Chapter Text
S U M M E R 1 9 9 2
✿ MAY ✿
Richie feels truly blessed, as if the big man himself has descended from the heavens to bestow upon him the most tender of forehead smooches, when he initially catches wind of Sonia Kaspbrak's quote unquote tragic accident.
Where the layman might see tragedy, a keener eye would be quick to recognize that rare special something, that raw divine quality for what it is.
Like, he's sure Jackie Kennedy deeply grieved her husband after the guy's brains got splattered all over her swanky Chanel suit. Naturally. But, after some time for the wound to scab over (the emotional wound, not the lethal gunshot straight through the cranium, time can't heal all that unless you're lucky Malala), with the iconic imagery and all the conspiracy surrounding it, the incident was now widely regarded as a joke. Well, to anyone with even a sliver of a sense of humor anyway, and Richie did his best not to concern himself with anyone else.
A dead president is a small price to pay for some of the funniest punchlines Richie's ever had the pleasure of hearing. He'd even spent some time constructing and executing (ha) a handful himself, secure in his belief that it was simply too big, too divine of an event to ever grow old and tired. Here he was nearly thirty years removed from an incident that had happened long before he was even a microscopic swimmer in Wentworth's nads, and he still gets plenty of chucks from that so-called tragedy to this day.
It's a beautiful, timeless type of material. A joke that holds up for generations thanks to the source juggling and riding a unicycle across that tightrope fine line between grim and absurd. And it’s history, baby. He's of the opinion that if there's no changing it, you may as well laugh at it.
And Sonia Kaspbrak's mammoth ass crashing straight through the floor of her third story office? Talk about history. There must be a god, and this must be one of his roundabout efforts to bribe Richie into going back to regularly attending Sunday mass. Because the reality of Sonia not just busting through the floorboards and landing on the next floor below, but getting stuck, with one end of her (her better half, the one that, as far as anyone who’s dumb enough to take him seriously knows, Richie’s got plenty of intimate experience with) jutting out of the ceiling of a room packed full of unsuspecting coworkers? That all more than meets his personal criteria to go down as the most divine historical event he's lived through to date.
If he were a wealthy man he'd be putting that coinage to good use and commissioning a painting of that wide mumu clad midsection jammed in the insulation between two floors. Perhaps a true to size floor to ceiling mural, so Richie could really get a feel for what it would be like to be in the room where it happened. He'd be willing to blow a small fortune on immortalizing the visual of Sonia's naked tree trunk legs dangling in midair, rippling and jiggling while mooning a full fucking conference room in the building she works in. He can see it now, in vivid watercolors, renaissance style.
But that's a pipe dream, unfortunately, as Richie's always been in the habit of burning through his weekly allowance like every day might be his very last. It's really too bad Bill's not in town anymore. Richie only ever had to pester him a little to exploit that chump's artistic talents, no dough necessary.
To ensure he— nay, the world— never forgets this day, he'll just have to settle for recording this in his uncensored chronicles of sidesplitting Derry delights. Right next to his recent pageful of material covering Greta Bowie's refreshingly humbling attempt at rollerskating to school last week; Shoving past him like she was some hot shit derby girl only to trip over her toestops and land with her side ponytail shmearing dog crap for two full sidewalk squares up as she skidded and shrieked all the way.
In his book, literal and figurative, gross out slapstick humor is about as timeless as presidential assassinations. He'll be milking that glorious memory until the teets run dry.
For all of this town's many irredeemable (i.e: horrifying, traumatizing) flaws, it at least provides some pretty epic highs to compensate for the epic lows. Case in point—
“Diane told me that at first they were all afraid— and I do mean terrified— that Sonia was freeballing it under that skirt. But after she was dangling for a while, they noticed she actually was wearing underwear, it was just a sorta peachy nude color, apparently. But everyone's telling me they were super crazy sheer, so. She may as well have been going commando at that point, is the consensus."
Richie physically bites his tongue in a last ditch effort to keep his composure, a battle he's been on the losing side of since hearing his mother utter the word freeballing.
It's not like he's full blown eavesdropping, really. As if he'd ever put in that much effort just to listen to someone else, ha. That's not exactly how he gets his kicks. He'd be much better suited to the role of someone being eavesdropped on— And wouldn't that be some kind of fucking flattering? He can't imagine anyone wanting to hear what he has to say badly enough to literally spy on him. What a riot.
His words are for the people anyway, as unappreciative as they may be over inexhaustible access to his genius wit, everything out of his mouth enters the world with an intended audience in mind. You'd be hard up to catch him saying something he'd be embarrassed about. Anything he might wanna keep to himself stays strictly locked down in the Rikers wing of his sprawling, illustrious mind palace. Despite popular opinion, Richie’s got a hell of a filter.
Lucky for him, Missus Tozier does not. Especially after a few glasses of Zinfandel, and it's a day ending with ‘y’ so there's a high chance she's already quite a few glugs deep. And the lady has been gifted with the same loud mouth as her darling, charming, some might say devastatingly handsome, son. So, Richie truly isn't expelling any extra energy to listen in on her full volume gabbing as much as he's just standing idly by, barely out of sight, preoccupied with picking a wicked amount of dirt out from underneath his fingernails.
Maggie cackles like a hyena, snorting at the tail end of the sound before audibly clapping a hand over her mouth to muffle the rest of the wild laugh.
Shit, even Richie has to really hustle to make her laugh that hard. Either Mrs. Frick from two streets over was even more of a card than he gave her credit for, based solely on the woman naming her one and only child Frank Frick, or this Sonia story was even funnier than he'd first assumed. Which didn't seem empirically possible, as even though he'd been around to witness Greta's perm getting caked in dog shit firsthand, that gratifying sight had already begun to pale in comparison to this shiny, new mental picture he's been piecing together using what little he's overheard so far.
Richie maybe gets a little overzealous in his abrupt desperation for all the sordid details. Even Maggie's barely subdued laughter paired with the sudden dinging of the oven timer isn't enough to overshadow the echoing squeak of his sneakers as he moves as close to the kitchen as he can get without hugging the seventies style striped wallpaper. The wailing groan of the old floorboard he'd been mindfully avoiding up until then is just insult to injury. He knows instantly that his cover is blown.
The oven timer is promptly silenced. “I've gotta let you go, Francine, my son is snooping. Talk soon, sweetie.”
He enters the kitchen super casually, the very picture of guiltless and unbothered, pushing through the two chest level swinging doors with his usual theatrical flourish. But without any of his go-to cowboy schtick this time around. He's here on business.
“Snooping.” Richie mocks, doing just that as he peeks into the oven. Maggie ignores him, busy digging through an avalanche of mismatched plastic containers currently spilling out of one of the freestanding pantries. “As if. Don't flatter yourself, sweetie. Is this meatloaf?”
“Yeah, grab it, will you? Mitts are on the hook.”
Richie unhooks the gaudy fruit patterned oven mitts, slowly sliding them on with the gravitas of a brain surgeon donning sterile gloves. “Oh boy, all by myself? Should I really? I'm all thumbs, Ma, what if I drop it?”
Maggie manages to get the chaotically cluttered pantry shut back up and shuffles towards him, precariously balancing an armful of colorful bowls and lids before she lets the lot of them fall and scatter across the countertop.
“Drop it and you're going in after it. And I might just have to change my dinner plans.” Her steel blue eyes flash a warning at him as she frees a chef's knife from its slot in the nearby block. “Do the names Hansel and Gretel mean anything to you? Think you could endure a slow roast at four hundred degrees?”
“Can't be any worse than the walk home.” Richie somehow manages not to burn himself extracting the ceramic dish, placing it safely on the stove while he dusts off one of Maggie's favs; his vapid yuppie voice. “Can you believe this weather we're having?”
Her glossed lips instantly curl into a smile. “I cannot believe this weather we're having!”
“So unseasonable!”
“So unseasonable, it’s unreasonable!”
Richie snorts. Maggie shoulder checks him out of her way, stealing one of the mitts right off his hand to start carving up the slab of mystery meat.
“Can you get the rest of that potato salad from the fridge?”
“Why? I had dibs.” He gives a token protest even as he goes forth to carry out her wishes. She has something he wants after all. Which she must very well know, since he's never this quick to comply outside of circumstances like these.
“I made it. I can override your dibs. Consider your dibs officially vetoed and revoked. Try to find those honey glazed carrots while you're in there.”
“Oh, I ate those.”
She huffs, the teeth of her knife scraping hard against the ceramic cookware. “Richie.”
“What? You're pissed at me for eating vegetables now? I'm getting whiplash, lady, I can't win with you. What happened to all that bullshit about them making my eyes stronger, huh?”
“Can you try and watch your mouth—”
“I can't watch anything! I think we need to up my prescription again. Those carrots didn't do jack.” He might be losing the plot a little. Business, Rich, business. “But they were delicious. You'll have to hide them from me a little better next time if you want them to last.”
She hums shortly, unhappily, so Richie makes the executive business decision to lay it on thick.
“I don't have the kinda willpower it would take to resist your cooking. Keep it up and I've got a funny feeling we might be the very first household to ever earn a Michelin star.”
“Uh huh.” Maggie says, totally flat. In a way that makes it clear that she's seeing right through all this hamfisted flattery. In a way that makes it clear that all this tip toeing is getting him nowhere.
“So.” Richie immediately gives up his half baked attempts at tact, impatience taking the reins. “What's this I hear about Sonia Kaspbrak's sheer panties?”
She doesn't respond, silent and stonefaced as she snatches the saran wrapped bowl of potato salad from him and yanks him aside by the back of his sweat soaked shirt to rustle through the refrigerator herself.
For a bleak, quiet moment, Richie's afraid she might be giving him the cold shoulder. Using her expert insider knowledge that ignoring him is the only thing that's ever consistently done the trick to get him bored enough to back off. What a bummer. A little rain on this sunny Sonia bashing parade. But then, blessedly—
“I really don't see how that's any of your business.”
A counter argument he'd been prepared for. “Eddie is one of my best friends, Ma. If something's happened to his only immediate family member, I need to mentally prepare to be a good shoulder to cry on!”
Maggie side eyes him with that same stony expression, only now in a way that's quick to pierce his guts with a sick stab of fear. Infinitely more intense than what had hit him at the prospect of some sissy silent treatment.
Icy shards of dread carve into him, freezing him in place. His teeth clack together hard enough to be heard, to hurt. He's said too much? No, no way, that was tame as fuck.
She closes the fridge and pauses there to lean her back up against the excessively magnet adorned steel door, a prolonged dramatic sigh leaving her. A sure sign that she's been worn down enough to finally spill. Richie makes a great effort to unclench and listen up.
“She got hurt at work this morning, alright? It was a… freak accident… She… fell and had to be wheeled out of there by paramedics. She’s been hospitalized and might have to get surgery to repair some external and internal tearing. So, she's probably in pain and… probably has reason to be feeling a little embarrassed right now, so…! You should keep her in your thoughts and prayers! I mean it, I'm serious, don't look at me like that!”
