Chapter Text
In the six hours of flight time between New York and Richie, Eddie does what he does best and worries.
Being back in Derry those three long months ago had been like a weird acid trip, Richie tells him one night soon after Eddie’s divorce papers are finalized, slurred and quiet on the phone. He’s drunk, and Eddie has to do the enormous mental task of tacking along the word again to the end of that thought.
Eddie’s never been anywhere near acid, but he understands nonetheless. In Derry, it had been deceptively easy to become a closer approximation of the thirteen-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak he’d left behind all those years ago, babied and teased by his friends, none more than Richie and his affinity for making Eddie’s head hurt with lame jokes and impressions.
Derry had been both regression and progress; for a moment down there in the dark tunnels, he’d felt like a child again, small and helpless against something much bigger than himself. It’s a feeling he’d become extremely acquainted with recently, as the memories of his childhood had come flooding back. There had been so many things he’d sworn he’d never be able to forget, that he logically shouldn’t have forgotten, that had been lost to him. To It.
His childhood had come back to him bittersweetly, everything from his overbearing mother with a freakish similarity to Myra that somehow he’d never noticed before, to the way Richie’s dark eyes had softened when he’d crowed, “Eddie Spaghetti, shove your fat ass over,” and clumsily swung his lanky legs into the hammock (their hammock, Eddie remembers a week later; it had always been their secret, special place, where they could sit close and blame it on the lack of space, pressed up against each other warm and clammy from the humid summer, anxious to see if anyone else would comment on the way their legs tangled).
And Richie. Richie, who comes back into his life so bizarrely unchanged and yet so completely different that it has Eddie’s heart reeling, says into the phone, his deep voice hoarse from his show that night, uncharacteristically quiet and serious, “Come stay with me in L.A.”
Eddie turns over in his bed to face the window. The blinds aren’t fully closed, and though his apartment is on the tenth floor, that does nothing to drown out the chaos of the city outside, and suddenly Eddie feels as restless as New York.
Freshly divorced, thinking about sticky summer afternoons at the peak of adolescence, Eddie closes his eyes and imagines Richie laying in his own bed on the other side of the country, far too big and extravagant for just himself. “No way,” Bev had cried, laughing herself silly when Richie had nonchalantly pulled out a black card to pay for bodega sandwiches last month when they’d visited him in New York, Bev and Ben claiming Eddie’s guest room and leaving Richie the couch, “They pay you this much to stand around and act like yourself?”
Eddie had come out to grab some water in the middle of the night. He’d still been half asleep, not thinking about how there were three other people staying in his home, and in passing Richie on the couch, he’d nearly had a heart attack.
He’d looked ridiculous with his long legs draped over the leather arm of the sofa, mouth slack in his sleep, glasses tossed sometime in the evening on Eddie’s coffee table. And yet, it had been enough to make Eddie hesitate.
For a long time, Eddie had stood in the doorframe of his room sipping at his water and watching Richie sleep uncomfortably on the sofa, taking in the slope of his shoulder, so much wider now that he’d had a chance to grow into his lanky height, the bareness of his feet, pale and bony where they stuck out of the blanket Eddie had left neatly folded for him.
Then, like with most things pertaining to Richie, Eddie had folded the image away into some corner of his brain before he thought too hard about it.
At present, as Richie’s offer spins in his brain like an out-of-control carousel, the memory of Richie sleeping in his living room barrels into mind like an intrusive thought.
There’s so much of him that just wants to see Richie. Just make sure that he is real, that he won’t slip through the cracks once again when Eddie loosens up and lets himself be vulnerable. They’d lost so much time in the middle.
“Eds?” Richie says a little bit hesitantly, “Are you good? I was sort of—"
“Yeah,” Eddie answers, breathless, “yeah, I will.”
And less than a month later, Eddie’s packing up what few belongings he wants to keep and moving all the way across the country.
Richie’s house is as extravagant as Eddie had expected, but three times filthier.
In the very back of a cushy gated neighborhood by the ocean that Eddie tries his best not to scoff at, Richie’s house is a huge, classical thing, imposing and lit yellow from within. His sportscar is much sleeker than the tank of an Escalade Eddie had owned in New York, and definitely a million times more dangerous, were he to crash. Eddie tells him as much over the purr of the engine and Richie grins as he speeds down a miraculously empty street, “It never sinks in that you’re real until you open your mouth, Eds.”
With that grin, the last of Eddie’s uncertainty over all this fades—moving all the way across the country without any plans, his life profoundly changed at the less-than-tender age of forty, to live with someone he’d once been… been something with. Not a thing, really, but not nothing. He’d never call it nothing.
They’ve always been able to fall back into rhythm with each other in an alarmingly short amount of time. Whether it was after Richie’s parents had sent him to summer camp for eight whole weeks when they were eleven, or after a forgotten twenty-seven years, catching eyes over mediocre Chinese food in the midst of everyone’s chatter, something always slotted back into place just so, and everything would be alright again in the universe because Eddie remembers, oh, Richie exists.
