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When Eddie Kaspbrak is less than a month away from his first year at university, something he’s always dreamed of happens.
His mother kicks the bucket. Just like that Sonia Kaspbrak bites the dust, she meets her maker, falls six feet under. All that good shit.
If he’s being honest, Eddie doesn’t really care. It’s awful, he thinks, but then he remembers who his mother was and he realizes it’s kind of justified.
He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t get angry, he just doesn’t give a fuck that his mother is dead. It was kind of expected, everyone who knew his mother knew that a heart attack would be the one to take her sooner or later.
He remembers being a kid, kneeling in front of his bed for his nighttime prayers, thinking if there was a God out there please swoop him up and take him out of this fucking house, take him away from her.
There is a God out there, Eddie thinks when he learns the news of his mothers death.
Her funeral was an open casket. Eddie thinks how goddamn typical of his mother, can’t even let Eddie just forget about her when that’s all he wants to do. Of course the last time Eddie sees his mother, she has to haunt him with the familiar purple eyeshadow she favoured and her hair curled just how she did it every day. She couldn’t just let him leave her behind.
When they lower her casket into the ground, he doesn’t even tear up. He just focuses on the warmth of the sun beating down on his back, and how uncomfortable the material of his suit was. His mother’s sister, Aunt Sylvia, sobs onto his cousin’s shoulder. The irony almost makes Eddie laugh. Sylvia and Sonia never got along. Every time they saw each other it ended in Sylvia storming out, telling Sonia that she’s never speaking to her again. That’s just the kind of person that his mother was, she could make anyone turn on her.
“My little sister,” She wails, dabbing her eyes with a mascara smudged tissue. “Oh, Sonia. I’ll miss you for the rest of my days! My sweet baby sister”
Eddie has to hold back a scoff. The misery gets on his nerves.
His front doorstep is coated in supermarket flowers, sympathy cards and letters for weeks on end. Eddie doesn’t respond to any of them. He doesn’t even pick them up, he lets the summer rain water log the cards and smudge the ink on the letters. He lets the flowers wilt and die on his doorstep, similar to his mother.
Richie is the only one Eddie lets come over. Not Bill or Stan or Mike. Only Richie, just because Richie won’t pity him.
Richie just leans his bike up against the panelling of the house and steps over the mess on Eddie’s doorstep. He wears his converse inside and tracks dirt and leaves from the quarry all over the carpet, something Eddie’s mother would’ve had a conniption about if she was still alive. Now that Sonia is dead, he’ll smoke his cigarettes inside the house. He’ll stretch his long limbs across the couch, and ask Eddie if he’s excited to complete a marketing degree at Princeton.
Eddie should be mad, but he isn’t. He can’t bring himself to be.
He attempts to keep up with the maintenance of the house so the showings will go smoother. The real estate agent promised him that the house will be sold by September.
“I’m keeping you to that” Eddie tells her with a sick chuckle. “You can’t lie to an orphan”
Eddie is lost on how to feel about his childhood house being sold and gone in a flash. On the one hand, it’s where his memories of Richie clumsily crawling in his bedroom window at absurd hours of the night happened. On the other, it’s where his mother would cry hysterically any time he left the house until he was fifteen, it’s where his mother would slap him right across the face every time he questioned if he was really ill, it’s where his mother manipulated, controlled and abused him his entire childhood.
The August sun streams across Eddie’s yard. Richie sits in a fold-up adirondack chair, sunglasses on, drinking a warm beer as he watches Eddie cut the grass.
Eddie soaks up the sun and looks at Richie from across the yard. Richie grins a toothy grin, the one Eddie adored, and waves lazily. Eddie squints and waves back.
“Aren’t you worried about your allergies, honey?” Richie teases, once he gets closer. “‘Eddie-bear, don’t go rolling around in the grass, you know how bad your allergies can get’”
If anyone else quoted his recently deceased mother like that, Eddie probably would have punched them in the face. But since it’s Richie, Eddie laughs. He doesn’t just laugh, he doubles over, unable to breathe.
