we were always here at the right time

by fuckener

Summary:

Eddie’s eyes were getting heavy again. Richie helped him back down to the pillow.

“It’s always kind of like this, isn’t it,” he mumbled.

Richie didn’t move. He was still holding Eddie’s hand, his shoulder.

“Like what?” he asked softly.

“You and me,” Eddie said. What else?

one

 

Eddie woke up in a hospital room he vaguely remembered the look of, only now it was darker and the crowd of people around his bed was gone. The last time he’d drifted back into consciousness Mike had been holding his hand in both of his and saying things Eddie couldn’t quite make sense of, and Bev had been in a chair at the bottom of his bed, arms crossed over his shins and her head lying on top of them, watching him with a smile, and Richie -

Richie was still here. His eyes were big, unblinking.

“How you doing there, Eds?” he asked.

Eddie squinted at him.

“I don’t know.” The words all ran into each other. He swallowed, cringing - his mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of it, and everything tasted weird from sleep. “I feel - my head is, it’s so, I don’t know. It’s good.”

Richie’s mouth curled up. “Yeah?” He reached out and smoothed a hand through Eddie’s hair. “You were high as a fucking kite earlier. You told us you felt like Saran wrap over warm pie.”

Eddie tried to follow that and struggled. “I did?” Then he leaned back into his pillow, sighing. “Yeah, you know what? I do.”

Richie laughed. Eddie saw the little clipped corner of his front tooth and smiled. There it is, he thought.

He looked around. On some level he knew that he hated hospital rooms but this one didn’t seem so bad to him right now. He could hear the calming sound of the rain hitting the window, quiet voices from another room. The bedside table was covered with chocolates and flowers and candy he hadn’t tasted since he was thirteen. His body felt light and warm inside, like something that didn’t even know how to be sick.

“The fuck is that sound?” he asked, frowning.

Richie listened for a moment and glanced down at the sheets.

“I’m pretty sure that’s you pissing, Eds,” he said.

What? That couldn’t be right.

Eddie pushed the bedsheets off of him and, sure enough, there was a bag strapped to his thigh with his piss being funneled into it.

He stared at it and then he looked up at Richie.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, still peeing.

Richie pulled the sheet back up to his chest and tucked it into his sides. His lips were pressed together, quirking at the corners like he might laugh.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll show you my piss-bag when you sober up and we can call it even.”

Eddie looked around again. “Where is everyone?”

“They went to the cafeteria downstairs.”

“You didn’t go?”

Richie shrugged and fixed his glasses even though they were sitting straight. “Not a fan of shitty hospital food, personally. I figured I’d just eat the Toblerone Ben got you.”

“I want that,” Eddie said. When was the last time he’d had chocolate that wasn’t dairy-free, sugar-free, and didn’t taste like shit? He waved a hand. “Leave me some.”

Richie smiled and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I’ll try my best. Normally I wouldn’t make any promises where nougat is concerned, but I guess since you’re down a spleen that’d be a real dick move on my part.”

“Down a spleen?” Eddie repeated. He was pretty sure he still had a spleen. He lay there and tried to mentally root around for it, but was harder to locate than it really should have been.

Richie’s eyes went round.

“Oh, fuck.” He shook his head minutely. “Forget what I just said. I didn’t even say anything. You - you’re stoned.”

Eddie absorbed this, nodding. He glanced at all the empty chairs surrounding his bed, the coats and bags left on top of them, the rumpled paperbacks and puzzle books his friends had left behind. He didn’t know how long he’d been in here, only knew his Losers had been waiting on him for however long it was. He loved them all so much it felt like something too big for his chest to contain.

He looked at a chair with nothing on it.

“I miss Stan,” he said.

There was just the sound of rain for a minute. Eddie had an image in his head of how Stan must have looked grown up and felt oddly certain that it was exactly right, because none of them had really changed that much, had they? Not in the ways that counted. Stanley would have grown into someone neat, handsome in a quiet way, someone smart and still a little strange.

Richie folded his hand warmly over the one at Eddie’s side.

“Yeah,” he said. "Me too."

Eddie squeezed his fingers and looked at their hands joined on the sheets. He remembered something so abruptly it cut through the clutter in his brain and he jolted up, struck, his back ramrod straight.

All he had were fragments, a dozen moments jumbled together, that he couldn’t quite connect into a complete memory.

“Hey.” Richie put his other hand on Eddie’s shoulder and pushed gently, trying to guide him back down. “Hey, hey - Eds, you gotta -”

“Did I die?” Eddie asked.

Richie froze.

“No,” he said, then he started shaking his head rapidly. “No no no, you’re fine, you’re here. You’re fine. You’re all good. You’re warm pie under Saran wrap or whatever the fuck. Right?”

Eddie touched his stomach. He could feel the gauze through the fabric of his hospital gown, the tight texture of it around his middle, and all those scraps of memories started to form something intelligible - no, he didn’t die, but he almost did.

When he looked back up at Richie it was with sudden recognition. Richie had held his hand like this before while he pressed a red-soaked jacket to the wound in Eddie’s back as it bled and bled - and Eddie didn’t remember how it felt but he remembered the sound of Richie’s voice cracking when he begged Eddie to stop, please, you have to stop, like he was remembering a bad dream.

Eddie wanted to tell him something and moved his mouth silently. The words he had felt clumsy, lacking. Richie had held him together. Richie had carried him out of that house.

Wordlessly, he lowered his head until his forehead bumped against the curve of Richie’s wrist and then he stayed there. Richie said something, soft, surprised, but Eddie couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear the rain anymore either. There was only this point of physical connection. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips against the back of Richie’s hand firmly enough to feel the shape of his bones.

Something unfurled inside of him, slowly and thoroughly, and left behind a brightness he could feel emanating from his skin, an indulgent feeling of joy he’d never experienced before. It felt significant. He didn’t know he wouldn’t remember it later.

He gave Richie’s hand another kiss before lifting his head. Richie was looking at him strangely, a wounded kind of look, his mouth parted.

He looked so different then, suddenly new. Eddie had never looked at him before and let himself feel like this. It made them both seem sort of beautiful.

“You should be on morphine more often,” Richie said, strained.

Eddie’s eyes were getting heavy again. Richie helped him back down to the pillow.

“It’s always kind of like this, isn’t it,” he mumbled.

Richie didn’t move. He was still holding Eddie’s hand, his shoulder.

“Like what?” he asked softly.

“You and me,” Eddie said. What else?

Richie’s throat worked. He nodded like he was thinking hard and looked down at their hands. He patted Eddie’s, moved to let him go, and then didn’t. He said nothing for a while. Outside, the rain was softening.

He stroked Eddie's knuckles with his thumb. “Close your eyes, Eds.”

“I think I’ve been having bad dreams,” Eddie said in protest, his eyes falling shut.

“It’s okay. I’m here.”

The bright feeling in Eddie was spreading, intensifying, even as he felt himself drifting away.

“You’re here,” he echoed, and fell asleep.

 

two

 

He stayed at Mike’s the night before his flight back home after getting discharged. Some of the Losers had already left at that point. Ben and Bev had gone together and hadn't specified where to.

“Well, obviously they don’t want to talk about whatever’s going on between them yet,” Eddie said on the drive from the hospital to Mike’s, because Richie wouldn’t shut up about it. “So my wild idea is, and bear with me on this: we should respect that and shut the fuck up about it.”

He looked at Richie in the rearview mirror. Richie looked back at him like he was an idiot. He was sitting in the back seat but he kept leaning forward to situate himself between Eddie and Mike, his seat belt straining against him, and Eddie was going to fucking kill him if he didn’t stop it.

He turned his attention to Mike. “Mike, back me up here. We have the right to talk to each other about it if it seems like our good friends are bumping uglies. Ridiculously attractive uglies.”

“I guess, but...” Mike pulled a face. “Do we want to do that?”

“Thank you,” Eddie said. He gave Richie the finger over his shoulder.

What was there to talk about, really? It was so clear that something was going on between the two of them that it didn’t even bear discussion. Bev had been juggling calls between her lawyer and a real estate agent the past few weeks, and every time they’d all visited she’d had to excuse herself from Eddie’s hospital room looking harried and spend forty minutes on her phone in the hallway talking in a hushed voice. Every time she came back in, she and Ben would exchange a look, her eyes sparkling the way only they did when she was really happy about something.

Whenever Eddie caught those little moments he felt pleased for them, of course he did - so much so it kind of made him want to fucking bawl - but at the same time he couldn’t help wondering why his friends were still so much braver than he was. Bev had served her shit-stain of an ex with a subpoena before she’d even been in Derry for a full week.

On the way to the farm they picked up some take-out and ate it on Mike’s porch with a few beers. Eddie only had one or two mouthfuls of his because of his deep-seated fear of doing anything that a medication label told him not to, but it was still nice to sit out in the fresh air and have a drink together, looking out at the fields and the sky stretching out beyond them. He’d been getting miserable rattling around the same hospital room every day.

“You told Eddie your big plan yet, Mikey?” Richie asked, nudging him.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t!” Mike brightened and turned to Eddie. “I’m going backpacking across South America.”

Richie smiled. “Isn’t that the most grad student shit you’ve ever heard?”

“What happened to Florida?” Eddie asked.

“Fuck Florida.” Richie spoke through a mouthful of fried rice because he was disgusting. “Florida can wait.”

The lamps sitting out on the porch weren’t strong, just provided enough light to give everything a warm kind of definition, but Eddie could see the look on Mike’s face clearly, the honest contentment, and he wondered again why his friends were capable of doing things that terrified him even in theory.

“I’ve been hanging around this town for so long,” he said, shaking his head. He really, really had. Eddie couldn’t even conceive of how long it must have felt. “Now I can just go anywhere. Do anything. My time’s all mine.”

Richie held his beer out. “Cheers to that.”

“I hope you have the fucking time of your life,” Eddie said, earnestly, and the three of them clinked their bottles together.

They stayed up for a little while longer, moving into the house when the night air became too cold. They went through Mike’s small collection of dusty old board games. Richie’s main goal while they played every single one of them was to drive Eddie batshit insane, and in that sense he won all of them, but in a much realer sense he lost at everything and got caught stealing money from the bank during Monopoly three fucking times.