Richie's frown grows and grows the more she carries on with this phoney, censored version of the story. He shakes his head at her all throughout the tail end of it, thoroughly unsatisfied with this rare display of discretion. Damn. For the first time in a long while, Maggie really isn't as wine wasted and loose lipped as he was hoping for.
“And the consensus is she was as good as commando during this horrible freak accident? Come on. Give me the deets, woman! Dish!”
“This isn't just some cheap gossip, y’know.” Says the professional resident gossipmonger who had just been hitting up who knows how many other housewives solely to dissect and mock this one morsel of drama. “She really got hurt, from what I hear, so there’s really nothing for us to be laughing about! I'm sure your little friend is worried sick about her.”
Yeah, no, he's sure that Eddie is kicking his little heels together, grateful for her attention to be otherwise occupied and off of him for a change.
“What a load of horse shit.”
Maggie gives him a mild swat on his forearm, like you would smack a rolled up newspaper on a dog's snout. Richie howls as if he's just been flayed alive.
“Yowch, have mercy! That's going in my memoir, missy, you'd be smart to start treading lightly around me. Anymore of this abuse and ten years from now you'll be tuning into a tell all interview between me and Oprah and I'll be dragging your name through the mud—!”
“Threatening your mother again, Richard?”
Went shoulders his way through the kitchen's saloon doors, a stifling gush of warmth following him in from the outdoors. His typically sleek salt and pepper mop of hair is a wiry mess from the humidity, frizzy and only flat around the ears where it's damp with sweat. He's looking more like a greasy used car salesman than a respectable dentist at the moment.
He’s home hours early, his unfailing piss poor timing conspiring against Richie's happiness not for the first or last time. It's all coming together now— Maggie's sharp ears must have picked up the sound of his car pulling in, and that's gotta be the real motive behind her not eagerly breaking down the sordid tale of Sonia's tumble for him.
Richie's sure she would never have bothered with showing so much restraint otherwise. But it was obvious to the both of them that Wentworth never did seem too thrilled to catch them gabbing and giggling over the latest happenings in town like a couple of girls.
“Me? Threatening? Is that what you'll tell the reporters when they come hounding you two about my appalling upbringing?”
“Good luck selling that story, kid, I have a contingency plan.” Went pats the center of his chest, right over his loosened, flashy neon necktie. “I'm wearing a wire. And I've got this whole place bugged to the gills. Your lies are all gonna come crashing down like a house of cards. Prepare to have your credibility destroyed.”
“Exposed by my own father before my fame can even get up off the ground. I might have known. Thought I smelled a rat lurking in this house for years now.”
“I'm surprised you can smell anything over your B.O.”
Richie squawks at the low blow, scandalized. And a little miffed that the bit's been cut short before he could bust out his crooked mafioso voice. “There's a heat wave! This is what a man smells like, Went, maybe you'd know that if—!”
“Don't finish that sentence. Save yourself.” Wentworth advises, dealing him a humorless stare from behind his bifocals.
His wrinkled expression smooths out the second his eyes are off Richie, naturally. The rigid tension in his shoulders melts away as he closes in on Maggie where she's leaning against the garish green granite countertops, sealing the last lid over a stack of tupperware all fogged up with heat condensation. As he presses flush against her back, Richie does a spin move away from the kitchen cabinets to get as much distance from the canoodling as possible. Before he sees what can't be unseen. But the maneuver does nothing to protect his ears from the ensuing unmistakable wet shmacking of lips seconds later. His appetite swiftly curls up and dies.
“Hey, Mags. What's all this?”
“I heard Ms. Kaspbrak had an accident.” Maggie starts with palpable mirth. “I was just about to send Richie over to Eddie's house so the kid doesn't starve while Sonia's in the hospital.”
“The hospital? Now that's a first. The poor woman.” Went says dryly. “What happened this time?”
“You're not gonna believe it.” She giggles, but it's not the same girlish tipsy tittering as she'd been doing over the phone. It's. Ugh. Flirty.
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmhm. But why should I tell you anything? What's this I hear about you wearing a wire?”
“If I was, I'm close enough that you'd be able to feel it, don't you think? But fine, keep your secrets as long as you can. I have other ways of making you talk…”
Richie shudders with visceral discomfort. Fuck's sake, he's standing right here. This family truly has no class— Richie can hardly be blamed for any of his alleged obnoxious behavior when these are the role models he's working with.
“Fellas, please, equally innocent and impressionable eyes and ears over here. My delicate constitution can only withstand so much disgust—”
“It's a good thing you were just leaving then.”
Like he said, no class. Whatever, he can take a hint, a dismissal. And with some luck, and with them being (ick) distracted, he could probably get away with also taking— “Can I borrow The Jag?”
The Jag is the nickname that Went's horribly practical and boring blue 1989 Mazda Familia has been christened with. Richie sometimes has wet dreams about tongue fucking the hatchback's exhaust pipes.
Probably just some wires crossing over wanting what he can't have— He really doesn't wanna delve too deep into what the subconscious meaning might be. It's bad enough waking up with that phantom smoky chemical taste of gasoline on his lips without any complicated psychoanalysis pissing in the wound.
“The Jag stays with me, I have to pick up Stevie from the library before they close.”
Richie can't keep his face from pinching at the mention of the brat. As if he wasn't walking home from much further spots at her age. And with an active serial kiddy killer operating in the area, he might add. As if he hadn't just dragged himself over hot coals getting back from school on his own two feet— He's pretty sure the pavement started melting the soles of his shoes around the time he was turning onto their street, if the lingering smell of burning rubber is any indication.
But of course Stevie gets her spoiled royal ass chauffeured around on command. Of course she would have a hand in keeping his star crossed lover (the family car) out of his longing embrace. Of course.
“She's got two feet, doesn't she? And I can be back in ten minutes.”
Two very pointed looks are sent his way from their suggestive position across the kitchen. “All the more reason for you to walk.”
“Wow, I see how it is. What a couple of sorry depraved sex pests I have the misfortune of calling my parents. Prioritizing a squeeze sesh over their one and only son's safety. This is definitely going in the memoir.”
“It took you four tries to get your license, speedy, this is us looking out for your safety. And my insurance deductible.”
“Damn the insurance, man, I'm gonna have a heatstroke out there! My blood's gonna start sizzling before I make it past the driveway! I'll be boiled alive from the inside out! Not that you care about that, but just think of the poor kid that's gonna find my corpse cooking on the sidewalk, all dried up like a crispy earthworm. They'll never be the same. You really want that on your conscience?”
“It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.”
“You say that now, but you gotta know deep down that I'm not as replaceable as I may have once been. Your legacy is at stake here— You can't just make another one, not anymore, these are your twilight years, Went. Your body is changing. You've gotta be at least shooting blanks by now, if anything at all. You’re probably close to that age where the well runs dry and you start splooging Crypt Keeper dust straight from your urethra—”
“That's enough.” Which is as good of a shut down as a beep beep, without any of the levity.
Hurtful, but very likely a sign of a job well done. Richie was actively trying to be the bonerkiller to rival Went's buzzkiller, after all.
With either a roll of her eyes or a look up to the heavens in a prayer for strength and/or patience, Maggie slips out from where she's pinned between the counter and the nasty nosferatu looking ancient fuck Richie has for a father.
He grimaces sympathetically at this poor, truly pitiful creature, trying to communicate solely through his eyes that she is leagues too good for this old ass creep fifteen years her senior. That it's not too late for her to get out from underneath the thumb of this shriveled ballsack. That no one would blame her for moving on to greener pastures, ideally running off with some heartthrob rockstar if she had the fancy to do so.
If Richie correctly recalls from the latest celebrity gossip sermon he and his mom had, huddled around the coffee table while flipping through the latest trashy magazines and sipping orange juice and screwdrivers respectively, David Bowie had only just tied the knot with Iman last month. But surely that trademarked Tozier magnetism alone would be more than enough to drive a wedge between them. One big enough for Maggie to make herself right at home in.
There was the issue of Bowie's mom also being a Margaret, but he hears she’s a Peggy not a Maggie. So it couldn't be any more oedipal than Richie's current thought process was in danger of tipping into. Not so much the literal motherfucking, duh, yikes— But there was a considerable appeal to the concept of usurping the eldest Tozier to take reign of the home.
Bury Wentworth in the backyard that had already become a mass grave to the many doomed goldfish won at the Canal Days festivals over the years. Make the creep literally sleep with the fishes, and have The Jag and the Mag all to himself without the horror of having to picture some dirty old pervert's hands all over them at any given time. That had to be something close to the American dream.
Maggie could at least stand to consider a whirlwind affair with the barely handsome dude that runs the deli counter at the supermarket. He senses undeniable chemistry there! Richie thinks he might've just felt a blood vessel pop in his fervid attempt to telepathically convey to her not to ignore cupid's arrow when it strikes.
There's much better prospects out there for her than a life sentence of sharing a marital bed with this sleazy geezer. And not just a bed, from the looks of things, their breakfast table is about to be violated beyond all measure. It really is too bad that Richie's maturity has reached the point where he doesn't immediately jump to gagging and dry heaving an all fours right there and then. That's not to say it's not in the cards though. He could be swayed.
Maggie's poofy dishwater blonde hair bounces menacingly as she approaches, shaking her head at him, demeanor toeing the line between fond and exasperated. He chooses to interpret this to mean that some of that cockamamie telepathy has reached her somehow.
Now's your chance to make a break for it, lady. Be free. Go on, get! He does his damnedest to beam the words through her skull, but either their psychic link has snapped or she's ignoring him. And she's made something of a full time job out of ignoring him, it seems to be a very fulfilling career path for her, so there's one mystery solved.
She dumps the stack of sealed up leftovers and fresh meatloaf into his arms and twirls him around to perp walk him towards the front door.
“Don't hurry home, alright? And extend some well wishes for Sonia from the family!”
“I very well wish she would fucking croak already.”
“Richie, please. Your mouth.” Maggie huffs a wine rank laugh in his direction, too toasted (and excited for reasons that Richie would rather die than dwell on) to fully stifle her amusement. She sends him off into the wild with a wry smile and a parting slap to his cheek that's gentle enough to barely make a sound.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
The fifteen minute walk to the Kaspbrak residence might as well be a week long expedition across endless Egyptian sands. And that one week drags on into two when he hits the halfway point between their houses and is struck with the upsettingly obvious realization that he should've brought a soda with him. Or some frozen fucking peas or something instead of straight up offering himself up as a giftwrapped sacrifice to whatever spiteful deity is responsible for unleashing all this heat.
Richie's a dumbass— Worse, he's a dumbass with an unhelpful flair for the dramatics. Extremes. As he treks on and on, all he can think is that his carelessness is likely to cost him his life this time around. That he's no better than a pea-brained lobster launching itself headfirst into a roaring seafood boil. Well, that, and the unavoidable internal groans of god fuck so hot shit fuck, that never get stuck looping in his head like this unless he's jacking off.
