Chapter Text
Richie stopped himself a moment from knocking, but not out of uncertainty over whether he wanted to – he’d decided to see how far he could push his broken heart. He stopped because something wasn’t right. He didn’t know how he knew, but the hair on his arms stood on end and his gut turned over. Enough time in Derry had taught him to trust these subtle signs of danger – fear - even when danger wasn’t immediately apparent. Here, where it lurked heavy like mist in the air, invisible until put under a light.
So instead, Richie swallowed his pride should anyone mount the stairs to see what he was about to do and leaned in close to the door until his ear was pressed to the wood. He closed his eyes, straining to hear the faint rummaging within. One set of footsteps bustled around the room – heavier than Eddie’s. No, not bustling, but rather pacing back and forth. He could just about make out Myra’s high-strung voice muttering quietly but frantically to herself – that didn’t exactly seem strange of her to Richie. What was strange was the apparent lack of Eddie in Eddie’s room – but he summed the oddity of that up to his own bias.
Maybe Eddie was just washing up while Myra packed. That was innocent enough, and no cause for concern, either, but Richie couldn’t imagine she would let him in just to speak with Eddie through the bathroom door. And if she did, he certainly didn’t want the worst possible audience present for the apologies building up behind the dam of his heart, desperate to escape his lips and flood Eddie’s ears.
Unless…
Jumping back on his tiptoes and feeling entirely too clandestine for what he meant to do, Richie jogged back down the hall, soft-footed, and descended the stairs, bolting straight out the front door. He could hear the others laughing in the parlour but didn’t stop for them, unsure how long Eddie would remain in the bathroom – if indeed he was there.
Rounding the building - feeling increasingly stupid as he went - Richie found just the right bathroom window, high over his head on the second floor, and released a sigh of relief to find the light within shining through. At least he hadn’t acted on his assumption in vain, and if that was to be the only positive outcome of this little excursion, well, who was he to complain? Sniffling back the last evidence of his tears, he wiped the back of his hand across his face and hoped to god he didn’t look as much the mess he felt.
He cupped his hands around his mouth, standing on the tips of his toes under the window. “Eddie!” It came out a whispered shout, earning no reaction from the bathroom. The sensation of time running out restrained his lungs as he imagined Eddie finishing up, leaving the bathroom, and slipping out of his reach once again. He called, just slightly louder, “Eds!”
Still nothing.
He turned his gaze downward, eyes combing the ground through the dark of evening until he found a decent-sized stone, toeing the line between pebble and rock. Plucking it up, he weighed it for a moment in his hand before lobbing it up at the glass. The arc was too narrow, missing the window – the building - entirely. Grunting under his breath, he picked up another and gave it a throw. It clunked off the siding, far from his target.
Rolling his eyes, he muttered to himself, “Great. So this is my Olympian moment?” He searched the ground again, gathering up a handful of gravel along the sides of the parking lot. Figuring he couldn’t miss with this many, he drew his arm back in a pitcher’s swing and chucked the whole handful up at the side of the building. A spattering of pebbles plinked off not only the glass, but also the siding and even the shingles of the roof. Not a moment later, Eddie’s face appeared in the window, and Richie felt his own light up with a smile. The last traces of his tears only disappeared then.
Motioning to the tarmac and exaggerating the shape of each word, he half-shouted, “Meet me in the parking lot!”
Eddie waved his arms as his mouth shaped a series of words strung together far too fast for Richie to interpret, then pointed back toward his room, then in toward his own chest, and finally shot two fingers down at Richie.
Brows furrowing, Richie shook his head and made an obvious expression of confusion, arms out to either side of him. “What?”
Eddie repeated the exact same actions but this time faster, and certainly no clearer the second time than the first.
Gesturing with his hands, Richie slowly mouthed, “I can’t understand you!”
Eddie’s movements were somehow faster this time, a frantic energy in each action.
Hold on, is he telling me off? Richie thought, but quickly disregarded the notion, finding panic in Eddie’s expressive eyes rather than anger. What the hell is he on about? Heaving a sigh, Richie mimed opening the window. Behind the glass, Eddie slapped a palm to his forehead and unlatched the window, throwing it open.
“Myra locked me in the bathroom!” he called in a similar half-shout to Richie’s, barely lower than his normal talking voice.
“She-?” Richie choked on his surprise, head spinning. Now he’s making up lame excuses? Is that really the best he can come up with? He nearly laughed, jaundiced and painful, but a laugh nonetheless. He stifled it in his chest. “Does she wipe your ass for you, too?"
"Beep beep, Richie! She's out of her mind!" he harshly whispered.
"Well then jump down, dickwad!” Richie satirically proposed, extending his arms out to either side of him with one leg forward and his hips leaned back in the image of an eccentric salesman giving his golden pitch.
“Easy for you to say from the ground! Do you know how high up this is? Last time I fell from this height, I broke my fucking arm!” Eddie snapped back at him, obviously trying to keep his voice down but failing, nonetheless.
Richie hesitated, cocking his head to one side. “You’re being serious?”
“What do you think?” Eddie hissed furiously.
From where he stood in the parking lot, Richie caught the faint sound of Myra’s voice through the bathroom door, asking, “Eddie-bear? Who are you talking to in there?”
In a more urgent tone, Richie called up to him, “Just hang down! I’ll catch you!” And with that, waved a hand in a circular motion to urge Eddie forward.
“No fucking way!”
“What, you don’t think I will? Do I have to remind you who fireman-carried you out of the Well House?”
Inhaling deeply, Eddie threw a hand up next to his face as if to get a handle on his vexation. “You fireman-carried me? You don’t fireman-carry someone with internal bleeding, asshole!” he snapped – Richie felt the corners of his mouth tug higher on his cheeks, his smile ranging all the way up to his eyes.
“If memory serves, it was mostly external bleeding, so…” Richie teased, putting on a mock matter-of-fact tone which called a world-weary sigh out of Eddie. Even so, he glanced uncertainly over his shoulder, worrying at his bottom lip, and turned again to Richie with forced determination in the darkness of his eyes.
“You better not drop me,” he warned as the scraping of chair legs on wood sounded from behind him followed by Myra’s curious, “Sweetie?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Richie assured him around a grin, throwing out his arms like he meant to catch him bridal style.
“This is such a bad idea,” Eddie grumbled even as he clambered out onto the windowsill, a pitiful reversal of Henry Bowers’ much stealthier entrance through that very aperture. Eddie must have been thinking along the same lines, a hand twitching up to the bandage on his cheek, but he closed his fist and brought it back to the edge of the window where he made certain he would have a good grip.
Carefully and after much fussing, he lowered himself down from the edge of the window, shoes skidding on the siding and drawing tracks of dirt down the wall of the old building. He gripped the creaking frame in his hands, his feet dangling just a foot or so above Richie’s head as he rambled at length about the absurdity of this whole situation – he talked so fast, the individual words blurred together indistinguishably.
From below, Richie tried to guide his footing, but Eddie only kicked and flailed uselessly. Groaning, Richie reached up to catch his ankles, to bring him down slowly, maybe even set Eddie’s feet on his shoulders so he could use him like a human stepladder, but Eddie let out a small scream.
“Don’t do that! Don’t pull my fucking feet! Are you trying to make me fall out the window?” he cried, forgetting to measure the volume of his voice.
“THE WINDOW?!” Myra exploded, so loud her voice bounced off the neighbouring buildings.