Mike headed upstairs to bed afterwards. Eddie, feeling like it was probably a good idea for him to do the same thing considering how early his flight was, headed up with him to the guest room. Richie had been staying there before; now he was relegated to the same lumpy couch the Hanlons’ had in their living room when they were kids.

He lay motionlessly in bed for an hour or two, his eyes open in the dark. He could hear the TV from downstairs. Being a grown-ass forty-year-old man apparently wouldn’t stop Richie from staying up stupidly late at night.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Richie asked him when he shuffled into the living room.

He was lying sprawled across the couch. He wordlessly moved his legs up to let Eddie sit at the end and after Eddie sat down his feet wormed themselves under his thigh. Eddie didn’t really mind.

“My ass is not your personal heater,” he said anyway.

Richie wiggled his toes. “That’s a real shame, ‘cause it’s surprisingly cushioned.”

There was a rerun of The Wonder Years playing on the TV. It was like everything, everything about Derry was suspended in time, like nothing had happened here past 1988. Eddie both weirdly liked and couldn’t stand it.

“You okay?” Richie asked.

Eddie didn’t know.

“Yeah, it’s just, you know.” He shrugged, shoulders sagging afterwards. “It’s a little weird, I guess. Tomorrow. Going back, after everything.” He shrugged again.

Richie didn’t say anything but Eddie could feel his eyes on him. It was unnerving. He didn’t like when Richie didn’t just come out and say the first thing on his mind.

He watched the opening credits of the show blankly, wondering how long it had been since he’d last heard this song, wondering why the hell he’d even said anything when he knew full well to swallow this shit down whenever it rose up in his throat like bile.

“Don’t go back,” Richie said.

Eddie turned to him, blindsided.

“Don’t...” he repeated. “What?”

Richie sat up and looked at him from eye-level over his knees.

“Let’s go with Mike.” Eddie could tell from the look on his face that it wasn’t a joke and Richie must have been able to tell from the look on his how much that concerned him. “Why not? For real. Let’s just fucking, fucking go and see what happens. Do something fun for a change.”

Eddie stared at him. He felt like someone had just upturned cold water over his head, the way he did before an anxiety attack. “I have to go home.”

“No,” Richie said, shaking his head. His eyes were intent, pinning Eddie to the spot. “No. You really don’t.”

A week ago, after a long day of insurance forms and physical therapy and the four hysterical phone calls from his wife in between, he’d made the mistake of telling Richie that he was worried Myra would put herself in the hospital if he stayed in Derry much longer, the way his mom had done after his failed attempt to leave for college. Richie had told him, looking furious on his behalf, that was a fucked up thing for him to have to worry about.

“We could go somewhere else, if you want,” Richie said, lower. His throat worked. “Just - you and me.”

Eddie couldn’t even let himself imagine it. He knew that if he did, even just for a second, it would be harder to live with afterwards, because then he would always some half-solidified impression of what it would have been like to run away with Richie, to go somewhere with him outside of Derry and all its bullshit. It would make a new life for itself in his brain, the chance he never took when he should have. He would be able to reach for the idea of what it would have been like and punish himself with it and he wouldn’t be able to stop.

His hands curled into fists on his lap. “I can’t, Rich."

He thought of his wife and felt nothing but anchored. He couldn’t meet Richie’s eyes.

“Right,” Richie said, turning. “Okay. Okay, then.”

After a moment he lay back down and faced the TV.

“Forget I said anything.” His voice was too quiet to sound like him. “It was... I’m being stupid.”

It somehow made it worse that they both knew Eddie wanted to say yes, that Richie didn’t even call him on it. It was more embarrassing that Richie, of all people, was pretending not to know better for his benefit.

Eddie stood up.

“I should,” he said, barely thinking, and left the room.

He spent the rest of the night lying awake and thinking of Richie in the room immediately below him. He closed his eyes and listened to the muffled fuzzy sound of the television until, abruptly, it stopped.

 

three

 

In the morning he double-checked his suitcases, his bags, his carry-on bag, took his medication, did the stretches the doctor had told him to do, shaved, showered, brushed his teeth, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror until he couldn’t anymore.

When he went downstairs to the living room and saw Richie curled into himself on the couch, fast asleep, he briefly considered not waking him up, but he didn’t have it in him to leave things between them like that. He knew he wouldn’t forgive himself for it later.

He sat down on the couch next to Richie’s feet and put a hand on his shoulder. He said his name, quietly, and Richie stirred.

He squinted up at Eddie, disoriented, barely conscious, and then blindly reached around the floor for his glasses. After he got them on he sat up and blinked, sleepy-eyed. His hair was a mess and the blanket over him had slid down far enough for Eddie to see that he was wearing a ridiculous T-shirt that said BERLIN: HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS over a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

“Eddie.” Richie rubbed at his eyes, the one that never managed to fully open in the early morning. “Is it, are you - now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Shit.” Richie nodded. “Okay. Well.”

He looked at Eddie awkwardly. Eddie was going to miss him so fucking much it didn’t even feel real that he was leaving.

He wrapped his arms around Richie’s shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug, and Richie hugged him back hesitantly, with a measured kind of pressure. He smelled like bad aftershave and himself and he was warm, always ran warmer than Eddie did and always had.

His hand moved across Eddie’s back, palm skating over his stitches, and then he let out a shuddering breath and pulled Eddie close. When he lowered his head into the crook of Eddie’s neck his lips brushed the skin there and Eddie felt it all the way through him, a terrifying heat that travelled up from his gut and spread.

“Take care of yourself,” Richie murmured.

Unable to stop himself, Eddie nosed into his hair a bit, bumping his glasses out of place, and breathed him in.

“You too,” he said, and then, ashamed, pulled himself away.

Mike wouldn’t let him help load his own things into the car. They drove to the airport in relative silence, with nothing but the hum of the radio. It was 7am and Eddie felt wired and exhausted at once, worn thin.

Myra had his flight details. She was going to pick him up and she was going to scream when she saw his cheek. She was going to want answers he would never be able to give her. He knew the next few weeks were going to be hell.

Mike reached between them and patted Eddie’s knee.

“I’m really gonna miss you,” he said, turning onto the interstate.

“Yeah.” Eddie swallowed, nodding. “I’ll miss you too, Mikey.”

He looked out the window. Derry was reflected back to him in the mirror, a grey town behind them, flattened and miserable looking.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry you had to wait this long for us to come back, and then - then we just spent the whole time almost dying and getting fucking hospitalized.”

“What are you talking about? It was you guys.” Mike looked at him sidelong, smiling. “It was worth it.”

 

four

 

Three months later, Ben and Bev got married in a barn in rural West Virginia decked out in fairy lights and silver garlands. It was just the six of them, Ben’s mom and Bev’s aunt, two women from Bev’s new startup, and their huge new dog who weighed more than Eddie did and drooled on everything in sight.

“Aw, he likes you, Eds,” Richie said, smiling in a way that made it clear that he knew exactly how uncomfortable Eddie was having his new suit pants be slobbered all over by Beau - which was a fucking absurd name for a pet in the first place. The ceremony was going to start soon and Eddie refused to spend the whole thing getting harassed by a dog.

“Will you just fuck off, you big Clifford fuck,” he said, high-pitched.

Beau just tilted his head where it was lying on Eddie’s lap.

Richie snorted. “You’re such a fucking drama queen.”

He grabbed Eddie’s hand and forced him to stroke Beau’s soft head, and Eddie said quietly, “Oh,” because it was actually sort of nice. He petted him again on his own. Beau just lay there, peacefully, doing the dog equivalent of smiling at him.

“It’s still a dumbass name,” Eddie insisted when he saw the looks Richie, Mike and Bill were all giving him.

String music started playing. Bev and Ben were walked in together looking perfect beyond belief and Beau lost all interest in Eddie and followed them up to where the celebrant was standing at the front - that was what the officiant was called at a humanist ceremony, Ben had told them earlier, to which Richie had squeezed his eyes shut, looking physically pained, and said, “I love you guys, so I won’t make jokes about what crunchy granola bullshit all of this is until after your honeymoon.”

He didn’t seem to think it was such bullshit during the vows when everyone started sniffling, him included, and he muttered under his breath, “Great, so none of us thought to bring a fucking Kleenex, huh.”

Eddie elbowed him to shut up. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the way Ben and Bev were smiling at each other. He ran his thumb across his wedding band and swallowed down the thick feeling in his throat.

After the ceremony Mike took photographs of them outside with the new camera Bill had got him for travelling, first of Ben and Bev alone, then Bev waved her arm for the rest of them to come in. Mike kept yelling over the wind for Eddie to stop doing something with his face that he physically couldn’t stop doing because it was so fucking windy out, but he tried his best fix whatever it was, and eventually they got one salvageable image of them all together, Mike’s grinning face very unprofessionally popping in from the side, all of them smiling and squinting and windblown.

Richie looked impressed by Mike when he showed it to them. “Wow. I mean, that looks dumb as hell.”

“It does,” Bev agreed, beaming.

Eddie couldn’t take it.

“Come down here, you gangly dumbass,” he said, and when Richie blinked at him and obligingly bent his knees, looking puzzled, Eddie started finger combing his windswept hair back into something appropriate for a wedding.

The reception was held in the same place after some rearranging of tables and chairs, and for the first dance the band played I’ll Be Loving You (Forever) by New Kids On The Block, an objectively terrible song that Eddie got choked up seeing his best friends slow dance to.

A little bar area opened up in one corner and Richie immediately darted over to it and came back holding a tray of booze.

“A toast.” Richie raised his drink. “To what the music selection makes me think might be the world’s gayest straight wedding.”

Ben reached for a glass and smiled. “Thanks. I was in charge of the music.”

Eddie hadn’t had liquor in about ten years. He winced at the taste of gin.

“Yeah, no shit, Hanscom,” he said.

It was the most fun Eddie had had since he, Richie and Mike had sat around Mike’s kitchen table debating the rules for Game of Life and whether or not Richie was allowed to be a polygamist in-game (he wasn’t). He’d been worried before today that things would be awkward between the two of them after the conversation they’d had that night, because things were different in real life than they were over idle text messages, but when they’d seen each other they’d fallen back into step with each other easily, the way they always did.

