a couple rebel top gun pilots

He’s been called names before, horrible ones, spat into his face or kicked into his shin. He never thought much of it. Everyone knows that a man is impervious to insult until he believes it, too. But now there was ample reason to believe that those boys were right, in some twisted sense of the word. What frightened Richie most was not necessarily the idea that they were correct, but the idea that the first good thing he had ever felt was wrong.
-
(the autumn after the clown.)

Notes:

i'm back! for the moment, at least. most of my notes will come at the end, but i wanted to give a heads up that this fic is actually one chapter of a much longer fic that i had planned. no idea if the other "chapters" will ever get written, but that's why this fic leaves much to be desired. but i promise there's still a lot of sweet shit in this one--in fact, i love what i had here so much that i wanted it to become a standalone. seemed like a crime to deprive this site of my handiwork.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

A couple rebel Top Gun pilots

Flying with nowhere to be

Don’t know you super well

But you might be the same as me

09.04.89 .

Three days after the blood pact, Derry is flooded by the sky.

As dreary as it is, it brings about a welcome change. Richie has personally had quite enough of this town--he’s wanted nothing more than to watch the stains of his torment, along with that of the rest of the Losers, get washed down these godforsaken streets and out of sight. Washed down into those sewers, under Neibolt, under all the places that hopefully never end up on any travel guides anywhere. And if someone ever has the gall to print such a thing, well, Richie hopes they end up in the same spots that they so foolishly recommended.

But those are all things that have nothing to do with him. Not anymore. Today, he indulges in more age-appropriate activities than escaping murder and killer clowns: he huffs and puffs and throws the most modest, respectable fit around his room where no one can see him. He’s frustrated, because he and the boys had a little shebang planned for tomorrow. Something pleasant and something fun, something to commemorate the end of summer. One day before the beginning of eighth grade. They were going to go out to that clearing beside the kissing bridge for the afternoon and have a bonafide picnic. Hell and heaven alike know that the kids deserve it more than anyone. The storm, however, shows no sign of clearing up.

Richie watches it from his bedroom window. He smears shapes into the condensation with his fingers. It’s 3:19 and he hasn’t eaten all day. For a boy like Richie, who can never shake his cravings, that sort of thing is unheard of, except for when he has the stomach bug.

He supposes that he’s currently afflicted by a similar thing. He’s been locked into a trance for quite a while now. And, just like everything he’s endured over this past eternity, he has that stupid fucking clown to blame.

He can’t escape the things he’s seen. It’s nigh impossible to ward them away from the forefronts of his mind. One of the worst symptoms to surface is his new hatred of sleeping: the peace is always broken by the night terrors. He always wakes gasping for air, almost screaming, with tears dried into salty lines onto his face. If the images don’t wake him, his body does, what with how it trembles and shudders as his reflexes attempt to rescue him from the bloody-faced apparition chasing him into the dawn. And then Richie lies there, clutching his pillow like it was his lover, wide-eyed until the morning--or until his mom knocks on the door to make sure he’s still alive. It seems that nowadays, that is the extent of what his parents do for him, but Richie doesn’t attribute it to any particular malice or annoyance with him. No, he’s sure that his parents are simply baffled to silence by his new and unusual temperament.

Several times, Richie has debated going out and looking for his friends. Whatever objections they typically have towards his spontaneity has never stopped him before. But now, it keeps him glued to the bed, because an inexplicable fear of rejection has dissolved into his blood. The thought of biking over to Eddie’s house crosses his mind about as often as he blinks, and as far as he can remember, he has never objected to it. At least until today. He prefers the idea that he is simply too lazy to try and defend his appearance to Mrs. Kaspbrak, as he’s sure that she still blames him for her son’s injury in Neibolt.

Unfortunately, he has never been that good of a liar, even to himself.

Richie’s finger falls from the window, and he slumps forward with a long sigh. One could count the times that he has been this immobile, or entirely uninspired, on one hand. He glances over to where his backpack sags in his desk chair. It’s unzipped, and it almost looks like a gaping mouth. It seems to be reminding him that he has yet to fill it with school supplies.

Richie frowns. In the madness of everything, he had neglected to purchase such things. Perhaps he could use this trivial task to test if his resourcefulness was still there.

He rouses himself from his cross-legged position with a mutter: “C’mon, Richie.” Then he pushes himself off the bed and drags himself around his room, pulling out drawers and shuffling through shelves in his closet. He paws through old jacket pockets and the depths of his sock drawers, the pages of books and magazines and every elementary school journal he’s kept. He even checks through the random boxes left in his closet that he had haphazardly thrown stationery into over the years--somehow, the only things left were paper clips and sticky notes covered in a sparse coating of dust bunnies.

Within about twenty minutes, Richie has amassed a small pile of highlighters, uncapped pens, and pencils with at least 5 inches of lead and wood leftover. He hops onto his bed, sighing, “Good enough.” He’s just about to relax until he remembers he needs paper, too. And a snack. Right on cue, his stomach grumbles, and so does he.

He sighs again and hoists himself off the bed in order to leave his room at last. As he enters the hallway outside, he gets the distinct feeling that he has become a ghost in his own home, an apparition that wanders the second floor. It is a cold, frighteningly light feeling, like he is being pumped with helium that leaves a nasty taste in his mouth.

A chill runs up his spine. In the flurry of goosebumps that shudder over his skin, Richie manages to shake away the sensation, although the taste remains. Perhaps he can replace it with that of a good chocolate bar. Or maybe, his body is simply telling him that he has been quiet for much too long. It has been quite a while since he indulged the Trashmouth within him.

He hurries down the stairs, tracing the walls with his hands. He hears signs of life in the kitchen--the kettle seems to be boiling. His mother notices Richie walk in, and a tired smile appears on her face.

“Morning, Richie,” says Maggie. She glances at the clock, and then back at her son. “My, I mean--afternoon! What have you been up to all day?”

Richie fiddles with his thumbs. That, at least, is a typical behavior. “I slept in.”

“Oh. That’s not like you.” Maggie looks out the window as she pours herself some tea and gives a low chuckle. “I suppose it is one of those days, though.”

“Well, I guess--” Richie’s eyes flit to the pantry-- “I got hungry. And I’m packing my backpack for school. Finally.” He forces a laugh. He hates that he cannot make it last more than a mere second.

Maggie doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes had lit up when he mentioned food, and now she says, “Well, that’s good! You let me know if you need anything, okay? Do you want a sandwich?”

The idea is a pleasant one, but Richie suspects that he doesn’t have the stomach for such a heavy meal. “No, it’s okay, Mom,” he says as he moves towards the supply closet down the hall. Then he pauses, and with a brief glance over his shoulder, he adds, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Richie.” The quality of her voice indicates that she has turned away to tend to her tea.

Richie interprets this as a natural dismissal and continues on his way. He isn’t sure how to feel about his mother’s nonchalance. It is kinder than it is hostile, and he appreciates that she maintained herself as a safety net. But if he’s being honest, he wouldn’t really mind if someone forced affection upon him.

He opens the closet door and stands on his toes to check the highest shelves. When he doesn’t find paper, he moves onto the next. By the time he’s reached the lowest shelf, he has only come up with a thin stack of loose leaf paper and twenty dusty notecards. Richie huffs and closes the door; he’ll just have to try his room again.

He grabs a granola bar from the pantry before hurrying back to the stairs. His pace slows as he begins to climb the steps; he grimaces whenever the wood creaks under his feet. The very unpleasant images of a certain decaying house flashes before his eyes, so strong that he must blink multiple times to clear it. He remembers what happened in that house. He remembers the clown, that fucking clown. He remembers it choking Eddie.

Richie steps into his room and rather forcefully shuts the door. He deposits the paper and cards on his supply pile before moving back to the closet. There, he moves towards the back wall, feeling his way around and kneeling to scan the floor with his hands. No way I don’t find anything back here, he thinks irritably. He almost gives up on his third scan, but then his fingers hit something.

Richie furrows his brow and pushes his head and shoulders through the button-up shirts hanging on the rack. Whatever he has found has been shoved all the way back, a result of careless laundry habits. He pulls it out to examine it. The light reveals it to be a necklace box.

It takes him a long moment to place this object. He knows that it’s his mother’s, so what on Earth is it doing in his closet?

An old memory tickles the back of his mind. Opening the box doesn’t immediately help, because the only thing that’s inside is a shiny bottle cap. Richie pulls it out with two gentle fingers, still frowning, and rubs the surface with his thumb. It’s a Heineken. His father loves Heineken. He’s no alcoholic, but he would amass bottles of it on warm Saturday nights and-- oh . Yes.

Now Richie remembers.

He stumbles back against the wall of his closet, all at once deep in thought. His eyes close on their own accord. He knows exactly where this bottle cap is from: he can recall the exact summer day he pocketed it and placed it carefully in this box. In some vague sense of agitation, he wonders how the memory could have escaped him, even for an instant.

The bottle cap came from approximately four years ago, when Richie was eight. The afternoon he found it, Richie was with Bill, the only friend he had in Derry. They were engaged in one of the most thrilling activities known to grade-school boys: throwing rocks at his dad’s empty bottles in the back of the house while Richie’s parents were gone.

Richie recalls that he and Bill were getting too good at it for it to be fun, and Bill had suggested that they find a new place to throw. They took the last four Heineken bottles and ran down to the Barrens, where they set the bottles up on several boulders across the stream. They each had two throws left. The deal was that if one of them missed both shots, that boy would have to buy the other one ice cream. If both boys missed twice, neither of them got ice cream. So it was quite a worthwhile incentive.

Richie had gone second. He had missed his first throw, so all of his focus and effort was being spent on ignoring Bill’s jeering to ensure that he hit the bottle. Unfortunately, that meant he didn’t notice that something--or someone--was rustling in the bushes behind the rocks. He only noticed when his rock shattered the glass, and he jumped up to cheer, but there was another person shouting, too.

Bottle immediately forgotten, he and Bill had shared a quick look before scrambling over the stream. They parted the bushes and found the culprit on the back in the dirt, panting and cowering like a very frightened puppy.

