Chapter Text
1:26 AM. It was 1:26 AM when the phone began to ring, killing his sleep, waking him instantly. Annoyance and confusion quickly turned into stone-cold panic.
Eddie was sure somebody had died. That was his first thought in almost any situation, but especially when someone called him earlier than five in the morning.
He scrambled to the desk, not even bothering to turn on the light, and picked up immediately. His mind was spinning with all the possible atrocities. Maybe his mom had gotten into a freak accident. Or, maybe it was about Bev, and his number had been given to the nurse as her emergency contact. Either way, his hands were shaking as he put the handset to his ear.
“Eddie Kaspbrak speaking.”
Richie’s voice came through crackling with poor signal.
“Hey Eds, I’m going to the laundromat, you wanna come with?”
All at once, Eddie was flooded with relief and irritation. All that worry for nothing.
He looked at the bag of dirty clothes on top of the dresser. He had been planning to wash them in the morning. It was morning. It was typical of Richie to call him about something as trivial as laundry at such a late (or, early) hour. In hindsight, he should’ve probably expected it.
Had it been anyone else calling him at 1:27 AM, Eddie would’ve politely declined and cursed them mentally. Richie, instead, was met with just about every swear word under the sun and a final “meet you in five”.
Eddie wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anyway, after that fright.
The laundromat was popular among students. It was two blocks from the college, in a little strip mall, next to a RadioShack, a BlockBuster, a CVS Pharmacy and a 24 hour breakfast diner with a vague name like “Sam’s”, the sort you’d never heard of before and would never hear of again after you left town.
An autumn breeze blew at the collar of Eddie’s jacket and he held onto his bag tightly, until his knuckles were white and his fingertips were red, like it was the only thing tying him to reality. He didn’t like walking around the city at night.
Though the way there was short, it felt like it took an eternity. The city was eerily empty at that hour, desolate and abandoned, like it had never been lived in at all. The streets, hidden by the dim glow of lampposts, were recognizable only by sheer force of habit. Eddie searched for landmarks through the murky haze of the night.
Those cracks on the pavement, that old dead tree and faded stop sign. He knew this place. He knew where he was and where he was going. It should’ve been comforting, but it wasn’t. Just familiar. Sometimes those things overlapped, but not always. Familiar discomfort was something Eddie had learned to be accustomed to. He thought it would leave him when he left Derry and a part of it did, but a part of it didn’t. He thought that maybe it never would.
A broken street light left him in the dark and he felt his pulse pick up. Involuntarily, a list of worst-case scenarios began to play out in his mind, as if thinking about them might make him more prepared. He could get hit by a car, he was harder to spot in the dark. Skunks or other potentially rabid nocturnal animals could decide to attack. Muggers or kidnappers could jump out of the bushes and there’d be nothing he could do to defend himself.
He tried to laugh it off. It was ridiculous and he knew it. Men his age didn’t get kidnapped very often. It was an irrational fear, the sort he’d been taught by his mom as a child. Boogeymen and phantoms hiding just beyond where he could see, waiting for him to step out of line. Monsters that still haunted him and probably always would.
Reaching the laundromat was a relief. The bright white lights that poured through the building’s windows made him feel like he was someplace safe. Someplace tactile and man-made, too real for the terrifying figments of his imagination to be much more than frightening daydreams.
Richie was pretty easy to spot, the only other person there. Of course he was. It was 1:32 AM. All of the machines were empty and the building was silent, except for the LEDs, which buzzed overhead. They hurt Eddie’s eyes to look at.
“Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie greeted, “so glad to see you, and without a knife to murder me for waking you up! How merciful.”
Eddie put his bag down. One of the washers was already open, filled to the brim with Richie’s clothes. He’d waited until the last minute to wash them, of course he had. He’d clearly been waiting to start the cycle, though there wasn’t any obvious reason why. There was not nearly enough room to fit both of their clothes in one machine. Eddie opened the next one over and started piling his own laundry in.
“And why exactly were you awake at this ungodly hour?”
“Well, it’s Saturday night and I’m not boring like you are, so…”
It didn’t surprise Eddie to be met with a lie, though he couldn’t say how he knew it wasn’t true. It was a plausible enough explanation. Still, something about the way Richie’s smile seemed to twitch, maybe a dip in the tone of his voice, maybe even something in his eyes that Eddie could only see after having looked in them for years and years, gave him away.
“Sure,” he said, to let the matter drop.
In Eddie’s opinion, insomnia was probably much closer to the truth of the matter. They all occasionally had bouts of it, ever since they were traumatized little kids in awful old Derry. Richie and Stan had it worse than everyone else. Even now, nearly a decade after they were sure they’d defeated the demons that haunted their childhood, they still had trouble sleeping at night.
Probably best not to bring it up, Eddie decided as he started up the cycle. As soon as he put down his laundry detergent, Richie swooped in and took it for himself.
“Hey!” Eddie said, because it would’ve felt strange not to argue with Richie about this, even though all the Losers were used to borrowing each other’s things. “Is that why you were waiting for me? Don’t you have your own damn soap?”
Richie shrugged, not apologetic in the least.
“I like it when my clothes smell like you.”
He was trying to provoke him, Eddie knew, but he couldn’t stop himself from feeling flustered nonetheless.
“Fuck off.”
Richie seemed to have forgotten all about it already. He slammed the door of his washing machine shut and smashed a fist onto the start button, like he was actively trying to break it. Then he turned to Eddie with a twirl.
“Where to next, Eduardo?”
