this (not gay) madness has to end

by lennynards

Summary:

A dream is a wish your heart makes. That's why Richie's last-ditch effort bolting out of Neibolt brings Eddie back to life. And Stan. And ties their souls together. (Richie's and Stan's, that is. Eddie feels totally normal about it.)

Notes:

Title from The Lonely Island. For the soulbond and cursed objects tropes from this October's tropes round (and maybe several years' past, who can say).

People always say that on your deathbed you never think "I wish I'd spent more time at work," but with It's claws fresh out of his chest and his guts leaking everywhere, Eddie's last clear, coherent thought is Shit I never finished that analysis for Tuesday. Kyle is gonna fuck it up.

"Hey, hey, look at me," Richie is saying, and Eddie thinks all kinds of things about how weird it is to see him up close, wild-eyed, his hands warm on Eddie's chest and his cheek. Richie's been bigger than him their whole lives, even though he forgot about it for a while there. Even though it probably doesn't matter anymore. Jesus, everything hurts, even the parts where Richie is touching him, his blunt fingernails like small, non-lethal claws. "Eds."

It probably doesn't matter that he never finished that report, Eddie thinks. It's not like it's going to be his problem ever again.

**

He wakes up with a burning pain in his chest, sharp and real. And he's covered in blood. And greywater. And all sorts of other shit he doesn't want to think about, Jesus fucking Christ.

And then, to add insult to the painful memory of an injury that apparently doesn't fucking exist anymore, he has to drag himself out of the revolting corpse of a house.

"I had to climb through the ruins," he yells. "I'm pretty sure I have asbestos now. Or mesothelioma. And you guys just left me there!"

Richie, who hasn't stopped crying since Eddie found them all climbing out of the quarry and started yelling at them for abandoning him, tilts his head to the side like a very large, very sad dog who isn't sure why he's in trouble. And then he shakes his head.

Eddie cuts himself off to ask, "What?"

"Nothing." Richie presses his fingertips to the base of his skull and makes that same considering face. "It's probably nothing."

Eddie wants to shove him into the lake. He's never been so glad to see someone but a small part of him wants to drown him. Richie probably has brain trauma from fighting that stupid fucking clown. They all probably do. "What?"

"Nothing," Richie says, waving his hands weirdly. "I didn't mean to interrupt. You smell terrible, by the way."

"I know!" Eddie is aware that he's lost the ability to modulate his voice but he also doesn't care. "Because you all left me in the clown cave and why are you doing that?"

Richie stops trying to sign something to Bev. "Doing what?"

"Who could you possibly want to call right now?" Eddie knows the international symbol for telephone; it hasn't changed in his entire lifetime. "Everyone you know is here."

"I know other people."

"Please don't say his mom," Mike says very quietly.

"I don't even know where my phone is," Bill says, squinting in the fading sun.

"That was supposed to be a phone?" Bev mimics Richie's gesture. "Richie."

"What? That's phone! Everyone knows it's phone! Eddie knew!"

"Who did you need to call?" Ben asks.

"No one," Richie says, quickly enough that everyone eyes him suspiciously. He tolerates it for a millisecond. "I mean, maybe Stan's… wife or whoever it was you talked to." He touches the back of his head again, wincing. "I just think something weird is going on but, you know, it can probably wait. Finish yelling. We left you in the ground, blah blah blah."

Eddie's going to get whiplash from this conversation. He can't believe he crawled out of the center of the earth only for Richie fucking Tozier to give him an aneurysm. "Blah blah blah?"

"Wait," Bev says. "Sorry, Eddie. Richie, what?"

"What?" Richie gestures jerkily at Eddie. "His wounds magically healed, the clown magic lifted, we're all somehow fine, who's to say it didn't… extend?"

It takes a second for what he's saying to sink in and then it seems to hit them all at once, what he's getting at. Eddie feels like he's going to throw up.

**

"I'm going to see him," Richie says, his breath hot on Eddie's temple. "Mike, tell him we're coming to see him!"

"Yeah, I figured you heard that." Mike plugs his free ear and turns away from them, stooping down so Bev can listen to what Stan's saying.

Stan.

After a day — fuck, after days full of shit Eddie can't believe, this is the final straw. He feels completely wrung out, exhausted, and overwhelmed, like everything that happened in Neibolt was years ago instead of hours.

"Uh oh." Richie's eyes go wide and he gets Eddie by the elbows before he even realizes he's starting to sit down where there's no chair.

"I need to go home," Eddie says stupidly. He needs to call Myra. Fuck, he needs a new phone. Somehow, killing that fucking clown brought him and Stan back to life but not their phones. It fucking figures.

"You need to sleep," Richie says forcefully. "You died today. Like actually literally died. In my arms. It was pretty fucked up."

"Don't." Eddie doesn't want to hear about it. He remembers It's claw going right through him and wishes he didn't.

"Come on," Richie says. "Let's go upstairs." He's already leading Eddie away, gently like he doesn't want him to spook. It's kind of nice, in a fucked-up way.

"But Stan…"

Richie's face goes weird for a second, distant, like he's remembering Stan actually died, too, and then he says, "Eh, Stan's fine."

There's no way that's true. None of them are fine. But Eddie lets it go, focuses on moving his limbs through the sludge that is the air around them.

"Wait," he says, looking around. "This isn't my room."

"Yeah, it's mine. I figured you didn't want to shower in yours after the whole, you know," he gestures manically at his own cheek, "Bowers thing."

Eddie blinks. "Oh, right." He should've gotten stitches for that. Now there's nothing but the phantom pain of a scratch. How had he forgotten about that already? Does he have brain trauma?

"Yeah, we all do," Richie says, because apparently Eddie's thinking out loud, "it's called GrowingupinDerryitis."

He waits, expectantly, for Eddie to laugh. When he doesn't, Richie shrugs, smacks Eddie on his miracle cheek, and then shoves him toward the bathroom.

"I can stay," he says suddenly, while Eddie moves slower than molasses. "I mean, if you want."

Eddie doesn't know what he wants so he says, "You don't have to," and slowly closes the bathroom door. In his head, his mother's voice tells him he'll feel better after a shower and a good, long sleep.

He almost believes her.

**

Things don't look better in the morning. But they don't look worse, either, so.

"All packed?" Bill claps his hand on Eddie's shoulder and then leaves it there, using him as leverage to ease himself down until they're sitting side-by-side.

"Yeah." He's leaving a lot of it here. The clothes he had on yesterday should be burned, not folded neatly and brought home with him. "You?"

"Yup." Bill shades his eyes against the early morning sun. "Feels like we've been here longer than a few days, doesn't it?"

On some level, it feels like they never left. Like the life he had last week is someone else's life, some Sliding Doors alternate universe that doesn't exist. He keeps telling himself that it's just because being back in Derry has been a mindfuck, that it'll settle down once he's home again.

"I'll tell you what, I'm glad to get the fuck out of here," he tells Bill, figuring if he says it enough it'll become true. Because he is glad to get out, to put as much space between himself and Derry as possible. It's everything else he's itchy about leaving.

"Yeah," Bill says after a long minute, fidgeting with his wedding ring. Right. He's got someone waiting for him at home, too.

Across the parking lot, Richie keeps trying to help Mike load their bags into their car. It seems to involve a lot of arm waving and shoving things on Richie's end and a lot of nodding and rearranging on Mike's.

"He's going to kill him before they hit Maryland," Bill says.

Eddie snorts. He can't imagine being trapped in a car that long with Richie, sixteen hours of his dumb jokes, too-long limbs, and his hair sticking up all over the place like he's never used a hairbrush before. His bag exploding all over the back seat. He probably thinks google maps routes are suggestions, not directions.

They're idiots to go on that trip at all. Eddie's glad to be going home, back to work, back to Myra. Back to where everything makes sense. If he were going with them, he'd probably kill Richie before they hit Connecticut.

Then again, maybe he should go with them, give Mike someone else to talk to. Or, more likely, give Richie someone to talk to so Mike can get some breathing room once in a while. Eddie never really got sick of him the way the others did. Sure, he got annoyed with him and fought with him and shit, but he had the highest tolerance and was usually the one who could stick it out the longest, until even Richie was sick of himself and would calm down.

Stan was good at that, too, Eddie remembers. Maybe even better at it than Eddie. He could calm Richie down. Eddie's strategy was always just to wind him up until he hit a wall. It's a good thing, then, that Stan would be there at the end of the road, waiting for them. Eddie doesn't need to be on the trip so long as Mike can hold out till the end.

"Oh, he won't kill him," Bev says. "One of us would, but Mike won't."

"Hey," Richie yells, "stop checking me out and let's go. Some of you losers have flights to catch."

**

Being home somehow feels worse than being in Derry. Every day is a slog and all Eddie ever wants to do, from the minute his alarm goes off until the minute he turns the light out, is crawl into bed and sleep for six years. Of course, once he's in bed he can't actually sleep.

Myra takes him to the doctor on day two. She'd made the appointment before he even came back to the city.

He swears up and down that he's fine, that the trip wasn't anything other than a reunion he'd forgotten to tell her about. He's still relieved when Dr. Morris gives him a clean bill of health.

"She said you were experiencing episodes," he says after Eddie's changed back into his street clothes and waits for a print-out he can scan to his insurance company as proof he's meeting his wellness goals for the year.

"I'm fine. I mean, I'm having a bit of trouble sleeping, but I'm fine."

Dr. Morris frowns. "Your wife asked for a referral to a specialist. A neurologist."

Well, that's just great. Eddie tries to school his face into something blandly professional. "She worries. I forgot to mention a class reunion and then I got into a car accident and those things happening back-to-back…" he trails off, unsure of what to say. Two weeks ago he probably would have been demanding an MRI himself. Maybe he should demand one, just for peace of mind.

Dr. Morris hums and looks unconcerned. "Stop using screens before bed," he suggests and then ushers Eddie out the door.

That night, curled up in the guest bedroom he's slept in since the third month after they got married, when he and Myra realized that they didn't have to share a bed and in fact slept better when they didn't, Eddie blinks at the bright light of his phone screen in the dark room and wonders if he should get those blue light glasses.

Anyone else getting brain-splitting headaches post-derry? Richie had sent to the group text not five minutes ago. Or just me?

I'm surprised MIke's not the one with the headaches Bev sends back.

Eddie tries not to think of aneurysms or tumors or encephalitis from the quarry or the sewers or anything else. Go to the damn doctor he sends. Take him to the doctor, Mike.

I gave him 3 advil, let's see if that helps first

This is the greywater's fault Richie says, with the bandaged head emoji. If only someone had warned me

I hope you got brain worms from it Eddie says.

love you too, Eds

Eddie falls asleep googling which parasites are most likely to live in standing water in Maine.

**

Two days later, Dr. Morris's office calls to inform him that his MRI has been authorized and scheduled for that evening at NYU as requested.

"What?" Eddie asks, but it's easy to connect the dots.

"Myra," he says to her voicemail, because she's at work, too, and not answering his calls, "I don't need an MRI. I'm fine." Stop pretending to be me to my doctor, he thinks. That part he doesn't say.

He keeps the appointment anyway, just in case he's not.

how many advil is it legal to take Richie texts while he's waiting for the contrast dye to take effect. Eddie's not sure if the rush of cold he feels is from the injection or the true fear that Richie's done something incredibly stupid.

"Is that all it takes to get you to call me?" Richie doesn't say hello when he answers the phone. "A normal medical question?"

"What did you do?" Eddie asks, picturing a dozen worst-case scenarios. "Can you touch your chin to your chest?"

"What?"

"It's a test for meningitis, just do it." It's cold in his little waiting cubicle; Eddie's glad the place is pretty empty for a Wednesday evening.

Surprisingly Richie doesn't argue, he just says, "Okay, yeah, I can do it. Do you need me to send proof?"

"Don't be an idiot," Eddie says. "Why are you taking so much Advil? Where's Mike?"

"I have a headache. He's in the shower."

"Still?"

"It's only been like five minutes and we got a late start because — oh, you mean do I still have a headache, not is Mike still in the shower. Never mind."

Eddie resists the urge to bang his head against the wall.

"Yeah, I mean I guess so. It comes and goes. The Advil helps but like, what if I OD on Advil? That'd be embarrassing."

"You're used to that, though," Eddie says.

"Ouch, man. Now I'm hurt in the head and the heart."

"Oh for fuck's sake." Eddie sees the door open, warning that a nurse is coming to check on him. "Alternate Advil and Tylenol, see if that helps. You can take ‘em like every three hours that way."

"Every three hours, got it." Richie sounds like he's writing it down. "Thanks, Dr. Kaspbrak."

"If it doesn't get better, see a real fucking doctor," Eddie says. "And tell Mike I said hi."

"Sure thing, sug—"

Eddie hangs up while Richie's mid-word. When he gets back from the test, he's got a picture waiting — texted directly to him, not the group — of Richie touching his chin to his chest and giving a thumbs up. He looks tired, has dark circles under his eyes and lines at the edges of his mouth and his beard's coming in like he hasn't shaved since he left Derry. It's probably from being on the road; they're clearly taking the slow route to Georgia.