The slam of the bathroom door being thrown open nearly startled Eddie out of his grip, and just like that, Myra’s head stuck out over him, a shrill shriek escaping her slack-jawed mouth. She was like a live-performance rendition of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Honestly, Richie couldn’t help but be impressed at the uncanny stretch of her mouth, if only just for an instant. Then she was grasping feverishly at Eddie’s hands, trying to drag him back in with all the strength she could muster – not nearly enough to carry his weight, even if he helped her. All she accomplished was to pry Eddie’s fingers from the windowsill, inadvertently forcing him to let go.
“Eddie!” she screeched in time with Richie’s, “Oh shit!” and Eddie’s garbled yell in terror and alarm. The world seemed to move in slow motion as she lunged halfway through the window before getting stuck, her slick hands grabbing fruitlessly after him, while below, Richie fumbled with Eddie’s legs - catching a foot in the face - and just barely managed to grab hold of him before he could hit the ground.
Richie’s arms automatically fastened around Eddie’s chest, and in the same motion, his legs sprang out beneath him, throwing them both away from the building only for Richie to land unceremoniously on his back in the gravel, the cushion to Eddie’s own landing. Richie raked in breath with hacking coughs, the wind knocked from his lungs, and shoved Eddie off himself with a groan. Rubbing a hand behind his back where a rock had dug in, he rasped, “See? Told you I’d catch you.”
To his amazement, Eddie started laughing – for an instant, Richie nearly mistook the hysterical sound for sobbing - with an elbow bent over his face and his knees pulled up to his chest like this was the most uproarious thing to have ever occurred. It didn’t help that Myra squawked her discomfort overhead, straining against the window biting down on her wide middle.
“We gotta– We gotta go,” Eddie wheezed between bouts of laughter. Even so, it took him a moment to scramble dizzily to his feet, kicking up gravel which sprayed over Richie’s head – Richie recoiled behind his forearms, spluttering and bemoaning the little pellets to the face. Hurriedly, Eddie gathered him up, helping him get his legs – reduced to Jell-O - under him.
By the time both men had come to a stand, they were each infected with the laughing fit, holding onto each other as they bustled away to Richie’s car. Finding the key in his pocket, he realized he hadn't even locked the doors. Myra shouted down at them, struggling to free herself of the window’s tight squeeze, but they could hardly hear her over the heartbeats pounding in their ears and the full, panting laughter shaking their lungs.
Richie called Bev over Bluetooth once they were on the road - "That's how I got in an accident," Eddie pointed out while it rang but Richie waved him off - if only to loosen the others' worries. When she picked up, the familiar voices in the background of the call illustrated the impression they hadn't yet left the parlour, becoming silent when she burst, "Oh, Richie! Myra just burst out of her room looking for Eddie-"
"It's fine. I found him-" Richie was saying when Eddie interrupted with, "We're laying low." Rolling his eyes, Richie went on to explain all that had happened but held his tongue on the manner by which Eddie had been locked in the bathroom. Eddie leapt in to denounce Richie's idea of valid escape routes, meeting Richie's eyes with a smile in his as he did.
When Bev spoke again, her voice carried a breathy quality with relief, but Richie knew it wasn't for Eddie. She must have heard the difference in Richie's voice – like he could - telling of his polar mood swing from just half an hour earlier. He tried not to react to that quiet inflection in her tone, glancing sidelong at Eddie to make sure he hadn’t noticed, and was silently thankful she didn't mention it. Instead, she told Eddie how the Losers were up in arms over his disappearance not an hour into his discharge from the hospital.
Mike must have stolen the phone out of her hand then, his voice filling the car as he laughed about their long search through Derry's ditches for the better half of the day. Ben and Bill wrestled him for it afterwards, mocking their own short-sightedness now that they knew where he'd been hiding all along, followed by a ring of laughter from all three funneling into the mouthpiece as Bev's higher notes faintly joined in from the background. Richie had to pry his eyes from Eddie's smile, warm and affectionate, to keep from driving off the road.
Shit, Eds, he mused internally, You're a rollercoaster I never want to get off of.
Oh, he's well aware of that, that snide, cruel voice distantly returned, muted in the jovial atmosphere of the car but nevertheless present. None of this changed the fact that Eddie was aware of Richie's feelings for him. Aware but passively silent, like he would be content to sweep the moment under the rug and promptly forget its existence the way they'd forgotten their pasts, their childhoods, each other. Blissful ignorance.
"You'll have Myra on your case now," Bill considered, not unkindly but rather like he was musing aloud. Eddie breathed sharply from his nose and waved his hand – Richie had only to glance at him to understand he would rather be talking about anything else, even the clown who almost killed him, than his own wife. Bill continued, as if privy to Eddie’s unspoken response, "Do you know where you'll go?"
“She’ll look everywhere,” Eddie muttered, disheartened, “I really should call her-”
"There's one place she won’t be able to dig up," Ben pitched before Eddie could succumb to his guilty feelings, "The old fort."
Both Richie and Eddie’s expressions softened into contentment, feeling foreign against the haggard lines of exhaustion carved into their faces after the day they'd both had. The brief silence on the other end of the line implied a similar moment of fond recognition between the rest of the Losers.
“To the fort?” Richie offered.
“To the fort,” Eddie said, smiling.
Richie offered up a helping hand once he’d descended the creaking steps into the small, dark space of the fort. Anywhere else, the claustrophobia of this blindingly dark, underground room would’ve seeded unease reminiscent of the sewers where It had hunted them, but when Richie was with Eddie here in this bubble of childhood memory, there was only comfort. Eddie took Richie’s hand, putting two feet on each step as he descended.
“I won’t let you fall,” Richie snorted, feeling like an escort at Cinderella’s ball while Eddie made a pain-staking spectacle of his entrance with Richie’s hand clasped in his.
“Says the man who had me jump out a second-story window.”
He showed his teeth with a proud smile. “That’s anything but a diss. Best idea I’ve ever had.”
“It’s not supposed to be a diss, it’s an example,” Eddie shot back, heaping buckets of sass into his tone. Richie’s theatrical smile morphed into a grin teeming with fond amusement. Either man had yet to realize the stairs had left the equation, leaving Eddie standing nearly chest to chest with Richie as they held hands at its base.
Richie felt as though he was floating as he drifted backwards over the creaking floorboards, pulling Eddie along with him. As they went, Eddie flicked on a small flashlight which doubled as a lantern lamp he’d pulled from his fanny pack, setting it on the nearest surface along their path. It washed the room in a warm, dim light to counteract the cold dark of the night, slithering away to deep corners and under furniture. The light glinted off Richie’s glasses to match the radiant smile in his eyes.
Richie’s mouth was on a roll, spouting off everything that entered his head the moment it entered, and Eddie laughed. He was laughing as Richie claimed the hammock and laughing still as he bumbled onto the unsteady cloth sling after him.
“Think she’ll find us here?” Eddie asked, lying side-by-side on the too-small hammock – so close, Eddie was practically on top of him – with Richie’s bicep as a pillow.
“She really would have to be some kind of demonic entity to manage that,” considered Richie. For once, Eddie could only laugh in mild agreement, and felt Richie’s hand in his upon squeezing his grip.
Only then did reality hit, and differently so for each man. Richie’s heart thumped in his chest with internal delight – that this was allowed, no pining monologues or hesitation, just simple touch – and felt his heart squeeze merrily tight just like his hand in Eddie’s, but Eddie’s breath caught high in his throat at the thought of Myra, burned into his mind’s eye. The image of her throwing herself out the window after him. The picture of horror, of hurt, of betrayal.
“Can we… talk?” Eddie began, sitting up in the hammock so his legs hung over the side. He wobbled and struggled against the destabilizing effects of the sling as it swung against his movements, but Richie provided the necessary counterbalance when he sat up as well, throwing his legs over the other side. Like this, they sat hip to hip and hand in hand.