Richie’s immediate first thought was precisely as follows: this kid looks like a girl. And then, his second thought: a really pretty girl. To his credit, Richie managed to avoid voicing these observations, and instead he said, “Who the hell are you?” at the exact same time the boy demanded, “Are you trying to fucking kill me?”

For some reason, cursing looked awfully strange on this boy. It made Richie smirk a bit for reasons that he didn’t understand until much later.

“Nuh-no,” Bill said, “we didn’t even s-see you. Promise!”

The boy clearly didn’t buy it, so Richie planted his hands on his knees and leaned down to explain, “We were just having a competition throwing rocks, and I just won.” He turned and poked Bill in the chest hard enough for him to stumble back. “You saw that, right? I won! You owe me ice cream, bitch!”

Bill just scowled while the boy blinked. “You call your friends ‘bitch’ ?” he stammered. He looked between Bill and Richie in shock. “Are… are you guys friends?”

“Sometimes,” Bill muttered while Richie crowed, “Hell yeah! Only the best! What about you, kid? Where are your friends?”

The boy opened his mouth, and then closed it. Something seemed to darken in his eyes, and it was kinda impressive to Richie, because his irises were already such a deep shade of brown. The boy looked up the slope behind him, and Richie followed his gaze. Even at that age, Richie could sense the embarrassment radiating from the kid on the dirt. In a softer tone, he asked, “You don’t have friends, do you?”

A look of indignation flashed across the boy’s face. Richie expected him to defend himself, but then the anger melted into defeat. He didn’t even try to lie. “No,” the boy said quietly.

“W-what are you doing here?” Bill asked kindly.

The boy picked at a hangnail on his left pinkie. “I, um…” He looked guilty, for some reason. “I…lost my inhaler.”

“What the fuck is an inhaler?”

Bill shoved Richie before the question was even fully out of the latter’s mouth. “Beep beep, Richie,” Bill snapped, but Richie didn’t care because the new kid was actually giggling. It looked much better on him than cursing.

“I--I need it, for my asthma,” the boy said. The smile dropped from his face. “And I…I lost it?” His tone lifted oddly at the end of his sentence--he clearly wasn’t telling the truth.

“Bullies,” said Richie. He meant it was a question, but in Derry, for a kid as scrawny as this boy, he didn’t need verification. The shirt loosely hanging off of his frail, narrow shoulders kept slipping around the collar, and if Richie really looked at him--which he already was--he could see marks of discoloration spotting his skin.

Anger started to bubble in Richie’s chest. He had a soft spot for bullied kids, because he knew all too well what it felt like to be on the receiving end of Bowers’s fist. The thought of that punk-ass bitch with a rat for a mullet hurting this pretty kid flooded Richie’s face with heat.

The boy appeared startled at Richie’s declaration, and upon noticing the color in his cheeks, looked almost frightened. But then he met Richie’s eyes, and he must have seen some kind of solemnity there, because he just said, “Y…yeah. Yeah, bullies. They threw it down here, and…” His voice trailed off.

Bill offered the kid a hand and pulled him to his feet while Richie proudly said, “Well, join the club, kid! We got ‘em too. ‘Fact, that wet bitch Bowers hates me so much that I think he’s got to have a crush on ol’ Trashmouth. That’s why we throw rocks, so we can nail those assholes in the dick a mile away.”

The new kid had begun giggling long before Richie finished speaking. By the end of it, even Bill was laughing, too. “Yuh-you can hang out with u-u-us,” Bill offered through his laughter, and Richie nodded.

“I’m Richie,” he said, beating Bill to the punch. “And this is Bill. He still pisses in his bed sometimes.”

Bill scoffed and slugged him on the shoulder. The boy was laughing again, and even in those early days, the sound of it made Richie feel like he was growing wings. He felt like he could fly. “I’m Eddie,” said the boy, and with those words, something was born.

“Nice to meet ya, Eds,” said Richie, and he pretended not to notice Eddie wrinkling his nose at the immediate appointment of a nickname. “You’re already less of a loser than you were a minute ago.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said dryly. “But, um--I still need my inhaler.” He knelt down and began sorting through the weeds.

“W-we’ll help,” said Bill, and before Richie could protest, Bill pulled him down to the ground with a pointed look. Richie sighed, even though he had already had every intention of helping Eddie find his…whatever it was. Together, the three of them pushed through the bushes, covering as much ground as they could. Richie had no idea what exactly this thing looked like, but he supposed he’d know when he saw it.

A minute later, Eddie had cried out, and Richie’s body acted on its own. He just appeared next to the boy, already drawn to his voice like a moth to a flame. “What’s up?” Richie asked.

Eddie was shaking his hand out, hissing through his teeth. “Just--poked myself on some glass,” he muttered. “Thanks to you guys.”

“Hey, no problem.” There was no blood, and Eddie seemed just fine on his own, so Richie left him to keep looking around. Whether by luck or fate, the next time Richie looked down at his feet, a red, rectangular object was resting against the sole of his shoes. “Hey, Eddie,” he called, “is your inhaler red?”

“Yeah, why?”

Richie grinned and picked it up. He brought over to Eddie, and with a dramatic bow and flourish of his hands, he handed it to him and said, “Then I believe this is yours, maestro.”

Eddie gasped. “Oh, thank God,” he said. He plucked it out of Richie’s upturned palm and turned it over in his hands with an obsessive energy. He dusted some dirt off before pocketing it. “My mom would’ve killed me.”

“Did you f-f-find it, Richie?” asked Bill, coming up behind them.

Richie looked over his shoulder, saying, “Yeah, we’re good.” Then he turned back to Eddie and offered him a goofy smile. “Anything else, Edward? Your real name is Edward, right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. He held out his hand towards Richie and opened it, revealing a cap from one of the Heineken bottles. “I, uh--I found this too. When I poked myself. I didn’t know if you wanted it--my teacher Miss Reid says it’s good luck to keep them, so--”

“Pfft. Who believes in that crap?” Even as he said it, Richie was already planning on where he’d keep it in his room. He took the cap and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

Eddie frowned at him. “You’re not very nice.”

“On the contrary,” Richie said, slinging his arms around Bill and his new best friend, “I’m just about the nicest person you’ll ever meet.”

Slowly, the memory fades, and Richie opens his eyes. He experienced it only in bursts, but the warmth lingers. He looks down and, in something like a daze, presses the bottle cap to his lips. Then he quickly but carefully puts it back into its container. The metallic taste still remains on the tip of his tongue even after he closes the box and hurries out of the closet.

The day he had met Eddie was nothing groundbreaking. And yet, clearly, his subconscious had known something he wasn’t aware of. Otherwise, he wouldn’t still have this cap. Or the cattail pressed into the scrapbook under his bed. Or the acorn hat still somewhere under all the paperclips and sticky note scraps in his desk’s mason jar. All of these things were little mementos, little reminders that Richie unconsciously harvested from certain days he spent with Eddie. However…he isn’t quite ready to wonder why.

Richie glances out the window as he walks back towards his bed. The rain has finally stopped outside--for the moment--but of course, everything is still a sad gray. The chilly, damp quietness that occurs after a relentless pour has begun to settle in. No signs of life stir outside--folks are still distrustful of the sudden silence. But it doesn’t bother Richie quite as much as it did this morning.

He leans over the side of the bed and picks his Walkman off of the vanity. He only owns one cassette tape with the Beatles’s Rubber Soul album on it. It was a birthday gift from his father, who had a taste for rock music that Richie couldn’t share at the time. But the more he listened to it, the more he grew into it, and for the last few months he’d been playing through the whole thing nonstop while doing his homework. Sometimes, he’d just put it on for the mere purpose of filling his room with something pleasant. Now he’s got at least half of the songs memorized, and he’s working on the rest fast.

Richie puts the set’s headphones over his ears and plays the tape. It picks up right where he had left it last--gosh, he hadn’t really been able to relax and listen to Lennon since before all the shenanigans began in June. The artist’s voice fills his body, pouring in from where it enters his skull, calming and relieving him like a drug taken after a long withdrawal. Richie can’t hear himself, but he can feel his throat rumble as he hums along.

There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed

He kneels on his mattress and begins filing the paper into his limited number of folders before placing them neatly in his bag. Then he works on stuffing last year’s pencil bag with the utensils he found--which isn’t hard, considering that he has quite a sparse supply.

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone, and some remain

Does he still have a water bottle? Richie shakes the thought away. He’ll find that tomorrow, or Wednesday morning. He’ll have plenty of space in his knapsack, so, no worries there.

All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead, and some are living

In my life, I’ve loved them all

As the song goes on, Richie starts to care less and less about his self-imposed chore. He shoves the pencil bag into his backpack and kicks back against his pillows. He’s never been one to sing, but he doesn’t think he’s hallucinating when he hears the edges of his voice join in the song. And he’s taken quite the crash course on hallucinations.

When the chorus hits, Richie is on his feet, eyes closed. He can’t make sense of the images he sees against his eyelids. For that matter, he can’t make sense of the song playing, either, but he knows it isn’t anything he should be able to relate to at his age. No, this is a song for the weary adults with eyebags that contain a million memories, both haunted and blessed. He won’t be able to really understand until the lines over his brows and the wrinkles pressed around his grin begin to look like the sentences of an epic saga.

And yet, there is already an echo nestled in the song’s most hidden chords that weasels into Richie’s bones and makes him feel a whole lot older than he really is. It is warm, far from hostile, though it holds something that feels like a warning. He isn’t sure that he should welcome it, but he does. He imagines that one day, he’ll figure out what it means, and why it feels so much like he is being told to try and stay young forever.

Until then, Richie will have to settle for dancing by himself in his room. At least in a few days, when the rain finally stops, he won’t be so alone.

09.06.89

They move the picnic to the evening after the first day of school. The six of them--Richie, Eddie, Bill, Ben, Mike, and Stan--are the first out the door. The bell is still ringing overhead when the boys meet at their normal rendezvous: the tree beside the curb out in the front.

“Alright, boys, how’s the body count?” Richie asks as he biffs Eddie on the head. Eddie slaps his arm away and shoots him a glare; Richie only grins.

Ben pats his backpack and huffs, “I already got a couple pages of math homework from Mrs. Jameson.”

“On what?” demands Stan, straddling his bike.