He saves the picture and makes it Richie's contact photo. It's not great, but it's better than the stupid gray default initials.

**

His scans come back clean. Eddie goes to work every day. Myra declares theirs a vegan household in an effort to eliminate any source of trans fats from Eddie's diet. He hates it but doesn't say anything; it's not worth the fight.

At times it feels like absolutely nothing has changed.

But then Bev will text a picture to their group chat with the caption Last box! On the truck! and a string of strong arms and confetti cannons and Eddie thinks about how so much has changed that he can't keep track.

IS BEN WEARING A WEIGHT BELT??????????????????????????? Richie texts almost immediately.

Eddie zooms in on the picture of Ben all sweaty, standing in the back of a moving truck with a giant grin on his face. The way he looks at Bev makes something rattle dangerously in Eddie's chest, like there's something important on the verge of shaking loose. He can't remember ever looking at Myra like that.

Back injuries are no joke Eddie sends.

Then why is he blowing Bev's out on the reg

Beep beep Bev sends in the midst of Richie sending a flurry of emojis that Eddie doesn't want to try to parse. It's barely ten AM, but even ten PM would be too early for this.

So where are you guys? Ben asks, somehow managing to convey the aura of a parent ignoring their kid's temper tantrum with just a text.

We just made it to North Carolina Mike sends, and then, we were hoping to hit Fayetteville today but Rich got a migraine so we had to stop

HDU blame this on ME
I said I would keep driving but YOU said it was crucial that I be able to SEE

Ben sends, North Carolina's nice!

You need to LIVE A LITTLE, MICHAEL

I'm just trying to stay alive, thanks Mike sends back. Eddie pictures them in their hotel room with the lights off and the blinds drawn, texting back and forth. Richie shouldn't be blasting his eyes with his phone screen if he's got a migraine. That idiot's probably got the brightness all the way up.

He's in the middle of side-texting Richie as much when his phone rings. It's the neurologist, confirming his consult.

"But Dr. Morris said everything was fine," he says, confused.

"Yes, but your wife —"

"No," Eddie says, "I mean, I'm sorry. Please cancel the appointment."

He hangs up before he can change his mind.

He deletes the long, half-finished message he'd been typing to Richie and sends GO TO A GODDAMN DR instead. Then he pulls up a separate message to Beverly and says It's so brave of you to do this, you should be proud!

His hands are shaky for no reason, a sudden rush of adrenaline he doesn't fully understand. Everyone's still texting in the group chat, the number of unread messages going up as his phone pulses with short, incessant vibrations. He watches the three dots that indicate Bev's typing and reminds himself that Dr. Morris called him and very calmly explained that he was absolutely, totally, one hundred percent healthy.

Eventually, one of those stupid nested pink hearts comes through, and then, You're my inspiration, Eddie. If you could drag yourself back to life, the rest of us can do anything

That night he lies awake for far too long, thinking about everyone's new lives: Bev and Ben and the one they're building together; Mike's, finally out of Derry, on a twisted, apparently meandering road trip with Richie, who spent eighty minutes on the phone with his manager rearranging an entire tour so they could do it; Stan, waiting for them like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Even Bill's in London, doing whatever it is famous writers do, probably having a magnificent time with his wife. Eddie's not jealous; he's deeply, sincerely happy for all of them. But it doesn't escape him that so many of his friends are starting over and here he is, back in the exact same bed he slept in before he died, before he remembered everything he forgot.

Before he remembered how patient Ben was, and how compelling Bill was, and how infuriating Richie could be, and how satisfying it was to win an argument against him, and how rewarding his stupid squawking laugh was, and how he was always willing to meet Eddie at whatever level he was operating on, like a demented improv partner.

It's enough to make him toss and turn, his runaway train of a brain overpowering even a double dose of melatonin.

At some point, he falls asleep, and then he wakes up and goes to work and does the same thing he's done for a decade, at the same place he's worked for a decade, and tries to ignore the growing feeling that he's two people sharing one body, the Eddie from Derry trying to fit in alongside the Edward everyone knows in New York, and the even bigger, scarier feeling that he likes one of those people a lot more than the other.

**

Eddie answers Mike's call on the second ring, tamping down the memories of the last time this happened. He isn't driving, there's no way he's going to crash this time.

"Hello?" he repeats. "Mike? Did you mean to call me?"

There are some weird, staticky sounds on the other end and then a grunt, and just when Eddie's starting to get really worried, imagining a wreck or a carjacking or — "Don't listen to him, Eds, I'm fine!" Richie yells in the middle distance.

"What?"

"Hey, Eddie, sorry, hang on one second," Mike sounds winded. He must put the phone against his shoulder because it's muffled when he says, "Stop it. This is the third time today. It's either Eddie or the emergency room."

"Emergency room!" Eddie says — yells, actually, because he's probably talking to Mike's muscles instead of the parts of him capable of listening. "Mike! Emergency room!"

He hears Richie say, "I don't know why you even called him, he's just gonna say ER."

"Drink that and don't move," Mike says, and then there's the sound of a door shutting. He sounds normal when he says, "Sorry. He's probably fine, I didn't mean to panic you."

"Emergency room," Eddie repeats. "Mike, listen to me."

"We already did that, Eddie." Mike sounds exhausted. "He's fine. They did all sorts of tests and he's fine. He's got migraines. The doctor says it's probably stress-induced."

Eddie snorts. "Probably deadlights-induced."

"Yeah." Mike laughs, a quiet, gentle sound. "Rich said that, too."

Eddie's heart's still beating at a panicked clip, worry and dread coursing through his veins. "What the fuck, Mike."

He doesn't mean it like a question, but Mike treats it like one. "I don't know. We're two hours from Stan's house but he looks terrible. The doctor gave him meds but he can't keep them down today; he's saying he's doing a ‘solids-averse' diet."

"I'm from LA, this is what we do!" Richie yells.

"Tell that dumbass he's from Maine," Eddie says.

Instead, Mike says, "Go to sleep!"

Eddie got migraines for a few years, the kind where his vision would go blurry and he'd have to sit in a dark room waiting for the actual headache to come. The waiting was always the worst part. That and the barfing.

"Crush up the pills and put them in some Pedialyte," he says. "My mom used to do that when I was little."

"I remember that, actually. So that's what I did."

Eddie pulls into his driveway, finally home, and parks the car. "Then why did you call me?"

"Can't a guy just miss one of his oldest friends?"

"Mike, what the — you threatened him with the ER, I heard you."

"Yeah, but because I'm on the phone with you he's actually drinking that disgusting kid stuff. You're a better threat than blood work."

"That's insane," Eddie says, because it is.

"He doesn't want to disappoint you, is all."

Eddie doesn't know what to say to that. If it were like, Bill who Richie didn't want to disappoint it would make sense. Eddie's just… nobody. Himself. A guy who has his primary care physician on speed dial and who performed a risk analysis before buying a new mattress two years ago.

"He should not disappoint me by getting a second opinion," Eddie says. "And eating a fucking vegetable — I know he hasn't since you left, Mike. It may have been years since we saw each other but I know a non-fried vegetable has not passed that man's lips your entire road trip."

"I think I saw him eat a piece of broccoli in Massachusetts," Mike says. He pauses for a second. "But it was covered in cheese, so I don't know if that counts on the Kaspbrak scale."

"Half credit." Normally it doesn't count at all, but Richie's struggling and apparently Eddie's feeling generous.

"I'll be sure to let him know." He can tell Mike's smiling. "He'll be pleased."

They talk for a bit after that, Mike filling him in on the actual highlights of their trip, his favorite part of each state they've driven through, Richie's repeated attempts to avoid calls from his manager, the latest news from his early morning check-in with Stan.

"With any luck, we'll be there today."

"Two hours away, you said."

"Yeah, just about." Mike lets out a sigh that Eddie feels in his bones. He wonders what it would have been like to be with them, crammed into the back seat while Richie reclined the passenger seat as far as it could go. Annoying, probably. The kind of thing that seems fun until you're actually doing it. "We should probably get going. Thanks for listening; I needed some sanity for a minute."

"And everyone else was busy?"

Mike laughs dutifully. "You were my first and only call, Eddie. Sorry to scare you at the beginning there."

"It's fine," Eddie says even though he means don't do it again.

"He fell asleep, so I think he's feeling better. He looks better, anyway."

"Good." Eddie takes a deep breath and then another. "That's good. Drive safe, yeah?"

"Of course. Love you, buddy."

"I — uh, I — yeah," Eddie says, suddenly aware he's still sitting in his parked car, the sun beating down on him, hot and stifling. "You too. Take Richie to the doctor if he keeps barfing."

"Will do." Mike hangs up, leaving Eddie with nothing but the shouts from the kids down the street playing and the deranged idea that he should book a flight to Georgia and surprise everyone.

**

It'd be ridiculous, he knows, to fly to Georgia. He just took time off to go to Derry, he doesn't have time for a second vacation.

**

Seeing the rip-roaring time Richie and Mike are having with the Urises doesn't make a spontaneous trip to Georgia any less compelling.

It would seem, based solely on the pictures texted to Eddie, that Richie has triumphantly overcome his debilitating migraines, or at the very least his medication is working. Every day it's something new, sent from Mike or Richie or Stan or Stan's wife, Patty, pictures of puzzles, of birds, of the elaborate breakfast Mike makes one morning. A series of Stan and Richie and Mike drinking tall cocktails on a patio followed by ones of Richie dancing in the middle of a moonlit street while Stan looks on, unamused as ever. Stan and Richie eating ice cream cones like a couple of nine-year-olds. Mike trying a dozen sodas at the World of Coca-Cola; Richie spilling his soda at the World of Coca-Cola; then Richie with the manager of the World of Coca-Cola — a picture that ends up on the official Coke Instagram, reminding Eddie that Richie is somehow a famous comedian. A celebrity.

Eddie saves all the pictures to the same folder on his phone, one he scrolls through when he's bored at work or when he can't sleep. It's not jealousy, he doesn't think — he has no desire to be chased down the street by Richie wielding a snow cone like had happened to Patty earlier that day — but it's a reminder, proof that he hasn't forgotten.

It feels like it was all a horrible nightmare sometimes, It's claws through his chest and the slow creeping chill of death. Eddie tries not to think about it, wishes he could forget it ever happened, but if that went hand-in-hand with forgetting everything else: Mike's quiet strength, Ben's gentleness, Beverly's fearlessness, Bill's faith in all of them, Richie's… Richie calling him brave, his face so close to Eddie's at the end. His face when Eddie walked back up to them, after. All their faces when Eddie came back, bloodied and disgusting and feeling like he might never be able to pull himself together again.

He had, somehow. They all had. And Eddie would never risk losing that.

He pulls up one of the pictures from early on in Atlanta, one Patty had taken of Richie and Stan dead asleep on the couch like they'd stayed up too late talking. Eddie's pretty sure there was a similar photo somewhere in his childhood bedroom; he'd taken it for blackmail purposes because Richie rarely fell asleep first. He wishes he still had it now so he could compare their faces, point out all the parts that are different and the parts that are the same like a puzzle in a Highlights magazine.

He falls asleep wondering what kind of person Stan grew up to be.

**

All good things must come to an end Richie texts at ass o'clock one morning. The picture it's captioning is Stan glaring while Patty flips the camera off.

Give everyone a kiss goodbye for me!!!! Bev sends.

Richie sends back three check marks. It's followed immediately by a text saying Stan Uris disliked a message which is followed by three separate variations that all boil down to Damn it, Bill. His stupid android phone always fucks everything up.

Eddie goes to work a little bit lighter, safe in the knowledge that for once he won't lose an hour googling the cheapest direct flights to ATL. Maybe he'll suggest Richie and Mike spend a day in the city on their way back. They could get dinner — Myra won't want to go out to dinner, not with all the e.coli outbreaks she's convinced have jumped from Chipotle to every restaurant in the world, but Eddie would. Not at Chipotle, but anywhere else.

**

He doesn't know why he answers the call from what his phone helpfully tells him is an Alabama number, only that he does it and immediately resigns himself to a life's worth of "your car warranty has expired" spam calls.

"This is —"

"Oh thank god, Eddie, it's Mike. I'm at a payphone in Alabama, I can't get any service out here."

"Why are you in Alabama? Isn't that out of the way?"

"We were going to do Nashville and we detoured into Alabama so we could both say we've been here but Richie, god, he's bad Eddie. Like, real bad."

Eddie feels like he did in Neibolt when the Stan-spider was trying to kill Richie, paralyzed with terror and panic. He's distantly aware of Mike saying something, and his brain must cleave in half so that part of him can actually function because someone pulls up google maps to pinpoint where Mike is and then directions to the nearest hospital. Eddie's never had an out-of-body experience before. He hates it.