He had come to the airport with a ridiculous sign in his hands reading Spaghetti on it in obnoxious red letters, but he’d crumpled it into his pocket to curl his arms over Eddie’s shoulders, pulling him in for a quick hug that had made Eddie’s pulse jump before taking two of his bags and guiding them towards the parking garage, chattering the whole time about L.A traffic.
In the house, Richie throws his keys on the cluttered kitchen island and gestures vaguely as he walks with Eddie past the foyer and sleek, open concept kitchen to the sprawling living room, littered with empty bottles and dirty laundry, crumpled papers and broken pens.
“You live like this?” Eddie deadpans, dodging a small tower of empty cans, “Like some kind of frat house?”
Richie rolls his eyes, and oh, his eyes aren’t magnified behind his thick glasses because Richie doesn’t wear glasses out in California. This isn’t Richie who cracks lame jokes across Eddie in the hammock in their clubhouse until Eddie kicks a foot out and slams a heel into his shoulder, this is L.A Richie who wears huge dramatic sunglasses to avoid being spotted, who sells out shows every weekend.
“Relax, Kaspbrak. The housekeepers come on Mondays.”
“Housekeepers,” Eddie says, dazed. Plural.
The guest room Richie shows him to is thankfully clean. Eddie gives it a perfunctory once-over while he sets his luggage down and Richie lingers in the doorway, watching him.
“Early dinner?” Richie says finally, “You wanna get something to eat before you pass out from jetlag?”
Eddie turns to face him finally, and finds him outlined in the doorway, golden from the light of the room, silhouetted against the hallway behind him. Richie has one hip against the wall, arms crossed loosely over his broad chest. The bright green leafy print of his shirt is slightly garish but somehow endearing, collar undone just one too many buttons to expose a fair bit of his chest.
“Sure,” Eddie says, throat suddenly a little too dry. “I’m going to shower. You call in whatever takeout you want, just make sure it’s not too spicy.”
Richie cracks a slight smile. “Right, right,” he says with a nonchalant wave of his hand, “and try not to slip in the shower, Grandma.”
“Jeez, Rich,” Eddie shoots back, pushing him gently into the hall, “I know how much you like old ladies’ titties, but if you wanted to help one shower you should just be straight up and ask.”
Richie makes a face at him but allows Eddie to shut the door in his face.
As Richie slinks back downstairs, Eddie turns to the room once again. While the rest of the house had been littered with trash, the guest room had been coordinated carefully, all dark wood and glossy finish. Years ago, Richie’s furniture must have been bought and styled by someone with meticulous taste. The bed is a wide, old wooden thing, heavy and beautiful and much too big for Eddie alone. He tosses his jacket on one of the armchairs before making his way to the en suite for a much-desired shower.
In the mirror above the sink, his face is pale and drawn, eyes dark and brows solemn. The tired, lined face in his reflection is a far cry from the sun-golden freckled one in his memories.
He loathes the thought, but it strikes him hot like a slap to the face—an insecurity that runs so deep and aches so raw that he’d hardly dared to let it penetrate the swelling hopefulness in his chest when he had agreed to move out to L.A.
He is not the same as Richie remembers.
He has not been for a long time, if he thinks hard about it. Returning to Derry had been a wake-up call, and though the memories and emotions had come back, each sending him reeling with the enormity of remembrance, Eddie can’t shake the feeling that Richie will laugh and reveal at some point that the whole thing is a sick joke and he wants Eddie to go back to New York—and Richie wouldn’t do that, he knows he wouldn’t.
But the thought remains.
Scar tissue knots ugly over his chest, horrible and just a few inches from fatal—miraculous, the doctors had called it at the time. Standing in the warm light of Richie’s guest bathroom, shirtless and skinny and unimpressive, he doesn’t feel particularly miraculous. Only inadequate.
He’d been vibrant once, alive and young and happy, despite the anxieties caused by his mother. The tired man in the mirror stares back at him, and suddenly all Eddie can wonder is what Richie sees, exactly, when he looks at him with that simmering intensity in his eyes.
He has to force himself to look away from the mirror and climb into the quickly steaming shower, letting water beat over his narrow shoulders until they’re pink from the heat. And then he stands there a few moments more.
Twenty minutes later, feeling much cleaner and in his element, Eddie pads from the room dressed in shorts and an old pullover, feet bare on Richie’s wood floors, downstairs to where Richie sits in the living room.
On the wide black leather sectional, Richie’s long legs sprawl haphazardly over the seats, his back against the corner seat before a low stylish glass coffee table housing several empty beer bottles and an extremely flat and wide wall-mounted television.
The sofa is so big that it dwarfs even Richie’s tall frame, making him look oddly lonely sitting there by himself. An island of man in an endless sea of slick black leather. Eddie sits delicately on the arm.
“You know that your house is giving me mildly alcoholic vibes, right?” Eddie says, and yelps the next second when Richie kicks out and tries to push him off his precarious perch.