Bev danced with them all over the course of the evening. When they saw her dancing with Bill, Eddie and Richie and Mike exchanged an awkward look and Eddie waited for Richie to say something inappropriate, but Richie just blinked at where Ben was dancing with his comically small mother and said, “Good god, that man looks like an angel.”

Even Eddie danced with her, despite being painfully aware that he was horrible at it. He hadn’t even danced at his own wedding, but this was Bev, and he couldn’t tell her no when she offered her hand out to him and insisted.

Her heels were off, which made the height disparity a little less mortifying, and as they danced she hooked her chin over her shoulder and hummed. Eddie was tipsy and emotional at this point and the colour of Bev’s hair was making him dangerously nostalgic. He could picture her as a kid, still taller than he was, still this beautiful, really the only girl he’d ever been close to being in love with.

“You know, I...” At their table Ben was talking to Mike but smiling over at them. He cleared his throat. “I love you, Bev. I’m so fucking happy for you.”

She squeezed him. Eddie knew she was thinking about how he’d almost died because he had a sixth sense for it now, and could tell whenever any of them were looking at him and remembering. It was in the shaky way she huffed a laugh.

“I did know that. I love you, Eds.” He could hear her smile when she said, “I hear Beau does, too.”

Beau had continued to pester Eddie throughout the rest of the day and Eddie had continued to act like it annoyed him more than it really did.

“Bev, honey, that dog qualifies as a bear,” he said.

Richie kept buying drinks and they all kept drinking them, sitting around and telling old stories and finding out some new ones from each other. They kept a seat at the table for Stan and talked about him a little - Bev had been keeping up with his wife ever since Derry and she’d been sent some pictures of him doing achingly Stanley Uris things like visiting antique fairs and looking at the camera with a completely deadpan expression instead of smiling. Even though it made them all turn a little melancholy Eddie liked talking about him when they were all together like this.

He was the good kind of drunk, the kind he'd so rarely gotten to experience, but as midnight drew closer and he watched two of the people that he loved most in the world slow dance together - foreheads pressed, smiling at each other with a private, untouchable joy he suddenly desperately wanted to understand - Richie turned and said to him, “Eds, you look like you’re about to throw up.”

Eddie frowned at him. Richie’s suit was dark blue and surprisingly tasteful, thanks to Bev’s input. Before the ceremony Eddie had told him he looked funny in it even though it wasn’t true, even though he'd been struggling the entire day to look at Richie like he didn’t want to soak up the image of him like this, in all its exotic strangeness.

“Or maybe - maybe I’m the one who’s gonna throw up,” Richie said, which seemed likely. Even though Bill was the drunkest, Richie had drank the most by far, it just didn’t show with him.

“Rich, for Christ’s sake. I told you, I fucking told you to stop doing shots. You have a forty year old prune of a liver.”

Richie nodded at him like he was making some valid points. Then he jerked up to standing, his chair scraping across the hardwood, and hastily walked out of the barn, not in the direction of the bathrooms but instead towards the woods.

“Hey,” Bill said. His hair was strewn across his forehead and his face was flushed. He pointed vaguely. “Hey, is Rich -”

Eddie cut him off with a hand. “I’m handling it.”

He grabbed his glass of water and headed in the direction Richie had lumbered out in. There were paper lanterns dotted around outside and Eddie could make out the silhouetted shape of Richie hunched over by the trees, looking like someone who was about to throw up, and made his way towards him.

“Hey, man,” Richie said, doubled over and holding onto a tree trunk for balance. He spat. “I don’t think you want to be here for what’s gonna happen next.”

“You even talk too much when you’re about to be sick,” Eddie said.

He reached out and rubbed Richie’s back in circles.

After a moment Richie told him, softly, “Stop.”

Eddie stopped. He left his hand there for a moment, unthinkingly, before snatching it back, face burning.

“Sorry.” Richie shook his head. His jaw clenched briefly. “Sorry, I know you’re just trying to...”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said. His skin was still prickling with heat.

Richie stood hunched over like that for a little longer, then he wiped across his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened, propping himself up against the tree.

“False alarm,” he said, waving a hand. “Excuse the dramatics.”

Eddie held out the water. He couldn’t look him in the eye. “Sip this.”

Richie took it and did as he was told.

Orange light and bad music poured out from the barn. Eddie could still make out the sound of voices from out here, the sound of the shrieking laugh Bev did when she was surprised.

“Was your wedding like this?” Richie asked.

He was facing the opposite direction, looking into the trees. Eddie thumbed across his wedding ring again.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

His wedding day hadn’t felt like a celebration. He’d hated himself so much for not being honestly happy then, the way he should have been, the way normal people were. He still did, sometimes.

Richie nodded. He turned slightly, and in the half-light Eddie could make out his profile and the way he was pressing his lips together.

“That’s kind of what I figured.” He snorted, but not like anything was funny. Then he put a hand over his eyes, pushing his glasses up to his hairline. “Sorry. I’m being a bastard. I’m being a drunk, unpleasant bastard.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had enough experience with you being a sober unpleasant bastard, I can manage.” Eddie tugged on the cuffs of his shirt sleeves even though they were fine. “Keep drinking that, Rich.”

Richie flashed him a smile over his water. The curve of his jaw was perfect, Eddie thought, it was obnoxiously fucking perfect. A cheesy Huey Lewis and the News song was playing from the barn.

His heart briefly stopped when Richie said, “You know, I love you all a disgusting amount.”

Grimacing, he turned to Eddie. “I think that’s why I always feel like throwing up when we’re all together. It’s like I can’t physically contain it.”

Eddie blinked, recovered. “That’s... kind of sweet, I think. In a gross way.”

“Yeah.” Richie shrugged.

Eddie could see what was happening between them them more clearly than he'd been able to earlier, couldn't keep pretending to himself that things were really as easy as he wanted them to be. There was more under the surface, and even if they couldn’t talk about all of it - Eddie was pretty sure he was going to keep a few things clutched to his chest until the day he fucking died - they could talk about some of it, and maybe they honestly had to.

“You can ask me,” he said.

Richie turned to him. “What?”

“You can ask me about it. Me. Myra. I know you want to.”

Richie looked at him like he was considering it. He took another mouthful of his water and looked down at the ground.

“I do,” he admitted. “It probably wouldn’t make either of us feel great afterwards though, would it? Me and you, we are high fucking emotion at all times.”

Eddie frowned. “I don’t know if I want that to be true.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I like that about us. I never have to hold back with you.” Then Richie frowned too. “Wait. Wait.” He wagged his finger like Detective Columbo. “Thats a fucking lie, actually, but - but you know what I mean. Right?” He glanced in Eddie’s direction but not at him. “It’s like we’re - we’re ourselves when we’re together, or something.”

Then he added, quickly, “I’ve had a shit-ton to drink, I don't -”

“I know what you mean, Rich,” Eddie said.

Richie went quiet. He stood, unmoving, looking down at his shoes.

“Okay then,” he said. “What was your wedding like, Eds?”

Eddie remembered scraps from the day, remembered how his hair had sat wrong and how his mother hadn’t been there. He couldn’t remember what Myra’s dress had looked like.

“Honestly?” he said. He shrugged his shoulders, hands up. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I was anxious the entire time. I had to use my inhaler during the vows and I sweated through my suit jacket before the ceremony even started.”

Richie’s face broke into a fond little smile. “Oh, Eddie.”

Eddie knew he wouldn’t have said any of this if he hadn’t been drinking, if he didn’t feel like he had a good enough excuse to be honest. He knew, heart aching, that he would remember Richie the way he was then, in that suit, this soft light. He swallowed. 

“It was just different, Richie.” He shook his head. “I was different then. Myra was the only friend I thought I’d ever had and all I could remember from growing up was how lonely I’d been, and I didn’t... I couldn’t do that. Not for the rest of my life.”

It felt pathetic to admit out loud, but he knew Richie would understand. He was always kind in the ways that mattered.

Richie gave him a soft look, his eyebrows arched.

“Hey, I shouldn’t have - you don’t have to justify anything to me, Eds. It’s okay. We were all different, then. Everything was.”

Eddie nodded. Richie reached out and patted his cheek twice, then he touched the scar lightly with his finger. Eddie tried to ignore the way it felt, the shiver that ran down his back.

“God,” Richie said, half-smiling. “You ridiculous little badass.”

He dropped his hand again. Eddie looked at him and felt, like he always did around Richie, helplessly obvious.

“I can’t imagine you being any different." His voice came out deeper than he’d intended.

Richie looked down into his glass and snorted. “Me neither, I guess. Not now.” He gave Eddie a hard smile. “Scary, isn’t it? Knowing yourself again. It has no fucking right being as scary as it is.”

Eddie didn’t say anything. He didn’t think he needed to. He couldn’t be alone with Richie like this for much longer - something was restless under his skin, trying to climb out of him.

Richie finished his water and pushed off of the tree he’d been leaning on.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of depressing shit for today,” he said. “Let’s make a deal, okay? If I catch you looking broody I’m entitled to wet-willy you, and vice versa.” He stuck his hand out. “Let’s shake on it.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and shook anyway. “I’d rather fucking die than put my finger in your ear, Richie.”

As they walked back to the barn Richie nudged his side. “Think you got one more embarrassing group dance in you?”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Eddie said, feeling much more sober then he had before - but he’d ended up caving under peer pressure and the six of them had all danced like the uncoordinated middle-aged losers they were to Let’s Hear It for the Boy, a Ben Hanscom all-time favourite.

 

five

 

Bev called him from their honeymoon after he messaged her late one night and gave her the news.

“It’s going to suck,” she told him. “It’s going to be awful. It’s just going to be lawyers and meetings and court dates and money and trying to find a place to live, and it’s so expensive and it dredges up so much shit and it feels like it won’t end -”

“Jesus, Bev,” Eddie said, head in his hand.

“And then one day it’s over,” she finished. “And it’s so, so fucking worth dealing with everything else.”