“Hmm, I think that begs the question of what we were doing before,” Richie teased. Eddie bumped his shoulder, shooting him a look, and Richie raised his one free hand in surrender. His other hand pressed Eddie’s, shooting fireworks off in his stomach. “You’re telling me you have a shred of a doubt in your mind that talking to you might not be my favourite pastime?”
An adorable crease furrowed Eddie’s brow in his attempt to decipher Richie’s sarcastic double negative. Giving up, he scoffed, “Certainly not after that mouth garbage. Ever heard of a yes or no answer?”
“Mouth garbage? I think the word you’re looking for is Trashmouth,” Richie noted around a grin.
Giving a roll of his eyes, Eddie set his chin in his free palm, his elbow propped up on one knee. Better not to meet Richie’s eyes for this, he thought. “The initials at the Kissing Bridge…”
Richie gulped, mouth drying up in a flash of heat across his face. He fought his instinct to release Eddie’s hand, wanting rather to remain in this casual contact as long as Eddie wasn’t pulling away.
“You said you loved me?” Eddie said it like it was question, but he remembered Richie’s words from earlier, crystal clear between his ears. He could still hear Richie’s voice ringing faintly in the back of his mind, repeating his love confession on a loop. I never meant to fall in love with you…
“Yeah, about that? I didn’t do it right. I’d like a redo.”
“A redo?” Eddie mused, “What, were you practicing a speech while I was locked up?”
“Heh, I wish,” Richie huffed under his breath. “Actually, I was mentally preparing myself to leave Derry…”
“You… What?” Eddie breathed, snapping his head to meet Richie’s eyes.
“I’ll get to that in a moment,” Richie said with an overcompensating smirk and had to squeeze Eddie’s hand just to calm his nerves.
Running his fingers through his hair, he was glad to turn away from Eddie for this. A million moments from their past flashed before his eyes, not just here in the Losers’ clubhouse, but everywhere they had been together. Derry. It was theirs. And for once amid the sea of feelings he had never been able to accurately tap, the right words became clear to him. Genuine and vulnerable.
“You know, when Henry Bowers used to beat the shit out of me for being a fag, I was convinced I deserved it?” Well if that isn’t a strong start, I don’t know what is, Richie internally groaned. Quick, keep talking. “Not right away. He called me all sorts of things before I ever even knew what they meant. No, it wasn’t until I started seeing it in myself, feeling it for myself, that’s when I started thinking… thinking the hurt just came with it. I guess that stuck with me, huh? I like men-” The words sounded alien in his ears, spoken in a foreign language of truths. “-and I hate that Henry fucking Bowers figured it out first.”
“He didn’t know shit about you, Richie. Throw enough stones and you’re bound to hit a target,” Eddie fiercely shot back.
“Yeah.” Rubbing the nape of his neck, Richie slouched deep in his seat. “But I figured I deserved it more than the rest of the Losers. For me, it was true. Is true.”
“Rich…” Eddie murmured, but Richie shook his head.
“I’m not looking for pity. I just want you to know why I never told you. Told anyone. Why I never, I don’t know, came out? It was a different world back then. Derry is a world all its own, full of hate and pain and… Maybe I accepted the hurt because nothing Henry Bowers did to me could ever hurt more than the fact that I fell for my best friend and everything in me was pushing me to ruin the only good thing I ever had.”
Richie felt Eddie tense up beside him, lashing a whip across his heart. Still, he pushed himself to continue.
“Even when I had no idea you existed; I kept an after image of you in my heart. And then we were back in Derry and it hit me worse than Henry Bowers ever did. I took one look at you, and everything flooded back. And you? You were married – are married. To a psychopath, apparently-”
“Careful,” Eddie warned, but there was only habit behind it.
Richie turned to face Eddie, raising his free hand, palm out, in peace. “Look, Eds, the long and short of it is, I’m into men, and I’m in love with you.” His lungs clenched painfully in his chest, chasing out these honest words. “Losing you would’ve killed me. And waiting for you to wake up in that hospital room? It made me realize what’s important. I had to show you the carving at the Kissing Bridge so I could leave Derry behind with nothing left to say.”
Eddie’s hand tightened around Richie’s, squeezing his fingers as if he never meant to let go. “Why are you leaving?”
“Oh, come on, Eds, are you saying you’re gonna set up shop with the missus here in PTSD-inducing Derry? There’s nothing left for us here.”
“I’m still here,” he obstinately retorted. The true message of his words hung in the air between them: Stay for me.
“And how much longer do you plan on staying?”
“As long as you’re here!” Eddie burst, sufficing to shut him up. In the ensuing silence, he squeezed Richie’s hand somehow tighter. Richie might’ve complained if his heart wasn’t beating a mile a minute. “How can you think nothing’s changed for me? After everything? Myra locked me in a bathroom! And… and you finally admitted you love me!”
“Whoa, hold up. Finally?” Richie sputtered, pulling his knee up on the hammock to turn his whole body toward Eddie, a sunflower to the sun. “You knew?”
Shrinking, Eddie ducked his head in a timid shrug. “I assumed… or maybe it was just a hope when I saw the R plus E when I was a kid. Why do you think I left that heart-encased R?”
“Oh you motherfucker,” Richie gasped. “Are you kidding me? All this time?”
“Don’t call me the motherfucker, dickwad! You never told me!”
Holy shit, Richie thought. His entire body vibrated with the growing jubilation of Eddie’s words. “You really had a crush on me?” he guffawed, failing to hide his cynical amusement. “That’s adorable.”
Eddie slapped a palm to his face. “You don’t get to talk!” he growled against his hand. Richie could only beam his smile, brighter even than the dim glow of the upward-facing flashlight. Running his thumb over the heel of Eddie’s hand, Richie reached out with his other hand to pry Eddie’s fingers from his face, revealing his glaring eyes.
“Hey… Eds?” Richie tested, coaxing Eddie slowly out of his glare. A mischievous grin took up Richie’s features. “Mack on me like we’re in tenth grade.”
Grumbling something about Richie being immature enough to still be in tenth grade, Eddie shoved him playfully, trying and failing to hold onto the façade of annoyance in the crease between his eyebrows. Judging by the blush climbing up his neck to colour the tops of his cheeks, and the smile that rounded them, Richie knew he had him.
“I can’t believe you had a crush on me,” Richie teased, repeating the words in his head, and took Eddie’s other hand in his so he had claim over both. Eddie groaned up at the ceiling, but let Richie hold his hands, intertwining their fingers.
“You know what? Neither can I,” Eddie grumbled, but a ghost of sadness crossed his features with the sense this conversation was taking place twenty-seven years too late. Richie felt it, too, dousing the light that had shone brilliantly within him. They held each other in this moment against the hands of time which had for so long torn them apart, but it didn’t change the fact they’d missed more than half of each others’ lives.
Both men fell silent, these many lost years opening a chasm between them to steal the smile from Richie’s face and depress the flight of Eddie’s heart. “I’m sorry I never told you,” Richie finally murmured through the heavy nothing worth too many years to contemplate. “If I’d just said something, given you the hint you needed, the clown wouldn’t have had any power over me. There’s nothing I’ve ever feared more, but without it… maybe It wouldn’t have hurt you like It did-”
“No, don’t do that. I should know better than anyone not to propose hypotheticals about things that can’t be changed,” Eddie snapped, shaking his head vehemently. He twisted on the hammock, pulling his legs up to intermingle with Richie’s, but Richie turned his head away.