“I dunno. It’s like a review, or something. Y’know, to see what we can do.”

Richie shoulders his backpack and knocks the kickstand up. “I’d just draw a picture of Eddie’s mom,” he says simply.

“Oh, my God,” exclaims Eddie, “can you chill out for one day, Richie? We just got back.”

“And? I gotta get a running start if I wanna keep the esteemed Trashmouth title!”

“Yuh-you’re proud of that?” asks Bill. They’re all on their bikes now, drifting down the street. Richie pedals in front of the group and starts turning in his typical, taunting circles. “Sure,” he says. “At least I’m known for something.”

Their banter persists all the way to the outskirts of town, and it eventually turns from poking fun at each other to poking fun at their teachers. Their history teacher, Mr. Fisher, quickly earns the name ‘The Mole’ due to how beady and small his eyes are. And of course Richie is required to establish how hot the new P.E. coach is, to which Eddie replies, “I’ll let my mother know you said that.”

The boys pull over next to the kissing bridge and walk their bikes down the slope to the river. The cattails make Eddie sneeze, which Richie briefly considers teasing him about. But all he says is: “How are the allergies, Eds?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie insists, waving him away. He pushes Richie in front of him and says, “And don’t call me Eds! Now hurry up, you asshat.”

“You just pushed me!”

“Yeah, because you’re taking so goddamn long!”

“Guys,” Stan calls from ahead of them. He always sounds so exasperated. Though Richie knows, deep down, his exasperation is pretty reasonable.

Bill and Mike have somehow already begun setting up the picnic. The former pulls out a couple bags of chips from his backpack while the other produces a box of sandwiches from his knapsack. Stan rummages through his bag and takes out an unopened pack of Oreos. Ben notices and says, “Oh, I brought cookies, too. Sorry.”

“Th-that’s fine,” says Bill. “I’m pretty shuh-sure we’ll e-e-eat everything.”

Richie nudges Eddie. “What’d you bring?”

“Um,” says Eddie. He unzips his fanny pack and peers into it. His cheeks alight with scarlet fire as he clears his throat and asks, “Do you guys like Altoids?”

Everyone stares at him. Richie feels his entire face lift with his wicked smile. “Are you fucking kidding me? Only my grandpa eats that shit!” he blurs. “God, that’s rich!”

The fire focuses into the heat of a star. It’s a wonder that Eddie’s hair doesn’t catch ablaze. “Look, if--if my mom caught me packing too much food, she’d--she’d--!”

“It’s okay, Eddie. We brought more than enough,” Mike assures him, shooting Richie a look.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Stan pitches in. “Some of us actually like having good breath.”

This statement is accompanied by a direct look at Richie, which is echoed quickly by everyone else--except for Eddie, who is looking sheepishly at his thumbs. Richie’s jaw drops at everyone’s glares. “Excuse me?”

“Richie,” says Ben, “your breath smells like…like ass.” Bill nods fiercely.

Richie wrinkles his nose. He breathes into his palm and inhales deeply. “I don’t smell anything.” He pivots on his heel and looks seriously at Eddie. “How ‘bout you, Eds? You smell anything?”

The second Richie grabs Eddie’s shoulders and leans in, the smaller boy shrieks and slaps a hand over Richie’s mouth. “Don’t even,” he shouts. “I will cough directly into your mouth and give you bronchitis, Richie, so help me--”

“Fine,” Richie says, muffled by Eddie’s palm. “Just give me the goddamn mint.”

Eddie cautiously releases his face and opens the tin while Richie watches. Then to Richie’s pink-hot surprise, he pinches an Altoid between three fingers and pushes it between Richie’s lips with a stern expression. “And don’t swallow it. I’ve choked on them before,” he warns.

Too startled to immediately respond, Richie passes the Altoid around his mouth a few times before snorting, “I know how to eat an Altoid, Eddie.”

“Yeah, but you’re also stupid as horse shit, so, I’m just saying. I’m tired of people almost dying on me.” Eddie gives him a hard look and then walks over to the rest of the boys, who have long tuned Richie and Eddie out and are now passing sandwiches around in a circle.

Despite his mildly wounded pride, Richie can’t help but smile. Just a little. If the other boys were to turn and look at him right now, they’d probably mistake it for his characteristic smirk that heralds an onslaught of inappropriate absurdities. But Richie privately knows that it’s reflective of that bubble of affection rising inside of him, a thing he’s long become familiar with. He’s also become familiar with the energy it takes to repress it, but this time, he allows it to manifest in a light warmth that spreads through his cheeks. He even lets it stay when he follows Eddie and sits down on a rock between him and Ben. Mike hands Eddie a sandwich and asks, “You said you’re gluten-free now, right?”

Eddie takes it and nods gratefully. “Yeah. Is this--”

“Yeah. They sell some at the bakery. It’s more pricey now, so, eat it all.”

Richie leans forward on his knees. “You’re gluten-free?” he echoes.

Eddie glances at him warily. “Yeah. Why? You gonna talk about how much of a pussy that makes me, or something?”

“No! I mean, maybe. But--what the hell does that mean?”

“Gluten-free,” Stan says slowly from across the circle. “Richie, what exactly do you think that means?”

Richie mouths the word a couple of times before replying, “I’m not dumb, asshole. I know it means he can’t eat gluten, or whatever, but what the fuck is gluten?”

The ensuing chorus of groaning is music to Richie’s ears. “It’s what they put in bread, genius,” says Eddie, slapping Richie’s knee. “It’s, like, grain proteins.”

“Can it make people sick?”

“Very.”

“Have you ever gotten sick from it?”

Eddie pauses. “No,” he says finally, “but--”

Richie promptly breaks a piece of bread off from his sandwich and waves it tauntingly in front of Eddie’s face. Eddie ducks under his hand and complains, “It’s not like allergies, idiot, I have to actually eat it. And anyway, that’s not very funny.”

Richie glances over at Ben, who’s snickering into his hands. Bill is cracking a grin. “I think,” says Richie, “you’re just grumpy because you haven’t eaten anything.”

The usual triumph fills him when Eddie takes the bait, which he so rarely does. The younger boy keeps his eyes fixed on Richie as he rips a large bite from his sandwich and furiously chews it. Richie takes the opportunity to dramatically gasp, “Wait, careful, Eds, you might get indigestion!”

And as if the universe were finally paying its dues to Richie, when Eddie inevitably opens his mouth to deliver a bitter retort, his face turns dark red. All that comes out is a hacking cough. Richie’s instincts have him springing to his feet to smack Eddie’s back--he isn’t heartless, after all. Certainly not for this particular kid. But it doesn’t stop him from laughing. In fact, everyone is. Even Stan can’t help but join in when Eddie doubles over and a piece of wet ham ejects itself from his mouth.

When he finally regains his breath, Eddie gasps and stares absolute daggers at Richie, framed by one and a half birds flipped directly in front of his face. “Fuck you,” Eddie snaps, and oh, fuck, he sounds kinda serious about this one. “You think that’s funny? You’d really laugh if I was, I don’t know, choking and hacking on the floor? And dying? Eat shit, dude.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” Richie says, and he means it. “I’m done. I swear. I wasn’t gonna let you choke. On my mama, really.”

“No one h-here would let you ch-chuh-choke,” Bill assures him. “And R-Richie is done. Or we’ll--we’ll get him too.”

Eddie huffs and crosses his arms. The pout on his face is painfully cute. “Whatever. Fine. Can we just eat? Please?”

So they do. And Richie really does feel bad for laughing, so he decides Eddie deserves a decent grace period from his jabs. They all finish their sandwiches (when no one’s looking, Richie picks the tomatoes out and throws them over his shoulder) and break right into the chips and cookies. Richie takes out the two liters of A&W he brought, and Bill says, “No cups?”

Richie hesitates. He hadn’t thought of that. “Nope,” he says cheerfully. “Just waterfall it, señor!”

Mike reaches for one of the liters and weighs it with his hands. “Show us how, Richie,” he says.

“You don’t know how to waterfall a drink?”

Mike shrugs. Richie rolls his eyes and takes the bottle from him. He’s never been one to pass up a chance to show off. “Alright, fine. You sissies.” He unscrews the cap and carefully balances the bottle between his hands, aware of how full it is. He catches Mike’s eye from around the container and says, “You do it like this.”

He angles his head back and uses his best estimate to position the bottle’s opening over his mouth. Then he tilts the bottle at the slightest angle with more caution than he typically exercises. Root beer pours into his mouth, and pride pumps his shoulders up; he’s just about to straighten up and pound his chest when all at once, something shoves him off balance and soda spills all over his face and shirt.

Richie leaps to his feet much too late: the entire front of his shirt is soaked in brown, and the September heat is already drying the sweet liquid into his face. “What the fuck,” he cries, dropping the bottle at his feet. The Losers have dissolved into witch-like laughter--Mike is literally slapping the ground. Eddie looks especially smug, and Richie knows immediately that he was the culprit. “What’s wrong with you, man?” he demands, turning on his friend. “This was my favorite shirt!”

Eddie sticks his tongue out. “At least you didn’t choke, right?”

Richie’s whole rant dies in his throat. He’s uncharacteristically still for a second, and then laughter begins to rise through him. “Alright, alright,” he says begrudgingly, “I deserved that.”

“Yes, you d-did,” says Bill. He sticks his hand out to Eddie for a high-five, which Eddie eagerly provides.

“But now all the root beer is gone, dipshit. I hope you guys like dehydration.”

“Soda doesn’t hydrate you,” Eddie corrects him while Ben says, “No, it’s not,” and holds up the half-drained bottle of A&W that he managed to salvage. “Plus, we still have another bottle in your bag.”

Richie quickly snatches the extra liter up and cradles it to his sticky chest. “No--fucking--way. This shit is all mine now. I can’t trust you assholes with anything.”

Stan stands up. “Oh, come on, Richie,” he sighs, reaching for the boy and his bottle.

“Nope!” Richie cries. With one hand still firmly clutching the bottleneck, Richie pulls his polo over his head, balls it up against his hip, and throws it to the ground. He kicks off his shoes and steps out of his socks, crowing, “If you want it, you gotta come and get it!”

