth. I think you already know, he can imagine himself saying, giving Stan the same courtesy he gave him, a moment of authenticity, but Richie is almost seventeen and doesn’t like to dwell too much on feelings that don’t make sense. That he’s never voiced aloud before. The moment is too charged for him to ignore Stan’s statement, though, so he says, “Well, I do have something important to tell you.”

Stan blinks back at him, curious.

I like, Richie thinks, and his mouth announces, “I think the earth is flat.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Stan lobs a candy at him and gets him right in the forehead, a small, startingly painful sensation. Richie tries to catch it before it hits the ground. “You’re such a fucking prick, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Richie answers. He shows off the M&M. “Five second rule still applies, right?”

Stan wrinkles his nose and slaps his hand, making Richie drop it again. It skitters away.

Richie’s jaw drops comically and he presses a hand to his chest. “I can’t believe you would do that, Stanley! There are people that are starving. Don’t you know we’re not supposed to waste food?”

“I think they’ll be okay if you don’t eat the M&M you picked up off the fucking floor,” Stan retorts. “Don’t you ever do that again. You don’t know when they’ve cleaned these halls last.”

“You got it, Dad,” Richie teases. He leans forward and musses Stan’s hair up, turning it into a chaotic mess of curls not unlike Richie’s. “Thanks, though,” he says, quieter. Subdued. “If I ever have anything important to say, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I better,” Stan grumbles.

“Such a nosy little gossip,” Richie coos, pinching his cheek.

Stan swats him away. “Not a gossip,” he snaps, which is a lie. “A friend.”

“Yes,” Richie sing-songs. “A gossipy friend.”

Eddie appears when Stan grapples Richie into a headlock, disagreeing vehemently with him, trying to squeeze his head so hard it pops, or explodes, or something. Richie’s peals of laughter and pathetic attempts to get him off him have them both missing the ringing of the bell and the filling of the hall.

“Hello,” Eddie says, perplexed. He ducks under the space they’ve left between them, and twists his combination into his lock, hardly batting an eye at Stan and Richie’s antics. “What are you guys arguing about and does it have to happen in front of my locker?”

Then, after a beat: “Stan, did you take my candy again?”

“I left you three bags,” Stan answers, panting. “Richie is being an asshole.”

“Just admit you like gossiping,” Richie shoots back. He shifts away from him, closer to Eddie, so he’s able to whisper in his ear. “He likes knowing things.”

Stan scoffs loudly. “So do you!” he says back. “Or am I imagining how invested you’ve gotten in Greta’s relationship?”

“She is a villain and that kid on the basketball team is too nice for her,” he replies. “Oh, and don’t tell me you’re not as curious about the rumor that she and Sally are lesbians, because that would be a fucking lie—”

“Wait, what?” Eddie asks, lifting his head back to look at Richie. His eyes are so brown in the fluorescent light.

Richie swallows, overcome by this realization, flicks his gaze to his nose, and smiles easily. “People are saying they’re only using Nice Boy From The Basketball Team as a cover for their illicit love affair because Greta never once spoke to him before they were suddenly dating and—”

“And I’m the gossip?” Stan demands, though he’s amused. “You’ve got it all wrong anyway. The rumor is they were caught in a very compromising situation behind the bleachers, but my source isn’t credible enough for that to be true without further investigation.”

“No,” Eddie breathes out. “When?”

Stan shrugs. “I don’t know. Last month, maybe. They don’t seem too affected by it, so it’s unclear if it’s even on their radar.”

“Huh,” Eddie muses. “It wouldn’t be that surprising, would it? They’re really good friends.” He drops his backpack between his feet and turns to face Richie. He flinches at the sudden coldness of Eddie’s touch on his cheeks. His fingers are always cold. “You have glitter all over your face, by the way.”

“Do I?”

Stan snorts.

“Yeah.” Eddie tries to pick the pieces off, scratching at his skin, and Richie clears his throat. He bites down on his lip to keep from laughing—uncomfortably and because he’s apparently ticklish on his goddamn face—or saying something remarkably stupid like—

He avoids Eddie’s gaze, the way his brow is furrowed intently, and how he’s so singularly focused on Richie and Richie alone. He is so close, when did he get so close? Why are his hands so soft? Why is he so—He smells of the lotion and hand sanitizer he’s no doubt slathered all over his hands, sweet and sharp.

Richie looks at Stan instead, no doubt frazzled, his own eyes wide behind his glasses, which already make him look crazy, and blinks. “Oh my god,” he blurts.

“Yup,” Stan agrees, following along as Richie unravels. They’re always on the same wavelength. Always sharing the same brain.

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie says eventually, dropping his hand. He looks up at Richie—why is Eddie so short? Why is he the perfect height for him?—his lashes dark and long and fluttering. “It’ll come off at some point, but I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re like colorful freckles. It’s cute.”

Richie can’t feel his tongue, too large and too dry, but he manages to say, “Nah, that’s you, Spagheds.” The nickname feels like it’s been torn from his throat, cracked and dry.

Eddie’s face scrunches up—he hates that nickname more than the rest—and he shakes his head, disrupting the hair he’s carefully brushed from his face, the Sonia Kaspbrak Approved hairstyle he’s been sporting for years. A wave falls against his forehead, right between his eyes; he blows it out of the way, but it only floats a bit before settling back down. Richie watches this, feels heat and want and the crackling energy of something else, something fond settle somewhere in his belly. It spreads, makes him warm, and he finds himself clenching his hand, crossing his fingers. He will not touch. He does not want to touch.

Not. Not. Not.

“I think you win today,” Eddie disagrees, easy and smooth, like Richie’s world isn’t crumbling to pieces around him.

Stan’s laugh is a loud bark behind them, and Richie can’t find it in himself to react, still staring at the planes of Eddie’s face.

“Stan,” Richie says frantically, grabbing his hood as he exits his last class. He’d stood out there for fifteen minutes, hands sweaty and heart pounding, peeking through the little window on the door, zeroing in on Stan’s face.

He’s spent more time waiting around in hallways than he had in class today, but that’s beside the point.

Stan squawks. “What the fu—”

“Stan,” he says again, voice rising an octave, high and squeaky, “is this a date?”

Richie emerges from the school, blinded by the intensity of the winter sun, bright and bouncing off leftover mounds of snow, and he immediately wants to turn back around.

Eddie is sitting on the trunk of Richie’s car, squinting at the book from his locker. Pride and Prejudice, Richie thinks it was. He’s lit up so nicely from the light that’s making it hard for him to see, soft and golden and alive in the dwindling daylight that makes everything else seem dull and dead in comparison.

He hasn’t seen him yet. He can still turn around and run, but his feet propel him forward, weaving between the leftover cars and bodies until he’s standing right in front of him. He flicks him in the ear, eliciting a squeak, and moves past him to unlock his backseat, where he throws his backpack.

Eddie shoves his book back in his own bag and asks, “What took you so long? S’cold out.”

“Had to talk to my physics teacher,” Richie lies—because he can’t exactly say I had a crisis in the bathroom and Stan had to talk me out of leaving my car here and running home from the back entrance.

He can still hear him, actually, kind of condescending but mainly gentle. You’re really going to walk to school Monday because of Eddie?

The answer is no, obviously, he’s not. Eddie is his favorite person and it’s that reason that makes his palms sweat.

It’s just…

He thought he was over this, done with it. Carved it out, packed it up, put it away for safe-keeping. Only to be dusted off when he was feeling particularly self-deprecating and miserable.

He’d been doing it. He’d been convincing himself that all of this was just what really good friends do, and what’s the point of friends, anyway, if you weren’t kind of in love with them?

But then Eddie has to touch his face, and say things like that wouldn’t be surprising, and call him cute. Him! Richie, who goes out of his way to make sure Eddie hears him call him that at least once a day because Eddie’s face turns this really pleasant shade of red and he gets so flustered and—

Shit.

Those walls he built? The barriers? Gone. Destroyed. Donezo. They may have never existed in the first place, his feelings so strong they became malleable, twisting into other things but always present.

And now maybe Richie gets why Eddie works himself up when Richie calls him cute, or cutie, or tries to pinch his cheeks. It’s jarring. Overwhelming. Is it a compliment? What does it mean? Richie’s been mulling over it all day, decided it was, and focused on how Eddie looked at him, touched him, how his own heart exploded into a million pieces only to put itself back together in a shape that is very reminiscent to the one that belonged to a thirteen year old boy carving initials into a wooden bridge.

“You know this one door doesn’t lock correctly,” Richie says finally. “You coulda sat in here and waited.”

“Still would’ve been cold,” Eddie replies. He’s wearing his winter hat, the beanie that’s a little too big for his head; it covers his ears. “Anyway, are you…” He lightly taps on Richie’s wrist, curls his fingers around his sleeve. A wave of heat floods excitedly through his bloodstream. His pulse beats erratically.

Stop, Richie thinks at it, at his body.

Eddie peers up at him like he’s cataloging Richie’s face, scanning it for injuries or signs of maladies. All he’ll find is this kind of painful zit by his ear that Richie knows he shouldn’t scratch even if he wants to. “Are you okay?” Eddie asks. “You seem, I don’t know, paler than usual.”

“It’s winter,” Richie replies. “Not all of us can look as cute as you with your little flushed cheeks.”

As if on command, the slightly pink skin of Eddie’s face reddens more, dramatically, even, at Richie’s words. Eddie clears his throat, tucks his hair beneath his hat. “I know,” he says. “I’m, like, a baby or whatever.”

“A cherub,” Richie corrects, “but close enough.”

“Aren’t cherubs babies?”

“They’re pretty little boys,” Richie explains, though he thinks they could be babies, too, but he’s no art historian. “And that’s what you are, with those cheeks.” He reaches out to pinch them, feels how heated they are, and finds the movements of his fingers begin to jerk around, changing course. He rubs his thumb along the apple, where the color is highest, soft and gentle, and cups the rest of his face at the jaw, holding him in place.

Eddie stares, pupils wide, and Richie stares back, mesmerized by the multitude of colors one face can have. He’s particularly enraptured by Eddie’s irises, how they aren’t just brown, and how brown isn’t an ugly color at all, like people think. He’s got little flecks of green in there, of gold maybe, and for some reason, Richie, who doesn’t take art class seriously at all, wants to go back to that stuffy room and ask if he can just—if he can draw eyes instead of the dumb mountains and treetops his classmates are slaving over.

He thinks he’d be able to do this justice. To make it good. He’d care more, at least.

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, so.” Eddie clears his throat. “Are we going to the diner before or after the movie?”

“After,” Richie answers. He thinks at Eddie, It’s a compliment, idiot, learn how to take one. “The movie is at three-fifty.”

“Okay.” Eddie checks his watch, moving out of Richie’s hold. “Let’s go, slowpoke. I didn’t know how badly I needed to see Bill Murray in a romantic comedy until three hours ago.”