“The clown was counting on me to keep my secret.” Now that’s some cruel irony. I gave It all the power It needed over me, and Eddie nearly died because of it. Because of me. Giving a quaky laugh, Richie fixed his eyes on their entwined hands. “That damn clown loved to look like you, Eds. In the Well House, both times. It made me look at a version of you that was dying, blood everywhere. I guess it was just playing with my fear of losing you, huh? Then It tried to kill you, the real you, right in front of me. To make me look you dead in the eyes as you di…” He choked up on the word, unable to get it out. “But that summer, when we were kids, It showed up at my house – my house – looking just like you. No blood, no horror. I thought It was you…”
“Me?” Eddie breathed, confusion in his tone. “Since when were you scared of me?”
“I wasn’t. That’s the issue. It showed up at my house, seventy pounds soaking wet, just like the night you ran away. It was your spitting image, and It sure played the long con. Shit, I thought you and me…” His breath caught in his throat, his face blooming red. The memory rushed back to him from the depths of his mind, hazy as if from a dream. The clown had dug into his greatest desire and simultaneous greatest fear. It was the only time Richie had ever kissed a boy, and it had been that fucking cosmic horror. The memory of It’s jagged teeth still seemed to brush the contours of his neck, the clown paint which had rubbed off still clumpy on his skin – he thought he would never get it out.
“Oh…” Eddie breathed, feeling the blush warm his face as well. Suddenly, he was very aware of his hands enmeshed with Richie’s. As much as Richie felt that itch to pull away – to hide not just his hands, but all of him, beginning with the shit stirred up in his head – he held on for dear life.
Shakily, Richie huffed, “I thought I was living out one of my top ten fantasies. It was fucked up is what it was.”
“The clown tried to seduce you?” Although Richie would have expected a teasing tone for such a question, there was only seriousness to be found in Eddie’s voice.
“You can imagine my shock and horror when I figured it out.” Pausing for a moment, he wiped his arm across his face without letting go of Eddie’s hands. “It knew me better than I knew myself. It came to me as you and I almost let It get me. It would’ve been so easy for It to… But It decided to tease the terror out of me and let me stew in it.”
“I had something… similar happen to me.” Reluctance to speak had entered his tone, catching Richie’s ear. “But It wasn’t you. The leper-”
Richie scoffed in mock offense, but Eddie shushed him.
“It had nothing to do with you.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Rolling his eyes, Eddie continued, “I didn’t tell anyone, because this time the leper spoke and I thought… I thought you would laugh.”
Richie started in surprise at that. “Since when has the clown been funny?”
“I’m asking you not to laugh now, Richie.”
In a rare serious voice, he swore, “I’m not laughing.”
Eyeing him, Eddie seemed to see something he trusted in Richie’s eyes, and muttered, “The leper chased me, and in an awful voice that sounded like it was right behind me, offered me a…” He glanced ashamedly down, unable to meet Richie’s eyes. “A blow job. First for a quarter, then a dime, then for nothing. I could feel its breath on the back of my ear. I heard its fly unzip. It almost caught me, raking its nails across my back, but all I cared about was staying out of its grasp. If it got a hold of me… I didn’t even feel the pain, I was so terrified. I thought, once it caught me…” He shuddered and closed his mouth. He didn’t need to elaborate, and felt in a way that if he did, it would become real again.
Never in his life had Richie wanted so much to face the clown and beat it to a pulp as in that moment. For a split second, he wished It alive again just to kill It, slower, more hideous, more excruciating. To make It feel what It had made them feel tenfold. Instead, he pulled Eddie to his chest and let the red seep out from his vision. “That fucking clown. It deserved worse than we gave It.”
“No argument here,” Eddie breathed into Richie’s shoulder. “I thought I was the only one the clown propositioned like that. I thought, like you said, the clown knew me better than I knew myself.”
“None of this changes the fact that I should’ve told you how I felt a long time ago.” Richie squeezed tighter against the shudder which coursed through Eddie’s body, wanting – needing – to protect him. Wrapped up in each other, in the hammock, in the fort, Eddie felt truly safe for the first time since their ultimate fight against the clown, unearthing the soothing sense that it was finally over. Not Richie, whose mind held firmly in memory and error. “If anything, this only makes it clearer to me.”
“We don’t know what would’ve happened if we did things differently.” Eddie pulled back from the embrace, forcing him to make eye contact. It wasn’t difficult - Richie was ensnared in the ferocity of Eddie’s eyes. “All I know is I don’t love you any less even twenty-seven years later.”
Fire scorched Richie’s insides, soft boiling him under Eddie’s intense gaze as these words assaulted his heart. Working to get a handle on himself, he spluttered, “Fuck, Eds. Were you practicing what to say while locked up?”
“Only a little,” Eddie admitted around a smirk which soon slid from his face. “But Myra…” A twinge of phantom pain stirred in his wound, reminiscent of her thumb pressed there. Wincing against this trivial sting, he pulled yet further away.
“You love her.” Richie said it with a nod, and to Eddie’s surprise, he took offense at this seeming accusation. Still, Richie mused on, “Of course you do, you married her.”
“Have you ever been married?”
Richie gave him a look.
“Right,” Eddie said with a small, mirthless chuckle. “I don’t think my marriage is what anyone would call normal.” He drew air quotes around the word and unconsciously rejoined his hands with Richie’s immediately after. “I don’t think most men marry a carbon copy of their mothers. I don’t think… I don’t think I do love her. Not as my wife.” The words echoed between them, bouncing off the walls Eddie had built around his heart, not as a defense but a prison harbouring the love he’d reserved for Sonia Kaspbrak and passed on, mutated and mangled, to Myra Kaspbrak. Only, the walls were breaking down, shining a light of truth in where he had coveted unreal love for so very long.
Richie met him with a soft regard. “That sounds like a tomorrow worry. For now, we’re here, we’re queer, and we have nothing to fear.” He smiled, proud of himself for the rhyme, but more so for the words themselves. This evening was turning out to be chock-full of self-acceptance, and he was starting to understand why people so vehemently advocated it.
“You’re a grade A dork, you know that?” Eddie pointed out. Richie threw a hand up to his forehead as if flabbergasted at the claim, and grinning, made a move as if to release his other hand’s hold on Eddie’s, but Eddie held onto him insistently. “Are you still planning on leaving Derry?”
“Eventually,” Richie muttered with an aimless shrug, and met Eddie with a smirk. “But that’s a tomorrow worry.”
“We have a lot of those, don’t we?” huffed Eddie, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He caught the flick of Richie’s eyes in this direction, rapt with the curve of his lips drawn up on one side. Something warm and light burrowed high in Eddie’s chest at Richie’s inadvertently soft gaze, his mouth parted ever so slightly. Eddie felt his Adam’s apple rise and fall with a dry gulp. “I think we can handle one more.”
“Hm?” Richie hummed, but found the noise stuck in his throat as Eddie leaned in toward him across the hammock, drawing Richie in closer by his hands. In that moment, as understanding dawned on him, Richie thought his heart would beat right out of his chest.
Stopping himself just a breath from Richie’s lips, Eddie haggardly pleaded, “Is it okay if I-?”
“Just kiss me, you coward,” Richie breathed, attempting a suave smile but failing in dumbfounded bliss. With his hands pinned to either side of him under Eddie’s warm palms, he felt Eddie’s smile against his before he realized Eddie had taken the plunge.
The hammock rocked, knocking them off balance, and suddenly, Richie was lit aflame, scorching hot under Eddie’s lips as he fell speedily backwards.