It's all culminating into a nauseating sensation that's proving to be a worse experience than the even longer walk home from school had been— The sun lower in the sky than before, close enough to dish out far more serious damage than just some puny pitstains. His brain might be hitting its melting point right about now, for all he knows. He imagines it's hard to tell what's what with a brain on the fast track to liquifying.
All he can be sure of is that he's got what feels suspiciously like trails of grey matter leaking from his ears by the time he's crawling up the creaky steps leading to Eddie's front porch. But of course it would be too easy for his suffering to end so quickly. Before his brain gets the chance to fully complete its transformation into chunky soup.
After banging on the locked door for what must be closing in on twenty seven fucking years, he resorts to throwing his full weight against it like the world's wimpiest battering ram. And still, eons pass with no answer. Richie switches tactics and begins impatiently rubbing the doorbell like it's a clit during a quickie, all desperation and no finesse and no results.
He knows that Eddie is in there, he has a sixth sense for this shit. Just like how he knows that Mike is miles away on his family's farm, and Stan is notably not at home but not too far from it— Probably outdoors eyefucking birds while basking on some big rock like the snake person he is. Richie can just feel these things. Their presences. In his nuggets. And these bizarre bloodhound instincts haven't steered him wrong yet, so he has zero doubts about Eddie resolutely tuning him out from up in his ivory tower/second story bedroom right at this very moment.
He endured blistering winds and scorching deserts to deliver this grub to this dickbag, he will not be ignored. At least not until he gets his hands on one of the cold beverages tantalizingly locked up only a few meters away from his chapped lips. He's willing to even choke down one of those chalky nutritional supplement drinks, a Kaspbrak household staple, he's that desperate.
Last reserve of patience long gone, he begins violently kicking out at the door, determined to keep it up until either Eddie opens the fuck up or his melted sneaker splinters through the wood, whichever comes first. But what actually comes first is body aches and exhaustion that's not easy for a bum such as himself, with no athletic bone to speak of, to push past. Richie ends up slumped miserably against the door, forehead leaving wet smears against the peeling paint.
“Stellaaa!” He yells, not for the first time, but now in a way that's more reminiscent of Elaine from Seinfeld than anything close to the lungs on Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. But fuck he's wiped. Close to collapsing, and that's not the dramatics talking. Well. Maybe so. But after well over five full minutes of knocking and kicking and shouting and sweating out all the hydration in his goddamn body, he's at his limit.
It's reached the point where he's considering taking off his threadbare Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem t-shirt to wring the moisture it's drenched with directly into his mouth. Hydrate using his own funky bodily emissions. Ick. He manages to even gross himself out on occasion. But, really, he might go through with it.
Didn't people who were stranded in the ocean get sea madness from doing this kind of shit? Would Richie be the first dipshit to get salt water poisoning and go full Looney Tunes on land? Guess he's about to find out.
But before he can sink to a new personal low, the deadbolt audibly unlocks with a heart lifting click and Richie's knees almost buckle he's so relieved. And then the door swings open and it's a wonder how he stays upright at all.
If this heat wave is being kind to anyone in town, it's Eddie. He looks pretty (Period. Fullstop. Pretty enough to be a mirage, seriously, Richie's a little concerned that he had blacked out on the sidewalk somewhere on the way over and this is all a cruel brainfried— brain soup illusion. That pretty. Need he go on? Well, yes!) edible with his face all flushed and pink, perspiration turning his honey brown hair a few shades darker around his hairline and bangs and angry eyebrows. A matching angry frown pulls down lips that have gone fever red.
Richie wrestles with a vivid onslaught of half delirious intrusive thoughts, most of them involving leaning down to lick the visible little beads of sweat off that peach fuzz mustache.
Seeing him like this is proving to be quite the opposite of the fast acting, soothing balm of cool comfort he was hoping for. It's more akin to pressing your fingers into a day old sunburn— Like scraping your nails hard up against the sensitive and sore seared flesh. Like burning your thumb on a cheap lighter and then stepping into a hot shower. It's overkill, heat on top of heat. Something to push the surface level warmth to a place much further down than skin deep. Where it can't be ignored.
Richie feels the flames licking at him inside and out all merge into one big scorching pit. It slinks down and settles to an insistent simmer low in his guts, quickly hurdling towards a boil the longer he stares. For the first time today, he doesn't mind the heat so much.
The arduous journey was well worth it. He humbly thanks Maggie for forcing him to suffer through this grand quest.
Eddie stands in the entryway, notably tense. Even more than what's typical for the uptight little freak. He releases the doorknob to cross his arms over his narrow chest, eyeing him with that all too familiar defensive and expectant look on his face. Richie takes the hint and shakes off his exhaustion, pockets his sweat sucking fantasies, and puts on his jester cap as King Kaspbrak commands.
“Eh, delivery for ehhhh Mr. Kazzbrock.” Richie butchers his surname using a throaty new york italian accent (that is shitty enough to sound Gilbert Godfried adjacent), balancing the stack of tupperware in one hand like it's a hot and ready pizza pie. “Yuh got money for this, young lady? Is yer daddy home?”
“Sure, I'll just go grab his wallet out of his urn.”
Richie splutters out a laugh, so caught off guard that he has to hurry and go back to two-handing the tupperwares lest they crash straight through the floorboards like Sonia had this morning.
Eddie readily grabs at the food, used to Maggie's sporadic meals on wheels home cooking program that's been in action for a while now. Ever since that sleepover where, while gorging himself on one of her mid tier crockpot concoctions, Eddie let it slip to her that Sonia basically has him living off of Ensure and health shakes and raw fruit and veggies like a fucking rabbit.
“Aren't you gonna let me in?” Richie coaxes when Eddie starts looking alarmingly close to shutting himself back inside and leaving Richie alone to roast.
“Not happening. I'll see you at school.”
He's never expecting a welcome wagon, but goddamn! There was this unspoken assumption that Eddie only ever pitched fits and put on these grand shows of reluctance over him visiting for a reason. That reason being Sonia, constantly holed up in the place, lingering and looming, her presence managing to haunt the halls and creep up the entire house. All the while rarely being spotted outside of the living room recliner.
But here they are while Richie has it on good authority that the wicked witch is dead, or at least indisposed, and Eddie's still warding him off as if Richie's only here on Pharaoh's orders to merc his firstborn son or some shit. He supposes the guy must just be hardwired to be more hostile than hospitable.
It would be sorta cute (like a feral honey badger rattling to defend its territory) if Richie wasn't depending on this dude to do the polite thing and offer him an invite, some company, at least some fucking refreshments. Seriously, who the hell raised this asshole, it's a hundred fucking degrees out here—
“Come on, I've got my heart set on that meatloaf. And my poor heart can't take any more stress today, Eds. The love of my life was just in a horrible accident, or haven't you heard?”
“Fuck off.”
And, yeah, this might be why he's so pissy, so antsy. He never comes out the gate this hot— pissing him off is something of an art, one that takes some steady, conscious effort and never reaps these kinds of rewards without a fair amount of trial and error. And all that hooting and hollering and— and minor property damage a few minutes back, feels like a lifetime ago, hadn't even registered as a category one event on the trashmouth hazard scale. It was minorly annoying, at best. Maybe a category two. Nothing worthy of this tier of genuine upset.
But, hey, he gets it now. It's only natural for Eddie to dread facing him and his big mouth most of all after his megabeast mother has just become talk of the town.
And, yes, of course there will without a doubt be a time and place to ruthlessly tease him about that until the hot head's famously poorly maintained composure snaps and he goes for blood, but that's not now. Not when he's pretty confident that he could still wheedle some more juicy details from Maggie and really refine all that he wants to say about this most holy of miracles (it's too nice a job to rush). And especially not when Richie's in need of a safehouse to beat the heat in.
So Richie holds his tongue. Easily. Because, as he's said before, he's got a filter and a damn good one.
“You're not gonna eat a whole goddamn meatloaf all by yourself. It wouldn't even fit in your body, you're the size of a fucking fire hydrant.” Admittedly not the most strategic pivot he could've gone with.
“A what— I absolutely will be eating this entire meatloaf, fuck you very much. Get off my porch. Your stench is wilting the plants.”
Richie pointedly eyes the long dead, dried up and straw-like potted fountain grass on either side of the welcome mat. “Those plants?”
Eddie doesn't budge. “You. You did that.”
“All I want is a slice! Yer really not gonna tip yer delivery boy? This is how I make a livin’, punk!”
He gesticulates like a real hand talking Italian as he gets back in character. An arm raises at some point during this and Eddie goes a little green, his expression comically souring and twisting.
“God, Richie, do you own deodorant? Have you ever even been in the same room with the stuff?” Eddie very melodramatically pulls up the neck of his peachy orange henley to cover his nose, muffling the latter half of the rude ass question.
“Never in my life. That's why I hang around you so much. You're like my personal, walking stick of deodorizer. So squeaky clean that I absorb your sweet smell through osmosis.” Sweet smell? Sweet jesus, put a muzzle on him.
“That's not working out for you right now.”
“Yeah, but these are pretty dire circumstances. I might need to try rubbing you directly on my pits for maximum coverage.”
It's an empty threat, but Eddie is right to assume that it could just as well not be. He's quick to back up and give Richie and the apparent stink cloud hanging over him a wide berth. But he makes the rookie mistake of not slamming the door in his face beforehand.
Richie jumps at the chance to pass over the threshold and into the cool sanctuary of the blessed indoors, shutting the door behind him to fully shield himself from all that lethal sunshine.
The several aircon units in the house all seem to be roaring at full blast. The place is teetering towards becoming an icebox. Richie doesn't know why Eddie looks so sweaty and heat ravaged if he's been kicking it here since biking home from school. The damn near debauched state of him must be another elaborate divine gift from the lord, a bribe to get him suckered back into the cannibal cult of Catholicism, back to sucking down communion wafers and wine on a weekly basis.
Or maybe this wasn't a bribe, but a test.
Richie's almost disappointed. He'd been hoping the AC was busted so he'd have the rare but always delectable honor of getting to sit around and watch Eddie play grease monkey. Grunting and sweating and, realistically, bitching while tinkering to get the units working again with only an old toolbox. And, ideally, a too tight slightly translucent tanktop. Maybe some low slung blue jeans, if Richie dared to dream. What he wouldn't do for a job in this dude's wardrobe department—
Eddie shoves the pile of plastic containers back in Richie's arms. “Put these in the kitchen. In the fridge. You can grab some water and go.”
“What, you're not gonna set the table for us? Some host you are. Guess I gotta do everything myself around here.”
“Look, I would, really, but there's this odor of some sort of burning fucking garbage heap that's been stinking up the place as of ten seconds ago. Kinda killed my appetite. But tell Miss Maggie I said thanks.”