“I can’t promise it’ll be any good,” Richie warns. Eddie’s got a habit of blaming him for all the bad movies they see, like Richie’s made them all specifically to spite him.

Eddie pinches him; it feels more affectionate than it does annoyed. He says, “It’ll be good because I’m with you. Just like how everything we do together is.”

Richie’s heart beats double time in his chest, mimicking a drum beat that’s both somehow wild and knowing. He takes a moment here to breathe—in and out, in and out, like he’s having a panic attack, but in a good way. He’s overwhelmed by the thought of Eddie just… of Eddie genuinely having a good time with him, of wanting to be with him, maybe, regardless of what they’re doing.

And Richie’s gone out of his way to pick some shitty titles at Blockbuster.

He coughs, breathes out shakily, and drags his hands down his face. He’s probably got more glitter there now. He thinks he can taste it on his tongue, but it won’t come off until later, and he can’t do anything about it, so he slides into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. He fiddles with his fucked up radio, twisting the dial this way and that, looking for a station that plays more than just static.

The closest he gets is a station that plays sporadically, the signal too far or too weak for him to get a clear sound. He thinks it’s Silly Love Songs, but he can’t be sure.

“Tapes are in the glove compartment,” he tells Eddie, hovering his hand over the vents, waiting for the hot air to kick in.

It doesn’t take that long to get to the theater, but the silence that could accompany them there… it’d give Richie time to think, to maybe say something he shouldn’t. Something stupid. It would be potent and palpable and easy to cut like tension sometimes is, and Richie doesn’t need that today. Not ever. With nothing to distract him, he has the ability to fuck it all up—fuck them all up—and that’s something he’d never want, whatever that means to him. To them.

“Do you have—”

“Yes.”

“I never said wh—”

“If you like it, I have it.” Richie puts the car in reverse, does that thing he’s only ever seen people in movies and his mom do, and grips the back of Eddie’s seat as he turns to check if the coast is clear.

Eddie hums, looking through the extensive tape collection—it’s the only thing in the compartment—and eventually pulls one out. If Richie knows him as well as he does, in about seven seconds, he’s going to play—

Oh! I wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the heat with somebody

Richie sings the next line and cuts Greta Bowie off, swerving into the street. He snorts at her incessant honking, which serves her right, even if she is somehow accidentally a gay icon. She’s a fucking bitch who picks on Stan for no reason, like she’s never met a Jewish person before. There are plenty in Derry, but everyone goes after Stan because it’s a really big part of who he is, being the rabbi’s son and all. Like Stan isn’t the fucking greatest. What the fuck ever, Greta, choke on a dick.

She deserves it, right, and Eddie doesn’t call him out on his reckless driving, so he thinks it’s okay.

Whitney Houston plays for a bit, the only sound in the car besides the rattle of his air vents.

At a red light, Eddie finally speaks, pulling a hastily torn paper from his bag and thrusting it at Richie. “Here.”

Richie glances at him, holds his hand out, and puts his eyes back on the road. The paper slices through the skin between his index and middle fingers, stinging. He ignores it, aware of everything and nothing: of his foot on the brake and Eddie’s heated gaze and the February chill seeping through the back window, which he’s left cracked open. “What is it?”

“I made it in math” is all Eddie says. He looks away from him, chin in his hand, elbow on the cup holder in his door. He’s too relaxed for it to be real. Richie notices how stiff his spine looks.

“Is it your polynomials test?” Richie asks. “Do you want me to put it on my fridge?”

“No, it’s not my test,” Eddie says, “but I did pass, so thanks. It’s something else.”

Richie measures the time he has between light changes and drops his gaze to his hand, where he’s holding the thing with such a tight grip that two of his knuckles have turned white with the strain.

The thickness of the paper is due to it being covered in graph lines, no doubt pulled from Eddie’s math book. It’s covered in a large, lopsided heart, the left side bigger than the right. It’s colored in so meticulously, so painstakingly, it makes Richie smile—Eddie’s such a perfectionist—though it is not as intense as Richie’s glittering masterpiece, which is on another level of artistic expression, he thinks.

Eddie’s handwriting underneath it is a little hasty, quick like he was nervous about it but needed to do it. Let u = the area of the shaded region, it says, and Richie has always had a terrible relationship with stress and anxiety and vomiting, so he feels very much like he’s going to upchuck right here. But when he does that this time, he’s going to be spitting up, like, flowers, or confetti, or maybe the anatomically correct heart in his chest, which no longer belongs to him. It doesn’t even beat correctly, just occasionally and painfully, like it knows how to work but doesn’t want to. Like it doesn’t listen to him anymore.

Fondness grows inside of him starting at his feet, twisting its way up, and up, and up, until he’s nothing but a warm, tender body of flesh without any control over himself.

He lays it down in his lap, afraid to wrinkle it, and puts his hands tightly at ten and two, something he hasn’t done since he passed his driver’s test. “This is so lame, Eds,” he says, throat tight.

“Well, you’re pretty lame,” Eddie retorts, “so I thought it was fitting.”

It weighs him down, this little thing, feels like there’s three hundred pounds on his thighs right now, and Richie sniffs and raises the volume of the song. Whitney’s singing about needing a change of heart now; Eddie’s leg jiggles in time with the beat, fingers twitching at his knee, and Richie watches the motions for a second, wondering what it would be like to lean over and—

A horn honks behind them, two irritated taps and then a longer blast, the driver holding down on it as if that will express their mood efficiently.

Richie checks his rearview mirror, sees that Greta is scowling at him, and flips her off.

She honks again, knuckles smashed into the wheel, and Eddie snorts when Richie deliberately goes much, much slower than the speed limit.

There may be a heart in his lap and another wriggling its way into Eddie’s hands, but this, at least, remains the same.

Eddie’s got a bony elbow, and he shoves it hard into Richie’s side, making him grunt and kind of, sort of feel like he’s getting shanked. All the air escapes him, gives Eddie the room to surge forward and try to pay for the literal fucking bucket of popcorn they’ve drenched in butter.

He pinches him at the back of his neck, where his jacket’s slid down, but Eddie doesn’t budge, used to these kinds of physical assaults from Richie. He bats his hand away, snaps, “I’m paying,” and tries to hand the movie theater employee a twenty.

Richie karate chops his arm. “No, I am.”

“You always pay—”

“—because I have a job—”

“—okay, and so do I—”

“—just because you and Mike have very similar pouty puppy dog eyes and manipulated his grandfather into having you help at the farm doesn’t mean—”

“—it’s a very strenuous job, do you know much I have to lift to—”

“—strenuous, my ass—”

“—could punch you in the face and break both your nose and your glasses—”

“—anyone can do that, nothing special there—”

“—okay, asshole, go on, feel my fucking arm, then—”

“—not going to feel your arm—”

Eddie shoves into Richie again, and maybe Richie really does want to touch him, he doesn’t know, but his hand wraps around Eddie’s bicep. “I only feel your jacket.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Eddie grumbles, tugging at his coat until it’s hanging off of one side of him. “Do it now.”

“Just let me pay,” Richie begs, circling back to the matter at hand. He doesn’t have to touch him to know Eddie’s filled out significantly since A) he stopped listening to his mother and dropped every single one of his medications and B) he started spending more time with Mike. He’s watched. He’s seen. He is aware with a capital A.

“No, let me,” Eddie insists, and he looks ridiculous, glaring up at Richie with those perfect eyes of his, mussed and righteous like he’s in the middle of having a tantrum. Like he’s five and Richie said he couldn’t have ice cream before dinner.

Richie squares his jaw. “You can pay next time.”

“Yeah, right,” Eddie retorts, “like you’ll remember you said that.”

The bored concession worker snaps her gum, pink against her teeth. “You know,” she starts, resting an elbow on the glass counter, “every time the two of you are here, you argue about this.”

“We do not,” Eddie snaps. Pauses. Reads her nametag. “Sally.”

Sally shares a glance with the guy behind her, the one who made their popcorn, and he snorts. “You do,” she says. “You”—she points at Richie—“always pay, even though you claim he can next time, and you”—her finger moves to Eddie—“complain about it like it’s the end of the world. I would kill to have someone pay for everything for me, but nooooo.” She shoots the dude a look again and he stares back at her, nonplussed.

Richie blinks.

Eddie opens his mouth, closes it.

“Whatever,” Sally decides. “Which one of you losers is going to pay? I don’t have time for your domestic squabble today.”

“Me,” Richie and Eddie say at the same time.

Richie shoves him out of the way and thrusts the money he’s been fisting into Sally’s waiting hands. Eddie rights himself just before he can knock over the candy display, winds up, and punches Richie in the arm.

“The fuck,” Richie blurts. “Why are you full of so much violence but so small?”

“I am not small,” Eddie returns.

“Itty bitty,” Richie proclaims, holding up his fingers and squinting. “The tiniest.”

Eddie moves to shove him again, but Richie is ready this time and ducks out of the way.

Sally saves their popcorn before it can spill all over her, a few pieces littering the counter space. “I won’t give you another one if you drop it,” she warns.

“I won’t,” Richie promises. “Can I have my change?” He grins over at Eddie as she presses coins and dollar bills into his hand, waggling his eyebrows like he’s won some sort of battle here.

And he has. It’s always worth it to see Eddie all worked up like this.

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, “or I’ll drop the popcorn on purpose and not share when I buy my own.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Richie replies, knowing Eddie is all talk and no action when it comes to shit like this. If Richie asks for food, he’ll give it to him, simple as that. He won’t give it to anyone else.

Eddie snatches his box of Sno-Caps, tears the rest of his jacket off, and says, “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”

Richie beams.

“Your flirting is nauseating,” Sandy says. “You’re pink.”

“Oh, we’re not—”

“Please go,” she orders, sliding another box of Eddie’s candy his way, almost like a bribe. “There’s an entire line of people behind you who do not find your not-flirting with your boyfriend as utterly precious as I do.”

Her face says otherwise and a wave of embarrassment, or shame, or something floods over Richie, drenching him. Date, Stan called this. Flirting, said Sally. Boyfriend.

It’s not. He’s not. They’re not.

The thing is—Richie can’t tell if the things people say are jokes anymore. Are meant to be mean. He doesn’t know when he’d started noticing it either; it’s not like his behaviors changed. He’s just… he’s being made aware of them now, over and over on this one day, on this romantic day, and he feels seen, reflecting off the annoyed glint in Sally’s eyes.

Sally, who hasn’t said anything derogatory.

Sally, who is just annoyed they’re keeping her from doing her job, which she doesn’t seem to like anyway.

“You don’t mean that at all,” Eddie says cheerfully, calling her on her bluff. She hates this. She hates them. They’re always here when she is and she fuckin’ sighed when she saw them. “You don’t even like us.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Sally replies. “Go. Enjoy your dumb movie.”