Mike hangs up with a promise to call the second he knows anything. Eddie immediately starts looking at flights to Alabama and then, when they prove few and far between, tries to figure out how quickly he could drive there.

Miraculously it doesn't take long for Mike to call back — Eddie hasn't gotten any work done in the hours since that first call, but he hasn't made any rash decisions either. He normally would have headed home by now, but he'd lost track of time.

"They gave him some crazy painkillers," Mike says, straight to the point, which Eddie appreciates.

"Which ones?"

"I don't know. He has an IV. He was dehydrated. They're going to let us go in a little bit."

"They should keep him overnight. Let me talk to the doctor."

"No. We're gonna go back to Atlanta, it's closer, and Richie says we need to check on Stan."

"What? Why?" Richie should be helicoptered to the nearest trauma center, is what Eddie thinks.

"Patty said he's pretty sick, too. Richie thinks that they ate something that made them sick, which triggered a migraine."

So they need to be together? Eddie doesn't say that because he's too busy pulling up a separate group text to send DID YOU GUYS TALK TO MIKE to Ben and Bev and Bill.

OMG it's crazy right? Bev sends almost immediately.

I THINK SOMETHING IS WRONG Eddie sends, and then, because Mike is telling him he's got to go, they're wheeling Richie out, "I strongly disagree with this. Tell Richie I think he should stay. He needs to see a real doctor."

"These are real doctors," Mike says patiently.

"Is that Eddie? Is he so stressed out he's turned from a solid into a gas?"

"Permanent cognitive damage is going to turn you from a solid into a liquid, asshole!" Eddie yells.

"He's incredibly worried and hopes you feel better soon," Mike says. "Bye, Eddie. We'll call you."

"Please don't." Eddie instantly regrets saying it. It's just that every time Mike calls lately it's with bad news, terrifying news, really, and at this rate, Eddie is going to have a coronary before the eleven o'clock news airs.

But it's too late to change it because Mike's hung up and he's probably loading Richie's weak, gangly ass into their definitely-cursed car.

Bev and Ben have been texting while he was distracted, but Eddie doesn't bother to scroll through what they've said.

SHOULD WE GO TO ATLANTA? He can't tell if it's a proportionate response to the situation, only knows that he feels like he's being held together by the flimsiest of tape.

YES
OBVIOUSLY Bev sends, and Ben says, First thing tomorrow?

That's too late for Eddie, personally, but it's probably for the best. Leaving for Atlanta without even a suitcase would be insane.

Booking this one. Ben sends a screenshot of his Delta app and the band squeezing Eddie's insides loosens a little. Is it weird that he's glad everyone else is panicking? Probably. Whatever. He doesn't really have time for this. He has a flight to book.

**

Myra's waiting up for him when he gets in, looking torn between being angry with him and relieved to see him.

"Myra," he says, because the extended silence is unbearable. She just sits there, waiting, and Eddie realizes he doesn't know what to say. There are too many options, the possibilities all forking out in front of him. He's paralyzed by choice.

"You didn't answer my texts."

"I'm sorry." He'd meant to, only to get distracted by coordinating with Bev and Ben, or mentally packing, or emailing his boss that he'd be taking some PTO, sorry for the late notice but there was a family emergency, in a few days he would probably be able to work remotely if they needed him.

He collapses into the seat across from her, the kitchen table feeling as wide as the Sahara. If he wanted he could reach out and touch her hand.

"Something is wrong with you, Eddie," she says, at the same time he says, "I'm going to Georgia in the morning."

He takes a deep breath, fighting against the useless panic threatening to rise inside him. It's only a conversation, he tells himself. You put your bleeding guts back together and dragged yourself out of a collapsing house.

The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like Richie.

He takes another breath, steadying himself, and then he starts to tell her about what actually happened in Derry.

**

Eddie's halfway to the airport when Bill's text comes in.

Wait are you guys serious

It is, hands down, the funniest thing Eddie's read all week. He laughs so loud that his Uber driver glares at him and Eddie has to apologize for upsetting the silence of their four AM drive.

Yes he texts back, trying to put himself in Bill's shoes, stuck hours ahead of them and waking up to increasingly unhinged messages across multiple group chats. Like that picture of the guy with the pizza when the party's on fire.

He's in the middle of composing a lengthy message to fill Bill in when Mike texts a Sorry this is so late but FYI everyone is feeling better! Richie felt better by the time we got to Atlanta, he hasn't been sick again since. Probably some weird food poisoning - Stanley is doing better now too. Hope you weren't too worried!

Too worried. Jesus Christ. If Eddie didn't need it, he'd chuck his phone out the window.

Too late motherfuckers, he says, I'm not canceling my flight.

**

He reunites with Ben and Bev in Atlanta and the three of them cab it to Stan's address. Everyone's waiting on the front porch when they get there.

Eddie climbs out of the car and stops short when he sees Stanley sitting there in shorts and a polo shirt, his hair going all crazy like he's only just woken up. It feels like seeing a ghost.

"Stan," Bev says, slipping past Eddie so she can run to the front steps and throw her arms around him.

"So, uh, Mike figured it out. It's worse than we thought," Richie interrupts an otherwise lovely reunion

"Why don't we let everyone come inside first," Patty suggests. "This seems like something everyone might want to be sitting down for."

"Patty, stop being so nice, Eddie'll fall in love with you and then you'll have to divorce Stan and he'll have to move in with me and —"

"Go to jail for murder," Stan finishes. He touches Ben's arm. "Come inside? It's really not as terrifying as Richie's making it sound."

**

"I'm sorry," Eddie says for what feels like the ninety-third time. "So what you're saying is: after you murdered an insane clown and you were fleeing Neibolt — where, need I remind you, we were tormented by an evil dog and the decapitated head of Stanley, among other things — you saw a rabbit's foot, and despite everything that had just happened, you still picked it up and made a wish?"

"To reverse everything!" Richie says. "I was doing it for you."

Eddie folds his hands and presses them to his mouth and reminds himself to breathe.

"And you did this because you saw Stan in the deadlights?" Bev, unlike Eddie, manages to sound calm.

Stan nods. "He called me a fucking idiot."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry for being mad that you killed yourself, Stan."

"And then he told me he loved me and then I woke up here."

"And then we started having crippling headaches because we were apart."

Stan holds up one hand as if to say, And then that. He and Richie stare at each other for a moment, weird looks on their faces like they both find this amusing even though it shouldn't be. Eddie can feel his pulse in his throat as he racks his brain, trying to remember if he's had any strange symptoms since coming back. It's a good sign he hasn't, right?

Across the room, Richie blinks first. "And then Mike figured it all out! I'm pretty sure he just googled it." He says the second part in a fake whisper, making both Stan and Mike roll their eyes.

"The combination of the rabbit's foot and the deadlights is what created the soulbond, I think," Mike says.

Eddie feels like his brain is going to start smoking any second. Richie told someone he loved them? And it wasn't like, sarcastic and immediately followed by a joke about Eddie's mom? And now he and Stan can't be apart or else one of them is gonna end up hospitalized? What the fuck is going on. Eddie died in that cave, he was right there with Richie, so like, what the hell?

Then again, he doesn't know why he's surprised. Of course Stan and Richie are like, permanently linked together. They always were two weird opposite peas in a pod, calm and chaos, yin and yang. And always will be, apparently.

"So what, now you guys have to live together forever?" he asks, because he can't wrap his brain around any of this, let alone the long-term logistics.

"Oh my god," Patty says.

Richie crosses his arms. "So what if we did?"

"No, we don't," Stan says. "Mike says we just had to acknowledge our bond and like, embrace it."

What kind of hippie-dippie crap? Eddie wants to know what the fuck "embrace it" means, but no one is interrupting with questions, they're all just nodding along like this makes total sense.

"We did another ceremony." Richie rolls his eyes at Bev. "You know Mike and his pentagrams."

"It sounds like he was very helpful. Again," she says. Mike smiles a little and shrugs, like saving the day was no big deal.

"He was," Stan says, clapping Mike on the shoulder. "Richie can fully cross state lines now. And he should."

"I'm going to move into the shed out back just to spite you."

"Embrace it… how?" Ben asks, which makes Stan go bright red and Richie laugh so hard he starts choking on his own saliva.

Eddie stops thinking before his brain can make any suggestions and give him like, a full-blown subarachnoid hemorrhage.

**

Richie finds him outside, hiding in the shade and trying to stay awake. It's only early afternoon, he can't fall asleep now, he'll wreck his sleep schedule. Or his not-sleeping schedule, as it were.

"Hey." Richie makes a huge production of sliding down the side of the shed, his limbs flopping around like wet noodles. Eddie knows he's trying to make him laugh, he's just annoyed it's nearly working. "What're you doing out here? Practicing mindfulness?"

"You should fucking practice mindfulness. It starts with not making wishes on cursed objects."

"I was just visualizing what I wanted, Eddie. I was using The Secret like Oprah taught me. If that didn't work, I was gonna follow 50 Cent's advice and make a vision board."

"And what would that look like? A bunch of dead people?"

"Obviously it would be alive people," Richie says it like Eddie's the stupidest person on the planet. And maybe he is, for panicking and flying down here and finding out that the only thing Richie and Stan needed to do was fucking hug it out or whatever. "It's like you don't even understand the purpose of a vision board."

"I don't!" Eddie says, and that makes Richie laugh really hard. Like, really hard, and for so long Eddie starts to get worried.

"I'm fine." Richie bats Eddie's hands away from his face. "That was just funny. You're supposed to use them to visualize what you want. You know. Conceive it, believe it, achieve it."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Richie stares at him for a minute, his face weird like he's trying not to laugh. After a second he shakes his head and looks away, staring across Stan's yard. There's a bird feeder there, and a stone birdbath. Eddie tries not to think about how many diseases birds carry.

"Can I stay with you?" Richie asks.

"What?"

"At your hotel. Mike quote ‘needs a break' unquote." Richie does air quotes and everything. "He sounds like my dad."

"Oh." Eddie hadn't really thought about anything beyond get to Georgia. He should probably find a place to stay now that he's here. "Yeah, of course."

He'll just have to look for a room with two beds. Easy enough.

**

"It's not the best, but —"

"Eddie, I have barfed in every hotel I've stayed in for like, the last three weeks. No, longer — since Mike called before we went to Derry. I think you're seriously overestimating how nice I need a room to be."

Eddie must make a face because Richie drops his bag right in the middle of the floor and says, "Now you're thinking about how many other people have thrown up in this room, aren't you?"

It's exactly what Eddie's thinking. "Thanks a fucking lot, asshole."

"Do you want me to go buy some bleach wipes?"

Eddie sets his bag on the luggage rack and pulls out some shirts so he can hang them up before they get too wrinkled. "Don't be a dick."

"Fine." Richie lies on one of the beds, right on the disgusting-ass bedspread. He puts his hand on his sternum and makes a face; Eddie's ready to offer him some Prilosec when Richie says, "Ugh, what the fuck is Stan so stressed about, he is killing me." He makes a face and then coughs, pulling at the front of his shirt. "Jesus Christ."

He sits up and pulls out his phone so he can start texting. Eddie wants to lean over his shoulder and read what he's saying. He wants to ask what it's like, knowing Stan's every emotion or whatever. It's none of his business.

"Do you need to go back to the house?"

"Nah. He's feeling better." Richie coughs again. At least this time it's into his elbow. "He probably like, lost a puzzle piece, I don't fucking know. We'll see him at dinner. Hey, do you want to watch a movie?"

He's already got the TV on, flipping through the channels faster than Eddie's brain can process what's on the screen.

"I should check in with work."

"Booooooo."

"Fuck you, get a real job."

Richie gasps. "I brought you back from the dead and this is the thanks I get?"

"I knew you were gonna throw that back in my face." Eddie doesn't know why he has to fight so hard not to smile. It's not fucking funny. "Just pick a fucking movie, I have to check my email."

He half expects for there to be a dozen notifications from Myra when he checks his phone, but there's nothing. It feels like a hundred years ago that he sat at their kitchen table and said, "This isn't working anymore," and, "I think we want different things now."

The relief he'd felt when she agreed was so overwhelming he'd thought he might cry.

She'd said, "I just want what's best for you, Eddie," and he knows she'd meant it, but the problem is he's a different person now. He's always been a different person, it's just neither of them realized it until it was too late.

**

Sharing a room with Richie makes Eddie feel like he's twelve again. Part of him wants to stay up all night, watching terrible movies and like, practicing wrestling moves. Part of him wants to smother Richie with his pillow just to get him to shut up.

"Aren't you done yet?"

Eddie looks up from his laptop to find Richie standing over him. "What the fuck are you wearing?"

"We're meeting Stan and Patty for lunch. Come on."

"Are we meeting them at a water park? Because that looks like a bathing suit."

Richie gasps, insulted. "They are patterned shorts. Some of us don't aspire to dress like sexy drywall every day."

Eddie is not in the mood to be ragged on. His shorts are a totally normal length. "What is wrong with khaki?"

"We're not on a safari, for one."