Ignoring the frustrated protests from the rest of the boys, Richie digs his feet into the dirt and launches himself towards the canal. He takes a flying leap at the edge and holds his breath before he hits the water. There’s a rush of air and then the sound of foam erupting around him. Then he is under, and all he hears is the quiet gurgling of water.

He finds the silty riverbed with ease and emerges, facing his friends. “Come on!” he calls, waving the root beer over his head. “Whoever can take it from me gets the whole bottle!”

Richie watches Bill and Mike share a look. Ben stands up. Stan reaches for another cookie as he kicks back against a rock. Eddie is the most engaged, already untying his tennis shoes. “That lid is gonna come off and you’re gonna waste so much soda,” he complains.

“Okay, Mom, what are you gonna do about it?”

Eddie grumbles and stammers for a few fruitless seconds before angrily pulling off his own shirt with his free hand. He rips a plastic bag out of his fanny pack and thrusts it at Bill, who takes it with a sigh and starts to tie it around Eddie’s arm. “You sh-shouldn’t swim, Eddie,” he still says.

Eddie snorts and points at Richie. “Nuh-uh. I like root beer. I want that shit back.” He folds his shirt against his stomach and jumps away from Bill the second the boy finishes the knots. He lays the shirt neatly over his backpack with a calculation that doesn’t match the energy in his voice as he exclaims, “You’re gonna get it, Trashmouth,” and races for the canal.

Richie’s smile gets impossibly wider. He scuttles back as Eddie abruptly halts at the edge of the canal, tests the water with one toe, and then begins to slip in. “Jesus, you’re like a turtle with bunions,” he snickers.

“Oh, I’ll show you bunions!” Eddie jumps and cuts through the water towards Richie with alarming speed. Richie grabs Eddie’s good wrist and dunks his head under; when Eddie resurfaces with a gasp, Richie holds him in place and spits water at his face. Eddie’s gasp becomes a scream, and he shoves Richie away with his elbows. “Ew!” he shouts. “Richie, what the fuck--do you know what’s in here? You’re fucking gross, man! You’ll get malaria!”

Richie struggles to keep his hold on both Eddie and the root beer. “Not if you get it first,” he says.

“That is not how it works!” Eddie sputters. The boys grapple with each other, and it quickly devolves into a nasty splash fight with water and insults firing through the air at each other’s face. More than a few times, a hand connects with an ear or an elbow with a shoulder. In the midst of it all, Eddie manages to knock the bottle out of Richie’s hand with his foot. Without a second thought, Richie gasps and dives.

The world is reduced to scattered light and sediment, where everything is silent except for the sound of the boy swimming down with him. Richie opens his eyes and sees Eddie in front of him right before he feels fingers poke at his neck and forehead. He instinctively opens his mouth to protest, but the words become bubbles that bloom between their faces.

Eddie’s giggle reaches him in murky, distorted waves. All at once, Richie wants to get closer and try to hear it again. He wants to reach out and feel the hair that billows around Eddie’s face. The golden-brown strands look impossibly soft. Eddie’s eyes are open, too, scanning the ground for the bottle. But suddenly, they glance up at Richie, and if he hadn’t been underwater, the way Eddie’s irises are glittering would’ve made Richie catch a sharp breath.

That’s what reminds him that he needs to breathe. He puffs his cheeks out and shoots back up to the surface, where he sucks in and spits out the water that had leaked into his mouth. Eddie pops up a second after. It’s a far more violent resurfacing than Richie’s, with water spraying everywhere as the boy shakes his head around and throws up his good hand to show off his prize. “I got it!” he crows.

Stan pumps his fist and Bill laughs, “Good j-j-job, Eddie.” Ben doesn’t look over, because he’s chugging what’s left of the first bottle. Mike wades into the canal with his shoes off and reaches out. “Throw it here, Eddie. We’ll open it up where it won’t spill everywhere.”

Ben burps into his fist and says, “Richie doesn’t get any.”

“That’s bullshit,” Richie moans, but he doesn’t move to challenge it. He’s more interested in turning to Eddie and playfully flicking water at him. “Nice job, Eds,” he says. “Honestly, I didn’t think I could get you to even get your feet wet.”

With some effort, Eddie tosses the bottle towards Mike. He looks back at Richie and gingerly wipes his eyes. “Yeah, well,” he says, “I was thirsty.”

Richie tilts his head at a devilish angle. “Well, fuck,” he says, throwing a hand over his chest to appear aghast. “At least take me out to dinner, first.”

Richie watches with amusement as it takes a second for the joke to register. When it does, Eddie’s face becomes a delightful shade of red-- he didn’t know it could turn so many different colors in one day!-- and he makes a sound that’s more flustered than anything.

“Not like that, dickwad! God!” Eddie grabs the sides of Richie’s face and dunks him underwater. Richie laughs the whole time and grabs for Eddie’s face, too, painfully relieved for the guise of a joke to excuse his own blush.

When Richie pops back up, he uses his leverage to lean forward with puckered lips. Eddie turns away and covers Richie’s mouth with his hand. He makes a smattering of gagging sounds and says, “You have herpes all over your lips, I know it. It’s disgusting.”

“So if I didn’t, you’d kiss me?”

Eddie stares at him. The sunlight catches in his eyes. “You’re so gross,” he murmurs.

Richie grins, even as Eddie turns away and glides back over to the bank, calling for the boys to save some root beer for him.

It wasn’t a no.

09.24.89

It rains again a couple weeks later. This time, Richie is itching to leave the house. He’s up by 9:00 AM to finish his homework, and then he’s grabbing his raincoat and knotting the laces on his tennis shoes. He knows Eddie is at home. He hasn’t had time alone with the kid since before they fought the shit-eating clown. Eddie’s broken arm doesn’t help--it’s almost completely healed, now, but Sonia is adamant about keeping Eddie away from the boys’ activities before she’s convinced he will be okay. She probably wouldn’t easily let him go until his arm itself breaks free from that damn cast. (Fortunately, she knows nothing about Eddie jumping into the canal after Richie.)

Eddie has expressed frustration almost daily about his mother’s rules, and Richie promised both himself and the other boy that he’d bring some excitement. His parents had purchased him a Game Boy just a couple months ago, and Eddie had always wanted to play with it. Since this summer was less than ideal for that, Richie supposes that now is a good time as ever.

He carefully places the console into his backpack. He hopes Eddie likes Super Mario. Then he hooks the straps around his shoulders and slips outside his room.

Richie glances around the house as he walks down the stairs. He wasn’t necessarily intending on sneaking out, but it’s always easiest to leave when his parents aren’t around. And neither of them are, so Richie takes that as his cue to vanish through the back door. Of course, he leaves a quick note with the words ‘At Eddie’s’ scrawled on it on the fridge. That way, they couldn’t say he didn’t tell them. And also so that they don’t think the phantom child-murderer who was absolutely not a phantom managed to get him.

It’s odd, though, how carefree they’ve still been with him, even after all this clown and death business. Richie’s parents had never been overly protective of him, but they did care. They indulged his silly whims and voices, and they didn’t seem outwardly exhausted when he ran his mouth. They laughed when he cracked a joke and smiled when he made inappropriate noises with his hand and armpit. His father took turns doing the yard chores with him, and his mother sometimes tucked him into bed, and that was more than Richie could’ve asked for.

At the same time, they didn’t try as hard as the other Losers’ parents allegedly did to ensure that he stayed home when he needed to. Richie never took offense at this because he assumed that he was too restless for his parents to try and keep track of him. There was an unspoken agreement between parent and child that they would confront the other if there was anything seriously wrong, and leave it at that. Though, Richie had violated that agreement by hardly breathing a word about what he and the Losers had been up to this summer. His parents never pried, and he never got tremendously hurt. So it worked.

But if Richie’s being honest with himself, he’s always wanted someone who did care enough to ask the uncomfortable things.

He pulls the hood of his raincoat over his head and listens to the raindrops fall against the fabric while he goes over to where his bike is parked against the side of his house. He hops on, locks it into gear, and drives down the road.

Richie, admittedly, gives pause nowadays when traversing the streets of Derry alone. Especially during the rain. It’s a trivial side effect of being so intertwined with Bill and his brother’s rather untimely murder. He had seen Pennywise disappear in front of him, yes, but there was no telling whether or not the whole twenty-seven-year grace period was set in stone. Luckily, the rain is falling lighter today, and there are people out and about, particularly in the deeper parts of town where Eddie’s house is. It helps Richie feel a little less alone.

He turns into Eddie’s small neighborhood and pulls into someone’s backyard a few houses over from his friend’s. He dismounts the bike and briskly walks it through the grass, head bowed and eyes up. Nobody notices him, but even if they did, this isn’t the first time Richie’s gone this way to avoid Sonia’s detection. They’d probably just turn a tired eye.

He reaches Eddie’s backyard and leaves his bike standing between a cluster of thinly-trunked trees. Then Richie picks up a handful of pebbles, pockets them, and walks underneath the window on the second floor. He weighs one of the rocks in his hand and then begins the tedious task of getting Eddie’s attention.

By some miracle, it only takes three throws for the blinds to suddenly open and Eddie’s face to appear in the section glass. He looks terribly frightened at first, but the second he notices Richie’s eager face, his expression dramatically transforms. He throws the window open and hisses, “Richie, what are you doing here?”

Richie gathers a breath with a high-pitched, melodramatic gasp and drapes himself against the wall. “Ah! He speaks! Oh, speak again, bright angel!” he drawls in a thick, horrible old-English accent. “Romeo, Romeo, where are you, Romeo!”

“My mom is gonna--” Eddie falters. “That isn’t how it goes, Richie.”

“Pish, posh, my dear fellow. That’s absolute nonsense, I say.” Richie waves Eddie’s correction away and says in a whisper-shout, “Can I come up?”

This makes Eddie remember what he was about to say. “No! My mom will kill you!”

“Why?” Richie takes immense pleasure in watching Eddie glance over his shoulder with his finger held anxiously between his teeth. “I’m just visiting a friend. A poor boy with a broken arm.”

Eddie groans and rubs his nose. “Richie…”

“I brought Super Mario Land,” Richie croons.