Now that’s some applaudable enthusiasm, Richie deliriously thought as his head met the comfortable support of the hammock. It swung, ropes creaking, under them, but that only added to the ride. Still, he strained his neck, chasing Eddie’s mouth, only to find Eddie had fallen forward after him, propped up on his hands – pinning Richie’s by his head - and knees – bookending Richie’s waist. Richie’s own legs were drawn up, his knees acting a seat for Eddie.
The look on Eddie’s face was priceless, a fleeting thing before Richie planted a kiss on his lips.
A haze of stupid ecstasy swept over Richie – washing away all doubts in his mind - at the loud, smooching peck he placed on Eddie’s lips, with heart fluttering high in his throat. Richie couldn’t help his gleeful laughter as he let his head fall back to the hammock, taken up with a self-satisfied smirk. Eddie wiped his mouth on his shoulder and shot him a sour look for the overexaggerated smooch – in such typical Richie Tozier fashion – but there was something more to that look.
Gazing up at him, Richie found a bold glint in the dark pools of his eyes. Eddie swooped in, slower this time, steadier, and met Richie’s lips with a gentle fervour. Richie’s own euphoric laughter funneled into his ears, muffled against Eddie’s mouth, but that was hardly where he kept his focus.
Mere minutes ago, he’d relished the shift in their dynamic that had simply allowed him to hold Eddie’s hands just for the sake of holding hands. He hadn’t imagined he would ever get that far, let alone get to kiss him. Now, he had Eddie all to himself, feeling the curve of his expressive mouth which had for so long teased him, mocked him, eluded him, tasting the intensity that was Eddie Kaspbrak for the first time, as he had long dreamed he would. The faceless fantasies of those twenty-seven years resurfaced now, given the only visage they had all along lacked.
Richie escaped Eddie’s hands to cup the nape of his neck and entangle his fingers in his hair, deepening the kiss as he slid his other hand up Eddie’s arm. He felt Eddie’s muscles twitch under his caressing touch, sending a tremble up to his shoulder and down his spine, a path Richie’s hand merrily traced to the small of Eddie’s back.
Eddie’s heavy breath warmed Richie’s face, fogging his glasses. Without a thought, Richie’s fingers fumbled to get them off, setting them on the little stand where Eddie had placed the flashlight. His knuckles knocked the little cylinder of light, sending it wobbling off the stand. The dim beam of light careened off to the side, flickered and went out, but neither Richie nor Eddie cared that they’d been pitched into all-consuming darkness. There was light enough in their heaving chests to make up for it with hands sculpting a blind imitation of sight in their happy wandering.
“Holy shit,” Richie huffed when Eddie pulled away to pepper his stubbly neck with kisses. “Maybe I died.”
“I don’t know about you, but I find death talk a real mood killer,” Eddie mocked against his Adam’s apple, shooting a bolt of electricity deep down into Richie’s gut.
“Mhm,” he moaned, nodding stiffly without impeding the good work Eddie was doing with his mouth. “Oh fuck, are you giving me a hickey?” A bubble of laughter escaped him, drunk with giddiness.
“Trying,” Eddie murmured against his throat, a wonderful vibration. Richie couldn’t help his hands tightening on Eddie’s waist, drawing him in closer. Eddie was just about straddling him, bent over him and latched onto his neck like a vampire.
Perhaps it was this line of thinking that led Richie to recognize the tangy, metallic smell of blood in the stale air of the fort, or maybe it was because Eddie’s minty breath was no longer directly in his face. Either way, the sharp scent found his nostrils, and Richie’s hands slackened.
“Eds? Are you bleeding?” He sat up straight, feeling Eddie wriggle upright in his lap, hands on his shoulders. They were practically chest-to-chest, Eddie’s thighs brushing either side of Richie’s waist, but neither man could see squat in this utter darkness.
“Shit, I am? Shit – where’d the flashlight roll?”
“What, so you don’t have a second one tucked neatly away in your fanny pack?”
Eddie pinched him in annoyance, not too hard but just enough for Richie to squirm and swat his hand away. “At least I thought to bring one.”
“Truly, the hero I deserve,” Richie sweetly chuckled and put on a mockingly suggestive voice. “I guess we’ll be playing doctor this evening?”
Eddie groaned, but moved in such a way, Richie could easily visualize his assenting shrug.
Grinning, Richie began, “Welcome to my office, Mister Kaspbrak. I take it you’ve come for your regular health check-up. Hey, Eds, could you do me a favour and make a glove-snapping noise? I assume you keep a box of them in your fanny pack-”
“Okay, that’s enough outta you,” Eddie interrupted, but Richie could hear the poorly concealed laughter in his voice. “Just do what you’re gonna do, dickwad.”
“You talk to your doctor that way?” Richie gasped in mock offense but before Eddie could come down on him, he patted Eddie’s thighs to indicate he would give up the act. With that, he found his way under Eddie’s shirt, moving slow enough for Eddie to stop him if he wished with his hands roving up to the bandage he knew he would find on his chest. Eddie inhaled sharply, halting Richie’s fingertips a moment from tracing the bandage’s hem.
“Oh,” Eddie whispered, a hint of sullen realization in his tone. “Myra might have… broken the stitches.”
“She what?” Richie breathed, although he heard him perfectly fine. No matter that the room was pitch black, a tinge of red from earlier trickled back into his empty vision. “On purpose?”
Eddie’s whole body moved – he slid slightly down Richie’s thighs – with his head nod.
Astounded, Richie spouted, “And you let me convince you to jump out a second-story window?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!”
“Shit, man, I didn’t think she’d hurt you.”
“So you just assumed she asked me nicely and I, what, walked myself into the bathroom?”
“Yeah, kinda.” He could just about feel the daggers Eddie glared at him, but that was the least of his concerns. His fingers splayed gently on Eddie’s chest, itching to wipe the blood – the hurt – away. “So, what do we do about this? Do we consult the fanny pack of convenience?”
“I guess we can,” Eddie mused, shifting in Richie’s lap in such a way, an electric sensation rolled low in Richie’s gut. “I should have something for this.”
First to drift off was Eddie, lying with his head on Richie’s chest and Richie’s arms wrapped around him. After incalculable minutes simply taking in the bliss of the moment, Richie pressed a kiss to Eddie’s forehead – in his sleep, Eddie snuggled blearily closer - and followed him to the land of dreams. He couldn’t help thinking his had already come true and was furthermore astounded when such a cheesy line didn’t even make him cringe internally.
Morning arrived in the blink of an eye and with it came trickling streams of sunlight piercing through the ceiling to illuminate the fort.
Eddie woke softly to this haze of filtered sunlight, and to a wonderful cologne mixed with the earthy scent of the underground fort. He was still half-asleep as he pursed his lips and pressed a kiss to the smell of Richie. Slowly, his head cleared of the blissful remnants of sleep and the euphoria of the night before, becoming crisp and sharp with tomorrow’s worries. He found his face nuzzled in the crook between Richie's neck and shoulder, his morning stubble scratchy against Eddie's lips. Under him, Richie sighed in his sleep, holding him tighter, and Eddie's eyes snapped open.
Eddie's arms were folded between himself and Richie’s chest, whose sleeping grip clutched him like a teddy bear to his body, both hands splayed over Eddie's back. Eddie's first reaction was hardly his own, the ghost of his mother's voice shouting in his head, Get off that Tozier boy! Without even thinking about it, he obeyed.
Careful not wake him, Eddie moved his hands slowly out from under him and bunched either edge of the hammock in his grips, feeling Richie's slow, deep breaths of sleep - the gentle thrumming of his heart at peace - against the soft line of clothing separating them. The hammock wobbled slightly in his unsteady push-up from Richie's chest, letting Richie's loose embrace slip down his back. An electric shiver traced down in the wake of Richie's hands.