Eddie slams his laptop closed. "Then why do your shorts blend in with the jungle?"

Richie sputters. Eddie rides the high of his victory all the way to the restaurant, where he refuses to sit next to Richie because his shorts are so ugly they're bound to give him a migraine.

"He's your problem, you sit next to him," he tells Stan.

"That's not how it works."

Eddie doesn't know how it works. Richie and Stan gave them a thirty-second explanation that boiled down to: the blinding pain was temporary, now there's a bond, it's hard to explain. Richie tried to do a demonstration involving playing cards and their alleged telepathy that ended with Stan yelling "It's an emotional soulbond, you bozo!" and Richie throwing the cards across the room.

It doesn't matter how it works, is what Eddie's decided. If they really wanted everyone to know, everyone would.

Patty shrugs. "Seems fair to me." She switches to one of the empty seats and pats the one next to her for Eddie.

"Good afternoon, sweetie," Richie says and plants a huge kiss on Stan's cheek.

"Why." Stan's dry voice doesn't match his expression — he's gotten worse at keeping a straight face, he's clearly biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn't laugh. Richie knows, too, because he's not fucking blind, and he keeps his face close, smiling so hard he looks disturbed.

He stays there until Stan cracks and the crows victoriously. "Hey hey!" He grabs Stan's head in both his hands and smacks another, longer kiss on his cheek, laughing as Stan blushes.

Patty shakes her head. How she's going to put up with this for the rest of her life, Eddie will never know.

He picks up his menu and tries to ignore the headache pricking at his eyes. At least he's not soul-bonded to Richie. That'd probably make everything so much worse.

**

"Come on, we can walk," Richie says, waving goodbye to Stan and Patty.

"It's like a thousand degrees outside."

"Are you afraid you'll melt? It's like a ten-minute walk."

Eddie's sure it's twice that. Richie's probably got some broken internal calculator because he's got those freakishly long legs.

"Come on." Richie nudges Eddie with his elbow. "I saw an ice cream place on the way. I'll buy you a cone."

Eddie doesn't want a fucking ice cream cone, he isn't a kid. "Fine," he says anyway, if only to stop Richie from making his eyes look all big and sad. "Stop doing that. You look insane."

"I am insane, Eds. Insane in the membrane."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Eddie starts walking. He trusts Richie will catch up.

**

"Let's go in there next." Richie points to an antique store across the street from the ice cream shop. Eddie shudders to think of the eight thousand disturbing artifacts that are probably hidden within.

"Why, so you can wish on a Civil War horseshoe that we can hear each other's thoughts forever?" Eddie can't imagine a worse fate. And judging by the panic on Richie's face, he can't either.

"Fuck you." Richie shakes his head like he's trying to clear the horrid of Eddie telepathy from his imagination. "I'm in the market for a new table."

"You are not."

"I am too. Right now I just have an old card table, it looks so dumb."

"You're forty years old, why the fuck do you have a card table instead of a real table?"

"I don't know! Because finding tables is hard, give me a break!" Richie looks wild-eyed, his arms bent defensively. It looks ridiculous with the way his ice cream is an aggressive fake-strawberry pink. "It's not like I eat at it ever."

Eddie shakes his head, disappointed. "You're an adult. You need a table."

"I know! That's why I'm trying to buy one!"

Eddie does not laugh. It's not funny. Richie is a grown-ass man, he should have a kitchen table, regardless of how much he tours or whatever the fuck it is he does.

They sit there awhile longer, eating their ice cream as the sun makes the shadows grow longer and longer. The heat would feel oppressive if they weren't in the shade. Eddie doesn't understand how people live like this. He can't imagine Richie's pale ass tolerating an LA summer. How has he not collapsed yet?

Whatever. Richie's insane table-free, unbearably-hot life isn't his problem. If it's anyone's, it's Stan's. Besides, Richie's lived nearly thirty years without Eddie or any of the other Losers making sure he stayed alive. Eddie doesn't need to worry about him. He needs to fucking learn to relax.

He feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine. Relaxing is easier said than done.

"You know, I really should be working," he says, the silence suddenly too much. It's almost four o'clock. He hasn't checked his email since before lunch. When he looks over, Richie is staring intently as Eddie tries to catch some of his sorbet before it melts onto his knuckles. "What?"

Richie looks away quickly and then shakes his head sadly. "You're on vacation, Eddie."

Eddie gives him a look. "Uh, no? You're on vacation. I told my boss I had a family emergency and that once it was sorted I would be able to work remotely."

Richie's face does sixteen complicated things at the same time. He looks like his features are melting, or maybe made of rubber.

"Shut up," Eddie says, before Richie can say something stupid. He doesn't want to talk about it. Richie's fine. Everyone's fine. So he panicked and overreacted, that isn't the point; the point is he's supposed to be like, somewhat available.

"I get it," Richie says eventually. "Can't let those insurance claims adjust themselves."

"That's not — shut the fuck up. You know that's not what I do."

"I don't know that. Your job is literally so boring that I can't think about it without falling asleep. Your job is Ambien."

"Eat your fucking ice cream so we can go in the stupid antique store and buy you a fucking table."

"A fucking table, now there's an idea." Richie's face actually lights up.

Eddie's stomach flips over. "Beep beep," he says and tries not to wonder if Richie rubbing his chest means that Stan knows the kind of disgusting thoughts he's having right now.

No one should be subjected to those.

**

"I thought you had to work." Richie frowns at the way Eddie stows his computer and grabs for the remote.

"I'm done. It's fine. Mind your own business." Eddie's not anywhere near done, but he's finding it hard to care right now when it's ten o'clock at night and Richie keeps laughing at some rerun of The Office he's probably seen a hundred times.

He waits until it's a commercial to say, "So are we going back to buy that table in the morning?"

If Richie's surprised by the 'we' in the sentence, he hides it well. "Probably, yeah. My manager sent the measurements, I think it should fit."

"You think?" This is a disaster waiting to happen. Eddie gets up from his chair and goes to sit next to Richie on his bed. "Let me see."

He's expecting Richie to protest, but he doesn't at all, just sighs and unlocks his phone and hands it over, saying, "Swipe right. I'm not responsible for what you see if you swipe left."

Eddie's glad there's only one lamp on in the room because it means Richie probably can't tell how red his face gets. He doesn't want to know what kind of pictures Richie has on his phone, doesn't even want to think about it. What if he gets hacked? He's famous enough. It's a huge fucking risk.

"Is this where it'll go?" His voice comes out strained; Eddie has to cough to clear it. He tilts the phone toward Richie so he can see, too.

"Yeah. That's obviously the one I'll get rid of."

The table in question's surprisingly clean. Eddie doesn't know what he'd been expecting Richie's kitchen to look like, doesn't know why he's surprised it's got marble countertops and white cabinets. It's modern, with clean lines and all that shit and, "Is that a bowl of fruit?"

Richie snorts. "Don't worry, it's fake."

Of course it is. Eddie wants to zoom in, examine the cookbooks on one of the shelves, the prints on the wall next to the fridge. The invitations and other shit stuck to the fridge with magnets. It'd be creepy to do any of that. He swipes through a few pictures, ones that have different angles of the room ,and capture the open floor plan of the whole living area.

"It'll look good," he says, trying not to focus on the jacket tossed over the back of a chair or the posters framed on the wall. The open notebook on the coffee table. All the signs of Richie's lived-in home, his life separate from this one. His real life. Eddie hands him back the phone. "If the measurements are right, it'll definitely fit."

"And if it doesn't, I'll just buy a new place." Richie grins crookedly. He's close enough that Eddie can see the way his eyes are sparkling; it's like he's daring Eddie to get outraged at his stupid joke.

Eddie refuses to take the bait.

After a second Richie lets it drop. He elbows Eddie and holds his phone up, zooming in on the terrible card table. "Tell me, do you think I need new chairs, too?"

**

The weird thing is, after a couple days in Georgia, wandering around in the swampiest weather he's ever experienced and being jolted awake at three am every night by another one of Richie's earth-shattering snores, Eddie realizes that, despite everything, he's borderline relaxed.

That it's maybe the most relaxed he's ever been in his adult life.

"Seriously?" Mike makes a face when Eddie says as much, all of them crammed into Stan's kitchen pretending to help get dinner ready.

"Yeah. I feel great."

"Good for you," Bev says. Richie leans across the island and puts his hand on Eddie's forehead.

"What the fuck." Eddie jerks away. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to see if a fever is cooking your brain right before our eyes." The duh is implied.

"Because I said I was having a nice vacation?"

Richie makes a face. He's still leaning awkwardly over the island, though at least his hand isn't on Eddie's face anymore. It had been suspiciously cool. From the lettuce, Eddie realizes. Richie's the one in charge of the salad.

"It is a little bit unlike you," Ben offers.

"Usually you have an itemized list of problems ready to go at any given moment," Richie says. "Stan, stop feeling bad for him."

"Stop feeling —" At Richie's glare, Stan rolls his eyes. "Stop picking on him, then."

Eddie opens his mouth, ready to say, "Stop using your stupid bond to talk about me like I'm not here," but before he gets the chance, Richie's saying, "We're not picking on him, we're stating facts about Eddie! And making sure he's not dying!"

"He's not dying, he's fine. Let him enjoy his vacation." Stan makes a face at Eddie like this dope and Eddie feels a rush of annoyance. You're both idiots,, he wants to say. And stop trying to side with me when you're supposed to be on his team. He doesn't know why being with everyone brings out his basic, most pre-teen urges. He hates this version of himself.

"Fine." Richie goes back to his cutting board and aggressively chops a red pepper in half. "But when Eddie becomes so relaxed that he permanently moves to Georgia and lives in your shed, I don't want to deal with you feeling all," he clenches his hand into a fist near his throat, "about it."

"Deal," Stan says, at the same time Patty says, "I thought you were going to live in our shed."

"Yeah, hence the." Richie makes the same fist again.

"Ah."

"I'm not living in a shed with you," Eddie says. That thing is like, tinier than their hotel room. It'd be chaos. How would they even get two beds in there? They'd have to share one, and that. Eddie's brain short circuits at the suggestion.

"You will and you'll like it."

"No one is living in our shed."

"Fine, Stan, but then Eddie and I will need access to the master bath."

"Oh for fuck's sake."

"And a place for my new table and chairs." Richie winks at Eddie. "They're antiques and they're incredibly precious to us."

Eddie's too distracted to correct him on the pronouns.

It's a blessing, really, when his phone rings. Eddie answers immediately.

"Hey, Bill." He lets himself out the back door, welcoming the quiet that follows. "Everyone's still fine."

Bill laughs. "Glad to hear it. I was just checking in before I went to sleep."

They'd all talked to him that first day, had conferenced him in for Mike's explanation of how Richie's idiocy had bonded him and Stan for life, but obviously it wasn't the same. He hasn't gotten to see Stan outside a phone screen, hasn't gotten to hug him or shake him or smack Richie upside the head for being such a wonderful moron.

"You should just come," Eddie says, not for the first time. He drags the toe of his shoe along the edge of Patty's flowerbeds. The line of dirt is perfectly even and straight. They must've paid through the nose for the landscaping.

Across the ocean, Bill laughs again. "Listen, I love you guys and I miss you, obviously, but I need to be here right now."

"Right." Eddie gets it. "You probably have a lot of work."

"No, Aurora."

"Oh." A bead of sweat rolls from Eddie's hairline down the collar of his shirt. Fucking Georgia humidity. "Obviously."

It is obvious, he thinks. Or it should be. When all was said and done, Bill just wanted to get home to his wife.

Through the kitchen window, Eddie can see Richie's arms waving wildly as he talks. Stan ignores him, keeps on pulling plates from the cabinets. It looks like a weird old-timey movie.

When Richie looks up, he catches Eddie watching him and his ranting stops. He waves and Eddie dumbly waves back.

When all was said and done, Eddie dropped everything to get back to Richie. He doesn't know why he didn't realize that until right now. Stress, probably. Trauma response. There are a million possible explanations.

Richie smiles. Eddie smiles back, like a fucking reflex.

A million possible explanations. He's distressingly sure there's only actually one.

"You know?" Bill says.

Eddie hums, pretending like he's been listening the whole time.

What the fuck.

**

By the time they make it back to their hotel that night, Richie is very drunk. It's an incredibly unfair turn of events. Eddie should be the one tripping over his own shoes now. He's the one who died. He's the one whose life is collapsing around him like a fucking dream from Inception. Or that old renovation show. Yo Eddie, we heard you like crises so we put a love crisis in your midlife crisis so you can have a meltdown while you melt down.

"Whoa." Richie knocks into the wall. He touches the sconce near his ginormous head. "Sorry. Excuse me."

Eddie rolls his eyes as he shoves open the door to their room. "I told you you shouldn't have tried to out-drink Stan."

"He thought he could beat me!" Richie says, indignant. "I could tell. I know these things now, Eddie. I know everything about Stan."

Eddie isn't grateful for the reminder.