Richie holds off on poking fun at the juvenile name Eddie's been stuck calling her since they'd first carpooled home from pre-k together, but only because he's trying to worm his way out of getting dragged out to the curb with the rest of the trash. He's at the point where he'd do or say pretty much anything to avoid a hasty return to hyperrealistically roleplaying as an ant under some sadist's magnifying glass.
“You're not gonna thank me? I just bellycrawled across the Sahara for you. I might have doomed myself to a slow death by skin cancer for you.”
“Thank you, Richie.” Spanked and banked. Whoa. Nevermind the overtly insincere delivery, he's sure that he's never in his life heard that from Eddie before. Why the fuck had he caved so quickly? “Now get lost.”
“Can't.” Thrown off course from any creative tactics he might've had in mind, Richie has no choice but to fall back on his last resort. Honesty. “My folks are banging it out in our breakfast nook as we speak. And Went might be a minute man, but I'm painfully aware of just how much those freaks love oral. Adore oral. Je t’adoral. I'd really rather never walk in on his head up her skirt again, man, it already robbed me of like half my sight the first time around. Any more indecent exposure and I'm at serious risk of going fully blind.”
Eddie gapes at him. “You're not serious.”
“Afraid so. I've been banished. Sentenced to fry in the sun until those horndogs finish.” Richie could get more colorful with his phrasing, but just the reminder of their sexcapades is already turning his stomach, and he still wants to be able to chow down on some meatloaf. And that potato salad. He had dibs, dammit. “Something about this heat wave must be getting the frigid residents of Derry hot under the collar in more ways than one.”
Eddie's gone all pink and cheek-pinchingly cute again, probably embarrassed about being bombarded with details on the deeeee-sgustingly steamy sex life of Mister and Missus Tozier.
Good luck making eye contact with Miss Maggie after this, sweetheart. Richie doesn't say for several reasons.
“Okay.” After cycling through some mysterious, somewhat offensive (fuck, like being forced to hang out with his good old pal Richie is such a chore) internal conflict, Eddie folds. “Take off your shoes. And if you're gonna stay, you have to shower. Like, right now. Immediately. You're a fucking biohazard.”
“You're always so sweet to me. I don't tell you that enough.”
And Richie is being nothing but sarcastic here, but it is pretty sweet the way Eddie impatiently leads him into the kitchen to force a chilled water bottle into his hand. The way he escorts him up the stairs with only minimal childish stomping. Finds him a clean towel and a washcloth, not a loofah, because they're apparently a deceptively bright and fluffy breeding ground for mildew and germs. Gets him a change of clothes while insisting they'll have to burn the outfit he's wearing now. Both because it's unsalvagably smelly and ugly to boot, or so he's told. At length.
Eddie slides the spotless pale blue curtain open and takes the time to show him how to work the straightforward temperature nozzles. Lifts vaguely phallic (Richie has an eye for such things) containers one by one and identifies which bottle is conditioner, which is shampoo, etcetera. Introduces him to the novelty of face wash, as if the shower is some kind of alien planet that Richie's never once orbited, nevermind touched down on.
The whole ordeal is almost insulting. Probably with intentions of being thoroughly insulting. But Richie wouldn't have thought to have checked all that before stripping down and hopping in, and he won't be able to read the labels with his glasses off. So, instead of belittling, Eddie's long winded explanations and preparations end up coming across as more of a toss up between sweet and snotty. A spaghetti specialty.
Richie's insides are gooey and gross and excruciatingly fond after all is said and done and Eddie is shutting him into the bathroom.
“You're not gonna stay and check me for fleas?” He calls after him, feeling an uncanny kinship with every mangy stray dog that's ever been taken in off the streets.
“I don't need to check, I already know you’ve got them.” Eddie says through the door. The snark there almost gets lost in his rush to start stomping off down the hall.
Richie is in and out after his standard five minute affair, his honestly not all that bad natural manly musk washed away down the drain. His greatly exaggerated ripeness is replaced with the mellow fruity smell of Eddie's cucumber bodywash. It's an improvement, he can admit. But it's not powerful enough to drown out the strong aroma of bleach he's picking up on now that he's not noseblind from being submerged in his own swampass.
He hurries to towel off so he can escape the noxious fumes before he catches a wayward high from huffing chemicals. Fuck, he thinks he might've just cracked the case on why Eddie's always such a twitchy little freak— Bro must be tweaking, high as balls on all the toxic cleaning products he's inhaling day and night. Richie might need to carry around an aspirator too if his lungs had to constantly withstand this shit. He might have to take a few hits off of Eddie's if he stays cooped up in here much longer.
Once his hair is sufficiently towel dried, he shimmies into the t-shirt that's been left out on the sink for him. It's one of the poorly tie-dyed ones they'd all gotten together to make only a few days before Beverly bailed for good. So, pretty old, but still a loose enough fit, if a little cropped for his tastes. But that was the fashion baby, he can dig it. Richie's not one to snub a perfect opening to make some skeezy happy trail jokes.
The shorts are another story. At a glance, while they're still folded up, Richie assumes that they must be briefs. Just going off of the miniscule amount of fabric he's looking at here. As he grabs them though, he can tell that the material is all wrong for that.
A little thrill runs through him as he realizes this can only be one thing. One of the legendary pairs of itty bitty athletic shorts that occupy a good portion of his brain capacity at any given time.
“Big fan of your work...” He mumbles reverently, grinning while running his fingers down the white stripe on the side, touch lingering around the hem where the fabric splits into an upside down ‘V’ for range of movement. “Have mercy.”
Richie can't help but laugh as he unfolds the daisy yellow bottoms and holds them up in front of his face. And then he puts his glasses on to make sure he's actually seeing this shit correctly and laughs harder.
These are the short shorts to end all other short shorts, reigning supreme at the top of the food chain of pure, sublime indecency. These short shorts eat miniskirts and whale tails for breakfast. And that's great, that's a beautiful thing and all, don't get him wrong, but the waistband is unbelievable. Inconceivable!
Richie really can't wrap his head around how Eddie could be this scrawny, even if the elastic does have a fair bit of stretch to it. If by some miracle Richie could wrestle them up past his own thighs, he wouldn't be able to move an inch without one to two balls or at least an ass cheek slipping free. Realistically, they'd simply tear within moments of being forced over his hips.
It truly is a wonder with all the care the guy had taken to give him an in depth review on the fundamentals of bathing, that this is the change of clothes he came up with. Eddie must have been the one plotting to get a spot in his wardrobe department all along— And his first pick is a crop top and slut shorts, Kaspbrak you DOG! Richie laughs even harder at the sheer ridiculousness of this prospect, catching himself on the rim of the sink so he doesn't snap in half from the sudden spasms of hysteria.
His boxers probably should be burnt, Eds was not kidding. But the colorful foliage patterned parachute pants he'd been wearing all day are only a little damp around the waist and back of the knees, so he slips them back on. They don't quite feel like the “biohazard” the rest of his outfit has been reduced to, but they're still a little on the nasty side, enough to be uncomfortable. And Richie has some very lax standards so that's really saying something.
If the shrimp doesn't have anything that might come a little closer to fitting him, he'd be down to kick it in one of Mrs. K's mumus. There's an almost irrepressible urge to jump the gun on that idea and go raid her room immediately, just to be rewarded with the shocked and appalled look on Eddie's bitchy little face during the big reveal. Tempting, but no, that's probably an eviction worthy offense and Richie's got no plans to be out of his hair anytime soon.
He yanks the bathroom door open to take a much needed breath of bleach free air, but doesn't duck out just yet. Bouncing from heel to heel, he mulls over the concept of using Eddie's toothbrush just to gross him out and piss him off and for no other reason whatsoever. But he resists, feeling just a hair too creepy to go through with it. He does pocket those teeny tiny gym shorts, however, with big plans to be a nefarious little creep in his own private creep domain in the imminent future. He'll just have to hope against hope that Eddie won't ask about them while Richie's hassling him for some bottoms that will fit a fully grown person and not a stuffed bear.
When he waltzes into Eddie's room to do just that, running his fat fucking mouth the second he's twisting the doorknob, he's faced with the unthinkable.
Eddie is sitting on the edge of his bed with his shirt hiked up above his belly button, khaki cargo shorts unbuttoned and unzipped, and it doesn't stop there folks!
Boy, if he felt like a creep for just considering to suck on Eddie's toothbrush, that has less than nothing on the burst of deviant thoughts that slam into him like a mack truck and drag his shellshocked body along for the ride as it hits the gas and hauls ass to the promised land of total depravity.
The very loudest of these thoughts is the one kicking him for being so loud himself. If he were capable of making anything more subtle than grand entrances, Eddie might have not noticed him right off the bat. And Richie might've gotten lucky enough to catch a proper eyeful instead of the lightning quick peek he manages before Eddie shoots up off the bed and turns his back to him, shoulders jumping up to his ears.
Richie mirrors the movement, silently spinning on his heel and staring a hole into an X-Men poster thumbtacked to the wall. Jubilee glares back at him with an expression chock full of withering judgement, but that hardly registers before his mind is conjuring up the vivid and very real snapshot his memory has just latched onto of Eddie's hand on his dick.
“You can’t be serious— It's been two fucking minutes, there's no way you even touched the conditioner!” The sound of the zipper of his shorts going back up very nearly makes Richie start to shake. “You don't know how to knock?! Did you forget how?!”
“I've done enough knocking for one day!” Richie swallows and makes a valiant effort to prevent his next sentence from coming out quite so shrill. “Why didn't you just lock the door?”
“There is no lock, jackass!”
“Well shit, sorry if I didn't expect you to be— to be—!” He has a hundred euphemisms in mind. This is his area of expertise after all. But they're all so stupid and unserious and this moment feels millions of miles outside of that. Struck unawares yet again, and at a much more drastic level than the minor whiplash he'd gotten from hearing Eddie say a simple thank you, that damning honesty sneaks up on him and slips free once more. “Shit, Eddie, I didn't even know you knew how to do that.”
Eddie's screechy voice shifts from just simple shock and anger to a darker toned outrage. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Whoops. Well. He was sorta hung up on the thought that he wouldn’t wanna get his hands dirty. Might need to outsource the job to someone a little more well versed in all things gross and obscene. Clearly that's just a pervy fantasy that Richie's privately indulged in one too many times over the years.
It is a pretty wild assumption to make about a guy this late into his teens, but— “I don't know, I thought— I don't know what I thought! Maybe just, like, you'd be way more fucking chill if— if this was something you were doing regularly! Or at all! Like, you're so on edge all the time, my fucking bad for thinking it's because you never— do this!”
“Right, okay, and I never do this because I don't know how? It's not fucking rocket science, dude, you really think you're some tortured fucking genius for figuring out how to rub one out? You're a real prodigy, Rich, have fun getting your Bachelor of Dicks at Jerk Off University, you fucking moron.”
Richie would laugh at that if his heart wasn't beating hard enough to make his whole body throb. Would probably say that he intends to aim a little higher and shoot for a Master of Dicks. “Okay, congrats! You know how to jerk off! Thanks for waiting for me to swing by to drop your pants and share your incredible new discovery with mankind! Scully's not gonna believe this!”