His fingers are already itching to begin picking up after Richie, but he tries to hold off, at least for tonight. Instead, he slides onto the seat adjacent Richie, crossing his legs under him. The running shorts that run up his thighs are reminiscent of the kind he’d worn many times as a teenager, red and quite short on Eddie’s lean legs, accented with white drawstrings.
Richie’s eyes drop to his thighs for a moment when he tugs them lower, and Eddie wonders if he’s remembering a similar sight from their childhood.
“You know you’re the homeless freeloader living in my guestroom, right?” Richie says finally, raising one dark eyebrow.
Eddie reaches out automatically to sock Richie’s shoulder, but something goes wrong and suddenly Richie’s holding his wrist between long, startlingly warm fingers. Eddie stares down at his narrow wrist. Richie’s hands are so pale, stark white and rather delicate compared to the rest of him. When he’d been younger, they’d been eerie, far too elongated just like the rest of his limbs, spidery and overgrown, tendons pulling taut against his skin when his knuckles flexed, but he’s since grown into them, his hands long and strong and elegant now. Eddie wonders what would happen if he held on tighter.
He pulls his wrist back a little too late.
Richie retreats into the corner of the sofa again. “You gonna start paying rent?” he says under his breath, which reminds Eddie that he’s Richie fucking Tozier and an asshole of the highest order.
“No,” Eddie says, fixing him with an unimpressed look, “I’m actually planning on becoming your trophy wife.”
“Yeah?” Richie says, raising one dark eyebrow, “You can start as a live-in housekeeper and try to work your way up by seducing your boss. Do you come with a little maid outfit?”
“Yeah, I got it from your sister, dumbass,” Eddie growls, and half of him wants to throw himself on Richie and start a scuffle like he’s done a million times before, but then he remembers that he is an entire forty years old and folds his hands in his lap instead. “What did you get for dinner? Better not be anything weird like that pub you made us go to in Queens.”
“Bev was just as enthusiastic about that pub as me,” Richie complains, “S’not my fault you get food poisoning at the drop of a hat.”
“Beverly was like, four margaritas and half a pitcher of beer in, she was only agreeing with you because you guys are like the world’s worst category five hurricane when you drink together.”
Richie’s grin turns teasing. “What about when you and I drink?”
“Apocalyptic.”
The intercom buzzes then, and Richie rolls his eyes fondly and calls over his shoulder as he ambles towards the door, “We got Greek food, by the way. You wanna beer so we can start off the apocalypse, Spaghetti? You and me, Mad Max style through the abandoned Hollywood Hills?”
“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says indignantly. While Richie’s tipping their deliverer, Eddie pushes the ashtray on the table away to make space for them to eat, sweeping some cigarette butts and ashes to the side with a tissue from the nearly empty box on the center of the table.
How could he forget? It always gets so much easier to breath under the care of Richie’s easygoing wide smile and gentle ribbing. Already, he feels a smile pull unwittingly at his mouth as Richie returns with his arms full of plastic bags and two beer cans, easily dwarfed between his long fingers.
Over dinner, Eddie loosens up gradually until he’s joking along with Richie about the tzatziki being the exact texture of cum (well, Richie jokes and Eddie makes an exaggerated retching noise, to which Richie replies in a lecherous voice, “yeah, baby, you’re gagging for it,” and Eddie kicks a leg out and catches him in the thigh), sipping at his cold beer and relishing the carbonation bubbling down his throat. He’s never enjoyed the taste much, but it’s a good way to cut the salt from his shawarma, and he finds himself reaching the end of it more easily than any beer he’s had before, half due to the fact that Richie’s an excellent drinking partner.
There is still so much to be unsure of, but Richie gives him a fond smile when Eddie launches into an expletive-heavy rant about some old businessman who’d definitely been giving him eyes during his flight, and Eddie thinks that at least of this, of Richie, he is sure of.
Eddie’s still running on East Coast time, and the sun has barely sunk below the horizon, washing the whole sky a myriad of deep peachy oranges and lurid indigos when he yawns, jetlag weighing down his eyes, and tells Richie he’s about to pass out.
“Go to bed,” Richie says, gently nudging him towards the stairs. “I’ll clean up, don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t forget—”
“The empty cans, yes Eddie, I’ve got them,” Richie rolls his eyes good naturedly and grins. “Goodnight, weirdo.”
Eddie tugs at the hem of his sweater and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He feels awkward, somehow, watching Richie clean up after him for once, neatly tossing everything into the paper takeout bag.
They haven’t talked about what’s been left unsaid for so long.
“Richie,” he says, soft.
The truth of the matter is this; Eddie and Richie do the Repression Tango like it’s nobody’s business.
His feelings have been clear since Richie stepped into the Jade of the Orient and everything had come rushing back, their banter warm and familiar. Eddie got a divorce and moved across the country, and here they still are, dancing around the subject like they had as kids, awkward and flustered.
And Richie had reciprocated, he’d been sure of it, letting Eddie shove into his space and nag him whilst covering his knobby scraped knees in colorful band-aids with his brows pinched together in a frown with no heat, Richie looking down at him with dopey adoring eyes, and though Richie’s older now, better at hiding parts of himself when he needs to, Eddie catches that same emotion in his face when Richie straightens up and turns to him, finds him standing there in his soft old pullover and shorts like a long-faded memory.