"Everything except the fact that he was dumping his drinks into a ficus, you idiot. He knew he could beat you."

"That is cheating." Richie grabs onto Eddie who, assuming Richie needs him for balance, doesn't move. It gives Richie the exact window he needs to cup Eddie's face in his hands and say, incredibly seriously, "Stan is a cheater."

Eddie wants to laugh but he can't, not with Richie this close. There's something about the way Richie's holding him that makes everything seem so much more serious than it actually is. I know, he wants to say. It's not fair that Stan can tell what you're feeling at any given moment. He's sure if he did say it, it would come out wrong. He doesn't think Richie thinks about it like that. He thinks the bond is something funny, charming. Stan doesn't seem to mind it very much, either. It's good that it happened to them.

"Eddie." One of Richie's thumbs taps Eddie's cheekbone. He's reminded suddenly, viscerally, of being trapped under Neibolt, how Richie had held him then, just as gently as he's holding him now. Like Eddie's something precious. "Eddie. I'm very glad you didn't die."

He's tried so hard not to think of that at all since he escaped. It makes him panicky to think about it now, like his heart might gallop straight out of his chest. Like he could very well die after all. He wants to look away but he can't; the look on Richie's face is making him claustrophobic.

"You need some water," he says. His voice sounds foreign. Everything feels foreign, like it's happening somewhere else, to someone else. He takes a step backward, lets Richie's hands fall into the empty space between them. Finally, he feels like he can breathe again.

Richie puts one of his hands to his chest, the way he always does lately when he's thinking about Stan, or feeling about Stan, or however it works. His eyes are glassy. "I'm glad it worked," he says.

"I know you are." He's glad Stan's back, too. Glad they're all here, getting a second chance. He herds Richie towards the bed, fetches him a bottle of water. "Here. Drink this."

Richie smiles up at him, squinty-eyed even though it's not bright at all in their room. Eddie wants to touch the corners of his mouth, his eyes, all the delicate places that Richie pretends he doesn't have. The places he protects the most, that he hides the best. He puts his hand on Richie's shoulder instead, just to keep him steady while he sits on the side of his bed and drinks.

It's not until the lights are out and Richie's snoring away that Eddie thinks about how much he doesn't want to go back to New York. It's not the first time he's had those thoughts, but it's the first time he really lets himself consider the reasons why.

He doesn't get much sleep at all.

Fucking Bill. This is all his fault.

**

"There you are." Bev finds Eddie on the back steps, dicking around on his phone while everyone else finishes cleaning up brunch.

"Here I am."

Stan and Richie are in the distance, bickering over how to sort the recycling. Eddie doesn't know why he's surprised Richie has such strong opinions. He probably doesn't, he's probably just arguing with Stan for the sake of arguing. Every so often, Stan laughs. When Eddie does that, it makes Richie angrier, but with Stanley, Richie just laughs back and looks pleased. Whatever they're doing, it's going well.

Bev rests her head on Eddie's shoulder. "How're you doing?"

It's a loaded question. Eddie shrugs. He doesn't really know how to answer it, doesn't know what to say, not when he's here, feeling great, ignoring how everything in New York is probably definitely falling apart. How he doesn't know what his life will be when he goes back to it, when he goes home. It's terrifying. Eddie died a few weeks ago and this reality is one million times scarier than that, which is pathetic, really.

He takes a deep breath. Across the yard, Richie is waving a soda bottle in the air like he's fucking Braveheart. Stan looks completely unphased.

"Look at those dorks," Bev says, almost laughing. Her chin digs into the fleshy part of Eddie's shoulder.

"I'm getting divorced." It's the first time Eddie's said it out loud. The first time he's thought about it in such black-and-white terms. He can tell when it registers for Bev by the way she pauses, her whole body going still.

She wraps both her arms around one of his, keeping him close. "I know some good lawyers in New York."

He shrugs. "I don't care how much money I get." It doesn't matter. That's not the point.

"No, I meant the kind that are quick. Painless."

"Oh. Yeah. Thanks." That's what he wants. Quick and painless. It doesn't seem possible, but maybe. A guy can hope.

For a long time, Bev doesn't say anything else. Richie and Stan disappear around the side of the house. Eddie can hear Richie still yammering on as they go, but eventually even that fades away and all that's left is the soft rhythm of Bev breathing and the steady too-quick thump of his own heart.

"I'm really proud of you," Bev says, so quiet it's almost like nothing at all. Eddie's glad she isn't looking at him, that she probably can't tell the way it makes his throat close up quickly.

It's terrifying. It's mortifying. He doesn't know why he's telling her, only knows that it's something he desperately wants to get off his chest. It's not fair to her, dumping all of this, but he knows if anyone understands, it's Bev.

"I think I might be in love with someone else."

The silence that follows is deafening. Eddie's sure he's going to have a heart attack, the way his chest hurts and his limbs go numb in the aftermath.

He doesn't turn his head — he can't, he feels paralyzed by it, by the ugly truth, the terrifying, hideous basic facts of the matter — but when he glances at her out of the side of his eye, she's grinning.

"That's exciting," she says, hushed, hopeful.

Eddie doesn't say anything else, but he does let himself think about it in those terms: exciting, new. Something good instead of this ugly weight around his neck.

"It'll never go anywhere," he says eventually. "They've got someone else, too."

Bev kisses his shoulder. "You never know."

Richie and Stan choose that moment to come back around the house. Eddie smiles wryly. He does know, but still. It's nice of her to say.

"Look alive!" Richie yells, arm reeling back to throw a football when Stan tackles him, sending them both into the ground. Eddie feels a sharp ache; he breathes through it, waiting for it to settle into something deeper but duller.

**

It's weird in a way, just going about the rest of his day with everything sort of out in the open. Bev doesn't say anything, doesn't even look askance in Eddie's direction, but it still feels like he's got an open wound again. Like half his guts are spilled out onto the floor but everyone's pretending they aren't.

For the first time since he got to Georgia, Eddie sincerely considers booking the next flight home, if only so he can get an emergency appointment with a therapist.

"No, look," he explains to Kyle for the third time, sharing his screen in a godforsaken GoToMeeting that's lagging on the shitty hotel wifi, "the model projects —"

"Eduardo!" Richie's voice cuts through everything in a three-mile radius. "If you're not ready to go in five minutes, the train's leaving without you."

Kyle, for once in his fucking life, doesn't say anything. His face says a million different things, but Eddie can ignore all of them.

"It's intolerable." Eddie draws violent circles around the graph in his shared presentation. "This cannot move forward."

"I get it, man." Kyle sighs. "Are you sure you don't want to call in?"

Eddie considers it. On the desk, his phone buzzes, a message from Richie in the group chat. From this angle, all Eddie can read is his own name and a windfall of red-faced cursing emojis.

"Yeah," he tells Kyle. "I'm sure."

It's probably the wrong call. He ends the meeting anyway, sends Kyle the updated deck a third time just in case, and then shuts his computer.

"Jesus shitting Christ, I'm coming," he yells when Richie starts banging on the door.

"Weird." When Eddie opens the door, Richie's standing right there, grinning at him. "That's exactly what your mom said last night."

Behind Richie, Ben puts his head in his hands.

Eddie smiles as sweetly as he can manage. "They will never find your body," he promises.

**

"Smile for Bill." Patty holds up her phone. "Eddie, I expect it from Richie, but you?" She frowns.

Eddie would feel bad, but mostly he's pleased he wasn't the only one flipping off the camera.

"Bill knows what he did," Richie says darkly, and then, only to Eddie, he whispers, "Nothing, I just wanted to be a dick."

"Me too," Eddie lies. It's fine because it makes Richie cackle. He has the stupidest fucking laugh. It's unbearable and contagious.

"You two are last, then," Stan says. "Here."

Eddie glares at the ball Stan drops in his hand. "I don't want to be fucking purple."

"I will." Richie swaps the ball for his own. "You can be black. Like your soul."

"Fuck you." It's only marginally better. "Why are there black golf balls anyway? How are you supposed to see this at night?"

"It's four o'clock," Bev says.

"Hey guys, remember that time Eddie told us he was relaxed?" Richie says. "Do you think he was lying or that like, the statute of limitations wore off?"

Richie's standing on a tiny drawbridge that leads to the golf course. Eddie contemplates pushing him into the tiny moat it crosses. It's probably deep enough for him to drown in, assuming he lands just right. "The statute of limitations on your life are wearing off."

Richie makes a face. "Not your best work."

"I'll show —"

"Okay." Ben claps his hands. "Who's first? Richie, you go."

The distraction works long enough to get them started and it carries them through ten holes. They're too big a group for it to be a truly competitive game of mini-golf, but Eddie dutifully keeps score.

Of course, scorekeeping is how he realizes Richie is trying to cheat.

"It was six strokes." Eddie points to each spot Richie had putted from, drawing a jagged line across the green.

"It was five," Richie insists. Eddie refuses to blink. "Fine, Jesus, who are you, the IOC?"

Eddie ignores that. As if the IOC has any integrity left.

Four holes later, he watches Richie give his ball a gentle nudge away from a giant alligator tail. Richie looks up when Eddie gasps.

"What?"

"You know what."

"You're surprised that a place like this would have an alligator so large? I know, I was pretty surprised, too, but gators are pretty normal —"

"You are a cheating bag of garbage."

"Ouch." Richie puts his hands to his heart. "Can you guys believe this?"

"I mean, you're obviously cheating." Stan makes a face that indicates he's got an inside line to all Richie's motivations. Eddie stares at the sky and tries to count to ten. He makes it to four.

"It is unfair to use your stupid," he waves his hand erratically, "bond to tip the scales!" He knows it sounds deranged, but now that he's started yelling he can't stop. "I was handling it!"

Stan crosses his arms. "Are you trying to catch him cheating or not?"

"It is the principle of the matter!"

Richie snorts and Eddie wheels on him. "You! Stop cheating. You're ruining the game for everybody else!"

"Am I?" Richie gestures behind Eddie, to where Bev and Ben and Mike and Patty are all sitting at a picnic table. They have drinks and at least one basket of fries. What the fuck. When did that happen? "Because I don't think they care."

"They finished twenty minutes ago," Stan says, "while you two were arguing about the water feature stroke penalty."

"It was one stroke," Richie says automatically.

"You're out of your fucking mind, the sign literally said two."

Stan touches his forehead. Eddie doesn't need to have their souls fucking bonded together to understand he's at the end of his rope.

"It's your turn," Eddie says to him, gesturing toward the green. Stan steps up, sets his ball down, and takes his shot.

Eddie's fully prepared to keep arguing with Richie about the fourteenth hole, but when he turns around, some kid's there going, "Oh shit, are you Richie Tozier? Can I get a picture?" and just like that, a line forms.

**

"Eddie," Mike knocks their knees together, "go save him."

"What?" Eddie looks over to where people are still waiting for pictures with Richie. He's still smiling. Still laughing at whatever they're saying. He looks tired, sure, but. "He's fine."

"It's been fifteen minutes," Bev says. "Come on."

Eddie looks at Stan, figuring if anyone knows, it'll be him. Stan rolls his eyes. "Go say we're leaving. Seriously."

"Ugh." Eddie's joints crack when he stands up. "Fine."

He trudges over, annoyed with every step, certain that Richie will just shrug and tell him they can leave without him. Only Richie lights up when he sees Eddie and he says, "I'm so sorry, guys, but I really need to go finish this game. I'm here with my best friend."

Eddie waits for Richie to gesture to Stan, but instead he slings his arm around Eddie's shoulders and says, "I'm beating him."

"I'll beat you," Eddie mutters.

Richie waggles his eyebrows and winks. Eddie whacks him in the shin with his golf club. "Hurry the fuck up, Richard."

"Yes, dear." Richie waves to the already-dispersing crowd. "Night, everyone. Wish me luck."

Unfortunately for Eddie, the very next thing that happens is Richie gets a hole-in-one.

**

"And it was a walk-off."

"It was not. And I don't think the bartender cares," Eddie says to Richie, leaning over to grab three of the beers and bring them back to their table.

"They're going to hang my picture on the wall!"

"No, they're not," Stan says.

Mike says, "Maybe to ban you for life if you don't get off the table."

"Oh hey," Ben holds up his phone, "Bill just texted. He said ‘‘Richie Tozier hole' is trending on Twitter.' Gross."

There's a beat of silence while everyone takes a moment to feel bad about that.

"I think I get to golf there for free for life."

"No."

"Nope."

"You definitely don't."

Patty claps Richie on the shoulder. "Keep dreaming, big guy."

Richie slumps in his seat. He looks a little bit like a puppet with his strings cut. For a second, Eddie genuinely feels sorry for him, even though it's the stupidest thing in the world.

He slumps a little too, if only so his leg can press reassuringly into Richie's. Surprisingly, Richie tolerates it.

"It was a good shot," he says.

He's expecting Richie to start crowing about it again, maybe to pull out his phone and order himself a World's Greatest Miniature Golfer trophy. But all he gets is Richie looking up at him, so close that Eddie could count the crow's feet that appear when he smiles.