“I'm not—! It's not because you're here, asshole, you fucking interrupted me with that stupid fucking meatloaf and then you wouldn't fucking leave!” There's a thread of panic pulling all of his words closer together now, speeding up every syllable double time. “I told you to go away like a million times and I fucking tried to ignore you breaking down the front door like Jack fucking Torrance, but you just don't give up! You can't ever take a fucking hint! Let me try and be clear enough for you here—!”
Eddie honest to god chucks a pencil case full force at the back of his head, damn near sending his glasses flying off as his neck pitches forward. The hard plastic case snaps open and its contents spill out and roll in all directions across the vacuum lined carpet.
“Go home, Richie! Fuck off and get out of my house and leave me the hell alone for once!”
His ears are actually ringing holy shit. He can't bite back a grin, even as the base of his skull smarts a good bit from the blow. It’s no secret that Richie kind of lives for Eddie getting this mad at him. And he typically has to try a hell of a lot harder to piss him off to the point of provoking violence— Sometimes it's a grueling, labor intensive, week long affair. So, suddenly being rewarded with a reaction of such a high caliber is a real cherry topper to this whole situation.
Needless to say, all that venom is nowhere near the deterrent it's intended to be. It is oddly grounding though. Familiar enough territory to bring him back to himself and make him cling onto the absurdity of what's happening here over anything deeper currently pulsing hot under his skin.
“Not happening. I'm not missing out on meatloaf just because you can't keep your hands off yourself after breathing in all my sexy, sweaty pheromones.”
Eddie starts wordlessly seething and scrabbling around, seconds away from throwing something else if Richie knows him at all. He whirls back around to face him so he can use his hands and arms as a shield in case Eddie's got a hold of a textbook or worse this time around. It's a bit disappointing to watch as only a pillow flies through the air at him.
Richie catches it, confused by the weak ass choice of projectile. This is a bizarrely uncharacteristic move for the little terrorist once he's been tipped over boiling point. He'd sooner throw a live bomb than a pillow, in this state. Eds-plosivo.
But now that he can see Eddie, it's real easy for him to put together that he's not quite in the throes of one of those generic spaghetti brand rampages that Richie's used to— That Richie's developed the beginnings of a fully fledged fixation on working to push him towards. So, of course, he can tell right away that something's off and Eddie's not at that highly sought after level of pure rage.
This is something else, something he can't pinpoint. Uncharted depths.
Eddie's posture may be the most rigid it's ever been as he backs up as far from Richie as the modest sized room allows, nearly denting the drawn blinds before he stills. His face is dangerously close to cherry red, and he seems to be more panicked than pissed. Like he's close to leaping out the window himself if Richie doesn't fuck off as requested. But once their eyes meet, for less than half a second, more of a grazing than a meeting, that naked panic swiftly bundles itself up under layers of irritation. The scowl aimed his way doesn't have its usual kick to it since Eddie's having trouble with maintaining eye contact for more than a few seconds.
It's all very fucking weird, and what's weirder is that Richie can't think of a goddamn thing to say. Well. Nothing good, anyway. Nothing good at all.
“Y'know,” Eddie starts, voice wavering with what Richie prays is anger because he has no clue how he would handle anything else in this moment. “I'm home alone like a few times during an entire school year, if I'm lucky. My mom leaves for work while I'm leaving for first period, and then she's home before I am. And she doesn't ever go in on the weekend and— and she seriously takes every single break I have for the holidays off with me. So, I'm stuck with her in this fucking house all year long until summer break.”
Eddie pauses as if Richie's expected to have some smart ass comment locked and loaded to respond to that with. So he does his best with how off kilter the entire planet feels to him at the moment. “No, that can't be right. She's in my bedroom every Friday night.”
It's pretty weak, evidenced by Eddie not reacting with so much as an aggravated eyelid twitch. “And summer break is still a week away, so from August until now, almost every single day I've been home, my mom is here. Okay? And— And I have to sleep with the door open, because I guess she's paranoid that I'm gonna experience sudden infant death at seventeen years old and just randomly stop breathing in my sleep or some shit, so, yeah. She's always around, and I'm not allowed to close my bedroom door, and I'm never fucking alone. Okay?”
Okay? Okay? “Okay.”
“Okay.” Eddie echoes, making Richie briefly worry they've gotten stuck in a loop. “So.”
“So…?” Richie tries his best to solve the riddle that's been awkwardly laid out before him. But it proves to be an impossible task with the current state of his soupy brains.
“So,” Eddie nearly spits with frustration, volume rising as he starts gesturing uselessly with his hands. “It's not— I'm not—! This doesn't have anything at all to do with you being here.” Duh. And he's not even delusional enough to be disappointed about that. No, really. “It's just because she's not here and when she is she's breathing down my fucking neck and I never get any privacy!”
The room goes quiet in the wake of his outburst. Against all odds, Richie manages to swallow a laugh, but is suddenly much too— amused, astonished, awestruck, take your pick— to suppress the smile that overtakes him as things start clicking together.
Fuck, it's no wonder Eddie was always so tough to lure out during the first week of summer break. ‘Getting a head start on the assigned reading,’ Richie's ass.
“Okay. So. This is why you didn't wanna let me in earlier? You're saying, whenever she's not here, that's the only time you get to, uh—”
“Yes, okay, you get it, let's move on—”
“—jack it till the cows come home? Like, literal cow, in this case? Is that right?”
“...Mhm.” Eddie confirms through the tight thin line his mouth has become, hands tense and twitching at his sides like a cowboy eager to grab their revolver mid standoff.
If there ever was a time to ease up and give the guy a break, it's now. Richie knows that on some level. Even if it is a hilarious problem to have. Like, there's seriously no way Eddie thought there was a world where he could get away with admitting that to Richie scott-free.
More than hilarious though, it's sad, and more than sad, the idea— the reality of him being any degree of desperate to get off while standing all of six feet away from him is turning him on way more than it has any right to the longer he thinks about it. Which creates a much bigger problem. In his pants. His paper thin nylon parachute pants that are too loose to compress and conceal any hard evidence like he can see that Eddie's starched khaki shorts are doing a swell job with.
Shit, he really shouldn't have just looked at his crotch. This is getting out of hand.
His only options here are to become too blatantly obviously hot and bothered to be able to successfully distract, deny, deflect, or shift gears and have a laugh at Eddie’s expense. Or do neither of those things and find a way to rise above this situation like some supernaturally superior beacon of peak maturity. Ha. Wouldn't that be something?
But he knows, not deep down, but right below the surface, where all things Eddie related live under his skin, that he really shouldn't purposefully be pressing down on any of those well worn (well loved) buttons he mashes on a daily basis with the end goal of making Mount Eddie erupt. Not while he's all pent up like this. It just wouldn't be right, given the circumstances. And any of that teasing would very likely be even less well received than usual. The throbbing, Tom and Jerry style lump forming on the back of his head is proof enough of that. But. Well.
With every passing second, Eddie's looking a little less freaked out and more so irresistibly grouchy in that exact way he usually does before Richie finds himself immersed in this same internal battle— Torn between riling him up and laughing at him, or licking his pouty face from jaw to temple like some horny dog one incident from getting his balls chopped smooth off. And Richie’s no dog, but he is a weak, weak man. What's that one saying about old habits and Die Hard 1988?
Richie hurries to subdue his smile (and anything else that, for the safety of all parties in this bedroom, cannot be acknowledged at this moment, or any other moment in time, for that matter, ever) and forces himself to frown in a way he can only hope is as devastating as one of Wentworth's deadpan stares.
“You're telling me I was out there roasting alive for how fucking long, and the whole time you were up here touching on yourself like some perv?”
Eddie's wide eyes flash with a fresh wave of panic and Richie almost feels guilty. Almost. “What are you talking about— No. Gross—!”
“To the sound of me screaming your name, no less.”
“Shut up, god, I didn't do anything like that— Wait, you weren't even screaming my name, dick, who the fuck is Stella?”
He tuts, shaking his head and dropping it so his mess of damp curls will fall forward and conceal the corners of his mouth curving upwards. “I can excuse the perving, but being this uncultured has gotta be one of those cardinal sins I'm always hearing about—”
“I was not. Perving. I wasn't doing anything except waiting for you to get the hell off my porch!”
“Oh, I'm sure. I'm so sure. Sounds to me a lot like something only someone deep in the habit and culture of perving would say.”
“Can you please stop saying that shit, it's not even a word—”
“I'm just saying, you've really gotta get a hold of yourself, man. People will talk. Any more incidents like this and you're at risk of becoming a regular Perving Irving.”
“What exactly are you trying to…” Eddie takes a breath, closing his eyes for a prolonged moment as he hits that sweet spot of realizing that Richie's just fucking with him.
Watching him get annoyed with himself for getting sucked into it so easily, every time, without fail, is honestly one of Richie's favorite parts of this whole song and dance. It's almost as good as sucking his face off would be. No, really.
“Very funny.” This is another highlight of the experience. Richie will take praise where he can get it no matter how sarcastically it's delivered.
He beams. “Yeah, thanks, I thought so too. All that time I spent in the sun with my skin sizzling and popping like a weenie over a campfire must have unlocked a hidden level of comedic potential within myself. I've got a feeling I'll be very funny to you for a while.”
Eddie squints, recognizing that for the threat that it is. “Look, I forgot how hot it was outside, okay?”
Sure, Richie could maybe buy that story, despite Eddie's tendency to bend the truth to get himself out of tight spots. His less than stellar track record with honesty, littered with little white lies and crafty excuses he pulls out just about whenever it suits him. Nine times out of ten he only ever doubles down when called out, stubborn to a fault.
Richie suspects it's one of those strict parents creating sneaky children conundrums, no way would he be such a seasoned pro otherwise. Eddie might be a bit rough around the edges, and with ample reason to be, but at his core he's all melted caramel center goodness, sweet and warm and, uh, simple.
Which is to say, kinda dumb.
But thank god for that or Richie wouldn't feel comfortable saying half the shit to him that he does. Fate works in funny ways, or maybe Richie's just lucky for coincidentally crushing on the only guy left in their friend group with a magic eight ball for a brain. The scarecrow to his Dorothy. Stan (lion) or Mike (tin-man) would have long since sniffed out Richie's attachment issues, his affections, he's sure of it. He's known them long enough to know that they would both be too naturally intuitive to overlook it if the full intensity of it was all focused on either of them. Despite his best efforts, Richie can't seem to keep a lid on it.
And he's sure that all it would take is one perceptive person picking up on his inclinations before everything snowballed into him ending up, at worst, dead in a ditch or, at best, shunned Amish style. If it was one of the other losers and not Eddie, as if it ever could have been anyone else, in a best case scenario maybe things would go on unsaid and he could keep his secrets as long as he stuck to walking on eggshells around them. Until whenever the time came that every last one of them had turned tail and fled Derry and left him on his own to rot.