He lifted his head and looked around his hotel room, at the unlived in cleanliness of it, at the neatly arranged army of suitcases by the door that contained everything he had.

“Yeah.” He breathed out. “Thanks.”

He heard someone else’s voice on the other end of the call.

“Ben loves you,” Bev relayed. “Does that help?”

“Not in a constructive way.” Eddie rubbed his forehead. “But it does make me feel better.”

They talked for a little while longer. Eddie didn’t want to get into details too much and Bev understood that, of course, and didn’t push him. Before she hung up she told him he could call her whenever he wanted to.

He flopped back onto the hotel bed afterwards and lay there for a long time doing nothing, then he raised a hand to the thin line across his cheek. He’d been right - Myra had hated the scar, been terrified of it. He’d grown to like how it looked on him: it cut through the reflection he expected to see in the mirror and reminded him he could be brave. He wanted to always be that person, the one who didn't let being afraid of something stop him from doing it.

He waited a few days before telling anyone else. He just puttered around his hotel room, his new little claustrophobic life, and spent a lot of time spacing out at his desk and in front of the TV and during conversations with his attorney. He wondered to himself if this was what things would be like from now on, a resized version of what they were like before. He wondered if this was really it.

“Eds?” Richie answered when he called. It was hard to make him out - it sounded like he was somewhere busy. “Isn’t it like one in the morning over there? Is everything okay?”

Eddie was sitting on the hotel room floor, back against the bed frame, and had just ingested a whole thing of chocolate from the minibar that he hadn’t even really wanted.

“Yes,” he said. “No. I left. Is this a bad time?”

“You - you mean, like, you left?”

Eddie thought about having another chocolate thing. “Yeah.”

“Holy shit. Okay.” There was a staticky sound of the phone was being moved around, Richie’s muffled voice saying, sorry, I have to - yeah. When he started speaking again, the background noise was gone. “I can’t believe - wow. How are you?”

“Terrible. I mean, good, but terrible.”

“That’s quite the combo.”

“I just -” Eddie pushed a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Even before Derry, part of him had known the marriage was built on something that was untrue. Back then he’d thought that he was the kind of person who could live with that, but now he knew he wasn’t and the fact that he’d stayed for as long as he had just made him feel guilty and stupid and fucking ridiculous.

“That’s okay,” Richie said. “You’ve got all of us, right? Who needs a wife. I can annoy you just as much as any wife could.”

“You’re right, it’s working. You’re annoying me right now.”

“See?”

Eddie’s mouth twitched. He missed them all when they were apart, but he felt it most acutely with Richie. That separation was more physical somehow. The thousand mile distance stretching between them was like something that was always hooked into his stomach, tugging on him. He almost regretted making the call.

“Are you gonna stay in New York?” Richie asked.

Eddie closed his eyes. “You’d be shocked if you knew just how little fucking forethought I put into this whole thing.” He turned to look out the window at the shapes of the buildings across the street. “I guess so. I have a good job. I can probably afford to stay somewhere decent, I don’t know. I’ll probably have to change my dentist.”

“Eddie, stop being so fucking practical,” Richie said. “Mike is in Argentina right now hiking a fucking mountain. Bev and Ben are having sex on a beach in Hawaii. Try being a little more adventurous, Jesus.”

Eddie bristled. “I’m getting a divorce, dipshit, what the hell are you doing that’s so fucking adventurous?”

“Me? I was just in the middle of a goddamn -” Richie stopped and blew out a breath. “I have my own shit going on. Believe me. I’m being adventurous as fuck right now.”

“That’s so vague, what the hell. I didn’t even know you could be that vague.”

“I’m full of surprises,” Richie monotoned. “You left your wife, that’s the subject of today’s conversation.”

Eddie started arguing with him but then Richie just said, “Move to LA,” with no preamble whatsoever and instantly shut him up.

“Oh, just, just,” Eddie sputtered, “just fucking -”

“Yeah, just fucking do it,” Richie interrupted. “Why not? Bill and I are out here. His wife is cool. She’s like a trained chef or some shit and she gives me leftovers, you could get in on that. You can probably find work, you probably have some work-related skills you’ve mentioned to me when I was thinking about other stuff.”

Eddie dragged a hand over his face. “You are so fucking annoying.”

“Well, I just don’t want you by yourself in shitty New York! Look, I hate to say it, I really fucking do, but here goes: west coast, best coast. Okay? It’s out there. It’s just the fucking truth. Fuck New York, fuck Maine and fuck New Jersey too, while we’re at it. All of you should just come to California and we should stay on the same fucking street like we’re living in a sitcom world. If Mike really ends up in Florida, fucking Florida, I’m going to go apeshit about it.”

“Wow,” Eddie said.

Richie wasn’t done. “And if you stay in New York just for your job, which, once again, I gotta say it, just sounds so fucking depressing it’s unreal, I’m going to go apeshit about that too.”

“This isn’t going apeshit?” Eddie asked.

“This is as low as the apeshit ladder gets.”

“Right. Jesus.” Richie sounded like Eddie did when he got worked up over something.

“I’m not trying to -” Richie cut off with a sigh. “I know, I know it’s not up to me. I just want you to be happy.”

Eddie brought his knees up to his chest and held them. “I know that. You make it obnoxiously clear.”

“And I want you around,” Richie said, quieter. Eddie could hear the sound of cars going past him over the line. “On a more selfish level.”

Eddie breathed in until his chest felt stretched. “I get it, Rich, it’s okay. It means a lot to me that you..." He swallowed. “I should have just gone with you when you asked. You and Mike. We could be on a mountain in fucking Argentina right now.”

Eddie didn’t even have any particular interest in hiking or mountains or in going to Argentina in the first place, but right then it sounded good to him, sounded like a fucking dream.

Richie didn’t say anything for a moment. “Eddie, it was insane for me to ask you to do that. He’s gone for like six months. Neither of us even like travelling. One of us would have died on that hike for sure.”

“We could have gone somewhere else,” Eddie said.

He regretted it immediately - squeezed his eyes shut and wished uselessly that he could take it back, just pull it out of the mic in his phone word by word and swallow it down. He could hear another car passing Richie by.

“Don’t - it’s not worth thinking about, Eds.” Richie cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I gotta go. I kinda ran out of something. But listen - you need anything, I’m here.”

“Sorry. Shit.” Eddie shook his head. “I shouldn’t have called so late.”

“Of course you should have. It’s a big fucking deal.”

Eddie leaned his forehead against his knees. “Thanks, Rich. Goodnight. Thanks.”

“Goodnight,” Richie said. “Proud of you, Eds.”

He hung up.

Eddie sat there for a long time afterwards. He listened to traffic from outside the window, felt that pull in his stomach stronger than ever.

 

six

 

Bill joined Richie in pestering Eddie into the move after he found out about the divorce. He sent pixelated photos of he, Audra and Richie having dinner together, followed by messages like, ‘Wish you were here! Audra’s risotto was described as ‘transcendent’ on TripAdvisor - LOL.’ Richie sent him listings for the shittiest looking rooms for rent in LA that he could find, places where five people were living in bunk beds and looking for a sixth body or places that were just a dingy floor and an air bed, all of them followed by messages asking ‘ur thoughts?’

Naturally Eddie told them both to shut the fuck up, but for a few long months he spent all the free time he had outside of work and being generally stressed researching it, trying to figure out what it would be like in reality: where he would live, where he would work, what his life might look like if he really went through with this insane, stupid idea. He looked into it meticulously, and he didn’t even have to because he already knew he wanted to go.

eds there doesnt need to be a perfect reason to do something, Richie told him one night. They were both up late. Richie had gotten sucked into an awful sounding reality TV show on Netflix and Eddie had been lying awake in the bed of the studio apartment he was renting for $1700 a month, wondering just what the fuck was going to happen next.

Eddie couldn’t argue with him because he was completely right. Instead he sent back the cropped picture of Richie’s face from one of the wedding photos that the Losers had taken to sending each other regularly and in response to everything. It was ridiculously unflattering. It was also one of Eddie’s favourite things in the world.

hmmmm resorting to sending the pic are we, Richie replied. guess i won this round!!

Eddie got genuinely mad and sent the photo again. Richie sent it back to him. This went on for a while.

I’m going to sleep now, Eddie said after he hit his limit. Fuck you.

ok same to you, Richie said, and he sent the photo one last time.

He was right and Eddie knew he was. He spent the next few months looking for an actual liveable apartment and doing some video call interviews for jobs that paid a little worse than the one he was at and, of course, enduring the tedious, never-ending process of getting his divorce finalized.

The last time they met with their attorneys he and Myra talked briefly. She looked at him oddly when he told her he was moving to California, and when she spoke it was the first time since he’d left that she didn’t sound hurt, just confused.

“You aren’t really who I thought you were, are you?” she said, clutching her purse.

Eddie told her no, he wasn’t, and he didn’t apologise for it even though part of him wanted to. He was sorry for some things, but not for that.

Two weeks later Richie and Bill met him at LAX holding a piece of paper between them that said BIG MAN KASPBRAK on it and drove him to his new place. They hefted all of his suitcases and bags up the two flights of stairs to his door and refused to let Eddie help.

“It’s my shit,” Eddie said when Richie pulled another suitcase out of the trunk. He knew he shouldn’t and couldn’t be lifting this stuff but it still ate at him. “You guys are doing all the work and I’m just fucking standing around in the street.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Bill and I secretly resent you. We think you’re a huge asshole for getting stabbed.” He dragged the suitcase across the street, Eddie following after him. “I swear, if we see you try to pick up any of this shit, we will be really fucking upset with you. You know how good Bill is at guilt-tripping.”

“You didn’t even let me take my backpack and it weighed fucking nothing!”

Richie started hefting the case upstairs. “I just did that to annoy you.”

He didn’t have a couch yet, so after all of his luggage was sitting in the empty space of his new living room they ordered burgers - Eddie’s treat - from a place nearby that came Audra-recommended and then they ate them sitting on the floor next to a window that had no curtains.

“It’s a nice place, Ed,” Bill said, looking around and nodding. There was nothing to see but Eddie knew what he meant. It had the potential to be nice.