"Thanks, Eds." It's so quiet Eddie can barely hear it above the noise in the bar.

Richie reaches over and squeezes Eddie's knee, a physical thank you like he's worried Eddie might not have heard the literal one.

"Sure," Eddie says, but no sound comes out. He puts his hand on top of Richie's and squeezes back.

He doesn't leave his hand there, no matter how badly he wants to.

**

Eddie stares at himself as he brushes his teeth, mentally counting out thirty seconds per quadrant.

You've been in love with Richie Tozier since you were twelve, he tells his reflection. This isn't new. You just forgot.

Knowing something has always been true doesn't make it easier to comprehend. Doesn't make it any less overwhelming.

He spits in the sink, rinses his mouth out with bottled water.

Maybe it'll fade away again. Not with evil clown magic, but with time.

He should probably get home soon, he thinks. Even though leaving will suck, healing takes time and rest and the sooner he can get started on that, the better.

**

He spends most of the next day looking at flights while pretending to work. Short-notice flights are stupidly expensive. He doesn't remember worrying about that on the way down here, which… that's just another sign he's losing his mind. God, he needs to get back to New York and his routine.

Even if everything will be different when he gets back — Bev's lawyer is already working directly with Myra's and she was right, it seems like it will be quick and painless — at least there will be structure. He won't be trying to work out of Stan's guest bedroom while everyone runs around setting up for an afternoon barbecue.

"It's Friday," Richie had said when Eddie asked why the fuck they were having a barbecue.

"And we're on vacation," Ben had added, and then the two of them had high fived and Eddie knew when to pick his battles.

He'd feigned a call and ducked out of the room and he's been here ever since, responding to emails on his phone and calling to yell at his coworkers. Everyone thinks he's dealing with an emergency.

Technically, he supposes, he is.

"Listen to me, Tad, you are making it far more complicated than it needs to be." At least the fucking incompetent idiots in the office are giving Eddie a place to focus his energy. "Just read what I sent you and call me back with questions."

As he's hanging up, there's a knock on the door. "Hey." Stan lets himself in without waiting. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. It's just." Eddie waves his hand through the air.

Stan just stands there patiently, like he's waiting for Eddie to elaborate. Something frantic scrabbles its way up Eddie's throat; it reminds him of It's claws. He needs to get a fucking grip. He's fine. Everything's fine.

He laughs; it sounds forced, desperate. Stan doesn't blink.

"You know. Putting out fires."

Stan scratches his chest, the same way Richie does when he can sense Stan feeling some kind of way. Eddie doesn't know how either of them can stand it; he'd hate to have anyone in his head like that.

The thought alone makes his skin prickle. The room is too small, too hot. His phone starts buzzing — fucking Tad, already calling back. Eddie declines the call.

"Do you need anything?" Stan's still got his hand on his chest like he's measuring his own heartbeat. "Can I help?"

"Nah." He doesn't know what Stan could do about his job. Doesn't know what Stan could do about any of this. He's got his own shit to deal with, anyway. "I'm okay."

Stan just watches him. "Richie said you died, too."

This time when Eddie laughs it sounds deranged. It feels like something that happened to a different person entirely. "Guess we should start a club."

Stan smiles; it looks a little like pity and a little like Stan gets it entirely. Eddie doesn't want to be soul bonded to anyone, but for a second he thinks being stuck with Stan wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. It'll be good for Richie, at least. "Pretty shitty club, Eddie."

"Yeah, well." Eddie shrugs. It's the hand they were dealt, right? "Beats being the only two guys in the Still Dead Club."

It makes Stan laugh, which is something. "You'll let me know if you need anything?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Stan reaches out like he might hug Eddie but then he thinks better of it. Which is good, because Eddie's pretty sure if anybody hugged him right now, he'd have a complete breakdown.

His phone starts ringing again. Fucking Tad.

"Seriously," Stan says, just before he goes. "I'm here if you need anything."

Eddie takes a deep breath, and then another, and then he accepts the call. "What?"

Stan shuts the door quietly behind him.

**

"Eduardo!" Richie waves a spatula high in the air. Eddie watches as the edge of it narrowly misses one of the lower-hanging tree limbs in the backyard. He focuses on that instead of the way Richie's t-shirt is just a shade too tight in the arms. It makes his biceps look deceptively huge.

"Are you just watching over all this until a grown-up gets back?" Eddie gestures to the grill with his beer.

"Ha ha." Richie nudges a hot dog with his spatula. "Patty trusts me."

"That's because she's new here."

Eddie gets a rush when Richie throws his head back and laughs. The heat off the grill is surprisingly hot; Eddie hasn't been to an actual backyard barbeque in ages. Since he was a kid, maybe. It reminds him of fireworks and popsicles and playing butts up against the side of someone's house.

Now that he thinks about it, it was always Bill's house.

"What's this? What's going on?" Richie draws a circle in front of Eddie's face. Eddie swats his hand away.

"Remember playing butts up at Bill's?"

Richie snorts. "I remember you yelling about the rules of butts up and how they were unflinchingly rigid."

"Fuck you, you were just mad I always caught you cheating."

"And I paid for it in welts." Richie rubs the back of his arm like he's remembering. "You were tiny but you whipped that ball like a real son of a bitch."

Eddie remembers getting so angry and not knowing what to do with it. He wanted the ball to hit Richie just as bad as he wanted it to miss him. "You deserved it."

"Probably." Richie grins at him. "You always were my tiny little rules lawyer. Still are." He chuckles. Eddie's face feels warm for no reason.

Richie pulls the burgers off the grill and then chucks some more on in their place. Then he reaches over and takes a swig from Eddie's beer. Eddie watches the way his throat moves as he swallows. All of a sudden, Richie's face shifts. "Sorry, I can get you another one so you don't come in contact with my germs if you want."

"Um." Eddie blinks. Richie wipes the condensation from the bottle on his apron. "It's fine." The back of his neck prickles. He feels like gravity has shifted, like the planet no longer has the same rules it did four seconds ago.

More than borderline, his brain supplies helpfully. It sounds an awful lot like Richie.

Eddie watches Richie check the burgers even though they're nowhere near ready. He takes a sip of his beer and tries not to think about how Richie's mouth was just there.

"That one's burning."

"Shit." Richie flips it just in time. Crisis averted, he reaches for Eddie's beer again.

"Nope," Eddie pulls out of reach, "it was a one-time thing. Get your own."

"You would rather I die of starvation —"

"Dehydration, and you're not even close."

"— than share with me, your oldest friend. The one who raised you from the — oh, perfect." Richie cuts himself off as Stan walks over, two new beers in hand. "I knew you'd know I was thirsty."

"Is that what we're calling it?" Stan shakes his head and then lets Richie pull him into a hug. He actually hugs him back, his face mushed against Richie's shoulder, the both of them rocking from foot to foot. It makes Eddie feel like someone's got his heart in their fist.

"Okay, now they're all burning, you're fired." He muscles the spatula out of Richie's grip.

"My burgers!" Richie yells and grabs it back, using his free hand to keep Eddie out of the way.

"What the fuck." Eddie tries to get closer to the grill. He doesn't care but it's the principle of it all. Stan takes two steps back, out of the fray. He's still holding their beers.

"No, this is my job. You're on ice duty." Richie points to the cooler by the house. It's fully stocked; Eddie had nothing to do with it.

"I'm not on ice duty."

"Yeah, you are. We took a vote while you were yelling at Tad for the ninety-third time. Decided you needed a break."

"I don't need a break."

"I know, that's why you're on ice duty. Everyone else said you shouldn't get a job at all, but I said, 'Guys, this is Eddie we're talking about. If he doesn't get to work his little fingers to the bone every second of the day, he'll go berzerk.'"

"Fuck you." Eddie doesn't need to work. He can relax. He's been fucking relaxing.

"Fuck you," Richie says, without heat. "Go check on your ice." He turns Eddie around by the shoulder and then swats him on the ass with the spatula. It makes Eddie gasp. Two feet away, Stan snorts.

"Do not put that back on the hamburgers, asshole," Eddie yells as he marches away, his face so hot he's certain it must be redder than bricks.

Maybe he'll stick his whole head in the cooler. Give himself a heart attack from the sudden temperature change and solve all his problems in one go.

**

Once Richie ditches the apron, things settle down. It's nice, actually, having everyone gathered around Stan's fire pit. It feels like their first night in Derry, only without the horror show aspect. The good bits only.

Eddie laughs at all the right parts of Richie's recounting of his and Mike's detour into Colonial Williamsburg.

"Candle-making is an honest profession," Mike argues, his hand clamped on Stan's knee.

"Yeah," Eddie snorts, "in the 1800s, maybe."

Stan pats Mike's hand reassuringly. "I think Yankee Candle has it covered, bud."

Richie punches Eddie in the shoulder, ignoring the way Eddie glares at him. "That's exactly what I said!"

Across from them, Stan digs his fingers into his chest. His face looks flushed; Eddie could blame it on the fire, but he knows the real reason has just slung his arm around Eddie's shoulders. He waits for a natural break in the conversation and then gets up to get more ice. The coolers have melted down considerably.

He's hauling bags out of the deep freeze in Stan's garage when Richie wanders in.

"Do you need help?" he offers, like this might be a two-man job. It's not, they both know. If he's here for anything, it's moral support.

"No." Eddie drops a bag onto the ground to break up the ice. "Thanks."

Richie shrugs. He shoves his hands into his pockets and peers at the shelving in the garage, mesmerized by Stan and Patty's gardening equipment.

Eddie lets himself watch the curved line of Richie's back for a minute — it's not crazy, logically, how tall Richie's grown up to be, but it's still impressive. Not that Eddie will ever admit it out loud.

Richie starts to turn around and Eddie, panicked he's about to be caught staring, grabs one of the bags off the floor and opens his mouth to ask if he's ready to go back to the party. It's his own damn fault he's caught off guard when Richie takes two steps to close the space between them and says, "Listen, I've never told anyone this before, but I'm gay."

Eddie can't believe he's holding a goddamn eight-pound bag of ice right now. Richie is staring at him and Eddie's whole brain feels like it's been set on fire, alarms going off left and right. "Okay," he hears himself say, "that seems like something you should tell the guy you're soul bonded to, but thanks for telling me."

Richie's face flattens out. A half second later he laughs.

"No," Eddie says, because there's a way to fuck this up entirely and he doesn't want that, "seriously, thanks for telling me." He touches Richie's arm and then his wrist and somehow ends up holding his hand. It feels weird and not weird at the same time. He drops the ice and squeezes Richie's hand. "That was really brave."

They're close enough that he can see the way Richie's cheeks go pink.

"Yeah, well, I kept thinking what would Eddie do, so."

"I'm getting divorced," Eddie says, instead of I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you.

Richie inhales sharply. For a split second he looks, bafflingly, like he might cry. Instead he picks Eddie up off the ground in a hug, spinning them both in a circle.

"Eddie!" he yells joyfully, shaking him like a ragdoll.

Eddie's about to protest when Stan comes in, out of breath. "Richie," he grits out, one hand fisted in his shirt, "fuck, I thought you were —"

"Shots!" Richie yells over him, his arms still around Eddie's middle.

"Please put me down," Eddie says, but no one's paying attention. The rest of the Losers have appeared behind Stan and everyone's too excited by Richie yelling out like he's karaokeing that damn LMAFO song.

Everyone clambers for bottles and glasses and at some point, Richie puts Eddie down and they find themselves in Stan's kitchen, their esophaguses burning.

"Eds," Richie says, his eyes bright. He sounds so hoarse it's like the whiskey has burned a hole straight through his throat. "I'm so proud of you."

He hauls Eddie close, right under his shoulder, and presses a kiss to the top of his head. It turns Eddie's knees to jelly. He feels like he could run a marathon. He wants to put his face into a pillow and scream. It's too much at once.

Instead of doing any of that, he lets himself laugh, turns his face in and presses his mouth to the closest part of Richie he can reach. It turns out to be an irrelevant part of his chest, but Eddie decides not to care.

"Right back atcha," he says, and then, because he's startlingly drunk and doesn't know what the fuck else to do, he shouts, "Stanley! You and me! Undead Kids Club shots, let's go!"

**

"This is, and I am not exaggerating when I say this," Richie takes a deep breath, "a hate crime."

"It's not a hate crime." Mike seems to have developed some level of Richie immunity from their road trip because he's unwavering in the face of Richie's whining.

Eddie, who is so psychotically hungover he cannot believe he's alive, let alone standing in the Atlanta Botanical Garden, has no such resistance. "I feel crimed." He blinks. "Victimized. Crimed isn't a word."

Richie smiles sadly at him, like he's amused by the new levels of pathetic Eddie is reaching. "It should be. Mike is criming us."

"Mike is leaving you here," Mike says, right before he walks off.