They’re still teetering on that fine line between something and everything, and it’s been so long since Eddie’s been nervous like this.
Eddie takes a step forward, and then another, and another. He clasps Richie’s face in his hands, stretching onto the tips of his toes, and, cheeks burning, he brushes his mouth against Richie’s jaw.
Richie’s eyes are wide when he pulls away, his own face flushed a soft shade of pink.
“Goodnight,” he tells Richie hastily, and spins on his heel, heading upstairs so he can go think about the scrape of Richie’s stubble against his lips on repeat in the sanctity of his room.
Feeling rather pleased with himself, he gets ready for bed grinning like an idiot, like it’s just setting in that he’s here, that Richie still looks at him with his heart in his hands, and it’s like something settles inside him, something heavy and warm and familiar.
Even when he crawls into the empty bed, feeling much too small and alone for the massive frame, there’s a dizzy sort of residual excitement in him, a promise of ‘I can do that again’.
Eddie’s just calming himself enough for the drowsiness to come creeping back into his limbs when his phone goes off. He presses the phone to his ear without checking the caller. “Hello?”
“Eddie?” Beverly’s warm voice is a familiar thing. Something in him relaxes as she barrels right on, “I thought I told you to call me when you get out there to Richie’s, you asshole. Ben and I were going to come help you, but God forbid we try to actually be good friends.”
Eddie feels a smile pull unwittingly over his mouth. “Nice to hear from you, Beverly.”
“Don’t ‘nice to hear from you Beverly’ me,” she says exasperatedly, but then Eddie hears her sigh deeply and knows she’s let it go. “How are you? How is Richie? Was your flight okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Bev,” Eddie rolls his eyes good-naturedly at the ceiling. “Richie’s… Richie, as always, but somehow a million times more California-fied, if that makes sense. How’s the honeymoon phase? Still going strong?”
Beverly and Ben had been all over each other when they’d visited Eddie in New York with Richie, handsy in the back of Eddie’s car, leaning into each other’s space like they belonged there, exchanging longing glances when they’d think Eddie and Richie weren’t watching. It had been equally as sickening and adorable to be in the same vicinity as the two.
Bev’s voice softens into something so tender that longing echoes in Eddie’s chest in response. “Oh, Eds,” she sighs. “Sometimes I wonder how this could be real. How I could deserve him.”
Beverly understands in a way the others do not. While their situations had been fairly different, the way Bev had looked at him over the table back at the Jade with those wide, nervous eyes when Bill had asked about her now ex-husband had been a countenance he’d known well. He’d seen it reflected back at himself in the mirror countless times, whenever his phone would start blowing up and he would look down at it, anxiety settling heavily in his chest like a conditioned response at the letters forming Myra’s name on the caller ID.
Bev’s tough. A hell of a lot tougher than Eddie had ever been, but they’re in this together—putting their lives back together in the aftermath, and when she had visited him in New York, her own divorce messier than Eddie’s by far, an entire fashion empire between her and Tom to divide up, and one night while Richie had gone out to grab smokes from the corner store and Ben had been in the shower, Bev had clasped his hands in her own, sure and warm and strong. Her eyes had been open, understanding, and she’d said soft, “It’s hard to unlearn these things, isn’t it?”
After a minute, he’d said quietly back, “Yeah. Yeah, it is, Bevvie.”
He’d teared up then, even while she’d been so brave, her own blue eyes resolute, and she’d held his hands in hers for the next twenty minutes until Richie had come back with his arms full of Thai takeout and Eddie had to wipe at his lash-line quickly, blaming allergies and high pollen counts for his swollen eyes.
Eddie stares at the blinds he’d left ajar. The sound of the ocean is a distant, comforting thing, though unfamiliar to Eddie, who’d lived in Brooklyn for most of his adult life. If you could call it life. He had simply been going through the motions for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to live truly. For nearly all of those twenty-seven years, he might as well have been a dead man. Does he deserve this second chance at life? The thought’s crossed his own mind enough times only within the past day.
“You do,” Eddie says sincerely as he can, and wills his voice not to crack over the words. “We both do.”
If he can persuade Bev, maybe he can convince himself.
Eddie starts working from home.
It’s his therapist’s idea initially, because he’d told her about moving out to L.A with Richie the day after he’d made up his mind—he had made a special appointment solely for that, still half convinced that the split-second decision could be chalked up to a momentary lapse in judgement.
(“Or,” she’d suggested in that calm therapist voice that never fails to aggravate Eddie like nothing else. “It could be good for you to have a change in pace. You told me this Richie guy was the best thing that ever happened to you, didn’t you?” Like he needs a reminder of that breakdown of an appointment.)