Once they’re inside, Eddie tells Richie he feels like he’s going crazy, like any minute his brain is going to start leaking out of his eyes or something.
Richie takes the cigarette out of his mouth and narrows his eyes. “So leave, get out of here”
“I’m leaving in a few weeks though” Eddie says. He plucks the cigarette from Richie’s fingers and puts it in between his lips. He takes a small drag before coughing and handing it back.
“So? Doesn’t mean you can’t go anywhere. You’ve got three weeks left and you definitely have enough money from the will” Richie reasons.
“You have to come. There’s no way I’m going to go alone” Eddie demands.
Richie smirks at this, blowing a cloud of smoke out. “You need me”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “I do not”
Sometimes, just sometimes, Eddie thinks that Richie reminds him of his mother. Sometimes the things that Richie says feel like the danger of things his mother would say. He would never tell Richie this, because if he did Richie would probably slap him upside the head. But sometimes he wants to, just to see what would happen.
Richie isn’t like Eddie’s mother really, not at all. Eddie’s just trying to fool himself.
“Give me a good reason why I should come with you, Ed’s” Richie dares. “I’m going to have to get used to life without you, you know?”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Because I know you want to”
“You don’t know that” Richie argues.
“I’ll pay you to come with me” Eddie urges. “An allowance. Please? I can’t do it on my own”
Richie takes a drag of his cigarette. “I’ll lose my job”
Richie worked full time at the record store that opened up on Kent Street about three months ago. He worked nine to five every single day since graduating and never really complained about it. He even said he liked it.
“You’ve been there busting your ass since graduating. Your boss won’t give you three weeks off?” Eddie questions.
“Nope,” Richie pops the ‘p’. “He relies on me”
“That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard, he doesn’t give a fuck! You two smoke a joint in the basement together before opening the store every day, dipshit!” Eddie exclaims.
“I told you that in confidence” Richie argues, pointing a threatening finger towards Eddie.
“Please” Eddie begs. “Please, come with me”
Richie stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray placed on the coffee table. He looks up at Eddie and bites his lip. “Okay”
Eddie lurches forward and kisses him softly as a thank you.
-
“I don’t believe you” Richie hisses.
He’s angry with Eddie for taking them to Newark.
“You’re literally moving here in three weeks. You’re going to Princeton for fucks sake!” Richie argues. “I thought we would go to Paris or Copenhagen. Or Amsterdam! I’ve always wanted to go to Amsterdam”
Eddie drops his bag on the floor of the motel and falls onto the bed. “It was the first train I saw. I thought we were being speedy with this getaway”
“You can get last minute plane tickets, asshole” Richie groans.
Eddie looks up at him, eyes soft. “We’ll see the world tomorrow”
Richie stares at him for a moment before leaning in and kissing him gently. He moves down to his jaw, then his neck and kisses all the way down to his collarbone.
Eddie tips Richie’s chin up with the tip of his finger and kisses him back like he means it until Richie pushes him off.
“Rich,” Eddie breathes out. “Please, let me give you anything you’ve ever wanted”
Sometimes Richie thinks he hates Eddie. He hates his smug face and how pretentious he is, like he’s better than Richie. He knows he doesn’t actually hate Eddie (how could he?) but he hates how the shorter can never seem to love Richie how he wants. Maybe Richie is just a complicated person, maybe Eddie just doesn’t know how to love because of his mother.
It’s at this that Richie dives in and lets Eddie have him.
He lets Eddie kiss him like he means it, he lets Eddie throw him against the bed and murmur in his ear how much he wants to take care of him.
-
They stay under the covers the whole day.
Richie decides he doesn’t care to see New Jersey, so the two of them lay skin to skin under the covers, smoking cigarettes and whispering to each other. The curtains stay drawn and the two of them live in their own world for the day.
Eddie is focusing on Richie’s hot breath against the crook of his neck when he says it.
“I love you” Eddie says just above a whisper. “Do you love me?”