Steadying himself, Eddie pulled a leg up on the hammock, planting his knee in the middle of the unsteady bed with his thigh pressing up between Richie's. The other man made a sound deep in his throat, eyes fluttering in sleep. Oh shit, Eddie mused, but he held still for a moment, watching Richie's eyelids flicker with quiet fascination. His heart banged in his chest, gazing down at Richie like this - his lips were slightly parted, soft and still a little bruised-looking from last night. Eddie's arms trembled, and not from the plank he held over Richie's slumbering body. There would be no getting out of the hammock without waking him.
He stopped himself. But I don’t ever want to leave this hammock, he realized, this time in his own voice. To see the rare softness of tranquility leave Richie's face, becoming worn and rough again with consciousness. To stop feeling the warmth beneath him, the heady tingle roving up and down his spine at the smallest movement, the chiming, almost painful, delight burgeoning in his chest. He would be content to sleep a little longer like this, or simply lie here for just as long, savouring Richie's embrace.
His mother's emphatic No! resounded in his head, fading out to nothing. Soon, he couldn't hear her at all. Then it was just him. His wants, his desires, his agency. Eddie’s heart raced against his ribs as he hovered over Richie much in the same way he had last night, unsure which way to go.
Finally, he made up his mind, and so came the small matter of figuring out how to settle back down on the hammock. Neither his mother nor Myra had earned the place to command him against his own heart.
Eddie's face was getting warmer now as he tried to work out in his head how he could have possibly fallen asleep in the same hammock as the man he'd kissed, in the arms of the man he loved, and not combusted into flames. It was probably only possible in the dark, but seeing him now with flecks of morning sunlight dancing across his face from the ceiling - the peace captured there without his glasses’ thick rims to block the view - and slices of it catching on his waves of dark, messy hair... He was mesmerizing.
Lowering himself again to Richie's chest, he felt Richie's warm breath tousling the top of his hair. Belly-to-belly, Eddie's knee slid down in the fabric of the hammock before he could stop it, the top of his thigh pressing against Richie's groin - an electric shock trembled low in Eddie's abdomen.
In his sleep, Richie squeezed both legs tighter around Eddie's thigh, an automatic reaction stopping Eddie rubbing up against him but simultaneously drawing him in closer, and only seemed to loosen up when Eddie was all hot and cold, his hands clammy and his breath short. This was not at all what he’d meant to do.
Eddie hesitated to rest his head on Richie's chest like before, wondering if his furious blushing would burn Richie as much as it burned his face. On that note, he wondered if the pounding of his heart rattling his ribcage would wake Richie – or wake all of Derry, for that matter - but his calm, slow breathing continued, chest rising and falling cathartically. Even this managed to send small charges through Eddie while they were chest to chest.
He wasn't sure what to do with his hands now that he had moved them, wary to put them just anywhere on Richie. He crossed his arms under his head, chin resting on his forearms, and smiled, feeling the absurdity of gazing so fondly up at Richie like the lovestruck teenager he never got to be.
Lying flat on top of him with his right thigh caught between Richie's – he was extremely conscious of how this would look when Richie did wake up - he couldn't get it out of his head that he had to change positions. Except, in a perfect catch-22, to do so would risk waking him. It’s only fair, he reasoned with himself, considering the effect Richie's heady cologne had on him, refusing Eddie to sleep and filling his head with ideas he couldn't allow himself to indulge, all the harder not to with Richie straddling his leg.
Thinking slow movement his best option, Eddie painstakingly squirmed and wiggled on top of Richie until he'd managed to turn over - careful so as not to jostle the hammock too much - and finally lay on his back atop Richie's chest, his leg free at last.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt Richie's hands on his hips, moving him just slightly down until his ass was on the hammock between Richie's legs as opposed to - Fuck, I'm an idiot! - what was essentially a free lap dance. Richie's breath tingled on the back of his neck with his sleepily moaned, "Eds... Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?"
Fire burst under Eddie's skin, burning yet hotter as Richie's palms traced up from his hips, following the V of his quivering abdomen to meet over his navel, and clasped over his chest where he could surely feel the flight of Eddie's heart. He drummed his fingers on Eddie's chest, matching the rhythm, and Richie's chest bucked under Eddie's head with a husky chuckle, barely awake. He pressed a sleepy kiss to the top of Eddie's head.
"Mornin' sunshine," he said in one of his overexaggerated Voices.
"Can I veto that before I have to wake up to it every morning?" Eddie was teasing before he'd even realized the implication. Richie was quick to catch it.
"Every morning, huh?" he mocked, except there was a slight breathiness in his tone, like wonder. "I'll be sure to spruce it up, then. Keep it interesting. Some nights, maybe I’ll do the risk analysis and you’ll be under the desk.”
Blushing furiously, Eddie gave a feeble, “Shut up, Richie.”
But he was on a roll, and proudly proclaimed, “You won't ever say Richie Tozier was predictable!” with a fist thrown to the heavens. Laughing, Eddie grabbed for his arm, wrestling him out of his pretentiously heroic pose and restraining his arm tight against his chest.
“Beep beep, Richie!” Eddie managed through his laughter, and Richie acquiesced, happy enough just to wrap his arms around him. Eddie crossed his own over Richie’s, tracing absent-minded patterns over the backs of his hands.
Smiling into the top of his hair, Richie noted, “You know, this is the most well-rested I’ve felt in weeks.”
“Really? In a place like this?” Eddie tsked, shaking his head in mock scorn, only to notice the state of the bug-infested hole in the ground in which they’d spent the night and see for himself the truth in his words. His eyes flashed wide open, his mouth hanging agape, and he pointed a finger in horror at all the signs of creepy crawlies and rotten wood permeating the fort. “There could be fungus spores just hanging in the musty air down here! Mold! And the bugs! They could’ve crawled in our ears, or – or lice in our hair, or ticks under our clothes! Oh fuck, Rich, grey water from the sewers could’ve dripped through the ceiling on us! Shit, I think I felt a bug on me! Why did we sleep here?”
“I don’t know about you, but there’s a bug on me,” Richie chuckled, and poked Eddie’s sides. “You wanna know what kind?”
Guessing where he was going with this, Eddie moaned, “Don’t you dare-”
“A lovebug,” Richie ironically sang, and squeezed him close, rubbing his face in Eddie’s hair like a child with his favourite teddy bear.
As much as Eddie wanted to be annoyed, he could only laugh as he battled Richie’s snuggling embrace, cackling, “Dork!”
In all their playful tussling, the hammock ropes gave one final, desperate creak and snapped first at the end by their feet, followed swiftly by the ropes above their heads. Richie’s ass hit the floor to the detriment of yesterday’s bruising, stirring up a mushroom cloud of dust around him as he let out an unceremonious, “Oof!” Then came Eddie’s weight crashing down atop him, his head pummelling Richie with a double bounce, right in the diaphragm. All the breath rushed out from his lungs, staggered with hiccupping laughter, and he shoved Eddie off himself. “That’s-” Wheeze. “-twice now!”
“Sorry,” Eddie snickered, pushing up to a sit as his shoulders shook with laughter. “But you make a great landing cushion.”
“Uh-huh. Are you calling me a bottom-?” Richie’s phone buzzed in his pocket, catching his attention. With a lethargic groan, he pulled it out to find a series of texts filling up the screen. This, the first of a series of reality checks. “What the hell?” he muttered, sitting up to grab his glasses and peer down at his phone.