“We will,” Eddie declares, grabbing Richie’s hand. It’s cold still, the chill from outside clinging to his skin, and Richie’s fingers slide between his, intent on warming him up. Eddie squeezes, stuffs both things of Sno-Caps in his pockets, and does not at all seem perturbed to be walking through the packed movie theater, their clasped hands on display.

Richie stares at them, the way his engulfs Eddie’s, makes him look small, and swallows. He accidentally catches Sally’s eye, his own widening in sheer fucking panic, and she offers him up a small smile, the corner of her mouth lifting and dropping all in the span of a second. Then she barks, “Next,” at them, ushering them away.

Eddie leads them through the theater and does not let go.

Eddie hands their tickets over, finds two seats together, balances the popcorn between his knees, and does not let go.

Eddie watches the trailers, tells Richie he wants to see some action flick Richie didn’t pay attention to, watches the opening of the movie—Bill Murray on the set of the news show he works for—and does not let go.

Eddie uses his free hand to eat popcorn, makes a discouraging sound when Bill Murray’s character is particularly uncouth, shifts in his seat so his shoulder presses against Richie’s arm, and does not let go.

Richie tries to untangle them, but Eddie merely squeezes his fingers, a sure message if he’s ever sent one. He leaves them, loosening his grip a bit in case Eddie can feel how much he wants to keep holding his hand even if he acts like he doesn’t.

Eddie offers him up a bunch of chocolates, eyes straight ahead, palm lifted in the general vicinity of Richie’s mouth. It’s a very un-Eddie thing to do, not asking if he wants any or dropping them into his own palm, and Richie doesn’t know why he does it—later, if asked, he’ll say he wanted to see how far he could push him—but he licks them off, tongue wet against Eddie’s dry, warm skin. He can feel the stuttering vibration of Eddie’s heartbeat in his wrist, intensifying as he closes his teeth around one of the nonpareils, and pulls away, crunching down on them.

The sugar explodes in his mouth, a nice addition to the butter from the popcorn, and Richie makes a decision.

Onscreen, Bill Murray attempts to woo Andie MacDowell over and over.

In the second to last row of the Aladdin movie theater, Richie breathes in for two and out for three, unlatches his hand from Eddie’s, and leans his arm against the top of Eddie’s seat.

Andie MacDowell slaps Bill Murray at the end of each of their so-called dates.

Richie swallows a mouthful of sweet and salty saliva and slides his arm down to rest around Eddie’s shoulder. He feels his heart in his ass.

Eddie shoves another handful of popcorn in his mouth, wriggles a bit, and moves, leaning his head against Richie’s chest. He grabs his hand, shakes out some more Sno-Caps, and stays there for the rest of the movie.

Andie MacDowell wakes up with Bill Murray on February third.

Richie does not breathe the entire time.

The diner is playing Bryan Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do It For You when Richie pushes the door open. The little bell jingles overhead, hardly audible over the chorus of the song, and the entire place looks like the Valentine’s Day aisle at the local drugstore threw up on it. The walls are covered in pinks, purples, and reds, hearts and Cupids with their arrows notched, and paper cut-outs of puckered lips. It smells of freshly baked cookies, coffee, and—that’s probably fries, greasy and salty.

Richie’s stomach grumbles.

His hand is empty, but he can feel Eddie’s fingers between his like ghosts. Can still smell Eddie’s hair, clean and kind of fruity, his shirt soaking up his shampoo like an eager sponge.

They wait, the two of them, for the hostess to recognize them, and they do not speak, and Eddie’s gaze burns into Richie’s cheek. He is staring. Just—staring.

That’s it.

Not that he hasn’t stared at him before—in annoyance, disbelief, humor—and not that Richie hasn’t been caught doing the same, but it makes him kind of itchy. Very, very warm, but that could also be the heater they’re standing under. He’s convinced he looks just like the rest of this place: vibrant, and red, and obvious.

Eddie finally says, “I don’t think I like Bill Murray’s character. He was the worst. If I had to live the same day over and over again, I wouldn’t do half the shit he did.”

Richie replies, “You don’t have a lesson to learn, Eds. You rarely do anything for your own self-interests. That’s the difference.”

“Is it?” Eddie asks. “How do we know if he changes at all? What if he’s just the same awful person he was when he started out?”

“I think maybe having to live the same day all that time would change him,” Richie offers. “He learns there are consequences for his actions and cannot just magically have all the answers. What’s-her-face did not like when everything was perfect, right? It only worked out when it wasn’t her.”

“I guess,” Eddie says.

“It matters,” Richie continues, “when the person does. There are no secret advantages, right, and no one wants a literal picture-perfect relationship. You have to work for it. You have to get there. That’s when it counts.”

Eddie squints a bit, peering up at him, and then he smiles. Richie hates (read: loves) the way it transforms his face, plumping his cheeks, showing off his dimple. “Kind of like us,” Eddie mumbles.

“What?” Richie blurts.

They’re beckoned farther into the restaurant and Eddie follows dutifully, talking over his shoulder. “We had to work for this, didn’t we? To be able to hang out without trying to kill each other? You used to annoy the shit out of me, but now…” He stops, considers something, and the next thing out of his mouth is kind of awkward, like it wasn’t what he’d initially wanted to say. “We’re together all the time. We don’t need a buffer like we used to and I like all your jokes, even if they’re stupid, and you haven’t made one about my mom in ages.”

Not since ninth grade when one of them brought you to literal tears, Richie thinks, but I’m not keeping track and watching my mouth, no sir.

He parrots himself, sounds idiotic and high-pitched when he says, “What,” again.

Eddie slides into his seat, smiles at the woman who hands them their menus. “I mean, just, like, working for it is kind of the best part, right? Wanting to make those sacrifices and really get to know someone because you want to. We had to do that, and now you’re, like—you’re my—” He freezes there, like he’s embarrassed, and ducks his head to peruse the specials, even though Richie knows exactly what he’ll order.

“I’m like what?” Richie asks, following his lead. Maybe he’ll order the halibut.

(He won’t.)

(He’ll get what he always gets, if he even eats. He feels inexplicably nauseous.)

Eddie clicks his tongue and shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, the voice of someone who does. “I want to say my best friend, but.” He pauses here, looks up at Richie from underneath his dark, long lashes. They cast fuckin’ shadows on his cheeks, goddamn. “I don’t think that’s right.”

“Well, yeah,” Richie replies. “Isn’t Bill your best friend anyway?”

Eddie hums, tapping his fingers against the plastic cover of the menu. “I’ve been telling you more things than him lately, but yeah,” he says. “I wasn’t going to say that though. I don’t think it’s right. I think… is there a name for someone who is—who is like a best friend but different? More?”

“I don’t know, dude,” Richie says, and the dude sounds so forced. So fake. His stomach churns. “I never thought about it.”

“I have,” Eddie replies. He makes direct eye contact now, face flushed so pink he blends right in with the décor. “I’ve thought about it a lot, actually.”

“Why?” Richie’s mind spins, thoughts stuck on Eddie’s face, on the faded freckles, on those frickin’ lashes. He’s so pretty. So, so pretty. He belongs in a museum, that’s how beautiful he is—in the art museum located in Richie’s heart because he doesn’t want to share. Once the rest of the world figures it out, it’s over for him, all lanky limbs and knotty hair and stupidly big glasses.

Eddie swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing nervously, but does not look away from him. “Because,” he says slowly, like he’s savoring it, like having it leave his mouth means something. “Because I think about you all the time.”

The silence that surrounds them is heavy, weighted, and so very thick. It rings in his ears, loud and vibrating, a real tangible thing that threatens to swallow him whole. He can break it, but he doesn’t know how, everything he wants to say, could say—it’s lodged in his throat, stuck like glue.

He doesn’t even hear their waitress arrive, her greeting swallowed up by everything that meant and everything it didn’t. The music swells, chaotic and vicious. Her pink heart pin glares at him, sparkling too much in the low light.

Eddie smiles at her, bright like the goddamn sun, and his mouth moves, but nothing registers. Just I think about you all the time, and What does that mean, and How do you think about me, and Is it how I think about you?

She looks at Richie, pleased as punch, and falters when Richie just stares at her blankly. He can assume what she wants from him, but he’s got nothing for her.

I think about you all the time.

Does she know what that means?

“Chicken fingers,” Eddie answers, his voice breaking through the haze. “Extra honey mustard. Right?” He kicks him in the shin.

Richie nods, coughs, and adds, “Can we get those hot chocolates, too?” His voice is a croak. He sounds old. He sounds sick. He sounds like his entire world got turned upside down.

“With or without marshmallows?”

“With,” Richie answers. “They’re his favorite part.”

She smiles at him and collects the menus. “You got, hon.” She winks at them. “Comin’ right up.”

Once she’s turned the corner, out of ear shot, Richie leans forward, knocking over the pepper, which he rights with a shaky hand. “Are you fucking with me?” he demands, which is not what he wanted to ask at all.

“No,” Eddie replies. “Why would you think that?”

“Because… because…” Richie grapples for words for his insecurity, for how much he’d never let himself believe Eddie could ever feel the same way, for how much he’d repressed it so he’d never have to get his feelings hurt. He comes up short. There’s no way to express it—he’s never allowed himself to think it, to dwell on it. That meant he’d think about Eddie, and that meant he’d get all sad, and discouraged, and confused, and that’s never a road he wants to go down, even though Eddie’s always a road he wants to go down. “Because,” he forces out, almost through gritted teeth, “because there’s no way you’d—you can’t—all the time, Eddie? You think about me—”

Eddie drags his tongue over lip, digs his two front teeth into the flesh. He lets it go, managing to make it pinker than before, and Richie stares. He stares. He’s not even subtle about it.

“Is that… is that a crime?” Eddie asks. “Should I not? Do you…” His confidence falters there, just a bit, but he pulls the brave face back up, masking it. “Do you not think about me?”

“No, I do,” Richie blurts out. It’s a little too loud. The family in the booth across from them stops their own conversation to look at him curiously. He fiddles with his glasses, gets half a thumb print on the left lens by his nose. “I do,” he repeats. “I think about you, like, a lot. A lot of the time. Especially that time when you wore that yellow sweater. You look good in yellow. What the fuck, why am I saying this, I—” He snaps his mouth shut, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurts.

Eddie is smiling at him when he gets the courage to look up from the sticky, shiny surface of the table. It’s that tiny, unsure one; he hits Richie with that more often than not, but he doesn’t know that Richie thinks the tentative way his mouth curls is just as great as his normal smile.

“If I had to relive any day,” Eddie starts, “I’d hope it’d be one of the days I’ve spent with you.”

All of the snacks Richie’s consumed today seem to be on their way back up. “Why?” he asks, struggling. He can taste pennies in his mouth. He drinks water.

“Because those are the days I wouldn’t change,” Eddie replies, and Richie wonders when he became such a fucking Casanova. How does he know how to say this shit?

He could follow along. He could say Me too. He could do a number of things that would wipe the slightly terrified look off Eddie’s face, that would quell his own beating heart, that would flip the switch and change everything.