Richie wiped stray sriracha off of his cheek with the back of his hand and made a noise of agreement. “I looked at so many hellholes to send you that I forgot apartments with actual rooms in them were still, like, a thing.”

Bill grinned. “It’s crazy.” He bumped Eddie’s shoulder with his. “You live here now. We can just see each other whenever we want to.”

Eddie had been feeling so positive about the whole thing since his plane had touched down that it was, for some reason, also making him deeply anxious. He let himself smile then, let himself feel a little of the relief he was trying to keep from diffusing in his chest.

"Yeah, that’s, it’s - yeah.” Eddie shook his head. “Crazy.”

Richie re-repeated, “Crazy,” just to be a dick, hitting all the consonants hard.

Eddie removed a pickle from his burger and wordlessly offered it out to him. Rickie took it, tilted his head back and dropped it into his mouth. When he turned back to Eddie, chewing, pleased, Eddie’s stomach actually swooped, which was embarrassing for too many reasons for him to even start naming.

They poked around the rest of the apartment. He didn’t have a fridge yet either, but he did have a bed and a toaster that the previous occupant had left behind and Richie told him those things were all that he’d needed to survive when he’d first moved out here. The bathroom was small but the closet was huge and that mattered more to Eddie. Saying that out loud got he and Richie into a heated argument that ended with Richie making a point by trying, unsuccessfully, to fit himself into the tiny bathtub, his legs and arms dangling awkwardly over the sides. Bill took a picture of him in there and sent it into the group text and five minutes later Mike sent back, It’s eddie sized not rich sized lol.

Bill left to pick Audra up from her shift around six, swinging his keys around his finger and gloating about the leftover apple and cinnamon cake she’d promised him. Eddie couldn’t help thinking about how after Derry, before he’d left Myra, he used to compare himself to Bill, to the other men like Bill who would say they were going to make their marriage work out and were capable of actually following through on it. He couldn’t make himself like them. Back then that felt like a failing instead of the self-made trap it was; he couldn’t be like them because he'd never been like them.

“You jet-lagged?” Richie asked. He was sitting on the kitchen counter, knees up. “I can get an Uber.”

Eddie had made him take off his sneakers so they didn’t fuck up the worktop and then had been confronted by the fact Richie was a grown adult who wore socks with Simpsons characters on them. As he sat next to Richie, ass becoming numb, he couldn’t stop looking at his yellow-socked feet against the oak. Richie had put on a playlist of 90s rap songs he’d loved in back in college when he said that smoking weed and listening to Wu Tang Clan made him feel like just about the coolest white guy in existence, and Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about that either - it had mortified them both. He could picture Richie like that perfectly, young and a little insecure and still so ridiculous.

He shrugged. Truth be told he did feel tired, but more than that he just wasn't ready for Richie to leave yet. “I’m good. Didn’t you say you were bringing something to celebrate with?”

Eddie had been worrying since Richie messaged him about it last night that instead of a bottle of something cheap and strong Richie was going to bring weed and try to convince Eddie to have anything to do with it.

“Oh.” Richie blinked, glancing at him awkwardly. “Uh, yeah.”

He hopped off the counter and went over to his bag, which looked absurdly beat up next to Eddie’s stuff, and then he pulled out a bottle of Coke and said flatly, “Tada.”

Mixing drinks in a bottle was an insanely cheapskate, college guy move, even for Richie. Eddie just snorted. “What’s in it? Rum?”

“It’s really just Coke,” Richie said. He looked at the bottle instead of Eddie. “I was going to, but I’m trying not to - you know.”

Eddie straightened. “Oh. Are - are you okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. It just seemed like a good idea.” Richie shrugged. “You called my liver a prune. The mental image kinda stuck with me. Aw, Eds! I’m kidding, don’t make that face.”

Eddie fished the two carefully packaged Neiman Marcus mugs he’d managed to win in the divorce out of his suitcase and leaned against the island, watching Richie’s back as he poured them drinks on the other side of the kitchen space.

“Bill asked me to come for dinner on Saturday night and finally meet his wife,” he said. “If you want to fourth wheel us.”

Richie snorted. “I get it. I’m the conversational lubricant. Oh, wait - shit.” He gave Eddie a strange look over his shoulder. “I would, but, uh, I can’t. Bev, she set me up with a friend who lives out here. So.” He turned away again. “I think we’re gonna go have some Thai food and uncomfortable conversation together.”

Eddie didn’t say anything for what felt like too long and then he nodded belatedly, even though Richie had his back to him. “Oh, okay. Okay. Cool, that’s - who is it?”

He’d never had to think about Richie dating anyone before because Richie had never talked about that kind of thing. He imagined the kind of woman Bev would be friends with - someone in fashion, someone smart and tall and funny who could keep up with Richie and his endless bullshit. Someone well suited to him, who would clean up his rough edges just being near him.

Jesus. Why the fuck had he asked?

Richie finished filling their mugs and put the bottle on the counter. “I think he’s a photographer or something.”

Eddie stared at the back of his head.

After a pause, Richie looked over at him.

“I’m gay, by the way,” he said.

“You - you’re, you’re - oh.”

Eddie’s brain was informationless, static.

“You told Bev first?” he said, unsure why that was what came out of his mouth.

He was doing this wrong, he was distantly aware of that, but he couldn’t help it. He thought of bathroom stall graffiti and Bowers spitting the word fag at Richie like a short round of poison. He thought of Richie trying to spit it back out later, saying, wet-eyed and breathless with anger, did you hear what he fucking called me? He thought of their hands bumping on the walk home from school, of how whenever it happened he’d wonder if what people said about Richie was true. He thought of how hard he would tell himself it couldn’t be true, because Eddie’s mother wouldn’t let them be friends if it was, wouldn’t let them sleep top-to-bottom in his bed on Friday nights after new episodes of X-men, wouldn’t let Richie sit at her dining room table. She wouldn’t like him anymore.

“No. No, I -” Richie looked wide-eyed, off. Eddie had never really seen him like this before. He turned away and started twisting the cap back onto the bottle. “You’re the first person I’ve told. With Bev, it was just... I think she always kind of knew.”

Always kind of knew, Eddie thought, feeling it reverberate.

His hands were sweating. Richie came and handed him his drink over the island and music was still fuzzily playing from his phone next to them and he stood across from Eddie, elbows on the counter, looking nervous, and nothing was different, not really, but Eddie’s brain felt like a never-ending pile-up, thought crashing into thought - Richie had just said it, opened his mouth and let it slip out. Eddie felt so many things it was an almost indistinguishable ache inside of him, but above everything there was a painful kind of admiration.

“You really had no idea, huh,” Richie said. His mouth was curled but he wasn’t smiling.

Eddie tried to stop thinking so much, tried to do this right. “A long time ago, maybe. But I thought, now - that’s - it’s a long time. It’s a real long time. It’s...” He looked at him. “I’m sorry you had to keep it for this long, Rich.”

How could Richie not tell with him? How hadn’t he been able to tell with Richie? Why were the words still clinging to the base of his throat, even now, even after this?

Richie shrugged and looked like he hated this conversation, and Eddie hated himself intensely for not saying whatever Richie wanted to hear. He put a hand on Richie’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Thanks for telling me, Rich,” he said. “I think it’s - I think you’re really brave.”

“Am I? Maybe it would have been brave a decade ago, but now?” Richie snorted. “I don’t know about that. I’ve lived in the gayest city in America for like fifteen years and I chicken out of ordering cocktails in public if they look too girly.”

“No, you are. It’s not about that stuff, it doesn’t matter. You’re doing something about it now, right? I'm - I'm proud of you, man.” Eddie squeezed his shoulder again. “And don’t do self-deprecating jokes, you know they never worked for you.”

“I’m trying to evolve my comedy,” Richie said, smiling slightly. He looked thankful for the out.

Eddie patted his arm. “Try harder.”

They finished their mugs of lukewarm Coke and then Richie ordered an Uber home. Eddie hugged him before he left - thought about the way Richie had held him when they’d said goodbye at Mike’s farm all those months ago, thought about how warm Richie was and what a fucking mess he was in - and then he clapped Richie’s back and let him go, and it was just him again.

He couldn’t deal with unpacking everything tonight. He just said, “Fuck,” to his empty apartment and went to bed.

 

seven

 

It took awhile for him to stop feeling so nervous about how much he liked living in LA.

He liked his new apartment and the furniture Ben’s interior designer friend had helped him pick out. He liked driving around and being able to see the water. He liked the weather. He liked that Bill and Richie both lived within a forty minute drive and had jobs that meant they could meet him for impromptu lunches whenever they wanted to. He liked his new job slightly better than his old one because his coworkers were less grating - he was working for a bank and Richie had changed his name in his phone to CORPORATE HACK upon finding out, and then Eddie had retaliated by changing his to JUST A FUCKING HACK. He liked the therapist Bill recommended him and he kept thinking about how after he'd done a quick run-through of his life story with her, sans paranormal clown encounters, she had eyed him over her glasses and said, “And this is the first time you’ve been to therapy?” He liked his new gym. He liked his 6’5 Russian barber, even when she tutted at him for not styling his hair properly and told him he looked like a gym teacher with depression. He liked when Mike called him late at night and told him in his storyteller’s voice about some part of the world he’d seen today. He liked getting photographic updates on Bev and Ben and that little shit Beau, even if sometimes it pressed at a bruise deep under his skin, even if he was still trying to adjust to finding out that he had spent so much of his life without knowing that he wanted love like that, that the need for it had always been lying dormant in his chest all along.

He tried to dislike it there. He tried to let the little things about the people he didn’t like become bigger issues than they were, it just didn’t work. His next door neighbours had rowdy parties almost every weekend and every time he went to them to complain they would be infuriatingly nice and try to invite him inside, and he’d eventually reluctantly hung out with them so much he started to feel too guilty to call the cops on them. The barista at the coffee place he went to every morning was still trying relentlessly to make Eddie follow him on social media, but he was just a dumb college kid, and Eddie still always put a dollar in the tip jar for him. His coworkers always wanted to get fucking salads at Sweetgreen for lunch, but after he'd been there a few times Eddie started wanting to go there most days, too.