“Who is it?”
“Bev,” he murmured, skimming her messages. He winced, glancing up under his eyelashes to meet Eddie’s curious glance. “So, uh, looks like Myra’s got a search party out for you. They’re combing the Barrens.”
“Fuck,” Eddie groaned, kneading his palms over his eyes.
Averting his gaze, Richie resorted instead to reading off his texts, “She apparently called all the Losers early this morning when you hadn’t come back.” Shooting him a fleeting grin, he added, “Personally, I’m offended she didn’t try me,” before getting back to the topic at hand, “Says she sounded hysterical, raving that she thought you might’ve gone back to the Kissing Bridge and fallen over the railing-” He choked on his words, eyes catching on the last of Bev’s texts. The first read,
Hold onto him and don’t let go, Richie. You deserve to be happy together. We’ve known how you feel, at least since the Well House, and you should know that it doesn’t change anything. The rest of the Losers’ Club has your backs. Now and forever.
And the final, sent two minutes later and the responsible party for catching his attention in the first place, read,
We love your love.
It was such a simple message, but tears sprung to Richie’s eyes. In the sort of hindsight brought on by happiness, one’s former doubts seemed a fever dream of dark thoughts and weakness. Now at least, he had something tangible to fight back against the ambush of darkness when it crowded in around him on all sides. Clicking the lock and home buttons simultaneously, Richie screenshotted her messages. Hell, he would’ve printed them and taped them to the inside of his wallet right then and there if he could.
Unsure how to respond, the best he could think to send back without letting his instinct to mask all sincerity with jokes was,
Thanks that means a lot
He wavered over the send button, but pressed, and immediately followed up with,
<3
Second guessing himself, he was about to send a graphic novel of emojis to help illustrate the cacophony of radiant feelings currently raving in his heart, but Eddie asked, “Richie?” and he was drawn back to the present moment.
“Oh, right. We should head back to the others.” He yawned like a cat, using this as an excuse to raise his hands and wipe the moisture from his eyes. “Regroup with Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie before Myra’s stormtroopers get the drop on us, ya know?”
“Shut up,” Eddie chuckled, coming to a stand. He stretched his arms high over his head, yawning as well. His shirt rode up to reveal a sliver of skin over his abdomen Richie would have delighted to kiss. Instead, Richie sat up with his elbows propped over his knees and a dopey in love expression on his face. Eddie dropped the stretch, musing, “Does that make you and me C3PO and R2-D2?”
“There’s no question you’re C3PO. The resemblance is uncanny.”
They wandered the Barrens in jovial company, hushing each other’s laughter and shushing the other’s jokes whenever one heard a branch snap in the woods. Even with Bev’s warning weighing on their minds, conveying the threat of being found by all those Myra had decided to involve in her hunt for Eddie, the two men had all too easy a time becoming enwreathed in each others’ affections. Or so it was, only until they noticed the familiar sewers by which they passed. Not by threat of a stubborn gale shoving against the mountain they’d already climbed in the rediscovery of their love, but by the memory of what had once lived therein, deep in the grey waters and tittering darkness, only this haunting memory was enough to shut them up.
Richie’s skin crawled as he averted his gaze from the sewer’s dark maw, loitering just along the edge of his vision, beckoning him to give into the paranoia nestled so deep in his being as never to be removed. The instinct to look over his shoulder at every opportunity, if only to catch a fleeting glimpse of the thing that would devour him no matter his efforts, no matter his precautions. He felt It like a tangible thing, alive in his memory and perched just outside his field of view. Awaiting him in the dark.
“Richie…” Eddie croaked. His own gaze was fixed forward like Richie’s, refusing to acknowledge the demise he so narrowly averted in the depths of this sewer system. “It can’t come after us anymore.”
“I know, Eds.”
But the foliage overhead veiled all sunlight, casting them in the kind of shadow that made tree branches into fingers reaching out to them, the papery bark white too similar to the clown’s gloves. Even the babbling brook echoed with the clown’s laughter.
“We’re gonna be fucked up forever, huh?” Richie muttered as they hastened up the hill together, helping each other along. They didn’t care that their shoes were caked in mud, the knees of their pants sopping wet and their hands slimy with mire by the time they reached the fence of the Kissing Bridge off which Richie had parked his car last night. Anything to escape all the faster the Hell that lay beneath.
“Better than dead?” Eddie uneasily answered, and Richie couldn’t help but give a small laugh. Memory of waiting in his hospital room coloured the laugh an uneasy hue, but he bumped Eddie’s shoulder and clasped his hand, hearing the muck squelch between their palms. At the sound and slick feeling, Eddie screwed up his face in a frown, loudly complaining, “Ugh, gross-!” but Richie leaned in close with a grin.
“So, you’re telling me kicking the bucket’s a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare, even over filling that bucket with, say-”
“Don’t-! Richie, don’t even start. I don’t wanna hear it.”
Richie cackled, squeezing his hand again, but Eddie stopped dead in his tracks at the end of the road near the shoulder where Richie had parked. At first, Richie figured this must have been his protest against the muddy adhesive suctioning their palms together, but then he saw what Eddie had. A second vehicle, recognizably Eddie’s, and a certain familiar silhouette loitering by Richie’s car. For a moment, she brought Eddie’s mother to mind, only for Richie to realize with a start, Myra Kaspbrak had found them. Or, more accurately, ambushed them.
She waited at the car with the patience of an animal trapper, letting her prey come to her, but she had her back to Eddie and Richie and didn’t seem to have noticed their approach.
“Fuck,” Eddie whispered under his breath, pulling his hand out of Richie’s and wiping the mud off on his jeans. Even after everything, Richie felt his heart plummet.
He measured his voice so as not to let his overthinking leak into speech. “You knew you’d have to talk to her sooner or later.”
“Yeah, later! I was hoping it’d be a phone call, or maybe over e-mail-”
“E-mail? I almost pity the lady-”
“Not helping.”
As if sensing her husband nearby, Myra spun on her kitten heels to face the two men across the width of Richie’s car. She blanched at the sight of Eddie and flicked her eyes toward Richie. The momentary concern that had furrowed her brows and pouted her lips warped grotesquely into anger, filling in double the colour until she was tomato red in the face.
“I knew it, I just knew it!” she began in that shrill voice of hers. Richie wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard her calm, or if she simply reserved her eruptions for him. But Richie held his tongue for once in his life, giving Eddie room to speak for himself. “What were you doing out here with him, Eddie-bear? Don’t you know how worried you made me-?”
“Stop it, Myra,” Eddie interrupted, anger glinting in his doe-brown eyes. “You locked me in the bathroom. You hurt me. Stop pretending you were ever worried about me when-” He audibly gulped. “-when you’ve only ever been worried about yourself!”
She raked in a gasp like he’d struck her, and Richie had to stifle the urge to give a play-by-play commentary.
Eyes round and watery, her pleading gaze flitted between the both of them as if expecting one to step up in her defense, as if the anguish she painted on her face was enough to overwrite all that had happened. “You- you can’t talk to me like that! I’m your wife! Your wife, and what is he? Your little fairy fantasy? Nothing but a backwoods fa-”
“Shut up!” Eddie shouted like a clap of thunder. She fell back a step in the wake of his voice, silence gathering in its absence.
For a long moment, like a painful eternity, only the rustling of leaves from the surrounding trees funnelled into Richie’s ears. He wanted to reach for Eddie’s hand again, to quell the tremor he could see in his fingertips, but Richie refrained. He could feel something bigger boiling to Eddie’s surface, and wouldn’t dare stifle him.