Instead, he says, “Eddie,” and he’s not even sure how it sounds. His ears have powered down.

They sit in silence like that, just staring at each other, and the air is so charged with possibility, with something that Richie wants to get up and hide in the bathroom again, but the waitress brings their hot chocolates over, and he’d never want to miss the look on Eddie’s face.

Eddie loves hot chocolate but his mother refuses to stock the house with it, claiming it’s got too many artificial sweeteners and chemicals. It’s a bunch of horseshit given that she fills their freezer with frozen dinners she just pops in the microwave, but Richie’s not ready to have that argument with her. Or any discussion, really.

The diner hot chocolates are massive, topped with dollops of whipped cream and pink sprinkles that match the heart-shaped marshmallows floating beneath. Eddie is fucking delighted, and when he takes a sip, he gets it all over his lip, on his nose.

Eddie looks at Richie as he licks it off, which feels like a personal attack. Richie watches him, though, the slow movement of it all, and for the first time in a long while, he does not push down the desire to kiss him. He imagines it, leaning across the table or even walking around and huddling him against the window, pressing his mouth to his. He knows exactly what he’d taste like, and he makes up the rest—the softness of his lips, the way they’d part beneath him, the sounds he’d probably make.

He lets himself want.

He lets himself wonder what it’d be like to be wanted back and thinks maybe, maybe, he doesn’t have wonder at all.

He sits on his hands, but hooks his ankle around Eddie’s under the table.

Despite it being a little past eight on a Friday night, the houses on Eddie’s street are dark. Streetlights illuminate the road in patches, yellow and eerie, and in some windows televisions flicker, casting a glow in otherwise dim rooms. It’s always felt like no one’s lived here, like Sonia Kaspbrak managed to scare away all of the neighborhood children and their families, keeping Eddie all to herself.

“Make sure you kill the lights before you pull up,” Eddie warns. “If my mom sees, she’ll—”

Richie swallows around a sigh, but does what he says. “It’s been years,” he replies. “She hardly ever sees me and when she does I make sure I am nothing but polite. She still doesn’t like me?”

“She doesn’t like anyone,” Eddie says. “Not even Bill.”

Yeah, he knows that; he’s heard what she thinks about him and his parents. Careless for losing their son the way they did.

“She hates me the most. You can say it.”

Eddie winces, rolling his lip between his teeth. “She thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”

“I literally tutored you in math,” Richie retorts. “You went from barely passing to—to wherever you are now. You never told me.”

“She doesn’t know about that,” Eddie admits, “and if she did, she wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’m actually smart,” Richie grumbles, which is not a thing he often says out loud. “Like. I’m good at school.”

“I know that, and I appreciate you,” Eddie says, “but I don’t think it would matter if she knew anyway.”

Richie runs his finger along the groove of the car’s company logo on his steering wheel. “I’d like to, I don’t know, hang out with you without wondering if she’s going to murder me,” he says. “Is that too much to ask?”

“With my mom? Yeah.” Eddie tilts his head towards him, hair falling into his face, and studies him with a keen eye. Richie doesn’t know what Eddie sees, but he knows what he does. Shadows fall over the cut of his jaw, making him look dark, and handsome, and like Richie’s ultimate dream boy. “But it doesn’t matter if my mom likes you. It matters that I do.”

Richie holds his gaze, thinks maybe they’re having a whole conversation without speaking, by just looking, and blurts out, “You look really pretty in the moonlight like this.”

Eddie blinks. “Joke?”

“Nothing I ever say about you is a joke,” Richie murmurs.

“Nothing?”

“No,” says Richie. “Truth. All of it.”

Eddie exhales, loud and shaky, pulls his sleeve over his knuckles, and surges forward. Richie is ready for it, but he isn’t, and he whimpers when Eddie tugs at him, one hand at his neck, and the other cupping his cheek. The fabric of his sweater is soft against his face, and his mouth is even softer, pressed to his in a short, shy kiss that lasts less than thirty seconds. It leaves Richie breathless. It sends a thrill of excitement through his body.

It’s perfect.

Eddie’s brown eyes stare at him worriedly, like he isn’t sure he did it right. He’s so close their noses touch, so close Richie can see every individual eyelash, even in the dark. So close their combined breaths are fogging up his glasses.

“Was that okay?” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Richie replies, “was it okay for you?”

Eddie nods. “Yeah,” he copies. “Yeah, it was—I want to—” He grabs Richie by the cheeks again, leans forward, and slants his mouth over his.

Richie slides his palms up his back, beneath his jacket, pressing him closer, and follows his lead. Stops when Eddie stops. Does not try to go any farther, does not deepen the kiss even if he wants to. He nips at him, tiny little kisses with no real heat or length, and only goes as far as biting down on his lip, tugging it into his mouth and sucking—and only because he’d seen Eddie do it so many times tonight he’d wanted to do it himself.

Eddie shivers. Richie blindly turns the heat up, and Eddie mumbles no under his breath, wriggling out of his jacket with such intensity he almost shifts them out of park. He pushes himself onto his knees, slides his fingers into Richie’s hair, and when Richie’s mouth presses against his again, he keeps him there, swipes his tongue over him, and opens up beneath him.

It’s messy, and it’s wet, and it’s so sloppy it can hardly be called a kiss in the first place, but Richie wouldn’t change it for anything.

His neck cricks from the angle, still belted into his seat, and he unclips himself, frees his body, twists—

And Eddie clamors over the center console, elbows the window, and makes himself at home in Richie’s lap. His knee digs into the muscle of Richie’s thigh.

Eddie takes Richie by the chin, pushes his glasses up, and kisses him so thoroughly he feels it in his toes.

He jerks forward, craning upwards, and presses Eddie back against the steering wheel, creating purchase, ridding Eddie of his hovering, looming control. It’s the most uncomfortable thing, kissing in the driver’s seat of his car, but he makes it work, digs his heels into the ground, glad he can’t accidentally send them flying forward. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he dances his fingers along the hem of Eddie’s shirt and slips beneath it, skin to hot, flushed skin. His hand splays out against his lower back, amassing the entire width of it, it feels like, and Eddie shudders, inching forward, closer, and closer, and closer.

One of his bony limbs hits the horn and stays there, filling the silence with a loud, unpleasant, uninterrupted BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP when Richie pulls away and drags his mouth down the length of Eddie’s neck, salty with sweat. He focuses on the skin of the right side, licking at it, teething at it—sucking it into his mouth over and over. Eddie tastes—he tastes—

There’s never been a flavor more intoxicating.

Eddie lets out a string of nonsensical words, gibberish, really, curling his fingers into the hair at the back of Richie’s head and pulling.

Richie bites a bit too hard, maybe, and Eddie pants, fingernails digging into his scalp, and then goes rigid. Richie’s kept his eyes open, watching every movement of Eddie’s face, his neck, his body, and sees the insistence in which the porch light at Eddie’s house goes on and off.

Dark. Bright. Dark. Bright. Dark. Bright.

Get in now. Get in now. Get in now.

“Fuck,” Eddie whispers, broken and miserable and—wanting, a tone that swills in Richie’s belly, that meets his own yearning, the pining he’s kept under lock and key for months, and years, and lifetimes.

Richie presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the underside of Eddie’s jaw, feels his thighs tighten around his own. Feels him cling. And then he’s crawling off him, back into the passenger seat, where he bundles his coat up in his arms and lingers, just a bit.

“Go,” Richie says, watching the curtains sway as Sonia lets go of them, disappearing back into the house. “I’ll…” What do I do after this? Where do we go from here? “I’ll call you later.”

“Wait until she’s asleep,” Eddie suggests. “I’ll smuggle the phone into my room somehow.”

“Okay,” Richie agrees. “You better be awake at midnight, though.”

“Always,” Eddie replies, “if you’re the one calling.”

Much to Richie’s surprise, he leans forward and kisses him again, soft on his cheek. He’s gone before Richie can respond, and he feels like every girl in every romantic movie he’s ever seen, lifting his hand and brushing it gently where Eddie’s lips had been.

He waits until Eddie’s front door shuts behind him before flicking the headlights back on and putting his car in drive.

It’s early, still. Not all of them have intense curfews like Eddie, and he could hang out with any one of the Losers if he wishes, kill the time between now and twelve.

Richie turns off this road and onto the next, turns around completely, and heads towards Stan’s.

Stan opens the door, already in his pajamas (lame) and asks, “How’d the date go, idiot?”

Richie waits until twelve-oh-eight to dial Eddie’s number, fingers trembling and making him fuck up twice, even though he’s had this memorized since the sixth grade.

The call does not go through. The number, apparently, is not in service.

Chapter Text

Richie’s tires hit the curb when he stops in front of Eddie’s house. It’s early; the sky just began lightening, but a cloud covered the sun, turning everything gray and gloomy. He doesn’t have a first period this year, but Eddie’s day begins at seven-thirty every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Richie never minds picking him up for school. They’ll get coffee or something before Eddie departs to, like, AP English and Richie fucks around in the cafeteria. 

He rubs his hands together, chilled, and leaves the car running while he gets out, traipsing up the walkway. The grass is brown and dead, Sonia’s half-assed garden beneath the front window full of withered, wilting plants. He jumps the steps to the porch, tries to squint through the curtains inside, and rings the bell. 

It’s a minute wait at most, but it feels like hours, and Richie has a burning restlessness that doesn’t quit. He fiddles with the strings of his hoodie, tries to balance on one heel, refrains from whacking his knuckles against the door for good measure. He needs to relax. To learn patience. At least that’s what his mother says, and a number of his teachers, and Ben. 

It’s just—

Here, at Eddie’s house, it’s hard to be patient. To not be riddled with anxiety, nerves, fear—which is not a feeling he has ever experienced with Eddie in this capacity. Fear of his feelings turning from platonic to romantic? Sure. Fear of being too obvious? Absolutely. Fear that Eddie will find out and hate him and want nothing to do with him again? One hundred percent.

This fear that courses through him now, it’s different. It’s getting what he didn’t allow himself to want, tasting and feeling and being more present than he’s ever been, and then not being enough. Not being wanted. Eddie’s kissed him and while Richie realized everything he’s ever wanted is still him, Eddie’s—he’s—he’s decided Richie isn’t worth the trouble. 

And it’s so irrational, he knows. Eddie’s not an asshole, not like that, and while he has a mean cold shoulder and little vindictive side, he would never just ignore Richie like this. 

But he didn’t pick up the phone. Not once, all weekend, and Richie went out of his way to call when he knew his mother wouldn’t be around. She has a very consistent schedule because she hates change. She goes to the supermarket Saturday mornings at ten, drives out farther than she has to in order to get lunch with one of her sisters, and gets back around three. On Sundays, she goes to church at eight and comes back by twelve. 

So, you know, Richie called then. 