He knows he’s won when Eddie hesitates for more than a few seconds. “Really?” Eddie asks quietly.

“Yuh-huh. You can play it. So can I come up now?”

Eddie’s face clearly says yes, but the boy still pretends to think it over. Richie finds it awfully endearing. “What if--what if Mom comes in?”

“Just tell her I didn’t want to use the front ‘cause--uh, I didn’t want to get mud everywhere.”

“God, Richie, really? ”

“Are you gonna let me in or not?”

Eddie sighs and gives the smallest jerk of his head to beckon Richie up. Then he disappears from the window.

Richie rubs his hands together and begins scaling the wall. There are very shallow curves in the uneven bricks he uses as footholds, made by his shoes over the countless times he has Spider-Man-ed his way into Eddie’s bedroom. The ascent is as easy as walking nowadays. He reaches out for the first floor window’s shallow awning, plants his foot on the side, and then springs for Eddie’s window. Although he makes the jump with ease, Eddie still leans out to grab Richie’s arms and help him climb in.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Eddie exclaims, right before Richie gets off the frame. “Hold on. Take your shoes off.”

Richie makes a face and pushes his shoes off with his feet. Eddie grabs them by the collars with a wrinkled nose. As he moves to set them beside his closed door, he asks, “Why didn’t you wear boots?’

Richie shrugs and hops onto the floor. “Hard to climb in,” he says.

“You seriously could’ve just come in through the front.” Eddie sits down on his bed and picks at a loose string on the duvet, watching Richie take his backpack and jacket off.

“Yeah, well.” Richie unzips the backpack and pulls out the Game Boy with a grin. It gets bigger when Eddie’s eyes light up. “What’s the fun in that?”

“No. Fucking. Way.” Eddie’s hand strikes out to grab the Game Boy from Richie, but at the last second, he freezes and sheepishly looks up at Richie.

Richie laughs and gestures Eddie closer. “Go ahead, dude,” he chuckles. “I brought the damn thing for you. But if you break it, I’m gonna snap your other arm.”

Eddie flicks the bridge of Richie’s nose. Richie pushes him away with a “Hey!” and fixes his glasses (which have been horribly bent over years of relentless torment, courtesy of Bowers and his gang) while the other boy takes the console and fiddles with it. “This is awesome. Really.” Eddie turns it over in his hand and glances over at Richie. “How much was it?”

“Dunno,” says Richie with a shrug. “I didn’t ask.”

Eddie nods and all of his focus goes back into studying the console. Richie wants to tell him to hurry up and get a move on, but he gets distracted halfway. He rarely ever gets the chance to just watch Eddie, especially when the boy is this transfixed by something. And it’s sad, because it’s such a magnificent thing to witness. Even if it’s just because of the way Eddie’s eyebrows scrunch up, or how he tongues the inside of his left cheek. It’s odd, how accurately Richie can predict his friend’s behavior. Or, considering how closely he has been paying attention, perhaps not.

He leans ever so slightly closer for nothing more than to get a better picture of the splash of faint freckles over the boy’s nose. They’re right underneath those long lashes that have caused Eddie to become the butt of many cruel, girlish jokes. As much as Richie adores a wide arsenal of jests, those ones never made the cut, because he could never understand how having soft features like Eddie’s could be anything but envious or beautiful.

These are the thoughts that run through his head as he stares much too intently to be appropriate. At that moment, Eddie suddenly turns to look at him, and Richie almost tumbles right off the bed. “How do you turn it on?” Eddie asks, seemingly oblivious to Richie’s slip of discretion.

“Uh--oh.” Richie hastily pushes the glasses up on his nose and cups his hand around Eddie’s. He tries to ignore the brief moment in which their fingers fall together as he thumbs the power button on the top. “Right here,” he says, making sure Eddie sees.

Eddie grins and boots up the console. “Awesome,” he says under his breath as the Super Mario Land graphics fill the screen. He settles against his pillow with all of his attention on the game. Richie hesitates but then follows suit, lying down with his cheek pressed against Eddie’s shoulder to watch him play. He mentally pats himself on the back for the genius of his plan: if you engaged in this kind of physical contact as a boy with another one, you could probably count on getting your ass handed to you on the playground along with quite a few nasty words. But if it was because the center of attention was a videogame, then it was all too common for boys to huddle together like penguins and stare slack-jawed at the player.

Not that Richie had to be too concerned about this right now. After all, it is just him and Eddie alone together in his bedroom, where no one like Henry Bowers or Vis Criss or Patrick Hockstetter could see him. Oh, how nervous that thought made him. Get it together, Tozier, Richie thinks, and he distracts himself by pointing at the START option when the game menu opens. “Press that,” says Richie.

“I know, Richie.”

“Okay, well, I didn’t wanna sit here while you stare at it for another five minutes.”

Eddie shoves him. “You don’t have to watch me!”

Richie shoves him right back. He flops onto his side, pushes himself up on an elbow, and props his head on his hand. “I want to,” he says bluntly. “I already played a little, so, maybe you can get farther than I did.”

“How far are you?”

“Uh…World 2, Stage 2. Somewhere around there.” Richie scrambles closer to Eddie again as the boy’s eyes return to the screen.

Eddie opens the level and begins moving around. A few seconds later, he suddenly asks, “Wait--what if I die?”

“Then you fuck us both over.”

Eddie grimaces. He appears a bit paler when he looks at the game. “Then--maybe I’ll watch you play first,” he says, shoving the console into Richie’s hands.

Richie gasps and scrambles to sit up and clutch the Game Boy properly. “Dude, you’re in the middle of a fucking level,” he exclaims. “You could’ve paused first!”

“I don’t know how to fucking do that, Richie!” Eddie snaps.

“Like this!” Richie shows him how to pause, and then shakes his head as he continues the level. “No wonder you’re not a gamer. Your intuition is worse than my grandma’s vagina.”

Eddie pinches him in the side and scoffs over Richie’s yelp of pain. “Shut up, Richie, that doesn’t even make sense. And at least I know how to zip up my fly.”

Richie forgets all about Mario in an instant. He flings the Game Boy to the mattress and shouts, “What?” as he looks down at his pants. Blushing deeply, he zips them, shooting a glare over at Eddie to try and shut up his incessant laughter. “Mario is up here, fuckface! Why’re your eyes down there, anyway?”

“It was just so obvious, ” Eddie says. “Also, you died.”

Richie grabs the console and stares at Mario falling off the screen. A single Mekabon sneers back at him. He turns to Eddie and demands, “Well, whose fault is that?”

“Uh, you? You’re the one playing!”

“You distracted me!” Richie tries to sound genuinely annoyed, but he’s enjoying their tussle way too much. He ruffles the boy’s hair and shudders faintly when Eddie briefly laces their fingers together while pulling Richie away. Eventually, though, he has to focus again, so he says, “Okay, okay. Just watch me.”

Eddie ends up curled against Richie’s side, staring up at the screen from where he is pressed against Richie’s shoulder. “If you die, I’m gonna pinch you again.”

“Whatever, Eds.”

Somehow, Richie doesn’t die, even with the feeling of Eddie’s side filling and falling against him. More than a few times, he takes a quick glance over at the boy, because he knows Eddie won’t see him. He can only really see brown hair and the gentle curves of Eddie’s profile, but it’s enough to keep the heat in his cheeks.

A couple minutes later, Richie beats the level and exhales. “Alright, Eddie. Ready to try again?”

Eddie nods. The smell of his shampoo floods Richie’s nose, and he has to fight to not audible sigh. “Yeah. Gimme the Game Boy,” says Eddie, reaching up.

Richie lowers the console into Eddie’s hand and sits back with his fingers twined behind his head. Eddie scoots into more of a seated position, but remains with his back against Richie’s chest. Affection expands between his ribs and Richie becomes afraid that Eddie might be able to feel how fast his heart beats. Especially when he musters the courage to lean forward and rest his chin on Eddie’s shoulder.

Richie can see Eddie look at him from the corner of his eye. “Jesus, Richie,” he mutters. “Little personal space--do you have to breathe right into my ear?”

“I wanna see!”

Eddie huffs, but he makes no move to force Richie to sit back. Richie takes this as permission to stay perched. So he does.

When the level starts, Eddie frowns and looks at the sprites. “Wait, what the fuck is this?”

Richie squints at it. “Oh. You’re in a submarine, I think.”

“Well, obviously!” Eddie starts mashing buttons, and at some point, Mario starts firing torpedoes. “Oh. That’s cool,” mumbles Eddie, more to himself than anything.

Upon realizing which button it was that made Mario shoot, Eddie continues to spam B like a madman, even when there’s nothing on the screen. Of course, that changes quickly, and when the fish show up, Eddie actually shrieks. “Wait, wait--Richie, what do I do?” he exclaims, glancing between the game and Richie.

Richie squeezes Eddie’s shoulder and responds, “Fucking shoot ‘em, duh!”

Eddie makes a long, frustrated sound and taps B so fast that Richie starts to get nervous. “Chill out, dude, you’re gonna break the thing.”

“Shut up! No I’m not!” In the midst of Richie’s frantic spamming, one of the enemies manages to make it past the fire and crashes into the submarine. The screen freezes, and just like that, Mario dies.

Richie winces. “Yikes,” he snorts. “How’d you miss that one?”

Eddie moves away so that Richie’s head momentarily falls without support. Then he elbows him in the stomach. “That’s your fault. You were distracting me, breathing down my neck and shit.”

“I was not,” Richie says. Even though he absolutely was.

“You’re stressing me out! Don’t do that!”

“Fine, but I’m taking it back if you don’t win this one.”

“Deal.”

And so they reach a compromise. They sit shoulder-to-shoulder against the pillows, and they switch off after every death or level. This is how they spend the next hour, the next month, the next twenty-seven years or eternity. Somewhere along, the game starts to lose its novelty, what with Eddie grabbing Richie’s knee whenever he gets too immersed in the level Richie’s doing and smacking the bed whenever he dies. Richie begins to forget all about Mario and Sarasaland and Koopas; all he can see and smell and hear and touch is the damn boy next to him. That creature in his chest gets bigger and bigger, until it’s literally getting hard for Richie to breathe by the end of that hour. So much so that Richie has to put the Game Boy down and say, “Hey, Eds? Can I get some water?”