“I’ve spent my whole life saying nothing, letting people like you and my mother do all the talking— all the thinking for me. Well I’m done!” The boughs looming overhead quivered with the incredible force of his words, as if struck by the tidal wave of everything Eddie had bottled up throughout his life, now finally set free. “I don’t need you talking for me, I don’t need you shoving prescriptions in my face, I don’t need you deciding what’s best for me! I don’t need-! I… I don’t need you.”
When Eddie’s voice quavered, Richie couldn’t refrain any longer. He slid his hand down Eddie’s palm to find the spaces between Eddie’s fingers and squeezed quiet affirmation into the shaking man. Eddie squeezed back, an automatic response, and his panicky breathing calmed some.
The blood rushed to Myra’s face at this display, red, blotchy, and ugly. She could have huffed and puffed the whole forest down for all her indignant wheezing, a blind rage sending her forward, kicking up autumn leaves with an index finger jabbed out toward her husband. “I knew…” she snarled, throat catching on fury, “I knew this would happen if you came back here!”
Eddie glanced sidelong toward Richie, confusion knotting his brow as the two stepped swiftly back from the raving madwoman in front of them. “How could you know? I could barely remember Derry-”
“Like you forget all your night terrors? Who do you think took care of you, Eddie-bear? Who held you as you screamed and begged It to stop? To leave you alone? While you cried out for that—that Richie Tozier?” She sneered his name as if it were a curse, sour on her tongue and thrown from her lungs. “It was me who took care of you! Not him!”
“I…?” Eddie faltered for words, his hand tightening around Richie’s. He couldn’t remember anything of which she spoke.
“I knew what was on the Kissing Bridge,” she trilled, a lunatic note playing on her voice, pitched just slightly too high, too off. An unnerving glint had entered her eyes, all too reminiscent of Henry Bowers. “Of course, you only ever whimpered about it. The carving you left for him. How can’t you see, I was worried for you, Eddie-bear! You would rave about these impossible things like you were retelling a story! The same story, night after night! Like you’d rehearsed it! I had no other choice!”
“No choice…?” He struggled to form words against the dryness in his mouth. “What did you do?”
“Nothing bad!” she insisted, a sing-song intonation pleading his understanding as she edged ever closer, hands reaching out to him, “You remember the sleep study, don’t you?”
“For my sleep apnea-”
“Oh darling, I didn’t want to scare you.” She spoke over him, a twinge of guilt flickering over her expression with a fleeting wince. “But you would have developed sleep apnea eventually. It was only a matter of time with your asthma-”
“The asthma was a lie!” Another thunderous clap, halting Myra in her frantic approach. He shook his head, bringing his other hand to his brow for the bewilderment behind his eyes. “What did you do?!”
“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me!” she cried, shaking her head so her wispy hair flung side to side. “Don’t, Eddie-bear. You’re hurting me-”
“Myra,” he warned, voice low. “Tell me.”
She slipped back a step, pulling her hands in against her chest with thumbs rubbing her knuckles. “Well, darling, don’t get mad at me. During the sleep study, I called my cousin. She’s a hypnotist-”
“You didn’t,” he practically begged, fresh exhaustion carving lines beneath his eyes.
“What was I supposed to do, my sweet? You don’t know what you put me through! Every night-!” She caught herself on a hiccupping sob, casting an unsettled itch under Richie’s skin for the obvious performance of it all. “All she did was put you in a trance – oh, darling, you were so peaceful – and we finally got you talking about your childhood. You know how much you worried me, that you could never remember anything-”
Eddie released Richie’s hand to pace the empty road, throwing both hands to his face with the meat of his palms pressing his eyes. “No, no, no, no- You never told me any of this!”
“I couldn’t!” she wailed, “She dug up such awful nightmares. They couldn’t have been true. It would have only upset you to hear how sick your mind had become-”
He shot her a scathing glare, stifling her words in her toad-like throat. “You hid it from me. If you’d told me— if I knew about Derry sooner— Stan might not have-” He choked on his words, and threw his hands up again, as if trying to squeeze out the ball of confusion unraveling in his head.
“You said so many things about your friends, I didn’t know what to believe. But there was one in particular, one who seemed-” She slid a deadly glare toward Richie, meeting his eyes for the first time with daggers in her own, only to blanch upon catching sight of the shapely bruise on his neck, which he was quick to cover under his free hand, raking breath back between gritted teeth. “-like more than a friend. Can’t you see that you were sick, Eddie-bear? That you still are? Just… just sit in the car with me. I’ve packed everything up, it’s all in the trunk, I’ve done everything for you, so you don’t have to. I’ll take you home.” Her voice wobbled. “It’ll all be better once we’re back home-”
“That’s enough, Myra,” he snapped, voice like the crack of a whip, but she flew into hysterics, stumbling forward with big, alligator tears in her eyes.
"No, Eddie, no. You're going to get in the car! You're going to get in, because you do need me. You'll always need me, Eddie-bear, you don't know how much I do for you! How much you need done for you! Do you really think this fruit will do even half of what I do for you? I'm all you have-!"
“That's just not true. None of it. You've never done a single thing for me that wasn't really just for you."
"How can you say that?" she whined, but Eddie turned away from her.
"Richie?” He extended his hand once again, beckoning Richie to his side. There was no hesitation, Richie’s fingers interlocked with Eddie’s as naturally as a key fit its lock.
“No,” Myra moaned, trudging through the fallen leaves on the asphalt, “No- no- no! I won’t ask you again! Get in the car!”
“I’m getting in a car,” he snapped in return, striding blatantly past his own with Richie in tow. They were headed for Richie’s car, and no matter the tension in the air, a wave of relief knocked into Richie yet again for the confirmation he found in this. Time and again, it was so natural for him not to expect it. That Eddie would choose him. That Eddie had chosen him and would continue choosing him.
“Eddie!” Myra shrieked, voice so shrill, it left Richie’s ears ringing. “I said, I won’t ask again! If you get in that car-” The ghost of a threat haunted her tone, but she floundered for words. She had nothing left to hold over him.
“Rich?” Eddie puffed, his voice tight, and Richie immediately understood his meaning. He busied himself with the fob in his pocket, fumbling to unlock his car for a speedy getaway. Myra had everything of Eddie’s locked up in the trunk of Eddie’s own car, but none of that mattered. Richie would get Eddie away from here, away from the very things that had tightened his lungs, closed up his throat, and feigned the life-threatening asthma so often used against him.
All that mattered now was that Richie took him away to the life they had almost missed out on, entirely.
Briefly, his eyes caught on the carvings at the Kissing Bridge, but then Myra was wailing slurs, slamming the sides of her fists down on the hood of the car and crowding the window after Eddie, but Eddie refused to look at her, to see the desperation she painted upon her face for him.
“All aboard the express trip out of Derry,” Richie said as he landed in the driver’s seat and turned the keys in the ignition.
Eddie slid into the passenger, shrinking from the scene Myra threw out his window, and met Richie’s eyes across the center console. Against all odds, he smiled, no matter the ringing in his ears nor the pounding of his heart. “Looks like we really are getting out of here."
"Together.”
Richie figured he should have pitied the woman bawling like a dying cat as her flailing feet banged dents into the side of his car and wild hands yanked incessantly on the passenger side handle, but he couldn't stifle his small, triumphant smile as he pulled onto the road. He pressed a hand to the middle of the wheel, sounding off a staccato beep beep.
"Richie..." Eddie sighed, but he punctuated this amused exasperation with a hiccup of laughter. The road beckoned them, and with Derry in the rearview mirror, they had not only survived but escaped the evils which had long lain there. Together.