He renegotiates his contract and winds up with a bit of a lower salary than he’d made in New York, but Richie sinks into the sofa next to him and grins so wide when Eddie tells him that Eddie can’t even bring himself to care. He gets the home office because Richie doesn’t use it anyways, and sets up the meagre things he’d brought from New York: his laptop and a cute little potted plant from Stanley, some stationary and his business cards.
He’d worked long hours before, because he hadn’t seen a reason not to. Myra didn’t care much—she’d been too busy micromanaging every other facet of his life, so Eddie had become used to spending most of his time with her or working. It had even sort of been akin to relief, working himself down to the bone just so he wouldn’t have to be with her.
Yet when he thinks about living with Richie, to his surprise, working from home doesn’t seem the unnecessarily complicated task it had seemed to him years ago when it had first become an option.
He’s tired, he realizes sometimes in the mornings when he wakes up with aching bones and twinging scars and his body protests vehemently at the thought of getting out of bed. He’s old.
And Richie barely works during the week anyways, Eddie finds out the next day when the housekeepers come, as promised, to tidy up the chaos of Richie’s home. Mostly, he lazes around the house and works on bits, writes when inspiration strikes, and bothers Eddie.
Eddie finds him standing at the bay window overlooking the pool in the backyard around midday a few days after he moves in, clad only in his boxers, and drinking a mug of coffee, staring off into the distance for a good three minutes before Eddie interrupts very loudly, “Motherfucker, what is that,” and points at Richie’s bicep.
Richie’s very unclothed but not bare bicep, he can’t help but note, and when Richie turns to face him, it takes all of Eddie’s self-control not to gawk.
He’s seen Richie in even less before, (It’s not that big, his head fills in Stan saying dryly), but Richie is broad now, soft in some places and still lanky in others. When he catches Eddie looking at his bicep, he shifts and the muscles pull taut, the veins visible in his arms under the hair there.
There is a tattoo there. On Richie’s inner bicep, there is a stark black tattoo of a turtle, small enough to be hidden by a shirt sleeve but big enough to be recognizable for what it is.
Richie looks down at the tattoo like he’d forgotten about it. “Well, it’s definitely not a stupid souvenir from my exactly one semester of college, that’s for sure.”
“You didn’t finish college? You?”
Richie’s grades had always been the best out of all of them, somehow. It had been part of what had made him so enigmatic to Eddie in his younger years; Richie Tozier who got straight A’s despite being sent out to sit in the hall for misbehaving during half his classes.
“Eddie,” Richie says pointedly, and gestures around them to the cavernous house, full of light and sleek beautiful furniture. Which is fair. “And don’t pretend that you didn’t sneak out just as much as I used to play hooky, you little delinquent. I would pay to see the things you probably got up to in college. Bet Mrs. K would be rolling in her grave.”
Eddie frowns. “Not really,” he says a little awkwardly, and rolls his shoulders, suddenly desperate for something to do other than talk about this. His spine cracks loudly.
Most of his college experience had been mediocre, to say the least, with a particularly dead love life. Eddie knows they've all been through their fair share of shit in the past twenty-seven years, but his own issues still make him a little squeamish, a little shameful when he thinks about them too hard.
The fact of the matter is that Eddie had been too anxiety-ridden, too conditioned to need codependency by the time he'd forgotten Derry, that when he'd gotten to college, he'd been something of a mess. Three times he had moved out and moved back in with his mother until finally she’d died, and then he’d gone and replaced her with Myra.
Richie’s still looking at him, expectantly, so he deflects quickly, “Don’t you have something to be doing?”
“Nope,” Richie says smugly, making his way over to the kitchen to grab a refill on his coffee, and after a moment, Eddie follows. “I have a show in San Francisco this weekend and I’ve already got it down. Now tell me about all your slutty, slutty college escapades, deviant.”
“Pour me a mug,” he says instead, settling on one of the barstools on the kitchen island.
“How do you like it?” Richie asks, and then cocks his eyebrow, an amused expression flitting over his face, but before he can say whatever unhinged dirty thing he’s thinking, Eddie answers quickly.
“Sweet,” he tells Richie, and when he gets that lecherous glint in his eyes, Eddie quickly adds, “And grab the fucking creamer instead of saying something vulgar, or you’ll never hear about me in college.”
Thankfully, Richie actually does what he says without commentary, pouring out creamer until Eddie holds up a hand for him to stop, and then slides the large novelty mug over to him.
“Why do you have so much of your own merch?” Eddie asks, looking at the neat little logo along the side, which reads TRASHMOUTH TOUR ’05. It’s only one of the many pieces from tours and sets past that he’s seen around the house.
“It accumulates,” Richie rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "Alright, I'm setting the scene. New York, mid-nineties. A very young and sexy twenty-something Eddie Kaspbrak is getting ready on a Friday night to—?"
Eddie flushes a little. "Study," he admits, and to his surprise, Richie walks around the island to him, and settles on the other barstool, their knees knocking together gently. He attaches his eyes firmly to the steaming mug between his laced fingers instead of Richie.
"Come on, how about the juicy stuff?"
He shrugs after a second. “There’s literally nothing to tell.”