There were a few little things he missed about New York, but he wasn’t unhappy the way he’d been there. Moving here had reminded him of how it had felt when he’d first gone to New York on his own and realized that he was actually a capable human being. After the first rough week of adjustment Bev had told him that it didn’t need to be permanent, that he could leave if it didn’t work out and find a better fit somewhere else, and he’d needed to hear it at the time but eventually he stopped thinking back on it so much.

He even agreed to go out for drinks with people after work two months into his new job. He’d sat steeped in secondhand embarrassment as they performed karaoke while being not nearly drunk enough for it, in his opinion. The woman from the office across from him asked about the scar on his cheek and he didn’t bother correcting her when she laughed at him saying it was a stab wound. It was funny to him then just how much more bizarre the full story was than she would ever be able to imagine. She asked if he wanted to go for a drink sometime, just the two of them, and he went so red and bug-eyed at the offer that she just laughed again and waved it off.

“It’s okay,” she said with a knowing kind of smile. “I got the feeling that maybe I wasn’t your type.”

Still red, Eddie said, “I - yeah. Sorry.”

The confirmation slipped out so easily it stunned him. She shrugged in response and said, “Hey, worth asking,” and then tried to tell him about some guy who worked on the floor below them who looked like Garrett Hedlund. Eddie told her he didn’t even know who that was and he wasn’t remotely interested, anyway.

As he was stepping back into the apartment that night, still mildly buzzed, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

It was Richie: u home

Eddie blinked at the screen. Yeah why?

because im omw over

Wow, well that’s presumptuous of you.

batten down hte hatches

Eddie looked at that one for a while and then he gave up on it and sat on the couch feeling agitated. He put on the reality show Richie never shut up about and had, regrettably, gotten both he and Bill hooked on.

It took less time than he expected to hear a knock at the door, and immediately upon opening it he could see that Richie was drunk.

“Hi,” Richie said. “Wanna hang out?”

His hands were braced against the sides of the doorway, head dropped onto his shoulder, and he was wearing that sleepy look he only got after ingesting too much whiskey. He was dressed in one of his nicer shirts, a flannel that Bev had gotten him for his last birthday.

“Tell me you didn’t drive yourself over here,” Eddie said, fully prepared to lose his shit.

Richie gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, nonplussed. “Yeah, I parked my car through your building’s front door.” He dropped his arm again. “‘Course I didn’t fuckin’ drive myself here, Eds, I got a ride. It was awful. The driver knew who I was. He said he stopped letting his kid watch me do ‘bits’ on YouTube." He put a hand on his chest. "I don’t think he respected my craft.”

Eddie stepped back to let him inside and muttered, “Maybe he saw your ten minute set about the etymology of the word ‘dildo.’”

He didn’t really like when Richie was so drunk it made his face do what it was currently doing and he told him as much as he led the way to the kitchen. Richie sat on one of the new stools with his arms loosely folded on the countertop and face smushed into the crook of his elbow, watching Eddie as he went about pouring him a glass of water.

“Do you know how much I love having you live so close to me?” he asked.

Eddie felt oddly flustered by the question. He sat next to Richie and put the glass down in front of him.

“You’re fucking drunk,” he muttered.

“I mean it.” Richie hooked his chin over his arm and smiled up at Eddie hazy-eyed. “You have no idea.”

Eddie couldn’t take the soft expression on Richie’s face.

“Drink that,” he said.

Richie looked at him for a moment. Then he sat up and started drinking.

“I thought you were trying to, you know.” Eddie made some brief, pointed eye contact. “Cut back.”

“I was,” Richie said. He shrugged. “I did. I’m not like, hammered. Let’s not make this into a big deal.”

“Drinking alone is a big deal,” Eddie said. When Richie didn’t say anything he took that as confirmation that it was true, that Richie had just been in his house draining a bottle of something by himself, and it made him angry in the most impotent, infuriating way. “How drunk are you?”

“Not enough.” Richie pressed his lips together for a second and then they reappeared looking shiny. “I came here to do something really, irrevol - irrevocably stupid. But now.”

“Now, what?” Eddie didn’t mean to this sound this snippy, but he was so fucking bad at hiding it when he was rattled. “You’ve suddenly decided not to be stupid?”

Richie squinted like he was really giving that question some thought. “Coming here was probably stupid enough.”

“No, coming here was actually smart.” Eddie looked at Richie darkly, shaking his head. “I don’t like the idea of you running around that big house alone when you get like this, I really don’t. This better not be a regular thing or Richie, I swear to god, I will intervene you. I’ll intervene you to fucking smithereens.”

Richie smiled crookedly at him. “Yeah. I bet.”

He picked up his glass of water, downed the entire thing in one long drink, and then he put it back down and said, “I broke up with Scott.”

Eddie stared at him.

“Richie, his name was Peter,” he said.

“Who cares?”

“You do, obviously. Look at you.”

“What, this?” Richie made a face. “Nah. This isn’t about that. I kind of wish I did care this much about him, but I knew that first night at dinner that I wasn’t going to care what happened with him, because - because.”

“Because what?”

Richie dropped his face back into his arms.

“Because he chewed with his fucking mouth open, can you believe it? How’d I put up with that for two months.”

Eddie met Peter once at Bill and Audra’s and found him annoyingly inoffensive. He’d laughed at Richie’s jokes and when Richie poked fun at him he hadn’t really known how to give it back, two things that Eddie considered to be major personal failings. He’d been shorter than Eddie had expected and he’d smiled at Richie as he was talking in an intimate way, the way you were allowed to smile at someone you were sleeping with, and Eddie had saw it and understood it and felt something clutch his stomach and yank on it, had excused himself and left early to sit in his car for twenty minutes with his head against the wheel. 

“High standards for a man who wears socks with holes in them,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” Richie mumbled into his sleeve, “a sock is one thing.”

Eddie went to touch his back and then reconsidered, hand caught in mid-air. Sometimes he still thought about how Richie had told him stop at Bev’s wedding - the way he’d sounded like he meant it - and he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the memory, burning.

But he looked at Richie, folded up into himself, and couldn’t help it. He put a hand on his back, keeping his touch light.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, Eds.” Richie raised his head. “Seriously.”

“He kind of sucked, anyway,” Eddie said, because he was an idiot. “I mean - he kind of just, I don’t know. He sucked. He’d never even seen Airplane.”

Richie’s eyes rolled back. He put his head in his hands, groaning. “The Airplane thing, god. That drove me fucking nuts. And he didn’t know who John Candy was. I literally had to show him a fucking picture of John Candy and explain why he was a big deal in the 80s. I know we had pretty fucked up childhoods, but Jesus fucking Christ, imagine.”

“That’s really fucked up, Richie,” Eddie said, seriously.

“I know.” Richie frowned hard. “Talking to him, it was like I was trying to learn another language and teach him one at the same time. Nobody ever got anything out of it.”

Eddie didn’t completely understand that, but then, Eddie had spent his entire adult life trying to avoid being understood by other people. Especially Myra, the only person he guessed he’d ever really dated. It had been easier with her to just shut some parts of himself down.

He pictured Richie trying to make himself understood by someone who wasn’t capable of it and it pressed at something tender inside of him.

“I’m sorry, that’s...” Eddie shook his head. “His photography wasn’t even any fucking good.”

Richie huffed a laugh. Then he pressed his lips together, almost like a wince. “You don’t need to...” He shrugged. “I’m not - I don’t like, hate him or anything. He was - what’s the word? Benign. Yeah, benign. He was a totally benign presence in my life. I don’t really care that it didn’t work out. I’m not saying that to be a dick, I just mean - we don’t need to sit around and talk shit about him to make me feel better.”

“I just wanted to talk shit about him, to be honest,” Eddie admitted.

Richie smiled. “I guess that’s okay then.” He looked around the kitchen. “This is a long shot, but do you have any Cinnamon Toast Crunch?”

“I’m an adult man, so no,” Eddie said. “I might have All-Bran.”

Richie stared at him. “Tell me you’re joking.”

Eddie got up without saying anything, opened one of the overhead cupboards and showed him proof of how serious he was being. Richie actually cackled.

The closest thing in the kitchen to the sugary, disgusting kind of food Richie was in the mood for was a sleeve of cookies that he’d forgotten here a couple of weeks ago, after planning to smuggle it into the movies. They sat on the couch and went through the whole thing, and Eddie couldn’t even really be annoyed with himself for eating such unhealthy crap because Richie was right: they were good fucking cookies.

“Your breath smells kind of boozy too, Eds,” Richie said after Eddie leaned past him to steal the last one. He waved a hand in front of his face, nose scrunched. “What gives?”

Eddie slapped his hand. “I had a few drinks with people after work.”

Richie’s mouth curled up. “Yeah? Was it fun?”

“Yeah, it - yeah,” Eddie said, shrugging. “People were doing karaoke. My boss sang the song from that Lady Gaga film.” He snorted. “It was a fucking train-wreck. People were booing.”

For a moment Richie just smiled at him, holding the last bit of cookie in his hand like he’d forgotten about it.

“I’m really glad you like it here,” he said.

Eddie ducked his head, glancing at him. “Thanks, Rich, I... I’m glad you asked me to come.”

They smiled at each other. There was something intimate about being alone together like this, the two of them in Eddie’s living room on a late night, something about the way Richie was sprawled over his couch like he owned it with crumbs all over his good shirt. Eddie felt tempted to sink into the warmth of it. He waited on the accompanying thrum of anxiety he was used to, waited and waited.

Richie blinked and turned away. He shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth and said, “Thank god, right? You’d have given me shit for the rest of our lives if this hadn’t worked out.”

There was the anxiety.

“There’s still time,” Eddie muttered.

Richie started flicking through channels that irritating, compulsive way of his where he barely processed what was on one channel before he was on the next. Eddie grabbed the remote out of his hand to make him stop.

“I think this was like, the first R-rated movie we ever successfully snuck into,” Richie said, sucking chocolate off of his thumb.

Eddie stared at him a little longer and then remembered to look at the screen. It was the second Terminator movie, which, unsurprisingly, had scared the living shit out of him as a kid.

“I think you’re right,” he agreed. “How the fuck did we not get caught?”