Got no answer, no dial tone, nothing. But he called. Often. A lot. It’s important to note that. 

He drags the toe of his sneaker along the crooked line of the wood plank he’s standing on and starts when he hears the front door unlock. He doesn’t know what to say, or what’s going to happen, or the mood Eddie will be in. It’s just occurred to him now that maybe Eddie doesn’t want a ride from him. Maybe he called Bill. Maybe he decided to walk. Maybe… Maybe he asked his fucking mom to drive him. 

None of that matters, though, even as Richie’s heart beats wildly in his chest and his hands grow clammy. It’s not Eddie that answers the door like usual, half in his coat and backpack dangling from one hand. It’s Sonia, squinting at him like he’s a pesky bug she can’t wait to hit with her flyswatter. 

Which—

That’s not that far off from how she normally feels about him. 

“Richard,” she greets. 

“Richie,” he corrects, his mouth moving faster than his brain. 

She purses her lips. “Eddie won’t be going to school today,” she says. Her eyes flicker over him in distaste, nostrils flaring. He feels slimy, dirty, under her assessing gaze. He pulls at his hood strings again, tugging the fabric close to his neck, as if to hide. She’s always been able to see right through him, even at the tender age of eight, somehow locating all the terrible parts of him—lazy, stubborn, annoying, ambiguous—and making that his entire personality. 

Not like Richie doesn’t do the same, but. He’s a child. 

“Oh,” he says. “Is he… why?” 

Sonia curls her hand around the door. Her nails are painted a pale yellow. “He’s caught a cold this weekend,” she tells him. “I worry it’s the flu. It’s a bad one this year.” She meets his gaze again, her own flickering in a way that makes Richie’s skin crawl. “I always tell him to be careful with you, that you’ll get him sick. Guess I was right.” 

“I’m perfectly healthy,” Richie says. His stomach drops to his feet, painful and fast. It makes him nauseous, has his mother’s homemade granola clusters racing up his throat, and he swallows hastily, not wanting to prove her wrong. He digs his nails into his palms, focuses on that. 

She quirks a brow and Richie knows that she sees him, and he doesn’t think he can trick himself into not throwing up right then and there, all over her ugly, fuzzy bathrobe. 

“Are you?” she asks, silky smooth, viciously calm, and entirely under the radar, but he hears it. She knows what she’s insinuating and his ears pick it up, twisting the words, turning them into something else. Into what she means. 

The light above his head flickered on and off Friday night, over and over, a clear message. 

I saw, I saw, I saw. 

Richie’s tongue dries out, feels heavy and shriveled in his mouth. Mummified. 

“I’ll tell him you asked for him,” Sonia says cheerfully, probably pleased by the paleness of his face, the blood draining in one fell swoop. “Have a good day, Richard.” 

She does not wait for him to respond—he can’t, anyway—and closes the door. It clicks shut gently, but the malice is still there in the way she locks up: first the knob, then the deadlock, and then the chain. No one is getting in that house. No one is getting out, either. 

Richie breathes in and out slowly, carefully, and turns on his heel, away from this awful woman and her toxic house, and all but trips going down the steps. He can feel her watching him, but he doesn’t know from where, and he can imagine her like a fairytale villain, like Maleficent, or the Big, Bad Wolf, or the Evil Queen, thrilled that she got away with it, happy to win by destruction. 

His car is, thankfully, warm when he gets back in it. He slouches down his seat, contorting his back and pulling his legs up, leaning his knees on the steering wheel. From this angle, he can see the second floor of the house, and he peers up at one of Eddie’s bedroom windows. He can’t see anything, but he imagines him anyway. 

Soft, cozy, bundled up in bed, sick—sick because of Richie, who should’ve taken better care of himself, who might have a tiny cold, but nothing as bad as—

He’s not sick, his brain supplies. He’s not sick, and you know it. She’s keeping him there. She’s manipulative and controlling and incredibly selfish and you know that she’s just—

Richie slams his fist against the wheel, shakes out his hand, and presses play on his radio. It takes a second, and Whitney Houston’s voice warbles out mid-song. He hadn’t changed the tape since Eddie was in here.

I remember the way that we touched
I wish I didn’t like it so much 

His finger hovers over the eject button, but then he thinks otherwise, putting his car in drive and pulling away from the house, down the road.

I get so emotional, baby
Every time I think of you

His watch reads seven-ten, a truly unreasonable time for him to be knocking the way he is—loud, insistent, relentless. He hits a beat against the door and falters, realizing that it’s to the tune of that dumb song he’d listened to on the way here. 

His hand is thisclose to slamming against the door again when it opens wide. 

“Good morning, Andrea,” Richie says breathlessly. “Is Stan up?” 

Stan’s mom has a throw towel wrapped around her hands, drying them off, her hair in a messy bun at the nape of her neck, and a bemused smile on her face. “If he’s not, I’ll kill him,” she says, the joke a mom makes when she’s probably yelled at her son to get out of bed four times already. “Go on ahead upstairs. I give you permission to jump on him if he’s still asleep.” 

“What an honor,” Richie replies, holding a hand over his heart. “Thank you for trusting me.” 

She clicks her tongue, amused, and steps aside, letting him in. Richie knows the rules here, kicks his shoes off on the mat, and races past her, taking the stairs three at a time. For once, his too-long legs are good for something. 

Stan’s door is slightly ajar, still dark, with no movement inside. Stan doesn’t have to be at school this early either, so he probably takes his time. Richie is the only sad sack in the Losers Club that gets up at the crack of dawn to drive someone to school when he doesn’t have to be there himself. He knocks tentatively, pushes it open the rest of the way, and when Stan doesn’t make a sound, he—well.

Richie whines, “Staaaaan,” bounces on the mattress, and then burrows beneath the covers next to him. Not exactly what his mother wanted, but, you know. 

“This is a nightmare,” Stan says immediately, voice heavy, laced with sleep, but alert enough. “I’m going to wake up and you won’t be here.” 

“Stan,” Richie says again. “You’re so mean.”

He rolls over, hair mussed to one side of his head, creases from his pillow on his cheek, and opens one eye. He looks past Richie, sighs. “I still have twenty minutes.”

“Your mom says if you’re not up, she’ll kill you,” Richie replies. “Seems pretty serious. Wouldn’t want to get on Andrea Uris’ bad side, personally, but you know her better than me.” 

Stan groans, drags a hand over his face, and flops onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. He looks tired. Richie feels bad for bothering him. “What are you doing here, Rich?” 

“Wanted to snuggle,” he says immediately. He shifts closer, presses his nose into Stan’s shoulder.

“We never snuggle,” Stan replies, but he must hear something in the tone of Richie’s voice because he knocks him off his arm and pats the top of his head, running his fingers through Richie’s hair like he’s a dog. “Thought that was a thing you pretended you and Eddie didn’t do together.” 

Richie stiffens, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries, pointlessly, to remember when he’d ever told Stan about that. “Want to snuggle with you today,” he says lightly, trying to cut the tension he thinks he’s carrying around with him. The tension Sonia wrapped him up in before he’d left the Kaspbrak porch. “Can’t a guy hold his BFF in bed without getting asked a million questions?”

“If it’s me and you, no,” Stan answers honestly. “What’s the matter?” 

“I missed you,” he says grandly. 

“You saw me on Friday,” Stan shoots back. “We watched E.T.” 

“And now it’s Monday,” Richie sing-songs. “It’s been two whole days, Urine. How am I supposed to survive that?” 

Stan snorts derisively. “Easily. We do it all the time.” 

“Listen,” Richie says, leaning into Stan’s touch when he scratches at his scalp. He stops, considering what he was about to say, and the words die on his lips. 

Stan waits a beat, hums a little as he works at a knot at the end of Richie’s messy mop of hair. “I am. Do you plan on talking?”

Somehow you’re my best friend, Richie hears him say, three days ago, standing in the Derry High hallway outside Eddie’s locker. You can tell me anything, you know. Contrary to popular belief, I will not judge you. 

And, look, Stan judges everyone—the jocks for being, well, jocks, and Greta for not knowing how to style her curly hair, and the last of Bowers’ minions for being “senseless, idiotic followers with no sense of self,” and Ben for his taste in books, and their physics teacher for her desire to be well-liked by the so-called popular kids in class, always gossiping with them instead of teaching. 

But Stan has never done that to Richie. Richie has done some pretty stupid things, too, which would warrant a good judgmental slap to the head, but Stan… Stan does not. He looks at Richie like he wants to punch him sometimes, but he dusts him off, talks him down, listens. Always listens. Never mocks his thought processes or acts confused when Richie gets good grades in school, like everyone else does, even Richie’s own parents. In fact, he was the one who suggested Eddie ask him to tutor him in math. 

Stan knows him, and he’s known him like this for years. No matter how annoying or outrageous or ill-mannered Richie can be, Stan has stayed. Stan has not left. 

I will not judge you, he said. 

Perhaps he won’t leave now, either.

Richie takes a deep breath, says, “Eddie kissed me on Friday,” and rolls over, facing the other direction. Stan’s arm is trapped beneath him. 

There. 

It’s out.

The admittance hovers over them, heavy like a raincloud ready to burst. Richie counts the seconds they remain in silence, the breaths he takes. 

One two three four. Stan moves, following after him, and presses his chest to his back. They do not cuddle, they do not share beds like this, and they do not show affection unless it is through overly violent wrestling matches, but Stan throws his other arm around Richie’s front, hooks his chin over his shoulder, and says, “I thought you said nothing happened. That it wasn’t a date.” 

“I—lied,” Richie mumbles. He feels awful for keeping that from Stan, who knew, who knows, and has never said a thing, has never acted any differently towards him. “I… do you—is it… it doesn’t change anything about us, does it?” 

Stan scoffs. “If it did,” he says, “I don’t think I’d be literally spooning you, you know?”

“You’re very good at it,” says Richie. “I feel very safe. Very supported. Warm.” 

“Thanks,” Stan replies dryly. “So, what happened? You kissed. And?” 

“Well, I mean,” Richie starts, staring at Stan’s Nirvana poster, hung kind of crookedly on his closet door. “He held my hand at the movie, and he told me he thought about me all the time, and I didn’t know he liked me, is all.” 

“You didn’t know,” Stan repeats, baffled. “Richie, you didn’t know?” 

“Was I supposed to?” 

“The two of you are—“ Stan stops himself, inhales noisily. “You are infuriating. God, if I could just show you… you really… Eddie’s had, like, moon eyes for you for years.” 

“He couldn’t stand me for years,” Richie says. “He was constantly insulting me and beating me up.” 

Stan pinches him at the wrist, where he can grab hold of skin. “And you make terrible jokes to show affection,” he shoots back. “What’s the difference?” 

“The difference is I’m… I’m me”—synonymous with disgusting and irritating and an overall nuisance—“and Eddie’s… he’s… he’s—“ 

“He’s what?” 

“A lot of things,” Richie replies. “Too good for me, first of all.” 