He watches as Richie processes, and takes a sip of his coffee when all he's met with is silence for a beat longer.
“Hang on,” Richie says finally, realization settling over his features, “what did you do, save it for marriage? That’s definitely not wh—”
“No, Rich,” Eddie interrupts, pushing aside the way the words make him want to squirm, continuing as frankly as possible. “Even till now, I mean.”
And Richie just stares.
Eddie takes another sip of his coffee, watching him carefully over the rim of his mug.
“Even till now?” Richie says, and he sounds breathless, like he’s been hit in the stomach. “What do you mean, even till now?”
He frowns. “You know what I mean. Don’t pretend like you don’t, you dick. I just never really…” he trails off awkwardly.
Eddie’s fully aware of the fact that Richie’s slept around, mostly with women but sometimes with men too, that he’s had girlfriends and once or twice, men he’s repeatedly hooked up with. He also knows that none of them have lasted long, that Derry flipped Richie’s life upside down just as much as Eddie’s, and takes a moment to ground himself in the present, in the kitchen—their kitchen, he asserts stubbornly, where Richie’s sitting right next to him, still staring at him in surprise.
“It’s,” Richie starts to say, but then fumbles, “I mean, I just didn’t expect. Fuck, Eddie.”
“The exact opposite, actually,” he says with a wan smile. “It’s okay, Rich, it’s as funny and pathetic as you think it is. You can joke about it.”
“No,” Richie says vehemently, and there’s an uncharacteristic solemnness in his eyes. “Eddie, what the fuck, I’m not— that’s the last thing you are, dude. It’s not funny, it just. It just is. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. Doesn’t change a thing.”
He gives Eddie a look that plainly reads, doesn’t change a thing between us.
Eddie hates a pity party, and he’s grateful for Richie not saying it out loud. In fact, he’d expected Richie to laugh about it, to question him or—or something.
But Richie’s like that. He’s always been like that, as carefree and flexible as flowing water, not letting the little things bother him the way Eddie does.
But then Richie asserts, "And I mean, if you don't—if you never want—"
"No!" Eddie says too quickly, and his cheeks burn from his own eagerness. Richie's eyes go wide, and Eddie's already hastily overexplaining, "It's not that I didn't—didn't want to, I was just. You know."
In a pseudo-Oedipal marriage with a woman while brainwashed to forget you. No big deal.
Half of him is still reeling from telling Richie a thing so previously secretive without any fanfare, can't even believe that Richie knows now, that he's privy to something about Eddie no one else in the world knows. Abruptly, he realizes they're both equally as flushed, staring awkwardly away from each other.
He waves a flippant hand. "But tell me about San Francisco?"
Richie blinks owlishly. “Right!” he says, and shoves his glasses up his nose, “Shit, San Francisco. I have a show, and now you're here and I should definitely have told my manager or something about this whole roommate development. I'm absolute shit at planning this stuff, oh god."
Taking his phone from his pocket, he quickly taps something out. "You're coming with me, right?"
"Well yeah," Eddie can't help but say immediately. It's not exactly a secret that Richie's career is a major hot topic amongst all of them, from the deep smoldering pride in Eddie's chest—remnants of the rainy days of their childhood, spent hidden away in the little loft above Eddie's garage when Richie would crack stupid jokes and practice his Voices as they poured together over the newest Shazam! issue, talking big about far away cities and crazy dreams—to Bev and Stanley laughing like hyenas about Richie's slightly cringe-inducing stint on SNL from his late twenties the last time they'd all been together.
"It's okay if I come, right?" He remembers to add. "It's not a problem or anything?"
Richie gives him the dopiest grin over his phone. "Eddie, my darling, you are the only important person coming. I will fully put effort into this performance solely because you're in the audience."
"Shut up," he tells Richie, ignoring the way his face heats in pleasure at the words. "Of course, I'll come to your fucking show and support you, idiot."
The corner of Richie's mouth twitches into a smirk. "Aww, Eds, that may be the nicest borderline-mean thing anyone's ever said to me. Now let me give this corporate fucker a call and tell him to add a plus one to the guest list, and then we can figure out lunch? I'm assuming that's why you're loitering in the kitchen instead of busting your ass, like... I don't know, analyzing risks?"
"What do you even think I do?" Eddie laughs, and then concedes, “yeah, yeah, hurry up with your call. You know I can’t cook for shit.”
“Worst trophy wife ever,” Richie tells him loftily, and leaves to make his call.
Eddie finishes his coffee in the time it takes Richie to return, wearing a stupid smile that makes Richie doubletake and give him a jokey mock-suspicious glance while he rummages around the fridge for lunch.
"I'll text you the flight details when I get them," he says, and then raises an eyebrow in question. "What do you look so smug for, huh?"
"M'not," he immediately insists, and tries to put a scowl on his face instead, though it doesn't really work because Richie keeps making stupid faces at him and he keeps laughing as they banter over condiments and drinks.
By the time Eddie gets back to his desk the usual cacophony in his head has quieted to something manageable. Instead, there’s a sort of giddiness welling up inside him uncontrollably, like a second wind of energy, like the best fucking runner’s high, leaving him both calm and restless.