Richie turned to him with a grin. “T-1000 really freaked you out, remember? He looks like total shit now but honestly, he kinda scared me back then too.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Eddie watched the early 90’s special effects, how the bad guy took the fakest looking damage imaginable. “He’s a relentless killing machine who refuses to just fucking die.”

It was quiet for a moment. Richie shook his head.

“That’s fucked up,” he said. “I wonder how much shit only makes sense about us now we can put the goddamn clown in for context. God. That’s weird, man.”

Eddie watched the screen blankly. “Yeah.”

There were so many things about himself that only made sense after Derry that it was terrifying to think about. There were huge parts of himself that he'd only begun to understand after he remembered who Richie was, when he’d been confronted head-on by the realization that his feelings for Richie had inextricably shaped him as a person. His sexuality had been built on going through puberty with an embarrassing crush on his best friend: he would get easily flustered around tall men in glasses, he’d feel a weird pull of attraction if a guy made a specific kind of bad joke around him. It used to all seem so fucking bizarre, and then he’d laid eyes on Richie again after twenty-seven years and thought with a sudden, terrible clarity, oh, God, that’s right.

He swallowed. He looked at Arnie in his sunglasses and his leather jacket and thought about how the two of them had sat watching this movie together just like this when they were fourteen.

“When did you and Peter...” He cleared his throat awkwardly instead of finishing the question.

“That actually happened like a week ago,” Richie said. “I did it before I went to see my parents. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”

At the start of the week Richie had flown out to see his parents and help them move into the new place with the bigger garden. He’d come out to them while he was over there and when Eddie called to ask him how it went Richie just said, “Yeah, it was fine. I think they’d already kinda figured it out on their own. Also, I just found a shitload of pictures in the attic of me as a kid, and let me tell you, it was demoralising as fuck to see proof that I’ve been this gawky my entire life.” (Eddie hadn’t known how to argue with that, even though he’d felt the urge to. He’d seen pictures of Richie in college, looked at them a little too long, honestly. It seemed bizarre to Eddie that he didn’t even know he was - that didn’t matter right now.)

Eddie was perfectly happy to let the subject of Peter die there. “How was it, being back?”

“It was nice, actually. They were asking about you.” Richie snorted. “They couldn’t believe they’d forgotten who you were.”

Eddie smiled. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking rude of them.”

“I know, right? You were a memorable kid. My mom used to freak out every time you came for dinner in case she ended up accidentally killing you. And you were so little, remember my dad used to do that lame joke where he’d go to sit on you? ”

“'Didn’t see you there, Edward,'” Eddie said in a low, nasal voice, a bad approximation of Went Tozier that made Richie laugh. “God. It used to piss me off so much. Your mom, too.”

“What didn’t piss Maggie off?” Richie grinned. “I made her laugh this week, did I tell you? It was weird. I wasn’t really even trying to. It was like a shitty throwaway joke about them being the kind of old people who grow their own cabbages.”

Eddie bumped their knees together. “Do they like the new house?”

“They love it. It’s retired people paradise.”

Richie stared at the TV and zoned out.

“You know, it was their forty-three year anniversary last month,” he said after a moment. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“Holy shit,” Eddie said. “Yeah. Wow. Good for them.”

Richie didn’t say anything. He was lost in thought, staring unseeingly at the TV screen. He looked like he was somewhere else. Eddie had a strange sense that maybe they were thinking about the same thing, about waiting, and held his breath.

He touched their knees together again. “You okay, Rich?”

“Yeah,” Richie said, absently. Then he sat up straight. “I should probably - I should go now.”

“You don’t have to,” Eddie said, instead of what he always wanted to say when Richie decided it was time to leave - I don’t want you to. “Richie, you - you don’t seem okay.”

“I am, really. I should go. I shouldn’t have dropped in like this, anyway.”

Eddie could feel it happening then the way he had before, like something was slipping out from underneath them. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not really cool of me,” Richie told him. He shook his head at himself. “I wouldn’t do this to Bill.”

“That’s different,” Eddie said, softer than he meant to.

Richie didn’t look at him. “Yeah. I know.”

He looked nervous. Eddie wondered what would happen if he said what he’d wanted to say to him. He wondered what would happen if he leaned forward and crossed the space between them, if Richie would kiss him back. He wondered if there was ever going to be a right moment to tell Richie about the feeling that had lived inside him since they were kids, since forever, and then it stopped feeling like a decision - it was now. It had to be now.

He grabbed Richie’s hand.

“Don’t go,” he said. “I don’t want you to go.”

Richie looked between their hands and Eddie. He was breathing so loudly Eddie could hear it.

“Is this -” He swallowed. “Are you -”

Eddie picked his hand up and kissed the backs of his fingers and said, “Yes.”

“Oh my god.” Richie was staring at him, stunned. “I imagined this happening - that’s so fucking lame to admit, but I did. I just always thought I was going to be the one to... I was getting around to it. ” He gave Eddie a look, open, honest, terrified. “But it was - I mean, you’re my best fucking friend.”

“You’re mine,” Eddie agreed. He squeezed Richie’s hand so he wouldn’t be able to tell he was shaking.

“Jesus,” Richie breathed. “I can’t believe you.”

Eddie had come this far. He could be this person, he told himself, he could tell Richie about the way he’d been carrying him around in his chest for thirty years.

He willed his voice to be steady and said, “I love you, Rich.” He breathed in, out. “I always -”

“I love you so fucking much,” Richie interrupted. He was gripping Eddie’s hand back just as hard and Eddie felt something unfurling inside of him, a brightness, a warmth. “I’ll stay. I’ll sleep on the couch, I don’t care. I’ll make you eggs tomorrow morning, anything, whatever. How the fuck did you not pick up on me being in love with you?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I thought, sometimes - but I was scared. It’s you.”

Richie touched his cheek, palm over the scar. “I know. I tried to tell you. I kept trying to tell you without saying it, like a fucking - Christ. Your skin is really soft.”

Eddie shook his head, leaning in. “Richie, I -”

That was as far as he got before Richie leaned forward to meet him, their lips touching in the slightest brush. Richie exhaled against his mouth.

“Are you still drunk?” Eddie asked.

Richie looked at him from an inch away and shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more clear-headed than this.”

Eddie kissed him again, firmer, reaching a hand up to cup Richie’s jaw. He followed the curve of it with his fingertips and Richie made a soft sound, his lips parting. His mouth tasted sweet and when Eddie licked into it Richie groaned, his arms sliding around Eddie’s shoulders - and Eddie didn’t want to stop doing this, ever, had never kissed someone and felt the overwhelming hunger for more in the pit of his stomach like he did then.

It made sense. He’d never been able to get enough of Richie. Even when Richie drove him crazy, he just wanted more of him. It had always been that way and he couldn’t remember it ever being different, couldn’t remember not feeling that constant pull towards him. Every time Richie had ever touched him it had been there, a need for more, for everything.

It was hard to stop kissing once they'd started. After Richie had pretty much climbed on top of him and Eddie had sucked the skin under his jaw purple Richie pulled away and said, breathlessly “Okay, let’s - we should maybe - I’m getting kind of, uh.”

Eddie blinked at him, lightheaded. His brain took a minute to catch up.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He leaned up to kiss Richie again. “Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, staring down at him half-lidded. His hand was still on Eddie’s chest, kneading at it through his shirt. It took a moment for him to stop.

He moved off of Eddie, dropping down next to him again with a quiet, “Wow.”

Eddie put a hand over his eyes and tried to make his dick stop being hard. It didn’t work.

“We shouldn’t,” he said after a moment, “should we?”

Richie shifted over so their sides were pressed together and then he put his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“Eddie, I’ve wanted to have sex with you for as long as I’ve had a libido, so you can imagine how painful it is for me to say this when I can actually see the massive erection in your pants, but - no. We shouldn’t. I really want to, though. Please tell me you have a convincing argument.”

“I need you to get tested,” Eddie said, looking at Richie from under his hand.

“Yup.” Richie nodded and looked down at himself. “That did it. It’s gone now.”

“I love you,” Eddie said. He just had to then. On the floor, Richie’s foot curled up against his. “I didn’t think I’d ever love anyone the way I love you. Before we went back to Derry, I didn’t - I didn’t even know I could.”

Richie turned to him. His cheeks looked a little red and he was so close that their noses touched. He reached a hand up to hold Eddie’s face and then he gave him a long, soft kiss.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

Eddie gave him the spare toothbrush he’d stolen from the hotel in New York and they stared at each other in the bathroom mirror as they brushed their teeth until Richie broke and started laughing through a mouthful of foam. He went through Eddie’s pyjama drawer even though nothing in there came close to fitting him and even though they had both already stripped down to their underwear - if he wore anything else to bed Eddie was going to be stupidly disappointed - but then all he did was pull one of Eddie’s T-shirts on over his head and look at how ridiculously small it was on him in the mirror. He modelled it across the room, poorly. It was so tight it was rucked up to his rib cage, his chest and arms stretching out the fabric.

Eddie threw a pillow at him. “You’re gonna ruin it.”

Richie pulled on the hem. “Eddie, it says ‘New York Life Insurance Company’ on it.”

“That’s a designer brand of clothing,” Eddie said.

Richie yanked it off again. He folded it up and everything before putting it back into the drawer. He looked at Eddie lying diagonally across the bed for a moment before laying down next to him.

“I’m not really tired,” he said.

Eddie put a hand on his thigh, dragging his fingers over the hair there, and said, “Me neither.”

He turned to Richie and took his glasses off for him, then he leaned up to put them on the nightstand, crossing the legs carefully. When he lay back down Richie was smiling at him in a soft way he never had before. Eddie couldn’t help smiling back. He slipped their hands together and kissed him for a long time.

 

nine

 

On the way to Eddie’s forty-first birthday dinner Richie patted himself down, said, “Oh, fuck,” and then told the cab driver they had to swing past his place quickly so he could get his wallet. They argued over it because Eddie had his card with him and he didn’t give a shit about who paid for dinner as long as they got to eat, but Richie made a big fuss about it being a birthday thing and said it was important to him, and the taxi driver, who was somehow the deciding vote, agreed with him. When they’d parked outside of the house, Richie told Eddie to come in with him and pee so he wouldn’t complain about needing to on the half hour ride back to the restaurant and it was a good point, so Eddie begrudgingly agreed.