Eddie frowns at him, initially startled to hear a question that isn’t about Super Mario Land. Then he gets it. “Oh. Yeah, uh--” He moves away from Richie and jumps off the bed. Richie immediately yearns for the warmth that had become so familiar to him. “Yeah,” Eddie repeats. “Just stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” Richie says, and just before he opens the door, Eddie adds, “And don’t touch any of my shit. I’ll know.”

Richie gives him a double-thumbs up, and then proceeds to break that rule the second Eddie is gone. He doesn’t touch very much, though. He just climbs off the bed and wanders around the room--a setting he’s been in a tall number of times, but a setting that is so comforting after all this time that it’s foreign. He’s never been one to stare too much at another family’s pictures, but this one time he makes an exception to look at one of the photos framed on Eddie’s desk. He makes this exception because he’s in it.

He remembers this photo, naturally. It was taken at Eddie’s birthday party two years ago. He, Bill, and Stan are crowded around the boy, all crooked beams and grimy ten-year-old faces. Nothing particularly flattering. But of course Eddie would keep it, and as Richie tentatively picks it up to look at it closer, he knows that he would’ve too. They all look happy, Richie especially--his eyes are pinched shut, pulled back with the biggest smile he’s ever seen on his face. Eddie’s bent underneath him, grinning at the camera, holding Richie’s hand against his chest.

Yeah. It’s something Richie would want to keep in his wallet.

He hears the stairs creak outside the door and he quickly puts the frame back down on the desk. He flings his body seductively over the bed and pulls the most sultry look he could muster as Eddie enters the room again. “ Bonjour again, mon ami ,” he purrs.

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot to the top of his forehead. He looks so alarmed that Richie’s surprised he doesn’t drop the glass of water in his hand. “Fuck off, Richie,” he says under his breath. “You’re so weird.”

Despite this, Richie spots the slightest bit of red dusting Eddie’s neck. He hides his grin as Eddie comes over with the glass of water. If there’s one thing Richie excels at, it’s dressing his feelings in the most ludicrous outfits so that no one looks too closely at the sincerity on their faces. If there’s another thing Richie excels at, it’s wishing more than anything that he could strip them bare.

Eddie hands him his water. “Don’t you dare spill it,” Eddie warns him. “I don’t wanna explain that to Mom.”

“You mean like…this?” Richie pretends to fumble with the glass, and even though it’s an old ploy, Eddie cries out and grips Richie’s hands. His predictability is one of the many traits Richie adores. “Stop it! Asshole!” Eddie snaps.

Richie sits on the bed and takes a sip with exaggerated care. “How’s that?”

“Yes. Good. Thank you.”

Richie holds the glass out to him as a toast. “To you,” he says, this time in his Old-Man-Peepaw voice, “Eddie, my love.”

This time, Eddie’s blush is nakedly clear. He averts his eyes and pushes Richie’s arm down. “Alright, alright, stop it. You are so fucking weird,” he says again.

“What can I say? I’m one of a kind,” Richie brags.

“Thank God for that.”

And even still, the look that they share communicates far fonder feelings than one would expect if they just glanced at the surface of the boys’ interactions. Many of Richie’s warm feelings came from his early realization that he could make these jokes-that-probably-aren’t-jokes with Eddie Kaspbrak without being called a queer. Or worse. He could pinch Eddie’s cheeks and call him cute and never once have to fear any genuine disgust. There’s a whole lot of gratitude held in this look that passes between them, a whole lot more than Richie could ever be humble enough to admit. But he’s pretty sure Eddie notices it.

Richie holds Eddie’s eyes for as long as he possibly can. Even after Eddie glances back at the Game Boy, there’s a tiny smile that the boy can’t hide.

The palpable tension that comes from that silent moment is thick, though. Thicker than anything Richie is willing to withstand. He searches for something they could talk about, anything to ease the atmosphere. What first comes to mind is less than ideal, but it’s a question that’s been burning for weeks--no, months, now. It’s a stark contrast to the tenderness Richie had just felt.

“Eddie, do you ever think about...you know, It? ” Richie blurts.

Eddie goes still. A few seconds later, the sound of Mario’s death cuts the silence that has somehow become worse. And then, a stunned word: “What?”

Richie shifts and rubs his arms. He realizes that that was probably not the best thing to say, but he finds he can’t let it go, and his mouth takes the horrible thought and runs with it as usual. “You know. The clown,” he says. His volume drops. “Pennyw--”

A gasp. Movement blurs through Richie’s vision. A hand plasters itself over his mouth and nearly shoves the boy’s head into the headboard. “Don’t,” shrieks Eddie, kneeling over Richie’s lap. “Don't--fucking--say it. Don’t ever say that goddamn name.”

Richie has long frozen in something akin to terror. Not at the fury in Eddie’s eyes, but at the fact that he might’ve just opened a massive wound that has just begun to scab over. And as he continues to stare up at Eddie, he can see fear intermix with the rage. It sucks the color from Eddie’s irises and drains the blood from his face and makes Richie feel like just about the worst person on Earth.

Slowly, gently, Richie reaches up and touches Eddie’s shoulder. The boy is panting despite the lack of physical exertion, probably because a very different part of him has just been strained past the max. “I’m sorry,” he tries to say--it comes out as “Mmm smm-ee.”

Eddie exhales, long and slow, and removes his hand. Richie says it again. “I’m…really sorry, Eddie. I--yeah.”

“You should be, dammit.” Eddie grits his teeth and closes his eyes. Richie patiently sits with his hands clasped between his thighs, still and quiet for once in his life. He waits for Eddie’s shoulders to relax and for his face to fall. “No,” murmurs the boy, all at once deflated. “I, uh--I guess I should, um, talk about it.”

Richie shakes his head. He rests a few hesitant fingers over Eddie’s hand on the bed. “You don’t have to. We can just keep playing Mario.”

“No,” says Eddie. He sounds more confident this time.

Richie blinks. “Okay,” he says. “Then…you do think about It?”

Eddie swallows so hard that Richie can see every muscle in his throat constrict. “Yeah.”

“What…what do you see?” Richie asks after a long moment.

The boy begins to tremble. Richie is right there in a heartbeat, just as he was on that day so long ago, when Eddie poked his finger on the glass shards. He fits himself snugly against Eddie’s side and rests a comforting hand on his back to steady him as Eddie tries to find his words. Eddie looks down at his hands and folds them tightly.

“That leper,” he says weakly. “That…that fucking leper. And--corpses. And these--these--” His face contorts like he’s biting into an unripe lemon, and he speaks as though he were trying to forcibly rid his body of its acids. “These parasites , everywhere, every fucking disease in the world. Just… crawling. All--all over--”

Eddie curls into himself and sucks in a short breath. His hands rub all over his body, an unconscious movement, and Richie suddenly knows exactly what kind of horrible feeling that must be creeping through his veins. Richie huddles closer and holds him, supporting Eddie more with his word than his arms. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey, hey, you’re okay.”

“I know.” It’s little more than a whimper. “I know.”

“Do you--do you need your inhaler?”

Eddie sharply shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Um--I get it. You don’t need to keep going, or anything.”

“I see them at night,” Eddie says after a beat of silence, completely ignoring Richie’s last statement. “And they see me too. Not…not every night, but. It’s enough.”

Richie nods, and in a daring, reckless show of affection, he presses his cheek against Eddie. The surprise comes when Eddie abruptly turns his face and buries it in Richie’s neck. The older boy stiffens, for once not knowing how to respond to the arm that crosses his body and hooks around his far shoulder. The rush of positive stimulus prompts him to perhaps foolishly confess, “I see them, too.”

“Really?”

Richie shivers at the feeling of the boy’s mouth moving against his skin. He nods faintly, not wanting to discourage Eddie from his current position. Richie pulls him in closer and lets the intimacy guide his next words. “Clowns, mostly. Dolls. Those creepy motherfuckers in stores, what are they ca-- mannequins .” He feels Eddie’s short breath, meant as laughter. Encouraged by this, he rubs Eddie’s back and says, “Fucking clown gave me a whole room full of those bastards, did you know that?”

“Dolls and mannequins?”

“Yeah.” Richie pokes Eddie and grins, “And you led me into it.”

Eddie pulls back and Richie instantly wishes he hadn’t said anything. “The hell do you mean?” Eddie asks incredulously. “I wasn’t there.”

Richie reddens as he recalls the thoughts that had crossed his mind when Pennywise temporarily assumed Eddie’s form to lure him in. “Well, obviously not,” says Richie, “but you know the kinda shit that clown pulled. It turned into you, and Bill and I were looking for you anyway, so--I just kinda…ran in.” He pauses to scan Eddie’s face, and then complains, “Why do you look so surprised? Shoot, do you really think I hate you, or something?”

Eddie blinks. “No! I don’t know. It’s just.” He stops hugging Richie and lies down on the bed. “I don’t know what I would’ve done,” he admits.

“At least pretend you’d do the same thing if you saw me in a creepy-ass haunted house.” Richie finds that he actually feels somewhat offended.

Eddie shifts his head to stare at him. “I mean. I guess I would,” he says. There’s some ring of sincerity in those simple words, enough to meet Richie’s satisfaction.

With the conversation having reached an uncomfortable standstill, Richie makes no further moves to push it. He lets Eddie take the Game Boy, but the boy pauses and decides, “I don’t think I wanna play anymore.”

Richie understands perfectly. Eddie hands him the console and he puts it into his backpack, saying, “Well, what do you want to do now?”

When Eddie doesn’t immediately answer, Richie quickly adds, “I can go, if you want me to.”

“No,” Eddie blurts. “I, um--I still have science homework. Can you…”

Richie barks with laughter. “Jesus, dude. I think I’ll leave instead.” He doesn’t, obviously, but he doesn’t make that clear until Eddie pouts and pleads. When he’s had his fill, Richie rolls his eyes and nudges him with his shoulder. “Fine,” he says, “but someone awfully wise and wonderful told me that I’m stupid as horse shit, so. Not gonna be much help.”

Eddie snorts at him. “That’ll never change.”

Neither will this, hopes Richie.