“Well, my plan was to stay here and read for the next hour, but I get the sense you won’t let me do that.”
“Eddie, are you aware that you are the most boring man I’ve ever met in my life?” Richie asked, with a performative gleam of admiration in his voice that just made Eddie roll his eyes.
“Well, what would you have us do?”
“They have all-day breakfast at the diner next door.”
“I’m not-”
“They have pancakes,” Richie added in a sing-song voice that was only slightly teasing.
And Eddie gave in.
Sam’s Diner was a distasteful place. Yellow lights flickering over garish décor that was supposed to make it look like the ‘50s (emphasis on ‘supposed’). The walls’ chipped blue paint clashed horribly with the bright neon brown of the sofa and the dirty white and black checkered floor. The whole place was practically empty, except for a booth in the far corner — no doubt a group of drunk students who had gotten a little snacky.
Richie insisted they get a table by the window and they ended up in what were probably the most uneven chairs to ever wobble, to Richie’s great delight and Eddie’s great annoyance.
Soon enough, a woman came to take their order. She was probably the only one working at that hour. She looked worn and tired, with bags under her eyes and ruffled brown hair pulled up half hazardly, like she didn’t have it in her to tie it more carefully. Eddie could sympathize. He’d worked night shifts before.
“Hello, welcome to Sam’s, what can I get you?” she asked, flat and mechanical.
“Pancakes, please,” Eddie said. He wasn’t hungry, but pancakes were pancakes.
She nodded and wrote something down on a notepad before turning to Richie.
“And you?”
Eddie sighed, bracing himself for what was bound to come next.
“I’ve got everything I need with Eddie baby here.” Richie looked at Eddie lovingly, then turned back to the waitress. “I’ve already eaten, if you catch my drift. A full plate of thick meat.” He winked outrageously.
Eddie rubbed at his temple, already sensing the beginning of a headache, and the woman squinted, confused. Probably trying to decide if she was awake enough to care.
“So… just the pancakes?”
“Yes. Ignore him, he hit his head a lot as a child.”
When she left, Eddie turned to Richie in disdain.
“You know you don’t have to be like that to every stranger we meet, right?”
“But it gets you so worked up and cute, Eds.”
Eddie felt a blush rise up his neck, regrettably, he feared, proving Richie’s point. He put his head in his hands, a poor attempt to hide it.
“Don’t call me that.”
Richie raised his hands in mock surrender, then leaned back and forth on his chair, just to hear it creak and click.
“Hey, did you get any news from Billiam and Benjamino’s honeymoon?”
Bill and Ben studied together in a nearby college and were on an exchange program to Paris to learn about poetry and the graphs of houses or whatever the fuck it was they studied in their courses.
“No, did you?”
“No, but Bev told me Ben said he’s been having a good time. I wonder if she’s jealous.”
“I’m almost positive she’s not.”
Bev and Richie shared the most classes, so they ended up hanging out the most. Eddie would never say it, but he was pretty sure that she was the only reason Richie had decided to go to their college in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to be alone.
Not that Eddie could judge him for that decision very much, since he had done the exact same thing, but at least he cared about Statistics. Richie seemed sort of lost and out of place in Communications, like he was only there because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Every now and then he mentioned possibly pursuing comedy after graduation, but that was the sort of thing people only ever dream of and never actually do.
Who knows, Eddie thought, he’d certainly be crazy enough for it. He could picture him pacing on a stage, microphone in hand, doing one of his Voices. The image suited him.
“If you went on a trip alone with Billonardo, I’d be jealous.” Richie pulled him out of his thoughts.
“If you went on a trip alone with Bill, I would sing Hail Mary and actually sleep through the whole night.”
“I could never be away from you that long, Eddie.” Richie made his voice get low and suggestive. “I’d have to call you every night to-”
“Beep beep, Richie.”
Richie put a hand to his chest, innocent as a lamb.
“What? I was gonna say ‘ask how your day was’.”
“Bullshit, no you weren’t.”
“You dare suggest I, Richard Ralington Tyson Tozier The Fourth, would make a sex joke at a time like this.”
“Given that it’s just about the only thing you’re good at…”
Richie dropped the virtuous act, in favor of wiggling his eyebrows, which was just as infuriating as it had been in fourth grade, when he first learned how to do it.
“I’m sure your mom would disagree.”
Eddie sighed.
“How has Bev not killed you yet?”
“Well, I’m extremely charming and funny. Maybe Ben should be the jealous one… What have I got that he doesn’t? I’m handsome, I’m talented, I’m fun, I-”
“At least we know he’d beat you in a contest of humility.”
Richie sighed, like a frustrated artist.
“How do you expect me to be humble with so much greatness?” he asked in a vaguely French accent.
Eddie couldn’t help the smile. He wanted to sit on those awful chair and trade insults with Richie forever, like they were still dumb teens with time on their hands.
The night passed by them, unnoticed, just as mundane and just as remarkable as it always was. It was, all at once, entirely uneventful and everything that had ever mattered. Eddie let himself lean into it.
Richie joked and Eddie joked back and they both tried to pretend they weren’t laughing, because that’s what they were. That’s how they had been since they were stupid little kids and Eddie was in love with it. Eddie was in love with him.
He had been forever and he’d never known why. He’d never known what to do about it, or if the feelings would ever go anywhere.
All Eddie really knew, and all that really mattered, was that he’d be perfectly happy to leave his whole childhood rotting in a wasteland of forgotten things, as long as he got to keep this idiot loser who had him laughing in the empty diner, waiting for their laundry to finish up at 2:24 in the morning.