“Something like that” Richie replies after a moment, voice mumbling against Eddie’s skin. “I’m getting there”
Eddie stays quiet for a second, turning the words over in his head before he pushes himself up on his elbows. The covers fall down to just above his stomach, and a chill rolls down his spine at his newly exposed skin. He can feel Richie looking up at him with a frown.
“What was that for?” Richie pouts.
“I need a cigarette” Eddie answers, reaching over Richie to grab the cigarettes and lighter off of the bedside table.
They talk about Princeton. Richie listens and plucks the cigarette from Eddie and smokes it to its filter.
“You should move into my apartment with me” Eddie remarks. “In September when my semester starts, come with me to Jersey”
Richie snickers at this and flicks the cigarette butt on the carpet below. “You’re funny”
“Seriously” Eddie urges. He leans down and rests his head on Richie’s stomach, looking up at him with the eyes Richie can never say no to. “Rich, I would take care of you”
“Sure you would” Richie huffs.
Eddie splays his hand out across Richie’s chest. “I would take care of you”
“I know,” Richie whispers.
-
That night, Richie and Eddie pack up and rush to the airport to catch a last minute flight to Amsterdam.
Richie argues with him about it, saying he didn’t have enough packed. Eddie reminds him that he all but asked for Richie to take him to Amsterdam. Richie rolls his eyes and keeps his mouth shut. Eddie reminds him that he wants to take care of him.
That night they dress in suits that Eddie bought them at the airport boutique and take a ride down the canal. They sip on wine and smile at each other as the sun sets behind them. Eddie thinks he wants to live in this moment forever.
They walk hand in hand through downtown Amsterdam where they end up on a bench, ties loosened, gripping onto each other like it was just the two of them in the entire world.
Richie leans his head on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie sighs in relief.
It feels like we’re a real couple Eddie thinks.
“I love you” He says, kissing the top of Richie’s head. Richie doesn’t say it back.
Eddie looks good in a suit, Richie decides. They make out as soon as they get back to the hotel. Richie unbuttons Eddie’s dress shirt and pushes his blazer off. Eddie kisses him until his lips are numb.
When he pulls away, tears begin to slip down his cheeks. Richie wondered when this would happen.
He pulls Eddie down to the bed where he curls up on Richie’s lap. Richie strokes his hair and holds him as his sobs sound throughout the quiet hotel room.
“I think we should go home, Ed’s” Richie tells him.
“No” Eddie protests. “I’ve got a plane booked for Venice tomorrow”
“Fuck Venice” Richie says. “We’re going home”
I already am home, Eddie thinks.
-
Richie is there when Eddie signs the papers, officially selling the house he’d lived in since he was born. Richie is there when Eddie goes to the bar and drinks until he’s incoherent. Richie is there when Eddie cries so hard he throws up, holding back his curls and rubbing circles into his back. Richie is there while he heaves and sobs his way to sleep.
When Eddie wakes up on Richie’s chest, he feels guilty.
“I’m sorry” Eddie forces out, voice hoarse. “I wanted to take care of you but it seems like you’re doing more of that for me”
“I love you” Richie breathes. “I love you, even though I’m an asshole about it sometimes”
Eddie smiles. He crawls up and kisses Richie, meaning it this time. He thinks Richie means it too.
“I love you”
Although Eddie’s childhood home belongs to someone else now, he has a new home, and that’s with Richie.
-
Richie comes with Eddie to Jersey. He gets a job at a local radio station and mans what he calls the “Rockin’ with Richie” hour.
Richie cooks supper for them in the evenings while Eddie sits at the kitchen table and loses his mind over homework. They watch Mad Men at night. Eddie will sneak glances at Richie as he leans over to hold his hand.
They find themselves entangled at night, and Eddie thinks he’s never been happier. Holding Richie just feels right.
Eddie doesn’t think about his mother or his childhood home anymore. Not when he has Richie who strokes his hair while he stresses over exams, who comes with him to frat parties, and who takes him out to dinner after he finishes his first semester.
They kiss before bed in the evening.
When he closes his eyes, Eddie thinks I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I’d follow you anywhere.
And it feels like a promise.