It’s Richie’s presence that gets him like this, so easily that it has him flushed for the rest of the afternoon, a kind of lingering sweetness so new to him that settles cloyingly, and with a mild surprise, in the midst of his first afternoon meeting, he realizes it’s contentment.
At the request of his therapist and the new slew of doctors he’d had to see for the whole huge nearly-fatal miraculous chest penetration scar thing, Eddie takes up running again.
To his pleasant surprise, no one is as outspokenly supportive about this fact as Bill and Richie. They’d known his affinity for running when he’d been young until his mother had pulled him out of gym, how he’d been the smallest but fastest in their class during the track units.
His body’s not as strong as it had been pre-impalement (impalement, Eddie thinks to himself sometimes in dull shock in the shower, one hand pressed to the rough scar tissue. I was impaled.), and while Richie had dragged him out of the way just enough for it to prove nonfatal, he’s going to have this ugly, knotted scar below his ribcage for the rest of his life.
He’s probably never going to have a mile time below seven minutes again, but Bill tells him with the patience of a saint over a grainy video call one morning when Eddie’s out of breath from his run and shoving a glass under the water dispenser in the fridge, “Eddie, none of us have had a s-seven minute mile since high school. Richie probably walked all of it, dude, don’t beat yourself up by having insane standards.”
“As much as it pains me to say it, Bill’s right,” Richie says, appearing from out of nowhere, sidling past Eddie to swing the opposite fridge door open, reaching for the carton of eggs on the top shelf. “Never run a mile in my life. Unless it was running away from the Bowers and Hockstetters of the world—then I’d fucking lap you.”
“When am I not right?” Bill asks jokingly, to which Richie replies by tipping his head into the frame to say dryly, “watch it, Big Bill. Can’t have the famous William Denbrough getting a big ego now, can we?”
“You’re telling me about getting a getting a big head?” Bill asks, and throws Eddie an incredulous glance through the camera like, can you believe this guy? It’s a familiar routine, and it makes Eddie smile even now, watching the two banter.
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Richie says automatically, a loose grin spreading over his mouth, “we all know I’ve got the biggest fattest h—”
“Beep beep,” Eddie cuts in quickly, yanking his phone out of reach. “Where’s Mikey?” he directs this question to Bill, ignoring Richie’s whining as he walks around the kitchen island and perches on a barstool. He downs the frosty glass of water in record time while Bill calls through the house for Mike.
They’d all been sorely in need of change after Derry 2.0, but even Eddie knows that none of them deserve it more than Mike, sweet, strong, reliable Mike who had quit his job at the library the very day after they’d finally killed It.
Bill and Audra had offered, and so Mike, eager to see the word, had left Derry for the first time in twenty-seven years all the way to London. They’ve all received a deluge of pictures from them, of Bill’s tired eyes shining brightly, Mike’s gentle smile and Audra’s elegant one framing each side of his face in front of various European landmarks.
Richie sets down the carton by the stove, sneaks up behind him again when Mike comes in the frame. He rests his hands on the counter on either side of Eddie’s waist, effectively caging him against it, rests his chin on Eddie’s shoulder casually, and Eddie tries not to let his breath catch.
Richie’s arms are long, his forearms thick with ropy muscle, the veins standing out when he grips the edge of the counter, and Eddie realizes there’s too much saliva in his fucking mouth—god, what’s wrong with him these days? He swallows hard and tries to focus on Bill and Mike telling a story about a bookstore they’d visited instead of the tendons of Richie’s arm shifting as he taps his long fingers idly on the counter, ever fidgety.
It takes an inordinate amount of effort not to think about how warm Richie feels pressed against him like this, to keep his breath even when Richie’s so close. He’s still hot from his run, and the proximity isn’t doing his tired lungs and shaky knees any good. Not to mention the way he’s all slick with sweat and Richie pressing against his back is sticking his shirt to his skin in a way his brain automatically processes as a confusing combination of gross and hot that leaves his mind buzzing with static.
He focuses on tracing idle patterns in the condensation left on his empty glass, little swirls and flowers as Mike and Richie chat about things to do in Amsterdam, the next scheduled city in the trio’s agenda.
"Well, Eddie and I," Richie's saying when he tunes back in fully, "are going to San Francisco this weekend for this show I'm doing, but I was thinking of doing something soon, when everyone's free. "
"With everyone?" Eddie asks, surprised by this quick development.
"Mhmm," Richie hums, and Eddie feels it rumble through him where they're connected, tries not to shiver as it wracks over his frame. "Housewarming for you slash six months since Mike's call. Since we all remembered."
"Six months," Bill sighs over the line. "And yet somehow it feels..."
"Like a lifetime," Eddie fills in for him. "A fucking eternity. Like this is the new normal, and everything else you've lived has been a weird fucking dream?"
"Yeah," Bill smiles humorlessly, "exactly like that."
"Watch out, Eds," Richie jokes, "Bill's definitely stealing that for his next script."