"Why?" It's a rhetorical question. Eddie knows exactly how he ended up in this position, even if he can't believe that after everything Mike is still making them do this. He should've been like Ben and Bev and flat-out refused. He would've, but Richie was already dressed and ready and arguing that it probably wouldn't be that bad. In hindsight, he realizes that Richie had still been a little drunk.

"Well." Richie squints into the morning sun. He looks like he's rapidly realizing just how bad it can be. "I guess we should, you know." He gestures futilely down the path.

Eddie sighs. Like so much in his life, it seems that the only way out is through.

**

They stay just far enough behind Mike that they can complain without ruining his day. Richie keeps burping, which is ruining Eddie's day, but every time Eddie yells at him Richie just swallows more air and belches louder.

"I think that one fixed things," Richie says after a disgustingly long burp. "No, wait. I still feel gross."

Eddie ignores him and moves on to the next plaque. One of these plant facts is going to fix his problems, he's pretty sure of it.

At some point, Richie disappears. When he comes back, he's got two iced coffees.

"They didn't have bloody Marys," he says, sounding apologetic. "I definitely asked."

Eddie wouldn't have had one even if they did sell them. "Ok. Thanks."

His whole body feels prickly. He can't stop thinking about Richie in the garage, telling Eddie his biggest secret. Can't believe that he told him before anyone else. Stan had to have known, that's all Eddie can think. Richie wished so hard that he would come back from the dead that their souls ended up glued together; there isn't a secret he has that Stan doesn't know.

Not that it's a competition. Eddie knows it was a huge deal for Richie to tell him. He tries to read about native Georgia wildflowers, but all he can think about is Richie's hand in his last night.

"I'm thinking of canceling my tour," Richie says, because apparently once he's started spilling his guts he's incapable of stopping. "I hated my old routine. I want to rework everything."

"That's…" Eddie takes a long sip of his coffee. He does not look at Richie. "Scary."

Richie exhales heavily. "I know."

"It's a good idea, though." Eddie turns. "Your old act was shit."

Richie's face does six different things in quick succession. Eddie's too hungover to recognize anything beyond surprised.

"You saw it?"

"The whole world saw it," Eddie says. "It's fucked up that you're like, famous."

Richie laughs in disbelief. "I know, right?"

Eddie wants to say something else, something like, "You deserve it," or, "It makes sense, because you were always the funniest person I knew," but the words get caught in his throat. Which is good because if he actually said that out loud, Richie would never stop making fun of him.

All he manages is to stare at Richie for a beat too long, until Richie crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue and shrugs. "Who am I to deny the people?"

Eddie shoves him. "Get over yourself."

"Never." Richie walks away. "I brought two people back from the dead. I'm basically a god now."

"Jesus Christ." If Eddie had any self-respect left, he'd walk in the other direction. All he can muster is walking a few feet to the left.

"Where are you going?"

"Out of the hot zone for when the lightning strike gets you."

Richie waves him off with a pfft. They wander a bit, Eddie reading plaques and Richie shaking the ice in his cup to an erratic beat. Every so often, Eddie turns and catches him rubbing at his sternum; they should've saved this for a day when Stan could come.

Because Eddie's a masochist, as soon as they head toward the next plaque he asks, "What's it like, having Stan in your head all the time?" It's not a fair question but he desperately wants to know.

"He's not in my head, he's like," Richie gestures to his front, a broad circle from his navel to his throat, "here."

"Like in your heart."

Richie thinks about it. "I… guess?"

Eddie expected it, so he isn't disappointed.

"But it's Stan, so." Richie says it like it means something. Like it's an actual answer. "Wait, stop. Smile."

Eddie stops; he doesn't smile. Richie takes his picture anyway. It's the fifth time today.

"I'm going to post all these and call them 'Waiting for Mike So We Can Gadot to Lunch.'"

Eddie wonders if Stan can tell Richie's smiling, if he can tell Richie's satisfied by his own goofy ass joke. He says, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Richie beams at him. "I'll tag you."

"I don't have Instagram."

"I'll make you an Instagram so I can tag you."

"Do not." Eddie doesn't want to be online, doesn't want an algorithm sending him ads for like, custom vitamin plans. He'd subscribe to six different ones within a month. Plus all his coworkers are on Instagram and he doesn't want to have to follow them.

"Fiiiiiiine." Richie slumps, his body sagging against Eddie's. It's too hot to be this close. Eddie doesn't move away.

It's his downfall because between one breath and the next, Richie manages to snatch Eddie's phone out of his back pocket. He feels like he's been electrocuted, the feeling of Richie's knuckles against the curve of his ass seared into his brain.

"What the fuck!" It echoes across the gardens because Eddie's lost the ability to modulate the pitch and volume of his voice. "Richie!"

Richie holds the phone away from him. Without thinking, Eddie tries to leap on his back, hoping to send them both toppling to the ground, as Richie furiously tries to get the phone to unlock.

**

"It looked like a fun day," Patty says, hours later, all of them crowded into a restaurant.

"It wasn't," Richie and Eddie say at the same time; it makes Richie cackle.

"It was, thank you," Mike says, and starts in on his favorite parts. Across the table, Richie pretends to fall asleep in his pasta.

Eddie refuses to laugh. It's an old joke, it doesn't deserve a response.

"It did look fun." Bev nudges Eddie to get his attention and holds out her phone. Richie hadn't actually succeeded in creating an Instagram account for Eddie, but he had posted all his pictures as promised. Right underneath it says liked by stanthebirdman and 19,512 others.

Eddie swipes through, looking at his increasingly annoyed face in each one. He tries not to think of the comment he'd read, an innocuous Losers from stanthebirdman, or how Richie had responded to it with both a black heart and a crying laughing face. It's a perfectly acceptable exchange, even if a heart emoji seems so over-the-top for such a dumb set of pictures. There are layers, Eddie knows. Richie's not sending hearts to everyone. He's not sending them to anyone else.

The last photo is the two of them, Eddie on Richie's back, the both of them laughing like maniacs. Like they weren't inches from splattering their brains on the sidewalk. He can't remember the last time he saw his own face look like that. He looks so disgustingly happy it's stupid.

"Cute," Bev says, managing to infuse a million layers of knowing into one syllable.

Eddie doesn't say anything at all. It feels like he's being choked by his own heart.

**

"We should —"

"No," Eddie says, flipping the latch on the door.

"You didn't even hear what I was going to say!"

"And the answer's still no!" Eddie has had a very long week and his vision is swimming with black heart emojis and his lawyer left him a voicemail at dinner and followed it up with three separate emails and he's done. Cooked. Over it. "It is ten o'clock, my sleep schedule is fucked, and I still haven't booked a flight home so it's going to cost like, six hundred bucks, which is highway fucking robbery!"

He doesn't mean for it all to come out at once, but suddenly he's standing there panting and Richie looks gobsmacked.

"Okay." Richie scratches the back of his head. It makes his hideous shirt ride up, exposing his stomach, dark hair and a slight swell; Eddie makes himself look away. "If you need money —"

"It's not the money, it's the principle." Eddie can afford his own flights. He just doesn't want to pay through the nose because he's been dragging his feet about flying home.

"Okay." Richie says testily, scratching his chest. It makes Eddie want to scream. He hates that Stanley's involved in all this now, that he knows Richie's annoyed because Eddie's being annoying.

"I'm taking a shower," he says, because that's the only option for some fucking privacy in this place. He grabs a change of clothes and doesn't slam the door behind him, even though he wants to. He feels like he could run six miles, feels like he could sleep for the next two days. It's like there's a war inside him, everything confused and stressed and no way to stop it, like his organs have unionized and voted to strike.

He turns the spray as hot as he can handle and stays there, letting the steam boil his emotions into something tolerable. Eventually, he knows, it will all melt away.

When he gets out of the shower, the room is dark. Richie's curled on his side, watching something Eddie doesn't recognize; the volume on the TV is so low Eddie doesn't know how he can hear it.

"I can turn this off," he offers, watching Eddie move around the room. It makes him feel like shit, the way Richie's acting like he's this delicate thing.

"It's fine," he says, shrugging it off. He crawls into his own bed and looks at flights on his phone. He impulse buys one for Tuesday; it's expensive as fuck, but it's the cheapest option and he can't stay here forever.

**

The problem, Eddie knows, is that he doesn't know what he wants. He wakes up before dawn, his mind racing, and can't fall back asleep.

He regrets booking that flight, but he doesn't know what the other options are. Stay in Georgia forever? Tell Richie how he feels? He doesn't even know if he wants that. He's terrified by the vague idea of it: what if Richie laughs, what if he thinks it's a joke, what if he turns Eddie down and tells Stan and then they both talk about it forever? Then what?

It's too much, too unpredictable. Eddie has built a life around predictability, around certainty.

The only thing he knows for certain is that Richie is tied to Stan, permanently, and that… It's something. Eddie doesn't know what, but he understands the odds. Richie made one wish. It brought two people back and tied two souls together.

It's not rocket science.

After forty minutes of tossing and turning, he gets up and starts packing. Richie, amazingly, sleeps through it all.

**

He doesn't say anything, not for the entire day. It's Sunday, they've all got fuck-all to do, and Eddie doesn't want to be the one who spoils the mood, even if that mood is just "fucking around at Stan and Patty's."

It hits a point, though, where he can't put it off any longer. They're mostly through dinner, everyone gradually helping themselves to seconds, when Eddie swallows against his worry and says, "I booked a flight home."

Everyone voices some form of protest; he shrugs, says, "I can't avoid it. These fuckers are fine, so…"

He smiles at Stan after he says it, mostly because he can't make himself look at Richie. Or Bev. All Stan does is take a sip of his wine and say, "We'll miss you." The line of his jaw is sharp; Eddie wonders if it's because of Richie or if the tension's one hundred percent Stanley's.

He doesn't have time to dwell, because Stan's comment has set off a whole round of everyone saying how great this trip has been and how they should get home, too, and how nice it was to see everyone finally, without the threat of uncertain clown death. The only person not saying anything is Richie. Eddie wants to corner him, wants to ask why. He watches Stan and tries to gauge if he's holding his fork tighter than usual instead.

"Next time we'll get Bill over here, make it a whole thing," says Mike.

Patty's whole face lights up. "Can't wait. Should we pencil it in now?"

Eddie finds himself tentatively agreeing to a long weekend in November, as if he has any idea what his schedule will look like then. Ben texts their group chat, setting off a flurry of notifications from Bill as he tries to get more details and is ignored at every step.

At some point, someone opens another bottle of wine. Eddie ignores the way it stains Richie's mouth purple and keeps reassuring Ben he's not leaving first thing. "It's the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow," he says for the third time.

"Good." Ben wraps his hand around the back of Eddie's neck and holds his gaze. It makes Eddie want to squirm; Ben's so serious and steady it feels like he can see straight into his brain, right into his thoughts. "No running away on us, Eddie."

"I'm not." Eddie hates the way his voice sounds. Hates that Ben probably knows, on some level, that Eddie's lying.

"Hey." Suddenly Richie reaches around and flicks Ben right between the eyebrows. "No antagonizing the recently undead guy."

"Ow." Ben glares at him. He lets Eddie go. Eddie fights the urge to get up, hide in the bathroom or the backyard or anywhere.

"Don't hit," he says, turning to glare at Richie. "What is wrong with you?"

"I was just —"

"Didn't your mother teach you to keep your hands to yourself?" It's fucked up, how yelling at Richie relaxes him.

It's also fucked up how Richie says, "Nope," and reaches over to flick Eddie between the eyebrows. It's like the tension of the last hour has been washed down the drain.

"I will kill you."

Richie snorts. "You and what army?"

"Do not try me."

"Oh look, cake," Bev says, and looks pleased as punch when it actually distracts them.

It's well into the night by the time they're all heading out, everyone crowded by the front door, saying their goodbyes.

Ben hugs Eddie hard enough to lift him off the ground. "I can't believe you're leaving."

"He's not." Richie waves his hand dismissively. "I'm going to call in a bomb threat at the airport. He'll be stuck with us forever."

Eddie whirls around. "Don't say that, fuckwit. Stan has an Alexa, Jeff Bezos can hear you."

"Oooh," Richie waves his arms; it makes him look like one of those windsocks outside a car dealership, "I'm so scared." He grunts when Eddie socks him in the gut.

"You should be. None of us are visiting you in prison."

"Mike will."

"Nope."

"Absolutely not," Stan says, before Richie can open his dumb mouth. "You go to prison, I'm getting Mike to sever this thing once and for all."

"Ah," Richie holds up a finger, "but to do that, he'll need a vial of my blood, so it sounds to me like someone's coming to see me."

"On that note." Eddie grabs a fistful of Richie's shirt and drags him out the door. "We'll see you tomorrow."

"Feisty!" Richie says, and thank fuck it's dark out because Eddie's cheeks start burning. "Throw me around some more, Eds!"

Eddie immediately lets go of him and hurls himself into the rental car. He takes a deep breath, listening to Richie fight with the passenger door. It was definitely the right decision to head home.