And perfect, and beautiful, and enthralling, and kind, and so incredibly strong, and the bravest person Richie’s ever met. You know, to name a few.

“Eddie is an asshole,” Stan corrects. “You are two peas in a pod.” 

“We’re all assholes,” Richie shoots back, “except for maybe Ben. It’s why we’re all friends.” 

“I’d like to think it’s more than that, but sure,” Stan says. “I’m not going to say he’s too good for you. You even each other out. But that’s not why you’re here.” 

“No,” Richie admits. 

“What happened?” Stan asks. “Did it not go well? Was it not everything you’ve dreamed it’d be?” 

Richie runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “It was—it was better than that,” he says, because he couldn’t have imagined Eddie’s mouth on his. The way it felt. The way it tasted. Even the best fantasies he’s had don’t compare. He knows how he feels, how he sounds. Everything else is noise compared to that. Is wrong. 

“Okay, great. Why are you in crisis mode? Does he not want to do it again or something?” The question is asked gently, but Richie feels it like a punch to the gut. 

“I don’t,” he starts, then changes course. “Do you think I’m dirty?” he asks instead. “Do you think me luh-liking buh-boys”—fuck, he sounds like Bill, and his cheeks heat up—“makes me sick?” 

God. Fuck. What a goddamn question. 

Stan tenses, and then he’s squeezing Richie tight, making it hard to breathe, just a bit. “Of course I think you’re dirty,” he replies, good natured, “we don’t call you Trashmouth for nothing.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Richie breathes out.

“No, I don’t,” Stan replies, “and anyone who does is a fucking bigot. Fuck whatever Sonia said to you, alright? I know it was her. It’s always her.” 

“I told him I’d call him,” Richie continues, “and when I left here on Friday, I did, but he didn’t pick up like he said he would. The number was, like, out of service or something, and it stayed like that all weekend.” 

Stan sighs. “She probably unplugged it or something.” 

“She said he was sick when I went to pick him up today. Said she always told him to be careful around me because I wasn’t healthy or whatever.” Richie sniffs. “She made it seem like it was my fault that Eddie has the flu.” 

“Where’d you guys kiss?” Stan asks, wriggling one of his feet between Richie’s. 

“In my car,” Richie mumbles. 

“In the movie theater parking lot? At the diner? Where?” 

“Outside his house,” Richie says. 

A beat. “I don’t think Eddie has the flu, Richie,” Stan says softly. 

Richie shakes his head. “The lights were off. It was dark. She couldn’t have seen.” 

“She sees what she wants to see,” Stan reminds him. “We don’t know what she thinks she knows, but she must’ve thought maybe Eddie was—she’d hate him being gay.” 

“We don’t know if he's—“ 

“You don’t, maybe,” Stan interrupts, “but on top of that, she’d hate that he chose you, who is always encouraging him to be a better, more independent version of himself.”

“We all do that.” 

“He listens to you the most,” Stan tells him. “If you weren’t there, if you didn’t support him, I don’t think he’d do half the things he’s done. He joined the fucking track team because you said he’d look cute in those shorts for fuck’s sake. He revamped his entire schedule going into ninth grade because you told him he was smart enough for it.”

Richie rolls his eyes, which Stan can’t see. “He did that on his own, for himself,” he says. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.” But he did think Eddie would look cute in those shorts, and he was right. He loves track meets. 

“All you have to do is listen to him and not shoot down his ideas,” Stan says. “You’re his biggest fan. If he wants to do something, you tell him to go for it, and you don’t care if he fails. You’re always there.”

“We’re all—“ 

“Will you shut up?” Stan demands. “Yes, we’re all there for him. We all said joining a sport would be good for him. We all agreed that he can do with some more challenging classes. But you’re the one whose opinion matters the most to him and that probably pisses Sonia off. You know she wants to keep him in her own little bubble. She’s such a bit—“

Stan’s alarm blares, a loud ringing that startles Richie so badly he jumps, elbowing Stan in the thigh. 

“Turn that off,” Stan instructs. The moment has ended. “You’re driving me to school today.”

“Yeah, sure,” Richie agrees. He’s already here. 

They untangle from each other, but Richie wraps himself up in his sheets while Stan puts around the room, getting his shit together so he can shower. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he tells him, standing in the doorway. “You like who you like and it doesn’t matter to me who that is. Don’t let her get to you.” He pauses, pink in the cheeks like he’s realized just how earnest he’s been. “He likes you, too.” 

“Thanks, Stan,” Richie murmurs. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I think you should talk to him, though. Not her.” 

“How? It’s not like I can call ahead or that she’ll let me in.” 

Stan fixes him with a look. “You’re telling me you have no other way to see Eddie? None?” 

He disappears, then, to the bathroom at the end of the hall, and Richie sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. 

Well, no, he thinks. There’s another way. 

Stan goes out of his way to pick up schoolwork for Eddie, telling his teachers he’s out with a cold, and piles it up with the rest of his stuff. 

He sits in Richie’s car after the final bell, scrawls something on the back of his Spanish II homework, and has Richie drop him off down the block and around the corner from Eddie’s house. 

Richie waits for him, finally switches the tape out in his radio, and idly taps his fingers to the beat of Queen’s Hammer To Fall.

“Hopefully he actually decides to do his homework,” Stan says, nose and cheeks red from the cold, “or else he’s going to be remarkably surprised when you show up later.” 

“I thought you took French,” Richie comments, driving them down and away, back to eat dinner at Stan’s. 

“I do,” Stan says, “so it’s unclear if he’ll be able to translate what I wrote.” 

“Great,” Richie grumbles. 

Stan flicks him. “It’s just a heads up,” he says. “It’s not like he’s not going to let you in his room.” 

He learns from last time and parks his car two blocks over, making the frozen trek over to Eddie’s with his hood up and a scarf wrapped around his neck. Richie counts his footfalls, tries to keep from stepping on cracks, and inches towards the Kaspbrak residence like a mediocre thief. He stops at the edge of his lawn, squints behind his glasses at the window, lit up, curtains half-drawn, to see Sonia putzing about the kitchen. It looks like she’s putting the kettle on. 

Richie sneaks across the grass like a shadow, quick and swift, and stops at the base of the tree on the side of the house, where years and years ago, there’d been a treehouse, a remnant of Eddie’s father. Sonia tore it down when they were nine, terrified of the amount of splinters Eddie’d gotten in the span of two weeks. It’s the only way Richie knows it’ll hold his weight. The four of them—he, Bill, Stan, Eddie—used to huddle up in there, playing cars, or whatever they were obsessed with at the time. Explorers, maybe. 

He hoists himself up the tree, digging his heels where he knows he can fit them. He scrambles with his hands, nails in the bark, palms slicing, and hurries up the trunk until he’s situated on the bottommost branch. From there, it’s easier, Richie pulling himself up and throwing his legs over others, higher up, until he’s staring at the window that leads into Eddie’s bedroom. Slow and steady, he scoots down the limb until he’s balancing precariously. He holds it tight with his thighs, leans forward, and grips the frame of the window. 

He taps his knuckles twice on the glass so Eddie doesn’t think he’s breaking and entering, and slides it up. 

Getting in is a bit harder than climbing the tree was, but Richie manages it, palm against the side of the house to keep his balance. He sort of, kind of tumbles inside, which was not his intention; there’s no need to make more noise than necessary, to capture Sonia’s attention.

There are hands on his back, righting him before he falls flat on his ass, and then there is Eddie, smirking over him, endlessly amused by his clumsiness. “You’re late,” he accuses. 

Richie smiles down at him—at his little dimples, and his fiery gaze, and the color of the sweater he’s wearing. Fuck. “Late?” 

Eddie clears his throat and says a series of words in what he thinks is Spanish but is just gibberish to Richie in the end. He stares blankly at him. “Keep your window open,” Eddie translates. “Seven o’clock.” He indicates to the clock at his bedside. “It’s later than that.” 

“By ten minutes, dude,” Richie says. “It’s not like it’s eight.” 

“I like when people are punctual,” Eddie retorts. 

“You’re always late for everything,” Richie reminds him. “Practice what you preach maybe.” 

Eddie purses his lips, narrowing his eyes a little, and his mouth quirks up the tiniest bit. “Sure,” he says after a moment. “Anything for you.” 

“You’re not going to try, are you?” 

“Nah,” Eddie says, “probably not.” He tugs at the sweater, a pale yellow that makes him fuckin’ glow, highlighting the color of his skin, of the tan that still clings, so many months after summer’s end. He looks golden, almost, and Richie is intrigued by the way he swims in the thing, engulfed in its size, making him look smaller, cozier, than usual. 

This strikes Richie as important. The sharp jut of his collarbones peek out of the neck. The hem hits the middle of his thighs, right above his knees, and the sleeves dangle. The longer Richie stares at him, the more he realizes this isn’t Eddie’s. It doesn’t fit him. It dwarfs him.

It’s familiar, though. The cut, the shade, the material. It’s from Freese’s, Richie knows, but more importantly, it’s from—

“Is that mine?” he blurts. 

Eddie fists the sleeves in his hands, pulling them beneath his fingers, and nods shyly. “Yeah,” he says. “I stole it.” 

It’s his. Eddie is wearing something that belongs to him.

“When?” 

“I was cold a few weeks back,” Eddie replies, like he knows the exact day, moment, conversation they had. “You gave it to me. I never gave it back.” 

Yellow, yellow, yellow. Of course Richie would have a yellow sweater to give him. Of course. 

He wets his lips, coughs, says, “It looks better on you.” 

Eddie’s cheeks flush prettily, dusted pink, and Richie hears Stan’s voice, ringing in his ears. You didn’t know? 

No, he didn’t. He really fucking didn’t. 

Eddie rushes forward, a blur of color, and throws his arms around Richie, who falls limp before he returns the gesture, squeezing him back, holding him close. He smells nice—clean and pepperminty, an assault on Richie’s senses. He feels lightheaded, almost, overwhelmed by all that Eddie is. 

He’s never noticed how easily Eddie fits against him… or maybe he has. Maybe he’s always known that Eddie can match him in all aspects, the other half of him. The missing pieces. You’re not supposed to let someone make you whole, that’s what they say, but Richie’s been doing that for years, turning this tiny boy into home. 

“Did you call?” Eddie asks, muffled by Richie’s chest. 

Richie nods into his hair. “Yeah.” 

“Sorry I didn’t answer,” Eddie murmurs. His sweater paws roam Richie’s back, sliding up and under his hoodie, his threadbare long-sleeved shirt. Richie shivers. “I don’t exactly know where the phone is.” 

“It’s okay,” Richie says, the voice of a teenage boy who did not have a weekend-long crisis and then climb into his best friend’s bed to mope. No, he is a boy who has his shit together and understands things happen and sometimes they are out of his control. He gets it. He does. He does. 