The minute they got inside and flicked on the lights, their bickering was interrupted by a group of people yelling, “Surprise!”

“Jesus!” Eddie said, clutching his chest. “What the fuck?”

Bill, Mike, Bev and Ben were there, dressed up and excited looking. There were even decorations hanging from the walls and ceiling of Richie’s living room, but considering the level of precision they’d been handled with, that probably hadn’t been his handiwork.

“Man, you really had no idea,” Richie said. He tugged on Eddie’s coat and helped him slip it off, hanging it on the hook by the door. “At a certain point I stopped even trying to be subtle about it.”

Bev clapped her hands together, grinning. “Look at you guys, all domestic!” She pulled Eddie into a tight hug. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

They all hugged him one by one and gave him their birthday wishes. He felt himself starting to tear up when Mike hugged him last because he looked different in the best possible way - leaving Derry had done him a world of good.

“You’re all here,” Eddie said after he pulled away, chest tight.

“It was my idea.” Richie raised a hand. “I do want all the credit for this.”

Eddie touched his arm. “Thanks, Rich, you shameless fucking glory hog.”

Richie kissed his cheek and said, “Anytime.” Then he frowned, turning. “Ben, buddy, I don’t think this was on the agreed upon playlist.”

Faith by George Michael was playing.

“You were being a very harsh playlist curator, Richie,” Ben said.

Mike made them all caipirinhas - which he’d been taught how to make professionally in a bar in Rio de Janeiro where it sounded like he’d been oblivious to a bartender’s attempts to hit on him - and then they couldn’t stop drinking them all night. Richie only had one and then he and Bev ducked out to smoke a joint on the balcony. They came in fifteen minutes later, half-lidded and smiling, and even though he hated the smell of weed Eddie let Richie kiss him when he sat down next to him because he was tipsy and happy and it was Richie.

There was food from Audra’s restaurant in the kitchen. Bev and Richie ate most of it between them but Eddie had his fill and then he sent her a typo-laden message of gratitude and asked her how she was doing. She was in her second trimester, now - Bill had been showing everyone photos of the latest ultrasound on his phone earlier, shiny-eyed, the complete lightweight. He’d just laughed when Richie told him his baby name choices were all offensively Californian.

They all got progressively drunker and higher. Richie did a one-man reenactment of the beyond shitty film adaptation one of Bill’s older books that they’d all been poking fun at in the group text ever since Bill had told them they absolutely had to watch it. Mike had gotten Eddie Game of Life for his birthday and a drinking game that ended with everyone deciding as a group to make the switch to water. Things peaked at 2am when Ben blasted Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) and Eddie was hammered enough not to think much of he and Bev yelling the words at each other’s faces.

After that, the tiredness hit. Richie had to carry him over his shoulder to bed.

“I love you,” he slurred into the back of Richie’s shirt, his arms dangling. “This was the nicest present I’ve ever - I love you.”

Richie snickered and deposited him onto the mattress. He leaned over him, hands on the sides of Eddie’s head, and kissed him. “I love you too. You didn’t get like, a single lyric of that song right, do you know that?”

Eddie moaned when he got back up again, distressed. “Where are you - don’t go.”

“I have four other shitfaced people staying over, I have to attend to them. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”

Eddie moaned again like this was definitely not okay. While Richie was gone he managed to get his clothes off and brush his teeth until his mouth stopped tasting like rum and then he dropped back onto the bed, face-first, completely naked. Richie’s bed was better than his but that didn’t really bother him anymore. He barely slept in his own apartment these days.

He dozed for a while and woke up a little when Richie came to bed and tried to get Eddie off of the sheets so he could put them back over him.

He was grinning. “You’re being aggressively unhelpful right now.”

Eddie mumbled, nonsensically, “Baby, it’s my birthday.”

When they were finally both successfully in bed, under the sheets, Eddie immediately rolled over to Richie’s side and buried his face in his neck.

“I’ve never seen you this drunk,” Richie said, reaching up to pet his hair. “I feel like you’re gonna be really mad at Ben tomorrow for taking that video of you and Bev on the table screaming the Eurythmics song.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said. He kissed Richie’s neck. “Thanks. I love you. You - you’re the best. I think Bev and I were pretty good up there, fuck you.”

Richie said something but Eddie didn’t hear it before he fell asleep, just felt him keep petting his hair.

 

ten

 

“I can’t live like this,” Eddie said upon waking.

Richie shifted underneath him and yawned. “Good morning.”

“No. No. My whole body feels like shit. Jesus.”

“I feel great,” Richie said, like an asshole. He stretched the way he always did in the morning, all his long limbs going out at once. “You were sweaty as fuck all night. You’re stuck to me. I think you’re going to peel my skin off when you get up.”

“I hope I do,” Eddie said. He didn’t make a move to get up. He didn’t want to. He wanted to lie motionless on top of Richie for a day.

Richie stroked his back. “Want me to make you feel better?”

“God, yes. I do want that.” Eddie arched his spine into the touch and then he tensed, remembering. “But everyone’s in the house.”

“Who gives a shit?” Richie’s other hand moved to cup Eddie’s dick, which was starting to take an interest in things. “You’re entitled to a little birthday head. I owe you from yesterday.”

Eddie rocked his hips and hummed consideringly.

“Good argument,” he said.

He moved off of Richie to lie on his back, their skin sticking together unpleasantly. Richie smiled and kissed him before crawling down the bed and disappearing under the sheets, and then Eddie sucked in a breath at the wet heat of his tongue on him. He reached down to catch his fingers in Richie’s hair.

Richie kissed his hip bone. “Don’t be too loud. That would be awkward for all of us.”

“Fuck you, Richie, I’m not - oh, fuck, yes.”

Getting a blow job from Richie was always made better by that fact Richie obviously liked doing it. Eddie did too, but not to the same extent. Richie made a sound around him, low in his throat, and took him deeper into his mouth, his hands steadying Eddie’s twitching hips.

He swallowed when Eddie came and Eddie shoved his face into the pillow to keep from crying out. He licked at him afterwards when Eddie was oversensitive and his brain hadn’t come back online yet, and it was way too much but he always kind of liked that Richie did it. Then Richie stuck his head out from under the sheets, his hair a wreck, looking pleased with himself.

Eddie pushed a hand through his hair. “C’mere.”

Richie came up to lie next to him. Eddie fumbled for lube from the bedside table and then he curled around Richie’s side and worked a slick hand around his cock. He kissed the sensitive skin of his neck and teased him by backing off a little when he got close that way that made Richie huff a laugh, eyes closed, hips jerking, the way that made him say, breathlessly, “Eds, you’re killing me here.” Then Eddie made him come all over his hand, all over his stomach and his chest, groaning.

Afterwards he was feeling exactly gross enough to let Richie kiss him.

“You taste like stale breath and jizz,” he said.

Richie smiled crookedly. “Yeah, now you do too.”

Nobody else was in the living room when they got up. Mike had messaged them all an hour earlier to say that he and Bill were going for a walk and they’d bring back pastries and Ben and Bev were still asleep in the guest room.

Eddie took a few painkillers and messaged Mike to get some more since he figured the others would need them - Bev definitely would, at least. He put on a pot of coffee and as it brewed he looked at the framed arrangement of photographs he’d helped Richie put up on the kitchen wall: the picture Mike had taken of them all on Bev and Ben’s wedding; of Mike at the summit of Mount Fitz Roy, holding up his busted shoes and grinning; of Richie and Bill and Audra looking red-faced and drunk in some sushi place; of Bev and Ben on their honeymoon with Beau at their feet; of Richie’s parents sitting together in their new garden; of the photo Patty had sent of Stan looking over his glasses, close to cracking a smile; of Eddie lying miserably on Richie’s couch with bed-hair; of Richie blowing a raspberry on Eddie’s cheek at The Comedy Store.

Richie was sitting on a deck chair on the balcony and Eddie brought both their mugs to the table out there, sliding the door shut behind him with his foot.

“God, that’s fucking bright,” he said, squinting against the sun.

Richie thanked him. He sat there cross-legged sipping his coffee and idly playing with Eddie’s hand on the arm of his chair.

“Oh shit,” he said, putting his cup down. “I forgot to give you your present. What the fuck, I can’t believe it.”

“What?” Eddie blinked. “Richie, enough presents. The blow job was the last present.”

Richie got up and bolted into the house, telling Eddie over his shoulder, “Wait, it’s a good one!”

Eddie shifted in his seat and blearily looked out at the water in the distance. He turned when he heard the door sliding open and shut again.

Richie sat back down beside him, grinning. “Put out your hands.”

Eddie opened his mouth to argue, realised there was really no point, and did as he was told.

Richie pulled a little square piece of paper out of the pocket of his robe and put it in Eddie’s hands.

It was an old photograph. The backs of Eddie’s eyes started to burn the instant he looked at it.

“Happy birthday, Eds,” Richie said.

“Rich, oh my god,” Eddie said, winded. He shook his head. “How the hell did you get this?”

“I found it in my parents’ attic with all the other photos. I know.” Richie smiled down at the picture. “I couldn’t believe it.”

It was a photograph of the two of them at Richie’s twelfth birthday party. Richie was scrunching up his face in a smile, his glasses huge on his little face and his arm thrown around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie was tilting his head towards him, grinning. They were both wearing crooked party hats and dressed terribly.

Eddie thumbed across his own face and then slowly across Richie’s.

“Jesus,” he said. “Look how cute you are. How were you ever this small?”

Richie pointed. “Your little freckles, man. I can’t deal with them.”

Looking at the picture, Eddie could still remember how it felt to be twelve years old and friends with Richie, to be excited to see him every day at school, to like him even when he was being so unlikeable, to want his attention so badly and still take for granted that he would always get it. He’d loved Richie even then.

“Hey, Eds, are you...” Richie touched his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Eddie wiped his eyes and looked up at the concerned expression on Richie’s face. He kissed the bow of his lip.

“Nothing,” he said, and he meant it.