- - (CW: brief use of the F-slur) - -

10.20.89

Around a month later, the weather mercifully clears for a good while. Richie forgot how much he missed seeing blue in the sky. That Friday, Bill, Richie, Eddie, and Stan decide to have a quiet little excursion with just the four of them--for old time’s sake. Fortunately, Ben and Mike already seemed to have plans: Mike had to run home to his farm to help birth a lamb, and Ben wanted to work on a secret project of his. So it worked out.

Richie shares his last few classes with Eddie, which makes the post-lunch day even better than it already would be. It meant a lab partner for science, a buddy to stand with during P.E., and a muse for art class. It also meant that Richie’s productivity totally plummeted during those final two and a half hours of school. Eddie was simply more interesting than the curriculum.

Sometimes, Richie’s teachers call him out on this, but to them it seems like nothing more than a hyperactive kid being distracted by a close friend. They weren’t too far from the truth. Richie was always just glad Eddie assumed the same. Usually, when teachers disciplined him (or both of them), they had been engaged in some sort of actual class activity, so there was never reason to scrutinize their dynamic or motivations. No reason to clue anyone in that there was more to it. And Richie convinced himself of that idea because he himself was fooled by it--for years, apparently. Because it was not until very recently that he has fully realized a number of things:

His fingers and cheeks tingle whenever Eddie hugs him.
He becomes inexplicably and deeply disappointed when Eddie is absent.
The aforementioned disappointment does not flare up when any of his other friends are absent.
He knows that there are exactly seven large, distinct freckles on the right side of Eddie’s face, and a few fainter ones.
His chest tightens when Eddie is assigned a project with someone else.
He believes this is jealousy.
Richard Tozier does not get jealous over anything, or anyone. Ever.

Fear took hold of him upon recognizing these horrible things. He’s been called names before, horrible ones, spat into his face or kicked into his shin. He never thought much of it. Always wiped off that three-letter word as if it were nothing but mud on his cheek (which it often literally was). It bothered him just as much as anything Bowers called him--or used to call him, anyway--which is to say, not much. It was never anything Richie really pondered, really wondered if there was truth behind those terms. Everyone knows that a man is impervious to insult until he believes it, too.

But now there was ample reason to believe that those boys were right, in some twisted sense of the word. What frightened Richie most was not necessarily the idea that they were correct, but the idea that the first good thing he had ever felt was wrong.

So, put simply, he learned to suppress it. He learned to indulge in what is given than to seek what could never properly be received; he learned to delight in the laughter and not ask for a word; he learned to look, but not touch, because his mother always chastised him for trying to take what was not his. Richie learned to love from a distance, and he learned that it would suffice. He was not the smartest kid in the world when it came to restraint, but when it was this crucial to his life, his friendships, his dignity, even Richie could do it.

Unfortunately, the suppression has led to many cumulative hours devoted to little more than yearning. Today is one of the bad days, when the urge to scratch the itch in his hands and mouth is greater than just a light tug in his heart. To fight it, Richie fiddles with the paintbrush in his hand, licking and biting his lips and doing all he can to focus on the blank canvas in front of him.

A sickly sweet cloud of potpourri descends upon Richie out of nowhere as his teacher looms over him. “Richie,” says Mrs. Miller in a tone so kind that it clearly wants to be cruel, “can you tell me why there is more paint on Eddie than your canvas?”

Richie looks up at her wrinkly face and almost cracks an awful joke. It wouldn’t be the first time. But something inside him holds his tongue back. He glances at Eddie, who is far gentler work on the eyes than the large woman to his left. The boy is glaring at him, making a big show of cleaning off the barely recognizable dick that Richie painted onto his arm. All Eddie ends up doing is smearing it into a blue splotch.

“Oh,” Richie says, swallowing a giggle. “S-Sorry, Mrs. Miller.”

Mrs. Miller clicks her tongue at him and wags her finger. “Richie, I do not want to have to write you up again! It’s hardly two months into the first quarter. I don’t think your mother wants to hear from me anymore, now, does she?”

Richie’s mother has not breathed a single word about the previous three meetings she and Mrs. Miller have supposedly held, but Richie doesn’t tell her that. What he tells her is, “No, Mrs. Miller.”

He hears Eddie snicker and Richie shoots a sharp look at him. Mrs. Miller, of course, does not notice. “Alright. Then I expect you to have transferred this...beautiful, ah, sketch--” here she waves a vague hand towards Richie’s sketchbook, trying to make sense of what he has scrawled-- “onto your canvas by tomorrow.”

Richie nods. He respectfully swirls his brush in the cup of water to clean off the paint, but as soon as Mrs. Miller’s back is turned to face the class, he takes the brush out and flicks it at her. She doesn’t turn, but Eddie grabs his elbow and hisses, “Richie, stop it!”

“What?” Richie asks, lowering his voice. “It’s not like anyone will see it.”

True as Richie’s statement may be, what with Mrs. Miller’s back covered in an embarrassing amount of sweat, Eddie doesn’t drop the serious expression. “Just ten more minutes, dude, and then we’re out of here. We’re not waiting for you if you get detention again.”

Richie holds Eddie’s gaze. He hates how persuasive those brown eyes are. “Whatever,” he sighs, and he mournfully wipes the brush on the paper towel.

The final ten minutes of class pass rather uneventfully. Margaret Eton throws a wad of kneaded eraser at Richie’s face, and Richie shoots a rubber band at her face. But the bell rings before Mrs. Miller can react, and in the ensuing cacophony of zipping backpacks and running faucets and twelve-and-thirteen-year-old voices, the incident is forgotten.

Richie instinctively latches onto Eddie’s shoulder as they gather their things and squeeze their way through the kids towards the door. “So where’re we going, Eds?” he asks as they burst free into the flooded school hallway.

“You know, I really don’t like that name.”

“Shut up. You love it.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, we’re probably going to the dam, or something,” Eddie answers. “I guess Bill has it planned out.”

The duo winds through the throngs of students. Everyone they pass is eager to get home on such a brilliant Friday afternoon. Richie keeps his hand on Eddie to stay with him--it’s all too easy to get accidentally shoulder-checked by some bigger student and become absorbed right into the movement of the masses. At some point, Richie feels something warm rest upon his fingers.

His breath catches. He’s pretty sure that’s Eddie’s hand on his.

As soon as they emerge outside, Richie sucks in a deep breath full of fresh October air. It helps him clear his tightened chest, though it does nothing for the pinkish haze that settles over his mind. He and Eddie make a beeline for their rendezvous, but then, someone catches Richie’s free wrist.

For a split second, his heart leaps into his throat, pounding terribly with the irrational thought that Bowers has returned from the grave to carve HOMO into his throat. But it’s just Stan, who grins and says, “Hey, guys! How was art?”

“Good. Although this idiot almost got his ass put into detention again,” Eddie says pointedly.

For once, Richie doesn’t have the heart to provide a more colorful response in his defense, so he just shrugs and says, “Would’ve been more fun than painting.”

He’s relieved when neither of his friends comment on his uncharacteristic lack of energy. For some reason, Richie’s pulse is racing, and it isn’t because neither him nor Eddie have pulled away from each other. Well--okay, that’s likely part of it, but there’s so much more. The real reason is rooted in his mind, which is currently occupied by a million thoughts that run a million miles an hour and suggest a million things that he can hardly begin to articulate.

He supposes that Bill arrives a couple minutes later, and he supposes that they all bid goodbye to Ben, who had accompanied the first boy. Bill looks at the trio and says, “Y-you all ready, guys?”

They all nod. “Yeah,” Stan says. “Where are we going?”

“The dam. And, guess wh-wh-what I brought.”

“What?” asks Eddie in a low tone. Richie always found it fascinating that the boy seemed capable of balancing genuine interest with a concern so close to fear that it became touching.

Bill takes off his backpack and opens it, revealing a couple canisters of spray paint. The three other boys all gasp in unison, and Richie finally finds his tongue. “Get the fuck out, Bill, are you serious?” He slugs his friend on the shoulder. “No way!”

Eddie looks horrified. “You mean we’re gonna--gonna--”

“Spray up the bitch,” Richie interrupts with a wicked smile. “It’s gonna be awesome. ”

Eddie looks at Bill, who is nodding proudly. Then he looks at Stan’s bright grin, and finally Richie. Defeated, Eddie hangs his head and says, “Alright, well, if we get arrested, I’m not vouching for you assholes.”

“We wouldn’t ask you to,” Stan replies as Bill zips his bag back up. The four of them mount their bikes and take off down the street.

As they ride, Richie’s head spins right along with his bike’s wheels. He doesn’t like this heaviness that is pushing down on his shoulders. The sensation of distraction isn’t new to him, but this specific kind is sluggish rather than excitable. He can’t seem to focus on anything, where typically, he simply focuses on everything. He wonders if this is what people mean when they call someone pensive, or philosophical. Richie decides that he hates this feeling, but try as he might, he cannot shake it. And then he decides that he cannot continue with his friends like this.

Right before they pull onto Kansas Street, Richie feigns sudden excitement and says, “Actually--I think I’ve got some spray paint at home, too! You guys want me to go get it?”

“Sure,” says Bill happily. “Do you wuh-want us to wait h-h-here?”

“Nah. You guys keep going. I’ll be fast.”

Eddie glances back at Richie. He almost looks sad. “I can come with,” he suggests. “If you need the extra backpack space, or something.”

Any other time, Richie would’ve accepted the offer, albeit with much teasing and jostling. But today, he shakes his head and says, “I got it, don’t worry! Just save some space for me, okay?”

The boys all give their own sounds and motions of agreement while Richie turns his bike around and pedals the opposite direction. He has no intention of going home. Actually, he has no intention of going anywhere in particular. All he wants is to bike far enough, long enough, to properly clear his mind. Whether or not he ends up at an exact destination is up to luck. He’ll just say he didn’t actually have paint.

The sun hugs his back as he rides up Kansas Street. The farther he goes, the fewer students crowd the street, and soon he beats the kids who already made it a mile from school. That is when he loosens the knot lashing his brain to grades and spelling tests and lunch; when it rushes straight to its default setting, properly dubbed Eddie, Richie does not stop it.