“No, it’s not,” Eddie mutters, annoyed. “I said I would—and I didn’t, but she—“ 

“I understand,” Richie says. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Your mom is… she’s… she’s your mom. I know how she is.” 

Eddie shakes his head and wriggles out of Richie’s grasp, which he hates. He feels cold suddenly, despite his weak attempts at covering up. “She knows,” Eddie tells him. He tries so hard to maintain eye contact, but he can’t, not for long, and his gaze flickers from Richie to something else and back again. “I mean, she suspected, which is why she would try to keep me in the house all the time, but she knows now.” 

“Knows what?” Richie asks, like an idiot.

“That I like boys,” Eddie says, so easily, so bravely, while Richie struggles and talks around it, in circles, in a way only people like Stan can decipher. “That I like you.” 

That I like you.

That I like you.

That I like you. 

Is that the sound of angels singing? Is it hot in here? Did Richie fall from the tree and hit his head and this is an intense hallucination? 

Richie is tongue-tied, unable to respond, which is good, probably, because he doesn’t know what to say to him. It’s not every day his innermost fantasies turn into reality, you know? They don’t prepare you for that. 

“She saw,” Eddie says. “That’s why I couldn’t answer the phone. She just… moved it, and she made me go with her everywhere this weekend, and I fucking hate visiting my aunt. She still pinches my cheeks like I’m seven.” 

Raggedly, Richie croaks, “Because you’re so cute.” 

“Well, it annoys me and it kind of hurts,” Eddie says. “I don’t care how cute she thinks I am. I think it’s condescending, like she also thinks I’m a baby.” 

“You’re not,” Richie replies. “I don’t think—it was dark, Eds, how could she have seen? We have, like, very similar eyesight problems.” 

“I don’t know, with binoculars? A telescope?” Eddie rubs at his neck, right at the underside of his jaw, which Richie remembers mapping out with his teeth, his tongue, his lips. “And you weren’t exactly… subtle.” 

“What do you me—“ Eddie lifts his chin in response, showing off the dark, healing bruise on his skin, the shape of Richie’s mouth. It’s purple and red, bigger than necessary, and the edges are beginning to turn yellow. Green. “It wasn’t like you were telling me to stop,” he says, mesmerized by it. He did that. Eddie let him—him, Richie Tozier, the dude with the trashy sense of humor that couldn’t sit still—do that. 

“You’re right,” Eddie agrees. “I liked it.” 

Richie nods, pulling his glasses off and wiping the lenses with the end of his scarf. He needs a break from looking at him. He’s going to fall apart if he keeps this up. “Me too,” he mumbles. The taste of him, the feel of him—there’s nothing better. He sniffs. “Why aren’t you covering it up, if she’s so upset with you? Wait, are you sick? No, right?” 

“She thinks I am,” Eddie says sourly. “She wants me to talk to someone”—he uses air-quotes here, curling his fingers in the air—“about this, but I think she wants to have someone talk me out of it, like it’s something I can control. I sneezed once this weekend and she went into a frenzy of me getting, like, mononucleosis.” 

“From a sneeze?” From me. 

Eddie shrugs. “An excuse to get me to stay home, to get me to the doctor.” 

“And you let her get away with it?” 

“It’s easier than fighting her,” Eddie admits. “She can make a scene at home or she can do it at school, with everyone around who already thinks I’m crazy. And it’s not like I’m lying down and taking it, you know? I could’ve worn the turtleneck she picked out for me, but I didn’t. I wore this.” He flaps his arms. 

Richie slides his glasses back on, glances at the hickey, and tries to focus on Eddie’s words. “My sweater.” 

“Yeah, and on top of her knowing it’s yours, it doesn’t cover it up, and she has to see it whenever she wants to see me,” Eddie explains. “It’s a reminder that she can do as much as she wants, but she can’t control everything about me.” 

“A reminder,” Richie parrots, gaze falling back on it.

“For her and for me,” Eddie admits. “I can let her get away with so much just to ignore a fight, but I can’t let her try to take this away, to convince me that it’s wrong. That I’m wrong. Because…” He trails off, then comes back stronger than ever, because that’s what he does. That’s who he is. “Because liking you, kissing you… that didn’t feel wrong. It felt… it was… it’s the only thing I’ve ever done that felt right, you know?” 

Yes, yes, I do know. I agree. Why do you think I follow you around? That I’m always near you? You’re the only thing that makes sense, that calms me down, that can organize this frazzled brain of mine. 

And, boy, would that be a great thing to say, wouldn’t it? 

But Richie has no motor skills or the ability to critically think, reduced to mush, and he says, “Do you need help with your math homework?” 

Eddie’s hopeful face falls just a smidge. Richie watches it, feels it crash land into his gut. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Um.” Eddie scratches the skin by his ear. “Yeah, actually,” he says. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t get it.”

“Okay,” Richie says. “I can show you.” 

“Cool,” Eddie replies. “I’m just—I’m doing it on my bed. Do you want me to move to my desk, or—?” 

Richie shakes his head and clamors onto the mattress. He dislodges a number of papers as he gets settled and searches for the worksheets he glanced at earlier. “Here is fine,” he tells him, plucking up something with a bunch of graphs. Slope, maybe? Equations for Eddie to memorize, no doubt. “Come on.” He pats the space next to him, perusing the questions, trying to formulate the best way to explain it to him. 

Eddie listens to him, settling in next to him, close to his side. His touch burns against Richie, who is still wearing his hoodie, but can feel Eddie’s arm all the way down to the atoms that make him up. They all vibrate with it, the close proximity to him, eager and waiting and remembering. 

He is halfway through his explanation, using Eddie’s notebook to scribble down what’s most important, showing him examples, when he says, “It felt right for me, too.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah,” Richie replies. “Felt like you were the only thing in the entire world that made sense.” He clears his throat, uncomfortable, and thrusts a pencil and the worksheet into Eddie’s lap. “Try question one and we can go over it if you still don’t get it.” 

Eddie’s fingers brush against his, and he ducks over his work, reading the question with a critical eye. “Do you tutor other kids in math?” 

“They want me to,” Richie says, watching him—the line of his jaw, the shadows casted on his cheeks from his lashes, the hair that curls by his ear. “I won’t though. I don’t need another reason for everyone to think I’m a fucking loser.” 

“I don’t think you’re a loser for doing this,” Eddie says. “You’re really smart. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” 

Richie ignores the warmth the compliment brings. “Hate to break it to you, Spaghetti, but you’re a loser too. Your opinion means shit-all.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. “Whatever. I think it’s cool.”

He doesn’t need to know he’s lying through his goddamn teeth. His opinion means everything. Maybe Richie will let them sic some other kid on him just because Eddie said so. 

When Eddie turns to ask him a question, Richie leans over and braces himself with a hand on his back. He traces the bone of his spine with his thumb, leaves his palm there, and debates spelling out his feelings across his shoulders. He twists the hair at Eddie’s neck around his finger instead, and the thought persists. 

I like you too, he imagines telling him, tapping it out on his bare skin beneath his sweater. He doesn’t, even though it’d be so easy, like everything with Eddie is. He thinks he already knows. 

Stan’s handwriting is illegible, cramped into the corner of his notebook paper, right above where he wrote the date. How’d it go? 

He wanted to answer the phone, Richie writes back, glancing up at their teacher, but his mom did something with it. 

Told you.

Shut up and pay attention.

That’s rich, coming from you. 

I will not let you copy my notes, Richie warns. 

Stan scoffs audibly, writes, Asshole. 

Richie draws a big heart beneath it. 

Richie continues to climb through Eddie’s window after dinner each night Eddie is out of school. It’s day three, a Wednesday, and Richie trips his way into his bedroom again, tumbling face-first into the bean bag Eddie moved from the other wall. 

Eddie snorts at him, but doesn’t get up, still bent over his work. Richie looks at the parenthesis shape of his spine, the intensity on his face, the way he chews on his pen. He stays there, gazing at him, and says, “I brought cookies.” 

There’s a baggie in his pocket, his mom’s homemade chocolate chip, made because Richie let it slip that Eddie’d been home all week. 

“Did Maggie make them or you?” Eddie flips urgently through his book, Pride and Prejudice again, looking for something in particular.

“Mags,” Richie answers. “What are you up to? How was today?” 

Eddie closes the book around his pen, marking the page. “English paper,” he says. “She took my temperature. Told me I had a fever. It was only ninety-nine.” 

“That’s nothing,” Richie says, climbing around him, legs spread wide, fitting Eddie between them. He scoots back, huddling into Richie’s chest, leeching warmth from him. 

“I know,” says Eddie. “I pretended I did, though, so I stayed up here all day. Ate some soup for lunch. Took a nap.” 

“I wish,” Richie replies, dropping his chin on top of Eddie’s head. He can read his notes from here, a rough outline of the paper he’ll end up writing, etched out in his neat handwriting. 

“No, you don’t,” Eddie says back. “It’s so boring. I look forward to you coming, if only so I can talk to someone besides myself.” 

Richie’s heart ricochets in his chest. Eddie can definitely feel it. “Favorite part of my day, too,” he agrees. “Maybe not for the same reason, but.” 

Eddie fits their fingers together, holding Richie’s hand in his lap, and sighs. “I’ve been thinking,” he tells him.

“Very dangerous of you.” 

“Oh, shut up,” Eddie snaps, light and airy. “I was just—when did they turn into dates for you?” 

“What?” 

“All the things we do.” Eddie clears his throat. “When did you stop and look at them and think, oh, this is a date?” 

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “Do you?” 

Eddie folds the edge of his notebook paper, making deep creases, dawdling. “I think,” he says, “that I may have always thought they were. Hoped, more like. It’s what I wanted, deep down.” 

“What was? Dates to the diner?” 

“No. You.” 

“Me?” 

“Yes,” Eddie says. “You. Remember, on Valentine’s Day, when I told you that—when I asked if there was a word for someone who is more than a best friend?” 

“Sure,” says Richie. “I thought about that. How about bestest friend?” 

“A real contender,” Eddie quips, “but I think it’s more like you’re my—” He pauses. “My soulmate.” 

Richie parrots him, heart in his throat, stomach doing somersaults. “Soulmate.” 

Eddie nods, his hair brushing against Richie’s chin. “The… I’ve always thought of you as the other half of me,” he says, hesitant and awkward, though he doesn’t try to leave Richie’s hold. “You mean a lot to me, and you’re my best friend, but in a way that Bill can never be. I want to tell you everything, and I want your opinions on things, and I want to be near you all the time. My mom, she doesn’t—“

“We don’t need to talk about her,” Richie interrupts.

“But I want you to know—“

“I already do.” 

“She’s going to get in the way. She’s going to make it seem like there’s something wrong with me,” Eddie says. He picks up his book, flips to a random page, and underlines something a few paragraphs down. “With us, but I don’t want you to think that I—that this isn’t what I want.” 