**

Richie's twitchy the whole way home, drumming on his stomach and the console between them and on the windowsill — anywhere he can reach, which is everywhere because Eddie'd rented this car with normal-sized humans in mind, not freaks of nature.

He's twitchy all the way up until the lights are off, and then all that Eddie has to keep him awake are the hum of the air conditioner and his own racing thoughts. Richie hadn't said anything once they got in the car, hadn't said anything when they got back except to graciously offer Eddie the first turn in the bathroom.

It's fucking weird.

They're lucky it's late. Eddie flips his pillow over, trying to get comfortable and trying to be quiet about it.

He's halfway to sleep when Richie says, "Eds? You awake?" It's soft, like he thinks Eddie really might be asleep and he doesn't want to wake him up.

Eddie rolls over. He can just make out the curve of Richie in the moonlight. "Yeah. You okay?"

Richie snorts, almost a laugh. "I'm fine," he says, and then starts to say a dozen different things. "I — you — we — I —" He gives up in a huff and then the next thing Eddie knows, Richie is at the edge of his bed, saying, "Can I?" and not waiting for an answer.

"Jesus." Eddie jerks away. "Why the fuck are your toes so cold?"

Richie cackles and shoves them between Eddie's calves. "I don't know, genetics? Bad circulation?"

It's not right. "When was the last time you went to the doctor?"

"Oh my god."

Eddie can feel the mattress vibrating from Richie's laughter, these tiny earthquakes. It's too dark; all he can see is the shadows of Richie's cheeks, the bright of his eyes. WIthout his glasses he looks younger, more sincere. It reminds Eddie of sleepovers and Richie's dad banging on the wall to get them to shut up and go to sleep.

"I wish you didn't have to go." Richie has his hand on his chest like he's holding himself in, like he's keeping Stan at bay. He lets go after a second to find Eddie's hand under the sheets. "I wish we had more time."

"You can come visit." Eddie's certain his hand is clammy. His heart feels like it's in his throat, like it's beating so fast Richie might be feeling tiny earthquakes from it, too.

"I'm sending you furniture for your new place."

"Richie." Eddie closes his eyes. "If you send me your shitty ass card table, I swear to god."

Richie starts laughing again.

"We are adults," Eddie says. Sure, he's getting divorced, but that doesn't mean he can't have nice things. Actual fucking tables, for one. He's picturing Richie's garbage furniture in his next apartment, wherever the fuck that is — how terrible it would look, how smugly satisfied Richie would be, seeing it in there — when Richie kisses him. There's no warning, no preamble, just Richie Tozier's dry lips against his.

Eddie's brain skitzes. It's like he momentarily reverts to being a teenager, having a full-blown silent panic attack because someone is kissing him, going through six stages of grief or every fucking terror alert level from orange to threat level midnight or whatever the fuck. And then just as quick as he internally melted down he's back, registering everything bit by unbelievable bit; Richie's mouth on his; the way he can feel Richie's breath gusting through his nose; the warmth of Richie's hand on his cheek, how big his palm feels, how soft it is in comparison to the scratchy pillowcase.

"What?" he says, like a fucking idiot.

"Sorry." Richie pulls back, shifting like he's about to flee.

Eddie grabs a fistful of his t-shirt to stop him. "Don't," he says, trying to organize his thoughts. "I —"

"I don't want you to go," Richie says for the second time. It sounds different somehow. After, he closes his eyes like he's mortified to have said it out loud. "I never want you to go. I think… Eddie." He opens his eyes again. He's so much closer than he was before; Eddie couldn't look away if he wanted to. "I'm kind of in love with you."

Eddie's breath catches. His brain sputters, thoughts tumbling over each other like a cartoon snowball down a hill, each one getting successively bigger: how, what, is he serious, what does this mean, say something.

He lands on, "But Stan."

Richie snorts indelicately. "Stan? Stanley Uris? With his beautiful wife and his birds?"

"You brought him back from the dead."

"I brought you both back." Richie shifts closer. His hand is hot on Eddie's shoulder, fingers digging in like he doesn't want Eddie to move. "Stan just needed more convincing, that's why we ended up like this. Mike thinks he needed an anchor. But you… Jesus, I didn't want you to go in the first place." Richie sounds raw, like might start crying any second now, and Eddie remembers what it was like right there at the end, with Richie holding him. Eddie hadn't wanted to go then, hadn't felt finished. The last thing he saw was Richie, the last thing he remembered was Richie. God, he hadn't been ready to go.

"I wanted to stay," he says, and Richie lets out a strange sound that Eddie never wants to hear again. "I thought, because of the bond, you know — I figured it meant you wanted Stan back more."

"Than you?" Richie laughs, incredulous. "I wanted you both back, but, Jesus, Eddie, you drive me crazy. I've loved you since we were kids. I just never —"

Eddie kisses him then because he doesn't know what else to say. Because he feels the same way and doesn't know how the fuck he could possibly say it. He tries to show it instead, and maybe, now that he's got Richie like this, he'll never stop showing it.

Richie is willing to Eddie do whatever he wants, it seems, because he goes when Eddie pushes him, lets Eddie roll him onto his back and climb over him and all Richie does is skim his hands from Eddie's shoulders to his waist, never fully settling, like a part of him can't believe this is real, either.

"Me too," Eddie gets out at one point, panting. Richie blinks up at him, wild-eyed, his hair a wreck, and it must take his brain thirty actual seconds to catch up because it's a long moment before he grins up at Eddie, cheek-splitting. Eddie wants to bite the apple of his cheek. He ducks his head and kisses Richie's neck instead, feels the scrape of Richie's stubble against his mouth and wonders how raw he'll be in the morning. He finds he doesn't care at all.

"God," Richie says, his hips twitching against Eddie's. The temperature in the room goes up ten degrees. And then Richie gets his hand on the small of Eddie's back and pushes him down and the room gets impossibly hotter. Eddie gasps at the contact, feeling it like sparks all up his spine. He feels half out of his mind when Richie shoves his pajama bottoms and boxers down and then squirms around to get rid of his own.

It's everything he never let himself dream about, everything he never even considered. He keeps thinking of things he wants: to put his mouth on Richie's dick, to taste him, to open Richie up with his fingers, with his cock, to have Richie's mouth on him and his fingers in him — there's a whole world of possibilities that he's never let himself consider until this moment, and suddenly they're all conspiring against him. he wants all of it and none of it, because having Richie do anything else right now would be a distraction. It would mean he'd have to sacrifice Richie's hips grinding up against his, Richie's mouth hot against his temple, saying shit that Eddie's too far gone to comprehend, about how he's wanted this forever, for always. How Eddie's so hot, so good, so Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Richie comes first. It's the only thing he's ever done quietly in his life. Eddie stares down at him, entranced. He still feels like someone's set him on fire, like he's run a marathon and could do it all again.

"Rich," he says, startled by how whiny his voice is, how desperate. He can't contain it, though, can't pretend to be something he's not.

"I know." Richie's chest is still heaving. He presses a kiss to Eddie's temple, his cheekbone, his mouth, uses Eddie's distraction to roll them so they're both on their sides. Eddie whimpers; he doesn't like change. "I got you, you're okay, here."

And then he uses his jizz to slick his fist and that, Jesus shitting Christ, Eddie knows he should hate it, that he should want to take a silkwood shower or some shit, but all he can do is dig his hands into the meat of Richie's waist and hold on for dear life.

**

Eddie wakes up sweating. Richie is so close it's like he's being smothered. Eddie definitely does not grin at the ceiling, because he's not a fourteen-year-old girl.

His phone chimes, a reminder of the notification that must've woken him up. Check in for your flight to LaGuardia! the Delta app is telling him.

"LaGuardia?" Richie wrinkles his nose. "Gross." He shoves his whole face into the crook of Eddie's neck and sighs. It is, against all odds, relaxing. Eddie feels his steady exhale and wants to melt into this shitty mattress. He doesn't want to give this up.

"Come home with me." The words are out of his mouth before he thinks about it. "If you can leave your beloved that long."

"You're my beloved," Richie says.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "I meant Stan."

Richie snorts. "God, Stan —" he rolls over, touches his chest, and then makes a spectacular face, "Stan's be-disgusted right now."

Richie laughs with his full palm pressed to his chest, and because he's laughing so hard, Eddie joins in even though a part of him is outraged. How dare Stan think they're gross when Eddie doesn't think he could love Richie any more than this.

"Also," Richie rubs his sternum, a look on his face like he's not fully there, like he's maybe halfway across town in a living room Eddie idiotically associates with home, "he's happy we're happy. I think."

"I thought he couldn't read your thoughts." He still doesn't understand this. He doesn't think he ever will, really.

"I said 'I think.' This is vibes Eddie, keep up."

"Sor-ry." It's ruined by the fact that Eddie can't stop himself from smiling.

Richie's phone beeps. "Actually, Stan says he doesn't want to know. He just wants us to get the heck out of this state before he has to get Mike to find a way to sever this bond. Quote 'consequences be damned,' unquote."

Eddie rolls over so he's half on top of Richie. He puts his hand over Richie's where it sits on the middle of his chest. "Noted," he says, and then kisses Richie until he loses track of time.

Eventually his phone buzzes. Eddie pushes himself up to reach for it and read a new message from Stan. It's a dozen barfing emojis. A second later a new message comes in.

Happy for you

And then:

Please leave

**

"What are you doing?"

They were supposed to be at Stan's twenty minutes ago, so of course Richie's sitting on the edge of the bed, half-dressed and dicking around on his phone. Eddie knee-walks across the bed to peer over his shoulder.

"Booking a flight," Richie says, angling his phone so Eddie can see the messages app where he is clearly not booking a flight. "And telling my assistant to pack up my kitchen table and send it to your address."

Eddie reels back. "Do not."

There's a whooshing sound that indicates the message was sent, and why Richie has his sound on is an argument for a different day.

"Jesus Christ." Eddie flops onto his back and puts his hands over his eyes. "Why? I take it back, you and your table are uninvited to New York."

Richie tugs his hands away so Eddie's staring up at him, caged in by all Richie's gangly limbs. He can feel his body temperature ticking up two degrees, like he's got some insane fever. Tozieritis. It's fucking unbelieveable.

"Too late, bucko," Richie says. "You can't unring this bell." He waggles his eyebrows and lowers himself down, inch by inch, until his face is so close Eddie's at risk of going cross-eyed. "You gotta give in," Richie's voice is thin, "because I am very bad at push-ups."

Eddie wonders what would happen if he didn't give in. If Richie could hold himself up so long his arms would start to shake and if he would collapse on top of Eddie, pinning him down there forever.

It's a useless thought because Eddie's already smiling against his will. Richie brushes their noses together.

"I upgraded us to first class."

"Motherfucker," Eddie says, and tilts his chin to kiss him. Richie catches his hand, pressing the back of it to his breastbone. Eddie can feel his heartbeat, a steady, solid thump.

"Stan is so mad at us right now," Richie says, his mouth curving into a smile, and Eddie laughs.

**

Nine months later, Eddie's cleaning out Richie's suitcase when he finds it.

"What the fuck, Richie?" he yells, so loud their upstairs neighbor stomps twice on the floor.

It's ten seconds before Richie's in their bedroom, glasses askew, hair going in all directions. "What? It's a totally normal number of condoms — oh."

"Yeah. Oh." Eddie shakes the hot pink rabbit's foot he'd found in the side pocket. "Did you seriously keep this?"

"It was good luck!" Richie's voice is sharp and strained. He sounds like he's going through desperate puberty. "It raised two people from the dead. Two. And they were some of my favorite people, even. Was I just supposed to throw it out?"

"Yes!" Eddie yells, even though now that he thinks about it he's not so sure. He wants to strangle Richie even as he kind of wants to kiss him. Who the fuck keeps a cursed keychain? "You sacrifice it or some shit, you definitely don't keep it for the rest of your life! I cannot believe I've been living with this thing for months."

"See? It's totally harmless." Eddie doesn't know when Richie walked across the room, but suddenly he's right there, smiling down at Eddie, cupping his face in his hands. He kisses him until Eddie stops wanting to strangle him. "Look at all the good fortune it's brought us."

"I don't support this."

Richie nods. "I'll note it in the minutes."

"Fuck you." Eddie refuses to smile, not this close to a documented cursed rabbit's foot. It was probably a real fucking foot or some shit.

Richie shivers. "Yes, please."

"No. You're not being cute right now. We're calling Mike, we're figuring out how to appropriately dispose of this thing, and then we're probably moving. Don't look at me like that, you brought this on yourself."

"Eddie. We're seeing Mike in three days." There is a distinct whine to Richie's voice; Eddie hates how effective it has proven. Especially when coupled with Richie's hands stroking down his sides, coming to rest on his ass. Eddie can feel his resolve crumbling. "Come on, what's —"

He slaps his palm over Richie's mouth. "Do not finish that sentence."

Richie, for once in his fucking life, stays quiet, and well. Eddie likes to reward good behavior.