With Eddie, he has the luxury of going just about as far as he dares, without being bogged down by any serious fear of raising red flags. You couldn't pay Eddie to take him seriously. He could tell him, to his face, just about anything short of, “I wanna sit on your dick and spin and then I’m gonna need you to pump my womb so plumb full of your baby cream that Went will have no choice but to force you to marry me at gunpoint in the world's first homo shotgun wedding. And I've always wanted us to get hitched on the Hanlon farm. And for us to wear matching marigold flower boutonnieres.” And Eddie wouldn’t blink twice.
Richie has all the bullshit that's been coming out of his mouth regularly since day one of their friendship to thank for that. Eddie has been desensitized fully and utterly. Honestly, he might end up saying the shotgun wedding thing at some point— As long as Richie puts a slight sarcastic lilt on the delivery, it would be very much par for the course, for them.
Richie may be living a lie, but he's not a liar. An exaggerator, mayhaps. A pretender, a fraud, without question. But nothing like the average deceitful type that has it tied into their nature to lie and deceive as easy as they breathe. And Eddie sure does seem to have an even easier time than that, factoring in his wheezing and asthma and whatnot.
Though he'd like to think he can read Eddie exceptionally well, warts and all, even he can't nail down any definitive tells when the prick is lying straight to his face. Like he probably is now. But Richie's first instinct here is still to believe him. Not only because of how earnest he sounds, because doesn't he always, the snot, but because Richie had just witnessed firsthand the proof in the fucking pudding that Eddie had his hands full (very full, respectably full) with other, much hotter matters than the weather.
Eddie continues, oblivious as always to the queer inner workings of Richie's mind. “Once I figured you weren't gonna just leave like, I don't know, a sensible person with a fully developed frontal lobe, I went downstairs to let you in.”
Which isn't exactly what happened, hello, Richie was there when Eddie damn near slammed the door in his face the second the humble offering he'd brought was handed off. Liar liar short-shorts on fire— Dude really can't help himself. The way he begins fumbling his words from this point on leads Richie to believe he does in fact have a much easier time making shit up than spilling his guts.
“And I would've opened up sooner, but, well, I had to wash my hands, okay, and the center for disease control says you should do it for a minimum of twenty seconds. And— you might not know this— if you're doing the bare minimum to be clean, you're not clean. And I've always been told that you should hum the, uh— god— the happy birthday song from beginning to end twice before you rinse and, so, so I did that, um, twice, so four times, because… Just. Because… This is. The first time I've gotten the chance— I mean, the house to myself, in. Like. Six months. So, really, you just dropped by at a bad time and I— it's got nothing to do with you being here.”
Richie squints back at him. Wow, he's really driving that point home, message fucking received already. “Six months, huh? That makes sense. Your technique was looking a little rusty.”
Eddie snatches a half full plastic water bottle off of his nightstand and rears his arm back to chuck it at him, red face clouding and twisting back up into what Richie now recognizes as total uncut (uncut uncut uncut— a flash grenade detonates in his skull, his vision whites out and blurs, his ears start ringing) mortification.
He snaps out of it just in time to use the pillow he'd caught earlier to block the incoming attack, before tossing it aside and getting down to business. Alright. Embarrassment. That's simple enough, he can work with that. He can pilot this spacecraft through the meteor shower, easy peasy. Richie will just have to top it, using the advantage of not being in possession of all that much shame himself— the catholic guilt he came factory pre-set with notwithstanding— and even less than usual when in the elusive, exclusive company of his favorite spag bol.
“That's a terrible way to live, man.” He hears Eddie inhale sharply through his nose and rushes to press onwards. “No, hey, I sympathize. Really. I think I would probably keel over and die if I tried to abstain for that long. Sometimes I can't even make it through the weekend and I have to sneak in a private tug sesh during sleepovers. Well, not so private, if I'm sharing the bed with one of you guys. It's a good thing you're all such heavy sleepers.”
The humiliation slowly bleeds from his body language, replaced with the predicted delicious disgust Richie was aiming for. “Fuck off, you do not do that.”
“Sure I do, all the time, Eds. Since we're doing honesty hour and everything, let me tell you, it's almost harder to come if I'm not doing that—”
“That’s fucking sick, dude, oh my god. You better be joking.”
“I guess you'll never know! Because I never get caught! If you're gonna ride this exhibitionism train with me, you gotta learn a few tricks of the trade. Lesson one—”
“No, no lessons, I don't wanna hear this shit, I'm not getting on that damn train, you should be in jail—”
“Lesson one, you can't ever get so desperate to get off that you can't stop if your cover's about to be blown. You gotta clear out the pipes regularly enough to keep your composure! There's gotta be better options for you than just never doing it at all unless you're all alone, locked up in your fortress of solitude. Or, uh, with me down the hall, I guess—”
“Seriously. Shut the fuck up.”
Aw, but his heart isn't in it, Richie can tell. All those sharp edges have already started to dull down to the slightly rounded corners that Richie's far more accustomed to grinding against— figuratively, at least. The worst of the tension polluting the air thins to something breathable, bearable. The planet begins to spin on its axis again as the two of them re-enter the atmosphere of next-to-normalcy.
“I will not! This is coming from a place of concern! If you keep this up, your balls are liable to spontaneously combust in a very unfun way and I'm not gonna be friends with a dude with no balls. It's too pathetic, even for me. Can't you just crank it in the shower like every other man on earth? Don't tell me it's too holy a space for you to desecrate with your spunk.”
Eddie narrows his eyes at him, hesitating before curtly admitting, “The bleach smell makes me soft.”
“Pfft, holy shit.” Richie pats himself on the back for holding it together this long and proceeds to plunge into hysterics, giggling and bending at the waist to clutch onto his thighs for a sense of stability. “There is no fucking way—!”
“It's not funny, fuck you.”
“No! It's not funny!” Richie agrees, gasping for air and grinning wide enough to hurt. “All this time, I had it in my head that the stuff must really get your motor revving. What's next— You're gonna tell me you don't jizz straight into a clorox wipe? It's like I don't even know who you are anymore.”
Eddie huffs a sound that's almost a laugh, but not quite, too bitter and clipped to really qualify, and moves to settle back down on the edge of his bed. As he sinks into the poofy plaid comforter, he rubs the heels of his hands into his eyelids. Which is wild, because Richie's all too aware of what else one of those hands had just been rubbing against. That peek he got of Eddie in the midst of trying to quell his six month dry spell pops up in his head with a vengeance as he watches him assume a similar position to the one he evidently prefers to get his rocks off in.
Richie holds back from making pink eye jokes and does his best to wave that unreal but very real mental image away for the time being. After swallowing the pool of saliva the aforementioned stubborn image has summoned, he sits down next to him.
“Y'know,” He says, keeping his mind carefully blank in an effort to ignore the faint static sparks zipping and zapping across the arm that's closest to Eddie's. “I've been half hard, like, this whole time.”
“What?”
“Yeah, like all day, dude. I've been raring to go ever since I first heard about Sonia's pussy sticking straight out of the ceiling. That shit's, like, a recurring wet dream of mine. Only, in the fantasy, I have a video camera and a step ladder and a hell of a lot of determination to get between those plump dangling legs.” Richie glances sideways in time to catch a look full of big brown bug eyed alarm, before Eddie turns his face towards the wall and all Richie can see is the back of his head shaking in rapid onset exasperation. “They call it stuck porn, Eds. It's the stuff dreams are made of.”
“...I really can't tell whether or not this is some ass backwards way to try and make me feel better.”
“I would never. Wouldn't even dream of it. Because I'm too busy dreaming of your mom trapped with her ass hanging out of a washing machine.”
“Okay— Good, what a relief, because that was a truly fucking terrible thing to say. Just— God awful. Have I told you lately that you're disgusting.”
Not in so many words, but the sentiment is always present. Terrible, god awful, disgusting. Richie in a nutshell. “Don't knock it till you try it.”
“How did you— Where exactly— Do I even wanna know how you discovered this shit? Is stuck porn even real or are you just running your mouth again?”
“Well, I don't wanna get you all hot and bothered, given your condition—” Eddie shoves him, hard, but Richie bounces right back into place at his side like a weeble wobble. “—but mine eyes have definitely witnessed both a woman with her hand stuck down the drain of her kitchen sink, and a handyman doing everything to her besides getting her unstuck.”
Eddie turns his face back towards him, all scrunched up and noticeably paler than before. But even those powdery pink wads of Dubble Bubble gum would look pale next to the splotchy flush Eddie had been rocking thirty seconds ago. “Down the drain? Really? That's what does it for you?”
Richie grimaces in sympathy, but it's hard to muster up much authentic fear himself while inches away from that crinkled nose. From this close up, he can see in distracting, high-def detail the freckles and sparse moles dotted across the bridge that's gone crooked from getting his face bashed in too many times as a kid (Richie relates, and would probably be similarly disfigured if the frames of his glasses hadn't always been quicker than his nose to crunch and snap and break). Along with the beginnings of a pimple that Eddie definitely hasn't spotted yet or it either would've been eradicated by now, or currently at the mercy of his crowded collection of extra strength acne creams and gels that Richie had peeped on the bathroom counter.
“It's not exactly my favorite scenario of the genre, but it really stuck with me, okay? It was very compelling, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Mostly because I kept waiting for the, uh, jumpscare. But the only clown I saw was that lady's husband pulling up and getting his ass kicked hard enough for the handyman to keep giving his wife the business without any home interference.”
“Is that not fucked up and creepy on like every possible level. Because it sounds super fucked up and creepy—”
“No, no, yeah, it definitely is. It's just one of those sophisticated, acquired tastes that only real porn-oisseurs can appreciate... And it's sorta the only category my porn guy keeps in stock, so. It was a sink or swim situation, and, oh baby, am I swimming in it.”
Eddie's face somehow scrunches up even further, but Richie has cultivated a well trained eye for the majority of the dork's microexpressions, enough to spot the flicker of amusement that peeks through that lemon sucking mask. “You have a—? No, I'm not gonna ask.”
But he doesn't have to, of course, Richie is more than happy to delve into the dirty details of his dealings with Dennis from the local Hollywood Video with no further prompting required.
He yaps at a breakneck pace, determined to defeat any lingering awkwardness through sheer will, pulling out all the stops to keep Eddie's attention on his voice and nothing else. He tells him how there’s no adult section in the store, never has been and never will be or the puritanical populace of Derry would be sent into a moral panic, but this minor obstacle hadn't done much to deter Richie from asking for X-rated tapes every visit anyhow, sure that sooner or later the jaded soul working solo behind the counter would grow exhausted enough with Richie's antics to cave and slide him some skin flicks from his personal collection. And low and behold, after years of trying, it's finally been panning out for him. Richie only had to ask the new hire twelve times before he hooked him up, and that's nothing. One of the long time employees has said no to him a record sixty eight times and counting, but he has a good feeling about lucky number sixty nine. He's optimistic about finally getting his hands on some unstuck porn.