A shudder runs through Richie, which he tries to hide, and he cards his fingers through the hair by Eddie’s ear, tugging at his earlobe. “What do you want?” 

Eddie lifts his head, looks at Richie upside down, and says, with the definitive power of someone who knows, and has always known, “You.” 

“Me,” Richie breathes out, trying to send a message to his heart to shut the fuck up, maybe. “You want—you want me.”

His eyes are so pretty, glittering in the light, focused on Richie’s face, and he swallows, staring back at him. He can probably see everything Richie has ever thought about him, reflected right there in his gaze, and he doesn’t try to hide it. It’s been four years coming. 

Longer, maybe. Lifetimes. 

Eddie’s mouth quirks, soft and sweet. “Yeah, Rich,” he says. “How many times do I have to say it? You.” 

Throat dry, tongue heavy, Richie asks, “Why?” like a fucking loser—which he is, he guesses. 

He gets lost in Eddie’s eyes as he considers the question, contemplates his answer, and barely registers when Eddie moves, twisting around, settling into his lap. He wants him, Richie, and his thoughts are fragmented pieces of other things, trying to make a cohesive reason as to why the most perfect boy in the entire world would want anything to do with Richie, a colossal mess, who manages to exclusively say the wrong things at the wrong times.

But maybe… maybe he doesn’t say the wrong things around Eddie. Maybe he says the right thing. 

“Why not?” Eddie asks back, nose to nose. Richie has to cross his eyes to see him; it makes his head hurt and everything else blurry around him. It fucks up the prescription of his glasses, probably. “You get me. You always have, even when we were little. You don’t ever get mad when I don’t understand things, and you take the time to explain them. You’ve never given up on me, and you don’t let my mom define me, even if she’s right—“

“—she’s never been right—“

“—and you push me to do things I’d normally be too afraid to do,” Eddie says. His eyes are wide, irises so brown, so golden, so green. Richie focuses on them, on how the combination of colors might be his most favorite. He’ll never find a crayon that matches. “Because I think I’ve wanted you my whole life—wanted your attention, and your opinions, and you to… to touch me, even when I didn’t want anyone else to.” 

Hand holding, long hugs, fingers wrapped around his wrist. Deliberate touches to his shoulders, his side, his face. 

Richie blinks, runs his tongue over his teeth. “I’ve always wanted you to look at me, too,” he admits, vulnerable and honest and terrified. “Even when I didn’t want attention, I wanted yours. I wanted you to see me.” See how much I’ve loved you, since that first time we met in elementary school. I’d do anything for you, I think. 

Look at me, look at me, look at me. Look at me and like what you see. Be the first person who doesn’t run away.

“I do,” Eddie murmurs. He is so close, so nice, so pretty, and Richie flinches back, overcome by the smell of him. “I’ve always looked. I’ve always seen. I never knew how to stop.”

“Today,” he says, words pulled from him in a frenzied blurt, “Bill went after those dumb kids who used to hang out with Bowers. They made fun of Stan, and he yelled at them, and he didn’t even have a stutter—“

Eddie’s fingers come up to grip his cheeks, soft and hot against his skin, and Richie’s hands follow, hovering over them. They’re both trembling, he thinks. “Rich,” he says, a ghost of a breath, hardly discernible, “I love Bill, and I’m sure Stan didn’t deserve it, but I don’t want to talk about them.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Richie asks, heart pounding. His nerves make the pads of his fingers tap against Eddie’s, light and fidgety. “Do you need homework help again?”

“No,” Eddie says. “I don’t want to talk about school.”

“What do you—“ 

Eddie slides his hands into Richie curls, mussed from the wind. “I like your hair,” he says, twisting his fingers into it, right at his neck. “I like your glasses. I like how you’ve climbed into my bedroom and helped me with my work the past three days. I like that—I like that you’re here. I like that she’s downstairs and you’re up here and there’s nothing she can do about it because she doesn’t know. I like you, and there can’t be anything wrong with that, because if there’s anything wrong with how you make me feel, I don’t want to be right. My mom’s made me feel bad enough as it is, she can’t make me feel bad about this.” 

“How do I make you feel?” Richie asks dumbly, his mind powering off. His hands hover between them, not touching, but close. 

“Safe,” Eddie says immediately, and no one has ever looked at Richie and thought He can protect me. It warms him from the toes up. “Like I matter.”

“Of course you matter,” Richie breathes out, lost in the gaze that has not left his. He curls his fingers around Eddie’s neck, thumb prodding at the mark he left there last week, fading fast, but still prominent. Yellowing. “Sometimes it feels like you’re the only thing that does.” 

Eddie blinks at him, pressing his nose against his. Their mouths are a breath away, the tension thick between them, solid and tangible. Every single one of Richie’s cells are buzzing with his proximity, urging him to close the gap. To mold them together. 

Eddie looks at him expectantly, like he’s waiting. 

“The whole time,” Richie says, a disconnect between his brain, his mouth, his hands. Is he in control of his body? Is he in control of anything? 

“Hm?” Eddie hums, nails dragging against Richie’s scalp.

“They were dates for me the whole time,” Richie’s mouth says. His brain shrieks, his heart pounds, and he feels like he’s been cut open so thoroughly all of his organs are on display. His teeth pry themselves open, words forming on his tongue. “Everything we’ve done has always meant something to me, even if it didn’t seem important. It was to me.”

A long silence follows, Eddie’s eyes searching, digging deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and then he breathes, “Are you going to kiss me?” 

“With your mom downstairs?”

“She never comes up here,” Eddie says. “She just sends me here, tells me I’m sick, and leaves me alone.” He tangles his fingers into Richie’s hair, cups the back of his head with his palm. “Every night I wait for you to kiss me and you never do.” 

“Have you ever considered climbing out your window when she does this?” 

“Richie.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“All my report cards say no, so I’m gonna go with—“ 

Eddie breaches the space between them, practically nonexistent, and slants his mouth over Richie’s, swallowing whatever he was going to say next. It’s slow at first, sending shocks up Richie’s spine, and then he moves, too, insistent and wanting. Eddie opens up under him, tugs him closer and closer until they’re a twisted mess of limbs with no definitive end or beginning, just EddieandRichie, no spaces in between.

One of them makes a low keening sound, though it’s unclear who, and something swirls in Richie’s stomach, crashing violently through him like a wave against the shore. He tilts his head, changes the angle. Eddie’s hands slip and slide down his back, bunching the fabric of his pullover, digging into his shoulders. He holds tight and scoots forward, knocking Richie back onto his pillows. 

Their kiss breaks then and Richie is struck by the way Eddie looks, straddling him like this, weight on his thighs, hips against his own. He is a vision, but that’s nothing new, with his pink cheeks and his bright eyes and the swollen lips. His hair is a mess, and Richie lifts a hand to fix it, brushing it back into his usual part. It swoops, not quite right, but Richie likes when Eddie gets like this, stops looking so proper and put together. It’s why he likes going to his track meets so much; Eddie always ends up sweaty and windblown, looking like a boy straight out of his sister’s romance novels.

Richie doesn’t read those; he just looks at the covers sometimes.

“I really like you,” Richie blurts. 

Eddie nuzzles at his palm, resting on his cheek, and drops down to his elbows. He doesn’t reply, ghosting kisses down Richie’s face, wet and hot, his tongue following along, tracing the line of his jaw. Richie goes boneless, trying to regulate his breathing, and Eddie bites down on his neck, sucking the skin between his teeth, and Richie gasps, jerking his hips up and forward.

Eddie whimpers, hesitates, and then rolls back, and Richie matches him, straining in his pants. His whole body vibrates with the sensation, and he grabs Eddie by the cheeks, kissing him soundly on the mouth, rutting against him. Eddie’s sigh floods his bloodstream, makes him woozy, and his hands, traveling down his chest to the zip of his jeans make him pause, make him shake, make him want.

“Do you,” Eddie starts, “can I—? I think…” He clears his throat, looks Richie in the eye, pupils blown and kind of glassy. “I think it would feel better if… if you weren’t wearing your pants.” 

“You want to—I—yeah, okay.” Richie fumbles to take them off, snagging his nail against the teeth of the zipper, and shoves them down his legs, kicking them off when they bunch at his ankles. 

Eddie stares at him, at his plaid boxers, at the very obvious attraction he’s feeling towards him, and lunges forward, kissing him hard and fast. Their teeth clank together, and he bites down on his lip in his haste, and Richie feels his heart in his ears, racing loud, when Eddie lowers down again. It’s nervous, a little, slow, and Richie swallows back a super unflattering sound when Eddie’s sweatpants brush against him. 

“Mm,” Eddie mumbles, “no,” and he shoves his own pants down, leaving them at his knees. 

Richie cannot stop the groan that escapes him when Eddie moves against him again, such little material separating the two of them. Eddie slaps his hand over Richie’s mouth, trying to silence him, and that makes matters worse. Better. No, worse, probably. Richie likes being shut up. 

Their hips find a rhythm good for both of them, slow and steady at first, and then jerky and quick. Richie watches a dampness blossom where Eddie’s tip is, staining the front of his underwear, and his mouth waters. 

Heat fills his belly, travels from his toes to his face, and Richie whacks Eddie’s hand from his face, pulls him down by the back of his neck and kisses him again, sloppy and wet, moving faster and faster, chasing the feeling. Eddie grunts and bites on his lip so hard he breaks the flesh, making him bleed, and Richie cares so little, pawing at Eddie—at his hair, his back, the meat of his ass. He drags his hands up to his hips, digging his fingernails into the skin at his sides, and keeps up the pace until he’s overwhelmed, overcome, and panting, thisclose to—

“Richie,” Eddie mumbles, going stock still, a tremor wracking his spine. It’s the way he says his name that pushes Richie off the edge.

Richie gasps into Eddie’s mouth, kissing him through it, and Eddie giggles, responding in kind, excessive and sloppy. He drops onto Richie like dead weight. “I really like you too,” he says back, and they don’t know this now, but twenty-three years from now, that will be what saves him.

For now, Richie, uncomfortable in his wet boxers, holds Eddie tight to his chest, and asks, “Do you want to go on a real date this weekend?” 

Eddie presses his mouth to the skin beneath Richie’s ear. “Only if you get me flowers,” he says. 

“I’ll buy out the florist,” Richie promises, and Eddie rests his forehead against his clavicle. 

In between then and now, they forget—each other, their hometown, the clown—and it all comes racing back over two days in 2016, right after Mike calls. 

Richie is in Los Angeles. 

Eddie is in New York. 

Richie rushes out of the venue and throws up over the side of the fire escape, his agent flustered beside him. 

Eddie calls his wife—why the fuck does he have a wife?—Mommy, heart pounding in his chest, and crashes his car.

The fear is palpable, strong, and enough to make even the bravest person turn tail and flee, but they both show up to Derry, minds buzzing except for one, seemingly pointless thought.

I wonder if he still likes me.

Spoiler alert, Reader: He does. He never stopped.