"Would be an improvement," Eddie immediately fires back, then shoots an apologetic look at the screen and adds hastily, "sorry Bill!" when he makes an indignant noise in response.
"No, don't be sorry," Richie breathes low, too soft for the speaker to pick it up, his eyes bright when Eddie glances over, "You're brilliant."
Just like that, he's flushing warmly again, cheeks reddening from the praise. He ducks down and bites back the pleased smile that threatens to curl his lips.
"You guys just don't get Bill's work," Mike starts, because he's got it bad, the same way Eddie had consumed the entirety of the Richie Tozier Comedy Canon in less than a week once long ago, an odd hyper-fixation that had come and gone fairly quick when he'd been twenty-five or six, that had left him with odd vaguely sexy dreams for months, an experience that he'd ultimately written off as odd but insignificant and thought less about as the years had dragged on until it made sense all at once.
"I don't think there's a person on this earth who really gets Bill's work besides you, Bill, and maybe Audra, like half the time," Richie says, to which a distant higher, feminine voice replies with something too muffled for them to make out.
"Audra said she doesn't get it either," Mike grins, and Bill sighs, rubbing his temple and trying his best to look disappointed even with a smile creeping up on his mouth.
"You guys are all insufferable," Bill says, and disappears from the screen.
Mike glances at him and then at Eddie and Richie, who mouths drama queen very exaggeratedly until Eddie elbows him and sends Mike an apologetic look.
"Hey, don't say you guys when you really just mean Richie," Eddie complains to Bill, who appears behind Mike once again just to shrug childishly.
Then Mike’s got on his placating smile, pointing out through a knowing look, “Says the one living with him, Eddie.”
“Yeah, Eddie,” Richie says in mock outrage, and knocks his bicep in against Eddie’s shoulder. “You’ve got a fair bit of Insufferable in you, too.”
“You’re both very lovely,” Mike rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and continues quickly, diverting the conversation back on course. “So, this six-months-out thing? Have you talked to the others about it?”
“Considering that I literally thought of it when I saw Bill talking to Eddie this morning, no,” Richie admits breezily. He waves a flippant hand. “But who cares about the details, I’ll pass the idea along to Stanley and he’ll make a spreadsheet about it or something. CC us in the emails and all that.”
“Okay, well pass it along to Bevvie, too. You know she likes to plan these things,” Mike tells him.
“Yeah, I owe her a facetime,” Richie says thoughtfully, which Eddie kind of doubts because he’d watched Bev and Richie talk for hours literally two days ago in the living room, during which Eddie had chimed in from time to time, but had mostly done work on his laptop and let the two chatter.
They’d always been like that together—a pair of troublemakers, mischievous as anything, with Bev’s flaming hair and Richie’s twinkling eyes. It had gotten Eddie incredibly fond, looking over his own spreadsheet (not that he’d admit it to Richie, or he’d laugh his ass off) and finding Richie smoking a cigarette and giggling with Bev over something, his long legs stretching across the sofa into Eddie’s space, his pale, bare feet pressed against Eddie’s thigh.
“Let us know how it goes,” Mike says, and Eddie mentally makes note of that. Us. Very interesting.
He cocks an eyebrow and makes a mental note to text Mike about it later, but says his goodbyes placidly.
“New rule,” he announces when they’ve hung up, dropping the phone at last, swinging around in the barstool and knocking Richie’s chin from his shoulder. “We need to talk about plans so that I can actually plan around them. You can’t spring stuff like San Francisco and the six months thing on me without giving me a little more time to figure out how it’ll work.”
Richie looks properly chastised at that, and shifts his weight sheepishly from foot to foot. "You're right," he says, "I'm sorry, I'm just not used to—to planning around another person."
“That’s okay,” Eddie says easily, because he appreciates an apology that comes without hesitance. He’s well aware that Richie’s mind works fast—a little too fast for even the six of them, who understand him better than anyone, who’d functioned essentially as one seven-bodied being throughout their adolescence, all wrapped in each other in their protective obsessive way, to keep up. “Just remember next time.”
Richie sticks out a hand between them, curling his pinky towards Eddie. “Promise,” he says, and grins in a way that makes Eddie’s heart pang.
He curls his own pinky through Richie’s after a moment, hoping the red on his cheeks can be blamed on the heat.
“Thank god you didn’t make us do the spit handshake thing you were obsessed with,” Eddie says, dragging his hand back.
"Oh, you mean this?" Richie teases, which, duh, he's Richie and Eddie should've known better than to remind him, and sticks out his wide palm, makes to spit in it when Eddie dances off the barstool and ducks out of reach with a cry of "gross!"
"I need a shower," Eddie tells him then, because the coolness of the house is starting to make his sweat dry all chilly down his back.
"Hmm, I'll call Stan," Richie says idly, and takes Eddie's vacated seat. "See what he's up to and when he's free in the next couple months. He'll probably chew my ear off about doing things so last minute."
"Good," Eddie says primly, and heads for the stair grinning when Richie makes an indignant noise behind him.