This is the line that finally cracks Eddie and makes him laugh for real, lips splitting into a short lived sight for sore eyes before he's clapping a hand over his mouth. After stifling a snort into his palm, Eddie stands up from the bed and pulls Richie along to do the same. Finally resigned to his fate to be saddled with him for the evening, from the looks of it.
As they move the party downstairs, far away from the scene of the crime, Richie talks and talks, barely stopping to take proper breaths, certain that the second he's not focused on keeping his mouth busy, his mind will wander. And, sure enough, wander it does— But he's got a leash on the damned thing. He can control himself.
Eddie chimes into the endless chatter here and there, mostly busying himself with flitting around the house while Richie noisily trails behind, the buzz to his bee.
Eddie finally stays in one place for long enough for Richie to catch his breath. Damn. That little fucker walks fast. He's nodding along to something Richie read in a tabloid magazine that neither of them care about, grabbing throw pillows off the plastic wrapped living room couch to toss them to the ground. They land in front of the twenty inch TV, old enough to still have an antenna jutting from the top of it.
Richie moves to click it on and (after a period of trial and error that drags on for long enough for Eddie's patience to visibly thin, his stink face graduating into a stank face) adjusts the antennas until the screen goes from static fuzz to a crystal clear closeup of Vanna White's very white smile.
Eddie's face pinches further as Richie cranks up the volume knob and game show sound effects and applause spill from the speakers. He’s quick to hunt down the remote.
After handing it off to Richie, he moves to leave the room. Richie moves to follow him, like he had been, like he'll typically do, but Eddie comes to a standstill so suddenly that Richie nearly rams into his back before he skids to a stop as well.
Eddie glances over his shoulder at him, eyebrows pinched, and then points at the cushions on the rug. “Sit.”
So, of course, Richie sits. More so balancing on top of than sinking into the pile of stiff square throw pillows. He hears Eddie climbing back up the stairs as he flicks through the channels, not paying much attention to the task, still yapping even though Eddie calls down a few times to let him know, not unkindly, but definitely less kindly the second time around, that he can't make out a word he's saying.
“You're seriously asking me to be louder?” Richie yells so his voice will carry to the second floor, but gets no response.
Richie very considerately doesn't shout up things that would guarantee him a response, such as ‘you're not touching yourself again are you bro,’ out of consideration for Eddie as much as himself. He's determined to prove that he can pretend to be normal about this. It'll be a good exercise of self control. Richie can be so normal.
Eddie soon joins him on the rug, kneeling next to him with a stack of board games and comics in tow. Eddie on his knees is definitely a thought. It's definitely something that's happening right here, right now, if we're getting technical here. He chokes up on the leash looped around his dirty mind and stops that line of thinking in its tracks.
Eddie helpfully distracts him by stealing the remote from his grasp. He clicks off the Nightmare Cafe episode Richie had landed on, cycling though channels while muttering about how Richie should know damn well by now that he can't stand creepy shit.
The moment Eddie sits down properly, everything is fine. Totally normal. And then, in the next few seconds, he sorta… squirms.
Fidgets? No, it's definitely a squirm, followed by a barely audible huff as his eyebrows knits together. There's more squirming— And everything is suddenly very much not fine or normal or anything close to it— The visual of Eddie literally for realsies writhing on the floor and trying not to crush his balls on these iron slab pillows, blatantly on edge and holding out for the chance to get back to it is just too much.
It's an unshakable sight, burrowing into the depths of himself like a mole he has no hopes of unhousing from the dirt. The dirtiest part of himself. The leash is out of his hands. More metaphors. Game over in a big way.
It's too bad that Richie can't take the high road here and simplify things by just asking if Eddie's okay. Less because he knows he's not— it's written all over his face after all and, uh, body language, if you wanna call it that, which Richie really doesn't want to do, thanks, holy shit— and more because it's just not really something they do. Not something any guy their age would do. Except Mike, but such was the pitfall of homeschooling.
But that one move, half a hip swivel, half a grind, the most insane thing he's ever seen that wasn't on a VHS tape he paid Dennis two bucks to borrow, keeps him preoccupied with some persistent and filthy things that cost him countless battleship games. Rounds that should’ve been easily won, seeing as Eddie has all of two amateur strategies of either lining the ships against the borders or bunching them up together.
But Richie's not hung up on sunken miniature ships. Or even Eddie's smug poor sportsmanship anytime he rubs a win in Richie's face. Richie figures that Eddie really can't be feeling all that awkward about what's just gone down if he's still mustering up the energy to be an obnoxiously sore winner.
His thoughts keep circling back to how crazy he would be going if he had gone six months without any privacy, and then had to entertain his dipshit friend with Spider-Man reruns and board games and mindless bullshitting all the while sitting on balls bluer than The Jag's paintjob.
Eddie must actually be some kind of saint. Like, that shit had to be straight up painful. There's no universe where Richie would have the strength or patience to play gracious host in such a state.
Even if Eddie is a little far from gracious, picking what they watch, and what they play, and sending Richie to the kitchen to warm up those leftovers all by his lonesome— Eddie only keeping him company for the two full minutes he spends scrubbing his hands raw at the kitchen sink.
He's still being devastatingly nice to him, all things considered. He hasn't even thrown something at him or told him to fuck off since they left his bedroom. Any nicer and they'd be braiding each other's hair and practicing kissing like a couple of girls.
It's super uncool of Richie to currently be repaying that kindness with graphic imaginings of just how much Eddie's gonna make himself come the second he's gone. In fluid ounces or multiple rounds, either scenario is really doing it for him, to be frank.
The fact that he could've been here while it happened— that he could've possibly witnessed what might have very well been the biggest bang this universe has ever encountered since the beginning of time itself— is an agonizing thought. Richie truly doesn't believe he'll ever get over it. He keeps wondering how long he should've waited before he could've walked in on Eddie making a fullblown mess of himself. With irrefutable evidence lying around that couldn't just be tucked up and away into his underwear.
He's thinking, after six months of buildup, there would for sure be at least a puddle of the stuff to contend with— A wishing well's worth, perchance, that Richie may dare toss a coin into. Or, more likely, in his expert opinion, a mess substantial enough to require rainboots or possibly a rowboat to be able to wade through his bedroom unscathed. But, oh, to be scathed—
What if it's not a massive amount, but a massive distance situation. Richie's had some solo chin striking incidents himself, but has yet to achieve his long term goal of finally setting the stage needed for busting out that elusive finger-windshield-wiper bit on his glasses. To entertain himself and no one else with, if that's not obvious. But, he would bet, after months, that he'd be able to shoot way further than just high enough to paint the lenses of his glasses.
Maybe if he had walked in at the perfect moment, and Eddie had changed his trajectory on the bed by like a forty degree angle, Richie could've caught a money shot to the face and reached true spiritual fulfillment.
Richie laughs a bit under his breath as increasingly absurd scenarios play out in his head, clamming up as Eddie's neck snaps up from the meatloaf in his lap to stare at him hard after the sound hits the air. He's real shit at keeping quiet. If that's not obvious.
Eddie's lips thin and his ears turn red, his neatly cropped hair doing nothing to hide them, but he doesn't say anything as his focus returns to his food. Probably because he thinks that Richie is laughing at him. In a sense he is, but not in the mocking, degrading way Eddie has clearly assumed— Though he would definitely prefer Eddie to believe that over the deviant trenches Richie's mind has actually been rolling around in. Like a pig in filth.
Richie wants to feel bad about inadvertently finding a new way to get under Eddie's skin in the most uncomfortable way to date. Really. But he's quickly discovered that, like the majority of the limited range of emotions one spaghetti man can express, embarrassment looks really good on him.
He's so ridiculously fucking cute and miserable that Richie's torn between if he should be feeling guilty that this is sorta his fault, or if he should be thanking his lucky stars for how this glorious day has shaken out for him. One for the history books, to be sure, Burr. He's gonna have a fucking field day recounting these events in his diary of Derry hilarity.
Richie gets so hung up on the funniest way to word his lingering fantasy about a babbling brook's worth of cum— kayaking in the Kaspbrak cum rapids— whitewater rafting indeed— that when Eddie reaches over to steal a sweet potato fry from his plate, he swears to fuck he sees his squeaky clean hand covered in spunk for a split second.
He's actually going fucking insane. In the literal sense, to the point of hallucinating. He needs to find a way to think about literally anything else, and quick. Much more of this and he'll be bunking with Bowers over at the asylum on Juniper Hill.
In spite of how deranged he feels, he plays it unbelievably chill in his opinion, and manages to loiter around a long while after the sun goes down. Before, ten minutes into Hot Pursuit, after John Cusack and his on screen girlfriend say fag at least three times in one interaction, Eddie says he's getting tired and calls it a night.
“Yeah, same here.” Richie fakes a yawn and stretches with a movement so exaggerated it nearly sends him into a backwards somersault across the living room rug (as he said, unbelievably chill). “See you in the morning, Eds. I take it Sonia's bed is empty? No need to get up, I know my way there very well.”
Richie winks, an art he has not mastered so it's more of a hard blink, and after his eyes open back up he finds Eddie frowning at him.
“You're not sleeping here.”
“Sure I am. Can't think of a reason not to.”
“Uh, I can.” And Richie expects him to list some practical things such as Richie not having a toothbrush here, or a change of clothes for school in the morning, or his bookbag for that matter, but it seems that they've both got dick on the brain. “What, did you think I'd just forget about you admitting to jacking off next to people while they're asleep? You're never staying the night here ever again, dude.”
“What the fuck.” Richie laughs because, yeah right, as if Richie's alleged J.O. habits are why Eddie wants the house to himself tonight. “I didn't admit to anything! I say a lot of stupid shit, I can't be held accountable for all of it. We'd never get anything done.”
“Too late now. If you didn't mean it, then you shouldn't have said it.”
“What the fuck is your problem, huh? You never take me seriously, you can't just start now— That's not cool.”
“I'm not chancing it.”
“What the fuck!” Richie says again, grinning helplessly at Eddie's grave expression, instinctively feeling egged on by the attention. “Wait, what if I promise to wake you up before I start. More or less creepy?”
“What the fuck do you think—”
“Yeah, I mean— Okay, when I first said it I thought I knew the answer, but the more I'm thinking it over, I'm not quite sure. I think I'm on the fence, like, wouldn't it be a matter of personal preference at that point? Like, it obviously starts off as an ignorance is bliss situation, but if that illusion is shattered, then, like, anytime you're asleep it would always be a nagging possibility in the back of your mind. So, in that case, it kind of would be better to be given a heads up, right? Just for some peace of mind—”
“No, dude, god— Who the hell do you know that’s just gonna be like ‘yeah, sure, that's cool’ and hang around after you give them that heads up?”
“Someone that's grateful I'm not doing it behind their back!”
“As if the appeal isn't entirely dependent on you doing it behind their back! What do you even get out of it if it's not for the thrill? What is the point!”
At that, Richie is having a tough time not cracking. But he holds it together long enough to say, straight faced, “It's like a bonding experience.”