Sometimes he wonders if everyone has a particular still in their mind for every person they are close to. Like a snapshot, per se, that represents everything they know they feel and everything yet to emerge. Eddie’s snapshot is simple, taken from no summer day in particular. He’s in a purple shirt, inhaler clutched in his hand, the other one anxiously adjusting his collar while he stares just beyond the eye in Richie’s mind. Pink lips, pink blush, pink nails. Richie’s never had a favorite color, but now he’s starting to think he does.

As he contemplates this picture, dread crawls up his neck, as real as a clown’s cold fingers. All at once, he realizes that he has wrestled with this dichotomy between affection and disgust for years now, but it was never so serious that he actually felt the struggle. Now, he can feel the rose bushes blooming in his chest, fighting to overpower the vines of thorns and brambles that twist over his bones. They were twin feelings born of nothing more than a sunny picture of Eddie Kaspbrak, a photo held closely and safely in Richie’s heart. Neither feeling could live without the other: the affection lives to support the disgust that chokes it. In return, the affection feeds on what smothers it, because there’s something dangerously alluring about the idea that Richie has been forbidden to love what he does. And that danger is precisely what makes the moments stolen in the Barrens and beside the Canal and in Eddie’s bedroom infinitely more precious.

But his mother always warned him that nothing good came for free. For Richie, hidden desire costs his own innocence; for Richie, affection for Eddie costs affection for himself. And it hurts.

God, it hurts.

It hurts because there are no truer acts of betrayal than losing even your deepest, most secretive, most treasured thoughts to external forms of hate. It hurts because what he feels will never be more than an incoherent prayer, which so closely resembles the whispers he hears, circulating rumors that are unbearably true. It hurts because Richie never intended for Eddie to become anything more than his best friend in his eyes. It hurts because Richie wished for more, and to wish that was to deceive one of the few people he’s ever really loved.

Richie doesn’t notice that there are tears blurring his vision until he has to swerve to avoid riding up against the curve. He glances at the wooden sign declaring the entrance to Bassey Park. Okay, Richie thinks. This is where he’s supposed to be.

The asphalt turns to gravel under his tires as he pulls into the park. Families wander around and enjoy the weather while it lasts. Richie keeps his head low. The odds of running into someone he knows are unfavorably high this afternoon, and he wants to avoid interaction at all costs. The boy walking in his shoes right now is not the Richie Tozier he wants to show the world. Not after all this time spent in his head--he’s sure that the gooseflesh on his skin is broadcasting his thoughts, painting him neon yellow like a hazard symbol. Stay away from him, cries the paint. He’s a sickness! There’s an illness in his brain! You might catch it, and then you’ll become a faggot, too!

Richie holds the tears back until he’s biking through the grass and sure he’s on his own. Then he releases. He does not wail, but his despair runs down his face without mercy, and a couple times he has to squeeze his bike with his thighs to keep steady as he swipes at his face. It worsens enough that sooner rather than later, Richie finally pulls over beside the kissing bridge, drags his bike down the slope, and slumps right against the brick with his face in his hands. And then comes the sobbing.

The bricks pull at his shirt like teeth as he sinks slowly to the ground, crying into his palms all the while. He’s pathetic, really, but Richie can hardly find it in himself to care. It’s cooler down here. Damper. An objectively ideal place to break down. Some delusional part of him fantasizes about Eddie suddenly turning up and finding him here; he imagines Eddie pulling him in, kissing his forehead until his eyes dry, assuring him that he isn’t all the terrible things he believes he is. Richie clings to the thought until he realizes that that would likely be the worst possible scenario. He ends up pushing the idea away, just like every other nice thing he’s ever dreamed of.

The funny thing is, the more Richie cries, the more the pain eases. Not immediately, but once the needles in his chest start to fall away, it feels less like a rodent devouring his lungs and more like an offensive congestion pressing his temples. He’s heard people refer to crying as some sort of cleansing method--a way to flush your body of the chemicals that don’t belong. Richie begins to understand that a bit better.

Eventually, his energy bleeds out of him, leaving him slumped against the wall with his face turned towards the stone under his feet. He pulls his legs to the chest and slowly rocks himself as he gazes blankly at the canal. His sniffling echoes against the bridge above him. It occurs to him that there may be people walking overhead, and they could have easily heard him. Perhaps they are still listening. But no one comes to investigate, as Richie would’ve, so he abandons the concern.

Eddie has not left his mind for the duration of Richie’s meltdown. Richie wonders what the boy would’ve done, had he witnessed this episode. He hopes that his friend would’ve comforted him. Actually, Richie finds that he’s certain of it, though the method escapes him. Maybe Eddie would’ve rubbed a hand against his back, or kindly squeezed his knee. Then again, it wouldn’t take anything more than for Eddie to just be there. For Richie to merely feel him, hear his reedy voice, bask in his presence that feels much bigger than his spindly, delicate body. And then it would all be okay.

In the wake of the grief’s exodus, relief begins to seep into the emptiness. Richie braces himself for the fear that typically came with thoughts of Eddie’s hypothetical love, but there is nothing besides a tentative comfort that works wonders on his muscles. He relaxes, all of him, and sighs along with his body. For once, the comfort had arrived alone.

Richie allows himself two more minutes before rousing himself, knowing the boys will soon be looking for him. Despite their relentless banter, after all that’s happened over the summer, they would surely come running to make certain that his body wasn’t drifting through the sewers. Richie owes it to them, to Eddie, to return.

He rubs his nose with his shirt collar and gets to his feet. He picks his bike up by the handlebars and walks it up the slope, surveying the park around him. The nearest person is walking along the path running perpendicular to the far side of the bridge. That means that Richie is safe to creep over the bridge’s rails, kneel against the post, and take out his pocket knife.

His hands start to shake the second his fingers wrap around the metal. Frankly, he has no idea what he’s doing. His legs had propelled him over the rails and his hands had deftly balanced himself and brushed off an empty space on the wood, and his eyes and ears were held alert for anyone who might stumble upon him. But he had not been truly conscious of any of those actions. He certainly does not know why he thinks what he’s about to do is a good idea, or why he possesses even the slightest hope that it may mean more than two stupid letters etched in wood. But he’s here, and he’s touching the blade to the rail, and he might as well finish what he’s starting before he chickens out.

Richie holds his breath the whole time. First he carves the R, going over the startlingly straight lines a few times to ensure it won’t easily fade. Then comes the two short dashes of the cross, and then--

And then.

Richie glances over his shoulder. Nobody is there. Every time he takes a quick look (which happens frequently) he fully expects Bowers or Pennywise or some manifestation of his meanest, loudest demons to be waiting for him to finish his vile act. Except it isn’t vile. And the only one here, the only thing worth listening to, is the sweet, fervid urge in his young heart.

So he begins carving the E. The knife is starting to shake too much to be useful, but Richie holds it firmly. He ignores the single bead of sweat slithering under the fabric against his neck. He counts the heartbeats that thrum through his hands and wrists and stops when he reaches thirty-three. Afterwards, he only listens to the static in his ears until finally, he summons the courage to lift the blade from the wood.

Richie dusts off the initials and leans back on his heels. Disbelief at what he has just done nearly rocks him to the floor. But then something new begins to strike through him, sharp and powerful like fireworks.

Elation. Pride. Joy.

His vision swims, and he almost passes out, because that’s not at all what Richie imagined feeling upon seeing R+E right out in front of him. Out in the open, where anyone could see it.

The strangest part is that Richie starts to laugh. Quietly, but it’s there. Just like the infatuation that has intertwined itself with the most fundamental parts of Richie’s soul. There is not a drop of blood in him that is afraid. He is fearless, unashamed of what he feels, for the first time in his life. The product is small, little more than two letters joining the hundreds already engraved on the bridge, but it is the first permanent testament to Richie’s love. It is defiant, it is unwavering, it is proud. And it feels…

Good.

Richie stares at the carving for a long time. He doesn’t want to forget how it makes him feel, to see such a bold declaration of devotion. He doesn’t want to forget the things it records. He has always been afraid of growing old, but there are ways to summon the past into whatever dark present he will grow into. Derry legend says that when you carve your initials into this bridge, whatever you wish will come true, and Richie’s already done so many stupid, ridiculous things that it couldn’t hurt to do one more. It’s never stopped him before. So it is at that exact moment when Richie decides to make a promise to himself--and to Eddie.

He touches his fingers to his lips. A foreign air of solemnity surrounds the boy and temporarily obscures him from the eyes of the world. It is just Richie and the three characters that mean more to him than anyone could ever know. Against his fingers, Richie whispers, “I swear I’ll never forget you, Eddie. Even in thirty years. I’ll never forget.”

He seals the promise with a kiss that he hopes will one day reach Eddie’s lips. Then he presses his fingers against the carving, right on top of the cross, and stands up. He stares longingly at his handiwork for ten more seconds before exhaling and mounting his bike.

He leaves the kissing bridge behind, knowing full well that it won’t be long before he returns again. No one will ever know what had transpired there, but Richie would.

Someday, he might just tell Eddie.

END

Notes:

hey! thanks so much for reading. again, there's more to come, possibly. my initial It phase was years ago in high school, which is when i wrote this, but i recently bought the novel and may or may not delve back into this relationship. i absolutely love how i captured that feeling of realizing you might like something that you shouldn't, and all of the joy and terror that comes along with it. it just makes me feel young again, and in college, that feeling is such a nice escape.
i really don't know how much i'll end up writing for this little series. maybe i'll get to the end, maybe just to the middle, who knows. the second "chapter" can definitely go up as a standalone if i end up writing it, but the third and fourth ones are more connected and would likely only go up together (although they would still be separate fics). technically, there's four more chapters planned with unique plots, and then two "epilogue" chapters that are directly tied to the canon. and yes, this whole fic was planned to be a Fix-It, particularly concerning Eddie Kaspbrak. y'all know what that means (or would mean, if i had the energy to actually get to the end).
in any case, i really appreciate you taking this chance on my work! i do love writing, and i need this escapism now more than ever. leave a comment to tell me what worked, what didn't work, or just to say hi! i love y'all and i can't wait to hear from you as always <3

Series this work belongs to:

Part 1 of lover's spit

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