“How the fuck does that…” A familiar look crosses Eddie's face, signaling that he's grown wise to Richie getting him caught up in bullshit. “Richie.”
“Yeah?”
“Put your shoes on.”
So, of course, Richie does.
It's late, after ten o'clock, and half the streetlights in this neighborhood either don't work at all, or flicker ominously. Which makes for a pretty grim scene once they're both standing in the tidy foyer, swinging the front door open. The heat wave seems to have passed for the most part since the sun had set, but a dreary summer rain has started up in its place. The humidity instantly hits Richie like a big wet wall.
Motherfucker. He's gonna have to shower again, twice in one day (unheard of) if he doesn't want Eddie wrinkling his nose at him and avoiding him all day at school tomorrow.
He's done it at least once, which is enough to make Richie wary of him doing it again— At the start of the semester, after he'd run the mile in gym and sat around stewing in his own sweat from nine am until their lunch period. Eddie had fully gagged and recoiled the second Richie sat down next to him. He'd snatched up his lunch box and quickly fled the premises, presumably to retch, going off of the grimace and the stiff way he had been holding his breath.
Stan hadn't been quite so melodramatic as to try and follow that performance, but he had stoically informed Richie that he smelled worse than a corpse, to the point that just him existing in such a state could probably be classified as chemical warfare. Richie— maybe because he'd been miffed by Eddie's callous abandonment, but he just as well could have said it without needing any provocation— had in turn made some unkind jabs about how Stanley's people would know all about chemical warfare.
Shortly afterwards, Stan had picked up his lunch tray to go and retrace Eddie's path out of the cafeteria, leaving Richie all by himself while those two nerds probably found an empty stairwell to eat under like the losers they were. Are.
And, despite never ever letting either one of them within scuffing distance of his car since his birthday last July, when the Rabbi had gifted him the keys in the first place, Stan had given Eddie a ride home that day. Very likely just to get back at Richie, and to force him to walk home alone.
As the rain begins to come down harder, he side eyes Eddie, taking care to look extra pathetic. Which is tough to pull off when one is so consistently pathetic by nature. Not that it matters, since, to no one's surprise, Eddie doesn't look at all sympathetic to his plight, expression flat and strict.
He nudges him out the door and onto the porch with the curved handle of an umbrella. Richie momentarily feels like a bad act being yanked off stage by a giant hook.
Eddie lets him borrow the umbrella and tells him to call when he gets home, which no one in their group has bothered doing since middle school. Richie assumes the unsettling dark night paired with all that clown talk earlier about dames stuck in drains has him wigged out.
Richie leans up on the doorframe and teases him on reflex, as if Eddie showing any trace of vulnerability is as good as a direct smack below the knee, guaranteed to make him kick out. “Call you? Aw, Eds, you do care. You sure you don't just wanna walk me home, stud?”
Eddie makes a throaty, fed up noise, somewhere between a scoff and a groan— one that instinctively gets locked up in the vault to be properly appraised and appreciated at a more private time— and takes a big step backwards before swinging the door shut. Richie moves his hand just in time to save himself from a busted thumb.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
Richie does call. He thanks his lucky stars that his perpetually in motion mouth had prompted his parents to gift him a phone to keep on his bedroom nightstand since way back in ‘85, so he can be alone to multitask. To make the call while getting some quality time in with his recently pilfered goods.
He lies back on his unmade bed and pulls his fittingly highlighter yellow highlight of the day from his pants pocket, worrying his thumb over the sporty material of the short-shorts as the line rings and rings and Eddie doesn't answer.
And now, wouldn't you know it, Richie's the one slowly getting wigged out from all that drain talk earlier. Because what if something horribly clownish has happened. What if they've spoken it into existence. Literally. Spoken It into existence. To his knowledge, this is the first night Eddie's ever been all on his own in that depressing house…
Richie sits up and calls two more times, growing more nauseous by the second, before Eddie finally answers, voice tight and murderous.
“Can I fucking help you?”
Oh. Shit. “Hey…”
There's actually no way that Richie's managed to interrupt him again.
Eddie's masturbatory habits truly are some kind of tragedy veering on Shakespearean proportions. The full scope of that is becoming clearer to him by the hour.
But, man, Richie is on a fucking role. Third times the charm, that's what they say— Maybe at this point there's a small chance Eddie will be Pavloved into thinking about Richie anytime he's got a hand wrapped around his cock— But Eddie's sounding pretty fucking far from charmed at the moment
“Uh. You told me to call you.”
“Yeah, I did, and then right after you started talking like a dickhead, so I figured that you wouldn't.”
“Oh. Well, I always talk like a dickhead. Like, constantly. So, you really should've known better, that's totally on you, to be fair. But, yeah, I know you were probably sick with worry and jerking off all forlornly out of concern for my wellbeing, but you can take that load off your shoulders, and take the next load off wherever you please, because I made it home. Safe and sound. Snug as a bug in a—”
Eddie hangs up on him. Richie can't help himself, he calls back instantly, curling the coiled phone cord around his finger, flopping onto his unmade bed stomach first and idly kicking his feet as he punches in the number by heart.
“Hey—”
“Hi.” Richie's cheeks are beginning to ache from how much he's been smiling today.
“—you need to cut this shit out. Immediately. I'm not doing this with you right now. I'm dead serious.”
“I will, I will, yeesh. I just remembered I, uh, had a question for you.”
“Can it fucking wait, maybe—”
“No! This is urgent shit, dude. So...” Unable to resist, Richie tries out a husky, feminine phone sex operator voice. “What are you wearing?”
“If you call me again, I’m kicking your ass tomorrow.”
Richie chokes and splutters around a laugh at the no nonsense threat, before Eddie follows it up with some nonsense to soften the blow.
“I mean it— I really fucking do— I’ll find a way to slingshot you directly into the goddamn sun. On sight. You won't even get a word out before you're shooting above the cloudline.”
Richie bites his lip, grinning like a mad man as he struggles to maintain the husky, girly accent. “That's pretty hot. Have I ever told you that I love when you get physical with me, Eddie baby. Makes me feel like I'm on The Honeymooners.” Richie's voice shifts from a poor man's sultry sex worker to a pretty spot on Jackie Gleason impression. “To the moon, Alice!”
Eddie rams the phone down on the receiver so violently that he misses, and Richie has the distinct pleasure of hearing a growled out ‘motherfucker’ as it slams down a clumsy second and third time before the call finally disconnects.
He giggles to himself, just a touch maniacally, before dialing Eddie's number again— and again and again— with big plans to circle back to that bit about shooting above the cloudline whenever he ends up successfully annoying Eddie into answering the phone for a third time. And Richie's fairly confident by now that it's definitely a matter of when, not if.
And, wow, hey, sure enough, only on the fourth try, two rings in—
“What exactly do I need to say to you to get you to leave me alone?”
At that, Richie instantly forgets all that he'd been gearing up to say. That question had practically been wrapped up in ribbon and a bow, just for him. A rare chance for him to get his hand up Eddie's ass and make him play the role of ventriloquist dummy. He could make Eddie say anything he wanted.
It’s a good bargaining chip. And a testament to how desperate Eddie is to get off (full stop) the phone with him. All around a pretty sweet deal.
Or it would be, if Richie had the balls big enough to actually tell him the sort of things up on that top shelf of shit he'd like for Eddie to repeat. No, unfortunately for him, his balls are just barely big enough for him to click his tongue and say, “Come on, you didn't really think I'd make it that easy for you, did you?”
“Rich, I swear to god— I'm gonna yank the fucking phone chord out of the wall if you don't just tell me what you want.”
“What do you think I want?”
What Richie wants is to know is why he thought it would be a good idea to ask that in the first place. God, it is getting late. Maybe the impossible has happened and he's actually gotten his fill of pestering Eddie for the day. He's running out of fresh material here. All systems overloaded.
Eddie seems to be just about tapped dry as well, not having any bitchy remarks or rants instantly at the ready. Instead, a long quiet moment stretches out between them before he finally responds with a simple, bitter; “How the hell should I know.”
“You're breaking my heart here. Don't you know me at all? I bet you could guess. Go on, I'll give you three tries before I lay claim on your unborn child.”
“What the hell—?”
“Like— fucking— like that one fairytale. With the creepy guy and the straw.”
“I have no clue what you're talking about.”
“Yes you do, shut up. It's the one where the girl turns her hair to gold. Or the straw to gold. You know.”
They get stuck going back and forth, lured into the habit naturally this time around, without Richie having to bait him. It doesn't take long for Eddie to accuse him of making the whole story up, and Richie finds himself floundering with no leg to stand on since he, ironically, can't remember the name of the stupid fairytale to save his life. Or his firstborn's.
It's wild how long you can milk an argument about whether or not a very well known, classic piece of media exists. But they do it, dammit, wasting enough time during this, one of their dumbest fights to date, that Richie's almost starting to regret calling.
Frustrated from talking in circles, he tunes Eddie's voice out and asks himself what it is exactly that he wants from this phone call. Maybe if he goads Eddie into giving him the absolute sweetest ‘goodnight’ of all time, they could wrap this up quick, without Richie losing his cool and feeling the urge to shake Eddie like a doll until he racked that peabrain of his and admitted that Rumplestiltzkin was fucking real—
Rumplestiltzkin. Son of a bitch. Richie is triumphantly preparing to shut Eddie up, to whip out the name of this make-believe bastard and put this dumbass conversation to bed. But it's then he notices that he won't be needing to cut Eddie off, as a lull has naturally occurred while Richie's been zoned out.
In the absence of words, Richie thinks he can hear a different sound coming through the receiver pressed against his ear. A, uh, slick noise.
And, as it happens, right in his ear, he can't help but instantly recognize the distinct voice of his long time lover. His right hand. That's a sound Richie spends too much time producing to be able to mistake it for anything else.
And suddenly he's sweating. Stunned. His eyes widen enough to roll out of his head, filter forcibly knocked offline, and big mouth falling open in a series of unfortunate events that culminate in him actually asking:
“Hey, what the fuck was that?”
“What was what?” Eddie says, talking twice as fast as he had been.
“There's no way you’re—” Nope, Richie can't say that right now, he just might combust. As in, cum and bust. Rapid fire. Like a machine gun. “—doing that—” While you're on the phone with me! “—in your kitchen! Who are you?”
There's a dreg of horrible silence that only ends with Eddie eventually hanging up. Remarkably quiet about it this time around, a solitary click signifying the end of the call.
Richie's heart is hammering against his ribs, he feels dizzy and dazed like he might faint. There's only a very small part of him left with enough sense to seriously consider calling back. For posterity's sake, of course. To keep up the bit and carry on as if he's totally unaffected.
But, as it happens, he's so affected that he can't bring himself to even look at the phone in his hand. Not when he's got that pair of Eddie's sunshiney yellow shorts crumpled up close to him on his mattress.
Richie gets on his feet and hurries to lock the bedroom door.